In their July, 2009 edition of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, the ADA has refined their position toward vegetarianism:
“It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.”
This is a disturbing and sad development and shows just how far from the world of good science the ADA has fallen. Consider these facts:
* Vitamin B12 that can be used in the body occurs only in animal-based foods.
* B12 deficiency has been found in babies being breastfed by strict vegetarians.
* Ability to assimilate B12 declines with age.
* Carotene in vegetables is normally converted to Vitamin A in the upper intestine, but only if there is fat in the diet. That’s fat (animal) not oil (vegetable). Take animal products out of the diet and the body is left without the ability to create this strong antioxidant and anti-cancer defense.
* Trace minerals like cobalt help our bodies use the iron and other essential vitamins and minerals, and occur most generously and in most usable form in animal foods.
* Babies fed a vegetarian diet are subject to deficiencies of B12 (necessary for proper brain and nervous system development), zinc, folic acid, calcium, B2, protein, calcium and calories.
My favorite quote on vegetarianism comes from The Milk Book by William Campbell Douglass, MD:
“There is no society in the world that is entirely vegetarian. The Hindus in India come closest. …the greater percentage of the population, who subsist almost entirely on vegetable foods, suffer from kwashiorkor, other forms of malnutrition, and have the shortest life span in the world.”
At no time in her life does a woman’s body need nutrition more desperately than during her childbearing years. Her children and grandchildren are shortchanged if she skimps on healthy food during these years. Pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood—these are not the times in our lives to be engaging in risky nutritional fads.
Why should we care what the ADA says? Their own website says this about them:
“The American Dietetic Association is the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals. ADA is committed to improving the nation’s health and advancing the profession of dietetics through research, education and advocacy.”
That the “world’s largest organization of nutrition professionals” is advocating such a dangerous diet for people whose diet matters so greatly provest that the are not at all “commted to improving the nation’s health” and that the “research, education and advocacy” they practice is in dire need of reexamination.
Shame on the ADA for this ill-conceived position!
This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays hosted by Cheeseslave, because vegetables are real food, but so are meats, eggs, dairy and animal fats.
The Dark Side of Fat Loss
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July 14, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS
What a great rebuttal! I’m going to bookmark this for future reference and for sharing. I’m curious what your source(s) is(are) for the points you made? I’d like to read more about this. Thanks!
July 14, 2009 at 6:40 pm
localnourishment
Unless otherwise noted, you can find references for all my points at http://www.westonaprice.org/
There’s a Website Tour for Vegetarians that answers many myths of vegetarianism, a great read about Vitamin B12, a surprising article about minerals and their lack of bio-availability in a vegetarian diet, a treatise on the importance of animal fats during pregnancy and much more. Some of the information gets a little technical, but it is all worth the effort.
One thing I didn’t mention in my post that would also bear researching is the dangers of soy protein, which is the popular substitute for animal protein in vegetarian and vegan diets. Unfermented soy is not a food suitable for human consumption. Research substantiating this gets its own section on the Weston A. Price Foundation website, called Soy Alert!
July 14, 2009 at 10:21 pm
jellysoda
oh man, are we still arguing about B12? i’ve been vegan most of my life, including throughout most of my childhood, with no B12 deficiency. i ate vitamins sometimes but probably not like you’d want me to. just writing to say that nutritional yeast and various sea vegetables are reasonable sources of B12. i don’t know about the rest of your evidence, but i would say based on my experience and a recent quick search on google that a person can absorb plenty of the right vitamins with a vegetarian or and vegan diet. in fact, the diet, when done healthily, is very high in vitamins.
i’m paleo now due to problems with starchy/grain digestion and metabolism, but that’s another story. the point is that you can get all of the nutrition you need as a vegan and be healthy. it’s possible, and a lot of people do it!
July 14, 2009 at 10:41 pm
localnourishment
You won’t get an argument from me. The aforementioned B12 information page addresses the issue of supplementation and sea vegetables as sources of B12.
I’m glad to hear you suffered no ill effects from a vegetarian diet. We are all, of course, individuals, and there are exceptions to every rule. I had a grandfather who smoked for 20 years, developed COPD, lung cancer and died. I had an uncle in the same family line who smoked 62 years and died peacefully in his sleep with no apparent ill effects. I am not comparing smoking to vegetarianism, I’m only using that as an example of how we are all unique with individual strengths and weaknesses. What worked so well for you might not work as well for someone else.
But I stand by my belief that pregnancy, lactation, infancy and childhood is not the time to be experimenting with even moderately questionable diets.
July 17, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Dana
If you were very lucky and had enough B12 stored in your liver and ate the occasional odd bug or bug poop over the years by way of all those veggies and fruits you consumed, that’s enough to explain why you never got full-blown pernicious anemia. Doesn’t mean you were getting enough, just means you were getting enough not to die–not the same thing.
But you didn’t get any vitamin A because you have to eat animal foods to get that one, and it also takes a long time to exhibit obvious symptoms if you’re subclinically deficient in vitamin A. I found that one out the hard way. I was only vegan/vegetarian for a short time, and that period of my life is fuzzy to me because it messed up my brain function along with a bunch of other things, but for most of my life I have depended on beta carotene as my source of A and it messed me up pretty badly in the end. For the last three years I’ve suffered from reproductive system issues and, let’s put it this way, there were days I could not leave the house for fear of an accident and subsequent mess away from home, and I often suffered painful cramping too. I was convinced I had endometriosis–and I still might have it, but I don’t have health insurance to find out. But I had begun taking vitamin A in natural form from cod liver oil after reading WAPF’s stance on the issue and lo and behold, my monthly grievances mostly cleared themselves up all on their own.
The simple fact you now have to cut grains out of your diet and go paleo tells me you did damage to yourself. While we are not evolved to eat grain in its natural state–we *always* have to process it to some extent to render it safe for human consumption–grain does not usually cause problems in a person trying it for the first time, aside possibly from mild grievances, unless they are allergic. I ate grain foods throughout my childhood without a problem. But I have symptoms of hyperinsulinism now from years of grain consumption. If your diet was so great for you it shouldn’t have damaged you in that way.
localnourishment’s being generous. I don’t happen to believe people have that great of differences in their nutritional needs unless it can be accounted for by difference in age or difference in gestational or other health status. If there were a population that thrived on a vegan diet we would have heard about them by now. “It didn’t kill me” does not constitute thriving. And veganism doesn’t avoid killing animals (what do you think organic pesticides do? Bugs are animals), doesn’t prevent environmental catastrophe, and leads to the kind of land-grabbing that seems to precipitate most of the world’s wars because, well, you need land to grow soybeans and such.
And you can’t tell the average vegan this stuff. They just don’t listen. For people professing to be so eco-friendly, you’d think they’d at least try.
July 15, 2009 at 3:14 pm
CHEESESLAVE
Jellysoda – Did you actually get tested for B12 deficiency? How many years were you vegan? Were your parents also vegan?
Thanks for this great post! I agree — veganism is not something that is safe for pregnant/breastfeeding mothers and children. I’m shocked that the ADA is advocating veganism.
July 15, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Catherine @ Healthy Fit Mom
I have absolutely no respect for the ADA. They are idiots. I received a current recipe book written by them specifically for diabetes. Did you know that a lot of their recipes are made with white flour, sugar and margarine?? Oh my! They recommend in the book to stay away from trans fats and then in the same book write recipes that contain trans fats. And how in the heck is it safe for a diabetic to consume sugar? Sugar/white flour are like a drug to those that are insulin resistant and diabetic. It only takes a small amount of sugar for me to go into binge eating.
Did you know that they recommend non-fat milks, fat free mayonnaise, egg substitutes and non fat half and half cream?
I don’t even know what fat free mayo or cream would look like.
July 17, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Dana
I’ve actually stopped and looked at some of those labels for fat-free so-called “dairy” foods. Gums, fibers, starches, you name it. Yuck.
The ADA was already on my you-know-what list for the way they behave about diabetes. What are they trying to do, kill people?
August 24, 2009 at 11:07 am
AS
This is a great post! It clearly outlines the shortcomings of the philosophy dictated by the ADA and other organizations who support these types of recommendations regarding diet and health. Apparently there are a number of dietitians and nutritionists belonging to the ADA who oppose these philosophies…so I’m wondering why there isn’t greater dissent in the ranks of these individuals about teaching the public the right ways to view food and health! The article I wrote on my site about the ADA’s refusal to acknowledge organic food as containing greater nutritional value spawned much dialogue from dietitians and related professions about this subject.
http://agriculturesociety.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/american-dietetic-association-refuses-to-acknowledge-benefits-of-organic-food/
It’s time to take a stand and make a difference in the way this organization affects our beliefs about health as its influence is widespread and pervasive in our culture.
October 9, 2009 at 2:19 pm
*Shakes head in disbelief* « Local Nourishment
[...] It’s shocking and frightening to me when authoritative voices choose poor bedfellows. The ADA and vegetarianism, for example. Or Kelloggs and education. I’ve suspected for a while now that the [...]