There are so many reasons to be veggi and I really hope this story about Trav quiting is made up. The source is not excactly fantastic. I know lots of other medical professionals that are healthy vegetarians and have never heard of a patient being asked to start eating meat. This story just sounds ridiculous.

Lee xxx

Now, I don’t have a medical degree (not that one is necessarily important with regards to nutrition), but I am working on my doctorate of chiropractic which, of course, has it’s fair share of biochemisty and nutrition courses, not to mention the available electives that I’ve taken and plan on taking in the future. Hopefully that’ll be at least close to enough for you to consider what I have to say on the matter. Unfortunately, I doubt any of the current vegetarians on here. It seems that facts have a nasty tendency to get in the way of vegan ideals. lol. Anyway, I can tell you that you’re right on each of your three points. Proteins are different depending on the source; burns do hurt (a lot); and people are indeed more likely to listen to doctors than online rhetoric while in pain. To quote one of my professors (although with regards to suggesting people drop non-necessary medications) “anybody who’s willing to tell somebody to get off pain killers, hasn’t ever been in real pain.” The most important thing you mentioned though, was the differences in proteins, which also goes back to…

vegan

You seem to forget (or else never knew) that not only are most of those sources mentioned still relatively low in protein when compared to meats, what proteins they do contain aren’t quite as readily absorbed or digested as animal proteins. Its a similar situation with the supplemental proteins that the original article mentioned he was taking. One other important thing about plant proteins is most plant proteins are incomplete (which means, niftily, that vegan diets are one of the few diet types where somebody can have both too much and not enough protein at the same time. Just a fun fact). The only known ones that do have complete proteins are soy (most popular, but still not in sufficient quantities unless making up the bulk of the diet which leads to other nutritional and hormonal problems), amaranth, a few types of bacteria (thus technically not plants, but they’re “less evolved” than animals (not really)) used to make most supplements (which obviously weren’t working well enough for Travis), and quinoa (which is actually a really good source of protein. Unfortunately, it tastes really bitter naturally and can be slightly toxic. Not a good thing…)

Finally, Proud Vegetarian

“You do not have to eat certain foods with other foods in order to absorb the nutrients in them.” A half-truth, at best and horribly, horribly, misinformed at worst. Very many nutrients require the presence or absence of other nutrients or environmental conditions (such as acidity or alkalinity of the food) in order to be absorbed in reasonable amounts, though it is still technically possibly to absorb relatively meager to trace amounts if these conditions aren’t met. The best example, is why they add both vitamin D and calcium to orange juice now (or just the vitamin D in the case of milk). The reason is that calcium absorption is greatly improved when vitamin D is also ingested due to vitamin D’s role in forming certain digestive hormones that take up calcium. Another good example is many of the heavy metals such as iron and copper have their absorptions interfered with by the other. Speaking of environmental conditions, there are many nutrients that have their bioavailability lessened by processes such as canning, drying, or cooking, while some such as vitamin A actually increase their availability through such methods. Oh. One more note about absorption being affected by other foods eaten (or in this case, part of the same food, but with some ingredients affected). In the US, currently foods can’t be called “whole grain” unless they contain all the parts of the grain in the ratios that would occur in nature. The reason being that absorption changes significantly if some things are left out of natural products (meat and plant alike) even if the amount of a nutrient shown on the nutrition label wouldn’t be affected. It’s just that important.

Why would you say you wish him all the best when you clearly don’t? You’d rather he suffered than ate meat.

Uh, no I wouldn’t. I’m a total carnivore, and I think he’s doing what he needs to do in order to get better. It was just funny timing, what with her PETA thing and all.

I’m anaemic, but I have a rare condition where my body rejects iron supplements because even the mildest ones are too high a dosage for me. If I didn’t eat meat I wouldn’t have the energy to get out of bed in the morning, I couldn’t go to college, or to work.

Unless you have some kind of intricate knowledge of the physiology and genetic make up of every person on this planet, STFU because you don’t know what you are talking about!! You’re just a bitchy self-righteous loudmouth with a blog!

You do not have to eat certain foods with other foods in order to absorb the nutrients in them.