Digging up the healthy dirt on protein power

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• Vegans: Eat only plant-based foods, excluding animal flesh, animal products (dairy, eggs, honey) and animal by-products like gelatin and beeswax.
  
• Lacto vegetarians: Eat plantbased foods, dairy products but exclude meats, fish, fowl and eggs.
  
• Ovo vegetarians: Eat plantbased foods, include eggs but exclude meats, fish, fowl and dairy products.
  
• Lacto-ovo vegetarians: Include dairy products, eggs and plantbased foods but eliminate meat, fish and fowl.

Of course vegetables are very good for you, and you should include them in your diet. But what is primarily lacking in a vegetarian diet excluding animal flesh is one of the most important compounds needed for health and vitality - protein.

Followers of vegetarian eating patterns argue that you can get enough protein from plants, but the truth is this: you can't.

Our bodies constantly require good quality protein to fight illness and disease, to produce hormones, to create new cells, to build and repair body tissues, and to supply energy. Protein can be divided into complete and incomplete groups - animal protein is "complete" or superior containing all 22 amino acids including the eight essential ones. All non-animal protein is "incomplete" or inferior, and mostly contains very few essential amino acids.

Thus, vegetarian diets increase the chances of:

• Calorie deficiency.
  
• Protein deficiency.
  
• Vitamin B12 deficiency (only absorbed from animal products).
  
• Vitamin D deficiency (egg yolks, fish liver oil, milk, butter).
  
• Calcium deficiency.
  
• Zinc and iron deficiency: meat and poultry are the richest source of bioavailable zinc and iron.

Vitamin B12 is present in its bioavailable form, and is found only in animal protein. Insufficient amounts of vitamin B12 can elevate homocysteine, potentially increasing the risk for heart disease and stroke. Research published in the journal, Nutrition, in 2002, showed eating an exclusively plant-based diet results in subclinical protein malnutrition, raised homocysteine levels and atherogenisis.

Plant-based foods are excellent for your heart and your overall health, and vegetables should comprise at least 50% of a diet.

The risks only apply if you exclude all animal protein from your diet, as these contain valuable sources of nutrients which cannot be obtained elsewhere.

Consider too, dietary sulphur, obtained almost exclusively from animal protein (fresh fish, grassfed beef, organic poultry). These are all considered "complete", as they contain all the sulphur-containing amino acids. Sulphur deficiency will affect the biological activity of both proteins and enzymes, cascading to health problems, and affecting bones, joints, connective tissues, metabolic processes, and more.

Sulphur plays other important roles in the body including:

• The body's electron transport system, as part of iron/sulfur proteins in mitochondria, the energy factories of your cells.
  
• Thiamine (Vitamin B1) and biotin conversion, which are essential for converting carbohydrates into energy.
  
• Synthesising important metabolic intermediates, such as glutathione.
  
• Proper insulin function - the insulin molecule consists of two amino acid chains connected to each other by sulphur bridges, without which the insulin cannot perform its biological activity. Unfortunately, vegetarian diets are often too high in grains and processed food, causing sulphur deficiency, as once food is processed, the sulphur is lost.

A vegan diet does not offer immunity from heart disease or stroke risk. Instead it lacks several key nutrients, including iron, zinc, vitamin B12, and omega-3 - important components of good health. Following a vegan lifestyle that is low in omega-3 from fish oil and vitamin B12, may carry a significantly high risk of developing blood clots and atherosclerosis - both of which increase the risk for heart attacks and stroke.

As such, the authors of a review in the Journal of Agriculture suggest that an increased intake or supplementation of omega-3 from fish oil and vitamin B12 may help to alleviate such risks. Vegans also tend to consume too much omega6 which ends up producing an inflammatory response.

In comments reportedly made during a press briefing for her movie Salt, Angelina Jolie discussed her bad experiences with a vegan diet, and said: "I joke that a big juicy steak is my beauty secret. But seriously, I love red meat.

"I was a vegan for a long time, and it nearly killed me. I found I was not getting enough nutrition."

Consider too, Dr Weston Price, a US dentist who traveled the globe studying the diets of native societies in the 1920s and 1930s while there were still people untouched by western civilization and processed foods.

He wanted to show that where people were exposed to white flour and sugar, they became diseased. He also discovered that there was no such thing as a healthy vegetarian society or tribe.

Although he encountered some vegetarian tribes, there were healthier tribes nearby who ate meat and animal products.

Price in fact was not able to find a single healthy culture eating only a plant-based diet.

Even Ghandi found he couldn't live on a vegetarian diet, and dismissed it eventually.

Soy is the main source of protein for most vegans, and must be addressed briefly. Soybeans and soy products are high in phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that binds to minerals in the digestive tract for excretion.

Vegetarians are already at risk for mineral deficiencies, especially zinc, and it's often the high phytate content of grain- and legume-based diets that is to blame.

There are many epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies linking soy to:

• Malnutrition
  
• Thyroid dysfunction
  
• Cognitive decline
  
• Reproductive disorders
  
• Birth defects
  
• Immune dysfunction
  
• Heart disease
  
• Cancer

Soy is a trypsin inhibitor, hindering protein digestion. Scientists have estimated that a child fed soy formula gets the hormonal equivalent of five birth control pills daily. Soy formula also contains no cholesterol, which is vital for brain and nervous system development in children.

Don't be persuaded either by The China Study by Dr Colin Campbell - who is not a medical doctor, but a researcher with no clinical experience.

Campbell's work has been exposed as heavily flawed - remember that this "research" is not a study at all, but simply a set of observations - very different things, and many experts have exposed Campbell's research shortcoming.

Source: Business Day