A Vegan Diet is Not Healthy
I’m mentally preparing myself for this one. Because it’s inevitable I’ll receive at least a few heated comments on this post. But that’s the cool thing – you can say whatever you’d like in your comment, the same way I can post whatever I’d like on my blog. So just keep that in mind if you don’t agree with what I have to say. And do try to be at least semi-courteous. You may or may not want to speak your thoughts to my face, but do remember that we are all people here, not just some nameless, faceless computer bots with gravatars.
So veganism. Generally defined as a diet and lifestyle which includes no animal products or animal by-products whatsoever. No meat, dairy, eggs, honey, etc.
I want to make two main points here about why I believe a vegan diet is not a healthy one long term. I’m not here to debate the ethics or morality of eating animals. Full disclosure: I am an omnivore. I eat meat. And I don’t believe it is cruel to do so. But that’s because I also believe all animals should be raised in an environment conducive to their health and well-being, i.e. not CAFO operations or battery cages.
I don’t believe a vegan diet or lifestyle is ecologically sustainable, either. If you want to delve more into that, I highly recommend reading Folks, This Ain’t Normal by Polyface farmer Joel Salatin. Life changing book.
So point number one about a vegan diet:
If You Don’t Do it Right, Don’t Do it at All
Did you notice that cheese puffs or white bread aren’t animal products? Do you know some vegans or vegetarians who are more like carb-etarians or junk-ans? Just because you don’t eat red meat or cow’s milk doesn’t mean you are automatically healthier. (By the way, the vast majority of all those ‘scientific’ studies that say red meat causes cancer were done using CAFO beef. Of course animals kept in confinement standing knee deep in their own poop, and being pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and being fed a completely abnormal diet of corn and candy wrappers will produce some nasty meat that can absolutely cause disease in your body. Same thing goes for pasteurized cow’s milk. But I digress . . . )
Here’s the deal – when done right, a vegan diet makes a fantastic detox diet in the short term. Scads of people have switched from a junk food diet of processed and fast food, replaced it with a vegan diet full of raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and legumes and have seen their health improve drastically. All those foods are incredibly healthy superfoods! And the vast majority of people in the Western world would do well to abide by that sort of a diet for a few weeks or months.
But (and this brings me to my next point) a long-term vegan diet is not a wise way to go. Many people (like John Nicholson) find their health deteriorating at a rapid rate when following a vegan diet.
A Vegan Diet is Not Nourishing
This is so fascinating to me. Did you know that without plenty of healthy fats in your diet, you are not able to assimilate and absorb the nutrients in fruits and vegetables? This means you can eat kale and bell peppers until you are green in the face, but if you’re not consuming enough healthy saturated fat, it’s like you didn’t even need to bother.
And where do you find these healthy fats? Sure, you get them from coconut, avocado, almonds, and olive oil, but these sources are not always in season, not always convenient to purchase in your area, and are not always present in your diet in a high enough quantity on a given day to meet your body’s requirements to function properly. After all, 60% of your brain and nervous system are made of fat. We need fat for proper brain function, nerve signal transmission, and hormone balance!
But butter from grass-fed, pastured cows is rich in saturated fats, vitamin A, buytric acid, conjugated linoleic acid (CLA – a powerful cancer fighter), and lauric acid. Grass-fed, pastured beef itself is also rich in these same nutrients, as well as being a fantastic source of protein, amino acids, and vitamin B12 – which vegans must take as a supplement (a required nutrient our bodies don’t create – we must get it from animal sources).
Omnivores Healthier Than Vegetarians in Indigenous Cultures
I read an awesome anecdote about my main man Weston A. Price over on The Healthy Home Economist’s blog (she wrote a great article about how 75% of vegetarians return to eating meat). The study Price documented is very telling about how a vegetarian or vegan diet is unsuited for humans. Here she is in her words:
Dr. Price traveled the world in the 1920′s and 1930′s visiting 14 isolated cultures in the process. During this adventure which he documented in great detail with amazing pictures in his masterpiece Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price concluded that while the diets of these natives varied widely, nutrient dense animal foods high in the fat soluble vitamins A, D, and K (also known as Activator X) were the common denominator. Consumption of these animal foods were revered in these communities as they bestowed vibrant health, ease of fertility, healthy children, and high resistance to chronic and infectious disease.
This discovery was a disappointment to Dr. Price who had expected to find the vegetarian cultures to be the healthiest cultures of all. But, the vegetarian cultures he examined displayed more degeneration than the omnivore cultures which surprised him given that these vegetarian cultures did indeed have superior health than the Americans of his day.
A sad commentary on the state of health in the Western world with our plastic, packaged, chemical-filled foods, but a true insight into the path to optimal health – it includes animal foods!
If you are looking for quality sources of sustainably raised beef & dairy, check your local farmer’s market (find one near you on the Local Harvest website) or have it shipped to your door from Beyond Organic.
I also want to highlight an absolutely beautiful, almost poetic look at this topic from Kristen of Food Renegade. Her post, Why I’m Not a Vegan, spoke volumes to me about this issue. I think you’ll find it well worth reading.
What has been your experience with a vegan or vegetarian diet?
This post is linked to Simple Lives Thursday, Fight Back Friday, Sunday School
Comments are closed.
Abraham
April 8, 2015 at 10:06 pmWe have teeth to eat, right? One’s back teeth are to chew through plants. Your front teeth are made to cut through meat. We are built to eat BOTH.
Ahmet Gokcek
March 11, 2018 at 11:07 pmI had a bought long bout of chronic fatigue and tried the paleo diet and ate raw organic grass fed meat and milk and didn’t improve. I then tried a high raw vegan diet and got my energy back. I feel better going Vegan so I’m sticking with it even though it was tough giving up the meat.
I also found T Colin Campbell’s work very compelling and really good research and on the benefits of going vegan.
Having said that I think humans can eat a small amount of good quality animal protein and thrive but humans now are eating way too much bad quality animal products and too much junk food on top.
Frieda Nugen
April 7, 2018 at 10:21 amHi all. I am not here to debate, either. What I will share is that back in the 1990’s, I decided to go vegan AND no fat. My father had just undergone CABGx5 due to his heart disease accelerated by his diabetes. He had never been overweight in his life. Neither has my cousin, who now has diabetes as well. I am about to turn 60 and have dropped my A1c simply by losing 15 lbs and only using WW. I apparently ate healthier.
In the 1990s’, I did this with the help of a registered dietician, who was on board with my temporary no fat approach (because at the time, Susan Powter was all the rage). Along with my doctor, we took blood work. So I went through a 2 week phase out of the ‘offending’ items, becoming well versed in combining for complete proteins, and the need to supplement with B12. None of this had to do with the sustainability issues of today, nor was I interested in giving up my leather briefcase. I simply wanted to see what Paul and Linda McCartney were up to.
Since I’m not here to argue, I’ll just state that my 6 months labs were horrid, and my boss even called me into her office due to my having to keep a stash of food at my desk, and the brain fog that I suffered as the result of my choices. I was losing hair, had peeling nails, but worse than this, I had only lost 5 lbs (I needed to lose about 30) the first 2 weeks, was sleepy all the time, blood pressure had risen, and my LDL cholesterol was up. Not to mention I lost my best friend (a vegan) to breast cancer, and then Linda McCartney died, too.
My friend had always tried to stay vegan all her life. I am not saying her eating killed her, but I often wonder if her and Linda McCartney suffered from diminished immune systems due to the ‘leaving’ out of certain nutrients. Since we do not know all there is to know about nutrition, I’m left to ponder the reason my doctor immediately sent me to an endocrinologist to ‘straighten’ out my poor health. I’m not saying I was robust before, either; but I did expect more from eating vegan and all the fresh vegetables I was eating.
I had high hopes – they just did not materialize for me while eating as a vegan.
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July 24, 2018 at 4:33 am[…] A Vegan Diet is Not Healthy […]
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