P.S. I did not become a vegetarian to lose weight. That concern came later. I became a vegetarian for environmental reasons and also the nausea and indigestion I began to feel whenever I ate meat a couple of years prior to the transition.

Dawn - thanks for sharing your thoughts; I also was a vegetarian young and I have been stunned with how angry my family was about me not eating meat. I couldn't understand it. 
How is it that food can polarize our friends, family and even ourselves?

Thank you for sharing your story Dawn!

My parents weren't critical of my vegetarianism per se, but they also made it clear no one would cater to my diet. I completely understand that position, my parents were busy and didn't have time to cook two dinners every night. But it did make hiding an eating disorder much easier. Because I had a set a precedent of not having dinner with the family, they didn't realize when I was restricting or eating strange things or whatever.

To be clear, vegetarianism is not an eating disorder! I've seen several articles in the mainstream media that are sensationalizing this study. But I do recommend parents remain supportive and involved so they can have a positive influence on their teen's diet.

As for the "supportive" comments... I'm still trying to figure that one out. No matter what people say, or don't say, it never feels right. And when they ask me what they should say, or shouldn't say, I don't have an answer. Because I know that even when I'm healthy, my brain is applying an eating disorder filter to comments about food and weight.

Julie -- This is an interesting and thoughtful piece. One thing I would encourage you to think critically about, however, is the sensationalization of the "obesity epidemic." You include obesity in your list of ailments with heart disease and diabetes. There has been little to show a definitive link between fatness and ill health, unless there are other indicators such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar or similar. A fat person with excellent blood panels is not necessarily in any better or worse health than a thin person with excellent blood panels. You may want to look into Health at Every Size (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_at_Every_Size) -- I think focusing more on health than size or weight is a good strategy for everyone, and would help work against a lot of the size-based shaming that people confront.

When I was staying in Costa Rica, the mother of the family I lived with was surprised to find out I wasn't vegetarian. I was the first student she'd hosted, and most of the US students they got in that town were from a couple of liberal arts schools with high vegetarian populations, so it was actually the assumed default.

Then as my stay drew to a close, and she'd started thinking about having other students, she asked me what vegetarians ate. She was under the impression that they lived on lettuce salads and was relieved when I told her that a lot of the food she already made was just fine for vegetarians, like empanadas and fried plantains, or the beans and rice that we had with most meals. And this generally seems to be the case with world cuisines, that there are a lot more routine options for food that're both a substantial, balanced meal and lack meat.

When I experimented with being vegetarian for a while here in the US, otoh, I once got served, with the idea that it was sufficient for an entire meal, four large slices of alternated zucchini and yellow squash. It was beautifully prepared, but not at all filling. And I remember going to American-style restaurants, though this is more rare now, and there often being nothing substantial to eat on the menu that didn't have meat in it.

My Costa Rican hosts actually had a lot more in the way of healthy, varied, plant-based dishes in their standard repertoire than many Americans do, even if a cultural confusion had led to a misunderstanding.

Which is to say that I think the low level of general knowledge about what a healthy diet means, let alone one centered around whole grains and legumes, must leave many parents of would-be vegetarians totally baffled as to what to do. Also, vegetarianism is supposed to be healthy in and of itself, a belief that's likely even shared by a lot of people who think it's an odd choice, so it's probably tempting to throw up your hands.

The meat and potato-centric diet plan this country's been on for so long clearly has many victims.

Great post. So frequently the two are linked together as many of you point out.

Vegetarianism, in itself, is not an eating disorder.  The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don't Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."

---Albert Einstein

"Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers.  Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals.  Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a 'magic pill' that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases."

---Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement

When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.

Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.

One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals.  The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.

A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.

Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease.

"The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood...and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses.  If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced."

---Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert

"I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives."

---Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease

Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.  Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke.  Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.

The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters.  The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population.

Studies have shown that decreasing a woman's animal fat intake can reduce the chances that she will die from breast cancer.  A large-scale, long-term study in the Netherlands found a powerful connection between  the amount of animal fat consumed and the rate of prostate cancer.  A review of a dozen studies found dietary fat strongly correlated with prostate cancer.

Ovarian, uterine, and endometrial cancers have all been shown to be strongly correlated to the amount of animal fat in one's diet, and vegetarian women have significantly lower rates of these cancers.

"The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all the natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined."

---Dr. Neal Barnard, Executive Director, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

"Vegetarians have the best diet.  They have the lowest rate of coronary disease of any group in the country.  They have a fraction of our heart attack rate and they have only 40 percent of our cancer rate."

---William Castelli, MD, Director, Framingham Heart Study

"Human beings are not natural carnivores.  When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

---Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief, American Journal of Cardiology

Excellent article! I've started paying attention to what I eat and what's in it. I haven't become a vegetarian but I've been getting organic grass-fed meat instead of the mass-produced stuff.

I'd never heard of vegetarianism bing linked to eating disorders before (low weight and vitamin deficiencies, yes, but not eating disorders), and I appreciate this article because it's opened my mind.

Thanks for sharing! The linkage between vegetarian and disorders can only reflect the short of information about the balanced vegetarian diet. If the public are more informed how to eat whole and balanced food, the disorder problems will be no problem. As a vegetarian for over 15 years, with two born vegetarian healthy kids (never touch any meat), I believe with parents support, kids can be healthier after changing to vegetarian diet, and also they are going to be smarter and loving(check the link: http://www.suprememastertv.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=sos_video&wr_id=92&goto_url=&url=link1_0 
). The government and media should support this healthy and compassionate living style.

Well, I reject out of hand the notion, premise, assumption, whatever, that vegetarians are more "ethical" because they choose to not eat meat, or that vegetarianism is more "healthy" than omnivorism.

The ethical arguement falls apart because nature is already eating itself, animals eat each other, and even if humans were to stop, nature would not. If humans eating animals is unethical, than nature is as well.

And it's false to believe or conclude that just being or becoming a vegetarian will make you healthier. At some point or for some individuals this may be true, or for a certain period of time, but just meet or do a statistical survey of vegetarians and you will conclude that not all these people are icons of health the rest of us would want to emulate.
Vegetarians over time run cumulative deficiencies in certain nutrients they might otherwise obtain from meat. Some animal products are higher in certain nutrients than others, which is why chinese medicine dietary therapy recommends different meal recipes to different patients, and these include specific animal as well as vegetable and herbal recommendations/ prescriptions. This is not based upon simple concepts of satiety or "comfort" foods, but of biochemical individuality; however it's not wrong to conclude that a person well- nourished is also more happy AND healthy. That does NOT presume everyone should sit down to the same meat-&- potatoes Sunday dinners that were the mainstay of American middle-class parents, or that any particular diet or choice of foods over time, won't affect your health for good or ill because it will. My point is that what you eat WILL affect you and what I eat WILL affect me, and I cannot and shouldn't have to eat what you do just to satisfy your EMOTIONAL needs or "ethical" ideas just to make YOU happy where my
HEALTH is concerned. That violates MY right to do MY experiment!

I'm not disparaging responsible dietary experimentation, life is an experiment anyway. And I respect everyone's choice of "ethics" to not eat meat for non "cruelty" reasons, but such logic also misses the bigger picture, that nature IS cruel, any one person's dietary choices not withstanding. It is not more humane watching a wildcat stalk and kill a deer, a jumping-spider stalk and catch a fly, or a zoo-plankton engulf a protozoa; these are simply examples of nature feeding herself.

I don't think it's any less cruel, telling a subsistance hunter or fisherman that he must stop his way of life or eating, just because it violates your new-found "ethical" code, ignoring the fact his ancestors have been doing it for generations such that his dietary choices are written into his DNA. It also ignores the fact that even if certain vegetable foods could substitute, s/he may not be able to afford them. I don't know how many of you have priced a lb. of cashews lately compared to a lb. of chicken.

If vegetarians want to convince the majority to stop eating meat then I think they should start working toward making vegetarian protein substitutes more affordable and nutritionally comparable to animal sources. Don't just quote
statistics from authors or brow-beat us with your BELIEFS.
If you're young, your body can tolerate more mistakes and dietary abuse, which may even be necessary as you search to quantify your dietary needs.

The fact is I was a vegan for 14 years, as self-righteous and militant about my ethical superiority as any of you. I corrected certain nutritional problems from my past diet, but also incurred new ones. Make no mistake, any changes you make to your diet IS AN EXPERIMENT, you cannot fail to BE
responsible for those choices. I found as for mine, I was spending most of my time in bed, contemplating the chemical consequences of those choices. At some point I realized the experiment was costing me too much time from what I'd been given, but also at the advice of a chinese physician, who gave me the option of eating animal foods, or die, because yes, my dietary experiment had gotten me into that much trouble.

Of course vegetarians will keep searching for different reasons why the rest of us should see and behave their way where it comes to food; their choice of diet is their "faith" and they want to convert everyone just as much as any televangelist.
That's based upon the simplistic but false notion that if we all share the same virus or belief-system/sense of conformity, then earth will be transformed into heaven. but it's also based upon simple hubris, that I'm pretty damn good/(morally superior), and you should be JUST LIKE ...me.

All I can tell you is, that as positive and certain the arguements for vegetarianism might sound, they most certainly don't apply to everyone all the time, and respecting those times and circumstances when they don't, may be the actual touchstone for whether you live in an ethical society, or not.

Thnaks for the informative post, Julie. My teenage daughter chose the vegetarian way several months ago - for her concern of treatment of animals - and you've given me some good insights on helping support her in that choice.

I became vegetarian very gradually, and have never gone vegan. I wish vegetarian activists would get over their all or nothing attitude.  I know lots of meat eater who also eat veggie burgers.  The problem, which is worse by far in the US than anywhere else, is just how badly the meat is being produced.  If you go to Mexico, the quality is far superior.  And this is for one main reason- we raise most of it on corn.  This is a terrible system, and our market is flooded with unnecessarily cheap meat products.  I claim no superiority bacuse I do eat cheese and eggs which are just as much part of the problem.  I hardly every have a problem finding vegetarian foods, and think what I eat is basically my own choice and no-one else's.  Recently Paul McCartney disparaged the Dalai Lama for eating meat.  His doctors basically told him he had to.  And many people have found that being veg actually leads to increased weight, due I would guess to the excess amounts of starches it is really easy to eat.  The main thing that keeps me from eating meat is BSE and also having worked in a chicken restaurant for 10 years.  If we raised our food animals on family farms and had a culture that considered meat to be something for a special occasion not an every day meal, my diet would most likely be different.  When I travel outside the US, I tend to be more likely to eat meat.  I used to eat fish but have stopped due to the plastic in the ocean thing, which killed my appetite for it.

"To be aware of where your food came from, to consider the impact it will have on your body, is exceptional."

I agree with the first part, disagree with the second.  It is rare to think about the ethical implications of where your food came from, but the act of putting food in our mouths is so steeped in ethos in this country that few of us can escape it.  We have "good" food and "bad" food, where the bad food category often comprises, not just junk food, but anything with a high caloric content, like mashed potatoes or even veggies with butter on them.  We have rules about when and how much to eat--fist-sized portions!  No food after 9 PM!  Eat breakfast so your metabolism will start working faster!  Of course there are many variants of these rules floating around, and many people ignore them most or all of the time, but they ignore them, so to speak, while being conscious of them.  They know that choosing to eat this whole bagel with cream cheese is a transgressive act (omg the carbs!!).  That's why we get "sinful" chocolate sundaes and phrases like, "Well, I shouldn't, but just one bite..."  This is all tied up in a dieting culture where eating the food your body seems to be asking for is no longer the norm.  And while going so far as to develop an eating disorder is the exception, it is dangerous to ignore that norm: the norm where we are hyperconscious of the supposed good/badness of everything we eat (in terms of how it will affect us, not in terms of its origins) instead of eating a variety of foods and learning to listen to our bodies when they tell us what and how much we should eat.

Yes, eating that way will lead to many becoming overweight and obese.  But guess what?  So will eating pretty much any other way.  And it won't be because the ones who are obese are eating so much more on average than the ones who stay thin; it will be because there are simply people whose bodies are naturally obese, and who, as Carly said above, can be perfectly healthy in that state.  They will likely be less healthy if they try to starve themselves down to an "acceptable" size according to narrow societal definitions, but many of them will do so anyway (and eventually fail, in about 95% of cases), because our society is so saturated with fat hatred and the supposed morality of weight and consumption that it's impossible to escape.  So please, don't imply that obese people become that way because they blindly shovel down junk food, and don't imply that the size of their bodies, on its own, is unhealthy.  And please don't assume that people who develop eating disorders are exceptional in assigning an unreasonable amount of value to the food they eat.

Bravo Matthew! I agree with you, "Our sense of reason, ethics and compassion is what supposedly separates us from wild animals." Even animals don't eat other weak beings if they are full. How about our human being? We have so many alternative choices, why bother to stain your hands with blood of innocent animal?
Vegan/vegetarian diet is more healthy, that's truth and facts. Check our own country, as well as China and some fast growing countries, after people change their diet into more meat diet, how about their health? Higher cancer rate, diabetes, cardiac problems, obesity. For more information, please visit: http://www.suprememastertv.com/bbs/board.php?bo_table=featured&wr_id=261&goto_url=&url=link2_0

And also, for the costs of meat and nuts, I think people better check the government policy, how much money the government has to subside meat industry in order to maintain the current price. Without the subsides, 1 lb of meat should cost $30 instead of $5. How much resource does the meat production cost our planet? According to World Bank latest research, over 50% of green house gases come from livestock raising. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tITyy8FKWM

As for B12, that's the old concepts, latest research shows our body has the ability to synthesis B12. And also, many fermented food, such as fermented beans, seaweed and many more, contain high levels of B12.

For our health, for our conciousness, for our planet, be Vegetarian/vegan.

This article is really strangely timed. I just submitted a paper for my women's health class on eating disorders and while I was writing it and doing research, I realized my bulimia came almost immediately after my parents made me stop being vegetarian. They're huge Atkins fans and so they were never supportive of my vegetarianism. I felt so good health and self-esteem-wise when I was vegetarian, though, so their attitudes really pushed me to subconsciously rebel with bulimia. 

I have thought a lot about links between various decisions about the foods one eats and came across some interesting information that discussed vegetarianism. I can't remember where I saw this information (I know, not helpful), but it noted that vegeterianism and eating disorders were often correlated. One reason was that which you mentioned, but it also mentioned that those who develop eating disorders are often strongly concerned about issues greater than themselves (i.e. war, etc.). There is often a connection between those who have eating disorders and their sensitivity to others or to world issues. That could be an explanation as to why so many people with eating disorders are vegetarians because they are concerned about the effects of eating meat - environmentally and the effects on the animals themselves. I thought this was a very interesting perspective and one that rang true in my own experiences.

Thank you for the article and all the following comments.  I have gone in and out of being a veggie and was vegan for a day!  It may be a measure of how "controlling" people you know are based on their reactions about any of your preferences! 

I for one am glad when ever I look beyond the plate and find I feel best if I eat for nutrition and no other reason

Mary

At least 80% of all foods sold in SUPERMARKETS contain some GMO components.  PEOPLE EAT GMOs. You miss the point re eating meat: animals can graze where NO crops can be grown.  Which is why small mixed-farming practices work best, and always did, until agra-giants came in and wrecked things.

It's true, factory-farmed animals are raised on unsustainably-grown crops.  I never believed for a moment that factory farms are good.  But if you eat ANYTHING that was bought in a supermarket, especially anything made with grains, you are part of the problem, as grains and most vegetables are grown on CAFOs for plants; huge monocoropping systems which deprive many animals, especially birds, of habitat. 

And, sorry to tell you, but it's not "just a few" animals killed accidentally by machinery.  Try hundreds of thousands!  All those grain and veggie crops cover thousands of acres, therefore the huge numbers of animals killed.

And HOW would you fertilize a vegan field without huge inputs of SOME kind of fertilizer?  You haven't been able to refute the fact that most grains (which I assume vegans eat) ARE grown unsustainably, and the fact that animals contribute to the health of the soil through their manure.

Sure, one could import guano from S. America (at huge cost) or seaweed (again, at huge cost) or some other costly method of fertilizing (like the petrofertilizers currently used) if one did not have animals.  But how sustainable would that be?

The quote "16 lbs" refers to what?  Corn?  Would just one lb be enough for you? How do you know?  And isn't there a better thing to eat than corn, which is high in sugar?  A better way to look at it would be this: Calculate the number of acres needed to support one human, then calculate the number needed to support livestock.

According to one man's estimate of what he'd need to eat to get his minimum daily requirement (of calories, not vitamins or minerals), one person would need around 7 acres to grow their food for a year, MINIMUM.  (This is his estimate of what he'd need to eat on a daily basis; done after he quit being a vegan: ·        
           Over one full gallon (20 cups - five quarts) of raw chopped mixed vegetables and salad including (560 calories):

·         3 1/3 cups broccoli

·         3 1/3 cups shredded carrots

·         2 2/3 cups summer squash

·         5 1/3 cups spinach

·         1 1/3 cup beets

·         4 cups dinner salad

·         Two bananas and two oranges (440 calories)

·         12 tablespoons barley powder

·         19 almonds

·         21 oz. carrot juice

·         8 oz potato

·         1 1/3 slice bread

·         One tablespoon Udo's Choice Perfected Oil Blend

This calculation is based on my knowledge of how many acres it takes to grow vegetables.  It would probably take a lot more acreage than that, due to the number of acres needed to grow grains, but since I'm not familiar w-growing grains, we'll leave them out.  (I grow most of our vegetable food in our garden, fertilized for free by our sheep.) 

Then take how many sheep could be raised on seven acres of rotated pasture: 70 to 80!  (YES, we do this and they and the land, thrive!) Then consider that meat is a nutrient-dense food, giving more calories, minerals, and B12 per lb than any plant could; therefore the person would not need to eat as much.  So we could feed 20 families off those 7 acres assuming they each had 3-4 sheep per year, and they wouldn't be short of the fat-soluble vitamins and minerals that vegans often are short of. 

Then consider that across the world, people who raise livestock, graze them on non-arable land; I've seen if for myself when I lived in Europe.  Even in the US, if all those acres wasted growing corn were put to use growing grass and small grains, we'd be a lot better off.

The point is, for many farmers across the world, keeping a few hens and a pig or a few sheep costs very little, and gives much higher-grade nutrition (in terms of being nutrient-dense) than veganism, which is only truly possible in areas where there is abundant food anyway.

Did you know there are herders in desert parts of Africa, that couldn't grow crops even if they tried, let alone tried to be vegans?  They have sheep which they have bred (over the centuries) that can live off dry dead plants that blow into the area. 

As I said before, think again about veganism, and look up the srticle on www.westonaprice.org called "The (Vegan Ecological) Wasteland"

I'm a vegetarian and I'm not sure how to interpret the findings of this study.  It's always important to know the methodology before deciding how much to accept the findings and how much to question them.  Does anybody know if any additional research has been done on links between vegetarianism and eating disorders?