[662] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
Re: Vegetarian Foods: Powerful for Health
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ed Piekos)
Mon Sep 18 13:04:44 1995
To: Lewis Haddow <9235367@arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
Cc: vsg@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of Mon, 18 Sep 1995 15:30:51 -0000.
<1CA69DC6C32@arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 18 Sep 1995 13:01:48 EDT
From: Ed Piekos <espiekos@MIT.EDU>
Lewis,
The way I understand it, the major vegetarian/osteoporosis
connection centers on protein, not only calcium, intake. Too much
protein causes your kidneys to dump calcium into your urine. Meat,
dairy, and eggs are concentrated sources of protein, causing people
whose diets revolve around these items to consume much more protein
than necessary. They therefore tend to get osteo even though they get
lots of calcium. While you questioned the epidemiological
significance of this observation, I do think it is interesting that
areas of the world with large rates of dairy (and, hence, calcium)
consumption still end up with high rates of osteo; even higher, in
fact, than areas with lower rates of calcium intake, but lower animal
protein intake. While it may not *prove* one thing or another, it
implies (to me at least) that there is more to the story than just
calcium.
Here's a study I found on Medline:
AUTHOR: Abelow BJ Holford TR Insogna KL
TITLE: Cross-cultural association between dietary animal protein
and hip fracture: a hypothesis.
ABSTRACT: Age-adjusted female hip fracture incidence has been noted
to be higher in industrialized countries than in
nonindustrialized countries. A possible explanation that
has received little attention is that elevated metabolic
acid production associated with a high animal protein
diet might lead to chronic bone buffering and bone
dissolution. In an attempt to examine this hypothesis,
cross-cultural variations in animal protein consumption
and hip fracture incidence were examined. When female
fracture rates derived from 34 published studies in 16
countries were regressed against estimates of dietary
animal protein, a strong, positive association was
** found. This association could not plausibly be explained **
** by either dietary dietary calcium or total caloric **
** intake. Recent studies suggest that the animal **
protein-hip fracture association could have a
biologically tenable basis. We conclude that further
study of the metabolic acid-osteoporosis hypothesis is
warranted.
NOTE: ADDRESS: Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven,
Connecticut 06510.
SOURCE: Calcif Tissue Int
SOURCE EDITION: 50(1)
SOURCE IMPRINT: 1992 Jan pages: 14-8
SOURCE CODEN: CGH
IMPRINT: 1992 Jan
Good luck in your argument. I'd be interested to see her sources that
found a greater rate of osteo in veggies, by the way; I've never seen
anything like this reported before (lower rates of calcium intake yes,
higher osteo no).
<<ESP>>
