To become a vegan?

[MissDallas]

OK, I am not your typical hippy type, I have hair extensions and I like fake tans and I have a corporate job. Not sure what that's got to do with it, but wanted to paint a picture.

I have been thinking about becoming a vegan for some time. I hate the way animals are treated in factory farming, it is so cruel. Also in my line of work I have come to know several facts about how meat is produced, mutated chickens, etc and it's awful. I used to think they were urban myths but sadly not. The horse in the ready meals scandal got me thinking as well. We can't even be sure what animal we are eating. Also the hormones, ammonia and other shit used in food... it's all horrible.

On a personal level, I would like to be healthier. I'm always stressed and tired, I'm also overweight.

I keep reading lately about the benefits of a plant-based diet. And people who do 42 day juice fasts and complete my change their health and become happier as a result. It's got me thinking... should I become a vegan?

Is anybody else considering it? Is anybody here a vegan? What do I need to know? Can a vegan diet give you all the nutrients you need? AIBU? Thanks.

Do it! I went vegetarian when I was 11, I was for 21 yrs. I did try Veganism when I was around 16 but it was a lot harder then as less information and my cooking and nutrition skills were awful. I have been vegan for a year now and loving it this time around. I do it for several reasons,
1: The love and respect for other life - there are no happy animals running around fields then saying ok I'm ready for slaughter now so you can have dinner, so ethical meat and dairy is BS
2: Health reasons - I feel lighter, I am slimmer and fitter. People on a plant based diet are less likely to get cancer, suffer with cholesterol, hear disease, osteoporosis and the list goes on.
3: The environment- raising animals for food is responsible climate change, 50% of water usage, water pollution, hunger in the 3rd world, rainforest destruction

I can spout out lots of facts and information but it's all out there so will just point you in the right direction.

Watch on Netflix

Earthlings - If you can stomach it (if you have the balls to eat meat you should have the balls to see what animals go through for you to have it)

Cowspiracy - produced by Leonardo Dicaprio, it will explain the environmental
Impact raising animals for food has.

Forks over knives - how a plant based diet is healthier for you

Vegucated - award winning documentary follows a journey of 3 people going vegan for 6 weeks.

Reading -
PETa.org.uk
Vegan life magazine

Social media accounts
PETA UK
vegan community
All the above documentaries are on Twitter and Instagram

Not sure where you live, but I am in SW London and there are lots of Vegan places to eat. I was just out in Brixton last night at the Veg Bar, a totally vegan restaurant. Also in Brixton is Ms Cupcakes a totally vegan bakery.
Whole foods caters for vegans, they even do healthy ready meals if you don't have time to cook, fresh Buddha bowls, or frozen foods like Amy's kitchen do vegan lasagne and macaroni cheese..
As Nature Intended have vegan sausages, burgers etc and some amazing vegan cheeses (I recommend vio-life).

Every year there is Veg Fest at Earls Court, you could go along to that as well to try new foods, and discover vegan clothing and make up.

Shopping places
Matt & Nat vegan leather bags and purses.
Urban outfitters also do quite a few vegan leather coats and bags.
Ethical wears - shoes and clothing
Vegetarian-shoes
Willis London

People on a plant based diet are less likely to get cancer, suffer with cholesterol, hear disease, osteoporosis and the list goes on

AS far as I'm aware, there is no evidence at all for this suggestion (notwithstanding the incredibly vague assertion you made).
If I am incorrect, could you point towards evidence. Thanks.

I dunno... life is for living. People who don't give up animal foods wouldn't enjoy their food as much. (wish I could say that in a thousand times more witty way)

A problem with cancers is that cancer isn't all same disease. Plus you can have a high veg/fibre diet & not be vegetarian.

Quite a lot of evidence here:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/

"The major benefits for patients who decide to start a plant-based diet are the possibility of reducing the number of medications they take to treat a variety of chronic conditions, lower body weight, decreased risk of cancer, and a reduction in their risk of death from ischemic heart disease."

Have only skim read so apologies if repeating.

Sea vegetables are very useful - mara dulse seasoning, waitrose seaweed strips, clearspring packets etc

Have as varied a diet as possible, hemp oil sometimes instead of olive and rapeseed oils eg

Quinoa is marvellous

So are chia seeds - great egg substitute in baking, puddings etc

Rotate your milk substitutes - you can now buy hemp milk, rice milk, cashew milk, quinoa milk and almond milk as well as soya milk

Avoid refined carbs such as white rice - long grain brown basmati has the lowest GI score of rice.

Thats one article, Grumpy, and not a very good one at that. Poorly defined and way too many confounding factors. That case study is a joke!

Like I said, very little evidence. A healthy plant based diet and a healthy diet containing some animal products can be equally healthy.

That Permanente article included Mediterranean diet as a plant-based diet... There's no consensus how to define the Med diet. Plus, it definitely isn't vegan.

I think the evidence is pretty solid that a plant-heavy diet is very healthy (advantageous) for people, compared to diets low in fruit+veg. Not on an individual level, but looking at whole population groups, the group that eats more F+veg is healthier. Not so established that a vegan diet confers wide advantages compared to (say) the Med diet, or a traditional Japanese diet, etc.

I agree with this " A healthy plant based diet and a healthy diet containing some animal products can be equally healthy." I feel it's much better and more natural and healthier to eat fish, eggs, meat etc which I will continue to do but huge amounts of what I eat are veg (by volume). I think those who eat in a healthy way have much more in common than those eating junk food even if some of us eat meat and others not or (me) eat paleo and eat no dairy products.

What Lustig and others have found is it is sugar and fructose which is the killer. You can eat vegan and main line oreos and use lashings of sugar or you can eat much as I do - loads of veg and you have beans (and I have eggs/fish). Vegan isn't always healthy eating if you're maxing out on the sugar as plenty of people do.

For those that asked, I was on iron and B12 supplements, then had to have weekly B12 injections and was at the point of needing an iron infusion. I have an autoimmune issue so I wasn't absorbing the nutrients properly from non-heme. I also can't tolerate beans and lentils very well, so that was my issues, personal to me. Like I say, veganism just didn't work for me despite what I think were my best efforts to make it work.

It sounds like you stuck with it far past the point that others would have packed it in, mrsmiggins - proper courage of your convictions stuff!

And yes it is very easy to be an unhealthy vegan, dammit. I've had to make an effort to lose weight as there are too many vegan tasties out there

My daughter and I are doing a vegan month at the moment, we're one week in (we normally never eat meat, and only very occasionally eat fish and seafood). I'm already thinking about extending it. I'll never be a fully fledged vegan because of my love for cashmere, but the dietary side really suits me.
We figured out that half of our meals are vegan anyway. I was crying over the milk in my coffee, but we both found good substitutes (coconut for me and chocolate soy for her). Vegan cheese works very well in toasties, so I'm good for now .
She's 13, and has never been an adventurous eater, but over the last week has taken a great interest in food and tried some new things. She's also baked me the most amazing vegan chocolate cake for her birthday.
We're also taking a B12 supplement, but I've read that this doesn't really work. That worries me.

Oohhh IIjkk if you think food without meat is less tasty you're doing it wrong! 😉 The best thing about veganism for me has been the crazy amount of new food and flavour combos I've tried - so many delicious things out there I had never bothered with before. I do really enjoy cooking though, so that makes life much easier 😊

Totally agree with PPs that a vegan diet is only as healthy as you make it - would be quite easy to eat Oreos all day and end up with all sorts of deficiencies. You really need to make sure you're getting plenty of everything you need, in which case I would argue that it's just as (ahem, more!) healthy than a diet with meat incorporated into it. But really, just knowing I'm no longer contributing to any suffering (and those who eat 'organic' and 'ethical' meat are no better than those eating 'free range' - some animals may suffer slightly less but I just don't think that's really any kind of justification) makes the hard work worthwhile.

(oops, three posts in a row, sorry!)
bestcat got a recipe for that chocolate cake by any chance? I've been looking for a good one!
B12 is absorbed through the mouth - I've been taking tablets with lots in it so I'm sure I'm still getting plenty, but you do get a spray for under your tongue too so that might be the way to go if you're worried!

Wasn't really a point about me @AllofTheWine. Just what others say. Including plenty of posters on MN. There's no shortage of people online saying they tried vegan diet & found it very dull. That's without those who are horrified at thought of no meat looking at DD.

Funny your user name, I had the impression that finding vegan wine can be quite challenging!

Myself, I love veg, btw, could eat variations on fruit & cooked veg all day long. But to have to be purist & pernickety about what's in everything, ugh. My old boss who has been vegan for 40+ years (and looks amazing for it!) admits he occasionally lapses (had some real cream on scones while in England, for instance). On bright side, I finally found a decent vegan creamer for tea (Oatley cream). I would sorely miss real cheese, though.

Ooh, must try that in coffee lljkk, sounds like that would be lovely. It can be rather difficult finding vegan wines (can't easily pick one up in the shop without some research!) but there are lots of lovely ones out there :) barnivore.com is a good resource when out and about to check if it doesn't say on the bottle (which isn't often!).

Info is here LionsLedge - quite hard to get vegan wine, alas. Sainsburys' Winemaker's Selection (red) often is though, for which I love them dearly.

www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/is-wine-vegan/

Fair enough to criticize that one study but where is the idea that there is no evidence coming from?

There is no real evidence that a healthy vegan diet is any better for you than a healthy diet which includes fish, or meat, or dairy. None at all.
There is plenty of evidence that a healthy vegan diet can be very very good for you. That is not at all the same as any began diet automatically being healthier than any other healthy diet.

That doesn't stop vegans asserting it as fact, as we can see from this thread. It's mere opinion though.

Because there isn't! Until you do massive scale studies comparing a vegan diet to many other kinds of diet, there is no real scientific evidence.

You say: but I'm now quite skeptical when anyone says there is no evidence at all that a vegan diet may be healthier than one that includes animal products.

Important word is MAY be, you say it yourself. It MIGHT be healthier, but you can't say so. Where are the studies comparing vegan diet to say, a traditional japenese diet? OR an Inuit diet? Or a lacto-ovo vegetarian with supplements diet? Or any others....

It might be healthier, it might not. Neither your nor I could possibly say. You can read all you like, but if you read that vegan diets are always healthier than none vegan, you're reading nonsense.

@LionsLedge:
In addition to massive long-term cohort studies (what I think Tigger means), there are studies called "systematic reviews" and a technique called meta-analysis. If you want, look on Google Scholar for studies with those words in the title that are about health benefits of Vn diets. A systematic review starts out by trying to find every relevant study that looked into a research question. Then the quality of each study is rated to see if it was done to a reasonable scientific standard. Where possible, certain results can be combined (eg, heart attack or cancer rates) to see what the combined result is for entire population in condition X (compared to some kind of group with condition Y). A systematic review can take months to complete. It isn't simply writing about a few studies you find in the afternoon on Pubmed.

Coz it's easy when oodles of research has been done to cherry pick results from individual studies in a regular 'review' paper, and proclaim almost any rubbish.

Us medical researchers are a very cynical lot. We have detailed checklists to try to figure out what is or isn't good quality research.

Example systematic review that found that vegans/vegetrians definitely had less bone density than non-Vs, but the bone density difference was clinically insignificant (doesn't matter).

ps: does anyone know how to sort Google scholar results by number of citations? Gosh that would be useful.

ps: in academic speak, when some studies report benefits but no thorough effort tried to check all such studies, or we found almost all such studies but the comparisons are mostly uncertain, we say something like "A vegan diet may confer health benefits (and we probably can't say why)" I suppose that finding is 'evidence', but it's not firm evidence, iyswim.

If you want to take time to find & link to some firm meta-analysises on vegan or vegtn diets, I'd be happy to see them. :)