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"in the sense that their stomach physiology isn't capable of digesting it" Its a very popular strightdope urban legend discussion topic. You'd die pretty quic

by VLM 12y ago

"in the sense that their stomach physiology isn't capable of digesting it" Its a very popular strightdope urban legend discussion topic. You'd die pretty quickly if you couldn't adsorb complete proteins. Astrologically speaking, iron ions from spinach are dramatically different than iron ions from a steak, but your biochemistry won't know the difference. You can get three interesting effects: 1) Any time you mess with your diet you mess with your gut flora and ... residue. Not to mention the "feel" in your stomach before its all broken down to constituent molecules indistinguishable from plant sources (other than less fiber) So minor tummy ache is theoretically possible. Less fiber intake = less... output the next day, etc. 2) From my M-i-Ls adventures in gallbladder problems, its theoretically possible for vegan types to chug olive oil especially in the form of salad dressing, but to really consume huge quantities of oil/fat all at once you need a greasy triple cheeseburger with bacon. So you can have some bile / gallbladder related fun (whoa I just ate three days worth of oils/greases in one meal, totally freaking out my gallbladder type of reaction). You'll be fine. 3) Psychologically you can get really messed up. Try eating some dog sometime in a foreign country and then focusing on your stomach (assuming you're standard American) is going to be all messed up. Still meat is meat and if they told you it was pork you wouldn't have blinked, but here you are feeling like you're gonna hurl. Its really not as much fun as my description sounds. Think of that soy stuff instead of cows/chicken/fish/pigs/dogs and you'll be just fine as long as you can avoid getting all anxious. Being anxious is never fun, no matter if due to diet or relationships or tiny enclosed spaces or public speaking or whatever.

hiou 12y ago
It's actually for the same reason people get sick when the visit countries with poor water quality and drink the water. They aren't used to the pathogens. Check page 2 of this Consumer Reports article[1] for an example. > Enterococcus was the most common bacterium we found, occurring in 79.8 percent of our samples. Next was E. coli, in 65.2 percent of them; campylobacter, 43 percent; klebsiella pneumoniae, 13.6 percent; salmonella, 10.8 percent, and staphylococcus aureus, 9.2 percent. It's part of the reason that only some people experience the problems as a lot of it depends on how long you have not eaten meat, at what age you stopped eating meat, the overall strength of you immune system and just if you were unlucky the first time you resumed eating meat and ate something with higher percentage of pathogens present. Also, if you regularly cooked and ate from a kitchen that was mixed use or non meat. [1] http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high-cost-of-cheap-chicken/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high...
thaumasiotes 12y ago
> Astrologically speaking, iron ions from spinach are dramatically different than iron ions from a steak, but your biochemistry won't know the difference. In general, this is not true. In particular, we can read the straight dope ( http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/696/why-was-spinach-once-considered-the-ultimate-vegetable http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/696/why-was-spinach... ): > Spinach's star dimmed once more research was done. It turned out the iron in it couldn't be readily absorbed by the body.

by VLM 12y ago

hiou 12y ago

It's actually for the same reason people get sick when the visit countries with poor water quality and drink the water. They aren't used to the pathogens. Check page 2 of this Consumer Reports article[1] for an example. > Enterococcus was the most common bacterium we found, occurring in 79.8 percent of our samples. Next was E. coli, in 65.2 percent of them; campylobacter, 43 percent; klebsiella pneumoniae, 13.6 percent; salmonella, 10.8 percent, and staphylococcus aureus, 9.2 percent. It's part of the reason that only some people experience the problems as a lot of it depends on how long you have not eaten meat, at what age you stopped eating meat, the overall strength of you immune system and just if you were unlucky the first time you resumed eating meat and ate something with higher percentage of pathogens present. Also, if you regularly cooked and ate from a kitchen that was mixed use or non meat. [1] http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high-cost-of-cheap-chicken/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2014/02/the-high...

thaumasiotes 12y ago

> Astrologically speaking, iron ions from spinach are dramatically different than iron ions from a steak, but your biochemistry won't know the difference. In general, this is not true. In particular, we can read the straight dope ( http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/696/why-was-spinach-once-considered-the-ultimate-vegetable http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/696/why-was-spinach... ): > Spinach's star dimmed once more research was done. It turned out the iron in it couldn't be readily absorbed by the body.