Are Vegetarians Healthier?

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So, now that we're all comfortable with the fact that meat is good for you, let's take another look at that question. Are vegetarians healthier? In many cases, no, they're not. Here are just a few:

In my book, I spoke with several physicians about the role meat plays in the health of the human body. And of course they all agreed that, in moderation and as part of a balanced diet and active lifestyle, it's a good thing. But what about all those worries that eating red meat with inevitably lead to hypertension, cholesterol problems and heart disease? Won't eating meat kill you? Turns out, as far as things to worry about go, having a roast beef sandwich is pretty far down on the list. One of the most important factors to consider regarding one's health, according to internist Dr. Rian Tannenbaum, isn't your lunch, but your genes. He told me the story of a fellow doctor who, by all appearances, was the portrait of healthy living: a marathon runner, a teetotaler, a strict vegetarian, etc. Then one day, feeling ill, he had himself checked out. Turns out, despite doing everything we're supposed to do to be a vibrant, healthful person, he had multiple plaques in his arteries caused by ragingly out-of-control cholesterol. After a couple of surgeries and a new regimen of statin drugs, those levels came down and he was fine.  And he started eating meat. You know why? Because it wasn't his dietary choices that caused his health woes...it was his family tree. So: when he was a vegetarian, was he healthier than, say, a person of similar age and lifestyle who happened to eat meat, but didn't share this poor guy's genetic predisposition for cholesterol problems? 

Not on your life.

Next, consider that not everyone can be a vegetarian. And yes, I mean that literally. Speaking of genetic predispositions, some people are part of an ethnicity that has subsisted on meat for thousands of years, and for good reason. Take Tibetans, for example. In the upper Himalayas, they're not able to grow very much outside of barley. So their diet consists mainly of tsampa (barley flour that's usually mixed with water and either eaten as raw dough or baked into bread), and yak products. Yak's milk, yak butter, yak cheese, and, naturally, yak meat. Now, you might know that most Tibetans are Buddhist, a religion that values life and compassion above all, and yet, in an interesting twist, most of them can't survive without having meat in their diet. Many try to become vegetarians, since they see it as karmically preferable. Like his Holiness, the Dalai Lama, who tried to cut out the meat, but soon became ill. His doctors said that he needed to nosh a little beef lamb now and then to stay healthy, which he does to this day.

Now look to Africa. Some friends of mine run a wonderful non-profit organization helping schoolchildren in a particularly poor area of Tanzania. They're lovely, giving people, but they don't have much to eat, mostly beans and rice, which is one of the world's cheapest complete proteins. Still, they occasionally suffer from malnutrition, and as a whole, they're very small of stature (a sign of insufficient nutrition during development).  Across the way, you have the Masai, who cherish beef cattle, which they cherish and use as currency. They eat mostly beef, and you know what? They're very strong. And very tall. It doesn't take a genius to see, between these two groups of people, which ones are healthier. Score another one for the carnivores.

Finally, it must be said that not every vegetarian is the Platonic ideal of health. I've known a number of them, most of them my friends, who didn't exercise, drank like fish, smoked cigarettes and weed, and ate mostly pizza and cheese fries. Naturally, they were overweight and out of shape. Were they healthier than someone like me, who works out regularly and has a balanced diet that included turkey sandwiches and salad with roasted chicken breast? No. Which is to say "no, duh." And then there are the former vegans whom I've known, who complained that, in their vegan days, they appear pale and undernourished, and that they picked up cold viruses with alarming frequency and regularity. That, and they were constantly hungry. All this despite their every effort to balance their diets. When they returned to omnivorism, these symptoms mysteriously vanished. 

There you have it: Three cases where vegetarians are definitely not healthier.