Eating for Life

Some people ignore dietary advice to cut back on or cut out animal products, perhaps hoping that a 'magic pill' will come along that will make their illnesses go away. Common sense tells us that prevention is the best medicine. More and more people are finding wonderful ways to tempt their taste buds without tempting fate.

"Vegetarians have the best diet. They have the lowest rates of coronary disease of any group in the country ... they have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 per cent of our cancer rate." - William Castelli, MD, director, Framingham Heart Study, the longest-running epidemiological study in medical history

"There's no reason to drink cow's milk at any time in your life. It was designed for calves, not humans, and we should all stop drinking it today." - Dr Frank A. Oski, former director of paediatrics, Johns Hopkins University

"What do you think of meat-based diets like the Atkins diet?" I call them 'the make yourself sick diets' because they cause the body to go into ketosis - a state that occurs when we are seriously ill. I also use that designation because the very foods recommended - meat, chicken, bacon, eggs and cheeses - are the foods the Heart Association and the Cancer Society say cause our most dreaded diseases. ... There is only one way to fully satisfy your appetite with delicious foods and stay trim and healthy for a lifetime - that's a low-fat vegetarian diet with fruits and vegetables and a bit of exercise. - Dr John McDougall, medical director of the McDougall programme.

Eliminating animal foods from your diet reduces the risk of some of our biggest killers. According to Dr T. Colin Campbell, nutritional researcher at Cornell University and director of the largest epidemiological study in history, 'The vast majority of all cancers, cardiovascular diseases and other forms of degenerative illness can be prevented simply by adopting a plant-based diet.' Heart disease, cancer, strokes, diabetes, osteoporosis, obesity and other diseases have all been linked to meat and dairy consumption.It's never too late to change your habits for the better. Changing your diet isn't nearly as inconvenient as enduring a heart bypass operation, suffering paralysis from a stroke or facing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer! Going vegetarian is the single best thing you can do for your health.

Vegetarians are typically slimmer than meat-eaters. A whopping 70 per cent of men and 63 per cent of women in the UK are either overweight or obese, conditions which lead to illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, gallbladder diseases, arthritis and musculoskeletal problems. In a study in the British Medical Journal, researchers studied 21,105 people and found that vegan men weighed 5.9 kilograms less and vegan women 4.7 kilograms less than their meat-eating counterparts. The study concludes, '[T]hese data suggest that a meat-free diet is associated with a low prevalence of obesity'.

The risk of developing heart disease amongst meat-eaters is 50 per cent higher than that of vegetarians. In fact, researchers have found that the longer and more often people eat meat, the greater their risk of heart disease.

Meat, dairy products and eggs are completely devoid of fibre and complex carbohydrates, the nutrients that we're supposed to be consuming more of, and are laden with saturated fat and cholesterol, which make us fat and lethargic in the short term and lead to clogged arteries and heart attacks in the long term.