Vegetarian Bone Health
|
Posted by Jill Harris Aug 19, 2007 |
Scientific research – and the testament of many healthy vegetarians – has shown that vegetarians and vegans consuming a healthy, balanced diet easily get enough protein.
Old-school wisdom (up until the 1980’s) suggested that since vegetable-sourced proteins (with the exception of soy) do not contain all of the essential amino acids, those consuming only plant protein needed to strategically combine proteins at a single meal to ensure the body got the amino acid “building blocks” it needs to form proteins. Some amino acids are “essential” in the diet because our body cannot synthesize them internally, unlike some amino acids. This myth has been debunked, however, when it was discovered that the body can recombine proteins at its leisure, as long as all the essential amino acids are consumed on a regular basis, not necessarily every day.
A recent study by Thorpe et al. (2007) investigated the effects of a vegetarian or non-vegetarian diet on bone health in 1865 peri- and post-menopausal women. This was a huge study, spanning 25 years. Among vegetarians, those with low protein intake were most at risk for wrist bone fractures, but this risk decreased by 68% with increasing protein intake. Similar results were found in the omnivorous group for meat protein.
As there were no significant differences in magnitude of reduced risk between groups, the authors conclude – not surprisingly – that adequate protein is available in a vegetarian diet to maintain bone health.
Though there are many other factors influencing bone health (physical exercise, calcium, phosphorus, vitamin D…) protein seems to be one less thing to worry about.
Reference:
Thorpe DL, Knutsen SF, Lawrence Beeson W, Rajarm S, and Fraser GE. Effects of meat consumption and vegetarian diet on risk of wrist fracture over 25 years in a cohort of peri- and postmenopausal women. Public Health Nutr. 2007; 1-9 [Epub ahead of print]. Available from:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=17686206&itool=pubmed_DocSum