Nagging Question
Do Vegetarians Lose the Ability to Digest Meat?
Or is that an urban myth?
If you’re a vegetarian, do you really lose the physical ability to digest meat?
Sort of, and only for a short period of time. David Levitsky, a nutrition professor at Cornell University, said the levels of enzymes that digest protein and fat can drop when you stop eating meat. But they quickly rise again once you fall off the wagon. “If you haven’t eaten meat for a while, it’s going to stay in your stomach longer,” but it’ll take only a day or two to recover your meat-digesting ability entirely, he said.
Longtime vegetarians report nausea and other gastrointestinal symptoms after consuming meat, intentionally or not, but several experts said they knew of no studies on the matter. The symptoms could be the result of those enzymes suddenly being asked to work harder than they have in a while, but Michael Greger, a clinical nutritionist and director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Society of the United States, thought it could also be psychosomatic. “What’s really happening is they’re thinking of some poor animal somewhere, and this may actually cause them to throw up,” Greger said.
I agree with the nausea comment. My family went veggie on me, and while still kept my options open to eat meat, for the most part I ate whatever my family ate. This meant going for months without eating meat. However, being the "flexitarian" that I am, when presented with an opportunity to eat a good burger, I took it. While it tasted great while I was eating it, I felt pretty gross later on, and was "out of sorts" digestively for the next day. I have no emotional baggage about eating animals, but I must admit that I feel healthier when I avoid meat. I did not want or expect that conclusion, but I really believe it. But I still enjoy a bit of meat every now and then...
i was never a vegetarian for real but didn't eat red meat for probably 10 years. during that time if i had any (accidental or otherwise) i would get some very real gi distress. and it wasn't psychological since i never chose not to eat the red meat for any reason other than i didn't love it that much and it was expensive - i mean who wants college cafeteria meat?! :) even food cooked on a mongolian grill would make me sick. it took a while to figure out but once i did and had them cook mine in the back "for vegetarians" i never got sick there any more.
any way when was i was pregnant and needed iron i worked my way back into eating red meat. took some time but now i have no issue with it at all.
I've been a vegetarian for 10 + years and I have significant GI issues when I consume meat. There is no way it could be emotional because I'll have the GI problems even when I did not know I was eating anything meaty (for example a pasta sause that had meat broth in it).
I can certainly appreciate that it's *possible* to feel, even have measurable physiological responses to know you ate dead animal flesh (which: I do since I'm an omni). But it's total speculation to say that's ALL there is to it for veggies who eat meat. The fact that science doesn't yet account for it doesn't mean it's "all in your head".
It's worth noting that enzymes aren't the only thing in play during digestion, and aren't necessarily the biggest culprit when it comes to upset stomachs.
A good portion of the work done in the digestive tract is shouldered by digestive bacteria. When a person stops eating a type or category of food, the bacteria hat are the best at digesting that food will start to die off. A typical vegetarian will have much lower amounts of meat digesting bacteria in their gut than the average person.
This also helps explain why people who eat relatively low fat diets often get sick from greasy foods, or why spicy foods cause upset stomach in people who have not acclimated themselves to such a diet.
I had an interesting experience when I went from long-term vegetarianism to (some) meat-eating. I stopped eating red meat when I was about 5 years old and did not drop fish and poultry completely from my diet for another several years. When I was 20, I began traveling much more, and found it extremely difficult to maintain my vegetarianism abroad. I re-introduced fish and poultry into my diet gradually and adjusted quickly with no problems. However, on the few occasions I’ve eaten a dish with small amounts of beef, I’ve been sick for hours afterwards.
It is my understanding that red meat has more complex proteins than poultry and is therefore slightly more difficult to digest (I may be wrong, but this is what people have told me). But I also wonder if, since I have eaten red meat so few times in my life, and stopped eating it so young, it may be possible that my body doesn’t produce the enzymes to break down the protein in red meat? Anyone know anything about this, and maybe have any idea how to handle it?
Perhaps you can ask these people about how precisely cow and chicken proteins like myosin, tropomyosin, troponin, actin, and actinin differ in terms of "complexity". If they don't know, then they probably have no idea what they're talking about.
The enzymes that break down proteins are called proteases. The stomach and pancreas produce specific proteases like pepsin, trypsin, and chymotrypsin, each of which breaks down certain amino acid bonds that are found in proteins. There is no known specific "red meat protease," so it's extremely unlikely that your body does or doesn't produce this apparently nonexistent enzyme.
What's quite probable is that you have adjusted to a low-fat diet. A high fat meal is associated with increased release of hormones like cholecystokinin, which can cause a decrease in gastric motility and increases in bile production and gallbladder contraction, hence some folks can experience significant feelings of bloating or even pain in the upper right quadrant of the abdomen if they have gallstones. Even my wife and I have felt a little ill after eating lots of foie gras in Bordeaux and Montreal.
Different kinds of bacteria in the small and large intestine can certainly be associated with a variety of gastrointestinal symptoms, and various factors such as diet (not only vegetarian vs carnivorous, but also ingestion of foods containing active cultures like unpasteurized milk and cheese, miso, etc) and use of antibiotics can affect the composition of these bacteria in an individual person.
Also, there is always the psychological factor, since apparently many vegetarians who visit Argentina and avoid obvious meat dishes nonetheless really enjoy the french fries, chips, and apparently vegetable snacks, which usually contain or are cooked in beef tallow or fat, which is quite likely to contain trace amounts of protein. I was quite surprised to find that the strawberry granola bar and the ketchup-flavored crisps, for example, that we were served on the airplane contained beef-derived ingredients. However, this contributes to the sense of umami, and ultimately, tastiness.
Young-Ho
I was veggie/vegan for more than 10 years. One night, I woke up ready to gnaw my own arm off I didn't get something meaty. Fried chicken, specifically. I tossed and turned until 10:30 AM, at which point I sprinted to KFC, ordered by body part, and ripped the flesh clean off the bone.
And I was fine as a fiddle.
Maybe it's different for everyone, but this has lead me to seriously question the "I found a bit of chicken in super burrito and I must have had a piece because I got violently ill" claims.
I virtually eliminated beef from my diet - no ideology, just to help lose weight. Now, when I grill a steak, it often disagrees with me - never had a problem with beef before.
I'm with you amymsmom. I had absolutely no problem reintroducing chicken into my diet, but beef is trouble. I recently had a dish with a beef-stock-based sauce and even that upset my stomach. Maybe it's not an issue of the specific protiens in the meat, but there is definitely something unique about red meat that does not agree with me.
I have been meat-free for 12 years now, and I can say that it is the LARD that gets me ill. If food is prepared with it, I don't have to be told because once it hits my stomach, I am hitting the toilet. I literally get nauseated or worse. And anything with chicken broth causes severe thick mucus to instantly form in my sinuses. But fish broth poses no problems. Yes, something does happen when abstaining from meat for long periods of time.
I was a strict vegetarian for 7 years and had no problems whatsoever, from day one, when I fell off the wagon.
Among my friends, the nontechnical term for the after-affects of eating meat for the first time in a while is a "carnover," like a hangover, but for meat.
I became a "partial vegetarian" August 3, 2007. I chose to still eat seafood. ANYWAY, I recently took a trip to my local Taco Bell (eww gross, I know) but it was on a whim and ordered "without meat". Somehow I think the meat was still there because the next morning, I became violently ill, throwing up 4 times, all remnants of my meal the night before. I am almost positive, that if it wasn't food poisoning, it was my inability to tolerate the low-grade meat that they used in the food they served since removing meat from my diet.
i was a vegetarian for a year and half, and been so low on protein i really thought it over, with soccer season coming up, and decided to eat meat 3 years ago. Ha, tasted familar in my house, but like a known stranger in one's house..anyway, my tummys been feelin kinda funny, [i got a funny in my tummy! lol] and i felt like, just, gasious in my intestines, but its a little better, since I just focuse on chewing slowly, and drink lots of water. I guess it takes time to get back use to it.
But yeah, its my third day I consumed meat.