Some of the ideas on this page are out of date due to new information. Please read:
http://quasi-vegan.blogspot.com/2010/12/vegan-disillusionment-one-plant-based.html
Are you vegan? Are you depressed, fatigued, or having trouble concentrating? Any hostility or mood swings? These are symptoms that could be associated with your over all cholesterol being too low or it's associated with not enough Omega 3 DHA. And, of course, the symptoms could be other things too — completely unrelated. I'm not God or an "expert".
I believe that one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, behind a failure to thrive on the vegan diet might be because the individuals didn't get enough fat, particularly saturated fat (coconut and palm oil) and Omega 3 fat. The low fat vegan diets and the raw food diets are the most unhealthy of them all, from what I found, they had the most instances of failure and some shitty health problems to go along with it. Lack of enough fat is my bet. Some types of vegan diets also don't include fortified foods or supplements. That is a big mistake. The supplement industry wasn't invented for vegans, many people on all kinds of diets don't get the nutrition they need from diet alone. Take your supplements!
Vitamin D is synthesized from cholesterol and Vitamin D regulates calcium absorption and excretion. Calcium is required for your bones and teeth. I hope you know that. Please learn something about nutrition science. Lack of Vitamin D in the diet is what I believe lead to the tooth decay issues that I encountered by reading about and meeting current and former vegans. Lack of Vitamin D might not be as simple as adding the vitamin as a supplement for some people.
The vegan diet has no cholesterol. Don't jump to any conclusions from that statement. Via diet, cholesterol comes from animals and their products, such as meat (chicken too), dairy, and eggs. Since your body makes cholesterol, the common GroupThink is that you don't need the dietary cholesterol. Perhaps most people don't need dietary cholesterol. I don't know. But what if your body doesn't make enough because it's genetically predisposed to dealing with a certain amount of dietary cholesterol? What if you don't fall into the obese or sickly CVD risk category? Certainly it's common knowledge that people have a genetic predisposition to having high cholesterol, therefore the opposite is also true. There's also a syndrome called SLOS "People who have SLOS are unable to make enough cholesterol to support normal growth and development." So it's plausible that there's variations of this.
Yo, check it:
Smith-Lemli-Optiz syndrome (SLOS), in layman's terms, is the inability to correctly produce or synthesize cholesterol due to a low occurrence of the 7-DHC reductace enzyme. Cholesterol is an essential nutrient for every cell in a person's body. It is needed to develop and grow appropriately, thus the reason for developmental delay in those with SLOS. It is a metabolic genetic issue and is estimated that as many as 1 in 30 people are carriers for the syndrome. There is a wide range symptoms and degrees of health, but the majority of those with SLOS can live to adulthood given the proper treatment and careful monitoring for levels of sterol cholesterol and 7-DHC (the latter being the precursor to cholesterol production). Current treatment is to give cholesterol either in synthetic form, or via natural foods such as egg yolk and cream, or a combination of both. A short list of some of the major issues faced by those with SLOS are... (read more about the symptoms)
One thing I do know is that each one of us is not a clone of the other and we all have different genetic constitutions. I am fine on a vegan diet, some people are not. Some people are fine on a Mediterranean diet, those would be the Mediterraneans. The Inuits would probably croak on it. They need their diet.
Eating foods, such as animals, that contain cholesterol is not necessarily a good thing, nor is it a bad thing by itself. Combining those foods with junk food, white food, crappy food, too much food, and high fructose corn syrup and other junk foods and not eating enough plants to meat ratio (having more acidic blood) is what I think is the problem is and that leads to stress and stress leads to inflammation and inflammation leads to hardening of the arteries and so forth. All forms of stress do this, not just nutritional stress. So while I have no degree or peers to review this idea, it's not so far fetched. I read it some where ;-). I could be wrong, I was wrong about the vegan diet being the best for all people. For some people it's good. Others not. For me, it helps me a lot. For a long time I was under the delusion that if it helped me, it would help others. Not all others, just some others. I'm sorry about that.
Be wary of GroupThink from all corners of any movement, vegan or otherwise, and TV pundits and talk radio. Think for yourself about everything. Everything.
GroupThink is on the "other side" too at Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) or some other "you need meat" and "soy is poison" group. Soy is not good for some people, my mother had some thyroid issues with it, I don't. You in particular may not need meat, your best friend may need it. For some people it makes no difference at all. This all or nothing about anything, any topic, is really a pain in the ass to me. Like I said before, the need to be right, not actually being right, but the need to be right is on all sides and it's really an interesting experience to sort through to find the truth or something plausible. I see this in myself, so it's easy to recognize.
There are no simple answers and there is also no one size fits all diet. WAPF, vegans, and primal, etc., all have something to contribute, but none of those diets is the "one ring that rules them all". It doesn't exist.
So if I'm saying that some people need meat, what chance do the animals have?
I sincerely believe that over the course of time, the ones who need meat could adapt to more and more plants and less and less meat. Just like the traditional Asian diet is more plant based. They would have to slowly eliminate over the course of years. But in the short term, so you don't go bonkers with some other freaky diet or thinking about food all the time, ethics needs to go and empathy needs to come in to take its place.
If you are vegan and you are empathetic to the plight of animals, know full well your child should not be a victim of your diet. Check your cholesterol for good measure. Take your B12 via a pill you can dissolve. Check your D3. I was an ovo lacto vegetarian when I was pregnant, I craved eggs my entire pregnancy and I ate them all the time! Make sure you are getting D3, there is a plant based version from mushrooms now, but it's 3x as much as from lanolin, get what you can afford and screw purity!
Empathy. Not Ethics. Not a pure diet for all, just some.
I'm a vegan (or Quasi now because I eat D3 from lanolin and bee pollen in my smoothie sometimes and occasionally I eat eggs just so I can call myself quasi.) I eat a plant based diet, 99% vegan, only because I empathize with the plight of animals and (knock on wood) it's healthy for me. I think nothing of it. It's not hard, it's second nature for me. It might be a pain in the ass for you. I don't know. I empathize with factory farmed animals in particular, I also empathize equally, or even more, with the tooth decayed vegan child or adult and the depressed one and the angry one and the foggy one. I hate factory farming with a passion. Factory farming sucks for all of us, not just the animals. (These things such as depression, fog, and tooth decay are also common in omnivorous diets too, so don't get bent out of shape about what I'm writing here.)
Back to Factory Farming:
Residents of communities near hog farms often have increased respiratory problems.23 A number of studies have demonstrated that fatigue, depression, and mood disturbances occur in higher proportions in people living near such facilities.24 A study of one town in Utah found a four-fold increase in diarrhea-related hospitalizations and a three-fold increase in respiratory-related hospitalizations over a five-year period during which an industrial hog farm was constructed and started operating.25 Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency has documented hydrogen sulfide concentrations in excess of World Health Organization maximum exposure standards on properties neighboring industrial hog facilities.26 A 2006 study comparing two rural Iowa elementary schools, one located near a CAFO and one not, found a significant prevalence of asthma in children at the school near the factory farm.27 http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/airpollution/
So let's get back to empathy. I think that a new movement should take the place of veganism and that movement should be based on empathy and not a one size fits all approach.
I envision something like your own road to living closely aligned with your own, personal and individual empathy towards animals, people and the environment. I'm calling it the Empathy Diet and will develop EmpathyDiet.org. It is also not "the ring that rules them all", but it will rock!
The empthy diet is little bit of the vegan mindset, a little bit of John Robbins, a little bit of Michael Pollan and a whole lot of thinking for yourself and learning about nutrition. You, and you alone, ultimately have your best interests at heart with respect to your health and your feelings towards animals, the environment and the connections between us all.
In the short term, visit VeganHealth.org and get the low down on healthy plant based eating and healthy attitudes too. This site is by Vegan Outreach, which is one of best organizations for factory farmed animals, in my brilliantly informed opinion!
Peace!
Don't outsource your thinking. Think for yourself.
