The nutritional status of vegans and vegetarians.

‘There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness . . . the unaccountable irrationalities of illtemper, that make hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerable evenness of temper . . .’. So wrote the poet Shelley in his pamphlet, A Vindication of Natural Diet, first published in 1813, from his own experience of 8 months on a vegetable diet. Nutrition would indeed have much to offer mankind if a relatively simple change of dietary regime could be of such benefit to the individual and to society. We wish to examine the present stage of knowledge at least with regard to the adequacy of the diet. For the purpose of this paper, we shall be considering three groups of people: (I) vegans, whose diet contains no animal foods whatsoever, and who may also refuse to eat vegetable foods in which animal products have been employed for processing-for example, white sugar clarified with bone charcoal, or margarine fortified with vitamin A from animal sources; (2) vegetarians, who eat no meat or fish, but who include milk or eggs, or both, in their diet; and (3) omnivores, who eat an ordinary mixed diet. Since various aspects of the nutrition of vegans and vegetarians were last discussed by the society in the 1950’s in symposia on The comparative merits of animal and vegetable foods in nutrition ( 195 I), All $esh is grass (1952) and Vitamin B,, (1952), Diet and anaemia (1956) (Nutrition Society, 1951, 1952,1956) there have been a number of dietary surveys of these groups carried out in various parts of the world and some have been reviewed by Hardinge & Crooks (1963a,b; 1964). These authors concluded that a vegetarian diet meets the nutritional requirements of all age groups, and that vegan diets comprising unrefined cereal products, legumes, nuts, vegetables and fruits produce no detectable deficiency signs. However, they indicated that vegan and vegetarian diets are inadequate if