Five myths about vegans By Carol J.

Adams, Monday, April 18, 5:01 PM

Though former president Bill Clinton isn t technically a vegan, his embrace last y ear of a plant-based diet with no meat and no dairy and his accompanying 24-pound w ht loss made headlines for a small but growing movement. After all, only 3.2 per cent of Americans are vegetarian, and just .5 percent fly the vegan flag, eschew ing all animal products and byproducts in their kitchens and closets. But is veganism healthy? Emasculating? Difficult? Let s get the skinny on this unu sual lifestyle. 1. Vegans have trouble getting enough protein. Where do you get your protein? is probably the top question vegans get. But protei n doesn t have to come from animals. Plant protein is neither incomplete nor inade quate and it s high-fiber, low-fat and cholesterol-free. Animal protein, which doe s not contain fiber, is high in fat and cholesterol, and it is associated with i ncreased risk of heart disease, loss of calcium from bones and poorer kidney fun ction. Nutritionists agree that adults who consume about 2,000 calories per day should get about 50 grams of protein. What s a vegan to do? Well, a half-cup of chickpeas contains 6 grams of protein. A half-cup of firm tofu contains 20 grams. A veggi e burger has about 15 grams. We can get to 50 grams pretty quickly without meatl oaf or bacon. Any vegan diet that includes a variety of plant foods provides all the protein a n individual needs. This is true for adults, teens and, according to pediatricia n Benjamin Spock, even children. As nutritionists Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melin a explain in Becoming Vegan, the answer to that often-asked question is: from all o f the whole plants I eat. 2. Vegans have countless rules about what can be eaten. To vegans, it appears that meat-eaters are the ones with lots of rules. In the U nited States, people eat cows but not horses, and chickens but not cats. But amo ng Hindus in India, cows are verboten, and in the Philippines and Korea, Lassie is on the menu. Some religions forbid eating pigs, while others don t. In the face of these varying, often contradictory norms, vegans have only one rule: We don t intentionally eat, use or wear anything from an animal whether meat, leather, eg gs, milk, wool, silk or honey. If veganism seems to need an instruction manual, it s because dead animals turn up in unexpected places. Most marshmallows contain gelatin, derived from animal bo nes. So do gelcaps and photographic film. Hostess fruit pies (but not Little Deb bie s) are made with beef fat. Dryer sheets have animal fat, too. Toothpaste may c ontain bone meal. And shampoo may have egg protein. Sure, the list seems to go on and on. But at your chain supermarket, more produc ts than ever are vegan-friendly. In 2011, it s not hard to live up to veganism s one simple ideal: trying to do the least harm possible. 3. Veganism is emasculating real men eat meat.

In 1990, I wrote a book called The Sexual Politics of Meat to dissect the idea tha t eating animal flesh makes someone strong and virile. The myth gained steam in the 1960s when anthropologists Desmond Morris and Robert Ardrey attributed the a dvancement of civilization to man the hunter. Today, cultural messages from Burger King s I am Man ad campaign to a Hummer commercial implying that a guy who buys tof

u must restore the balance by Pollan, who details a boar hunt at men must fell prey: Walking ing with the signs of your prey porn is ridiculous. What Pollan

buying a huge car reinforce this myth. Even Michael in The Omnivore s Dilemma, falls prey to the idea th with a loaded rifle in an unfamiliar forest bristl is thrilling. For vegans, this cartoonish hunter sees as a dilemma, we welcome as a decision.

But if real men once ate meat, it s not so any longer. Olympic track legend (and N ew Jersey state Senate hopeful) Carl Lewis is a vegan. Former heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson is a vegan. Outkast s Andre 3000 is a vegan. In Austin, a group of firefighters went vegan. But beyond the famous names who have embraced vegani sm for ethical or health reasons is the incontrovertible fact that eating meat d oesn t increase libido or fertility and a vegan diet doesn t diminish them. 4. Vegans care more about animals than humans. Veganism is a social-justice movement that includes concern for animals but also many issues that affect humans. The food choices vegans make address the enviro nmental costs of meat and dairy production, heart disease, public health crises tied to obesity, and, as Eric Schlosser pointed out in Fast Food Nation, poor cond itions in slaughterhouses, where workers suffer more injuries than in any other industry. In fact, eating vegan one day a week lowers your carbon footprint more than eating local every day of the week. The economic cost of systemic animal cruelty transcends shocking undercover foot age taken at factory farms. Eating grain-fed cattle helps push corn prices up; h igh prices contributed to 2008 s food riots in Haiti, Bangladesh, Egypt and elsewh ere around the world. Industrialized meat production allows infectious bacteria such as salmonella to sneak into our food supply. And treating a generation rais ed on cheap Big Macs will prove a fiscal challenge to Medicaid. Caring about animals means caring about people, too. 5. It s expensive and inconvenient to be a vegan. Try veganism for a day and see what happens. Is it so difficult to substitute ma rinara sauce for meat sauce? To get a pizza loaded with veggies instead of chees e and meat? To fix a big salad and add garbanzo beans to it instead of turkey? T o order a vegan dish at any of the ethnic restaurants rich with vegan foods Ethi opian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Italian? One reason Patti Breitman and I wrote How to Eat Like a Vegetarian Even if You Ne ver Want to Be One was to show people how easy it is to be a vegan. If you re used to a steady diet of beef, chicken and pork, veganism can expand your options. Yo u ll start discovering the variety of ways to prepare tofu, seitan, tempeh and tex tured vegetable protein along with more greens, grains and beans. In some parts of the country, some of these products might be harder to find than hamburger pa tties or sirloin steak, but they re not necessarily more expensive. And if they ar e, they may save medical costs in the long run. Non-vegans think change is hard. Not changing is even harder.