Are you an ex-vegan? If so, I’m probably not the first one to tell you this, but you did veganism wrong. Credible organizations have touted the benefits of a vegan diet. Veganism is appropriate for all stages of the life cycle — science has proven this. Therefore, if you didn’t function well as a long-term vegan, there’s only one possible explanation: you fucked up. There’s a few ways you might have done this…
You were a junk food vegan. Sure, you were vegan for the right reasons. You only cared about ethics, and not at all about health. But this was short-sighted. By merely replacing hot dogs with soy dogs, and by not dumping spirulina and nutritional yeast on everything you ate, you ultimately did a disservice to the animals. Now you’re a carb-cutting caveman and “feel alive again” after all those lethargic vegan years. Hey murderer, guess who doesn’t feel alive anymore? Do the words “moo,” “cluck,” “oink” or “baa” mean anything to you anymore? Probably not. But if you had done veganism correctly, you AND THE ANIMALS could be feeling alive right now.
You were macrobiotic. How could you follow the advice of a non-scientist who believed in the yin and yang of food, judged health by how much white showed underneath the iris of your eyes, was pro-smoking, insisted that people with large earlobes had a stronger constitution than those with small earlobes, was addicted to salt, and then died in his 70s? Yes, the actual food recommendations of whole grains, vegetables, beans, nuts and (non-tropical) fruit might have fit well with the general vegan conception of good health, but you should have considered the source of this information — a raving lunatic. Now you’re the raving lunatic, warning everyone you meet about the supposed dangers of the world’s healthiest, most compassionate lifestyle.
You were a raw foodist. You believed that the enzymes in vegetables helped to digest those vegetables. Is it any wonder that now you don’t even eat vegetables at all?
Those three interpretations of veganism seem to be the main culprits when vegans explain to ex-vegans what they did incorrectly (even though raw vegans and macrobiotics are usually considered the most healthy vegans while they are vegan). But now some vegan nutritionists, backed by recent research, are talking about a new wrong way to do veganism: low-fat veganism.
Vegan dietitian Virginia Messina (“Ginny” to her fans) had been skeptical of low-fat veganism at least since the beginning of her blog, which she started in 2007. In her fifth entry, The Mediterranean Vegan, she wrote:
Low-fat diets are sometimes touted as the healthiest way to eat, but that’s an old-fashioned idea. … Cooking with moderate amounts of oil can actually help you eat more healthfully since it improves the flavor of nutritious foods like vegetables and beans.
Fat also makes meals more satisfying. Some research shows that adding moderate amounts of fat to menus helps people achieve long-term weight loss. It also improves blood lipid values. And nuts and seeds are also healthful foods that contribute nutrients and phytochemicals to the diet.
Yet vegans still continued to sign up for Dr. John McDougall’s low-fat, high-starch tropical getaways. But in a blog entry last month, Fat in Vegan Diets: How Low Should You Go?, Ms. Messina finally threw down the gauntlet:
Anyone who is taking a serious and honest look at the research on diet and heart disease has to question the low-fat approach. …
Very low-fat diets produce a type of LDL-cholesterol that is very small and dense and more easily incorporated into artery-blocking plaque. Because of these effects on HDL levels, triglycerides, and LDL size, many researchers question whether very low-fat diets are a wise choice for people at risk for heart disease. …
Some high fat foods—nuts in particular, but also soyfoods—appear to have benefits for heart disease that aren’t related to cholesterol levels. Unfortunately some low-fat vegan diet plans severely limit these foods or even eliminate them altogether.
And while low-fat eating plans have been promoted for weight loss, they tend not to be effective over the long term. Some research shows that including higher fat foods—like nuts or avocado—in meals helps to make reduced-calorie diets more satisfying and actually promotes better long-term weight control. …
The idea that we need to avoid all dietary fats, including healthful plant ones, is outdated and perhaps even harmful.
With this, some comments on her own entry, and a similar follow-up entry, Messina has unmistakably distanced herself from the advice of accredited low-fat vegan advocates T. Colin Campbell, Neal Barnard, Caldwell Esselstyn and John McDougall.
Being a vegan dietitian without the guiding north star of “The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted” could have been lonely, but so far at least one major vegan nutrition authority has shredded his copy of The China Study to join Messina’s anti-low-fat-veganism team: Jack Norris RD, the founder of Vegan Outreach and VeganHealth.
As Jack Norris has become the most trusted dietitian for a certain segment of the animal-product-free population, his official siding with Messina against low-fat veganism is significant. In fact, it’s starting to look like there is only one correct way to do veganism left: the Jack Norris/Virgina Messina approach.
What is this approach, exactly? Well, the beauty of it is that it’s relatively difficult to define. It’s not low fat, but it’s also not high fat or high protein. There are general food recommendations, but only minimums, no maximums. Unlike raw foodists and macrobiotics, Norris and Messina are reluctant to say if there is any vegan food that must never be eaten at all. This gives vegans more leeway to figure out the diet that works best for them, while the recommended daily minimums of fruit, nuts, grains, beans and veggies make it hard to be a junk food vegan.
Since grains and beans both get the highest minimum recommendations (2 - 3 servings of each), Norris-style veganism might look like macrobiotics, but Messina prefers to call her version a vegan Mediterranean diet.
Like many vegan RDs, Norris became a registered dietitian to better promote veganism. Messina was a nutritionist first, then a vegan, but the latter wasn’t a development from the former; it was only after becoming vegan for ethical reasons that she “unlearned a bunch of the wrong ideas I had picked up throughout my schooling and work.”
Unlike other schools of vegan nutrition, Norris and his ilk don’t claim that veganism is always the healthiest diet. Veganism is for ethics, they argue, but with a good amount of planning, it is possible to be healthy as a vegan. As Messina put it, “A vegan diet is a great choice for healthful eating and it is an essential choice for an ethical lifestyle.”
Jack Norris/Virgina Messina veganism is not about maximizing human nutrition, it’s about making the best of an ethically mandated diet. Despite or (more likely) because of being dietitians, they don’t like the health argument for veganism. Messina explained why:
We have piles of good data about the benefits of eating more whole plant foods and a largely plant-based diet. What we don’t have (yet) are studies showing that vegans have significantly better health than those who eat mostly plant foods but still include some small amounts of animal foods in their diets.
That’s just one of the reasons I’ve never been a big fan of the “health argument” for vegan diet. If we are going to rely on the scientific data in a way that is smart and responsible—as all good vegan health professionals should—then the argument falls short of convincing.
The best advocacy is based on arguments that are rooted in solid fact—the ones that focus on the suffering of farm animals. When it comes to health, I’m not convinced that a few bites of chicken would hurt me. But I know beyond a doubt that those few bites would contribute to animal suffering.
This overriding concern with animal suffering does not make Norris and Messina totally blind to the pitfalls of a vegan diet. They acknowledge studies with unfavorable conclusions for vegans and vegetarians. They warn vegans to check their nutrient levels and supplement for deficiencies. They debunk self-serving vegan myths, like that dairy is bad for bones. They have pointed out cases where non-vegan foods are the best sources for particular nutrients, such as iodine and Vitamin A. (Of course they don’t advise vegans to make exceptions here, since animal suffering is their primary worry.)
Much of their advice is practical, not idealist. For instance, Messina likes processed vegan products because they make it easier to transition to veganism and stick with it. That fat restrictions make veganism less appealing is another reason she is against them.
As much as she would love to, Messina can’t proclaim the superiority of the vegan diet because she feels nutrition is still mostly uncharted territory:
The quest for a ‘perfect diet’ is pretty much a lost cause anyway, since nutrition scientists have yet to define that ideal. For example, common wisdom tells us to eat lots of fruits and veggies, but the science hasn’t been at all consistent about the benefits of doing so. …
Do we need more or less plant protein in our diets? Who knows? When it comes to nutrition, there are far more questions than answers about the best way to eat. I guess we can say with considerable confidence that an apple is more healthful than a Twinkie, but beyond that, it doesn’t pay to be too perfectionist about diet.
The more cautious (and vague) approach of Norris and Messina may alienate them from vegans who want to hear that veganism is a miracle diet and that eating any amount of animal product will kill you, but their moderate stance has helped them carve a niche for themselves as the most reasonable vegan dietitians.
It’s interesting that the most science-grounded people in the vegan nutrition world are also those who are most likely to have come to veganism through ethical concerns (Michael Greger is another example), but maybe that makes sense — if you think animal products are morally out of bounds, it’s safer to expose yourself to new research since you will want to stick with veganism no matter what the studies say.
With nutritional science turning against low fat in general, then, it’s not surprising that Norris and Messina are the early vegan adapters. And that looks good for them. But overall, the tide turning against a low-fat diet could be bad for veganism.
When you cut out all animal products from your diet, you are cutting out foods high in fat and protein. Even though that leaves nuts, seeds, vegetable oils, soy, olives and avocados, the foods that veganism bans means veganism naturally leans toward less fat, even for vegans who never bought the low-fat hype. When people talk about “good fats,” they might mean olive oil, but they probably mean fish.
Also troubling is that Messina and Norris are positioning themselves against the findings of T. Colin Campbell, whose book The China Study is what vegans point to when they want to prove that veganism is healthy. Campbell is more concerned with animal protein than fat, but he is definitely in the low-fat camp:
I begin with the view that a plant-based diet is optimal and it just so happens that this diet, when done right (good quality WHOLE vegetables, legumes, fruits and cereals), is low in fat as well as in protein. It is a diet that, for most people, is 10-15% fat, and 8-12% protein. For those who demonstrate vulnerability to health disorders, the fat intake should favor the lower side. Dr. Esselstyn (in his heart disease reversal study) and Dr. John McDougall (thousands of patients) have demonstrated this very clearly. …
[W]hen we compare the low fat Asian diet with the high fat Mediterranean diet, we see some very interesting but mostly unacknowledged findings. … Although much has been said about the lower cardiovascular and cancer rates among the Mediterranean people, this really means lower than the U.S. and U.K. In reality, the Mediterranean disease rates are significantly HIGHER than the rates of the rural Chinese. So my question is why ‘higher’. Is it because of their higher consumption of olive oil? I think that it could well be the case, especially given the adverse effects of monounsaturated fats on atherosclerosis lesions.
This is bullshit, according to Norris and Messina. But if even T. Colin Campbell is wrong, do vegans have any nutritional ground to stand on?
To paraphrase Virgina Messina: who the fuck knows?
At least we can say that the failures of macrobiotic practitioners and raw foodists show that vegans who get too restrictive in the name of health often end up the least healthy. And that goes for you anti-fat McDougallites too.
So vegans, you better get on the Norris/Messina train, or you might as well give up now.
