Food for Life: How the New Four Food Groups Can Save Your Life (29 page)

Those who consume animal products still get plenty of B
_12,
because the bacteria in the animals’ digestive tracts produce the vitamin, although, as you know, these foods are not recommended.

Deficiencies are quite rare, and you should certainly not include animal products in your diet to get B
_12.
But you do need to include a source of B
₁₂
in your diet. A deficiency is usually manifested by anemia and neurological problems, such as weakness, tingling in the arms and legs, and a sore tongue. Some people experience digestive disturbances. Findings can be subtle. Medical evaluation is essential because problems with B
₁₂
absorption—which is a digestive tract problem having nothing to do with the amount of the vitamin in your diet—are much more common than a dietary deficiency.

When one body builds another, it needs more nutrients. Pregnant women need roughly 300 more calories a day, which means an extra cup and a half of rice or corn, or a cup of baked beans or chickpeas, or three large apples, over and above their usual eating habits. This added food naturally brings protein along with it, which the body also needs.

They also need more iron, mainly in the second half of the pregnancy. Many women have adequate iron stores without supplementation, and some recent reports have suggested that iron supplementation can cause slightly prolonged pregnancies and a slightly higher rate of complications.
²⁴
However, many women do not have enough stored iron and need about 30 mg of supplemental iron per day, or twice that amount for women who are large, anemic, or have twin fetuses. A history of poor eating habits or iron deficiency also calls for supplementation. The most prudent course may be to have an iron blood test, called a ferritin test, at the beginning and middle of the pregnancy. It allows your doctor to begin supplementation only when needed. If such testing is not done, then most authorities agree that supplemental iron is, on balance, a good idea.

Pregnant and nursing women should be sure to include a source of B
_12,
such as an enriched cereal, traditionally manufactured miso or tempeh, or a supplement (5 mcg per day is sufficient).

For calcium, have plenty of green leafy vegetables such as broccoli or kale. The calcium from green vegetables is actually more absorbable than the calcium in milk.

Plant-based diets provide a good balance of nutrients to support a healthy pregnancy and are superior to diets containing milk or other animal products.
^25
,
26
Whole grains, vegetables, beans, and fruits give both mother and baby the nutrients they need. Support for a vegan diet during pregnancy comes from a study of 1,700 pregnancies at The Farm, a large vegan community in Tennessee. The study showed a record of safety that would delight obstetricians. Only one in a hundred delivered by cesarean section. And in twenty years, there was only one case of preeclampsia, a syndrome of hypertension, fluid retention, urinary protein loss, and excessive weight gain, that occurs in at least 2 percent of pregnancies in the United States overall. Other studies have found similar results.
²⁷

Some things to avoid are fatty, sugary, and refined junk foods, as well as alcohol entirely. Children born to drinking women are at risk for low birth weight, small head circumference, mental retardation, and abnormalities of the face, heart, and extremities. While one sometimes hears rationalizations for drinking during pregnancy, it is never advisable.

Dairy products should be avoided, during both pregnancy and nursing. Cow’s milk proteins can cross the placenta and even enter a woman’s breast milk. These proteins are believed to spark the production of antibodies that leads to insulin-dependent diabetes.

Also, it is a good idea to stop eating fish years before you plan to become pregnant. As noted earlier, PCB and mercury contamination are common in fish. PCBs can remain in your body for decades. According to a study at Wayne State University, women who consumed fish regularly—even years before getting pregnant—had a disproportionately high incidence of children who were sluggish at birth, had a small head circumference, and showed various developmental problems.

A vegan menu is preferred for nursing women, too. A plant-based diet reduces levels of environmental contaminants in breast milk, compared to that of meat-eaters.
²⁸
The reason for this probably relates to the concentrations of chemical contaminants in animal tissues. And, as noted, antibodies can pass from cow’s milk into a milk-drinking woman’s bloodstream and ultimately into her breast milk, where they can cause colic. So steering clear of animal products benefits both mother and baby.

The New Four Food Groups are great for kids. Vegetarian children grow up to be slimmer and healthier, and to live longer than their meat-eating friends.

Breast-feeding is nature’s way of meeting the infant’s nutritional needs, and also helps boost the infant’s immunity, not to mention its psychological benefits. When breast-feeding is not possible, commercial soy formulas are nutritionally adequate. There is no need for infants to be raised on cow’s milk formulas.
²⁹
Aside from the colic-inducing proteins that bother many children on cow’s milk formulas, cow’s milk is a common cause of allergies. Immune responses to milk proteins are implicated in insulin-dependent diabetes and even in sudden infant death syndrome. Soy formulas are commonly used in all hospital nurseries, although they can occasionally be allergenic as well. Soymilk sold in grocery stores is not the same as soy baby formula, however, and is not adequate for infants.

Babies are usually born with rather high iron levels. During the first three months of life, iron supplementation should be avoided unless prescribed by your pediatrician. There is evidence that overly high iron intake can disrupt immune function and make infection more likely. However, this soon changes. Growing children need iron. A variety of beans and green leafy vegetables help meet the body’s needs. The vitamin C in vegetables and fruits enhances iron absorption. Iron is another reason to avoid cow’s milk. As noted above, cow’s milk is very low in iron, and can induce a mild, chronic blood loss from the digestive tract.

Calcium is supplied by beans, green leafy vegetables, enriched flour, and, if desired, fortified orange juice; and excluding animal proteins helps the body retain calcium.

Children need protein to grow, but they do not need high-protein foods. A varied menu of grains, beans, vegetables, and fruits supplies plenty of protein. The “protein deficiencies” that our parents worried about in impoverished countries were the result of starvation or diets restricted to very few food items. Protein deficiency is extremely unlikely on a diet drawn from a variety of plant foods.

Very young children may need a slightly higher fat intake than do adults. Soybean products may be helpful for this purpose. Tofu hot dogs and
seasoned tempeh burgers, for example, are very well accepted. However, do not take the need for fat in the diet too far. American children very often have the beginnings of heart disease before they finish high school. In contrast, Japanese children in decades past grew up on diets that were much lower in fat than those which are common in America, and there is every indication that they were better off for it.

Vitamin B
₁₂
is plentiful in many commercial cereals. Children who do not eat these supplemented products should have a B
₁₂
supplement of 3 mcg per day. Common children’s vitamins contain more than enough B
_12.

Children also need sunlight, which allows the body to make vitamin D. Children in latitudes with diminished sunlight may need the vitamin D in a typical multivitamin supplement.

Perhaps the most important consideration for children is this: Childhood is the time when dietary habits are established—habits which exert a lifelong effect. Children who acquire a taste for chicken nuggets, roast beef, and french fries today are the cancer patients, heart patients, and weight-loss clinic patients of tomorrow. Children who are raised on the New Four Food Groups will have a lower risk of heart disease and cancer, compared to their counterparts raised on the average American diet. They will also tend to stay slimmer and to live years longer.

Some studies suggest that the growth of vegetarian children is more gradual—that is, a bit slower at first, but then catching up later on.
²⁵
,
³⁰
Final heights and weights are comparable to those of meat-eating children.
³¹
Interestingly, breast-fed babies also grow more slowly than bottle-fed babies. It may well be that nature designed the human body to grow up more gradually, to reach puberty later, and to last longer than happens for most of us raised on omnivorous diets.

In a 1980 study in Boston, researchers measured the IQs of vegetarian children.
³²
Some of the children were following a macrobiotic diet, a few were Seventh-day Adventists, and the rest were from families that had simply decided to go vegetarian. On intelligence testing, the kids were considerably above average. The average IQ was 116. Now the diet probably had nothing to do with their intelligence. Rather, these vegetarian families were better educated than the average meat-eating family, and it is probably the parental education, rather than a dietary effect, that was reflected in their children’s measured intelligence. On the other hand, this study should help reassure vegetarian parents who wonder whether there is something in animal products that is needed for brain development. There isn’t.

As noted in
Chapter 1
, evidence indicates that diet can affect the age of puberty, and it may well be that parents of vegetarian children sleep better at night, knowing their children are not dating earlier than they otherwise might.

In the
next chapter
, we look at the process of change, and how to make it stick.

We are creatures of habit, and food habits are among those most dearly held. By the time children start school they have very strong food preferences, and they fly into near panic with any violation of them. They do not want to try new foods, not even a little bit. And even foods they do like had better not touch each other on the plate. Once learned, our food preferences are resistant to change.

It is not just food. We have a hard time breaking any habit: alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, of course, but also work habits, our behavior with friends and family, and just about every other aspect of our lives. Newlyweds soon learn how upsetting it can be when their toothpaste tubes, toilet seats, and laundry no longer conform to their accustomed habits.

Food habits may actually have a biological value. Thousands of years ago, when one of our ancestors reached to pull a berry off a bush, there was some risk in being overly adventurous, and some reassurance in sticking to the tried-and-true. This same culinary conservatism is observed in other animals. As chimpanzee toddlers put every new and shiny fruit to their lips, their mothers will flick away any foods that are not part of the chimp culture in that area. A few miles away, a different group of chimps will have a different set of dietary traditions and will rigidly adhere to those as well.

Now, of course, we recognize a need to break some habits. Healthful eating is a significant departure from the standard American diet. It has to be, because the standard diet makes us fat, gives most of us either heart disease or cancer, and measurably shortens our lives.

Kicking animal products and other greasy foods off the menu does lead to a period of missing them. This is to be expected, since most of us became
used to eating these foods in earliest childhood. Breaking any habit requires an adjustment period. Happily, food habits are among the easiest to change. For example, it is much easier to become a vegetarian than it is to quit smoking. I can say this as one who has done both. For smokers, there really is no substitute for tobacco, and they simply learn to forget about it, a process which often takes a long time. When it comes to food, the situation is much easier. New foods substitute very well for old foods and lead your tastes in a new direction. You will develop a palate for new and delicate flavors. Like the traveler enjoying the simple delights of a light
potage de legumes
on the Côte d’Azur, or a spiced pasta with wine on the coast of Italy, new and wonderful foods await you.

When we break food habits, what we are actually doing is
replacing
them with new ones. I suggest that you begin this program in this way: Try the 21 Day Meal Plan of simple and delicious menus in
Chapter 8
. It will help you adapt your tastes and learn about some new foods, new ways to select, and new ways to prepare food. You can, if you wish, add any of the other recipes and food ideas in
Chapter 8
, or add any other foods, so long as they come from grains, vegetables, fruits, or legumes. Eliminate animal products and keep vegetable oil to an absolute minimum.