What seemed a bit crazy just a few years ago is fast becoming mainstream. Veganism — the practice of only eating plants, nuts, mushrooms, and legumes, and forgoing animal-based foods and products — is increasingly being talked about, studied, and actually practiced.
I’m guilty of occasionally scoffing at vegans, mostly politely, in past years. Then I met a lovely lady who has been vegan for almost a decade and, well, my tune changed a little because I began to take it seriously enough to actually research veganism. And my dating a vegan led me to eating an increasing number of vegan meals — and actually enjoying them. I eventually tried being vegan myself, as an experiment.
This piece will look at the nutritional science behind veganism, my personal vegan experiment, and the various motivations that might prompt one to adopt veganism, or at least try it.
First, however, I’ll explain why I previously scoffed at this lifestyle choice: I considered it extreme to the point of fetishism, and not well-supported philosophically. I’ve long flirted with vegetarianism and was mostly vegetarian for a couple of years about a decade ago. But I lapsed back into fairly regular meat- and dairy-eating habits.
While I’ve been vegetarian-friendly for a long time I didn’t see the more extreme vegan diet (vegetarians can eat dairy and eggs but vegans don’t) as necessary or helpful when vegetarianism seemed hard enough for most people to follow and already very beneficial in terms of ethics and the environment.
I kind of agreed with (the now late) Anthony Bourdain that vegans were a “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarianism.
In a previous column I critiqued the documentary Cowspiracy, which had an openly vegan agenda, for being guilty of fearmongering and playing loose with the facts. I still stand by that critique of the movie (the follow up by that same documentary team, What the Health, is far better), but I am now more sympathetic to veganism itself because I understand better the three main factors that motivate many vegans, and because I’ve experimented with it myself: 1) ethics; 2) environment; 3) personal health. Let’s examine each of these in turn.
The ethics of veganism
Yuval Noah Harari, a well-known historian and philosopher who also happens to be vegan, has pointed out in his best-selling books, Sapiens and Homo Deus, that while most humans are living in a golden age on this little planet of ours, having come so far from previous centuries in terms of health, wealth and happiness, the same cannot be said for our animal companions. In fact, he makes the defensible point that we humans are now responsible for more animal suffering than has ever occurred before.
Why? Because of the animals we raise for food and animal products like milk. We have literally billions of animals in unwilling bondage, often kept in inhumane conditions, and generally slaughtered in fear and suffering.
This is indeed unconscionable and any thinking and feeling human should think long and hard before participating in this system of sanctioned animal suffering and torture.
But what about dairy and eggs, aren’t those animals treated pretty well? Well, no. The large majority of animals kept for milk or eggs are not “happy cows.” They are in fact miserable cows and chickens.
Cutting out dairy was pretty easy for me. There are many vegan cheese, milk and yogurt options available now that taste as good or even better than the real thing. Even large grocery chains are starting to carry many varieties of vegan milks like almond milk, soy milk, mac nut milk, oat milk, etc. The latter is my favorite and I don’t miss dairy milk in my cereal at all. Now, milk in my coffee I do miss a bit still since none of the vegan options seem to work very well.
Cutting out eggs is harder because none of the vegan options I’ve tried taste very good or seem very egg-like.
This argument is an easy win for veganism: basic ethics weigh heavily in favor of a vegan diet, or at least a mostly-vegan diet.
The environmental case for veganism
Environmental impacts are a kind of ethical concern, but I’ll address them separately because we usually think of ethics as being about pain and suffering of animals.
We don’t need to debate the exact magnitude of the environmental impacts of livestock to agree that there is a massive impact on our environment. The sheer land area required for livestock is large and growing each year, requiring forests and wildlife habitat to be destroyed at an alarming rate.
The runoff and chemicals otherwise released into the environment from large-scale livestock farming are also massive and beyond debate in terms of their negative impact.
Similarly, we don’t need to debate the fact that livestock farming leads to a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions. I did in fact challenge the numbers behind Cowspiracy’s arguments with respect to climate change in my earlier column, but the fact remains that emissions are large even if they’re not as large as that movie claims they are.
Again, the environmental case for veganism is a pretty easy one to make, particularly when we look to the growth in population and wealth in developing nations around the world. If everyone on the planet ate a similar meat-oriented diet as in the U.S. — as they will if they continue their economic growth curves — it’s very clear that such livestock farming would not be at all sustainable on a global basis. It isn’t sustainable today and it certainly won’t be sustainable at twice or three times the scale even with better business practices.
The personal health argument for veganism
There is more space for reasonable debate with respect to the personal health issues surrounding veganism. Let’s, however, put one debate to bed right away: research has shown that vegans get plenty of protein from their plant-based diet. I can personally attest to this, as I’ll describe further below when I discuss my vegan diet adventure. Any arguments that vegans don’t get enough protein are not accurate.
A big factor in prompting me to try veganism was Rich Roll’s book Finding Ultra, an autobiography of his self-transformation from an out-of-shape attorney into a badass ultra-athlete who completed literally five back-to-back Ironman-length triathlons, on successive days on each main island in Hawaii — all on a 100% vegan diet. He also claimed in his book that since going vegan a number of years earlier he’s never had a sports injury.
As a similarly middle-aged attorney who wanted to get back into excellent shape, I found his story inspiring. Before I get into my own vegan experiments, however, I’ll talk a bit more about the nutritional science of vegan or mostly-vegan diets.
A recent column of mine discussed Valter Longo’s Longevity Diet and his excellent book of the same name. Longo argues that a mostly-vegan diet is the best diet for most people. Here are a few key findings from Longo’s and others’ research on vegan, veganish, and related diets:
· Risk of heart disease is dramatically reduced, particularly when combined with the fasting-mimicking diet and fish a couple of times a week (so not strictly vegan), discussed in my last column
· Risk of diabetes is also dramatically reduced. The best way to assess risk for Type 2 diabetes (adult onset and the most common type) is to measure abdominal fat by measuring one’s waist. And veganism (with occasional fish for best health impact), also combined with regular exercise and the fasting-mimicking diet, is a very reliable way to reduce belly fat and body fat more generally.
· Cancer rates are also much lower. A lot of new science is showing that animal protein, particularly processed meats, has a high impact on cancer risk. See Colin Campbell’s The China Study for more on this. Longo particularly highlights the benefits of fasting and fasting-mimicking diets for reducing cancer risk and improving the effectiveness of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, though there are apparently no completed clinical trials in this area yet. See Longo’s book for detailed recommendations on diet, fasting, and exercise for those with a high risk of cancer.
My vegan experiments
I recently finished a three-month vegan experiment, no cheats allowed. I built up to this by trying a number of other one-week or one-month experiments, including smoothie meals, gluten free and low carb diets, as well as a one-month vegan experiment, during the previous year. The three main motivations for this more committed three-month experiment was my partner being vegan and urging me to try veganism and educating me about its benefits, the Rich Roll book I mentioned above, and my own research reading Colin Campbell’s work (Whole and The China Study) and other writers, including Longo’s work.
I also like a good challenge and my mantra lately has been “if you can’t change yourself how are you going to change the world?”
I’ll summarize my three-month vegan experiment with some bullet points:
— It wasn’t always easy but I made it the whole three months with no intentional cheats. Ok, actually, right at the end I cheated a couple of times with fish.
— Being vegan is much easier if you can cook for yourself and live in an area that has good health food stores and vegan-friendly restaurants.
— Traveling can be more difficult because airports suck for vegan food. If anyone wants to discuss an idea for a vegan food restaurant chain for airports, my partner and I are all ears.
— I had been struggling with recurring sports injuries, mainly in my legs, from decades of running and tennis, and was determined to get as close as possible to 100 percent perfect health. The combination of my vegan diet, triathlon training, and curcumin, bioastin, niacin and various other supplements, led to big improvements but still not back to 100 percent (yet)
— My energy levels were lower for the first couple of weeks but I bounced back to normal pretty quickly. I didn’t find any great boost in energy or performance during my experiment (as some vegans report)
— My run times stayed about the same but my data were confounded by the fact that I got a mild cold early on in my experiment and it never went away!
— I’ve never had a cold last more than two weeks and this one lasted literally months. For a while I blamed it on the vegan diet but after my experiment ended I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted for a month, including meat and dairy, and my sniffles still persisted. So it seems that I just had a very persistent cold bug and I can’t fairly attribute my sickness to the vegan experiment.
— I ran an Olympic triathlon (the Lavaman event in Kona) toward the end of my experiment and I finished about in the middle of my age group. It was my first tri of any sort so I can’t make any comparisons. My ongoing cold definitely slowed me down, to the point where I couldn’t even finish my last training swim because I felt pretty crappy.
— I found that I craved fruit and veggies much more after being vegan for a while. The key shift in going vegan or vegetarian is learning to appreciate a meal as complete and satisfying without any meat or fish.
— I was able to reach my weight loss goal during my vegan experiment (twenty pounds lighter than when I started actively trying to lose weight 1.5 years earlier), but due probably more to my frequent training and intermittent fasting than to my being vegan. It’s surprisingly easy to eat a lot of calories and put on weight while being vegan, particularly if you’re not careful about carbs. French fries are my weakness… When traveling, however, French fries may be one of the few vegan options available in airports and such!
— About two weeks in I had a really euphoric day and I attributed this to the vegan cleansing effect. Rich Roll has talked about his euphoria about the same time into his going fully vegan.
— I definitely found my recovery time after workouts and races much faster than before. Rich Roll writes in his book that since going vegan he has never had an injury. That was a big motivator for me since I had been struggling for years with sports injuries. I recovered fully from a trial Olympic triathlon a month and a half into my experiment, and then the actual Lavaman event two and a half months in, within just two days each time, much faster than would have been the case otherwise. I wrote after my trial race: “two days after my tri trial run I feel almost back to normal and almost no soreness. All injuries feel great. Amazing.”
— However, 10 days later I wrote: “Also played pickleball a couple of days ago and still super sore in my piriformis muscles so going vegan has not been a panacea for sure.”
— I seemed to have no problem with getting enough protein (a common concern for those thinking about going vegan) since I didn’t lose any muscle mass as far as I can tell. Nor did I have any other obvious dietary deficiencies, beyond perhaps the mysterious lingering sniffles.
— I also found it interesting playing the role of “that guy” when asking about vegan milks or vegan food options at restaurants and coffee shops, and suffering judgments from asking such questions. After being a sometime scoffer myself, it was an interesting role reversal.
Ok, so here’s the one-line take home from my vegan experiment: I generally felt great, found it surprisingly easy to be vegan, and really enjoyed the guilt-free eating. I felt like I was achieving a higher realization of who I can and should be.
All that said, I don’t think being fully vegan is necessarily the best diet for everyone or for me. I wrote in a recent piece about Longo’s “longevity diet,” which is mostly vegan, because he believes that the best research weighs on the side of occasional fish and goat milk/cheese, andthat this “plant-centric” (but not plant-exclusive) approach seemed to be the most sustainable and perhaps also the most healthy diet we can aspire to.
I also think that going vegan is a massive leap for the large majority of people and it’s too much to expect for the average Joe or Jane in terms of achieving a sustainable long-term dietary and lifestyle change.
I really enjoyed my experiment and I have newfound respect and appreciation for vegans and veganism, but I am now on my long-term “plant-centric” diet, which is basically the same as Longo’s Longevity Diet. A future piece will report on my experience with this new diet.
So, should you go vegan or vegan-ish?
Summing up, the ethical and environmental arguments weigh strongly in favor of going vegan. The personal health impacts can in most cases also weigh heavily in favor of veganism, but with the caveat that some respected researchers like Longo don’t think a strictly vegan diet is the most healthy for most people. And when we add in the difficulty and personal sustainability factors (can people actually stick to a strictly vegan diet?) it seems that the personal health argument can go either way. We can argue reasonably in favor of strict veganism or vegan-ish approaches instead.
What is clear, however, is that the various arguments (ethical, environmental, health) all weigh heavily in favor of a plant-centric diet, whether that is vegan or “only” vegan-ish.
If you’re drawn to veganism at all I recommend that you give it a shot and see how it works for you. But if you find it too difficult to be strictly vegan don’t give up on the plant-centric approach. You’re allowed to be vegan-ish and still be in the club.
And if all of us simply cut out meat and dairy one, two, three or four days a week, we are still a big part of the solution to all of the problems I’ve described above.
