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Health & Fitness: Vegetarians Hit the Fern Bars

5 minute read
Denise Grady

When Chicago Bears Coach Mike Ditka opened a restaurant in the Windy City just over a year ago, the decor was basic football and the menu offered a hearty fare of steaks and ribs. Today the macho ambience remains, but entrees like wild brown rice with lentils and pasta salad with raspberry vinaigrette have sprouted on the menu. Reason: Ditka’s regular customers demanded meatless dishes. “And those who still eat meat,” says a waitress, “are beginning to eat less of it.”

Even in the most determined of America’s carnivorous strongholds, ’80s-style vegetarianism is on the rise. About 8 million Americans, from Rock Star Madonna to television’s Mr. Rogers, now call themselves vegetarians. Vegetarian Times magazine, based in Oak Park, Ill., claims that fully 2 million of them have gone over to vegetarianism since 1985. The publication, which features Vegetarian Actor River Phoenix on its current cover, has seen its circulation double in the past two years to 150,000. Untold other Americans are aspiring vegetarians or semivegetarians who indulge in some chicken and fish. The new Vegetarian Times restaurant guide, to be published this month, will list more than a thousand vegetarian eateries in the U.S. and Canada, compared with just 350 in 1978. Next month potential converts in upwards of 150 cities across the nation are expected to forgo meat for a day to mark the fourth annual Great American Meatout, sponsored by a coalition of vegetarian, consumer and other groups.

Back in the bad old 1960s, vegetarianism may have had to do with long hair, pacifism and sympathy for the plight of livestock, but today it has taken a more pragmatic turn. The new breed of upscale vegetarian is giving up meat, red meat in particular, because of the belief that it is unhealthy. The real issue is that red meat ranks high among sources of fat in the U.S. diet. Says Dr. Sherwood Gorbach, professor of community health at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston: “There is persuasive evidence that a low-fat diet can help prevent, and even treat, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes. I’m of the school that holds that low-fat diets also reduce the risk of colon and breast cancer.” At the very least, Gorbach notes, vegetarians tend to be thinner than meat eaters, and that alone is beneficial.

Even a barbecue capital like Houston has a Macrobiotic Center with a cooking school and a restaurant that, despite the pointed absence of meat, poultry, caffeine, sugar and alcohol, draws 120 patrons a day. Three-quarters of the customers, says the center’s co-director, Janis Tirapelli Jamail, 34, are “professional people making money and taking care of themselves and their life-style.” It requires some dedication, since more time is needed to prepare grains and beans than to throw a chop on the broiler. Jamail’s husband Randall, a lawyer, has been converting yuppie friends by boasting that his energy level increased dramatically after he gave up meat. “These are power brokers who don’t need that 2 p.m. sinking spell,” he says. “They want that edge, the extra stamina that gets them ahead.”

Not even the halls of Congress are exempt from veggie power. Several times a week Democratic Representative Andrew Jacobs Jr. of Indiana cooks himself a vegetarian lunch in a microwave oven in his Washington office. Sometimes the Congressman is ambitious enough to whip up chili, grains or a casserole. “I get kidded about it once in a while,” he says. “When I became a vegetarian in 1970, it was one more piece of evidence, like my being an anti-Viet Nam War peacenik, that I was a weakling.” But Jacobs, a former Marine, is sticking to his dietary guns. “I’ve never slipped in 18 years. I would find eating meat odious now. Your taste buds adjust. And this diet results in physical well- being and strength.”

Virtually all vegetarians insist that their eating habits leave them feeling clearheaded and energetic. Despite their claims, however, there is little medical evidence that forswearing meat increases vitality. But nutritionists agree that there is no reason to believe giving up meat is harmful, especially since most U.S. vegetarians still eat dairy products and eggs, which supply ample protein, vitamins and minerals. Says Nutritionist Johanna Dwyer of the New England Medical Center in Boston: “A well-planned vegetarian diet can be perfectly healthful. In fact, it may be more in line with the recommended U.S. guidelines for reducing sodium, saturated fat and cholesterol and increasing dietary fiber and starch.”

A few starvation deaths of vegetarians gave rise to scare stories in the 1960s, but these fatalities resulted from fanatical adherence to rice-only macrobiotic regimens that have since fallen out of favor. Today’s more moderate approach, though, may present problems: deep-fried potatoes and vegetables, for instance, can be surprisingly high in fat from the oil they are cooked in. And a slice of quiche or a salad swimming in blue cheese dressing may be no better for the arteries than a hamburger. Ounce for ounce, certain cheeses have more saturated fat than lean meat.

For those who want to pass the vegetarian gospel on to the next generation, the key seems to be a firm stand and an early start. Vegetarian Author Victoria Moran of Kansas City tells of the time her four-year-old daughter Rachael noticed someone at a shopping mall eating a hot dog. “She said, ‘What is that child eating?’ And I told her, ‘It’s a dead pig.’ She said, ‘I know it’s a dead pig, but what’s that wrapped around it?’ ” Rachael had never seen a hot-dog roll before.

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