Should I be a vegan?

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I disagree. Paleo diet eliminates grains and sugars. There is plenty of information written by medical doctors with degrees in human nutrition that suggests that grains and sugars are related to multiple health concerns. You have to do your homework and research your information before you make a blanket statement.

For the record, I'm not on the Paleo diet.

And there's like every human civilization ever in history being built on grains and agriculture vs like 3 studies on pubmed somewhere or Mark Sisson.

This is a classic form of vague comment which people who eat flesh like to trot out ; but which has no real factual grounding.
It's well known that many plant based foods contain forms of oils and fats which are healthy... and certainly more healthy than the kind which is typically found in animal flesh.
As I said before, droves of flesh eaters are deficient in Omega 3, or have horrible cholesterol levels ... and there's a reason for this.

Yes, reasons for "horrible cholesterol" is due to an inflammation within the body. Our body is designed to repair itself and we need cholesterol to do this.

As for oils and fats: I'm not discounting the importance of vegetables. A healthy diet consists of a balance of both.
The richest sources of omega 3 is found in: flaxseed oil, hemp oil, chia, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, dark green leafy vegetables, egg yolk, animal fats (particularly from wild animals), animal milk and human milk.

It's not about being a "trot" - it's about pointing out that despite you having a strong opinion, you really are not basing it on facts. You are repeating what mainstream thinking chants. I, personally, don't agree with it and there are multiple reasons why it doesn't make sense.

You know that I'm a qualified nutritionist, right ?
How about you ?

It's mainstream thinking to chant the notion that only animal products and flesh could possibly contain healthy types of fat.
I disagree with perpetuating questionable notions about nutrition which aren't based in fact, however you are free to do that if you wish - whether I agree with your stance or not.

Ladywoofwoof, your posts are full of logical fallacies, you're clearly biased and using emotially manipulative language. In addition you never provide any evidence or reason your claims are true, you just declare them. Whatever qualification you may have does not remedy any of that.
Below a selection from your posts and the flaws in them. I hope you can refrain from making such mistakes in future so we can have a more meaningful discussion.

Firstly, the food is called meat, not flesh. Flesh has a negative association, which you're trying to push on meat eating -> emotionally manipulative language, which has no place in a rational argument and often indicates a lack of real evidence.
Meat, fish, eggs and dairy products (all the things vegans don't eat) are as good as the only sources of B12, aside from supplementation (link). Therefore they ARE especially nutritious. Nutrition planning for vegans is made much harder by their exclusion of the only natural sources of B12, forcing them to supplement. Hence, metticulous planning.



It's shocking to see how many people think anecdotal evidence is actual evidence. Also, correlation =/= causation, no evidence, no numbers for the amount of vegans deficient in these, etc. Shocking to see? Nothing to see here but empty words and manipulative language: "shocking to see", "flesh".


You're using a strawman argument. No one claimed a diet of only meat is the way to go, so why are you arguing against that?


Manipulative language again: "flesh", "trot out". Also, it's rather brazen to accuse someone else of what you do throughout your posts. YOU claimed veganism is the healthiest diet, the burden of proof lies on YOU, not on the person who disagrees.



As well as most of them having been built on slaves and warfare, having absolute monarchs, no rights for women, etc. Grains are good for empires, certainly, that doesn't make them good for people.

Actually dietary supplements promote long term benefits, and I am fully aware of the impact of what some of them do. Best to view them online and value each of their properties first, to fully examine what uses they would do to each part of your body.

Did I say that though? I specified that both are equally important.




I feel you are doing so, yourself. I appreciate differing opinions but we (in general) need to be careful when stating facts from opinions. I would also suspect that if a certified nutritionist was applying those same dietary (vegan/vegetarian)methods, one would be in a much healthier state.

Last edited by ASDsmom on 02 Nov 2013, 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just for kicks, I will list the richest sources of multiple vitamins.. key word being "richest" (and therefor not limited to):

V
B1: pork, liver, heart, kidneys
B2: eggs, meat, milk, poultry
B3: meat, poultry
B5: meats, liver
B6: meat, poultry, fish, eggs
B12: meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk
Biotin: liver, egg yolks
A: liver, fish, egg yolks, butter
D: fish liver oils, eggs, fish
K2: organ meats, full fat cheese, butter, cream, animal fats, egg yolks

"Vegetables combine with meats and fish very well and provide the missing nutrients. By combining meats and vegetables in one meal, we balance the acidity in the body, which is important because both too acid and too alkaline states are not very healthy."

- Dr. Cambell-McBride
Degress in both Neurology and Human Nutrition

She also lists pages and pages of references.

My family and I work alongside a qualified nutritionist who believes/practices in your exact opposite. She believes vegan/vegetarian diets are unhealthy diets and has expressed to me why. I am telling you because (apart from you asking me) being a nutritionist does not mean you are free from misinformation and gullibility. It does not give you any more credibility above any other poster who does not have a nutrition certification. In my humble opinion, some things ARE just plain common sense.

You may disagree but you do not have the right to disrespect people's opposing views.

I was vegan for a year and it did not work for me.

This is something I wrote up but never shared anywhere, it explains my whole situation.



Transitioning from Vegan to Ethical/Local Omnivore, out of need- not greed!

A month ago, I discontinued the vegan diet that I had been faithfully devoted to for a year. I had not been feeling well for a while, despite constantly tweaking my supplements and "improving" upon my vegan-ness. In retrospect, I was just making excuses for what I now know to be a state of medically-substantiated lacking.

Vegan felt great at first. Then I didn't feel well, so I did caffeine free vegan. No change, so I did sugar free vegan. Felt worse, so I did raw vegan. Wasn't feeling up to par, so I did gluten free vegan. Soy-free vegan. Then I did caffeine free, sugar free vegan. Then caffeine, sugar and gluten free vegan. Then all off of that together and add raw back onto it. Then I was a fruit only vegan. Then I tried low carb vegan. You get the picture- at this rate, pretty soon there would be nothing I could eat! No matter what type of vegan diet I ate, I discovered that I was developing more and more sensitivities to certain foods, and feeling worse and worse. To top it all off, I was ashamed to tell people I was vegan. Why? Because in just 3 months of being vegan, I had piled on 10 pounds. Six months into it, I was 20 pounds heavier. A year into it, I had gained a whopping 30 pounds and didn't fit into anything but stretchy yoga pants. Talk about depressing. It also wreaked havoc on my skin. After about three months vegan, I was reacting to every product I used, breaking out, and I developed psoriasis on my elbows, knees and scalp. I am genetically prone to psoriasis, but this was more than just the rare and tiny breakout that I had every few years.

Every time I tried to discuss it with someone, I was informed that I was eating too much junk and fake meats. Thing is, I wasn't eating processed or packaged vegan junk foods, and didn't use fake meats or cheeses. I was eating mostly whole, organic foods. And paying close attention to calories, protein, and barely ate any sugar. Something just wasn't right. For about nine months of my vegan life, I excused these unacceptable changes as being "transition" and eventually my body would love me for the changes I made, and everything would even out. The weight would go away. The bloating would disappear. The exhaustion and daily naps would be no longer needed. My joints would stop aching. I'd be able to do ballet and yoga again. Really.

The thing is, it didn't get better. It only got worse. And no amount of supplementation or changes, or tweaking of my diet helped. Neither did all the exercise I was doing. I felt terrible. I had no energy, could barely think straight. I honestly felt like something had just put my flame out, and I was destined to be a 42 year old woman who felt like a Grandma pushing 90.

Before I became vegan, I had taken a hormone saliva test. These measure cortisol levels, DHEA, and an array of hormones- progesterone, estrogen and testosterone. Last summer, pre-vegan, I was suffering from low DHEA and stage 2 adrenal fatigue. I was convinced that the vegan diet would cure these things and put it all behind me. I can't even start to begin to tell you how wrong I was. My tests last month yielded results that were a major wake-up call for me. My DHEA levels, despite supplementation with 25 mg of DHEA per day, had dropped to a historical low- only 43. My cortisol levels also dropped significantly. In fact, they were so low that I was informed by my new Naturopath that if I was not able to increase them through lifestyle change, that I would soon develop full-blown hypoadrenia, or Addison's disease. The vegan diet had taken me from Stage 2 adrenal fatigue into Stage 3 adrenal exhaustion. My blood work also revealed that I was in a pre-diabetic stage.

A month ago, I made a big decision. I realized that I needed to start eating eggs (bought from a local farm) and salmon (wild caught) again. I've been eating four eggs a day since then, and have started eating wild caught salmon several times a week. I added pasture butter two weeks ago. Then, small amounts of organic, local goat cheese. Last week I purchased some grass fed beef at the farmer's market from a local farm, which I had visited over the summer while on a farm tour.

The difference has been NIGHT AND DAY. I have since learned that a vegan diet is the worst thing in the world for a woman with low DHEA and low cortisol. Salmon, eggs, pasture butter and grass-fed beef are super foods for my condition. Looking back over the last year, I don't know how, or why I hung on for so long. The constant aches and pains in all of my joints and lower back are gone. The nagging pain in my jaw (TMJ) is almost completely eradicated- when I was vegan, it hurt so badly that I would wear hot/cold packs wrapped around my head and went days only able to drink smoothies because I couldn't chew! I was taking 4 advil every 6 hours when I was vegan, for joint/muscular/back/jaw pain. Now? nothing.

Energy levels? Don't get me started. When I was vegan, I had to coax myself into doing the most basic amount of work for my job to get by. Housework? Just enough to get by. I had to save my energy so that my Son wouldn't know how truly exhausted I was. I am now completely caught up at work and creatively-inspired in my projects. My house is clean again. I am waking early, well rested, and walking 4-6 miles every morning with my dog. My memory has returned. I feel sharp and alive again. I've started planning for the future, instead of laying my tired, sore body down in bed and watching yet another documentary on factory farming.

I've only told a few of my friends and family that I'm no longer vegan. I'm waiting for next month's hormone saliva tests, which I hope will show a huge improvement in my DHEA and cortisol levels. Best thing of all, though- is that I feel fantastic, I have tons of energy, and my body is bouncing back quickly. I was constantly starving when I was vegan. No food was completely satisfying. I am eating less food, less hungry and much better nourished now that I am eating a more paleo/primal type of diet. I still eat tons of veggies, occasional fruit, and healthful nuts and seeds. I don't drink milk. It's the addition of high quality proteins that have made such a huge difference in my life. I know now that I can feel at ease in my decision to eat locally sourced, pasture raised beef, poultry and eggs. I am not eating for greed, I am eating for NEED- and the downward transition of my DHEA and cortisol tests prove that.

Vegans may feel that I've sold out, that I'm a horrible person for no longer being vegan. But in my heart, and physically- I've learned the hard way that the only living beings that benefitted from my being vegan were the animals. I was suffering. My Son was suffering. And I can't have that. As a single Mom, I need to be there 200% for my Son. I'm back there, once again.

I know that the vegan diet is not completely to blame for my condition. An array of very stressful life situations, lack of sleep, prescription medicines for anxiety/sleep, and the use of ibuprofen for pain- all contributed over the last decade to lowering my cortisol and DHEA levels and causing adrenal exhaustion. But my point is, that the vegan diet did not HELP me improve my health, it made it much, much worse! If you are over 40, female and have experienced any major stresses in your life, or lived a fast-paced life through career or child-bearing, you are most certainly at risk for adrenal fatigue or exhaustion. And the only way you can know where you stand is to buy a hormone saliva test.

I would not have believed all of this six months ago. I would have brushed it off and tried to be a "better" vegan. But that's the thing, you can't fix health issues such as mine, with veganism if you aren't consuming any cholesterol, which is only found in animal products. Cholesterol is the building block from which all of the hormones I am deficient in- are made! Furthermore, the typical low fat vegan diet does not allow the proper absorption of fat soluble vitamins, so you can supplement all you want (as I was) but you will most likely be deficient. Documentaries such as "Forks over Knives" and "Vegucated" lead you to believe that animal products are the cause of the rising rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes in the United States, and that starting a vegan diet is the end-all, be-all that will magically erase all woes and miraculously lead to weight loss that is lasting. I don't believe it. The more research I do, the more I believe that sugar, gluten/wheat/white processed flours, transfats found in things like margarine and Crisco, and nutritionally void fast food-- is the culprit. While adopting a vegan diet for the short term is certainly an excellent cleanse and detox, and a way to lower bad cholesterol levels, I don't think that it's the vegan diet that is doing it, but more likely the eradication of a diet high in sugar, trans-fats, fast food, and processed grains.

For more information, search online for Adrenal fatigue diet/Adrenal fatigue/Adrenal exhaustion


Here's to eating ethically, locally and healthily!


UPDATE, October 1 2013. After 2 months, my new round of saliva testing reveals that my Cortisol levels have risen back into mostly normal ranges, and I am now only in stage I adrenal exhaustion. My DHEA levels are approaching optimal. I've lost 5 pounds, and am sleeping through the night. I am able to hike longer distances, and am averaging 5-6 miles a day walking or hiking. My joints no longer ache, and my skin has settled down and become smooth and clear again.

Some people may thrive on the vegan diet, but I am clearly not one of them. My vegan diet may have been saving the lives of animals, but it was slowly killing me.

^^^^^
Thanks for all the details. My sister had a related experience. It wasn't medically identical (it never is) but in her case her iron levels fell to scarily low. Just the teensiest bits of meat in otherwise vegetarian stews did the trick for her.

There is a fair bit of epidemiological evidence showing better health outcomes with a vegan or (more frequently) a vegetarian diet. But these epidemiological studies never parse out the type of meat a person is eating. They lump together the fast food hamburger eater with the person who raises chickens and eats eggs that were laid one hour ago from a chicken that runs around the backyard eating bugs . The people in the latter category are so statistically minor that they don't even make a dent in those studies. So people come away from the study thinking that animal products per se are unhealthy when it is actually a function of how the animals are raised and what the meat/vegetable ratio is for a person.

I´d like to know, who got you into a low fat vegan diet? Even as normal vegetarian, I always cared to eat nuts, avocados, ... regularly to have a sufficient fat support, that can be pretty hard for vegans? Every nutrition specialist will tell you that fat is important for the body, just as carbohydrates you simply need to care for an balanced amount of it, fitting to your lifestyle? And the "totally raw" stuff, our bodies have one of the worst digestive systems on earth, simply because of humans being able to cook for decades. Doesnt mean that a salad or some vegetables or some sushi from now and then is bad, but in general your body is used to getting certain food in cooked forms.

In general unhealthy diets are causing that. Only because a diet is vegan, that doesnt make it healthy. Eating soj-chocolatepudding all day is vegan as well, but thats definitly no healthy diet.

In general it is definitly possible to eat healthy vegan (dont wanna blame you, every metabolism has other needs, for me thinking of that high fat diet some people does, gets me already puking by only thinkin about the foods, I simply cant process that much of fat and it makes me sick), but eating vegan is something that needs to be taken care of by getting into recipes, knowledge of daily nutrition, ... tons of people I knew, testing it, did not really care for that, and had as well no good results. In general it is far more for general people to simply reduce flesh consume massively, but not totally. So some of the nutrients that an "unhealty" vegan diet hardly supplies, are offered that easily in certain other products, that eating 1-2 times a weel non vegan meals, sufficiently support you with it. So the body does not need a daily support of them, but is as example able to store most B-vitamins, that are offered in an good amount in certain products, up to weeks. (Which is simply necessary for northern folks to withstand winter, because that vitamins often need sunlightprocesses of the skin to be "activated", and if the body was not able to store that during the no sun time, it would pretty suck.)

Dont get yourself into needless excusing or blaming yourself. Far more important then strictly eating vegan, is it to simply be aware of what you eat in general. Is it highly antibiotics polluted "industry"-flesh or healthy natural flesh you eat. (There is no need always to go streight organic, maybe you have local farmers, having smaller industrial farms, that provide you a good middle way?) Just like Soj-fans should be aware, that there is acutally a huge mafia about soj in south america, that are threatening small local famers to move, so they can plant themselves huge soj-plantages. Dont get yourself into black and white, there is a lot of grey. If you meet a lunatic blaming you, let him talk. I remember a discussion with an lunatic vegan, that lead in the end to me having hallucinations on my way to work, because from spring to autumn I always see the cows of an local cow farm, standing relaxed on their gigantic maw, and looking pretty happy to me. But a city-vegan told me, that cant be, because there can be no happy, relaxed, well treated animals of food animals. Ok, I am sure she will know better, what I see two times a day, when passing. ^^ Luckily the hallucinated taste of them, when the farmer is slaughtering and offering farm-sale products, is pretty fine.

Its not generally eating flesh that ruins the world right now, its simply the amount and quality of it. We do not need to totally avoid it, but simply to reduce it to an amount, that it allows us a good working waste/benefit system again. Just like eating thuna should not be avoided until all ages, but it simply should right now be reduced, so that we are able to eat thuna in future as well. Its simply about the right amount of eating a certain product, so that it dont exhaust nature.

yes unless you want to remain a disgusting hypocrite specisim is as appalling as racism remember apartheid ? Though I'm no poster boy being a anxiety suffer/dumb dumb, though I do have something going for the "movement " I have been told by nt's I look younger than 38 .

agreed dark choclate is so much nicer or is this a lump of fat to ? Dark choclate is also quite fatty

Do you really believe those b12 supplements found almost anywhere even the local supermarket are just made for vegans who make up 1 % of the population ?