Page 25 - Spring2008

Vegetarianism and

Nutrient Deficiencies

By Chris Masterjohn

decided to go vegetarian when I was 18 and vegan
soon after, believing I would save the animals, the
Ienvironment and my health. I thought that my low

Chris intake of saturated fat would protect me from heart disease
Masterjohn and that my low intake of animal protein and high intake
is the creator of soy isoflavones would protect me from tooth decay

and maintainer
of Cholesterol- and bone loss. Instead, over the next two years my health
And-Health. took a series of blows: my digestion fell apart; fatigue set
Com and a in; anxiety took hold; and tooth decay overran my entire
frequent mouth—a single visit to the dentist yielded a treatment
contributor to
Wise plan that would take the following year to complete. I was
Traditions. a mess, and I didn’t know why.
He is currently When I read Weston Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration about

pursuing his three years after first removing animal products from my diet, I fi nally
PhD in understood why my health had fallen apart. I had always associated nutri-
Nutritional tion with fruits and vegetables. Meat was for protein; milk for calcium; but
Science with a vitamins were something you got from plant products. Yet the groups that
concentration Price studied had a very different idea of nutrition. They valued foods like

in Biochemical liver, shellfish and deeply colored butter for their life-promoting qualities.
and Molecular Price used cod liver oil, butter oil and organ meats to supply the fat-soluble
Nutrition at the vitamins to his patients. These were mostly foods I had never eaten, and the
University of foods with only small amounts of important animal-based nutrients—meat,
Connecticut. eggs, and milk—were precisely the ones I had banished from my diet.

SPRING 2008 Wise Traditions 25