1.   VEGETARIAN CORNER–CUT ANIMAL FAT, REDUCE CANCER! APRIL 1978

At a meeting of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Lon O Crosby, a nutritionist reported that 40% of men’s cancer and 60% of women’s cancer are estimated to be caused by diet.  In remarks before the Society Dr. Crosby commented:
“We predict that 700,000 lives could be saved in the year 2000 if a nutrition programme were implemented now.”

“A person who eats two 12 oz. charcoal – broiled steaks in a week gets more tar than from smoking two packs of cigarettes a day for that period.” 

Chemist John Weisburger, research vice president of te American Health Foundation, claims that cancer rates of the colon, rectum and breast are much lower in Japan where only 20% of an average person’s calories comes from fat.  In contrast the average American, whose intake of dietary fat accounts for 40% of total calories, has a much higher rate of these cancers. 

The presence of the hormone, “prolactin” seems to correlate closely to the incidence of breast cancer, Dr Weisburger noted.  And those individuals who eat more animal fat are more likely to have high levels of prolactin, and a higher incidence of breast cancer. 

Comparing women volunteers on high fat diets with women on low fat diets, Dr Weisburger said that high fat volunteer’s secreted 40% to 60% more prolactin than did the low fat group.  Furthermore, he said, animal studies also show elevated prolactin and a higher incidence of breast cancer for a high fat group.  Animal fat in food may increase the likelihood of breast and colon cancer “by altering endocrine balances and affecting sterol and bile acid metabolism, “he suggested.

It is encouraging to note that vegetarians have significantly lower incidence of cancers of the lung, breast, rectum and colon.  The reason for this is that vegetarians consume much less animal fat than meat eaters, and the diet of vegetarians is usually higher in fibre.

Dr. William Bruce, a researcher at the Ontario Cancer Institute at Toronto’s Princess Margaret Hospital found that people who cut their animal fat intake from 150mg a day to 50mg a day (in essence, decreasing their meat consumption) could reduce the presence of detectable cancer – causing (N – nitroso) compounds by 50%.  In addition, the addition of bran to the diet and a daily intake of 2gm of vitamin C per day were also found to reduce the presence of cancer causing compounds. 

The American Cancer Society is concerned about these findings.  It states that if over-whelming evidence is found linking animal fat and cancer, it plans a campaign to promote a low-fat diet as a possible means of cancer prevention.  Yet another reason to give some thought to a more vegetarian oriented diet. 

“MORE AND MORE VEGETARIANS IN BRITAIN” – BBC WORLD SERVICE.  (THE STRAITS TIMES – 25TH JULY 1985)

For hundreds of years, the main constituent of the British diet has been meat.

But nowadays, vegetarianism is growing by 60% a year, and Britain’s Vegetarian Society predicts that if present trends continue, more than half the population will have given up meat eating for good by 1991.

Until recently, people in Britain tended to believe that vegetarians were pallid and anemic cranks.  Not any more.  Though only about 2% of the population is vegetarian – that is not eating the flesh of fish, fowl, or beast – a further 2% abstain from red meat, and the habit is growing fast. 

The boom is such that the country’s Vegetarian Society has launched a big campaign, and its chief executive Peter Cox has declared that he aims to make butchers meat a thing of the past by the end of the century. 

In many parts of Asia, of course, people do not eat meat for religious reasons.

Many Hindus and Buddhists avoid meat, eggs and fish because of their belief in non-violence.  And in many other parts to the third world meat is too expensive or unavailable. 

This is not so in the West.  While vegetarianism has a highly respectable intellectual tradition – in the 19th century, vegetarian societies were formed in Britain, the United Stated, France and Germany – it has remained the concern of a very small minority. 

Three arguments seem to be now persuading people to abandon their carnivorous ways.

The first is related to world food resources.  Forty percent of the world cereal output is used to feed animals, which are then eaten.  It is much more economical, claim vegetarian’s for man to eat cereals. 

The second argument is about health.  While the traditional belief that a nice juicy red steak is good for you still holds, there is now a mass of medical evidence from around the world to suggest that diets rich in animal fats lead to heart disease and cancer.

A vegetarian diet, with its emphasis on pulses and grains to provide essential vitamins, is regarded by many medical experts to be much healthier. 

The third argument – and the one which probably sways most people to change to vegetarianism – concerns moral objections to the slaughter of animals.

In the past five years a vociferous and sometimes aggressive animal rights movement has grown up in Britain to protest against the exploitation of animals in laboratories, circuses, sports and farms.

Following close behind has been the rise of vegetarianism and the spread of vegetarian restaurants. 

The meat industry – while is on a big promotional campaign – claims that the Vegetarian Society is misusing statistics.  Vegetarianism ebbs and flows, it says; the present boom is a temporary fad. 

Nonetheless there’s no doubt that the meat industry is worried.  Last year in Britain, an estimated 9 million people cut their meat consumption and red meat consumption has gone down by 20 percent since the late 1960’s. 

An average Briton in his or her lifetime consumes 8 beef animals, 36 pigs, 36 sheep and 550 poultry birds. 

2. A TENNIS PRO’S DIET PUTS POWER IN HIS SWING - VIRGINIA WESTERVELT 

(BY LEAH LENEMAN – VEGETARIAN TIMES: APRIL 1983)

Since the publication of his book “Tennis for Life” in 1981 Peter Burwash has evolved from a successful tennis pro to be one of the best examples of athletic vegetarianism in action.  Featured on a variety of TV an radio shows, and in person at health and athletic conferences, the 37 year old Canadian is living proof of the vitality and strength resulting from a well balanced vegetarian diet.  A former Canadian Davis Cup tennis player, Burwash has played internationally in 74 countries and has coached in 86 countries.  He is considered by many to be one of the top three professional tennis coaches in the world today. 

It’s difficult to find a more persuasive exponent of vegetarianism than Burwash; physically he radiates health and vigor.  He jokes about the fact that before he changed his diet, he thought vegetarians were thin, emanciated, unhealthy creatures. 

After becoming vegetarian in 1970, Burwash was rated the fittest athlete in Canada by a fitness institute in Toronto which tests all the top athletes in the country.  “When I was a meat eater, I rated between number 50 and 60 but after one year as a vegetarian I had the highest fitness index of all the athletes,” Burwash said.  “I became firmly convinced that it was working for me so I figured that if it worked for me then I’d better start getting the message out to everybody”.

Burwash has taken vegetarianism and tennis with him to countries all over the globe. He travels over 300 days a year, covering 250,000 miles.  He speaks at dozens of health conferences and athletic events.  In 1975 he created a world-wide tennis organisation – Peter Burwash International (PBI).

PBE is the world’s first and largest tennis management group.  PBE provides tennis coaches and staff to quality resorts, tennis facilities, clubs and camps.  The Honolulu based organisation has been a smashing success, with permanent coaches in 23 countries and clinics conducted in 91 countries.  The organisation also has programmes for the blind, deaf, and physically and mentally handicapped, and for people in prison. 

In his 17 years of travel and through his work with PBI, Burwash has seen a tremendous shift in the attitudes of doctors and athletes towards diet, especially a vegetarian diet, and its relationship to performance.  “Many athletes are becoming open to the idea that vegetarianism can improve performance,” Burwash said.  “Many still believe that a steak is the best preparation for competition.  But more and more athletes are relying on carbohydrates – grains and vegetables.”

“The question I’m most often asked when I’m traveling is how can an athlete be a vegetarian?” says Burwash.  “Athletes are so dependant on their bodies, they’re afraid that something may go wrong that will screw up their system.  They’re very careful about what they put into their bodies.”

Burwash explains that fats from meat coat the inside of the body’s arterial wall.  The result of eating meat is that less oxygen travels through the blood to the organs; when less oxygen gets to the muscle structure, muscles fatigue faster.  An athlete’s over all output is decreased with the onset of fatigue.  

In a chapter on the vegetarian athlete in his latest book, “Peter Burwash’s Vegetarian Primer” (New York: Athenaeum, 1983) Burwash writes about the benefits he experienced when he switched to a non-meat diet.  “Having spent twenty-five years of my life as a meat eater, I was constantly perplexed by the physical ups and downs that are a part of a high-protein meat diet,” Burwash wrote.  “But my energy levels as a vegetarian have been so consistent that for me a low-energy day is indeed a rarity.” 

Burwash first became a vegetarian out of concern for his health and performance, but he soon developed an understanding of the ethical and moral issues of vegetarianism.  “I went to a slaughter house shortly after I changed my diet,” Burwash recalls “I saw the brutality and the fear in the animals, and I knew it was wrong.  It had a great impact upon me.  Before that I couldn’t really relate to vegetarianism a moral thing.  But now I feel it’s essential to have a moral conviction as well as a concern for your health.  If you don’t have a concern for animals, then there’s a great potential for you to cheat.”

Some athletes have a problem relating to the moral implications of vegetarianism, said Burwash.  Athletes are so involved with their own bodies and selves that at first they may not understand vegetarianism as a concern for other living beings.  “You have to get beyond yourself and your ego to really understand vegetarianism,” Burwash says.

Between business trips Burwash is working on a new book, tentatively titled “Peter Burwash’s Aerobic Workout for Men,” which will outline an entire fitness programme including exercise and diet, for men.  He says the new book will emphasise the need for a total aerobic workout to stay fit.

Meanwhile, Burwash’s schedule includes visits to Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Europe and possibly Africa in the months to come.  It’s a sure bet that he’ll be spending much of his time talking abut tennis and the diet that changed his life.  As he puts it, “Of all the things I’ve done, and I’ve coached and played in more countries than any professional in history – still the most exciting thing for me is understanding vegetarianism.”

3. CLIMBING THROUGH THE 80’s (VEGETARIAN TIMES – MARCH   1983)

Hulda Crooks had done a lot of climbing in her day – she’s scaled Mt. San Georgonio (11,502 feet) near her home in Loma Linda, Ca. about two dozen times, hiked down the Kiabab Trail at Grand Canyon, and made the 90 mile hike across the Sierra Nevada Range.  Most recently she completed her twenty-first climb of Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in the United States. 

Crooks is a few steps above the rest of the mountain climbing crowd in terms of age and experience.  She started climbing twenty years ago at the age of 66 and hasn’t stopped since.  At 86 she’s trim and has the energy and stamina that it takes to climb the highest mountains.  A vegetarian since she was 18, Crooks attributes her good health to a good diet.

“Your body will do what you ask it to if you take care of it” said Crooks when asked how she manages to keep climbing.  “What you feed it is most important.”

Crooks starts each day at 5 a.m. with a mile long jog and then a good breakfast of fruit and whole grain cereals.  She eats her main meal in the early afternoon, usually potatoes and some kind of legume like peas, beans, lentils or a soybean product.  She also likes homemade bread, nuts and lots of fruits and vegetables. 

Growing up on a farm in Canada meant lots of meat, potatoes and butter.  Crook’s father owned a country store, “so I ate candy by the pound” she admits.  “I’d grab a handful of chocolate peppermints, go sit on a fence and munch like an elephant.” When she was 15 she was five feet [1.52 m] tall and weighed 160 pounds [72.5 kg]. 

When Crooks stopped eating meat, she lost weight.  She has maintained a lacto-vegetarian diet throughout her life.  When she decided to take up mountain climbing she was in good shape.

Crook’s climbing experience is awesome.  She has twice scaled down Havasu Canyon, the “Gem of the Grand Canyon” and hiked the 212 mile John Muir Trail over high passes, carrying a 24 pound pack.   Crooks likes to climb steadily with brief rest periods – she averages about a mile an hour.  She drinks up to a cup of water every half hour or so to avoid dehydration.  For extra energy she carries a bunch of grapes. 

“Sometimes I’ve had to battle high winds and icy trails.  Some years it’s been so cold I felt as if my face would crack if I smiled” Crooks says of the many trips she’s made up and down Mt. Whitney, “But I always made it to the top and back down again.  There’s a sense of satisfaction that you get when you’re not defeated by adverse elements.”

The satisfaction of having reached the top is part of what keeps Crooks returning to Whitney again and again.  But the beauty of the rugged mountains has a lot to do with it also.  The awe inspiring canyons, the wild flowers clinging to the moist slopes, and the clear mountain air are worth a hearty climb for Crooks.

4. WHY I AM A VEGETARIAN -By Owens S. Parrett, M.D.

Is A PERSON who does not eat meat peculiar, or is he Wise? 
My mother tells me that when I was a baby I refused to eat any kind of meat and would spit it out if it was put in my mouth.  She thought – as many mothers do that I needed the meat to make me grow.  So she persisted until if finally acquired a liking for it.  However, for the past fifty years I have chosen a diet that does not include any kind of flesh food, fish, or fowl. 

In my practice of medicine I have always followed the policy of telling my patients the reasons for what I ask them to do.  I do not like to do anything without knowing why I am doing, and I assume that most people feel the same way.  So I am going to tell you why I am a vegetarian, and why I believe you should be one also. 

First, I love life and I want to live as long as is can.  These are stirring and eventful days, and I want to know what is going to happen next.  I have passed the Biblical threescore years and ten, and I am thankful to God that I still find the days too short for all I want to do.  I still carry a full practice and like to dip into several hobbies even if for only a few minutes a day. 

I find that most of my patients are retired at the age I am now, I have no desire to retire so soon.  I would rather spend the day helping the sick, many of whom have been forced to retire early because they lacked te knowledge I possess. 

It is my certain conviction, having studied the atter scientifically and observed sickness and its causes through many years, that if I had eaten largely of flesh foods during my life, I would no be too aged to carry on the practice of medicine.  A doctor must be able to think clearly and have considerable powers of endurance and nervous energy. 

Both aging and fatigue are hastened by flesh foods.  Age is the wearing out of the body. The process varies considerably among different individuals. Within the past week I was asked to visit men in a certain hotel.  One was aged in the late forties and the other in the early fifties.  Both were on the country welfare and certainly looked unable to work. Though so young in years, they were both old men.  Tobacco and liquor, of course, had played a part; but the part that meat played cannot be overlooked.

The cells of which the body is made up are little units.  Each must take n nourishment, give off waste, and breathe oxygen.  When this process is interfered with, the cells deteriorate and the organs them make up naturally deteriorate too. 

The late Dr. Alexis Carrel, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1912, recognised that the efficiency of providing nutrition and eliminating waste was what determined the aging of a cell of tissue.  So he attempted to extend the life of a bit of chicken heart by bathing it in a nutritive fluid that removed waste and added nourishment.  So successful was he that fro 1913 that piece of chicken heart was kept alive until 1947.  Finally, after 34 years , it was thrown into a sink where it died.  Dr. Carrel himself was already dead.  How much longer the chicken heart might have lived is not known.  Certainly then Dr. Carrel proved that length of life depends largely on eliminating waste and adding nutrition to the cells. Practically applied, this would mean that if we could regularly remove all the waste from our body cells and apply adequate nutrition to these same cells, we might easily reach of unheard-of-lengths of life.  By the same token, if he body fluids that bather our cells are overloaded with waste, life would be shortened. 

Let us take a look at history.  The Bible indicates that for en generations before the Flood people lived an average of 912 years.  After the Flood the human race began eating flesh foods. The lives of then next ten generations were shortened to an average of 317 years.

The idea is prevalent that if you are going to work hard and need a lot of endurance, you must have a large beefsteak.  The acts are just the opposite.  I can refer to only three illustrations to show how this is to be true. 

Some year ago the well known Yale professor, Dr. Irving Fisher, showed that when vegetarian rookies were pitted against the best athletes of Yale, the untrained men had more than twice the endurance of the meat eating athletes. 

Johnny Weissmuller, the Tarzan of the comic strips and world swimming champion, was invited to the dedication of a new swimming tank in the Battle Creek Sanitarium.  Weissmuller had made 56 world records but for 5 years he had made no new ones because he was getting older. After several weeks on a well selected vegetarian diet he was able to hand up six more world records in the new swimming tank.

Recently the vegetarian swimmer, Murray Rose of Australia, world champion and winner in the Olympic Games has become widely known.  So have his dietetic practices. Rose has been a vegetarian since he was tow years old.  He not only swims fast but his ability to spurt ahead at the finish demonstrates that superior endurance accompanies a fleshless diet.

Why should this be true?  Meat contains waste products that the animal would have eliminated had it lived a little longer.  A person who eats flesh food loads himself with the wasted on the meat. When these wastes reach the body cells, they bring on fatigue and aging. 

Prominent among the waste products are urea and uric acid.  Beefsteak contains about 14 grains of uric acid per pound.  The late Dr. L. H. Newburg, of  Ann Arbor university called attention to the fat that when meat formed 25 percent of a rat’s diet the rats became bigger and more active than other rats on a normal diet.  But after a few months the kidneys of the meat eating rats became badly damaged. 

Another danger facing the meat eater is that animals are frequently infected with diseases that are common to man.  This was called to my attention forcefully the other day when my secretary told me that the dairy where her husband is foreman had four cases of Leukemia died four hours after the veterinary made the diagnosis.  Incidentally, the veterinary suggested that the ailing cow be sent to market, I happen to know that many cows are no longer able to produce mild are sent to market, and the price paid for them indicates that they are not thrown away of used fertilizer.

Cows with eye cancer are usually milked until they go blind, after which they are allowed by government regulations to be sold for meat, provided that the caner does not show up in too many other parts of the body. 

I believe it was some of these facts that made the late Dr. J. H. Kellogg remark once when he sat down to a vegetarian dinner “it’s nice to eat a meal and not have to worry about what your food may have died of.”

No one knows better than the inspectors themselves how much disease there is among the animals slaughtered for good.  Recently a friend called at my office selling audiometers, instruments to determine the degree of deafness.   As we chatted together my friend related the following incident.  His wife attended a banquet and ordered a vegetable plate instead of the regular meat being served.  At her side sat a gentleman strange she had not met before.  Each eye the other’s vegetables until finally the stranger remarked, “Pardon me madam, but are you a vegetarian?” “Yes the woman replied, are you?” “No” the stranger answered.  “I am a meat inspector.”

When it comes to poultry we face an alarming situation.  Recently I flew to East Lansing, Michigan and spent a day visiting a special research project started twenty one years ago by the Federal Government in collaboration with twenty five State universities to try to control malignancy in chickens.  The problem has become so serious that it threatens the poultry industry of the United States.  

I learned that cancer in fowls takes several forms.  Besides the usual one in which cancerous tumours are found, there is a carrier form in which a chicken may live out its natural life with no signs of cancer, while all the time it is infecting other fowls.  This form is so difficulty to detect that the only way the research men can finally determine whether a chicken has the disease is to incubate an egg from a suspected fowl for fifteen days.  On the fifteenth day the egg is carefully fertilized from the outside.  The embryo is removed and the liver is cut out and ground up.  A small portion is then injected into the breast muscle of another chicken.  If a cancerous tumour results at the site of inoculation, it is known then and only then that the hen which laid the egg has the disease.  Obviously, there is a small chance that an inspector will cull out of every diseased fowl, and still less chance that ‘dad’ will pick a healthy bird for Thanksgiving. 

As for fish, I will remember an occasion when I was fishing in the cold water of Yellowstone Lake.  Someone warned me not to eat the fish.  “They have worms in them,” he said.  I examined several and found it to be true.  When halibut is being fried, worms often crawl out. 

Rabbits are very subject to disease.  According to the laws of hygiene given by Moses, they are unclean.  As a lad I used to hunt with a friend who was a very good shot, and I helped him clean the rabbits before he sold them to his customers.  Seldom did we find a cottontail that was not loaded with tapeworms.  I gave one that we had killed to a neighbour, and he remarked as he thanked me, “You don’t know what you’re missing.” I said, “I may be missing a lot of tapeworms.”

Anyone wishing to get along without meat will find that it is not as difficult a problem as it may at first seem.

For those who like the flavour of meats, some very tasty foods made from grains and nuts are now available.  Dr. Fredrick State, of Harvard, a well known authority on nutrition, wrote me that which diet included mixed grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes (peas, beans, lentils, etc), with some nuts was adequate when it includes meat-like dishes made from nuts, grains, and other vegetables.  These vegetable “meat” dishes help to make the changeover to a non-flesh programme easier. 

I keep my table well supplied with a variety of delicious foods, and the lack of meat never enters my mind.  In fact, after studying animal diseases in the laboratories, and having observed the effects of a flesh diet on my patients these many years, I would find it difficult indeed to partake of flesh again. 

I quite agree with the leading nutritionist of John Hopkins, Dr. E. V. Mecollum, who gave it as his opinion that anyone who choose to eliminate flesh food from his diet would be better off for doing so.