Hi Halicarnassus, I haven’t read those books but I’m aware of the findings in them. I personally wouldn’t ever want to give up eating meat for good, although I have found that my land based animal protein consumption has reduced quite a lot on this diet (apart from the juicy steak I had last night!), whilst my consumption of oily fish has gone up.
But that’s a conscious choice I’ve made. One thing I have done is give up all processed meat, with the exception of bacon/sausages but then I only get those from a local farmer who uses the traditional method of curing the pork (i.e. with salt and not nitrites).
If you really want to go down the non animal protein route, then you can get what you need from plant based foods, but the temptation can be to fill up with starchy carbs as your choices are more limited. There is a very good extract in Holfords optimum nutrition book which details how to combine foods (an in your case plant based foods) to make sure that you are getting enough of the essential amino acids for muscle repair. And that is the key to it. Lots of food have “protein” in them, but unless that protein is made up for the 8 essential amino acids then they aren’t any good for the body.
The older I get the more I realise that everything comes down to a balance and moderation. The Chinese don’t drink milk, but they do eat beef/chicken/fish/pork. But the probably limit their consumption compared with Western cultures. Weightlifters look healthy, but cardio wise they are screwed. Cardio freak will have great hearts and veins, but their bone density and joints will suffer.
So my approach is to base most of my food around naturally growing vegetables and wholegrains, with a bit of organic meat/eggs (I have my own chickens) and fish. Red meat I normally restrict to once or twice a week (saying that I’m definitely having it twice this week, lol). Same with exercise. I do a mixture of running, swimming, cycling and weights and I’m about to start pilates too.