The Other Side to Veganism

Hello all,

So today I’m going to have a little talk about being Vegan. I’m sure a lot of people stopped reading as soon as the dreaded ‘V’ word came up. But this is not a ‘guilt trip’ post about why YOU should be vegan. This is a post about why I am vegan, and why I feel that I am forced to defend my choices on, what feels like, a daily basis. I will be referencing a recent article written by Siobhan Fenton for The Independent which can be found ‘here’, explaining the downfalls of the vegan ‘trend’.

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Firstly, let me explain my reasons for becoming vegan. Although the obvious animal cruelty breaks my heart, the thing that made me make the leap into Veganism was realising the environmental implications of eating meat and dairy. I won’t bore you with statistics and numbers, all I’ll say is that they were severe enough to change my mind, the mind of someone who has had chocolate and meat probably every day of her life.

I’ll move swiftly onto where my problems lie, mainly with the aforementioned article. Firstly, the headline is misleading, and it made me irrationally angry, it made me presume that the author is insinuated the vegan diet is unhealthy. Upon further reading I understood that what Siobhan is trying to say is that people who follow an uninformed vegan diet are putting their health at risk, which, in some ways is true.

Essentially I agree with the premise of the article, the idea that a misinformed diet is dangerous, but this is true for carnivores as well. Meat leads to cancer, milk actually sucks calcium from your bones, despite what you were taught the countries with the highest cows milk consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis. Additionally, approximately 65% of adults lack the enzyme lactase to effectively break down lactose, meaning well over half the population of the world is lactose intolerant. The meat and dairy diet which is considered ‘normal’ has to deal with higher rates of cancer and stomach issues, us vegans are left with protein, calcium and B12 deficiency. We have to ‘make up for what [we] don’t get in meat and dairy’ (cancer and diarrhoea)’.

All I seem to hear about is protein deficiency; ‘dieticians argue vegans risk not getting enough protein’. There are virtually no cases of diet caused protein deficiency, especially not caused by a veganism. It is virtually impossible; purely a myth. In fact, I read once, it’s so rare there’s not even a name for it. Check this out for some more facts about where we get out protein from, because I guarantee even meat eaters aren’t getting the majority of their protein from meat.

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I’m not slamming the article in its entirety. I agree that if you want to follow a vegan diet, you need to understand the best food to eat to fuel your body. Eating nothing but watermelon, although good for the environment, isn’t healthy, the author links to this useful article. I’m just expressing my frustration that the Vegan diet is one to be feared, it’s branded as not healthy because it’s not understood properly, myths around food are ones we need to break.