Real men eat tofu - advantages of a vegetarian diet - Men's Health Report

Think of all the vegetarians you know -- are they men or women? Chances are the latter, because men constitute only a third of the 12 million American adults who say they're vegetarian. That's too bad, because taking a pass on meat has clear health benefits for men. It can help us lose that spare tire around the middle, increase virility and cut down on prostate problems. Need a little more convincing? Read on for 10 ways vegetarianism can improve your life.

1 A vegetarian diet can clean out your Arteries. By age 23, three out of four men have at least one major blockage in the arteries to the heart. The biggest reason, in most cases, is the fat and cholesterol in that chicken salad and roast beef they've been eating.

Blockages occur in all the major arteries, not just those leading to the heart. For instance, by age 20, 10 percent of men have an advanced blockage in at least one of the arteries that nourish the spine. Researchers now theorize that this loss of blood flow to the spine is a major contributor to the deterioration of the disks and vertebrae that lead to back pain.

Switching from red meat to chicken and fish does not help much, if at all. Both have plenty of cholesterol and a lot more fat than you would guess. The good news is, your arteries begin to clean themselves out when you top your pasta with marinara instead of meat sauce. Research by Dean Ornish, M.D., director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, Calif., showed that a vegetarian diet with only 10 percent of calories from fat, in combination with exercise, smoking cessation and stress-reduction techniques, reversed artery blockages in more than 80 percent of patients.

2 It might preserve your sexual potency. Impotence increases in midlife, and by age 60, a quarter of all U.S. men have said good-bye to sex. The reason is not performance anxiety. In most cases, those blocked arteries we just mentioned are to blame. Male sexual function depends on good blood flow. And just as a clogged artery to the heart causes a heart attack and a blocked artery to the brain causes a stroke, closing off the blood supply to the genitals can mean that they no longer work. Will vegetarian foods restore sexual function the way they melt away chest pain? Admittedly, research in this area is only just beginning, but meanwhile, how about some macho tofu with your power potatoes?

3 Giving up meat will keep you lean. Does your high-school graduation picture show the last time you were in good shape? Many men gain weight in early adulthood. The reason often is that they have traded their athletic jerseys for business suits but are still eating like football players.

Exercise is part of the answer, but there is nothing like going veg. The average man who starts a vegetarian diet becomes 10 percent leaner. In the Dean Ornish research mentioned previously, the average person lost 22 pounds, and some lost much more.

Part of the reason men lose weight on a veg diet is that vegetables, grains, fruits, beans and most other plant foods are naturally low in calories unless fat is added during cooking. But these foods also readjust your body chemistry. The natural starches in pasta, potatoes, rice and beans lead to the activation of two natural hormones in your body, noradrenaline and thyroid hormone, which in turn step up your calorie-burning metabolism. So don't throw away that football jersey just yet. A meatless diet could get you back into it.

4 You may never have to learn where your prostate is. A meat-based diet causes a man's body to make a bit too much testosterone. This doesn't make you more manly but actually causes overproduction of cells in the prostate gland, which rests beneath the bladder and surrounds the urethra. An overgrown prostate can pinch off urinary flow, leading to a diagnosis of benign prostate hyperplasia. This condition can make you miserable, necessitating trips to the bathroom all night long. This process happens to some extent in most men, starting at about age 30, but it is two-thirds less likely to occur at all if you are a vegetarian.

While urologists are perfectly happy to cut away the excess tissue with a long thin Lube (yes, your mental picture of the procedure is accurate), vegetarian foods can help keep your prostate in its place.

5 It might make you nicer. The Massachusetts Male Aging Study, a large research study of health in older men conducted by the Boston University's school of Medicine, found that the more fiber in a man's diet, the less likely he is to be overly aggressive and domineering. The reason, presumably, is that fiber helps prevent testosterone excesses. The liver constantly filters the blood, pulling out waste testosterone and sending it into the intestinal tract. There, fiber soaks up the testosterone like a sponge and carries it out with other waste products.

Animal foods don't contain any fiber at all. The more fish, chicken, beef, eggs or cheese on your plate, the fewer plant foods you eat; the result is you have less fiber in your digestive tract and you end up reabsorbing your own waste testosterone. Recycling is great for bottles and cans but not so great for hormones.

6 A meatless diet can cut your risk of cancer. A beer in one hand, a spatula in the other -- who'd notice the carcinogens on that grilling burger? Most cooking methods create carcinogens on meat; in fact, chicken actually has 15 times more carcinogens than cooked beef, according to researchers with the National Cancer Institute based in Bethesda, Md.

As a group, vegetarians -- including even french-fry-eating, soda-guzzling, couldn't-care-less-about-health vegetarians -- are 40 percent less likely to develop cancer than meat eaters. The risk of colon cancer, for example, is cut by two-thirds. Oddly enough, lung cancer was shown to be less common in vegetarians even in studies that controlled for smoking. The explanation probably relates to anticancer properties of vegetables, fruits, beans and soy products and to stronger immune systems in vegetarians. Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center found that vegetarians' white blood cells are twice as vigilant against cancer cells, compared to those of omnivores.

7 You might even forestall baldness. Whether or not a man goes bald depends entirely on genetics. However, the age at which hair loss starts and how quickly it progresses depends on testosterone, which enters the hair follicles and gradually kills them off. Some research suggests that the same excess testosterone that enlarges a meat eater's prostate might cause baldness to occur too soon and too quickly.

Research in this area is still new, but Japanese dermatologists have observed that as the Japanese diet has become Westernized -- other words, more laden with meat and fat -- baldness has become more common, especially in younger men. The reason, they believe, is not only a stronger testosterone attack on the hair follicles but also more rapid conversion of testosterone within the follicle to a much more powerful hormone, called DHT, which is basically follicle poison. A low-fat vegetarian diet will not let you keep your hair forever but may enable you to keep more of it for longer than you would otherwise.

8 There are microbes on meat. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 15 percent of beef carcasses are contaminated with disease-causing bacteria. Chicken is even worse -- about a third of the chicken packages at retail stores are tainted with live salmonella, and 60 to 80 percent carries a similar, lesser-known bug called campylobacter. These bacteria can cause an illness that masquerades as the flu, and many strains are now resistant to common antibiotics.

The real problem is not the bacteria that cling to the meat itself, because cooking at a high enough temperature for a sufficient length of time kills the microbes. The bigger concern is the traces of bacteria that dribble out as you open a package of chicken or hamburger. They may be invisible, but they survive on your countertop, your dishcloth and your hands. From there, they get into everything -- your salad, your side dishes and even baby food. In fact, infants get more salmonella infections than any other age group, all from cross-contamination in the kitchen. So skip the meat and save that trip to the emergency room for some other day.

9 You'll hold high blood pressure and diabetes at arm's length. Sixty million Americans have high blood pressure. Half of them are taking medication for it and enduring all kinds of side effects, including impotence in men. The other half are not yet aware that they have high blood pressure.

A Scandinavian study showed that a vegan (entirely plant-based -- no eggs or dairy diet) could get 75 percent of research subjects off their medicines and bring their blood pressure down lower than when they were on medication. Vegetarian foods reduce the viscosity of the blood, requiring less pumping pressure.

The same goes for diabetes. In research studies, a combination of a low-fat vegetarian diet and regular exercise helps many diabetics throw away their medicines and avoid the complications of diabetes.

10 A vegetarian diet shows your compassionate side. A man who orders pasta marinara is likely to come across as a more sensitive prospect than a guy who asks for steak tartare or spare ribs. The 7 billion chickens raised in the United States each year and the 100 million or so cattle, pigs and other animals on U.S. farms are not volunteers. Compassionate folks everywhere, whether vegetarian or not, will look at you with real respect when you use the V-word. And environmentalists who are concerned about the pollution from -- believe it or not -- 1.6 billion tons of livestock manure that farms crank out each year will know that you are not just an environmentalist wanna-be. You're the real McCoy.

Neal D. Barnard, M.D., is the president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and author of Ear Right, Live Longer (Harmony, 1995).

COPYRIGHT 1997 Vegetarian Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group