Why Vegetarians are Eating Meat

Food and Wine ^ | Aug 2007 | Christine Lennon

[kalee]

A growing number of vegetarians are starting to eat humanely raised meat. Christine Lennon talks to a few converts— including her husband and famed author Mollie Katzen.

To a die-hard meat eater, there's nothing more irritating than a smug vegetarian. I feel at liberty to say this because I am one (a steak lover) and I married the other (a vegetarian with a pulpit). For me, "Do you now, or would you ever, eat meat?" has always been a question on par with "Do you ever want to get married?" and "Do you want children?" The answer to one reveals as much about a person's interior life, and our compatibility, as the response to the others. My husband Andrew's reply to all of those questions when I asked him three years ago was, "No."

Obviously, we're now married. We had twins earlier this year. And somewhere in between those two events, the answer to the third question was also re-evaluated, and the vegetarian soapbox was put to rest, too.

Yes, my husband has started eating meat again after a seven-year hiatus as an ethically motivated and health-conscious vegetarian.

[ari-freedom]

Yes but gas is made out of...gas. If I’m going to use gas, I might as well cook indoors

[Lady Jag]

If Vegetarians eat vegetables... what do Humanitarians eat?

Grain fed vegetarians?

[LiteKeeper]

But Acts 10:13-15 should trump Gen 1:29 for the Christian!

[irishtenor]

My point exactly.

[theymakemesick]

If you wanted a pan fried steak I guess you could cook it inside with gas or even electricity, but who wants to do that?

[ari-freedom]

you can use a cast iron grill pan or broil it.

but to me, nothing beats the smoky dry heat of charcoal and wood. I also like the low level of control...kinda like the commodore 64 days when demo programmers coded in pure assembly and had total control over the computer.

You can change the taste in so many ways just by changing the type of fuel you use.

[little jeremiah]

Humans are made out of meat, too.

[Dinsdale]

Did I say briquettes? They’re barely better the gas grilling (At least you aren’t steaming your food like on a gas grill).

I said charcoal. Any hard wood will do. Mesqeete from Mexico is reasonably priced.

[Obi-Wandreas]

Amen to that.

My parents own a big fancy gas grill. The last time they were over I threw some hot dogs and burgers onto my Weber kettle grill with good old fashioned lump charcoal. My dad spent the whole time talking about how he needed to get one of those himself.

[paltz]

So the word of God can be ignored in Genesis? Where did God say the scripture in Acts trumps the scripture in Genesis?

[aruanan]

Ok. Steak lover here also - plus eat plenty of chicken,turkey. But have a friend who just got a report of high cholesteroal and super high triglycerides. The physician who got this report went nuts about putting my friend on no red meat diet. This person now eats ground beef, beef roasts, some steak, regularly!

The spouse will NOT eat chicken or fish. Friend is on medication for the cholesterol but these levels still went up - zoomed up.

Any reasonable ideas to help this friend's health "emergency" (according to the doctor)?

Ounce for ounce, any flesh, be it bird, mammal, or fish, has about the same amount of cholesterol. Other tissues, such as brain and organs, have a great deal more. You have to have a certain amount of cholesterol for health. If you don't get sufficient cholesterol in your diet, your body will make it. Dietary cholesterol is transported through LDL (low density lipoprotein). There is a receptor on cells (especially in the liver) that these LDL particles dock with and unload their cargo. The unloaded cargo causes the endogenous production of cholesterol to be downregulated resulting in cholesterol homeostasis--keeping a more or less constant level of cholesterol appropriate for tissue repair. If you're not getting enough dietary cholesterol, the endogenous production is increased to compensate.

There are several ways of screwing up this homeostasis: 1. you can simply ingest so much cholesterol that even if your body were to shut down its own production you could end up with too much, 2. you could screw around with the components of the transport (and reverse transport) mechanism. One of the components of the reverse transport mechanism is HDL (there are several varieties), high density lipoprotein. It carts cholesterol from the body back to the liver where it is disposed of, largely as bile salts.

There is a family in Italy with an interesting mutation in their HDL. It works so extremely well that these folks are almost completely free of cholesterol-related heart disease, even though their diet could indicate otherwise.

If you're not lucky like that, you could have a genetic defect in some other component. Very often people who have very high levels of cholesterol have some sort of problem with their LDL receptors. If LDL cannot be internalized, your body thinks it's not getting enough and continues to produce its own cholesterol.

There are consequences to this. The LDL particles floating around in the blood stream can get oxidized and damaged to the point that other receptors are impaired in their jobs of getting rid of it. The damaged LDL is scavanged by foam cells that then extravasate through the intimal lining of the blood vessels and build up between the intimal lining and the smooth muscle of the blood vessel. They die and leave their cellular debris and cholesterol load there. Over time this builds up into what is known as arterial plaque.

Increased plaque decreases the diameter of the blood vessel, reducing blood flow. If the blood flow is reduced too much, the muscle served by it may not get enough oxygen, especially if overworked. If the blood vessel is a coronary artery and the muscle is the heart, you're in trouble. If the intimal lining should happen to become ruptured over a plaque deposit, the contents, being highly thrombogenic, can quickly form a clot that can either pretty suddenly block the flow of blood, leading to the malfunction and damage of coronary muscle, or can break off and go somewhere else where it will block the flow of blood. Aspirin can help to lessen the risk of clot formation.

Anyway, the problem with high cholesterol foods together with highly saturated fats is that saturated fats can impair the functioning of the LDL receptor. So, if you have a person whose endogenous cholesterol production tends to be high who also has defective LDL receptors who also eats a lot of high cholesterol food and saturated fats who is not one of the lucky ones from Italy with super-HDL and who does not engage in enough physical activity to boost his own HDL levels, you have someone who is more likely than not to develop heart disease.

The goal is to determine the causes of the high cholesterol and then treat accordingly. If someone has defective LDL receptors, then he has to take care to reduce the amount of cholesterol he eats. This is true for anyone. You have to determine what overwhelms the system and stop before that point. Almost anyone can tolerate an ounce of alcohol. Almost no one can tolerate a quart of alcohol. He could also try to boost his HDL levels. He could take drugs that help to reduce the endogenous production of cholesterol. He could take "drugs" that bind the cholesterol in bile salts and prevent it from being reabsorbed in the intestine. All of these together can help to reduce the cholesterol to the point that its not hanging around too long in the blood stream in LDL getting oxidized and scavanged and deposited as coronary plaque.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“Yes, my husband has started eating meat again after a seven-year hiatus as an ethically motivated and health-conscious vegetarian.”

And I’ll bet he acts just like every “dry drunk” we’ve known.

[gopheraj]

"Actually, I like my meat with as little fat as possible"

We do too. We raise and eat longhorns - not registered but full blood and they have less fat than regular cattle. They also have less cholestral than white meat chicken according to an A&M study. Our longhorn meat is tender too. We raise them on pasture grass and only feed supplement in the winter - a molasses mineral lick and hay. We don't give shots either as I believe that an animals immune system is better able to work on their own without interference.(and BTW, we never have vet bills either for sick cows) Our son in law from Scotland can't eat the hamburger meat out of the store. It is either the steroids/antibiotics or fat that is in it. He has to eat ground turkey/chicken BUT can eat the sh!t out of our longhorn meat. Find you a rancher who will sell you a steer about a year old - 400-500 lbs - and take it to the locker. Less fat, no steroids. Best eatin' you can find, IMO.

[dfwgator]

Why Vegetarians are Eating Meat

Because it tastes good, duh.

[AFreeBird]

I'd be happy to post it, but it seems I lent out the book to a friend.

It is a simple marinade. Veg Oil, soy sauce, sesame oil, grated fresh ginger, lemon juice, and I'm not sure what else. Marinate the flank steak over night (12hrs), cook on the grill, on low indirect heat for about 40 ~ 60 minutes. Comes out a nice juicy, tender, medium rare.

I gotta get that book back. That, and I need to create a database of recipes.

[AFreeBird]

BUT can eat the sh!t out of our longhorn meat

Man, you guys eat all parts of your beef, huh? Personally, I'd leave that part of the beef out of the kitchen. ;-) Of course, what do you expect from a Scott.

They eat Haggis! :-o

[Gabz]

Thank you. Except for the sesame oil, that sounds similar to one we use. I’ll have to try adding the oil.

I have so many “databases” of recipes, that I need a database for my data bases :)

[LiteKeeper]

God, Himself, said it. "That which I have declared clean, NO LONGER call unholy." Couldn't me much clearer than that!

God also said the same thing in Genesis 9.

BTW, there are many things that were commanded in the Old Testament that are no longer required of the New Testament Christian. We no longer sacrifice animals (Genesis 4) - Jesus is the Perfect Sacrifice. We no longer keep the Sabbath day - for every day is the Sabbath in Christ.

There are basic hermeneutical principles involved in interpreting the Scriptures...and the principle here involves the concept of progressive revelation; and also the fundamental difference between the Old Covenant and the New.

[pepsionice]

I know several folks who attempted a full-up vegetarian diet...and after a year...they were 90 percent vegetarian, with fish being eaten an awful lot. And the truth is...that might be the most balanced diet possible and give you a few more years.

[NathanR]

Those that do are called lacto-ovo vegetarians. (They eat milk and eggs, but not chickens or beef.) There are many many types of vegetarians.

And then there are Vegans.