In a week in which two vegetarians have died prematurely, including Linda McCartney, what are we to make of the claim that a vegetarian diet is the healthiest? Jim Greenhalf reports.

Generations of British children were exhorted to eat up their greens without ever being told why cabbage boiled almost white was thought to be good for them.

Vegetables, like castor oil or a polio jab, were endured rather than enjoyed. The first 15 or 16 years of life were spent surreptitiously hiding soggy sprouts or carbuncular cauliflower under other uneaten items on the dinner plate.

There was something indigestible about the very appearance of British vegetables, and the cooking of them didn't improve matters. Your plate was heaped with a miniature rain forest of steaming discoloured vegetation and unappetising mashed potato pitted with lumps.

An aversion to vegetables probably led to the suspicion that vegetarians must be inherently nutty. Who in their right minds would forego chops and sausages for lentils and rice? Vegetarians were risible figures, like beatniks: the fringe beyond normality as represented by good old roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Several things changed this outlook. The 1960s generation became fascinated by all things Eastern and that included the cuisine of India and Pakistan. Icons such as John Lennon (the "fat Beatle") took up vegetarian and macro-biotic diets.

Supermarkets displaced grocery shops and offered a fantastic variety of products and produce. Lastly the anti-vivisection movement, which had always been around, grew into an animal welfare campaign with a strategy and activists.

"Vegetarianism is a moral issue to militants: it's wrong to exploit animals by eating them or mistreating them in any way," said Dr Richard North, the Wibsey-based food scientist.

"Linda McCartney's great catch-phrase was 'Never eat anything with a face'. She was turned off by the reality that meat comes from animals. Urban kids, middle-class kids are so detached from reality these days that it's not until their late teens that they realise that meat doesn't grow on trees.

"There's no moral superiority and no health grounds for adopting a vegetarian diet. Earlier this year it was claimed that high meat-eaters have a higher risk of cancer, but only because they tend not to eat enough vegetables. Medical orthodoxy now is that vegetables should be part of a balanced diet of which meat should play a part because it is so rich in iron.

"An organic-farmer friend of mine has a catch-phrase: 'If they don't die they don't live'. It's meat-eaters who actually keep animals alive by giving them an economic raison d'tre," he added.

Vegetarians would especially take issue with that last assertion. Atma Trasi, a 61-year-old Hindu who lives in Shipley, is a member of the Bradford Vegetarian Society.

"Animal farming is a very great threat to the environment in terms of slurry and the use of water," said Mr Trasi. "The amount of land that is used is very unproductive as compared to growing grains and fruit. Then there's the destruction of the rain forest for beefburgers (turning forest into open range for cattle).

"A study by Oxford University comparing lifestyles of vegetarians and non-vegetarians concluded that on the whole vegetarians are less likely to have heart disease."

Vegetarianism evidently didn't do a lot of good for Linda McCartney who died 14 years short of her three score and ten.

"Some people might draw that conclusion," added Mr Trasi. "There's no guarantee against cancer, there are so many forms it can take. But we say there's less chance of getting cancer with a vegetarian diet than if you eat meat and fatty foods."

That's small comfort to the parents of 24-year-old Clare Tomkins, a vegetarian for 11 years who died earlier this week from a form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease - the human form of mad cow disease.

The death of Clare, who reportedly gave up eating hot-dogs and hamburgers at the age of 13, throws into doubt the incubation period of CJD which was thought to be eight years.

Richard North's objection to militant vegetarianism is that the animal welfare campaign distracts attention from other questionable areas such as additives and the use of pesticides for crop protection.

He mentioned a specific pesticide, related to DDT, which has been banned in Israel because studies have linked it to breast cancer. This chemical, Dr North claims, is still widely used on farms in East Anglia, which he said has the highest rate of breast cancer in the country.

Claim and counter-claim sway volatile public opinion back and forth. One national newspaper reported that at the height of the mad cow disease crisis, 5,000 meat-eaters a week became vegetarian. We don't know how many have since gone back to their old carnivorous ways.

Paul McCartney reportedly asked everyone to turn vegetarian in memory of his dead wife - but the fact is the public knows very little about the origins of most of its food. The willingness to trust what is said on packaging and in TV commercials may account for the sudden reversals and panics over eggs, soft cheese, butter and even milk.

Forty years ago, before cholesterol became a dirty word, dairy products were akin to sunshine: they only did you good. Now they are regarded with the suspicion reserved for time-bombs.

Denholme cattle farmer and butcher Edward Greenwood believes the origins of BSE go back to the 1980s when new meat-processing techniques were taken up by big manufacturers of processed food for supermarkets and other large retail outlets.

Back in March 1996 when the BSE-CJD scare started, he told the T&A: "The majority of beef used in things like ready-made meals comes from older dairy cows. They (the manufacturers) buy the cheapest product they can and process it."

Subsequent events seemed to back up him up. Cattle over 30 months old were banned from the food chain and had to be destroyed, and the sale of animal feed stuffs containing bone meal was forbidden.

Vegetarians may think this only goes to prove their point. But, according to Dr North, the dodginess of some aspects of the meat trade does not explain why up to six people a year die from eating peanuts.

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