The Irish Independent has published this story:
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Dear Editor,
In reply to Madeline Ross who wrote on 6th February 2024: “Advice to do plant-based diet route is flawed, Irish expert says”; the expert being Prof Alice Staunton from RCSI.
It is with deep regret that your readers must find an article which was found wanting in its scientific rigor and its consistency of simple logic.
The authors claim that meat is essential for certain minerals like iron and zinc and calcium. They fail to realise that these minerals are not made by the animals’ bodies (they are minerals after all!) but are only ingested by the animal through eating plants or indeed feed bags with mineral supplements.
“Animals are not magical reservoirs of calcium, protein, and iron. They get everything they need from plants. When you go vegan, you cut out the middleman, which is a tortured animal. Just go straight for the plants.”
The same is true for protein: only plants can take nitrogen from the air (the essential building block of any protein) and only plants can make proteins: animals just use protein for their bodies. The authors also falsely regurgitate the already (in 1974) debunked claim(1) that animal protein is somewhat superior to plant protein: as Gardner et al.(2) and others(3) have eloquently demonstrated plants do provide all essential amino acids. However animal proteins are associated with increased mortality and morbidity(4–6) due to the higher content of branched chain amino acids(7).
Therefore, claiming that consuming flesh from corpses (yes any killed being is a corpse!) is essential is blatantly ignoring the simple laws of physics and biochemistry.
This law of nature as above is confirmed by looking at our ancestors: archaeology had been hampered or misled by the fact that traces of bones are easier to find than evidence of plant consumption: however, the record has now been set straight and it has been confirmed that our ancestors were essentially vegetarian with only occasional hunting when harvest or foraging was of low yield.(8–10)
The longevity aspects of a plant based diet are further confirmed in the study of the “Blue-Zones”(11) and large population studies such as the Adventists(12–14) and Nurses Health Studies(15) and UK biobank studies(6) all of which also confirm the health risks of meat consumption.
Dr Ulrich Bartels FRCOG, FRCPI, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, Honorary lecturer of the University of Galway; medical advisor of the Vegan Society of Ireland
1. Mclaren D. THE GREAT PROTEIN FIASCO. Lancet [Internet]. 1974 Jul;304(7872):93–6. Available from: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673674916493
2. Gardner CD, Hartle JC, Garrett RD, Offringa LC, Wasserman AS. Maximizing the intersection of human health and the health of the environment with regard to the amount and type of protein produced and consumed in the United States. Nutr Rev [Internet]. 2019 Apr 1;77(4):197–215. Available from: https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/article/77/4/197/5307079
3. Mariotti, Gardner. Dietary Protein and Amino Acids in Vegetarian Diets—A Review. Nutrients [Internet]. 2019 Nov 4;11(11):2661. Available from: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/11/2661
4. Kitada M, Ogura Y, Monno I, Koya D. The impact of dietary protein intake on longevity and metabolic health. EBioMedicine [Internet]. 2019 May;43:632–40. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2019.04.005
5. Orlich MJ, Sabaté J, Mashchak A, Fresán U, Jaceldo-Siegl K, Miles F, et al. Ultra-processed food intake and animal-based food intake and mortality in the adventist health study-2. Am J Clin Nutr [Internet]. 2022 Feb 24; Available from: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqac043/6535558
6. Papier K, Fensom GK, Knuppel A, Appleby PN, Tong TYN, Schmidt JA, et al. Meat consumption and risk of 25 common conditions: outcome-wide analyses in 475,000 men and women in the UK Biobank study. BMC Med [Internet]. 2021 Dec 2;19(1):53. Available from: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-021-01922-9
7. Budhathoki S, Sawada N, Iwasaki M, Yamaji T, Goto A, Kotemori A, et al. Association of Animal and Plant Protein Intake With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality in a Japanese Cohort. JAMA Intern Med [Internet]. 2019 Nov 1;179(11):1509. Available from: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2748453
8. Curry A. How ancient people fell in love with bread, beer and other carbs. Nature [Internet]. 2021 Jun 24 [cited 2021 Jun 27];594(7864):488–91. Available from: http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01681-w
9. Dunn R. Human Ancestors Were Nearly All Vegetarians [Internet]. Scientific American. 2012 [cited 2020 Jun 27]. p. 1–5. Available from: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/
10. A Grassy Trend in Human Ancestors’ Diets | University of Utah News [Internet]. UNews Archive. 2013 [cited 2020 Jun 27]. Available from: https://archive.unews.utah.edu/news_releases/a-grassy-trend-in-human-ancestors-diets/
11. Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue Zones: Lessons From the World’s Longest Lived [Internet]. Vol. 10, American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. SAGE Publications Inc.; 2016. p. 318–21. Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1559827616637066
12. Oussalah A, Levy J, Berthezène C, Alpers DH, Guéant J-L. Health outcomes associated with vegetarian diets: An umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Clin Nutr [Internet]. 2020 Nov;39(11):3283–307. Available from: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0261561420301011
13. Fraser GE, Cosgrove CM, Mashchak AD, Orlich MJ, Altekruse SF. Lower rates of cancer and all-cause mortality in an Adventist cohort compared with a US Census population. Cancer [Internet]. 2020 Mar 25;126(5):1102–11. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/cncr.32571
14. Le LT, Sabaté J. Beyond meatless, the health effects of vegan diets: Findings from the Adventist cohorts [Internet]. Vol. 6, Nutrients. 2014. p. 2131–47. Available from: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients
15. Naghshi S, Sadeghi O, Willett WC, Esmaillzadeh A. Dietary intake of total, animal, and plant proteins and risk of all cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality: systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. BMJ [Internet]. 2020 Jul 22 [cited 2020 Jul 24];370:m2412. Available from: http://www.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10.1136/bmj.m2412
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