ish, poultry, dairy, and eggs"(11). There are many other foods thatmay not be acceptable to many vegans, however. Foods that involve animalprocessing toany degree are often avoided. This means that vegans can consume no foodscontaining animal byproducts, such as milk, eggs, or honey. Being a veganoften dictates an "animal friendly" lifestyle that, aside from not eatinganything that came from an animal, also abstains from buying or usingproducts that were tested on animals or are made from animal hairs or skin,such as leather shoes or belts (Messina 11). A common misconception of vegetarians is that they are all a bunchof skinny, malnourished idealists who live on plants and soy milk. Andanother, related common misconception is that a diet of meat is a diet thatbuilds strength. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale designed a series oftests in which he compared the strength and stamina of meat-eaters againstvegetarians, with three groups of individuals represented: meat-eatingathletes, vegetarian athletes, and sedentary vegetarians. His studiesshowed that the average score of the two vegetarian groups was over doublethe average score of the meat eaters, even though half of the vegetarianswere sedentary people and all of the meat-eaters were athletes. Fisherconcluded that:"...the difference in endurance between the flesh-eaters and the abstainers(was due) entirely to the difference in their diet...There is strongevidence that a ... non-flesh...diet is conducive to endurance." (206) A comparable study was done in 1968 by a Danish group ofresearchers that tested a group of men on a variety of diets, using astationary bicycle to measure their strength and endurance. The group fedtheir test subjects a diet that was comprised of mixed amounts ofvegetables and meats for a period of time before testing the men on thestationary bicycle. The average time that they could pedal before musclefailure was 114 minutes. The very same group of su...
