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’.
Pic Credit
Pic Credit
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.
Pic Credit
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.
