How healthy is veganism?

whiteonion

Most vegans I've met are vegans because of ethical reasons. I can understand why some people refuse to eat food made of animal meat. My question is, how healthy is this diet? Seems you will not get enough nutrients when you eat this way. Also a vegan diet means that most of your calorie intake comes from carbs and as we all know carbs are bad for you. A high carb intake means you are running the risk of developing type 2 diabetes further down the line. Many vegans eat soy and soy is also very bad for you.

Kadongy

I agree that you are unlikely to be able to get enough nutrients - numerous minerlas, including iron, would probably be lacking.

It's only simple carbs that are really bad for you tbh. I wouldn't think Vegans would be more likely to develop diabetes - probably less so. They are less likely to be fat I think, and the restrictive nature of their diet would mean they would probably eat less refined foods.

Overall I think that the only reasonable arguments for Veganism are ethical/environmental.

Here is a blog by a Vegan who changed their mind for health reasons:

http://voraciouseats.com/2010/11/19/a-vegan-no-more/

Here is a recent thread where the same sort of thing was discussed:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056192974

smellslikeshoes

whiteonion wrote: »

My question is, how healthy is this diet? Seems you will not get enough nutrients when you eat this way.

Not being able to get enough nutrients with a vegan diet is a total myth.
With a well planned vegan diet you get everything you need. If you struggle to get everything there are these amazing inventions called vitamin supplements :pac:

whiteonion wrote: »

Many vegans eat soy and soy is also very bad for you.

Soy is a very healthy food. The only negative I can see is the few studies over the last few years trying to connect it with cancer. The jury is definitely still out on that as for every study citing a negative effect there is a few citing an anticarcinogenic effect.
One thing that needs to be remembered with the soybean is it's been a staple of Asian food for 5000 years. It's not like it has suddenly appeared or anything and it's not done Asian people any harm :pac:
Soy for the most part seems to suffer from apprehension in the west because we are simply not used to it in the same way as eastern people.

whiteonion

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Not being able to get enough nutrients with a vegan diet is a total myth.
With a well planned vegan diet you get everything you need. If you struggle to get everything there are these amazing inventions called vitamin supplements :pac:



Soy is a very healthy food. The only negative I can see is the few studies over the last few years trying to connect it with cancer. The jury is definitely still out on that as for every study citing a negative effect there is a few citing an anticarcinogenic effect.
One thing that needs to be remembered with the soybean is it's been a staple of Asian food for 5000 years. It's not like it has suddenly appeared or anything and it's not done Asian people any harm :pac:
Soy for the most part seems to suffer from apprehension in the west because we are simply not used to it in the same way as eastern people.

I heard that soy can make men develop breasts and in girls it can cause menstruation to start earlier than it should.

paky

veganism is quite healthy provided you eat enough of the right stuff and avoid the bad stuff. ive been vegan for over a year now and only recently understood the importance of green leafy veg in the diet.
green leafy veg is by far the most important food for the human body and provides all the nutrients you may need to compensate for the lack of iron and other nutrients your body will be lacking.
i drink a green smoothie every day, spinach, lettuce or maybe cabbage juice. cabbage juice is absolutely discusting but i only drink it if theres no spinach in the supermarket.
if you make fruit and veg a priority you wont have to worry about anything else.

Kadongy

whiteonion wrote: »

I heard that soy can make men develop breasts and in girls it can cause menstruation to start earlier than it should.

It is full of plant oestrogens, so these effects seem plausible. Plant oestrogens seem quite nasty in general tbh, aside from undesirable hormonal effects.

It is extremely difficult to get enough iron, as well as other minerals on a vegan diet (outlined in the links I provided).

biZrb

Its possible to be healthy as a vegan, you just have to do your homework, and know what foods to include in your diet to give you all the nutrients you require.

Its a myth to say its impossible to get enough Iron on a vegan diet. There are loads of sources you just need to know what to eat and how much of it to eat to get your daily intake. There are meat eaters who are anemic just like there are vegetarians and vegans who are anemic. Its all down to them not eating properly, and not including the correct food in their diet whether thats meat or plant based food.

This is a vegan & vegetarian forum, you are not going to get many people with the same view as yourself here. We've heard it all before too about how bad our diets are, but we don't agree. We're healthy and happy!

smellslikeshoes

Kadongy wrote: »

It is full of plant oestrogens, so these effects seem plausible. Plant oestrogens seem quite nasty in general tbh, aside from undesirable hormonal effects.

whiteonion wrote: »

I heard that soy can make men develop breasts and in girls it can cause menstruation to start earlier than it should.

Sorry but that's rubbish, the phytoestrogens in soy aren't going to make men develop breasts. They effect reproduction in grazing animals but studies have shown that it doesn't effect human male hormone levels
Lets not forget that the soy has been a staple of Asian food for 5000 years, I think people might have noticed if there was a few hundred million Chinese men with breasts.

Frankly I'd be more worried about hormones in animal products like milk than soy. At least any hormones in soy are natural unlike what's been happening in dairy production in the last 50 years.

Kadongy

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Sorry but that's rubbish, the phytoestrogens in soy aren't going to make men develop breasts. They effect reproduction in grazing animals but studies have shown that it doesn't effect human male hormone levels
Lets not forget that the soy has been a staple of Asian food for 5000 years, I think people might have noticed if there was a few hundred million Chinese men with breasts.

Frankly I'd be more worried about hormones in animal products like milk than soy. At least any hormones in soy are natural unlike what's been happening in dairy production in the last 50 years.

There is research suggesting a link between dairy consumption and cancer. I think the main rationale is lower rates of certain types of cancer in countries where dairy consumption is low.

Absurdum

Kadongy wrote: »

It is extremely difficult to get enough iron, as well as other minerals on a vegan diet (outlined in the links I provided).

I donate blood every ~90 days, my haemoglobin level is always in the range of 15-20 g/dl. I personally know several non-vegetarians who tested for low iron levels who couldn't donate blood as a result. I don't take any supplements.

have a read of this (not just one person's blog)

Some might expect that since the vegan diet contains a form of iron that is not that well absorbed, vegans might be prone to developing iron deficiency anemia. However, surveys of vegans have found that iron deficiency anemia is no more common among vegetarians than among the general population although vegans tend to have lower iron stores.

The reason for the satisfactory iron status of many vegans may be that commonly eaten foods are high in iron, as Table 1 shows. In fact, if the amount of iron in these foods is expressed as milligrams of iron per 100 calories, many foods eaten by vegans are superior to animal-derived foods. This concept is illustrated in Table 2. For example, you would have to eat more than 1700 calories of sirloin steak to get the same amount of iron as found in 100 calories of spinach.

Absurdum

Also, I eat loads of soya products and I don't have moobs.

Kadongy

Absurdum wrote: »

I donate blood every ~90 days, my haemoglobin level is always in the range of 15-20 g/dl. I personally know several non-vegetarians who tested for low iron levels who couldn't donate blood as a result. I don't take any supplements.

have a read of this (not just one person's blog)

Interesting. How do you consume enough - just eating loads of green leafy veg and drinking fruit juice?, or other things as well? I've no doubt that you would need to be both well-informed and very considered in planning your diet.

sweetoblivion

Kadongy, if you're very interested in this why not pick up Becoming Vegan, it is written by two dieticians and tells you everything you need to know about getting the right nutrients on a plant-based vegan diet.

I always find it funny that vegans/veggies get quizzed so much on what we eat and how nutritious our diet is...when I was an omni and eating absolute ****e food no one ever asked me whether I was getting enough iron. I didn't eat crap food because I was omni, I have to stress that point - but when I started eating veg (and I ended up being vegan by default as I'm lactose intolerant and never ate eggs unless they were in baked goods) I took a long look at my diet and overhauled it completely.

If you are vegan or omni and eat lots of processed foods and very little veg, fruit, whole grains, nuts etc you won't be healthy. I don't think the average meat eater assesses if they're getting enough iron through their meat, they just eat meat whenever they want. Whereas as many of us veg*ns are very careful about getting in green leafy/cruciferous veg every day etc.

Also, I know lots of omnis who have been b12 deficient and anemic. I rarely ate red meat and ate a crap diet and was never deficient in either. Sometimes people just absorb different nutrients in different ways.

The jury's out on what the healthiest diet is but I would say that eating a plant-based vegan diet is good for you - much better than a standard processed food diet that a lot of people live off. Surely a veg juice is better than a bowl of Special K for breakfast, for example

Absurdum

Kadongy wrote: »

Interesting. How do you consume enough - just eating loads of green leafy veg and drinking fruit juice?, or other things as well? I've no doubt that you would need to be both well-informed and very considered in planning your diet.

I don't plan. If I'm hungry, I eat! It's as simple as that. My fridge/cupboard isn't full of crap. That's all there is to it.

Kadongy

sweetoblivion wrote: »

Kadongy, if you're very interested in this why not pick up Becoming Vegan, it is written by two dieticians and tells you everything you need to know about getting the right nutrients on a plant-based vegan diet.

I always find it funny that vegans/veggies get quizzed so much on what we eat and how nutritious our diet is...when I was an omni and eating absolute ****e food no one ever asked me whether I was getting enough iron. I didn't eat crap food because I was omni, I have to stress that point - but when I started eating veg (and I ended up being vegan by default as I'm lactose intolerant and never ate eggs unless they were in baked goods) I took a long look at my diet and overhauled it completely.

If you are vegan or omni and eat lots of processed foods and very little veg, fruit, whole grains, nuts etc you won't be healthy. I don't think the average meat eater assesses if they're getting enough iron through their meat, they just eat meat whenever they want. Whereas as many of us veg*ns are very careful about getting in green leafy/cruciferous veg every day etc.

Also, I know lots of omnis who have been b12 deficient and anemic. I rarely ate red meat and ate a crap diet and was never deficient in either. Sometimes people just absorb different nutrients in different ways.

The jury's out on what the healthiest diet is but I would say that eating a plant-based vegan diet is good for you - much better than a standard processed food diet that a lot of people live off. Surely a veg juice is better than a bowl of Special K for breakfast, for example

I might check that out actually.

Vegans and vegetarians get quizzed because people are curious about the diet. There's usually no reason to ask someone following a traditional/unrestricted diet about what they eat. It's an interest in the diet, not in you personally.

smellslikeshoes

Kadongy wrote: »

I might check that out actually.

Vegans and vegetarians get quizzed because people are curious about the diet. There's usually no reason to ask someone following a traditional/unrestricted diet about what they eat. It's an interest in the diet, not in you personally.

They're interested in our veggy diet, not us? /hurt feelings :pac:

Absurdum

Kadongy wrote: »

Vegans and vegetarians get quizzed because people are curious about the diet. There's usually no reason to ask someone following a traditional/unrestricted diet about what they eat. It's an interest in the diet, not in you personally.

There's a fine line between curiosity and patronising us, or at least it can feel like that. Would you ask a morbidly obese person about their diet, since it is quite apparent that they are suffering, health-wise?

seamus

Kadongy wrote: »

Vegans and vegetarians get quizzed because people are curious about the diet. There's usually no reason to ask someone following a traditional/unrestricted diet about what they eat. It's an interest in the diet, not in you personally.

Probably about 25% of the time.

The rest of the time they ask us so they can say things like, "But sure are you not just dying for a big dirty steak?" or, "But if God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?"

I imagine teetotallers get the same attitude. Sometimes it's "Oh that's interesting", but the rest of the time the attitude is, "Are you a freak or something? What's wrong with you?".

Breezer

seamus wrote: »

I imagine teetotallers get the same attitude.

Try being a teetotal vegan

(Although I may have been less teetotal recently, first lapse in about 5 years, will not be repeating same )

paky

the hardest thing about been vegan is trying to justify it.

i never tell anyone im vegan because i get the same stupid questions all the time normally beginning with ''where do you get your protein from (duhhh)?''

Ice.

paky wrote: »

the hardest thing about been vegan is trying to justify it.

i never tell anyone im vegan because i get the same stupid questions all the time normally beginning with ''where do you get your protein from (duhhh)?''

brianthebard

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Sorry but that's rubbish, the phytoestrogens in soy aren't going to make men develop breasts. They effect reproduction in grazing animals but studies have shown that it doesn't effect human male hormone levels
Lets not forget that the soy has been a staple of Asian food for 5000 years, I think people might have noticed if there was a few hundred million Chinese men with breasts.

There are as many studies showing that soy phytoestrogens are damaging as there are showing they are safe. And Asians have been eating fermented soy products for the majority of that time, not raw/unfermented soy.

Frankly I'd be more worried about hormones in animal products like milk than soy. At least any hormones in soy are natural unlike what's been happening in dairy production in the last 50 years.

What if the hormones in animal products came from soy???

Ice.

brianthebard wrote: »

What if the hormones in animal products came from soy???

Even organic, grass-fed cows have over 80 naturally occurring hormones.

brianthebard

Ice. wrote: »

Even organic, grass-fed cows have over 80 naturally occurring hormones.

Absolutely, so fearmongering about hormones is pretty pointless.

Ice.

brianthebard wrote: »

Absolutely, so fearmongering about hormones is pretty pointless.

They are hormones that are natural for cows, not Humans.

brianthebard

Ice. wrote: »

They are hormones that are natural for cows, not Humans.

And the soy hormones are natural for humans?

Ice.

brianthebard wrote: »

And the soy hormones are natural for humans?

Plant hormones, including most phytoestrogens, cannot be used by humans.

Ice.

whiteonion wrote: »

My question is, how healthy is this diet? Seems you will not get enough nutrients when you eat this way.

Such as?

Animal products are high in saturated fat, high in cholesterol, and are devoid of fibre and many other essential nutrients.

whiteonion wrote: »

Also a vegan diet means that most of your calorie intake comes from carbs and as we all know carbs are bad for you.

Carbs are NOT bad for you. A vegan diet can be high-fat as well as high-carb.

whiteonion wrote: »

A high carb intake means you are running the risk of developing type 2 diabetes further down the line.

False.

whiteonion wrote: »

Many vegans eat soy and soy is also very bad for you.

Most anti-vegan rhetoric seems to focus on soy as if thats the only thing a vegan eats. It might surprise you to know that a lot of vegans don't touch the stuff at all. As for weather soy is healthy or not? Thats another debate.

whiteonion

Ice. wrote: »

Such as?

Animal products are high in saturated fat, high in cholesterol, and are devoid of fibre and many other essential nutrients.




Carbs are NOT bad for you. A vegan diet can be high-fat as well as high-carb.



False.



Most anti-vegan rhetoric seems to focus on soy as if thats the only thing a vegan eats. It might surprise you to know that a lot of vegans deon't touch the stuff at all. As for weather soy is healthy or not? Thats another debate.

Ok carbs are bad for you, they lead to obesity and tooth decay. Carbs lead to higher blood sugar, which gives an insulin response. When you overload your body with carbs you will develop insulin resistance and later on type 2 diabetes. Carbs are among the worst things you can eat. There is no evidence that you need to eat a single gram of carbs at all.

danlen

Ice. wrote: »

Such as?.

There may be some problems with deficiency in a few nutrients on a vegan diet. As I don't want to give false information out, I won't list them until I've double checked, as at the moment I can't remember (typical me!). However, B12 is certainly one that vegans can have trouble with and usually will have to use a supplement.

Ice. wrote: »

Animal products are high in saturated fat, high in cholesterol, and are devoid of fibre and many other essential nutrients.

There are numerous studies which have confirmed the benefits of saturated fat intake in the diet (as a side note, coconut oil is awesome!). There is also a major lack of credible evidence to suggest that dietry cholesterol can significantly affect blood cholesterol levels.

Ice. wrote: »

Carbs are NOT bad for you. A vegan diet can be high-fat as well as high-carb.

While it is certainly true that one macronutrient group should not be consumed, I think the point trying to be made was that over-consumption of carbs can lead to a plethora of metabolic problems. However, I agree that a vegan diet is highly unlikely to result in this, as the type of carb being consumed is significant.

Ice. wrote: »

Most anti-vegan rhetoric seems to focus on soy as if thats the only thing a vegan eats. It might surprise you to know that a lot of vegans don't touch the stuff at all. As for weather soy is healthy or not? Thats another debate.

I have not done enough research on soy in particular to comment on its nutritional effects, although I have heard about some negative studies recently (again, I havn't read these so I can't comment on them). However, personally, my problemwith soy would be around the fact that almost all of the world's soy is produced via genetic modification/engineering. Starting to get a bit off-topic now so I'll stop there!

Squeaksoutloud

For anyone interested there is a movie coming out this year on the benefits of plant based eating and how it can be used to prevent heart disease and possibly other diseases. Its a little stricter than being vegan as oils and nuts are also eliminated from the diet but it is pretty much a vegan diet. Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish along with others have carried out studies where heart disease even reverses on this diet. Move link here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ijukNzlUg