25 From what I’ ve seen, vegetarianism works best when accompanied by a deeply felt spiritual commitment. When spirit and emotion support a diet devoid of animal products( or with dairy only), our bodies seem perfectly able to extract and transform all the nutrients they need for maintenance and repair from plant products. Vegetarianism does not appear to have equally positive effects when embarked upon solely for“ sensible” reasons of health; if passion and emotion are not involved, we seem to be less efficient at processing vegetable matter, and symptoms of insufficiency may result after a number of years. Moreover, if the diet doesn’ t work, intellectual reasoning or ideology may at times block our awareness of the signals given out by our body indicating distress or discomfort. To illustrate the weakness of iron-clad logic as a defense of vegetarianism, allow me to present you with two sides of the argument. As I mentioned earlier, moral vegetarianism is based on certain premises regarding the undesirability of killing animals and the unsuitability of our bodies for the consumption of animal protein. Some proponents of vegetarianism also maintain that we should eat nothing that can defend itself or run away from us. I discovered the other side of these arguments with the help of a young man who once sat next to me on a train going from Philadelphia to New York. When he found out about my interest in food and health, and my own largely vegetarian inclinations, he laughed.“ I’ m quite the opposite,” he said.“ I only eat whatever can defend itself or run away; why should I attack helpless plants? So I eat only animals, not even eggs or milk! And you should see my plants! They grow tall and beautiful for me, and perfume my home— they know that I’ m not going to eat them.” As I sat there too dumbfounded to even wonder if he was kidding me, he went on:“ Besides, our teeth are not suited for vegetable consumption. Our incisors are too short— look at the rabbits! And our molars are not wide enough— look at the horse and the cow! And our intestines are too short— the cow’ s intestines are twenty times their body length, whereas ours are only about four to six times our body length.” Recovering my speech, I started to say that it was quite the opposite, but since I didn’ t have the exact numbers at my fingertips, I decided that it was better to be quiet and mull over this whole new angle. Eventually I did some research and found that, to my surprise, the young man was right: The dog’ s intestines are 12 to 15 feet, or about four to five times its body length, if we allow some two to three feet from head to tail. Our intestines are 22 to 26 feet long; if we consider three feet from head to tail( legs don’ t count), that would make the intestines six to eight times body length. The herbivorous ox, however, has intestines that are 130 feet long; allowing five to six feet from head to tail, that would make them twenty to twenty-two times body length. 26 And where does that leave us in this age-old argument? In the middle! And so, it appears, choices in diet are available to us according to our desire and our comfort. The young man, however, had not finished:“ Not only are our bodies not suited to consume vegetables, but we can be much more spiritual by eating animal protein, which is easier to convert to our own protein and so doesn’ t use up too much of our energy; we have some left over to put into spiritual matters.” Well. What can I say? As Einstein taught us, everything is indeed relative. We just have to pick the ideas we like and we’ ll have no trouble finding the arguments and the evidence to support them. The Question of Vitamin B 12 It is widely held that a fully vegetarian diet will be deficient in vitamin B 12, causing pernicious anemia and, after ten to twelve years, degeneration of the spinal cord. Studies done early in this century on British vegans, who ate only vegetable foods, no eggs or milk, revealed that many of them did indeed eventually exhibit those symptoms. B 12 is thought to originate from bacterial fermentation of vegetable matter in the intestinal tract of herbivorous animals. For this reason, their organs and muscles contain appreciable amounts of the vitamin. However, there is evidence that whole grains such as wheat and oats might in fact also supply the full B complex and deliver from 0.1 to 0.4 micrograms of B 12 per 100 grams edible portion. 27 The Food and Nutrition Board recommends from 0.3 micrograms for infants to 4.0 for pregnant women. A daily intake of 0.6 to 1.2 micrograms is considered sufficient for the average adult. A vegetarian diet based on substantial amounts of raw fruit and salads, nuts and seeds, cooked vegetables and potatoes, and only occasional grain, will indeed be deficient in this vitamin; and such was the diet of European vegetarians early in this century. If in addition sugar or honey is consumed, both of which tend to de-mineralize and weaken the body, the problem is compounded. But when the vegetarian diet is based on whole grains and beans as staple foods, B 12 is supplied in sufficient amounts: A three-ounce serving of oatmeal will provide the minimum daily requirement for an infant, while as little as three ounces of oatmeal for breakfast and three ounces whole wheat bread during the rest of the day will supply enough B 12 for the average adult. Sea vegetables contain significant amounts of the vitamin( see chart this page