Apr 04, 2006
Is the vegan diet healthier than alternatives? Many groups, including the (somewhat dubious) Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, the Vegan Society, and many other vegan advocacy groups all make claims about the healthiness of veganism. They claim (and their claims are occasionally backed by weakly supporting studies) that veganism offers lower risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, digestive ailments, and a host of other diseases. They claim that you will be more energetic, happier, and more fulfilled on a vegan diet.
Why is it then that the majority of people don't see the benefits and go vegan or at least vegetarian, what with so much public advocacy? The fact is that most people who are convinced even mildly by the arguments do... but only for a short time. There are many more ex-vegetarians and ex-vegans than practicing ones.
Vegan diets are not "natural" diets. Humans have been omnivorous since humans have been humans. Beyond Vegetarianism, a tremendous resource on these sorts of things, offers a brief evolutionary history of human diets. Further evidence of the non-naturalness of veganism comes from what veganism lacks - no "natural" source of B12 (deficiency of which causes nerve damage, metabolism failure, and other fun problems), and only mediocre sources of calcium. Vegans are advised even by the advocacy groups to take supplements for B12, and to consume foods fortified with calcium.
But these are easily attainable things. Multivitamins make everyone healthier, vegan or no, and it can be good practice in general to take them, so why not just go vegan for all of its benefits and stick to a supplement regimen? After all, it is not at all necessary that our modern, enlightened diets be archaic; only that they be an improvement over the past. Humans inovate, and veganism could be the next step after fire, the wheel and antibiotics.
I expect that most people's flirtations with vegetarianism or veganism end unglamorously - a moment of weakness together with the scent of freshly cooked bacon, or a cheese sandwich, or just the difficulty of asserting your dogma in an inconvenient time. The momentum of habit and majority of years of omnivorousness replace the ideal quietly. For others, there may be slow suffering from a more subtle problem - failure to thrive, in which one continues to believe in the regimen of choice, but nagging health problems come up. I have spoken to many people in the past who have dropped vegetarianism or veganism on orders from their doctor; I expect if they had paid more attention to their health than their dogma, they may have figured it out on their own.
Of course, not everyone fails to thrive - there are the "lifers" in the vegan and vegetarian crowds. I think that I fit into this category in terms of health - despite my gaunt 160 pounds for my 6'4" frame which I have maintained steadily for about 8 years, my 5 years of veganism have left me very energetic, capable, and athletic, even. I find vegan food very satisfying, and do not have temptations or lapses. By contrast, I find dairy products to be unappealing. I wonder at times if the vegan diet might contribute to long term problems that will appear 20 or 30 years from now, but the fact is there isn't much evidence out there to convince me either way. It is perhaps more likely that heart disease or cholesterol problems should befall me in that time if I ate a diet high in animal fat. Of course, it should be noted that omnivorous diets are not limited to the standard american diet.
In short, veganism is almost certainly not right for everyone, and the "all or nothing" approach of many promoters of veganism or vegetarianism is not ideal either. We are not (for the most part) believers in Christian purity - why should our diets make pretense to it? Would the occasional "approved" (instead of guilty) consumption of lean meat or dairy in a primarily vegan diet destroy its ethical sanctity? There is a disturbingly religous quality, a strong "ism"ness, to veganism. Party lines should probably be challenged - I think less emphasis on purity and more emphasis on reality would be an improvement.