If Veganism is so unhealthy?!

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I'm close to 50, healthy (my life insurance company insured me as super-preferred so they don't think I'm about to die anytime soon), and have been eating a vegan diet for about 25 years. My diet is high in fruits and vegetables and omega 3 fatty acids+ I supplement with B12 and vitamin D. I know a lot of healthy long-term vegans, middle-aged and older.

Now OTOH, cotton candy, potato chips and soda are vegan, so it is possible to have an unhealthy vegan diet, filled with junk food and low in micronutrients.

The real reason so many people think a vegan diet is unhealthy is that they are brainwashed by the meat industry to think you need meat for iron/protein/strength and that one needs dairy for calcium/strong healthy bones. When in reality, it's an excess of animal fat and animal protein that are major causes of heart disease and cancer. Also, many people are nutritionally illiterate. They ask vegans, "where do you get your protein?" or "where do you get your calcium?" not realizing that beans and green vegetables are excellent sources of protein and that there are many excellent vegan sources of calcium: almonds, sesame seeds, kale, etc.

Also, a lot of meat eaters don't want to know or believe that there's anything unhealthy, cruel, and environmentally unsustainable about their diet. It's easier simply to keep your head in the sand and attack vegans as being unhealthy, such as by pointing to a famous vegan or two with an eating disorder, generalizing that to the entire group, and not looking at any of the many positive examples of healthy vegans.

P.S. to Rockle: My husband is a vegan martial arts instructor with many blackbelts in many martial arts. Also, Cherie Soria, the vegan head of Living Light raw foods culinary school has more than one black belt in karate. The stereotype of whimpy weak vegans is just that--a stereotype.

Long-time vegan with an M.S. in nutrition

|The "vegan diet" is not unhealthy because no reasonable diet really is. All of the "mainstream diets" emphasize "well balanced". However, some vegans, as with vegetarians and omnivores, are not as conscientious about what they eat as long as it meets the "rules" (no animal products whatsoever). Veganism isn't unhealthy but some vegans have an unhealthy vegan diet.

veganism is just a diet. it can be done correctly or incorrectly. i think many people think that it's unhealthy cause they have been raised to believe that you need meat to live.

another reason might be because someone decides not to be vegan after while. this doesn't mean it's unhealthy,maybe they missed meat or were eating incorrectly. maybe they didn't have time to cook proper meals or maybe. it's all individual. many people are vegan for a lifetime.

Vegan-ism is like any food lifestyle. You are what you eat. As long as you get the proper amount of nutrients to keep you body functioning properly then you will be healthy. Humans have omnivore teeth because that allows us to eat and get nutrients from both meat and veggies. However with proper supplements people can now eat however they want. It sounds like your mom has a good handle on her nutritional needs. Most people who embrace vegan-ism don't take a supplement or make sure that they replace the nutrition that they were getting through meat. So some people on any restrictive food diet will suffer some body issues and will look unhealthy

To odimwitdwon: The ex-vegan you described probably got that way because she wasn't eating the right foods to maintain her weight and she wasn't taking iron pills to prevent herself from becoming anemic.
Because yes, you can easily live a healthy vegan life. You just have to know a lot about food and ingredients to ensure your getting enough protein, iron, etc.

I'm a martial artist, fueled entirely by plant food. I just sigh when people tell me all vegans are pale and weak, with crumbling bones, and anemia.

I got my black belt after five years of not eating meat. (the black belt took a year... I was veg for 4 before that)

Vegan black belt

It's strange how some people can become so infuriated and passionate over somebody else's diet. It's just food. It's not your body or your decision. Mind your own business, get rid of that hate in your heart, and just be happy!

I'm not arguing that it can't be done healthfully but there are all kinds of diets that are not ok in the long run that people don't just drop dead from so that's not really a valid argument.

...and meat eaters DO die of heart disease and colon cancer....good topic.

Yeah, just like cigarettes! I've got a great uncle who is 90 and still smoking, so that is PROOF they aren't bad for you!!
What a moron.
I know another ex vegan who went on it to control her blood sugar. she lost weight, became borderline anemic and her doctor told her to get off her unhealthy diet and back to meat.
Let people who can think do the thinking, you should just follow their lead.
News Flash: Everybody has different genes.
News Flash: Everybody has different gut fauna
News Flash: Everybody is unique.

Read some of these articles and think again:
http://naturalhygienesociety.org/diet-ve…
http://naturalhygienesociety.org/diet3.h…
http://chetday.com/vegandietdangers.htm
http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/dange…

is because they think vegans dont get enuf protein by eating veggis but is not true btw some meat is also healty
my gf is vg and she eats a fish or chiken once in a month

Because most of them go back to eating meat. There are a lot of high profile vegans who have admitted they've gone back to eating meat because the vegan diet made them sick.

Angelina Jolie says "my vegan diet nearly killed me."
The VoraciousVegan (a top ten vegan blog of 2010) says "a vegan no more"
Author of the "Moosewood" cookbooks has gone back to eating meat. Her new cookbook includes recipes containing meat.
The Chicken-tender website "As I've alluded in recent posts, I've become a meat-eater. Not just a borderline omnivore who eats fish occasionally, but a full-on consumer of food-with-a-face."
VeganLunchBox: "...I now aspire to the label "nutritarian" rather than vegan."

to name a few......

ADDED: Isn't it funny that when someone leaves the vegan diet, they're branded "eating disordered"? Ignoring, of course, that many vegans are vegan because of their eating disorder!

More at the link: "According to Dr. Angela Guarda, director of the Johns Hopkins Eating Disorders Program, many vegans (and vegetarians) who enter her treatment center initially deny an underlying problem—only to later confess that their efforts to avoid animal products were really an effort to avoid food in general. “In most of our patients, the vegetarianism is in the service of the eating disorder,” she said.

For this reason, Guarda and her staff try to dissuade patients from observing any form of vegetarianism while undergoing treatment, encouraging them to broaden their food repertoire to include some meat. Other eating disorder and nutrition specialists report similar approaches.

Dr. Marcia Herrin, founder of the Dartmouth College Eating Disorders Prevention, Education and Treatment Program and now a dietician in private practice, takes a stricter (if potentially problematic) approach: Herrin tells parents not to let their kids be vegetarian until they go to college, echoing that the diet can create a “ruse” that loved ones can’t see through. “Most families don’t have the time to prepare vegetarian entrées,” she said. “What’s at risk is the child’s growth and development, and potentially an eating disorder.”

Herrin may be onto something: A 2009 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association revealed that young adults ages 15 to 23 who reported being vegetarian were, at some point, more likely to have also engaged in unhealthy weight-loss behaviors like bingeing, purging, and using diet pills or laxatives. And surveys show that the prevalence of vegetarianism among eating-disorder patients is higher than in the general population."

http://www.eatingdisordersblogs.com/nutr…