#2 Jeremy | 2006-09-12 04:22
Hi Bob. Fairly new to your site. I feel like I should say something here, since I am a healthcare professional, a cardiovascular intensive care unit nurse(CICU RN) and a vegetarian since birth. I am 6'1' and 280 lbs. was on a sports scholarship in college. I'm big and strong and fast, always have been. And my little brother is bigger than me. I am saying this since Dave apparently likes to make wild unsubstantied claims about being a meat-eater vs. being a vegetarian. You don't need to eat meat to get adequate nutritionally complete protein, that's bunk. And if Americans are taller and bigger (fatter) it's because of the steroids fed to the animals and the increased number of calories we eat. If you went to another country, it would be patently obvious that this is the case. The difference between rich and poor was not meat in the diet. It was diet and lifestyle in general. Less food (veggies, grains, or meats) equals less calories. CALORIES. As you mentioned earlier, a calorie is a calorie. But not all calories are created equal. If you eat extra fat calories, your body doesn't have to do anything to convert the fat, it simply stores it, not a lot of work involved. It prefers to store fat, less work. It you eat higher amnounts of protein, it is a lot of metabolic work for the body to convert it to fat, same with carbohydrates though not so much. I feel that a complete explanation of biochemical reactions at the cellular level is beyond the scope or interest of this message board. If you really want to know more, I'd be happy to tell you. Plants, by the way, have sterols, which are similar to cholesterol from animals, and of course, a person's body produces cholesterol all by itself. So, while you would seemingly like to claim no correlation between eating meat and CAD(coronary artery disease), there is. Eating extra calories, which are fat, are readily stored in the body as fat. DUH. And if you eat a lot of protien, most people eat too much in this county, that creates a state of metabolic acidosis, that your body doesn't like. And this is also ignoring the bodies' systemic response to basically any stressor, which is an inflammatory response. Which creates a whole cascade of problems you body has to scramble to fix, like acid-base balance. Notice how osteoporosis is only prevelant in socities where people eat a lot of meat and dairy? The animal protien leaches calcium from the bones. Now as for your example of people in Alaska, don't you find it odd that a remote people like the Eskimos who eat this diet all the time who as a distinct population are much fatter than most people all over the globe with the same standard? Is this an attempt at stimulating discussion about differences of race? I hope so, otherwise you seem oblivious and naive to such an obvious thing. It is mainly fat from fish by the way, which most Americans are deficient of, the omega 3's and 6's, I am sure you have heard of them. And if your buddy is taking a survival class in AK, do you think he is eating a lot of processed foods, empty calories, extra calories? You may be very astute in the sociopolitical arena, international relations, foreign policy, but you don't know jack about the human body or optimal nutrition. And at this point I really doubt this post gets put up on your site, but here it is anyway.