This is what will happen if you eat vegetarian, especially if you go vegan for any length of time
October 7, 2010 - 2:26pm
This is what will happen if you eat vegetarian, especially if you go vegan for any length of time. Maybe not all of these things. But some of them. You will wear our your insulin receptors. The human body was never meant to absorb that amount of sugar. You can call it “complex carbohydrates” if you want, but it’s sugar. The hypoglycemia will make you shake, sweat, and crave, god, those cravings. You’ll feel like you’re going to die if you don’t put food in your mouth every three hours, every two hours, then every thirty minutes after you eat. Hypoglycemia is its own emotional hell; the sudden weepiness, the temper fits, the instability. It’s inexplicable when you’re living I, and you also think its normal, just life. It’ll get worse every year. And yes, obviously you could do this to yourself as an omnivore. The standard US American diet contains vast quantities of sugar, with or without the meat. But it’s hard to avoid as a vegetarian unless you live on eggs and cottage cheese, and impossible to avoid as a vegan.
You will destroy your bones and joints. You won’t get enough minerals; unless you pretreat every seed (grains, nuts, beans), the phytates will bind with what few minerals you are ingesting; and you won’t have enough dietary fat to absorb whatever is left. And you won’t have enough vitamin D to build bone matrix, or enough zinc to build collagen.
The, polyunsaturated fats, unstable and rancid, will wreck your blood vessels, your heart. Without protective saturated fats, adequate protein, and enough vitamin D, you will be at tremendous risk for cancer, especially the kinds that kill. Remember the hunter-gatherers don’t get cancer. Remember who does.
The high omega-6s (and the nonexistent emga-3s) will create inflammation everywhere. Your joints, your blood vessels, your gut, your liver, your nerves, your brain are all potential victims. Maybe you’ll get fibromyalgia. Maybe you’ll get Alzheimer’s. Maybe you’ll have unnamed low-level pain where everything aches and you hate to be touched or jostled. It’s because everything’s inflamed.
On the low-fat and vegan versions especially, you’ll have menstrual problems, fertility problems. Jorge Chavaro and his colleagues at the Department of Nutrition at Harvard found that women who ate two or more servings a day of low-fat instead of full-fat dairy foods increased their risk of ovulation-related infertility by more that four-fifths. That’s 85 percent. You’ll get fibroids, cysts, endometriosis. If you do manage to have a baby, you’re five times as likely to have a child with birth defects.
You’ll strain your thyroid until you damage it. You may even kill it. I think of a twenty-four-year-old vegan I talked to. Arthritis in her kness, crippling menstrual pain, and a daily dose of synthroid. “Do you really think your body was meant to fall apart at age twenty four?” I urged. My information unmoored her but she was desperate. I know exactly how she felt. But her boyfriend was a vegan;so were most of her friends. I don’t know where she landed in the end.
You may destroy your stomach like I did. You hair will dry out, thin and your skin may get so dry it hurts. Your immune system, built from protein, won’t be strong enough to protect you. And it may kick into overdrive from all the plant lectins and their molecular mimicry. Remember who gets autoimmune diseases and who doesn’t.
You’ll be cold. Then you’ll be freezing. You’ll be tired and you won’t know why. Everything will become such an effort. You won’t understand how other people have the energy to go to school and then to work and then out dancing. It’s no normal to be that tired. I’m telling you; it’s not normal.
And then there’s B12. The sticking point. Just accept it; there are no non-animal sources of B12 and you can end up blind or brain-damaged without it. B12 deficiency also leads to infertility, miscarriage, and maybe Alzheimer’s. Just take the damn supplements. Here’s what you’ll do to your kids; neurological damage that could well be permanent. Breast-fed infants of vegan’s mothers can have brain abnormalities from lack of B12. Kids on vegan diets” demonstrated neurological impairments that persisted, even when animal products were added later” Similarly, B12 levels in the blood of formerly vegan children remained low even after animal products were added back into their diets. And vegan children scored substantially lower on tests measuring spatial ability, short term memory and ‘fluid intelligence, ‘defined as ‘the capacity to solve complex problems, abstract thinking ability and the ability to learn”. Another study found “major skin and muscle wasting---in 30% of the macrobiotic infants.
One researcher put in bluntly; “There have been sufficient studies clearly showing that when women avoid all animal foods, theirs babies are born small, they grow very slowly and they are developmentally retarded, possibly permanently….There’s absolutely now question that it’s unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans”.
In one small community of vegans, twenty-five infants had protein and frank calorie deficiencies, anemia from a lack of both iron and B12, rickets, zinc, deficiencies, and retarded growth. One baby died, weighing at five months less than when she was born”. I know what I did to myself being a vegan; I shudder when I think of what I could have done to s child.
Soy will make all of the above worse. You can do a lot of this damage on the standard American diet just as easily. The polyunsaturated fatty acids, the sugars, the omega-6’s, the plant lectins; it’s all there and call deadly, in the grains and their oils that we were never meant to eat. But you can fix it as a carnivore. You can’t as a vegetarian.
And then there’s your brain; the depression, the anxiety. Some proportion of you, especially the teenage girls, will end up with full-blown anorexia from trying to be vegetarian. PETA puts their ads with fluffy chicks and baby pigs in magazines aimed at teen girls. Never mind their endless misogynist ads, the live naked supermodels in cages; I can’t forgive them for going after teenage girls. One study found that only 17 percent of vegetarian girls consumed enough protein. It’s only a matter of time until the tryptophan-deprived brain becomes a disease, then a demon. In another study of teenagers, “all vegetarians weighed themselves more often and were more likely to say that they were dissatisfied with their bodies than non-vegetarians.” So it begins. PETA is willing to sacrifice these girls for the cause. I’m not.
You will not live longer. I remember absorbing the “fact” that vegetarians lived longer. Two years, five years seven years” I didn’t know the details but I repeated it to anyone who asked. And of course it’s not true. What is true is that people who choose vegetarianism are a health-conscious group; they also don’t smoke or drink and they exercise. Those are the variables that create a longer life span. Compared to the average US American, Seventh-Day Adventists have lower rates of “hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, colon cancer, prostate cancer, fatal heart disease in males and death from all causes”. Because Seventh-Day Adventists are supposed to refrain from meat; politicized vegetarians have raised these numbers as a battle cry. But comparing Seventh Day Adventists to the average US American is absurd, because they are also forbidden to drink alcohol and coffee and they are slowed to smoke. They eat substantially more fresh food and substantially fewer doughnuts. Of course they’re healthier. If you want to claim that their health is a function of their vegetarian diets, you need to find a cohort to compare them to; a group of people whose diets and lifestyle match that of the Seventh Day Adventists except for meat. Guess what? Those people exist. They’re called Mormons. Mormons also abstan from alcohol, coffee, smoking and lots of the generalized junk if SAD. But they eat meat. Guess who lives longer? Surely you’ve guessed the punchline: Mormons.
But even putting aside all the lifestyle differences that many vegetarians embrace-the abstention from cigarettes and alcohol, the exercising-the all cause death rate for vegetarian mean (0.93%) is still a little higher than for omnivorous men (0.89%). For vegetarian women, it’s substantially higher (0.86%) than for omnivorous women (0.54%)”. As early as 1970, vegan women were shown to have higher death rates from heart disease than nonvegan women. And vegetarians are 2.5 times as likely to die from metal and neurological diseases. Nobody told me that. I’m telling you.
And I’m telling you again that people on low-fat diets are twice as likely to die from violent death or suicide. Death if forever. So is suicide, especially for the people who find the body. My friendship circle lived through a spectacular suicide and yes she was an abuse survivor, but weren’t we all? She was also a vegan. Her mood disintegrated from depression and fits of anger to paranoid rages until she killed herself. Do I know for a fact that she would have found a way through if she’d eating some real food? No. The distance between endurance and despair can be measured in so many variables. But I know for myself that a little serotonin can go an awfully long way.
I know what you want to be true, vegetarians. You want to open the circle of concern to everything sentient. With all your hearts, you want us humans to be meant for cellulose or seeds or berries or anything that you believe can’t fell pain. And I’m telling you the truth; it doesn’t work. What you are mode of—bones, blood, brain, heart—needs animals. This is not the universe you wanted. But it’s the way the world, always alive and always hungry, works. You can try to live on those other things—the cellulose you can’t digest the seeds that fight back, the berries and their sugar. If you’re like me, you’ll do it until you’re half dead. If you’re smarter than me, you’ll learn. You want to open that circle, but in fact there’s no way out of it. We’re all of, seeded and feathered, rooted and furred, already in it.
Somewhere inside you is an animal that wants to eat. There’s no dishonor in that animal. She’s the same animal who wants to curl up around her sleeping beloveds, to keep them safe and warm. She’s the same animal who comes alive at the smell of rain. She’s an animal who belongs here. She’s four million years old. She’s in the shape of your teeth, the empty bowl of your one stomach. She’s in your stalwart heart, a hundred years strong, surrounded by animal fat. She’s in the fold of your brain, and the messages needed an answer. Your animal found language, art. She answered. She drew what mattered. Go look. The pictures are still there. She left them for you; take, eat, this is the body we have made, predator and prey together. This is the pact, the prayer, our true first communion, not wine, but blood; we are all part of each other. Bow your head and take aim. The take your turn. (Taken from "The Vegetarian Myth" by Lierre Keith)
October 7, 2010 - 11:04pm
#1
*Claps* The meat industry is hiring better representatives these days.
Maybe a vegan diet didn't work for you because of your body chemistry. Maybe you did it wrong. But I feel amazing. And I'm sure that for all of those studies you selected to represent your opinion there's equally as many to counter those for vegetarian diets. And I'm sure a lot of the vegetarian ones weren't paid for by the meat/dairy industry.
And don't pretend like you posted this here to save other vegans from this terrible fate you suffered. You are angry that a vegan diet didn't work for you (as it won't work for everyone), so you want to destroy the thing you believed in so much that let you down. I'm sorry that it didn't work for you. And I'm sorry you feel such a need to take revenge. I'm sorry that it disappointed you, let you down, almost destroyed your health. I hope you are doing better.
Just like you wouldn't want a crazed vegan telling you the meat industry facts, or a crazed religious person telling you what to believe/you are going to hell, don't come into a vegan board and religiously preach to us that our lifestyle will kill us.
I take pride in the fact that I'm not one of those crazed vegans out to deride every meat eater for their diet. Why don't you accept that you are choosing to see only one side of it and you are actively trying to destroy others' lifestyle choices that they may be very happy and healthy in?
October 7, 2010 - 11:05pm
#2
Did not see that last bit, that it was taken from a book. But I do not retract my statement.
October 8, 2010 - 12:11am
#3
I think I'll add some points you missed, if you don't mind.
All fruits are hybridized, and eating them in large quantities will rewrite your DNA structure.
Don't even think about going to banana island. Given enough time(varies with individuals) you will slowly grow into a banana tree.
You're going to be hot, all the time. Really hot. All that sugar is going to make you feverish as your body tries to literally burn the sugar away.
You're going to destroy your spleen. Bovine secretions are needed to stimulate antibody stimulation, and without organ meat the spleen isn't able to recycle iron.
You'll get better at first, but the transformation is coming. Fruit based diets might seem to improve your senses(particularly smell, like a fruit bat), but that's just the beginning. If you continue eating this way than one night during a full moon you will grow huge bat like wings and take flight in search of food. Even if you can forage enough to sustain you(compare the size of fruits and bats with humans and cows, its only logical who should eat what), you're going to look like a demon, and nobody wants that.
Then of course there's vitamin D, one of the many things you can only get from meat. Yeah, I know, you say we should get that from the sun, but we all know that's just going to give you cancer.
Studies show that 23% of vegans develop schizophrenia. Our brains are mostly fat, and unless you're gorging on avocados, coconuts, nuts, etc. you're not going to get enough fat without eating meat. I remember one prominent raw vegan, Harley I think his name was, promoted a low fat raw vegan diet. He uploaded videos to try and convince people the diet worked, then I saw one about a year ago where it finally seemed to catch up to him, I couldn't even finish the video. Sad, wonder what ever happened to him.
I'm sure I'm missing many, I can add more if wanted. I'm super serial about this stuff guys, be careful.
October 8, 2010 - 6:56am
#4
Im going to agree with Amm because I've probably had every title there is, one thing I've learnt in my journey is to shut up. Nobody wants to hear about their diet from someone else unless they seek your advice. I used to be a preachy vegan, but from my journey I know see how irritating it can be when someone shoves information down your throat about your diet.
October 8, 2010 - 2:44pm
#5
What a load of hogwash- I know people who haven't eaten meat /animal foods for 20+ years and are not weepy, irritable, tired, depressed, ill nor do they need to constantly eat etc. I myself haven't eaten meat since 1986. I'm 42 and everyone I meet say I look about 26.
October 8, 2010 - 4:36pm
#6
Go eat your processed foods and hormone/chemical injected meat that comes from unsanitary slaughterhouses where they chop the flesh you bite into that's been rolling around in feces, disease, guts, and blood. If you enjoy it, then go for it.
I do not appreciate, however, someone who feels they know the right way to eat and live and is pressuring everyone to follow- the "I'm right, you're wrong" scenario. Why are you even a member of this site?
I agree with amm170579. It probably just didn't work for you because you weren't following the path of a healthy vegan lifestyle. Maybe you consumed too much "vegan" junk that comes from packages, cans, and boxes rather than fresh living fruit and vegetables that is grown in pesticide free soil. Maybe you don't enjoy eating vegetables and fresh, green, luscious salads containing all the nutrition you need and would much rather chow down on a Big Mac. Maybe you didn't eat enough calories and you constantly wanted to eat but felt wrong to eat large quantities of fruit, veggies, or greens. Maybe you just gorged on nuts and too many raw desserts rather than eat your protein and greens, leading to sluggish and the feeling of being heavy. Maybe you don't exercise therefore have no energy. And are you Mormon? Because it sure sounds like you're trying to preach that religion up in here, stating that you'll live just as long, or even longer than a Seventh Day Adventist. This is NOT a religion board. And by the way, I come from a Mormon background, and there are plenty of vegetarians and vegans as well in that religion, just as many as the amount of hypocritical people who are members who try and show-face by acting all righteous and leading a double-life, because outside of church they sure as hell are not acting all supreme and holy (hence my reason for no longer practicing any organized-religion).
Bottom-line: I have been raw vegan for 4 years now and have never felt better than I do following this lifestyle. I did my research, and I continually do my research on nutrition to make sure I receive the adequate nutrition that I need to live healthy and to support my body. I do what I find works best for me, what makes my body, mind, and spirit feel good, and not what other people tell me will work. There is not single correct path in being raw vegan. I am an athlete and find that I have better endurance and performance compared to some of my meat-eating friends because my body doesn't waste energy with hours of meat digestion, but rather provides me with more energy to get through my day. And why is it that I can go through19-20 hour days and still feel energized and vibrant, without coffee, and have time for a full time job, night school, and the gym after school, and still come home and get a good night's sleep and still wake up earlier than people who go to bed way before me? Maybe it's because my body doesn't take up all the energy I have to process the steaks and chicken sandwiches that SAD eaters find will make them crash and pass out. How is it that I feel focused and do not cluster my brain with thoughts about my next meal, with thoughts about how delicious junk food sounds? Because I eat to live, not live to eat, which is where most SAD eaters fall into, because cooked food "just tastes so good!"
Obviously you are controlled by your mind and the desire to eat what you were trying to give up, and it didn't work for you, and you didn't have the willpower. Then again, you may have gone vegan/raw for all the wrong reasons, that's why it didn't work for you.
Do not come on this site, a site meant for building a community of support for people who are unique and "different" (what SAD people call us) than the rest of the world's population. A site where people care about what they put
into their bodies for their well-being.
You're bashing is not appreciated.
October 9, 2010 - 5:34am
#7
Good points Eloisa- processed foods, no matter whether they are vegan, vegeterian or ominvore are not good for one. Fresh is best!
October 11, 2010 - 8:13pm
#8
Oooo ya, dang, it really sucks that I haven't been sick since going vegan, and my migraines that used to make me vomit have miraculously disappeared. It's also pretty inconvenient that my menstrual cycle has been the most regular it's ever been and my pre-menstrual symptoms have disappeared entirely. Not to mention, I sleep like a baby at night now - what a bust, insomnia is much better, wouldn't you agree? And don't even get me started on my hair and nails; nails used to chip and peel, and they're not anymore... what is up with THAT? And my previously thin-thin-THIN hair is thickening up quite a bit. My cravings for all processed and refined foods have disappeared, as well as all my cravings for sugar. How much does that suck? ALSO, get this - my muscle mass just won't decrease. Can you believe it? How annoying is that? And my eyesight has finally started to improve since going vegan! People OBVIOUSLY want to wear strong prescription lenses their entire lives, right? My knee problems have cleared up, i never have indigestion or stomach aches of any kind, my concentration has greatly improved, my skin is flawless, and my energy levels are through the roof.
If only the vegan diet had benefits...
Now please, stop imposing these so-called "facts" on people and generalizing to the population. If being vegan is so terrible, let us find that out for ourselves. (FYI: best decision of my life)
October 12, 2010 - 12:48am
#9
Just curious, how long did it take for going vegan to have an effect on your insomnia? And did anything else change around the time you switched that might have played a part?
I've had insomnia pretty much all my life, and have mostly eliminated diet as a factor(I've tried various foods, times before last eating and going to bed, etc.). But the longest I've done a stretch of 811/vegan is about a week and a half, which had no effect on it. I figure most people would say that's not long enough to see results, but as I said I don't think diet is the culprit. Figured it doesn't hurt to ask though.
October 12, 2010 - 1:31am
#10
Sorry for the contrast in post lengths and relevance, but...
I LOL'd.
October 12, 2010 - 3:24pm
#11
Glad to hear you are so well now veggievicky.
October 12, 2010 - 3:55pm
#12
I still have my insomnia :/ Although sometimes I kind of don't mind it. I actually think it's increased since going raw because of all the energy I seem to have now. I get my second wind usually around 8pm or so. But the good thing is that it doesn't affect getting up early in the morning. I actually only get roughly 5 hours of sleep a night (I do sleep longer on weekends, but "make-up sleep" just doesn't exist. You lose what you lose and it does catch up to you at some point), but can get up early in the AM for work and be alert all day at work. And no I don't drink coffee, but I do lukewarm brew green tea pretty much all day. So I guess that caffiene in the tea does help me. What can I say though, I enjoy being a nightowl. That's when I feel most creative and productive. I think that if I didn't HAVE to sleep and still have the same amount of abundant energy, I'd probably sleep every other night or so. :)
But I'm glad yours cleared up VeggieVicky!
October 13, 2010 - 6:46am
#13
haha, hikuro! Loved your post. Super serial, indeed. ;)
I've never read this book before, but given this excerpt it seems very poorly written.
"You’ll be cold. Then you’ll be freezing. You’ll be tired and you won’t know why. Everything will become such an effort. You won’t understand how other people have the energy to go to school and then to work and then out dancing. It’s no normal to be that tired. I’m telling you; it’s not normal."
Only if you are undereating on calories (or eating lots of cold or frozen foods) will you be cold all of the time. And the same goes for fatigue; if you undereat, you will experience fatigue. If you don't undereat, then you won't. Now this is assuming that you are eating a species specific low fat, high fruit raw vegan diet, not just any vegan fare.
"You’ll strain your thyroid until you damage it. You may even kill it. I think of a twenty-four-year-old vegan I talked to. Arthritis in her kness, crippling menstrual pain, and a daily dose of synthroid. “Do you really think your body was meant to fall apart at age twenty four?” I urged. My information unmoored her but she was desperate. I know exactly how she felt. But her boyfriend was a vegan;so were most of her friends. I don’t know where she landed in the end."
A 24-year-old vegan that he talked to? Oh brother. Vegan, in this case, means nothing because we have no idea what she was eating.
"And I’m telling you again that people on low-fat diets are twice as likely to die from violent death or suicide. Death if forever. So is suicide, especially for the people who find the body. My friendship circle lived through a spectacular suicide and yes she was an abuse survivor, but weren’t we all? She was also a vegan. Her mood disintegrated from depression and fits of anger to paranoid rages until she killed herself. Do I know for a fact that she would have found a way through if she’d eating some real food? No. The distance between endurance and despair can be measured in so many variables. But I know for myself that a little serotonin can go an awfully long way."
Again, what exactly was she eating?
"Somewhere inside you is an animal that wants to eat. There’s no dishonor in that animal."
Yes, and she wants to eat fruit. Lots and lots of delicious fruit :)
Swayze
www.fitonraw.com
October 13, 2010 - 7:25am
#14
Being cold is more commonly associated with low thyroid than undereating on calories, although it does come a close second.
Those who are cold all the time generally complain about other low thyroid symptoms such a hair loss, excessive fatigue etc. Which is why i always say eating seaweed regularly is probably a good idea. I say that often but when i had thyroid problems it was horrible mass fatigue, puffy face constantly(hated that), hair loss, cold all the time, low libido the list goes on and the only thing that corrected it was regular seaweed intake.
hey swazye is the other raw forum(pranas one) alerting that it contains a virus or possible malware?
October 14, 2010 - 2:52pm
#15
>hey swazye is the other raw forum(pranas one) alerting that it contains a virus or possible malware?
I am getting the same alert. :(
October 14, 2010 - 6:32pm
#16
Yep, I'm getting the alert too. Not sure what's going on...
Swayze
www.fitonraw.com
October 15, 2010 - 1:05am
#17
Damn but its good to see others are getting it too, i read why its happening, its from a website thats obviously posted there or someone has posted the link.
All prana would need to do is delete the thread or profile where its located but i cant get in contact with him.
Shame as its a good forum.
October 15, 2010 - 11:39am
#18
Yea I agree. I'm sure he'll have it up and running again before long.
Swayze
www.fitonraw.com
October 24, 2010 - 3:47pm
#19
Bummer about the other forum. It's probably a "cross site scripting" hack as @powerlifter seems to suggest. Someone got it into a thread. I can relate - running a forum is probably not as easy as it looks. We retain the help of a third-party service to help us keep spam out and some STILL gets through! We've been lucky enough to have gone a year or two without any huge problems but the threat is always there. But I digress....
November 8, 2010 - 2:54pm
#20
I'm with Deadly Steve...I have found this to be hilarious. Who is putting on whom?
Eat fresh, keep moving, seek peace and love. You'll be well.
January 3, 2011 - 11:28pm
#21
my mother was vegetarian before her pregnancy with me, during and after. She's 54, and still is getting hit on by 23 year olds. I was raised vegetarian, and have been all my life. Veganism is a fleeting thing, but still dear to my heart. What has been "claimed" above is something that I have heard all my life. I don't believe it. Never will. Daniel and his 3 friends were given "fruit and grains to eat and water to drink" and were stronger, healthier than all the men in Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom, including the king himself. (biblical reference).
January 4, 2011 - 12:30pm
#22
I don't think you need any biblical references to rubbish Lierre Keith et al. Just talk to any vegan who knows how to be good to themselves!
January 5, 2011 - 2:08pm
#23
Good stuff. I find it ironic that my MIL loves to tell me what's wrong with everything I eat (even though she doesn't follow her own advice) and I'm the one who's at a healthy weight and has had excellent physicals and bloodwork since changing my diet.
Everyone wants to tell everyone else what to do when it comes to diets. My thoughts? Why not do your own thing, enjoy it and be healthy, ya know?
http://www.sweetwheat.com/sweet-wheat/underappreciated-health-be...
