Subsections

Vegetarianism

Nutrition authorities say that a properly planned vegan diet presents no significant nutritional problems. Supplementation is, however, highly recommended. [1839]

There are several nutrients vegans should pay attention to. These include vitamin B12, iron and iodine: deficiencies in these are more likely following a vegan diet, and deficiencies of these have potentially serious consequences, including anemia, pernicious anemia, cretinism and hyperthyroidism.

Guidance on food labelling for vegans and vegetarians []
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued the guidance on food labelling for vegans and vegetarians in 2006. These terms had not been defined by UK food labelling regulations. The FSA guidance was therefore welcomed by consumers and food industry. FSA definitions are:

Vegetarian
"The term 'vegetarian' should not be applied to foods that are, or are made from, or with, the aid of products derived from animals that have died, have been slaughtered, or animals that die as a result of being eaten. 'Animals' means farmed, wild or domestic animals, including for example, livestock poultry, game, fish, shellfish, crustacea, amphibians, tunicates, echinoderms, molluscs and insects."

Vegan
"The term 'vegan' should not be applied to foods that are, or are made from, or with, the aid of animals or animal products (including products from living animals)."

Reasons of veganism [1845]
According to the UK FSA there are various reasons for people choosing vegetarian or vegan diets. Many prefer not to consume food that results from the slaughter of animals, or from animal products.

Others are concerned particularly about ethical methods of farming, transport, and slaughter. An individual's choice to be vegetarian or vegan may be based entirely on religious grounds. Some people are allergic or intolerant to particular animal products. Personal choice may be based on a combination of these factors.

The motives for individuals choosing a vegetarian or vegan diet are important, because they determine what particular foods or food ingredients are deemed to be acceptable.

Small intakes of foods of animal origin associated with chronic degenerative diseases [1840]
Campbell and colleagues found that rural China diets are substantially richer in foods of plant origin when compared with diets consumed in the more industrialized, Western societies.

The scientists came to the conclusion that chronic degenerative diseases are prevented by an aggregate effect of nutrients and nutrient-intake amounts that are commonly supplied by foods of plant origin, and that even small intakes of foods of animal origin are associated with significant increases in plasma cholesterol concentrations, which are associated, in turn, with significant increases in chronic degenerative disease mortality rates.

Vegetarianism, a good way to reduce greenhouse emission

[1841] [1842] citeIVU worldwide
According to FAO , the livestock sector generates 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent. This is more than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.

Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

FAO says that the environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,

Suggested remedies by the FAO Report London 2007:

FAO in its Report suggests:
Land degradation: controlling access and removing obstacles to mobility on common pastures. Use of soil conservation methods and silvopastoralism, together with controlled livestock exclusion from sensitive areas; payment schemes for environmental services in livestock-based land use to help reduce and reverse land degradation.

Atmosphere and climate: increasing the efficiency of livestock production and feed crop agriculture. Improving animals' diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, and setting up biogas plant initiatives to recycle manure.

Water: improving the efficiency of irrigation systems. Introducing full-cost pricing for water together with taxes to discourage large-scale livestock concentration close to cities.

Other suggestions to reduce emission from lifestock:

Other suggestions are to eat more vegetables. Meat consumption should de reduced by half. The vegetarians suggest to stop eating meat at all.

Vegetarianism:

Vegetarianism means nutrition without any products from dead animals such as meat, poultry or fish.
Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat plant food plus dairy products and eggs.
Lacto vegetarians don't eat eggs but they eat diary products.
Vegans don't eat anything coming from an animal, therefore no diary products, eggs or honey for example.

Conversion Plant to animal food:

Meat based nutrition requires 20 times more land and 14 times more water than a plant-based diet. The production of 1kg of meat requires 10-16 kg of cereals and other plant food.

Water consumption for fodder:

70% of the world's water consumption is needed for the production of fodder. It has been calculated that to produce 4kg of meat, the amount of water needed is equal to what a normal family consumes in one year.

Manure pollution:

Animal excrement which is responsible for half the pollution of our lakes, rivers and groundwater, amounts to 110t per second in Europe and America. 2/3 of it is liquid manure. The nitrate and ammonia in it contaminate our waters.

The evaporation of the ammonia from this liquid manure causes part of the acid rains, after having changed to nitric acid.

Compassion:

The most important reason why we should not eat meat: sentient, suffering creatures have to give their life for it. Every year 13 billion animals are slaughtered on earth. Nutrition transition toward animal foods implications in China [1844]
B. M. Popkin and S. Du used China as a case study and found large shifts in the composition of diets and obesity across the developing world noting that these changes are accelerating. The authors point out that in developing countries the prevalence of obesity is greater than that of undernutrition and concerns related to intake of saturated fat and energy imbalance must be considered more seriously by the agriculture sector which is focused on livestock promotion.

They come to the conclusion that although linkages between animal source foods intake and obesity cannot be established as clearly as they are for high animal source foods intakes, heart disease and cancer, the potential adverse health effects linked with an increased animal source foods intake should no longer be ignored.

Animal origin may not be shown by the list of ingredients []
The animal origin of some ingredients may not be apparent from their names. For example, some additives may be carried on a gelatin base and therefore not be suitable for inclusion in a vegetarian or vegan diet. Food labelled as vegan or vegetarian may become contaminated during preparation, for example, outlets where deep fried food is cooked in oil that is used for both meat and non-meat products. This will not be apparent from the ingredients list.

General EU rules already prohibit misleading labelling (Article 2 of Directive 2000/13/EC and Article 16 of EC Regulation 178/2002. However, there are no specific rules at EU level on vegetarian or vegan labelling, and this subject is not currently under discussion at EU level.

Labelling food as suitable for vegetarian or vegans is entirely voluntary. However it does provide useful information to consumers and Government would not wish to discourage it.

Legislation, including sanctions, is already in place to protect consumers against misleading labelling. Current enforcement activities involve industry inspections of labels to ensure they are not misleading. The advice set out in the proposed Guidance provide an interpretation of what should be considered as a minimum standard when labelling food as 'suitable for vegetarians' or 'suitable for vegans' (or other similar claims).

Childhood intelligence and being a vegetarian [] [1999]
According to Marcus Richards evidence increasingly suggests that intelligence is associated with health and survival, and intelligence could mediate the impact of adverse circumstances (such as overcrowding), influence the acquisition of factors that protect health, and reflect underlying biological mechanisms that regulate health.

IQ has nothing to do with vegetarianism [1997]
Ramakant Sharma does not agree with the study. He says that vegetarianism has nothing to do with IQ. He claims that 60% of the population of India is vegetarian, even so this population is not more intelligent than the western counterparts who eat meat. The incidence of Indian CAD is 7 times higher than the western population. Sharma says that vegetarianism is a cultural phenomenon and it should be looked as that only.

Sharma concludes that "vegetarian food is healthy" is a misconception. Probably, food has nothing to do with disease except malnutrition and deficiencies.

Food and ecology

About 6% of the population of Germany are vegetarians. They want to avoid to harm animals, to avoid food waist as animal feed and last, but not least to reduce greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide emanating from animal breeding. FAO environmental scientist calculated the CO $_{2}$ - equivalence of the different types of nutrition:

The global animal population produce approximately one fifth of greenhouse gases resulting from the activities of mankind. FAO stresses that this is more than the emission of global traffic. CO $_{2}$ emission results from burning forests to prepare land for pastures and feed crops. Dung and liquid manure produce nitrous oxide. Ruminants such as cattle and sheep emit methane. Mechanized agriculture of rape and soy produce more CO $_{2}$ . Approximately 6 kilos of vegetable protein are necessary to produce one kilo animal protein.

Lacto-vegetarian nutrition:The Cornell University (Ithaca, USA) found in a study, that the production of one kilo milk protein needs 14 kilocalories of fossile energy, this is the same amount needed for the production of one kilo porc. The German Freiburger Öko Institute writes that 8 litres milk are necessary to produce 1 kilo cheese.

The CO $_{2}$ - equivalence of the production of 1 kilo, cheese, meat, egg and yoghurt

Product	Emission of
CO $_{2}$ equivalece Cheese	8 kilo
Meat	6 kilo
Egg	2 kilo
yoghurt	1 kilo

Soy and feed:According to Jörg Michael Greef from the German from the Bundesforschungsanstalt für Landwirtscaft. The world production of soy is 220 million tons. Germany imports 40 million tons. Three million tons are used for the production of edible oil and other applications. The main core of 37 millions tons are transformed in animal feed.

Soy farms built monocultures in USA, Argentina and Brazil, where they invade the tropical forest and savannahs. Centralised animal breeding, depending on soy are an environmental false step. Smaller units, depending on local feed are ecology friendly and create jobs.

PalmoilAccording to the Environmental Program of the United Nations UNEP, 83% of palm oil comes from Indonesia and Malaisia. The consumption of Palm oil increases deforestation of these countries.

High consumption of red and processed meat linked breast cancer risk.

[1998] In a survival analysis to assess the effect of meat consumption and meat type on the risk of breast cancer in the UK it was found that women, both pre- and postmenopausal, who consumed the most meat and processed meats had a significant increase in the risk of breast cancer.

According to Professor Janet Cade and colleagues from the University of Leeds, the high saturated fat content of the meat may be behind the apparent effects, with this kind of fat linked to cholesterol production which is a precursor for the female hormone oestrogen, linked to breast cancer risk.

The disease is, however not limited to red meat as sole cause, but many other factors may trigger breath cancer.

The authors found a 64 per cent greater risk of breast cancer for post-menospausal women which consumed more than 20 grams per day processed meat, such as as bacon, sausages, ham or pies. An increased risk of 56found in women of the same age, which consumed more than 57 gram red meat per day. In pre-menospausal women consuming more than 20 grams processed meat per day an increase of breast cancer of 20 percent, compared with none meat eating women.

The British Charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer denotes that there are other factors like age, weight, nutritional habits accounting for 30 per cent of the cases, and exercise which influence health. It is being emphasized that all women eat a balanced diet, limit alcohol consumption, exercise regularly and keep a healthy weight in order to maintain general good health.