former vegetarians- a question

[mopinko]

2 of my kids (17 and 21 y.o.) are now vegetarians. they are convinced that if they ate meat now, they would get sick.
those of you that went "off the wagon", what was it like for you?

[harmonicon]

1. I don't buy it

I've never considered myself a vegetarian, but I do go weeks and months at a time without eating meat. If they over eat or eat overly rich foods, yeah, maybe they'll feel a little queasy, but that's all.

My brother was a vegetarian for something like 15 years, woke up one morning and thought "I'd like a cheeseburger", so he went and got one, and he said it was great.

[helderheid]

2. I was Veg for about a year. No longer and it didn't make me sick.

:shrug:

[TroglodyteScholar]

3. I was vegetarian for about two years...

Well, I still ate fish. Anyway, I went all-out when I fell off the wagon...Wendy's Jr Bacon Cheeseburger + chicken nuggets. Didn't get even slightly ill.

[Deja Q]

4. Well, I eat meat and if I kept a slab of ground turkey on the counter for 2 days and then ate it RAW

I'd get sick too.

:shrug:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. Ask your doctor...

I have a friend who wound up in the hospital after being vegetarian for several years then having a little meat.

[PeaceNikki]

6. Interesting. What were the symptoms/was the diagnosis?

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. What she told me was that her meatless years rendered her stomach devoid

of enzymes that are necessary to properly digest the meat.

I would think that it wouldn't be difficult to restore the enzymes without wreaking havoc on the digestive tract.

[mopinko]

13. doesn't sound too believable to me.

we eat lots of things that we can't digest, and they just get passed along without harm. :shrug:

i know that this is an opinion that is out there. i know people who have been there, done that, and tell both sides of the story.
i also know that there are many, many tales of enzymes out there, and very, very few actual studies documenting them.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

17. It's been many years, and I don't remember how they treated her illness...

but it seems wisest to consult with experts beforen making a drastic change in one's diet.

[Dystopian]

7. That's very interesting....

I've been a vegetarian for about 35 years...but a pseudo one I guess as I go fowl maybe once a year. I thought that adding small amounts of meat every other day or so would adjust one's system. I didn't think it would be anything to worry about. In fact, I know so little that I didn't know that one's system had to adjust...
Funny how little I know about vegetarianism....thanks for this information.

peace~

[GoddessOfGuinness]

12. I think you may have been correct...

But I'm no expert. I only know what my friend went through. I guess the bottom line is, when you want to make a significant change in your diet, it's best to research and consult with a doctor and/or nutritionist.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Check this out..

http://www.chow.com/stories/10827

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.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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.

[mopinko]

10. did you know

that they recently figured out what the appendix is for? apparently it holds a seed culture of digestive bacteria. so if you get diarrhea, and your system is flushed, (or you get a colonoscopy, for you old folks, like me), needed bacteria are quickly replenished.

thanks for an interesting reply.

[BrklynLiberal]

14. I did not know that.

My appendix was removed when I was 11. Guess that is why I always have to take acidophilus....especially on the rare occasion I take antibiotics.

[crispini]

28. Wow! I did not know that!

That's fascinating! Go appendix!

[Heidi]

11. I fell from grace due to my mother's breaded pork chops. I was violently ill for 24 hours

after an hour-long meal that was nothing short of heaven.

[undeterred]

15. I had a roommate who was mostly vegetarian

in that she would go for months without eating meat. She wasn't philosphically committed to it- it was just her diet. So if an occasion came up for eating meat she would do it, and usually end up with abdominal pain. She accepted the explanation that you get a level of enzymes for digesting meat when you stop eating it. If she kept eating meat it would get better in a few days.

[qb]

16. I think vegetarians being "sickened" by meat is a whole lot of drama.

I quit being a vegetarian when my son decided he wanted to eat meat. No problems.

[Heidi]

18. It can happen.

I hadn't eaten any meat of any kind, or had any dairy products, during six months of vegetarianism in college. I went home for a weekend and gave in to my mother's fried, breaded pork chops and mashed potatoes and gravy. I _sincerely_ was violently ill for the next 24 hours. It wasn't the flu. It was meat, grease and dairy products visited upon a body that hadn't processed those items in six months.

[yewberry]

19. What happens when I get "surprise" meat products (icky details, sorry):

Sometimes people use chicken stock or bacon fat in food and it either doesn't occur to them that it's not veg*n even though it's not actual meat or they think that no one will know.

I find out with stomach pains, cramps, and sudden onset diarrhea. :( Especially nice that this happens exclusively when I'm away from home.


If I wanted to go back to eating meat, I'm sure I could do it by adding it back to my diet slowly.

[Heidi]

20. Same thing happens to my sister-in-law, who would be completely vegan if she didn't

wear leather products. I believe you 100 percent because my mother-in-law and I have unknowingly caused her to be sick because of our use of animal bouillon to boil pasta and potatoes for her and to steam vegetables. We try to be very careful when she's eating with us, but it's so automatic for us to cook with eggs, dairy products and animal bouillon that we sometimes would just space out to the reality that her system can no longer handle this stuff. She's been a vegetarian for more than 20 years.

[yewberry]

23. I think it's automatic for a lot of people and a lot of dishes.

I never want to be suspicious and make people feel funny by asking them, "Are you suuuure this doesn't have any (insert suspicion here)?"

The last time it happened I was visiting family, and the awful truth came out (ha ha, not so funny at the time) as I was driving across southern Maine to NH. I had to apologize to a park ranger.

:blush:

[Heidi]

24. It's perfectly fine with me when vegetarians ask me about the ingredients.

I don't want to accidentally make anyone sick or even introduce into their system something they've made an effort to avoid. I guess some people believe that meat-induced illness is just melodrama, but I don't see how serving meat derivatives to a vegetarian is any different than serving alcohol to someone who has sworn off alcohol. It's a matter of courtesy and respect, in my opinion. I would never disrespect someone intentionally.

[yewberry]

32. You're a good egg, Heidi.

Thanks.

[LeftyMom]

30. I get that if something's contaminated with dairy.

Of course, I'm allergic.

[yewberry]

31. Yeah, most of my family is lactose-intolerant.

Varying degrees of "holy-crap-there-was-dairy-in-that" disease.

Yummo.

[LeftyMom]

33. There was a recall a few years back on some soy parmesean.

I knew before the recall that it had dairy contaminants, because of a certain telltale symptom after eating it.

For the sake of any weak-stomached readers I won't go into detail about the symptom, but it's as good as a lab for testing for trace dairy, in my case.

[petronius]

21. I suspect that unpleasant things can happen as a result of any drastic change

in diet. I've noticed occasionally unpleasant changes in my processing and output systems when I make a major diet switch, whether it's towards a healthy diet or away. I suspect that adding meat over a short term would cause some upset, but I'd guess the tales of meat-induced illness are overstated.

I think the key is to find a balanced diet that works for you, and practice moderation in all things...

[Heidi]

22. I agree with you about balance,

but I also know (and I'm not a vegetarian) from personal experience that meat products suddently introduced into a vegetarian diet can make a person miserable. I used to poo-poo such claims, until it happened to me in college, and until I accidentally caused it to happen to my sister-in-law, who hasn't eaten meat or animal-derived products in 20 years. Believe me, when someone hasn't eaten eggs or cheese in two decades, accidentally ingesting these can relegate them to the toilet for a day or two.

[petronius]

26. That's what I meant by "some upset" - I wasn't intending to trivialize the real impacts

of major dietary changes, just expressing my skepticism that they are so much more pronounced and mysteriously-sourced when the change is towards meat consumption. I think one's system gets used to certain things, and it's a bad idea to mess with that too abruptly.

Of course, I'm not a nutritionist, so my interest here is mainly social. In that arena, if someone tells me that eating x, y, or z causes them upset I'm not going to argue, I'm going to feed them something they can enjoy...

ETA: you said "poo-poo"! heh heh heh ;)

[JVS]

25. Moderation might be the way to go on this. So no Brazilian BBQ buffet!

[ThomCat]

27. When friends make dishes that have meat stock in them

and I don't know about it, I get sick eating it. So it's not "just drama" as one person above so rudely stated.

[Lyric]

29. Any serious dietary change can cause temporary stomach upset.

If, say, someone who eats a lot of meat but very little roughage suddenly decides to eat a salad, then he or she is going to be running to the bathroom and crampy for a few hours. ANY change in what your digestive system is used to consuming can cause problems like that, at least in the short-term.

It's not so much a meat/veggie thing as it is an abrupt dietary-change thing.

[Mendocino]

34. I only eat fish a dozen or so times a year,

and I eat an egg maybe once a week. My diet otherwise is "vegan". I ate a bit of turkey Thanksgiving 07 and had problems for nearly a week. I would guess that it depends on the individual, but for me it wasn't a pleasant experience.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

35. i think your body often reacts to new things weirdly, i wouldnt be surprised if it were true

[pitohui]

36. i didn't get sick at all, i think it was time

i was a vegetarian for 3 years and it was just got to be too isolating and expensive not to ever eat meat

if they want to return to eating meat, just go slow and don't eat meat high in fat at first, i don't know why, takes time to be able to digest it properly even if you have been eating other full fat foods such as cheese (i was an ovo-lacto vegetarian)

didn't get sick "at all" is i guess an exaggeration, now that i think about it, when i tried to eat some fried chicken too soon it wasn't happy, i became nauseated but other than that i was ok