On December 5, the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) released results of their latest poll of the number of vegetarians in the United States. Here is my quick analysis:

VRG found that 5% of adults “Never eat meat, fish, seafood, or poultry.” The margin of error was approximately 3%, meaning the real number could be from 2 to 8%. This continues a long trend of VRG polls showing the percentage of vegetarians in the United States to be steadily increasing. However, none of these polls, going back to 1994, has shown an increase greater than the margin of error above the 3% of the population in the U.S. that did not eat chicken at the time.

It should be pointed out, though, that even keeping up with the increase in the U.S. population is impressive. In 1994, the population of the U.S. was 260 million. In 2011, it is almost 312 million. So even to keep the percentage of vegetarians at 3% would be an increase of 1.5 million vegetarians. If it has really gone from about 3 to about 5%, then the increase has been 7.8 million people. And this does not count all the semi-vegetarians or people who have become opposed to factory-farming in the past 15 years.

It is slow progress, but lately it seems to be picking up momentum. With the hard work of organizations like Vegan Outreach, those trends will continue.

Did I mention Vegan Outreach is having an end of the year fundraising drive in which your donation can be doubled? 🙂 Click here to donate. Thank you!

Harvard School of Public Health: Nutrition Insurance Policy: A Daily Multivitamin

From the article:

“Looking at all the evidence—from epidemiological studies on diet and health, to biochemical studies on the minute mechanisms of disease—the potential health benefits of taking a standard daily multivitamin appear to outweigh the potential risks for most people.”

They reference the Iowa Women’s Health Study which I blogged about on October 11.

(Note: I am not able to recommend or assess any particular brand of multivitamin.)

I was out of town for two weeks, had a lot of Vegan Outreach (VO) work to catch up on, and hope to get back to nutrition blogging soon.

In the meantime, VO is running a matching donation drive — we are trying to match $102,000. We started November 1 and are still just over halfway to our goal.

Every day, in all kinds of weather, VO leafleters are handing out our hard-hitting booklets to thousands of college students. In 2011, we handed booklets to over 1.5 million students at about 1,000 schools!

These efforts are creating a generation of young people who oppose factory farming and view animals as deserving respect. And we are starting to see this reflected in polls and rates of meat consumption.

Please become part of this change by donating to VO’s end of year fundraising drive! We cannot let up the momentum now.

And if that’s not enough reason, remember that VO provides the financial support for VeganHealth.org. Without VO, what organization would be willing to present all the scientific research on veg diets? Who would take the time to provide free advice to people who are having questions or problems?

Please donate now by clicking here, and your donation will be doubled.

Thank you very much for being a part of this change!

Jack

If you missed my interview with Elisa Rodriquez, RD, LDN that appeared on One Green Planet, it has been re-posted on Elisa’s site, EatUrVeggies.com.

And tomorrow, Wednesday, November 30, EatUrVeggies will have info on how to win a free copy of Vegan For Life!

Interesting post by PaleoVeganology arguing that the efficiency of carrying adipose tissue by way of bipedalism, and not meat-eating, is what allowed human brains to grow larger than other primates:

It’s Curtains For The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis

Cooking food has also been argued to be what allowed humans to grow their brains larger than other primates.

I have added a new feature to PeaCounter.com, which does not require logging in, where you can calculate your physical activity level by putting in how many minutes per day you do various activities and then calculate your energy requirements:

peacounter.com/con_en

I base this all on equations and activities provided by the Institute of Medicine and there are some limitations in terms of the number of activities.

For example, the fastest running is 10 minute miles. But if you run faster, you should be able to extrapolate and get a rough idea of what your caloric expenditure would be.

Also, there is a limit to the IOM’s calculations in that “very active” is the highest physical activity you can have and so whether you run 10 minute miles for 120 minutes or for 240 minutes, your caloric expenditure will be the same. But if you play around with it, you can estimate beyond what the IOM’s calculations provide.

On Friday, a cross-sectional study was released from India examining the B12 status of apparently healthy people aged 60 and older (average age of 66 years). The study included both omnivores and vegetarians. Ninety-nine of the participants were vegetarian (presumably lacto-ovo) and 76 were omnivores.

There was significant exclusion criteria including cardiovascular disease as well as memory difficulties. The participants were from affluent areas.

Sixty-two of the participants were taking multivitamin supplements. They had significantly higher plasma B12, and lower methylmalonic acid (MMA)^a and homocysteine (HCY)^b levels. Only 2 people consuming supplements had higher than normal homocysteine levels.

61% of the vegetarians had elevated MMA levels vs. 46% of the omnivores. 17% of the vegetarians had homocysteine levels above 15 µmol/l vs. 7% of the omnivores.

There was no significant correlation between plasma B12, MMA, or HCY levels and any of the 10 cognitive tests given the subjects.

In summary, it appears these vegetarians could have been doing a bit more to improve their B12 status but so far no harm had come from their less-than-ideal levels. B12 supplements proved to be of value. Given that this was a cross-sectional study with stringent exclusion criteria, it may not be representative of the larger population.

Notes

^aMethylmalonic acid (MMA) levels are a specific measure of vitamin B12 status. MMA is not thought to be harmful, particularly at slightly elevated levels.

^bElevated homocysteine (HCY) is associated with low B12 and folate intakes and levels, as well as risk of early death, heart disease, stroke and dementia. More info at Mild B12 Deficiency – Elevated Homocysteine.

Reference

Shobha V, Tarey SD, Singh RG, Shetty P, Unni US, Srinivasan K, Kurpad AV. Vitamin B 12 deficiency & levels of metabolites in an apparently normal urban south Indian elderly population. Indian J Med Res. 2011 Oct;134(4):432-9.   |   Link

In 2009, I blogged about a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association that showed that people aged 15-23 who called themselves vegetarian had a higher rate of disordered eating. The study had a strong propensity to detect that vegetarians have disordered eating as their definition of “vegetarian” included people who eat fish and chicken, were only vegetarian for one month, and their definition of “disordered eating” was very broad. I suggested that better designed studies were desirable before any conclusions could be drawn.

Today, a well-designed study was released on-line (ahead of print), by the journal Appetite, and the results were better than I would have expected (Forestell, 2011).

Researchers from The College of William & Mary divided female college students into the following groups:

Vegetarian – 14 of 55 were vegan
Pesco-vegetarian – eat fish but no other meat
Semi-vegetarian – eat chicken and fish but no read meat
Flexitarian – cutting back on red meat
Omnivore – not limiting animal products

Their eating habits and attitudes were surveyed with a battery of questions at baseline and then again one year later.

The results were that vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians did not score higher than omnivores for restrictive eating behavior, whereas the semi-vegetarians and flexitarians did. The authors concluded, “It appears that semi-vegetarians and flexitarians specifically, may be more likely to experiment with restriction of animal products as a form of weight control than vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians.”

Reference

Forestell CA, Spaeth AM, Kane SA. To eat or not to eat red meat. A closer look at the relationship between restrained eating and vegetarianism in college females. Appetite. 2011 Nov 2.   |   Link

You decide:

Vegan Nutrition: Sometimes the Devil Really is in the Details

Today’s post on the possible B12/acne link prompted me to ask if you’ve ever reviewed any literature on a link between iodine and acne. I began supplementing with iodine a few months ago–thanks to Vegan For Life, I realized I must be terribly deficient!–and I noticed a few weeks later that my skin was absolutely freaking out. I’ve dealt with adult acne pretty consistently for years but had things well under control with topical medication, and it seemed like something was really aggravating my skin all of a sudden. After googling around, I found a number of people claiming a link between iodine and acne, but I can’t tell whether any well-done studies have confirmed this. I’m well aware something else might have been causing my skin to flare, but I stopped taking the iodine and waited for my skin to calm down (which it has), and I plan to start with a very low dose of iodine and see if it happens again. I would love to know whether any good research supports a connection.

I had not previously reviewed the literature, as I had never heard of this before, but I reviewed it today (click for list of studies). Like B12 and acne, there is very little recent information. I was able to get copies of a couple letters from the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (Arbesman, 2005; Danby, 2007) in which there was a discussion about whether iodine in dairy could cause acne and they cited papers from the 1960s and 70s as evidence that iodine can cause skin problems.

A 1990 review of iodine toxicity reports says “…iodine intakes less than or equal to 1.000 mg/day are probably safe for the majority of the population, but may cause adverse effects in some individuals (Pennington, 1990).” The RDA is 150 micrograms per day.

It seems safe to say that iodine supplements could cause acne (or acne-like) skin problems for some people.

Iodine is not like B12 in that you should not try to catch up with a low iodine intake in the past. If your iodine intake was so low that you have hypothyroidism or a goiter, then you should see a doctor for supervision. But in terms of starting to supplement for optimal health, do not start with amounts more than we recommend in Vegan For Life or on VeganHealth.org, which is 75 – 150 micrograms every few days. Some iodine supplements have as much as 225 micrograms per tablet; in those cases I’d either break it in half or take it once every two three days.

So, I am scared to wonder what other supplement recommended for vegans might cause acne in some people. Vitamin D? Luckily, a quick search finds people claiming vitamin D cleared up their acne, rather than caused it!

(I do not know if the claims that vitamin D can clear up acne have any validity.)

References

Arbesman H. Dairy and acne–the iodine connection. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2005
Dec;53(6):1102.   |   Link

Danby FW. Acne and iodine: reply. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2007 Jan;56(1):164-5.   |   Link

Pennington JA. A review of iodine toxicity reports. J Am Diet Assoc. 1990
Nov;90(11):1571-81. Review.   |   Link