Vegan responds

Their website states, “Many studies have shown that vegetarians seem to have a lower risk of obesity, heart attacks, high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus and some forms of cancer”. Still the AHA doesn’t tell people to become vegetarians because the AHA doesn’t think patients would follow that advice. But the AHA has never denied that vegetarian diets are healthier.

In fact, while I’m sure even Meldrew will admit that doctors such as Dean Ornish were able to reverse heart disease in their patients without using any medication by putting them on a vegetarian diet, I am again publicly challenging Meldrew to name one doctor who had the same success using Meldrew’s non-vegetarian diet. Ornish has also shown enormous promise treating early stage prostate cancer patients with a vegan diet.

Meldrew tells us John Robbins, whose book I quoted from, only wants to make money. I guess he doesn’t know that Robbin’s father was the man who owned Baskin Robbins ice cream and offered his son the business. But John turned down the offer, which would have made him millions of dollars, because he felt running Baskin Robbins would violate his vegan principles.

As for Thomas Turk’s claim (Letters, October 21) that plants feel pain, that is an unproven theory. Google “Do plants feel pain Wikipedia”. But even if it was true, as I’ve noted before, most plant food is fed to livestock, not humans. So the ultimate irony is that meat-eaters cause more plants to die than a vegetarian does. 

Eric Bahrt

Pattaya