Okay, vegans. I know what you\u2019re thinking. There have been many articles with similar titles circulating around the internet for years, and after you read the article you realize the person, although technically vegan, also had a serious eating disorder like anorexia or even the lesser-known \u201corthorexia,\u201d or was on a restricted calorie cleanse consisting of lettuce water, or they were homicidal parents feeding their baby one carrot a day \u2013 or something like that. Somehow, people like this even manage to wind up on the Today show with book deals, as we saw earlier this week.<\/p>\n
Well, this is not one of those stories. For me and my fianc\u00e9, our regular vegan diet actually almost killed us. If you\u2019re thinking about veganism, you\u2019ll want to read this \u2013 and vegans, please hear us out.<\/p>\n
Examples of the 100% livestock-free food we were regularly eating \u2013 but was our own death lurking on our plate?<\/p>\n
The Best of Intentions<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I believe people are vegan for really, really good reasons. In a nutshell, they\u2019ve learned that we make the choice every day to either pay people to breed and intentionally kill vulnerable animals for our pleasure \u2013 or to just not do that. After all, these animals value their lives as much as our pets do and are just as worthy of love.<\/p>\n Then they learn that dairy and eggs are as bad as animal meat, because newborn males are an unfortunate byproduct of egg and dairy production and are typically killed \u2013 while their sisters and mothers are forced into production before being butchered once \u201cspent\u201d a mere fraction into their lifetime. And they learn that this is part of the typical process even if the farms are \u201chumane,\u201d small, local, organic, pastured, cage-free, or free-range.<\/p>\n They learn about the many scientific and academic sources showing that vegan diets represent perhaps the most significantenvironmental effort one can make, requiring about half the water and emissions to produce compared to typical Western diets. This is starting to become more mainstream information, especially since Cowspiracy hit Netflix.<\/p>\n Oh \u2013 and this is not a small point \u2013 vegans learn that plant-based diets feed far more human beings. As a recent Chemical and Engineering News cover story explains, producing meat and animal products \u201crequires a lot of animals raised on huge, unsustainable amounts of plant protein,\u201d adding, \u201cA switch to plant proteins by those who can afford meat would go a long way to feeding the growing global population while using fewer of the planet\u2019s resources.\u201d<\/p>\n So how could we just sit by and continue to opt in to this human-created nightmare called animal agriculture when we could just make a very simple, doable lifestyle change to create less harm?<\/p>\n With that background, hopefully you can understand why we chose to go vegan. Our hearts were in the right places. I\u2019d been totally vegan for about 3 years after dabbling in varying degrees of vegetarianism throughout my life. My now-fianc\u00e9 Craig made the shift after we\u2019d been together for a few months, which you can read about here.<\/p>\n Is plant-based food like this actually killing you?<\/strong><\/p>\n What We Ate<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Unlike the typical negative stories of vegans eating very restrictive diets, we basically ate everything under the sun other than animal products, of course. Craig\u2019s an amazing cook and I\u2019m not so bad myself. Since there are 20,000+ edible plant species on planet Earth to choose from and tons of ways to enjoy fresh, frozen, and prepared fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, mushrooms, beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds, it wasn\u2019t hard. We made rich cheeses, sausages, ice creams, gravies and more, all without animals. It\u2019s not like we were stranded on a desert island without a plentiful supply of food. And when we got lazy, there were plenty of yummy pre-made vegan meats and cheeses to choose from at the store, even after we moved from an urban to a rural area.<\/p>\n We stuffed our faces full of delicious, nutritious food basically every day with few exceptions \u2013 say, that time on a business trip I was stuck with omnivores who looked pityingly at my wilted salad and plain baked potato at the restrictive omni restaurant they took me to. (I snuck out after for a real meal at Native Foods.) But generally everywhere we went, we could get satisfying vegan meals, even from popular chains like Subway to Taco Bell to Chipotle.<\/p>\n Whenever I used an app to see if I was getting enough protein, I\u2019d usually had more than enough even just by lunch! I\u2019d always tried to take a daily multi-vitamin even when I was omni, and that didn\u2019t change, but I now took a vegan-friendly version when I remembered to (and I admit I often forgot). Like my old supplement \u2013 and like those given to livestock themselves \u2013 it included vitamin B12. Salt is iodized, folic acid is added to many packaged goods, and vitamin D is added to cows\u2019 milk, so we didn\u2019t find it weird to be getting a nutrient obtained from bacteria in isolation rather than from the flesh and fluids of animals.<\/p>\n It looks healthy enough\u2026but is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n So What Went Wrong?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n We were getting all our nutrients like everyone else and were totally healthy. I hadn\u2019t wasted away, my hair wasn\u2019t falling out, etc. When I gave blood at a blood drive, the nurse commented on my high iron levels. At my annual physical checkups, my physician never mentioned anything was remotely amiss. And despite working in offices where colds and flus regularly made the rounds, neither of us had gotten the flu since going vegan, or even much of the sniffles.<\/p>\n Yes, sometimes it was hard socially, like when my uncle asked me why vegans don\u2019t care more about people. I told him we don\u2019t kill and eat people, either. That shut him up. (I could direct those with further objections here or give them the handy anti-vegan bullsh*t mix n\u2019 match for fun.) And that time when the waiter accidentally put dairy milk in my oatmeal, instead of throwing a tantrum, I politely requested another bowl. The struggle is\u2026 real?<\/p>\n I should add that Craig is a molecular biologist and I have an MBA in environmental management, so we know better than to intentionally harm ourselves to avoid harming others \u2013 or so we thought. After all, despite lots of anecdotal confirmation bias-affirming claims to the contrary, the world\u2019s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals (the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, formerly called the American Dietetic Association) and its international counterparts declare a vegan diet is healthful and appropriate for all stages of life, with not one medical or dietetic association claiming otherwise or that the flesh or fluid of any animal is somehow necessary to cure, treat, or prevent any deficiency, disease, or twinge of discomfort. Not only that, but a growing body of evidence shows that animal products don\u2019t do a body good after all.<\/p>\n Our lives were almost ruined by this clearly extreme and fanatical idea of \u201csustenance.\u201d<\/p>\n So how did our vegan diet almost kill us? Well, it was a couple of months ago when we ran out of cashew milk (one of many tasty non-animal milks) and bananas. I really, really like to make shakes every day around midafternoon \u2013 peanut butter, dates, vanilla, chocolate, berries, whatever \u00ad\u2013 with a frozen banana for a creamy base. I swear it tastes like soft serve ice cream, but healthy. You can add hemp, chia, and\/or flax seeds and a few Brazil nuts for an extra boost of sustenance too, if you\u2019re into that sort of thing.<\/p>\n So we ended up going to the grocery store to get more milk and bananas, and as we were crossing the street to the store after parking\u2026 wait for it\u2026 a car totally came out of nowhere and almost hit us! It was seriously a really close call. We could have been killed. We almost died!<\/p>\n If we hadn\u2019t been vegan, we wouldn\u2019t have run out of cashew milk, and we probably wouldn\u2019t have been drinking a midafternoon shake because we probably would have still been in a food coma from eating severed birds\u2019 wings or someone\u2019s ribcage with mammary secretion dip or whatever the hell it is omnis eat these days. Am I right?<\/p>\n What a relief to find out this food is actually delicious AND healthy!<\/p>\n The Aftermath<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Ever since that fateful day, even though our vegan diet almost killed us, we\u2019re actually both\u2026 still vegan. You heard me right.<\/p>\n We decided that we\u2019d still rather not pay people to do things like fire bolts into sweet animals\u2019 brains and slit their throats, grind up newborn male chicks in macerators, place \u201cspent\u201d hens in gassing chamber units, force females to lactate by impregnating them and then removing and either killing their babies or forcing them into the same servitude based on their gender, turn \u201cspent\u201d mothers into hamburger meat, remove fishes from the rapidly depleting oceans to become \u201cseafood\u201d no one needs (or feed for filthy fish farms for more manufactured seafood no one needs), or heck, even to steal honey we also don\u2019t need that bees produce for their own personal use and whom we have to sedate in order to take. That would be like, I don\u2019t know, aliens breeding humans for our ear wax.<\/p>\n In fact, seeing as the global population is now seven billion humans and SEVENTY billion farmed animals, we\u2019d rather not pay people to artificially inseminate animals at all! And if we want to talk about our diets almost killing us, perhaps the focus should be on the many pervasive lifestyle diseases either directly caused or greatly exacerbated by animal-derived foods, many of which actually kill people. In fact, heart disease, which vegans rarely get, is the number one thing that actually kills people!<\/p>\n So yes, even after our frightening ordeal, Craig and I are still eating delicious, nutritious food every day, even though we almost died from doing so. That\u2019s how dedicated we are.<\/p>\n We\u2019re still doing our part and we hope you will join us.<\/p>\n After all, we have somehow managed to peel back multiple, complicated layers of confusion and cognitive dissonance we\u2019d picked up from a lifetime of sensationalist articles like the one you thought you were about to read. Like you, we had constant exposure to the same repeated myths and misinformation about where nutrients must come from, had been told the same fairy tales about farming animals for their flesh and fluids, and we also operated in a social context that reduced our natural wisdom and empathy for animals; animals whose individuality and cuteness we would have otherwise gone gaga over \u2013 or whom we would have at least respected enough to just leave the hell alone and eaten or worn something else.<\/p>\n We didn\u2019t come this far to turn back now, careless drivers and annoying lifestyle bloggers be damned.<\/p>\n Source: dailyrecords.us<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Okay, vegans. I know what you\u2019re thinking. There have been many articles with similar titles circulating around the internet for years, and after you read the article you realize the person, although technically vegan, also had a serious eating disorder like anorexia or even the lesser-known \u201corthorexia,\u201d or was on a restricted calorie cleanse consisting… <\/p>\n