Hmm, I suppose this is what I get for passing on secondhand information from a book I haven’t myself read or fact-checked. The rigorous Mark LaRochelle, who I knew from the forums on Free-Market.Net writes the following:

I am a big fan of Julian, but I have been stewing about this for a couple of days, and must say I am disappointed in his post about vegetarianism and John Robbins.

To support the point that Americans tend to eat more than the Recommended Daily Allowance of protein, Julian inexplicably links to a page citing a source — from 1892! No information is given regarding how the study was conducted, how large the sample was, how the sample was selected (or self-selected), whether food-intake type and quantity were verified or self-reported, how protein content was estimated, etc.

Far better (and more current) sources are available:

The Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine has established an RDA of 0.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight per day.

For a person of median weight, that translates to about 60 g/day of protein. The FNB estimates that median U.S. protein consumption is between 55 and 100 g/day.

According to the Nutrient Data Laboratory of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, one cup of "Soybeans, mature cooked, boiled, without salt" provides 28.6 g of protein, while a cup of " Chicken, stewing, meat only, cooked, stewed" provides 42.59 g.

So would be possible for Julian to get his RDA of protein on a vegan diet, from (for example) either 1.84 cups of unsalted, boiled soybeans, or from an omnivorous diet, from (for example) one-quarter cups of stewed chicken.

Regarding health, according to the FNB’s Food and Nutrition Information Bureau’s Dietary Guidelines:

"Most vegetarians eat milk products and eggs, and as a group, these lacto-ovo-vegetarians enjoy excellent health. Vegetarian diets are consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and can meet Recommended Dietary Allowances for nutrients. You can get enough protein from a vegetarian diet as long as the variety and amounts of foods consumed are adequate."

So the powers that be admit that protein is not necessarily a problem for vegetarians, though other nutrients might be:

"Meat, fish, and poultry are major contributors of iron, zinc, and B vitamins in most American diets, and vegetarians should pay special attention to these nutrientsâ?¦. Because animal products are the only food sources of vitamin B12, vegans must supplement their diets with a source of this vitamin. In addition, vegan diets, particularly those of children, require care to ensure adequacy of vitamin D and calcium, which most Americans obtain from milk products." [Cautionary tales: This vegan didn’t buy all that corporate propaganda! Also: dispatch from a vegetarian paradise]

Other official pronouncements add that vegetarian diets can be hazardous for the elderly and for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding These warnings are not very different than the ones I recall from public-school Health class. But then I don’t remember my Health books claiming that all vegetarians would drop dead. What I do remember is that they said — contrary to John Robbins, et al. — that eating meat is not suicide. What I was never told was that "teenage vegetarians may be at greater risk of eating disorders and suicide than their meat eating peers."

(I have no objection to anyone being a vegetarian, or proselytizing for vegetarianism, but I do object to dishonest fear tactics, to terrorism, and to attempts to lobby for coercion to dictate the lifestyles of others.)

If textbooks disavow the PeTA line only because they are bribed by the cowboy-and-milkman cabal, these forces must also control the USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Nutrient Data Laboratory, National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine, and Food and Nutrition Board — not to mention the CDC, American Heart Association, American Dietetic Association, and American Cancer Society.

If "most health textbooks are underwritten by the meat and dairy" industries, that is not enough to prove that they are wrong. Studies funded by the tobacco industry were wrong not because of their funding, but because they were shown to involve errors of data or methodology. If the NAS and others are wrong about the health risks of animal products, it must be on analogous grounds.

But are Health textbooks really so funded? This should be a simple matter to document. What health texts are used in most public schools? I seem to recall one by Holt and one by Glencoe. Are they underwritten by the Cattlemen’s Association or Dairy Council? We need something better than "a friend of mine told me so" — especially if she was taken in by Diet for A New America.

Author John Robbins makes all the usual "animal rights" claims about the how brilliant rats and pigeons are and how cruel scientists, ranchers and basically everyone who has anything to do with animals are, but his sources are all about 30 years old. His arguments are clearly aimed at urban or suburban adolescent girls, whose only experience with animals is from their pets, or anthropomorphic cartoon animals — and who are drawn to vegetarianism as a means of weight control.

But Robbins goes beyond the usual animal rights arguments to environmentalism and pseudo-humanitariansm, blaming the consumption of meat and dairy products by Americans for everything from an alleged "cancer epidemic" and deforestation of the Amazon to famine in Africa and "global warming." ( If you think Robbins is gullible, check out his son, Ocean, who "facilitated the environmental portion" of an "international youth summit" in Moscow in 1987.)

First, there is no "cancer epidemic." Age-adjusted cancer rates are declining. Vegetarians do have lower incidence of some cancers than the general population — along with lower rates of smoking and alcohol consumption (present company excepted). In any case, vegetarians do not have significantly lower cancer risk than meat-eaters who also eat the recommended daily amounts of fruits and vegetables — suggesting that the general population need not give up meat, but should eat more fruits and vegetables.

Despite its centrality to the Rainforest Action Network worldview, Robbins’ notion that the Amazon is being razed is largely a myth. Likewise, despite its centrality to the International ANSWER worldview, Robbins’ notion that U.S. Quarter Pounders comprise Brazilian beef is a myth. The U.S. has not imported beef from the Amazon basin — or from South America at all — since the cattlemen’s lobby got a protectionist "quality control" regime in place in 1979. Less than one-half of one percent of U.S. beef comes from Central America (e.g., Costa Rica, where such exports do not drive deforestation).

Contrary to Robbins’ claims, famine in Africa — as such stalwarts as Peter T. Bauer and George Ayittey have argued (and as even USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios and UN World Food Program Executive Director James T. Morris recently testified) — has more to do with local tyranny than the dietary habits of Americans.

Eighty percent of nutrients consumed by cattle are from non-grain sources (by-products from human food and fiber production), including soy hulls, distillers’ grains, citrus pulp and cotton seed hulls. Such feed is suitable for animals, but not humans. With a vegetarian diet, only 39% of total energy and 20% of total protein in a corn crop are recoverable for human consumption. Using the residual bran for animal feed, we recuperate 51% of the energy and 30% of the protein from corn for human consumption, according to these guys. Converting this fodder into meat, eggs and dairy products actually increases the supply of food available to humans.

As for global warming, it ain’t happening. The whole thing seems to have been a math error.

Speaking of math errors, Robbins says is that it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. No, it doesn’t. Even for grain-fed cattle, it takes an average of 200 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef (441 gallons per boneless pound) — and much less for the 30% of US cattle that are grazed only on pasturage. Robbins’ estimate was about five to 12 times too high. More to the point, water "used" (for whatever purpose) does not disappear from the hydrosphere; it is recycled through the hydrological cycle.

Anyway, Robbins opposes not only animal agriculture; he opposes all but organic agriculture, writing that produce in the American diet contains health-threatening levels of pesticides, hormones and other chemicals. He opposes not just biotechnology in livestock, but genetically-modified crops (which could reduce the use of those pesticides he finds so scary).

He not only opposes the use of animals in science, medicine and education; he opposes science-based medicine altogether, writing, "many conditions, including most forms of cancer, viral infections, allergic and autoimmune disorders, and most chronic degenerative diseases . . . are more effectively handled with alternative approaches."

If Robbins got his way, and got a ban on animal agriculture, he would actually reduce the quantity of nutrients available for human consumption, increasing starvation. Banning non-organic agriculture would reverse the gains of the "green revolution," drastically increasing produce prices, again increasing famine. Banning genetically modified crops would destroy the best hope we have of eliminating malnutrition. Banning the use of animals in science would prevent research such as that on retroviruses like feline AIDS, thus hamstringing researchers confronted by new human diseases like HIV. Substituting "alternative" therapies for real medicine would seal the fate of those afflicted.

Apparently, Robbins is not kidding when he says he is determined to do something about human overpopulation. How could Robbins get so much wrong? Well, Robbins — heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream fortune, who was radicalized at Berkeley in the ’60s — admitted that the book’s message was "channeled" to him by a giant talking cow and giant talking pig that came to him in his dreams.

Donâ??t believe me? Check it out for yourself:

Stephan Bodian, "Diet for a New America: An Interview with Stephen Bodian," Yoga Journal, September/October 1988.

John Robbins, "Rebel With a Cause," New Age Journal, May/June 1988.

The chain of information here seems to trace from Julian to his friend to Mr. Robbins to a couple of talking animals. I believe this qualifies as hearsay.