Veganism, not a good idea...

ed skull murphy

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I'm posting this thread as a warning to others, It contains personal information that I otherwise would not divulge, out of respect, but I believe that it is important to warn people of the dangers of embarking on a life of veganism.

My dear old Dad, God rest his soul, was the best bloke I ever knew, he was clever, and he was a very good gambler, but he was a sucker for every fad diet that came along. He fell for it all - soya, vegetarianism, canola (rapeseed oil), veganism - and sadly, he paid heavily for it with his health in his latter years.

But by far, the worst of the above mentioned must be veganism.

Be warned, there is an entire industry of shysters out there on the internet and in the bookstores, who make a tidy living by promoting this dangerous claptrap, i'm fairly convinced that these peole are taking grants from some of the big foundations, because they seem to be living rather too large from just having some two-bit website, holding a few seminars and putting out the occasional youtube videos... or publishing the odd book.

When my father embarked on his life of veganism, he had bought a handful of these books and read them, books such as 'The China Study', which is filled with utter nonsense, and he signed up to a dozen of the websites. I kid you not, this racket is something akin to TV evangelism.

In the beginning we all went along with his new diet, believing he knew what he was doing, because he'd done so much research, but after a couple of weeks of this, the rest of us started feeling unwell and went back to taking in animal protein. But poor old Dad persevered, despite our pleading, and six months down the line, his condition became quite serious. He ended up having a stroke, with a sudden onset of dementia, and after he fell and broke his hip, became confined to a wheelchair.

A police detective I know, has a brother who is confined within an insane asylum, we're talking about a young guy here, who was also a vegan until his rapid decline.

Many of the problems with veganism are explained by the video I posted under the heading 'Health', in this section of the forum. But basically, we must have cholesterol, saturated fat and protein, which you are not going to get from eating raw vegetables, and we must avoid too much fibre which you are going to get plenty of from eating raw vegetables.
 
well it all comes down to smart choices. I'm sorry about the situation but I also know perfectly healthy vegetarians and vegans and grossly unhealthy meat eaters.
personally I've been a vegetarian (not vegan) for about 25 years. but animal protein really isn't a requirement for health...frankly theres many detrimental effects that come from eating animal proteins.
not everyone is the same of course. knock on wood but I haven't had so much as a cold in 15 years and the blood pressure of an 18 year old. I've never missed meats in my diet and consider myself in pretty good shape for someone pushing 50 (and often mistaken for 30).
but like all things there's a myriad of factors..external ones...genetic predisposrions etc
sure if you're going vegetarian or vegan do your due diligence. but I don't beleive it so dire.
sorry about your father's health. my father has alzheiners and dementia and my brother a bad stroke this summer (both meat eaters by the way).
I don't crusade my vegetarian lifestyle but I do embrace it and have seen the positive effects on my health.

ps sorry for weird spacing and punctuation. im on my phone
 
well it all comes down to smart choices. I'm sorry about the situation but I also know perfectly healthy vegetarians and vegans and grossly unhealthy meat eaters.
personally I've been a vegetarian (not vegan) for about 25 years. but animal protein really isn't a requirement for health...frankly theres many detrimental effects that come from eating animal proteins.
not everyone is the same of course. knock on wood but I haven't had so much as a cold in 15 years and the blood pressure of an 18 year old. I've never missed meats in my diet and consider myself in pretty good shape for someone pushing 50 (and often mistaken for 30).
but like all things there's a myriad of factors..external ones...genetic predisposrions etc
sure if you're going vegetarian or vegan do your due diligence. but I don't beleive it so dire.
sorry about your father's health. my father has alzheiners and dementia and my brother a bad stroke this summer (both meat eaters by the way).
I don't crusade my vegetarian lifestyle but I do embrace it and have seen the positive effects on my health.

ps sorry for weird spacing and punctuation. im on my phone

I was brought up a vegetarian, with plenty of soya in my diet, and I am undersized and with other negative consequences. Thankfully, when I was eating out of the house, I would eat a traditional diet and that saved me to some degree. My parents were not so lucky.

I don't know if you eat soya products, but if you do, I recommend that you pull up an excellent and well documented article on the web entitled "Cinderella's Dark Side"

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Soya is seriously dodgy stuff.

Vegetarianism is OK but you must make sure that you get plenty of saturated fat and full proteins.

Coconut oil, avocado oil and dairy will take care of the former, while cheese and a combination of rice and beans will take care of the latter. Salad is good for the occasional detox, but don't overdo it.

Like Natasha Campbell-McBride says in the interview, vegetables should be well-fried in saturated fat to make them amenable to the gut, because too much raw veg will rip the gut flora to shreds, and destroy your immune system, your ability to fend off disease, and cause mental illness down the road.
 
it's very mportant not to confuse opinion with fact. or coincidence with correlation.
poor health AND vegetarian/vegan is not synonymous with poor health BECAUSE vegetarian/ vegan.
one does not necessarily necessitate the other ie there isn't by default correlation.
sure there are very unhealthy vegetarians and vegans BECAUSE of their dietary lifestyle. Just as there are meat eaters in poor health BECAUSE of their dietary lifestyles. and both categories can simply have poor health which has nada to do with diet.
for example it would be ridiculous for me to say brother cancer stroke meat eater ergo...meat eating causes poor health. Or father stroke dementia alzheimers meat eater..ergo meat eating causes poor health.
Eat healthfully. And smartly. Irrespective.of your chosen lifestyle.
ps vegetarian at 6 foot one and 180. I wouldn't peg me as undernourished or undersized.
 
it's very mportant not to confuse opinion with fact. or coincidence with correlation.
poor health AND vegetarian/vegan is not synonymous with poor health BECAUSE vegetarian/ vegan.
one does not necessarily necessitate the other ie there isn't by default correlation.
sure there are very unhealthy vegetarians and vegans BECAUSE of their dietary lifestyle. Just as there are meat eaters in poor health BECAUSE of their dietary lifestyles. and both categories can simply have poor health which has nada to do with diet.
for example it would be ridiculous for me to say brother cancer stroke meat eater ergo...meat eating causes poor health. Or father stroke dementia alzheimers meat eater..ergo meat eating causes poor health.
Eat healthfully. And smartly. Irrespective.of your chosen lifestyle.
ps vegetarian at 6 foot one and 180. I wouldn't peg me as undernourished or undersized.

When did you become a vegetarian? Were you raised as a child as a vegetarian? Or did you choose the lifestyle as an adult?

My parents were raised as traditional eaters but chose vegetarianism in their thirties. Their ill health began in their fifties and sixties and afflicted them until the end, mainly due to the soya.
 
well poor health in 50s and 60s is a cross most of us will unfortunately bear despite our efforts.
Never much fancied meat as a kid but became full on at 23. I'll be 46 next month.
I'll add I was a pretty sickly kid. And this was in my meat eating days. I haven't been sick in well over a decade (closer to 2).
Out of curiosity...why do you beleive soya the culprit rather than simply..well..aging
 
well poor health in 50s and 60s is a cross most of us will unfortunately bear despite our efforts.
Never much fancied meat as a kid but became full on at 23. I'll be 46 next month.
I'll add I was a pretty sickly kid. And this was in my meat eating days. I haven't been sick in well over a decade (closer to 2).
Out of curiosity...why do you beleive soya the culprit rather than simply..well..aging

Because I have done my research, and fifty is not old, it's the prime of life, despite what the propaganda is telling you.

But, you neglected to answer my question, do you eat soya products?
 
I do..and healthy and hearty.
Frankly your post is leaning into tinfoil hattery. Had you said soya the culprit based on family doctoral evidence vs opinion I might have given it if not a pass but at least consideration. Basically you're saying it was soya 'because that's what I think'.
I didn't say they were old but aging. The body breaks down over time regardless of what we eat.
Like I said I could say my brother at 55 had his stroke because he ate meat. It's an opinion (not one I hold but opinion nonetheless).
Anyway to each their own choices. I only wanted to point out your thread was opinion based not factual based for the sake of other readers and share personally...which is just that...personal. Neither the state of my health nor your father's is universal based on dietary lifestyle. There's simply too many other considerations that factor into declining health to point to one (arguable) culprit.
 
I'll chime in here: raised as a carnivore, starting developing issues digesting meat when I was in my early 30s, dabbled with vegetarianism for a couple years and failed miserably. Met a woman -- now my wife -- who'd been a smart vegetarian for some years and had done all the background research re living a healthy vegetarian life. I switched then, that'll be almost 30 years ago, and am very happy I did.

The key to being a healthy, happy vegetarian is a properly balanced and varied diet, primarily including a variety of beans and whole grains. A good vegetarian eats -- or should eat -- a vastly more varied range of veg, grains and legumes than most meat eater's ever dream of. I sat down a few years ago and added things up: over the course of a year I eat about 120 different types of fruit and veg and roughly 30 different types of legumes and grains. And, personal preference, almost all organic. THAT's the recipe to being a healthy vegetarian. IMHO.

Anyone thinking "oh hey, I'll just cut out the meat and eat more salad" as the way to become a vegetarian is doomed to unhappiness and poor health. You need to re-build your diet pretty much from the ground up. :D Massively widening your tastes and veg eating habits is where it starts. That takes a few years so you've got to be in it for the long haul: it's not a dabblers game IMO. The veg-heads I've known who don't overhaul their cooking habits and recipe list are the ones who look and feel like shit. BTW most of those were the ones who thought "take away meat, add tofu, no problem". Not! Again, a great recipe to look and feel ghastly, primarily because most meat eaters are complete failures when it comes to eating a healthy variety of veg and grains. A smattering of potatoes and greens isn't going to do it.

Also, get your blood work done every few years. That'll tell you if there is anything missing from your veg diet. In my 30 years as a veg-head my only issue has been a B12 deficiency -- notoriously common amongst vegetarians I might add -- for which I take a particular form of B12 supplements.

As to veganism: [strike]no problem but you at least double the complexity of doing it right. Research research research and then a bit more research if you want to do it well and safely. My wife was vegan in the years before I met her and she loved it but she hated how much work it was to do it right.[/strike] Scratch that. The Mrs says "never felt better in my life than when I was vegan" and doesn't remember it as being difficult at all. She did miss the cheese and desserts though, and afaic a life without cheese is too horrible to contemplate so ... we became a happy vegetarian couple and have been to this day.

Soya products? Yes, and I love them. They're only part of a "good" vegetarian diet but TBH I'm having a difficult time imagining where the devil is hidden in my tofu. That Cinderella article has been pretty widely criticised afaik and some years ago. As in a decade and a half ago. We veg-heads have come a long way since then.
 
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One of my colleagues has been vegan for many years, and honestly I wish I looked like him. Healthy and strong, you'd probably think he's eating 3 whole chickens a day. But met him in Tesco's and the trolley looked depressing ;)

On the other side, another close friend is a single hippie mom, vegan and her kids are vegan too. Kids are 10, 8 and 5 and always sick. Not the best of ideas, in this climate, to force veganism upon kids. I'm not an expert, but you'd really have to be one to balance a good vegan diet that can assure small kids get all the nutrients they need.
 
Eating badly is rife across all dietary choices. Vegetarians/vegans are no more, or less, guilty of that than omnivores or carnivores. Sick kids happen because of poor food planning, not because of veg or veganism.
 
Eating badly is rife across all dietary choices. Vegetarians/vegans are no more, or less, guilty of that than omnivores or carnivores. Sick kids happen because of poor food planning, not because of veg or veganism.

Not strictly true - I have hear numerous professionals state that animal fats and proteins are essential in the development of children, especially the nervous system...granted, parents feeding their kids too much crap is an issue, but nutritionists don't recommend vegan diets for under 18's as whole.
 
My partner converted to Veganism from being a Vegetarian a few years ago and so far she has not noticed any ill effects from it. However as I understand it,a vegan or vegetarian diet is not suitable for everyone because our bodies do not all function in the same way when it comes to digestion and its ability to absorb the nutients we need.
We have a vegan Restaurant near us and I have noticed how healthy most of their clients appear to be
 
I'll chime in here: raised as a carnivore, starting developing issues digesting meat when I was in my early 30s, dabbled with vegetarianism for a couple years and failed miserably. Met a woman -- now my wife -- who'd been a smart vegetarian for some years and had done all the background research re living a healthy vegetarian life. I switched then, that'll be almost 30 years ago, and am very happy I did.

The key to being a healthy, happy vegetarian is a properly balanced and varied diet, primarily including a variety of beans and whole grains. A good vegetarian eats -- or should eat -- a vastly more varied range of veg, grains and legumes than most meat eater's ever dream of. I sat down a few years ago and added things up: over the course of a year I eat about 120 different types of fruit and veg and roughly 30 different types of legumes and grains. And, personal preference, almost all organic. THAT's the recipe to being a healthy vegetarian. IMHO.

Anyone thinking "oh hey, I'll just cut out the meat and eat more salad" as the way to become a vegetarian is doomed to unhappiness and poor health. You need to re-build your diet pretty much from the ground up. :D Massively widening your tastes and veg eating habits is where it starts. That takes a few years so you've got to be in it for the long haul: it's not a dabblers game IMO. The veg-heads I've known who don't overhaul their cooking habits and recipe list are the ones who look and feel like shit. BTW most of those were the ones who thought "take away meat, add tofu, no problem". Not! Again, a great recipe to look and feel ghastly, primarily because most meat eaters are complete failures when it comes to eating a healthy variety of veg and grains. A smattering of potatoes and greens isn't going to do it.

Also, get your blood work done every few years. That'll tell you if there is anything missing from your veg diet. In my 30 years as a veg-head my only issue has been a B12 deficiency -- notoriously common amongst vegetarians I might add -- for which I take a particular form of B12 supplements.

As to veganism: [strike]no problem but you at least double the complexity of doing it right. Research research research and then a bit more research if you want to do it well and safely. My wife was vegan in the years before I met her and she loved it but she hated how much work it was to do it right.[/strike] Scratch that. The Mrs says "never felt better in my life than when I was vegan" and doesn't remember it as being difficult at all. She did miss the cheese and desserts though, and afaic a life without cheese is too horrible to contemplate so ... we became a happy vegetarian couple and have been to this day.

Soya products? Yes, and I love them. They're only part of a "good" vegetarian diet but TBH I'm having a difficult time imagining where the devil is hidden in my tofu. That Cinderella article has been pretty widely criticised afaik and some years ago. As in a decade and a half ago. We veg-heads have come a long way since then.

I agree with most of that, Max, and my parents were not exactly dabblers, I remember as a child there were always bowls of beans and grains in soak for future use, but unfortunately they didn't know about the importance of fermenting the grains to break down the phytates.

Tofu should always be well fermented, and usually is, but it is interesting to note that the Japanese will only eat tofu with red meat, because an ingredient in the meat counteracts the digestion blocking properties of the soy.

I am personally convinced that unfermented soya is harmful, and chemically processed soya products should be banned, and I say this because I grew up on it, and can recognise the symptoms of what is outlined in the Cinderella article in myself and what I observed in my immediate family.
 
... the Japanese will only eat tofu with red meat...

That at least is simply untrue. I've been eating Japanese food for decades and while the Japanese do seem to like their meat there has been no 1:1 correlation that I've seen, quite the opposite actually.

Your conviction that tofu is unhealthy is, of course, your business. But even a casual search of your Cinderella story will show you that those claims have been disputed for at least 15 years.

Given the mountains of pro-tofu evidence I'd suggest your convictions are a matter of personal choice. Yours for the taking but you'll forgive those of us who see (and live) the evidence to the contrary.

Ditto for your claims against veganism, IMO. I'm no vegan and never want to be but I have no doubt that it can be a healthy and happy life choice. Without doubt it can also be done badly and wrong, but that's about the practitioner not the practice.
 
That at least is simply untrue. I've been eating Japanese food for decades and while the Japanese do seem to like their meat there has been no 1:1 correlation that I've seen, quite the opposite actually.

Your conviction that tofu is unhealthy is, of course, your business. But even a casual search of your Cinderella story will show you that those claims have been disputed for at least 15 years.

Given the mountains of pro-tofu evidence I'd suggest your convictions are a matter of personal choice. Yours for the taking but you'll forgive those of us who see (and live) the evidence to the contrary.

Ditto for your claims against veganism, IMO. I'm no vegan and never want to be but I have no doubt that it can be a healthy and happy life choice. Without doubt it can also be done badly and wrong, but that's about the practitioner not the practice.

I'm no food nazi, live and let live is my motto, but I just felt a duty to put this info out there for people to make up their own minds.

I'll forgive you anything Max, ;) even for misquoting me, I never said that Tofu was unhealthy, because it is fermented.

I misquoted the Japan thing, it is a long time since I read the piece. This is the paragraph I was referring to:

"The soybean has one of the highest phytate levels of any grain or legume that has been studied, and the phytates in soy are highly resistant to normal phytate-reducing techniques such as long, slow cooking. Only a long period of fermentation will significantly reduce the phytate content of soybeans. When precipitated soy products like tofu are consumed with meat, the mineral-blocking effects of the phytates are reduced. The Japanese traditionally eat a small amount of tofu or miso as part of a mineral-rich fish broth, followed by a serving of meat or fish."
 
My partner's been vegetarian for about one year and feels better for it, although she draws the line at veganism and its dour palate. Vegan cheese anyone?

I think it's important to adapt your diet to how your body's evolving, Going full-on with extreme diets like veganism isn't good for anyone in the long run.

I eat meat still but will happily eat vegetarian meals as I'm not fussy. Balance is the key and with all this information at our disposal it would be foolhardy not to at least identify harmful things in our diet, and attempt to cut them out gradually.

Take dairy. We've cut it out as much as possible and are now drinking the likes of soya/ coconut/ rice/ almond milk and love it thus far. But as for drinking too much soya, we'll just have to see. If my voice resembles Joe Pasquale and my moobs balloon out of proportion I may have to slow down on that :eek:
 
This is the paragraph I was referring to:

"The soybean has one of the highest phytate levels of any grain or legume that has been studied, and the phytates in soy are highly resistant to normal phytate-reducing techniques such as long, slow cooking. Only a long period of fermentation will significantly reduce the phytate content of soybeans. When precipitated soy products like tofu are consumed with meat, the mineral-blocking effects of the phytates are reduced. The Japanese traditionally eat a small amount of tofu or miso as part of a mineral-rich fish broth, followed by a serving of meat or fish."

I think it only fair to point out that your quote is from the Cinderella article, which has its baggage (as previously pointed out).

I'n no food nazi either. In my time I've eaten a large selection of the things that fly, walk, swim and sprout on this Earth. These days I'm veg and enjoy it. Very much enjoy it as it happens. But yes indeed, by all means we must each follow our own bliss when it comes to the noms.

My point in chiming in on this is that veganism is like many other dietary choices: done wisely it can be wonderful if that's where you want to be. I seriously doubt the claim that it is inherently unhealthy and life-endangering. Just as I seriously doubt such claims about carnivore- or omnivor-ism, or vegetarianism for that matter. I believe that any of those dietary choices can be legitimate and done in a healthy, life-enriching way. They can also be done in ridiculously unhealthy and life-damaging ways.

I suspect it's probably easier to make it through your days as an uninformed and careless carnivore or omnivore than it is to do so as a vegetarian or vegan. But ease and ignorance were never life styles I've particularly valued so the bit of extra work required to be a healthy vegetarian has been no hardship IMO. In fact given all the wonderful things I've discovered, coveted and cooked as a vegetarian I'd say I've made the right choice. For me.

But I'm no vegetarian preacher so fill your boots with whatever does it for you. Of course I'd respectfully suggest that abusing the shit out of other creatures because you want to eat their body parts is an ethical issue well worth discussion but I know that here too people will make their choices and defend those choices to the grave. Vive la difference I guess, especially since neither you nor I can do much about other people's choices anyway.
 
My partner's been vegetarian for about one year and feels better for it, although she draws the line at veganism and its dour palate. Vegan cheese anyone?

I think it's important to adapt your diet to how your body's evolving, Going full-on with extreme diets like veganism isn't good for anyone in the long run.

I eat meat still but will happily eat vegetarian meals as I'm not fussy. Balance is the key and with all this information at our disposal it would be foolhardy not to at least identify harmful things in our diet, and attempt to cut them out gradually.

Take dairy. We've cut it out as much as possible and are now drinking the likes of soya/ coconut/ rice/ almond milk and love it thus far. But as for drinking too much soya, we'll just have to see. If my voice resembles Joe Pasquale and my moobs balloon out of proportion I may have to slow down on that :eek:

I make my own rice milk, which I whizz up in a blender with bananas, honey and yoghourt and then leave it to ferment in jars. When it is ready to drink, I will add a bit of home-made kefir. It's a fantastic probiotic.

The issue with my father was really the raw vegan/juicing crowd he got invoved with on the internet - like I said it is almost like TV Evangelism - he was just following their tips blindly and they were leading him down the garden path. That was what my original post was meant to be about.
 
.. If my moobs balloon out of proportion I may have to slow down on that.

They will. :) A few choice exercises and a little moderation will help with that.
 
But I'm no vegetarian preacher so fill your boots with whatever does it for you. Of course I'd respectfully suggest that abusing the shit out of other creatures because you want to eat their body parts is an ethical issue well worth discussion but I know that here too people will make their choices and defend those choices to the grave. Vive la difference I guess, especially since neither you nor I can do much about other people's choices anyway.

I agree, and that is precisely the kind of meat and dairy that it's best to avoid, imo. There are organic free range farms in the UK, raising grass-fed sheep and cattle, a tad pricier but OK for an occasional treat.
 
I have my own views on healthy eating, and how hard that is nowadays, if you aren't growing your own veggies, or have chickens, cows, pigs and/or rabbits for meat, eggs, milk, then you will have to buy from 'healthy' farms - whereby healthy, in most cases, is at best subjective - or small local growers and such..

That aside, i noticed Japan was highlighted by the O.P., which struck me as funny, because it has statistically been proven numerous times, that Japan is one of the healthiest Countries in the world, and their varied diet, in which tofu, soy and fermented soy (miso) play a big role, is one of the key factors.

Some more on topic reading, to balance your view, which currently seem to be mostly influenced by that Cinderella article:

Japan:

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General:

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I was brought up a vegetarian, with plenty of soya in my diet, and I am undersized and with other negative consequences. Thankfully, when I was eating out of the house, I would eat a traditional diet and that saved me to some degree. My parents were not so lucky.

I don't know if you eat soya products, but if you do, I recommend that you pull up an excellent and well documented article on the web entitled "Cinderella's Dark Side"

You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.


Soya is seriously dodgy stuff.

Vegetarianism is OK but you must make sure that you get plenty of saturated fat and full proteins.

Coconut oil, avocado oil and dairy will take care of the former, while cheese and a combination of rice and beans will take care of the latter. Salad is good for the occasional detox, but don't overdo it.

Like Natasha Campbell-McBride says in the interview, vegetables should be well-fried in saturated fat to make them amenable to the gut, because too much raw veg will rip the gut flora to shreds, and destroy your immune system, your ability to fend off disease, and cause mental illness down the road.

I worked Dietary for quite a few years. Soya is a huge NO NO, especially for women.
Vegetables should NOT be well fried in anything..period! They shouldnt even be well cooked. Contrary to your belief that raw foods destroy your intestinal villi, ( the hairs that help push your food through) it's actually the fibre from raw foods and blanched that help your gut and bowel stay healthy. Proteins can come from raw nuts like almonds. spinach, fish oils, huge list of things.
Dairy? It takes 24 hours for one glass of milk to digest, x's that by 3 glasses a day. That will destroy your villi. As will and gluten products like bread. Rule of thumb.if you can roll it into a ball and it doesnt fall apart, then the bread will expand inside your stomach. Rice bread is good choice.
 

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