Month: November 2016
Is it morally right to eat meat?
I recently saw a video shared on Facebook of a hyena disembowelling a wildebeest. The shocking part was that the wildebeest was fully conscious and sitting upright, it was simply immobilised due to injury or exhaustion. I was totally horrified and it made me angry at the hyena for a ‘silly’ second. I wanted the hyena to have compassion for the poor beast, or at least put it out of its misery before he started tucking in!
This started me thinking; if this is just nature in action, it can’t be inherently ‘bad’ to take another’s life in the name of food or survival, can it? In other words, isn’t eating meat a natural instinct?
The only reason humans are ‘superior’ to animals is that we happened to be the species who knocked over the first domino on a run of fortunate evolutionary developments.
Now you could argue that the hyena was simply trying to survive and it doesn’t have a choice or the brain power to make ‘better’ decisions – this is totally true – but it still stands that as part of a natural eco-system it is perfectly right that animals consume each other; morals don’t come into it.
Wild omnivores are able to digest both animals and plants very effectively and so have the choice, but they know that in order to be healthy they need to have the flexibility to select foods when in season and to eat the full range of foods that will keep them well. Their craving for meat is not just a self-indulgent desire, it’s a genetic compulsion based on the hard wiring that helps them survive.
Are Humans Different to Wild Omnivores?
I don’t think so; we have the same genetic wiring and the same compulsions, it’s just that social conditioning leads us to believe that we should ‘know better.’
I find the notion that humans are superior to other animals, and somehow don’t need to be part of the world’s eco-system, both arrogant and naïve. The only reason humans are ‘superior’ to animals is that we happened to be the species who knocked over the first domino on a run of fortunate evolutionary developments.1
The development of tools to crack big animal bones allowed us to access nutrient-dense marrow effectively, and the development of tools for slicing meat allowed us to chew flesh more easily and quickly. These two significant breakthroughs accelerated the quality and density of nutrients we could digest in our food in a day.2
A further leap in human evolution was when we learned to control fire. Cooking food3 increases the bioavailability of nutrients and significantly increases the number of useful calories we can assimilate in a day.4
These seemingly simple advances allowed us to reduce the amount of bulky plant matter we had to find and eat to sustain us – apparently this takes up to 80% of a large primate’s daytime activity – and allowed our digestive tracts to shrink, turning us from big bellied creatures using hands and feet on the ground, to an upright ‘six pack’ sort of person who can run and hunt. After tucking into a fatty, meaty feast we had the energy to last a few hours without food and could now afford to take the time off endlessly foraging for relatively low-nutrient, low-calorie foods in order to hunt down the next nourishing high-calorie meal!5
But Should I Be a Vegan Now?
It’s not hard to see how this process made us into who we are today. Nowadays, of course, we are able to eat a vegetable-based diet; we no longer have to forage for our food – the grocery store has done it for us! Eating a vegan diet can certainly be healthy – and is giant leaps away from an unhealthy modern Westernised diet – but you need to work pretty hard, plan carefully, and supplement the diet in order to keep yourself well. This is really tough. You’re fighting with hundreds of thousands of years of genetic programming which is telling you you’re missing something important in your diet. This isn’t a ‘choice’ like deciding which colour shoes to buy. It’s a deep inherent yearning that often leads to many vegans filling the ‘hole’ with junk food. A less-than-perfect vegan diet is very likely going to make you sick!6
You may be one of the ‘elite’ modern humans that can resist scratching an itch that is more persistent than an infestation of fleas; I am in awe of people who have such self-control in the name of a cause. But for a huge portion of the world a ‘perfect’ vegan diet isn’t even available or affordable. Millions of people in this world live in environments so dry, wet, mountainous, inaccessible, or poor that their only reliable source of nourishment is meat, eggs, and milk, supplemented with whatever can be grown or foraged. Millions more have a seriously limited range of foods available to them, be it raising their children on milk yoghurt and butter from a backyard cow in India, eating meat and milk from a herd of goats in Afghanistan, or eating a diet of fish and seals in the Arctic regions of Canada. Are these people tragically forced into having to take immoral actions in order feed themselves? Or are we Westerners arrogant enough to consider ourselves ‘beyond’ the need to be part of a natural food web?
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says ‘animals can offer several advantages over crops in developing parts of the world’ and goes on to note:
Meat and milk can be produced year-round, being less seasonal than cereals, fruit, and vegetables.
Animals, particularly small ones, can be slaughtered as the need arises, for food or income.
Both milk and meat can be preserved – milk as clarified butter, curd, or cheese; meat by drying, curing, smoking, and salting.7
So maybe it’s reasonable to think; ‘OK, if you have the money and access to a full range of nutritious foods THEN it’s morally wrong to eat meat.’ With this in mind, we have to dig into why we think it’s wrong in the first place. I tackle the environmental arguments here, here, and here, so let’s not go there, or this article will never end! In this article, we’re talking specifically about cruelty.
Is a Plant-Based Diet Kinder Than an Omnivore Diet?
If you have spent any time in well-managed pastures or meadows, you’ll know they’re teeming with life. The buzz of insects, the scuffling of small mammals, the wonderful bird song; if you lie down in the long grass you’ll soon be covered in inquisitive invertebrates. So if you think that dragging large metal blades deep into these areas and turning the ground upside down will be a bloodless pursuit, then you are deeply ignorant of the destructive nature of conventional arable farming for plant food.8
Once you get over the immediate ‘mini-mammal carnage’ and the tearing up of snakes, frogs, beetles, and other insects, you should perhaps consider the harm being done to the micro critters in the soil. Healthy soil – of the sort you would find in a pasture – has more micro-organisms in a cup than there are humans on the earth! Tilling the land is incredibly effective at damaging soil health and reducing the diversity and numbers of earthworms, fungi, nematodes, and bacteria. The underground microscopic army of healthy pasture takes carbon and methane from the atmosphere and locks it underground. If a pasture is grazed in a rotational pattern with rest periods, it will be even more effective at storing carbon and has been shown to have the capacity to store all the methane a grazing cow can produce.9
Adding inorganic fertiliser, spraying with herbicides and pesticides, and irrigating the land – all practices more likely to happen when growing crops – can compound this issue further, leaving the soil a lifeless desert unable to absorb our ever-increasing greenhouse gases.10
There is no food system in the world that can feed us without death – it’s impossible.
In a conventional arable system producing vegetables and cereals, a crop will receive multiple dressings of pesticides – sprays that kill small creatures or ‘pests’ including pollinators like bees who are essential for so many eco-system functions. The soils in these fields are often very poor at absorbing water and soil washing into streams and rivers is a huge environmental problem, not least as they carry the aforementioned pesticides with it, killing fish and leaving dead zones in our oceans.
It is true that currently many of the crops produced will end up being fed to animals intensively reared indoors; this system is energy hungry, carbon heavy, inefficient, and simply bonkers. BUT, if we were ALL to eat more plants instead of animals, we would need more grassland to be converted into arable land to meet our additional food needs. There is a limit to how much food can be produced from the world’s potentially cropable lands – intensification, monoculture, and overuse of chemicals are inevitable. Not to mention that on a vegan diet we need a broader range of foods, many of which are very inefficient to grow.
Can We Afford Not to Produce Food From Our Grasslands?
It is clear that by eating plants we are killing many life forms as a ‘by-product.’ The worst part is we are not even getting food from these dead creatures; they are essentially wasted.
When these creatures die, we have no control over how they die either – the nest of field voles starving to death because their decapitated mother is no longer around to feed them probably won’t bother you; after all ‘out of sight out of mind!’
You could argue that the number of lives lost overall will be fewer for each person fed, but that’s not necessarily true either. It’s pretty hard to count, but some studies suggest that there is ‘least harm’ in an omnivore diet.11 And anyway at what size does a creature’s life become valuable? Do we add in worms and micro-organisms or is it only fluffy animals that count?
Perhaps there’s actually a good moral case for eating the biggest animals possible – that way we feed more people from fewer lives. You can feed a whole lot of people from a beef steer, with the loss of a single life!
We tend to use the word ‘agriculture’ as a dirty word these days and associate it with intensively reared animals behind bars and farmers feeding grains to animals – there is no doubt that this is a huge problem and it needs to stop. But ‘agriculture’ feeds ALL modern humankind with ALL types of food – plant and animal; omnivores, raw vegans, vegetarians, and a few dedicated carnivores all require agriculture. There is no food system in the world that can feed us without death – it’s impossible. But does this mean we should just throw our hands in the air and accept anything? Definitely not, but we need to stop oversimplifying this argument and start taking some responsibility for sourcing our own food from agricultural systems you support, with a proper understanding of what’s involved. Blanket claims that one diet or another is ‘moral’ and the other ‘murder’ is simply a cop-out. If you are shunning meat in favour of an entirely plant-based diet, be careful before taking the moral high ground – you’ve simply swapped the killing of large animals in favour of a food system that kills small creatures.
With good abattoirs and careful practices, we can ensure a herbivore dies a clean and reasonably stress-free death by rendering them unconscious before slaughter. Some abattoirs have CCTV, staff trained in animal welfare, and specially designed pens to minimise stress and reduce what an animal can see – let’s campaign for more of these. An even more humane death is that of a wild deer killed by a skilled stalker. Grazing one minute; dead the next.
We often lump all animal agriculture into one steaming pot. Factory farming and intensive farming practices make me sick to the stomach, and I have dedicated my life to fighting it, but the reality is that a relatively small portion of the world’s meat comes from these systems.
By opting out of eating meat you are opting out of influencing the way our meat industry grows. A supermarket selling cheap factory farmed meat will probably not miss your sale too much, but by consciously buying 100% grass-fed beef or lamb you can easily convert more farmers to organic by creating demand for that special product. I believe in ‘fighting’ causes with positive actions, not resistance. Couldn’t we focus on trying to eat animals from pastures and grassland that can’t be used to produce crops AND eating plants from organic systems that minimise killing and encourage soil health? This is what I do; this is what I promote. And yes, you can feed the world this way.12
I believe all things are interconnected and we are all part of a circle of life that depends on birth and death. A recent study intrigued me; it showed that, in a controlled setting, a plant knew it was being eaten by a caterpillar and the plant responded by excreting a poisonous defensive substance. It’s obvious that plants don’t have brains or cognitive problem-solving ability, but it seems they do – on some level – know when they are likely to die.13
We are only just beginning to understand on a scientific level how life and death works and, as always, empirical evidence is a long way behind what we know inherently to be true. I know it can’t be wrong to eat other living creatures for food, but some of the ways we are doing it nowadays I find deeply disturbing and morally unacceptable. We all need to eat, and we are living in a world where we can’t participate in the natural cycle of life easily, but we can make choices that will help bring our planet – our eco-system – back into balance.
How about we all focus on doing that?
Do you think it’s morally right or morally wrong to eat meat? Do you resist or fight with positive action? Let us know your thoughts on meat-eating in the comments below!
References
Welsh, B.J. (2011, 22 August). Man Entered the Kitchen 1.9 Million Years Ago. In LiveScience. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/15688-man-cooking-homo-erectus.html
Gupta, S. (2016). Brain Food: Clever Eating. In Nature, 531, S12–S13. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592_supp/full/531S12a.html
Wanjek, C. (2006, 4 July). The Raw Food Diet: A Raw Deal. In LiveScience. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.livescience.com/889-raw-food-diet-raw-deal.html
Watson, C. (2016, 30 March). Healthy Eating Habits You Can Learn From Your Grandparents: Slow Cooking Meat. In Primal Eye. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://primaleye.uk/healthy-eating-habits-you-can-learn-from-your-grandparents-slow-cooking-meat/
Wanjek, C. (2012, 26 November). Sorry, Vegans: Eating Meat and Cooking Food is How Humans Got their Big Brains. In The Washington Post. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/sorry-vegans-eating-meat-and-cooking-food-is-how-humans-got-their-big-brains/2012/11/26/3d4d36de-326d-11e2-bb9b-288a310849ee_story.html
Toro, B.R. (2011, 28 November). Vegetarians and Vegans (Infographic). In LiveScience. Retrieved 4 April 2016 from http://www.livescience.com/17200-vegetarians-vegans-infographic.html
(Anonymous). (n.d.). Livestock and Food Security. In Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://www.fao.org/docrep/x0262e/x0262e13.htm
Davis, S.L. (2002). The Least Harm Principle May Require That Humans Consume a Diet Containing Large Herbivores, Not a Vegan Diet. In Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 16, 387–394. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://fewd.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/inst_ethik_wiss_dialog/Davis__S._2003_The_least_Harm_-_Anti_Veg_in_J._Agric._Ethics.pdf
(Anonymous). (2013). An Exploration of Methane and Properly Managed Livestock through Holistic Management. In Savory Institute. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://savory.global/assets/docs/evidence-papers/exploration-of-methane.pdf
Philpott, T. (2010, 24 February). New Research: Synthetic Nitrogen Destroys Soil Carbon, Undermines Soil Health. In Grist. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://grist.org/article/2010-02-23-new-research-synthetic-nitrogen-destroys-soil-carbon-undermines/
Archer, M. (2012, 15 Dcember). Ordering the Vegetarian Meal? There’s More Animal Blood on your Hands. In The Conversation. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659
(Anonymous) (2016, 3 February). Organic Agriculture Key to Feeding the World Sustainably: Study Analyzes 40 Years of Science Against 4 Areas of Sustainability. In ScienceDaily. Retrieved 4 Apri 2016 from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160203085855.htm
Bush, J. (2016, March 19). Study Claims Plants Can Feel When They Are Being Eaten and They Don’t Like It! In The Homestead Guru. Retrieved 4 April 2016, from http://thehomestead.guru/study-claims-plants-can-feel-when-they-are-being-eaten-and-they-dont-like-it/
Are you missing out? The potential nutrient deficiencies in vegetarian diets.
Through all the research on diet and lifestyle of our early ancestors and into healthy indigenous and traditional cultures, one thing is now crystal clear.
There’s no ONE natural human diet.
Different parts of the world have hugely varied landscapes that grow different native foods and humans have adapted rather nicely to utilising on these available foods.
However what’s also clear is that although traditional diets varied hugely, the inclusion of at least some animal foods was essential to maintaining robust health over the long term.
There are no essential foods, but there are essential nutrients only found in animals foods. Plant-based diets are virtually devoid of B12, calcium, iron, zinc, the long-chain fatty acids EPA & DHA, and fat-soluble vitamins like A & D.
Adequate B12 intake is thought by some to be possible from certain plant sources such as seaweed, brewer’s yeast, spirulina and fermented soy. As it turns out, plant sources of B12 are mostly B12 analogues or cobamides which in fact block the intake of, and increase the requirement for true B12.
Vegans are often found to be deficient in calcium. Not just because their diet doesn’t include calcium rich animal foods but the calcium-rich plant foods they’re eating contain oxalates and phytates which block absorption of some of the calcium contained within them. (1) (2) (3)
Vegans often have lower serum ferritin concentrations than omnivores even though their iron intake calculations are comparable. Once again this is due to the form in which the iron is eaten. Many plant foods are high in iron but the iron is in the (non-heme) form that’s poorly absorbed. Many of these plant foods are high in iron absorption inhibitors, such as phytates, polyphenols and oxalates. The result of this combination is that 90% or more of the iron in those foods isn’t absorbed. Luckily the absorption inhibitors in only seem to apply to the non-heme sources of Iron, so If you’re eating plenty of veggies with your meat then you’re good to go. (4) (5) (6)
Zinc’s the same story, although there’s not too much concern about the intake levels of zinc in a vegan diet, the high levels of phytate in the plant foods being consumed increase the volume of those foods required to absorb sufficient zinc. (7) (8)
EPA and DHA are two (omega-3) essential fatty acids found nearly exclusively in fish and animal foods. These long chain fatty acids are thought to protect against diseases such as: cancer, asthma, depression, cardiovascular disease, ADHD, and autoimmune diseases. Some plant foods contain both linoleic acid (omega-6) and alpha-linolenic acid (omega-3) which are essential fatty acids. Some plant based omega-3 (ALA) can be converted into DHA and EPA however, the conversion rates are very low at about 5- 10%. The successful conversion of these ALA’s is dependent on adequate absorption of synergistic nutrients such as zinc and Iron – hmmm!
If we eat too many omega-6 fatty acids this will interfere with the successful conversion of ALA into DHA and EPA. This is why grass fed meats with a higher ratio of 3:6 are important. and why vegans who are eating diets high in omega-6 (which they inevitably are) are less likely to successfully convert ALA into EPA or DHA. (9) (10)
It’s been shown that traditional cultures all have a near equal balance of omega-3 and omega-6 in their diets.
As Nora explains in her wonderful article here’s a very special fat out there that is found only in the fat of grass-fed and finished animals. CLA or ‘conjugated linoleic acid’ could be one of the most healthful and potent cancer-fighting substances in our diet.
CLA has been proven to – even in amounts we’re likely to eat – can block all three stages of Cancer unlike most “anticancer nutrients” which are only effective in one stage. Research has demonstrated beneficial effects of natural CLA from animal fat have been found in cancers of the breast, prostate, colon and skin.
Correlation is not causation but it can give us clues. Several studies strongly suggest CLA could be particularly helpful in the fight against cancer. In one Finnish study, women who ate the most CLA had a 60 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those who ate the least. Some French researchers sampled the breast tissue of 360 women and found that the women with the most CLA had a staggering 74% lower risk of breast cancer than the women with the least CLA.
In a study that perfectly highlights the need for whole food solution not isolated nutrient supplements; human breast cancer cells were incubated in milk fat high in CLA or in an isolated form of CLA without any milk fat. The milk fat high in CLA decreased the growth of cancer by 90 percent compared to 60%. What was shocking is that some cells were incubated in linoleic acid (the omega-6 fat high in grain and grain-fed animals meat) the growth of the cancer cell increased by 25 percent!
There are more and more studies being done on the preventative properties of CLA against breast and Colon cancer and the findings offer a great deal of hope for those willing to source good grass fed and finished milk, butter and meat.
As Jo Robinson says on ‘Eat Wild’ ‘Many people take a synthetic version that is widely promoted as a diet aid and muscle builder. New research shows that the type of CLA in the pills may have some potentially serious side effects, including promoting insulin resistance, raising glucose levels, and reducing HDL (good) cholesterol.’ You just can’t fake natures processes.
Vegan diets are nearly entirely absent in fat soluble vitamins A and D. Fat-soluble vitamins are critical activators to human health and are found mainly in animal foods particularly seafood, organ meats, eggs and dairy.
Vitamin A has a critical role in maintaining healthy vision, neurological function and healthy skin.
Vitamin D deficiency is common and linked to increased risks of developing common cancers, autoimmune diseases, hypertension, and some infectious disease.
Apart from certain hard to find mushrooms which contain vitamin D, most plant foods don’t contain vitamin A or D. Plants contain beta-carotene which is the precursor to vitamin A but the conversion rates are poor. (12) (13) (14)
Vitamin D levels have been shown to be 74% lower in Vegans than in Omnivores.
To get the same vitamin A hot as a portion of beef liver you would have to eat 14 cups of carrots. We know that in healthy traditional cultures people at up to ten times the amount of Vitamin A than our current RDA. To attain these levels of vitamin A today from plant sources would be virtually impossible. (15) (16)
In 1945 Weston A Price discovered through the chemical testing of the organ meats, eggs and butter eaten by healthy traditional cultures an unknown fat soluble nutrient he called ‘Activator X.’ He discovered that the nutrient was present in higher quantities in the meat, milk, butter and eggs of animals eating quickly growing green plants in healthy pastures.
Dr Price found the nutrient played an influential role in the absorption of minerals, protection from tooth decay, growth and development, protection from disease and the healthy functioning of the brain.
A growing body of scientific work now confirms that the mysterious activator was Vitamin K2 which work synergistically with the other fat soluble activators vitamins A and D and is usually conveniently packaged with them in traditional fatty grass fed animal foods. (17)
Vitamins A and D tell the cells to produce certain proteins and vitamin K then activates these proteins. The K vitamins are also essential for effective blood clotting.
As illustrated in Kate Rheaume-Bleues’ ,‘The Calcium paradox’, vitamin K2 is the transport mechanism that gets calcium to your bones and eating calcium without sufficient K2 will be essentially wasted. Supplementing calcium could even be harmful in the absence of animal foods as it could increase the formation of plaque in the arteries or kidney stones if it’s not utilised in the bones.
Apart from fermented soya ‘natto’ and some other fermented vegetables, plants don’t provide vitamin K2. The K2 found in fermented foods is produced by the bacteria (animals) in the fermenting process. The K1 found in green leafy vegetables has a low conversion rate when ingested directly by humans – approximately 10% .
Vitamin K2 is thought to be one of the main nutrients responsible for the wide facial structures, lack of tooth decay and fine stature of the non-civilised people Weston Price studied in his research.
Weston Price found that ‘the diets of healthy, non-industrialised peoples contain at least four times the minerals and water-soluble vitamins, and ten times the fat-soluble vitamins found in animal fats (vitamin A, vitamin D and Activator X, now thought to be vitamin K2) as the average American diet.’ (18)
Modern diets in ‘civilised’ parts of the world are now based on processed foods, refined grains, sugars and vegetable oils. But even the animal foods we are eating contain only a shadow of the nutrients our ancestor’s wild meats would have offered up.
In one study Cows grazing pasture and receiving no supplemental feed had 500% more conjugated linoleic acid in milk fat than cows fed typical dairy diets. (19)
In another study, fatty acid profiles were significantly modified by different diets in milk cows. CLA, vaccenic acid (VA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) significantly (P < 0.05) increased in plasma as a function of the proportion of pasture added to the diet. (20)
In a study on lamb by Bristol University the favourable fatty acid profiles of lamb improved when lambs where grazed on habitats with a greater diversity of species against a control of lowland pasture.
It’s clear from numerous studies that animals eating a natural diet with produce meat, milk and eggs that are higher in many of the nutrients helpful to human health. It is also clear that the health of the land, diversity of the habitat and breed or species of the animal influences the potential health and therefore the produce it supplies. Choosing produce from animals that have been reared in ways that mimic nature will outperform those which have been reared on un-natural foods in confinement every time.
I need no convincing that a diet high in poor quality and processed animal proteins is bad for your health and I would also like to make it clear that I’m not necessarily suggesting a high-protein diet is a great idea either, especially it reduces the amount of nutrient dense veggies you eat. Individual health, associated eating habits, quality of food choices, hormones, common gene mutations and the composition of our gut microbiome are hugely influential on how successfully we utilise and convert nutrients. Some people will manage very well on a vegetarian diet who others will feel and look terrible. A vegetarian diet based on junk food is a very different deal to a raw food diet which includes pastured eggs and raw milk. We need to be careful about jumping on a bandwagon or making sweeping statements. (21)
That said there’s no credible evidence that being a vegetarian is any healthier than being a health-conscious omnivore. (22)
There are many studies being thrown around to ‘prove’ a vegetarian diet results in better health but in nearly all of them they are loaded with what is known as the ‘healthy user bias.’ The healthy user bias occurs because the type of people who would take a huge step like cutting out an entire food group from their diet in the name of improving their health, are already some of the most health oriented and ethically minded people within society. (23)
To compare vegetarians with a general selection of meat eaters which includes a considerable number of McDonalds eating and sugar addicted elements of society is a tad unfair! But even with a fair heap of healthy user bias included, this study found no difference in mortality rates between vegetarians and meat eaters in the UK. (24)
Here’s an example of why these types of studies don’t prove cause:
This study compared smokers with non-smokers and analysed their consumption of vegetables and other healthy habits.
‘Although Americans as a whole have unhealthy diets, smokers appear to have worse diets than their nonsmoking counterparts. Prior epidemiological studies have shown that smokers consume more fats, alcohol, and caffeine and less fruit, vegetables, and fiber than nonsmokers.5–7 These unhealthy habits are evident even among adolescent smokers. Teenage smokers are more likely to skip meals8,9 and eat less healthy foods10 than their nonsmoking counterparts’.
From this study, you could conclude that smoking somehow stops you eating vegetables. The more sensible conclusion, however, is that people who smoke aren’t educated in healthy eating choices or don’t give a hoot about their health.
Thankfully there is one study that does consider this healthy user bias. This study compared omnivores and vegetarians that both shopped in health food stores and found no significant differences in rates of mortality even though vegetarians are likely to be consuming far higher amounts of nutrient dense vegetables.
This study also studied omnivores and vegetarians that were considered healthier than the average population and found no statistically significant differences in rates of mortality.
Being a healthy vegetarian seems to be as achievable as being a healthy omnivore, but remaining healthy as a vegan for a prolonged period is a far harder task. Vegans need to supplement heavily and there’s little room for ‘empty’ calories; every mouthful should contribute towards a carefully planned nutritional plan that fills all the gaps.
Be aware that we have no historic evidence of any healthy cultures that didn’t eat at least some animal foods, nor do we have any long-term evidence of vegans that have maintained robust health for more than one generation. If you choose to follow this diet you’re part of a rather uncertain human experiment!
I would love to hear your thoughts on ‘Are you missing out? The potential nutrient deficiencies of a vegan diet’ below.
For many more links to relevant research and evidence please take a look at the ‘healthy Omnivore‘ board.