Featured Sites
- VegTampaBay.com's MySpace page
- TryVeg.com
Compassion Over Killing's excellent veg starter guide, lots of recipes, video libray, and much more! - VegForLife.org
Veg Starter Guide
Download PDF Guide to Vegetarian Eating by The Humane Society of the United States.
Video Library
(CBS) BROOKLYN The 4-month-old calf that made a break for it three days ago, dashing out of a truck taking it to the slaughterhouse and setting off a wild chase by police through the streets of Bay Ridge, has escaped certain death. See the video
by Virgil Butler, ex-Tyson slaughterhouse worker
An issue not even thought about by most people, even many of those in the fight for animal rights, is the effects on the minds of those people who do the actual slaughter of the chickens.by Environmental Health Perspectives
High Levels Of Arsenic In Chicken May Require Adjustment in Consumption. Study in Environmental Health Perspectives Reveals Chickens Have Highest Level of Arsenic. Chicken consumption may contribute significant amounts of arsenic to total arsenic exposure of the U.S. population, according to a study published today in the January issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).by Jeremy Rifkin, The Guardian, UK
Hundreds of millions of people are going hungry all over the world because much of the arable land is being used to grow feed grain for animals rather than for people. Cattle are among the most inefficient converters of feed.by ScienceCentral.com
Mad cow disease has some consumers worried about what might be in their beef—but what about a harmful substance we already know is inside chicken? As this ScienCentral news video reports, there's new information out on the amount of arsenic in chicken.By George Monbiot, The Guardian UK
The Christians stole the winter solstice from the pagans, and capitalism stole it from the Christians. But one feature of the celebrations has remained unchanged: the consumption of vast quantities of meat.Protein in the Vegan Diet
By Reed Mangels, Ph.D., R.D.
Summary: It is very easy for a vegan diet to meet the recommendations for protein, as long as calorie intake is adequate. Strict protein combining is not necessary; it is more important to eat a varied diet throughout the day.
Some Americans are obsessed with protein. Vegans are bombarded with questions about where they get their protein. Athletes used to eat thick steaks before competition because they thought it would improve their performance. Protein supplements are sold at health food stores. This concern about protein is misplaced. Although protein is certainly an essential nutrient which plays many key roles in the way our bodies function, we do not need huge quantities of it. In reality, we need small amounts of protein. Only one calorie out of every ten we take in needs to come from protein (1). Athletic performance is actually improved by a high carbohydrate diet, not a high protein diet (2). Protein supplements are expensive, unnecessary, and even harmful for some people.
How much protein do we need? The RDA recommends that we take in 8/10ths of a gram of protein for every kilogram which we weigh (or about 0.36 grams of protein per pound that you weigh) (1). This recommendation includes a generous safety factor for most people. When we make a few adjustments to account for some plant proteins being digested somewhat differently from animal proteins and for the amino acid mix in some plant proteins, we arrive at a level of 1 gram of protein per kilogram body weight (0.45 grams of protein per pound that you weigh). Since vegans eat a variety of plant protein sources, somewhere between 0.8 and 1 gram of protein per kilogram would be a protein recommendation for vegans. If we do a few calculations we see that the protein recommendation for vegans amounts to close to 10% of calories coming from protein [For example, a 79 kg vegan male aged 25 to 50 years. His RDA for calories is 2900 calories per day. His protein needs might be as high as 79 kg x 1 gram/kg = 79 grams of protein. 79 grams of protein x 4 calories/gram of protein = 316 calories from protein per day. 316 calories from protein divided by 2900 calories = 10.1% of calories from protein]. If we look at what vegans are eating, we find that between 10-12% of calories come from protein (3). This contrasts with the protein intake of non-vegetarians which is close to 15-17% of calories.
So, in the US it appears that vegan diets are commonly lower in protein than standard American diets. Remember, though, with protein, more (than the RDA) is not necessarily better. There do not appear to be health advantages to consuming a high protein diet. Diets which are high in protein may even increase the risk of osteoporosis (4) and kidney disease (5).