So, on Tuesday morning the Violet band got an email from our fearless leader with the subject line:
Oberskizzle was out, so she assigned us into four groups and sent us articles about veganism to read via email. So you can imagine how ecstatic Max and I were to find in our inboxes an article entitled:
( we weren't, btw )
Fun fact: Its okay to disagree with stuff you read on the internet. Immediately we started reading it, reservedly and objectively holding our opinions back until we each finished the entire article. We were checking to see if it was an opinion piece, a news article, or an opinion piece that just sounded like a news article.
Right off the bat we noticed quite a few invalid (or at least questionable) arguments laid out in the article. After a brief conversation with Max, sharing our ideas about the article and noting the parts that stood out to us the most, we compiled all of our content, the points from the article, our own reflections, and our counterarguments onto a nice, organized, old-fashioned poster.
Besides winning me some sideways glances around Brightworks, (since I live in the bay area and veganism is becoming increasingly common/popular) this poster was really helpful (at least for me) to organize ideas and present them in a seemly manner. As you can see, the article shared five reasons to not go vegan, each point with its own strengths and weaknesses.
1. Vegans are deficient in many important nutrients.
I'm not going to deny that this makes sense. After all, humans were evolved to be omnivores, so you could conclude that vegans are missing out on at least half the vitamins and nutrients that a meat-and-leaf-eating person would be getting. Arguably, this point highlights that veganism can be just as bad for you as only eating meat. Kris Gunnars, the author of the article, lays down that vegans are missing vitamins and supplements such as B12, amino acids, creatine, carnosine, testosterone, docosahexaenoic acid, saturated fat, and cholesterol. On the other hand, I'm no nutritionist, but would a little deficiency in these substances be all that bad? The real shockers on that list for me were cholesterol and sat fat. You hear so many horror stories about people with high cholesterol and risk of heart disease when you're old and frail that I can't imagine a lack of all these other bits and pieces to be all that vital if I'm being perfectly honest.
2. There are no studies showing that they are better than other diets.
That's also probably true, but again Gunnars' point is iffy at best. To give a very brief summary, he explains the case of the A to Z study, where people eating meat lost more weight that people on a vegan diet, and another study where a low-carb diet did as much for patients as a vegan diet.
He later admits in the article that the vegan diet is more effective than the American Diabetes Association's recommended diet. Hopefully, you can empathize with Max's and my incredulity and frustration when we were only this far in the article.
3. Vegans use lies and fear-mongering to promote their cause.
I can concur that some of veganism's current success is partly fad appeal and trace amounts of peer influences. Still, an unsustainable food source that's slowly but surely destroying our planet is pretty scary on its own. I don't see why vegans would have to do any work to make not being vegan any scarier (climate change denial alert much?). Plus, I feel like the "cause" he talks about is reasonably worthwhile if you break it down. If it's good for the environment, I say it's worth a try.
4. Vegan diets work in the short term for other reasons.
What this means is that vegans just happen to be healthier because they take in less added sugars, refined carbs, vegetable oils, trans fats, etc. Gunnars claims that this is the reason for their health benefits, not the omission of animal products.
I say 'whatever floats your boat'. If cutting out meat from your diet works for you then cool, by all means go for it. Besides, they put so many crazy things in meat these days, it's hard to measure how much of these harmful substances are making their way into your body, veganism is a really good way to just try to live simpler, if not necessarily healthier. It's also like compensating for the millions of Americans that don't get enough (or any) vegetables in their diet. The whole point is more of a sacrifice to the preservation of our planet and a protest against shady business practices than just the benefits to the individual.
5. No health reasons to completely avoid animal foods.
See previous point.
Again, Gunnars makes the infamous argument that humans have been eating meat for thousands of years, and repeatedly denies the existences of scientifically valid health reasons for eliminating animal products from the diet. In fact when you think about it, this feels kind of the same as point two. But it also kind of feels like all the other points.
I give this article two vegan eggplant emojis out of five. Redundant, mediocre, and ranty, but at the same time it was passionate and a good try.
To kick off vegan week, Jack, Josh and I made falafel and guess what it was delicious. But unfortunately, due to some circumstantial health reasons I copped out of vegan week later that night.
Now I have pretty mixed feelings about veganism, but at least I tried.
Regardless of what some expert has to say, vegan week was, if not fun and enlightening, then at least interesting
everything is interesting.
🍆🍆
The article in question: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/why-vegan-diets-suck
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