Meat-free marvels: does a vegetarian diet reduce your risk of disease?

Is it me, or are there times when contemporary diet trends appear to verge on pseudoscientific crankery? While I briefly mentioned potentially dangerous items such as raw water and unpasteurised milk a few years' ago, it's surprising how many fad diets in developed nations bear a suspicious resemblance to the traditional ingredients of non-Western societies. 

Super foods are a particularly overhyped element of this faddish arena; the marketing suggests they can help achieve perfect 'balance' and 'wellness' in the body. Some assertions go much further, with consumption of the likes of kombucha claimed as something of a miracle cure. While the pseudocereal quinoa is sold in the West as the 'grain of the gods', it is unlikely to give the partaker any super powers. It certainly didn't save the Inca and Anasazi - who cultivated it in pre-Columbian America - from the rapid collapse of their civilisations and apparently suffered from disease and famine as much any other society.

There is a scientific basis for recommending certain non-meat items, from the antioxidants in tea and coffee to the vitamin D in mushrooms, while various plants and vegetable oils contain Omega-3 fatty acids. But a recent report has concluded that a vegetarian diet may have a marked positive effect on overall health compared to one with regular meat consumption. The research was conducted by the University of Glasgow, with the data showing substantial reductions in disease biomarkers for non-meat eaters. However, it was unable to provide an underlying reason for the positive results, once risk factors such as age, alcohol and nicotine intake had been accounted for. Cholesterol and products linked to increased risk of cancers, cardiovascular disease, and liver and kidney problems were all lower in vegetarians.

Apart from suggesting that vegetarians eat more fibre, fruit, vegetables and nuts - some of which have known health benefits - the report's conclusion also noted that rather than the positive effect of these items, avoiding processed meat products and red meat may have also contributed to the results. As someone who hasn't eaten meat in over thirty years, I find the research extremely interesting, although I think there are many other factors that should be considered, with the report forming just part of the debate. 

For example, the data was drawn from c.420,000 people living in just the UK, rather than from a variety of nations and environments. In the past century, the diet and lifestyle of most people in the West has changed enormously, with the emphasis on quick-to-prepare meat dishes including the likes of burgers and sausages, remaining at the forefront despite the replacement of physically demanding lives with predominantly sedentary ones. In other words, the diet hasn't changed to match the alteration in lifestyle. It's little wonder that obesity has outranked malnourishment in some nations.

In addition, it is thought that several billion people, predominantly in less developed regions, consume insect protein on a regular if not daily basis. This is a profoundly different diet to those of Western meat eaters with the latter's concentration on domesticated species such as cattle and horse, sheep/goat, poultry, etc. Although game, bush meat and exotic species such as crocodile are eaten in many regions, these are a much smaller element of the human diet. 

In contrast, vegetarians in many regions can eat an enormous variety of plants and fungi. The geographic and seasonal availability of many fruit and vegetables is expanding too: until a few years ago I hadn't heard of jackfruit, but it is now available as the tinned unripe variety from many stores here in New Zealand. So in both time and in space, there's no such thing as a typical vegetarian diet! This also doesn't include the differences between lacto-vegetarians and vegans; it would definitely be rather more time-consuming to plan a diet with an adequate mix of proteins in the absence of eggs and dairy products. It would therefore be interesting to conduct research to find out the health differences between these two groups.

Although some of the blame for poor health and obesity has been placed on processed and refined foods, there is an ever-increasing array of prepared vegetarian products, often marketed as meat substitutes for meatatarians wanting to cut down on their consumption of animal flesh. My daughters (regular meat eaters) and I have a penchant for fake bacon made of wheat, pea and soy and I also eat a variety of meat-free sausages and burgers as well as Quorn products. 

Many companies are now getting on the bandwagon, with products that aim to replicate the taste and texture of the real thing. Some brands such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have seen a rapid rise to international success, while the UK bakery chain Greggs has benefitted from its tasty (if high-fat) Quorn-based vegan sausage roll becoming one of their top five selling products. Therefore the range of processed foods suitable for vegetarians has grown out of all proportion to those available several decades ago. Could it be that these may have detrimental health effects compared to the less refined ingredients traditionally eaten by Western vegetarians (and still eaten in developing nations)?

Just as there are shed loads of books claiming that epigenetics will allow you to self-improve your DNA through your lifestyle, diet gurus play upon similar fears (and gullibility) to encourage people to eat all sorts of weird stuff that at best maintains equilibrium and at worst can lead to serious health issues. I personally think that a wider amount of research, undertaken in all sorts of regions and societies, needs to be done before a vegetarian diet can be claimed to be distinctly superior to a meat-based one. Of course, a reduction in ruminant farming is good for the planet in general - both for saving water and reducing methane - but as far as a diet equates to health I still think that moderation and a sensible attitude can be key factors in this regard. Nevertheless the Glasgow study certainly is...wait for it...food for thought!

Smart phone, dumb people: is technology really reducing our intelligence?

IQ testing is one of those areas that always seems to polarise opinion, with many considering it useful for children as long as it is understood to be related to specific areas of intelligence rather than a person's entire intellectual capabilities. However, many organisations, including some employers, use IQ tests as a primary filter, so unfortunately it cannot be ignored as either irrelevant or outdated. Just as much of the education system is still geared towards passing exams, IQ tests are seen as a valid method to sort potential candidates. They may not be completely valid, but are used as a short-cut tool that serves a limited purpose.

James Flynn of the University of Otago in New Zealand has undertaken long-term research into intelligence, so much so that the 'Flynn Effect' is the name given to the worldwide increase in intelligence since IQ tests were developed over a century ago. The reasons behind this increase are not fully understood, but are probably due to the complex interaction of numerous environmental factors such as enriched audio-visual stimulation, better - and more interactive - education methods, even good artificial lighting for longer hours of reading and writing. It is interesting that as developing nations rapidly gain these improvements to society and infrastructure, their average IQ shows a correspondingly rapid increase when compared to the already developed West and its more staid advancement.

Research suggests that while young children's IQ continues to increase in developed nations, albeit at a reduced rate, the intelligence of teenagers in these countries has been in slow decline over the past thirty years. What is more, the higher the income decile, the larger the decrease. This hints that the causes are more predominant in middle-class lifestyles; basically, family wealth equates to loss of IQ! Data for the UK and Scandinavian countries indicates that a key factor may be the development of consumer electronics, starting with VCRs, games consoles and home computers and now complemented by smart phones, tablets and social media. This would align with the statistics, since the drop is highest among children likely to have greatest access to the devices. So could it be true that our digital distractions are dumbing us down?

1) Time

By spending more time on electronic devices, children live in a narrower world, where audio-visual stimulation aims for maximum enjoyment with minimal effort, the information and imagery flying by at dizzying speed. This isn't just the AV presentation of course: digital content itself closely aligns to pop cultural cornerstones, being glamorous, gimmicky, transient and expendable. As such, the infinitesimally small gradations of social status and friendship that exist amongst children and teenagers requires enormous effort on their part to maintain a constant online presence, both pro-actively and reactively responding to their peers' (and role models') endless inanities.

The amount of effort it would take to filter this is mind-boggling and presumably takes away a lot of time that could be much better spent on other activities. This doesn't have to be something as constructive as reading or traditional studying: going outdoors has been shown to have all sorts of positive effects, as described in Richard Louv's 2005 best-seller Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.

Studies around the world have shown that there are all sorts of positive effects, including on mood, by mere immersion in nature, not just strenuous physical activity. Whether humans have an innate need for observing the intricate fractal patterns of vegetation (grass lawns and playing fields have been found to be ineffective) or whether it's noticing the seemingly unorganised behaviour of non-human life forms, the Japanese government have promoted Shinrin-yoku or 'forest air bathing' as a counterbalance to the stresses of urbanised existence. It sounds a bit New Age, but there is enough research to back up the idea that time spent in the natural environment can profoundly affect us.

Meanwhile, other nations appear to have given in, as if admitting that their citizens have turned into digitally-preoccupied zombies. Last year, the Dutch town of Bodegraven decided to reduce accidents to mobile-distracted pedestrians by installing red and green LED strips at a busy road junction, so that phone users could tell if it was safe to cross without having to look up!

2) Speed

One obvious change in the past four decades has been in the increased pace of life in developed nations. As we have communication and information retrieval tools that are relatively instantaneous, so employers expect their workforce to respond in tune with the speed of these machines. This act-now approach hardly encourages in-depth cogitation but relies upon seat-of-the-pants thinking, which no doubt requires a regular input of caffeine and adrenaline. The emphasis on rapid turnaround, when coupled with lack of patience, has led to an extremely heavy reliance on the first page of online search results: being smart at sifting through other people's data is fast becoming a replacement for original thought, as lazy students have discovered and no doubt as many school teachers and university lecturers could testify.

Having a convenient source of information means that it is easier for anyone to find a solution to almost anything rather than working something out for themselves. This can lead to a decline in initiative, something which separates thought leaders from everyone else. There is a joy to figuring out something, which after all is a key motivation for many STEM professionals. Some scientists and engineers have explained that being able to understand the inner workings of common objects was a key component of their childhood, leading to an obvious career choice. For example, New Zealand-based scientist and science communicator Michelle Dickinson (A.K.A. Nanogirl) spent her childhood dismantling and repairing such disparate household items as home computers and toasters, echoing Ellie Arroway, the heroine in Carl Sagan's novel Contact, who as a child repaired a defective valve radio before going on to become a radio astronomer.

Of course, these days it would be more difficult to repair contemporary versions of these items, since they are often built so that they cannot even be opened except in a machine shop. Laptops and tablets are prime examples and I've known cases where the likes of Microsoft simply replace rather than repair a screen-damaged device. When I had a desktop computer I frequently installed video and memory cards, but then how-to videos are ubiquitous on YouTube. The latest generation of technology doesn't allow for such do-it-yourself upgrades, to the manufacturer's advantage and the consumer's detriment. As an aside, it's worrying that so many core skills such as basic repairs or map navigation are being lost; in the event of a massive power and/or network outage due to the likes of a solar flare, there could be a lot of people stuck in headless chicken mode. Squawk!

3) Quality

While the World Wide Web covers every subject imaginable (if being of immensely variable quality), that once fairly reliable source of information, television, has largely downgraded the sometimes staid but usually authoritative documentaries of yesteryear into music promo-style pieces of infotainment. Frequently unnecessary computer graphics and overly-dramatic reconstructions and voice overs are interwoven between miniscule sound bites from the experts, the amount of actual information being conveyed reduced to a bare minimum.

In many cases, the likes of the Discovery Channel are even disguising pure fiction as fact, meaning that children - and frequently adults - are hard-placed to differentiate nonsense from reality. This blurring of demarcation does little to encourage critical or even sustained thinking; knowledge in the media and online has been reduced to a consumer-led circus with an emphasis on marketing and hype. Arguably, radio provides the last media format where the majority of content maintains a semblance of sustained, informative discussion on STEM issues.

4) Quantity

The brave new world of technology that surrounds us is primarily geared towards consumerism; after all, even social media is fundamentally a tool for targeted marketing. If there's one thing that manufacturers do not want it is inquisitive customers, since the buzzwords and hype often hide a lack of quality underneath. Unfortunately, the ubiquity of social media and online news in general means that ridiculous ideas rapidly become must-have fads.

Even such commodities as food and drink have become mired with trendy products like charcoal-infused juice, unpasteurised milk and now raw water, attracting the same sort of uncritical punters who think that nutrition gurus know what really constituted human diets in the Palaeolithic. The fact that some of Silicon Valley's smartest have failed to consider the numerous dangers of raw water shows that again, analytical thinking is taking a back seat to whatever is the latest 'awesome' and 'cool' lifestyle choice.

Perhaps then certain types of thinking are becoming difficult to inculcate and sustain in our mentally vulnerable teenagers due to the constant demands of consumerism and its oh-so-seductive delivery channels. Whether today's youth will fall into the viewing habits of older generations, such as the myriad of 'food porn' shows remains to be seen; with so much on offer, is it any wonder people spend entire weekends binge watching series, oblivious to the wider world?

The desire to fit into a peer group and not be left behind by lack of knowledge about some trivia or other, for example about the latest series on Netflix, means that so much time is wasted on activities that only require a limited number of thought processes. Even a good memory isn't required anymore, with electronic calendars and calculators among the simplest of tools available to replace brain power. Besides which, the transience in popular culture means there's little need to remember most of what happened last week!

Ultimately, western nations are falling prey to the insular decadence well known from history as great civilisations pass their prime. Technology and the pace of contemporary life dictated by it must certainly play a part in any decline in IQ, although the human brain being what it is - after all, the most complex object in the known universe - I wouldn't dare guess how much is due to them.

There are probably other causes that are so familiar as to be practically invisible. Take for instance background noise, both visual and aural, which permeates man-made environments. My commute yesterday offers a typical example of the latter sort, with schoolchildren on my train playing loud music on their phones that could be heard some metres away to the two building sites I walked by, plus a main road packed with vehicles up to the size of construction trucks. As a final bonus, I passed ten shops and cafes that were all playing loud if inane pop music that could be heard on the street, through open doors. Gone are the days of tedious elevator muzak: even fairly expensive restaurants play material so fast and loud it barely constitutes the term 'background music'. If such sensory pollution is everywhere, when do we get to enjoy quality cogitation time?

If you think that consumerism isn't as all-encompassing as I state, then consider that the USA spends more per year on pet grooming than it does on nuclear fusion research. I mean, do you honestly really need a knee-high wall-mounted video phone to keep in touch with your dog or cat while you're at work? Talking of which, did you know that in 2015 the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform's Exploding Kittens card game raised almost US$9 million in less than a month? Let's be frank, we've got some work to do if we are to save subsequent generations from declining into trivia-obsessed sheeple. Baa!