Every time the word vegan is mentioned on these forums, there are always helpful people chiming in with advice about how vegans are all weak and sickly.
This particular time, I’m going to helpfully link to a YouTube search on the words “vegan bodybuilder” to demonstrate that there are vegans who could easily kick the arse of anyone on this forum.
Here’s a link to the PCRM study I mentioned upthread:
http://www.pcrm.org/good-medicine/2006/autumn/targeting-diabetes-groundbreaking-pcrm-study-shows
I’m wondering though–you keep mentioning “unprocessed food.” Sounds like you are thinking more in terms of raw foodism.
Vegan eating IS a challenge. You’ll need to get rid of most of the foods in your kitchen, and build all your meal ingredients from the ground up. You won’t be doomed to never eating out again, but you’ll be extremely selective of what you eat. You have to make a focused effort to get all your protein, but it’s not impossible.
Raw foodism, on the other hand, is an Olympian effort. If that is your ultimate goal, start out slow, maybe one or two days a week.
Keep in mind, there are no “Vegan police” hiding under your bed, waiting to jump out and bust you if you eat a single shred of cheese, or you had pasta made with egg. Do the research, read your labels, and make fully informed choices.
Best of luck!
~VOW
I’m not vegan, but here are some genuinely good things about the lifestyle (and yes, it’s a lifestyle and not just a diet)
[ul]
[li]You’ll become more mindful of the makeup of your food and thus more likely to avoid unhealthy things.[/li][li]Lots of fattening and unhealthy foods have ingredients derived from animals, being able to cross them out will make weightloss easier.[/li][li]It’ll make it easier to make friends with some very ethical people.[/li][li]The food you make may be bland but you’ll never accidentally offend your Jewish/Muslim/7th Day Adventist, ethical-omnivore or vegetarian friends. You’ll still offend the fruitarians, but screw them.[/li][/ul]
But based on whose ethics? Aren’t we all “ethical”. What makes a vegan more “ethical” than me?
The last vegan I interacted with was someone I was on a date with (met via a dating site, it didn’t come up in conversation before we met). Worst date I have ever had in my life. She ended up comparing me to Nazis, accused me of being a sympathiser of rapists and walked out on me. And this was despite me saying at one point “hey, I see we disagree on something here, but how’s about we move away from that and try and enjoy the evening”.
So sure, there are no doubt a lot of lovely vegans. Maybe even the majority. But like non-vegans, prepare to meet a lot of absolute dicks as well.
Presumably, the same thing that makes the Indian guy who lives on your block more “ethnic” that you.
Vegans are just about the most beautiful and healthy people I know. It takes time and discipline to get there and It is definitely not something to do for anyone else.
If people know that you are vegan, they are always expecting you to be picky, difficult, and anal retentive. That is one of the hard parts, dealing with people that do not understand or agree why one would be vegan. I have met vegans, mostly the young or recent converts to the diet, who seem to need to tell everyone how and what they eat.
Other then that, it is a great diet for health, and the attempt to eat food which does not cause suffering and bloodshed to other beings is a good feeling. Also, soy cheese tastes better than you might think.
The ones I’ve met do go on about it, that does get annoying. (and your post simply drips with perceived superiority) but I suggest that is a product of the boundaries they set themselves and the fact that they are so restricted. With something so fundamental as eating it is highly likely that the subject is going to come up with regularity.
Personally, I see no problem with killing and eating an animal for food or using the products of that animal. Meat? fish? leather? fur?..not a problem for me.
I do have a huge problem with animal cruelty but that is in no way at odds with my previous sentence, the big question is the degree of suffering, the quality of life and overall sustainability.
But to the OP. The best advice I can give is to avoid “going on a diet” and make a conscious decision to “have a diet”.
By that I mean choose something that you can stick to. Something you can live with long-term. You really can’t go wrong with plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables and well sourced meat and fish. Do your own cooking and care about your ingredients.
You can have an ethical and nutritious diet without tying yourself up in knots.
Unless of course you do have a problem with using animal products in general. In which case Vegetarianism and Veganism aren’t going to protect you fully from that You have to make a choice exactly how much of a hypocrite you are willing to be.
Only vegans who don’t really know why they are vegans annoy me.
Vegans are anal rentative because they have to be, if they’re actually serious about being one (and not just adopting it for trendy, superficial reasons). A person can’t go bonkers about eating honey, but not go bonkers over wearing wool or silk. Or reading books bound by animal glue. Or playing a violin bound by animal glue, with a bow made out of Mother of pearl and horse hair. That’s why it’s essential to have a good purpose. Are you doing it for health reasons? OK, well, honey is good for you. Are you doing it because you don’t like how animals are treated and you refuse to be a part of the system? OK, well, that’s great, but that means you can’t half-ass it. Part-time veganism for ethical reasons doesn’t make sense.
If you want more energy and clearer skin, do yoga. All that sweating seems to be especially good for my skin, but of course YMMV. It will make you more energetic for sure.
Personally I am trying to be more vegetarian, without making any commitments. My reasoning is simply that veggies require less energy to produce than animal products. Also, more veggies in my diet seems like a healthy move.
But vegan? To heck with that. Maybe if I had been born into it.
I’m just checking here. Pigs are technically vegetables, right?
All of this and bolding mine.
Cultivation of vegetables, fruits, legumes and grains also displaces and kills indigenous vegetation and along with it, wildlife - so it’s not like even “true” vegans are wholly innocent. Here in Michigan soybeans are a major farm industry, so tens of thousands of acres are plowed bare and denuded of anything that sustains wildlife to maximise profit. Same goes for most crops.
In any case, being a committed vegan is a lot of work. If all you want is better skin and more energy - exercise more, don’t smoke or drink (too much), eat less meat, fast food and over-processed foods and more vegetables, fruits, legumes and home cooked meals.
As Mark Bittman said: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Not a vegan but a few reasons:
Being vegan forces you to make conscious choices about what you are eating. Mindful eating is is one step to a diet that consists of fewer unhealthy choices and more healthy ones. Yes, you can still make crappy choices and even be a mindful - but stupid or ignorant - vegan. And you can make mindful and informed nutritional choices without being vegan. But it does force some decision making discipline on you.
Vegan diets contribute significantly less to greenhouse gases and utilize the food productive capacities of our planet more efficiently. (As alluded to by T2B Comprehensive.) Yes, you can do much of that good and still eat some animal products.
Sure vegan diets can be healthy, and so can lots of other diets.
How about just doing as T2B is doing and stick you toe in? Not go whole hog all at once, to use an inappropriate phrase. Maybe commit to X meals a week, or Y days a week as vegan if you think it may appeal to you?
What the heck? Of course it does! If you are a vegan for ethical reasons, your goal is presumably to reduce suffering. If you’re a vegan 50% of the time, you’ll reduce suffering by twice as much as it you weren’t a vegan at all. Whether you should still call yourself a vegan is a different matter, but that has to do with semantics, not with ethics.
Over time, I’ve come to eat an an almost entirely vegan diet. However, sometimes, like when I’m travelling, it’s almost impossible to avoid dairy, and on those occasions, I’ll eat dairy. Similarly, a lot of products have small amounts of animal ingredients in them. I certainly can’t promise that I read all the labels and avoid all of those products. However, I do try to pay a reasonable amount of attention.
Personally, I certainly wouldn’t call myself a vegan, because I’m not 100% vegan - I would say I’m at about 90%, most of the time. I do call myself a vegetarian, though. However, I certainly don’t think veganism is an all-or-nothing proposition. There is certainly such a thing as more or less vegan, and it’s certainly possible to become a vegan incrementally. The idea that you suddenly have to turn your entire life upside down in one big go will only serve to scare people away from the idea and make it all seem like an impossible undertaking. Veganism certainly shouldn’t be painful. In fact, I would say that if it is, you’re doing it wrong.
uh, the problem is that “reducing suffering” is like “raising awareness.” It’s a goal that cannot be determined if it has been reached, or to what degree.
Say I eat one less chicken every week. One less chicken is raised for consumption and killed. Global demand for chicken has gone down by one chicken. Say I reduce my consumption of milk. Less milk is now consumed. Fewer cows are now needed to produce the global demand for milk. What, exactly, is difficult about that?
EDIT: We are of course assuming that animals that are raised for meat or milk etc. are suffering, or may be suffering. If you don’t agree with that, well, OK, that’s a different side of the debate (and, of course, an important one!).
that only holds if the number of chickens raised and slaughtered is 1-for-1 with the number of chickens sold, which it is not. you personally deciding to stop buying chicken just gets lost in the noise.
Yeah, no point in doing anything, then. :rolleyes: Look, of course one individual person doing something doesn’t change the world. However, lots of people doing something does make a difference. Would you agree? The funny thing is, a group of lots of people still consists of a whole bunch of individuals, each of them doing their own little thing.
yes, but we’re not talking about eradicating polio, or easing famine in a blighted area (i.e. something that’s universally recognized as the Right Thing to Do.) we’re talking about someone’s personal choices on what they want to eat or not eat. if it makes you feel better personally to not eat animal-based foods, then fine. if your personal ethics require you not to, then fine. But to act as though your personal choice has any measurable effect towards “reducing suffering,” that’s nothing more than smug delusion.
well, if lots of people start agreeing with you, the “problem” takes care of itself.
You’re saying that one individual’s ethical choices are always meaningless because a) you’re just one person, so it makes no difference if only you do X, and b) if everybody did X, it still wouldn’t make any difference if you did X, because everybody else are doing it anyway? Therefore, no one should ever do X?
Yeah, that’s some water tight reasoning right there.
If what you’re asking for is some way to precisely quantify the amount of suffering you may or may not be contributing too, before you would consider veganism, then I’m not sure I can help you. We haven’t developed the suffer-o-meter yet.
One thing you say is true, though: What you eat is a personal choice, and in fact I would probably be a vegetarian even if I didn’t think it had any impact at all, because, well, I just like it.
While your ethical or moral actions will likely not save the world, they may very well preserve and promote one’s own sense of well-being when adhered to. You might want to look for a book called Eat To Live. It doesn’t necessarily promote veganism, and it’s too severe for my personal tastes, but it does have some good ideas such as avoiding processed foods almost entirely and eating nutrient dense foods almost exclusively. I’ve been trying to follow the guidelines and I do generally feel better from what I eat.
Yoga was mentioned above, and it’s an excellent point. Regular exercise can make a large difference in quality of life, and yoga seems to be an exercise that a lot of people can stick with.
Another thing that may be useful is learning the glycemic index for foods you commonly eat.