Do you think animal products have a useful contribution to make toward human health? If so, you clearly haven’t read Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s “The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health.” The “startling implications” eluded to in the title come down to this: any and every form of animal product consumed in any amount whatsoever is bad for us. Veganism, it turns out, is the optimal human diet.
Along with the American Dietetic Association’s position papers on a vegetarian diet, studies on Adventists and the anecdotal cases of successful vegan athletes and body builders, “The China Study” is key to the argument that veganism is not only a healthy way to live, but may in fact be the healthiest. Vegan authorities swear by this book. People go vegan because of it. If “The China Study” were discredited, it would be a significant setback for veganism.
And that’s why some vegans don’t appreciate that Denise Minger, a 23-year-old former raw vegan, seems to have done just that.
This summer, Denise applied her interest in statistics and research to either a good or evil cause – depending on where you stand – by thoroughly dismantling Campbell’s bid at scientific immortality. In a series of entries on her blog Raw Food SOS, Denise demonstrated that Campbell’s anti-animal-product conclusions in his 2005 book did not match the data from his own research.
Always eager to defend his life’s work from uppity pro-meat subversives, Campbell posted a short rebuttal via a vegan blogger. Denise spent her next turn on “The China Study: My Response to Campbell”. Campbell then penned a lengthier second response, which inspired Denise’s “The China Study: A Formal Analysis and Response”. So far Campbell has kept any further protestations to himself.
Campbell critics say that his responses didn’t address most of Denise’s key points. Vegans tended to side with Campbell, however, sometimes for reasons as basic as ‘I am a vegan and Campbell defends veganism.’ As one vegan wrote: “So, whilst [Denise’s] work is impressive for the amount of time and effort she’s put in, as a vegan I am, not surprisingly, very firmly sat in Dr Colin Campbell’s camp. I just believe Dr Campbell.”
But some vegans found Denise’s critique harder dismiss. Tynan, the blogger who posted Campbell’s first response, was one of them – he abandoned veganism two weeks after reading her initial China Study entries. Denise Minger may not be the worst calamity ever to befall veganism (that honor goes to Gary L. Francione), but vegans who rely on the health argument to drum up new converts have cause for concern.
When Denise isn’t tap dancing all over everything T. Colin Campbell has done with the past two or three decades of his life, she is a freelance editor, tutor, writer and web/graphic designer who likes art, hiking and Scrabble.
But let’s see how the tap dancing is going.
You gave up meat at the age of seven because it repulsed you. Did you ever have ethical reasons, or was it always pure disgust?
As I got older, I definitely cozied up with the ethical reasons. Once you start associating with other veg people and watching the “Meet your Meat” PETA videos, it’s kind of hard not to jump on the ethical vegan bandwagon. I always loved animals anyway. And I still vehemently oppose factory farming.
Plus, vegetarianism and veganism totally have their own gravitational force. Once you put a meatless philosophy at the core of your life, you start reeling in everything possible to support that – health arguments, ethical arguments, environmental arguments, sustainability arguments, etc. – until you convince yourself that avoiding animal foods is the only “right” way to live life. I think it’s really hard to be a vegan solely for health reasons or solely for ethical reasons, because eventually, all the pro-vegan arguments smoosh together into one giant ball of virtuous delusion. That was my experience, at least.
How did you talk yourself out of the ethics of veganism when you started eating raw dairy and then eventually meat?
The dairy wasn’t too hard because I sourced it from small farms where I could investigate how the animals were treated. But with fish/meat, it wasn’t really a matter of talking myself out of anything – I was really unhealthy and probably on the verge of some total breakdown anyway. I had no conscious plans of ever eating meat again, but during an end-of-the-semester potluck in college, someone brought a platter of sushi and sashimi – and in a strange fit of compulsion, I shoved a bunch of salmon into my mouth. It was amazing. I was buzzing afterward and was physically satisfied in I way I hadn’t felt for many years.
So it wasn’t a matter of deliberately revising my ethical stance. It was more like ethics vs. biology jumped into a boxing ring together, and biology clobbered my vegan tunnel vision into smithereens.
I know there are vegans who’ll read that and think I was just weak/evil/etc., but when you spend a long time feeling crummy and then find a missing piece that makes the crummy go away – well, that’s a persuasive moment.
Many ex-vegans claim to feel healthier almost immediately after consuming animal products again. Is this the placebo effect, or is it possible to feel better that quickly?
I definitely think it’s possible. I felt better immediately after scarfing down fish even though I was expecting to get sick from it. I don’t know what the specific mechanism would be, but maybe the body has some sort of physiological “food memory” where it associates the taste of a particular food with the nutrients it delivers. And if that’s the case, merely chewing and swallowing something containing a needed nutrient could result in a profound sense of satisfaction even before digestion is complete, like how liquid immediately quenches thirst or eating a large meal quickly alleviates hunger.
That’s just a wild guess, though. It could be other things. Maybe animal foods just trigger an endorphin release while they ruthlessly clog the body with toxins, cholesterol, and Bad Juju, resulting in a misleading feeling of “health.”
A lot of people who don’t thrive on a raw vegan diet give up veganism but stick with raw, like you basically have. Why not give up raw and go to cooked veganism?
As soon as you dip your toe in the raw vegan world, you start learning about the horrors of soy and grains and fake meats and all those other other things that usually comprise a cooked vegan diet. And a lot of people also become indoctrinated with the idea that cooked food is inherently toxic, or lacks enzymes and “life force” and other woo-woo concepts. (One of my biggest peeves with the raw movement is the willingness to embrace everything *except* science, but that’s a story for a different day.) So when raw veganism goes awry, cooked veganism hardly seems like a viable option.
In some cases, people also migrate to raw veganism because cooked veganism wasn’t enough to make them really healthy, or because they’re trying to clear up chronic conditions that a cooked diet didn’t improve. So again, backtracking from raw to cooked vegan isn’t always a logical step. The early stages of raw veganism – the “honeymoon” period – can bring a lot of incredible health improvements, and I think folks stick with raw-non-vegan because they want to preserve the benefits raw brought while circumventing the problems veganism ushered in.
Have you been accused of “doing veganism wrong”?
Only about a trillion times! There’s a very strong “blame the victim” mentality in vegan communities – probably even more so with raw veganism than cooked veganism, since the raw gurus tend to promote the diet as completely perfect. Anyone who claims to have problems is assumed to be lying, trolling, cheating on the diet, or secretly working for the meat and dairy industry.
Ironically, I’ve gotten the “you’re doing veganism wrong” comment mainly from folks who themselves are struggling (even though they try blame it on everything but diet), so I think it’s mostly a matter of projection. Also, people don’t want to have to consider the possibility that the diet they’re so fervently embracing could possibly have flaws, so it’s easier to just lump all the vegan “failures” into one group and blame them for their own health woes. It makes their experiences easier to dismiss.
Is it possible to “do veganism right” from a health perspective?
I’ll put it this way: it’s possible to do veganism in a way that makes the best of a diet that doesn’t naturally suit the human body’s physiology. A vegan who eats chiefly whole foods, minimizes their phytate and lectin load, eats enough fat to maximize nutrient absorption, nixes unfermented soy and weird meat replacements, supplements where necessary, and doesn’t become a starch-noshing monster might be able to dodge health problems for a lot longer than someone who eats nothing but Toffuti Cuties.
But that’s not the same as saying there’s a truly “correct” form of veganism that guarantees success. I don’t believe veganism is optimal for most people, especially long term – so “doing veganism right” may be an elusive or impossible ideal.
Vegans sometimes ask me why I still bother to talk about veganism after leaving it. To me this says “Veganism is so irrelevant that only vegans should care about it.” Of course I don’t think vegans really believe that, but I do get the sense from some vegans that ex-vegans need to shut up about veganism as soon as they quit it, and if they don’t, their continuing interest in veganism qualifies as “obsessive”. What are your reasons for still caring about veganism enough to thoroughly critique the sacred vegan health text, “The China Study”?
Veganism is one of those things you can evaluate more objectively when you’re no longer immersed in it or emotionally invested in its success. I think that’s why veganism remains interesting to a lot of ex-vegans – because once you’re on the “other side,” you see veganism with fresh eyes and can more easily identify its flaws as both an ethical philosophy and health approach.
When I started all the China Study stuff, it was mainly out of curiosity. It’s such a widely cited book by vegans and its namesake study claims to be the most comprehensive epidemiological study ever conducted – so as someone who’s deeply interested in health, I wanted to see if it really did suggest that any consumption of animal foods may be harmful. The skeptic in me likes to see actual data rather than blindly trusting someone else’s interpretation of it, so I was excited to find out the original China Study data was available and I wouldn’t just have to take Campbell’s word for it. I wasn’t planning on launching a crusade against veganism.
Critiquing the China Study was about more than just veganism, though: it was about looking at the misuse of science to support a weak hypothesis. That’s never acceptable, regardless of whether veganism is is involved.
After your own experience with a vegan diet, did you expect to discover problems with Campbell’s findings?
I had a hunch that he’d oversimplified things, but I wasn’t expecting to find that the China Study data yielded so little of what he claimed it did.
How would you summarize what’s wrong with “The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health” (aside from the ungainly title)?
The two biggies:
1. Campbell’s casein research. His aflatoxin studies showed that the amount of casein fed to carcinogen-exposed lab rats could literally turn tumor growth on and off like a switch – a finding that he used to implicate animal foods with cancer in humans. Although the research is valuable, Campbell has no basis for extrapolating the effects of casein onto all forms of animal protein, and onto animal protein exclusively, and in the context of a real-world diet that contains whole foods rather than isolated substances. His own research showed that plant proteins behave identically to casein when their limiting amino acids are restored, which happens naturally in a vegan diet containing a mixture of plant foods. And another of his studies showed that tumor growth induced by animal protein could be inhibited by swapping the sources of fat in the diet (fish oil instead of corn oil), so tumor-promoting properties of complete proteins may be dependent on other elements of the diet. And more importantly, another form of animal protein – whey – has well-documented anti-cancer action, which invalidates Campbell’s theory that all animal protein promotes cancer growth.
2. Campbell’s interpretation of the China Study. Despite the book’s claims, the China Study data does not show an overarching, direct relationship between animal food consumption and Western disease mortality. For cardiovascular disease, the relationship is consistently inverse – meaning the counties eating the most animal products generally had less heart disease than the counties eating the least.
The only way Campbell was able to indict animal products was by hooking together chains of correlations – for instance, “animal protein correlates with cholesterol and cholesterol correlates with various cancers” – as a way to make animal foods look like relevant players in disease etiology. The problem with this method (apart from the fact that it assumes cause and effect, thus breaking the Golden Rule of Statistics) is that when you actually look at the link between animal foods and the diseases in question, the relationship is close to neutral or too weak to be significant. In the cases where it appears positive, there’s typically some sort of obvious confounding going on – such as fish consumption, which correlates strongly with liver cancer, being highest in humid regions where hepatitis B and aflatoxin growth (two liver cancer risk factors) are widespread.
It’d be fine if Campbell had performed adequate statistical analyses on the numbers and found a direct link between animal foods and disease, but he didn’t. His China-Study related papers typically examine blood markers like cholesterol (which is influenced by more than just diet) rather than actual food consumption trends as they relate to disease. In fact, he often cited univariate correlations from the China Study – without adjusting them for confounding variables – in order to extol the virtues of a plant-based diet.
In explaining his approach to the data, Campbell stated that if we start with biological models, “then it is fair to look for supportive evidence among a collection of correlations” in ecological studies. (This should be a total facepalm moment for anyone who respects the scientific method.)
Was the China Study really the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted?
In terms of documenting a massive number of variables, absolutely. I’m not aware of any other study that collected such detailed information about diet, nutrient intake, smoking and drinking habits, blood and urine values, and mortality from various causes. But “comprehensive” isn’t the same as saying it’s the biggest (it’s not) or the best (it’s riddled with confounding variables) or most the conclusive (epidemiology never is). It just collected a whole lotta’ stuff. And because all the data was aggregated at the county level, it only yielded 65 data points, which is pretty measly if you’re trying to establish confidence in your results.
So even though there’s tons of data, it’s not very easy to work with or untangle. The China Study is useful for generating hypotheses, but nothing in it can replace actual controlled studies.
Was there anything about your look at the raw China Study data that surprised you?
Quite a few things, but two stood out. One was the very strong, statistically robust association between wheat and heart disease. Nothing conclusive can ever be drawn from epidemiology, but so far this is the most significant relationship between a mortality variable and specific food I’ve come across, and it doesn’t seem to be explainable by anything else the China Study documented. So that raises an eyebrow, for sure. I’m indebted to the readers who asked me to prod it further, because I initially was just going to post my critique and move on to something different.
I was also surprised by the diet of one county called Tuoli, whose citizens seemed to subsist mainly on milk, meat, and dairy, eating 3700 calories per day on average. But Campbell told me their information may not be accurate because they were “feasting” the day the survey team came to record their food intake, so I don’t know if that one’s legit or not.
On the Jimmy Moore podcast interview with you, you said the “feasting” retort from Campbell about the Tuoli data undermined many of Campbell’s other conclusions in “The China Study”. How so?
Since they ate such an astronomical amount of dairy on the feasting days, Tuoli single-handedly inflated the correlations between animal protein and some of the variables Campbell used to link animal foods with disease – particularly total fat intake.
In his own words (page 86 of “The China Study”): “The correlation between dietary fat and animal protein in rural China was very high, at 70 - 84%. … This is important because in China and the international studies, fat consumption was only an indication of animal-based food consumption.” So from that, he felt justified in saying that when fat consumption was associated with a disease (even very weakly, like with breast cancer), then it was actually animal foods that were associated with that disease.
But once you pluck Tuoli out of the data set and recalculate the correlation between animal protein and total fat intake, the 84% figure drops to 51% – with vegetable oils accounting for the other half. That’s almost an exactly even split between plant sources and animal sources contributing to fat consumption. So it’s impossible, using what Campbell implies is a corrected data set, to link animal foods to disease by way of fat intake – even though he tried to do so in his book.
Tuoli also altered some of the correlations with blood markers – including various cholesterol fractions – that Campbell used as indicators of animal food consumption because they appeared to have strong associations with animal protein.
To his credit, Campbell might not have been aware that the Tuoli data was unreliable back when he was cranking out “The China Study,” so citing the flawed correlations could’ve been an innocent mistake. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. But if he thought Tuoli was a valid data point to use in correlations, it’d mean he had to consciously ignore the fact that a population eating two pounds of dairy, 173 grams of (mostly animal) protein, and 186 grams of animal fat each day had lower cancer and heart disease rates than many of the near-vegan counties the study.
In one of your entries, you asked rhetorically, “Why does Campbell avoid mentioning anything potentially positive about animal products in 'The China Study,’ including evidence unearthed by his own research?" Do you have any theories?
I think Campbell really wanted to synthesize all the components of his decades-long research in a way that showed animal products to be harmful. He believes very strongly in his hypothesis – I have no doubt about that – and I don’t think he did anything to be intentionally deceptive. But when you’ve already made up your mind that a particular theory is true, it becomes easy to internally justify some tweaking here, some data omission there, and so forth until you’ve sculpted your results into what you want them to be. Campbell is not the first researcher to have done this, and I’m sure he won’t be the last.
Campbell has been accused of responding to criticisms of "The China Study” with ad hominem attacks, focusing on the critics’ lack of credentials. Was Campbell the same way when he responded to your critique, or was there more substance to his response?
Overall, I think he ad-hominemed me much less than he did previous critics. Campbell did imply I might be funded by the Weston A. Price Foundation (who have “untold amounts of financial resources”) and that my use of adjectives “left him wondering” about my motives, but I’m sure this was justified. Adjectives are pretty suspicious. Especially cutesy ones like “biased” and “misinterpreted.”
Although I was disappointed Campbell didn’t address my critique more specifically, especially the problems with his casein research, his second response was the most substantial one I’ve seen him write to a critic so far. He offered a list of papers discussing the biological models he used to back up his nutritional theories. Those were helpful to look at, even though none actually supported a link between animal foods and disease.
And for the record, I really don’t have anything against Campbell as a person. I may disagree with his health theories and his Hemingway-esque aversion to adjectives, but I’m also thankful he took the time to engage in dialogue with me at all.
Is there anything to the argument that because you don’t have scientific credentials, anything you have to say about nutrition ought to be ignored?
I think that argument is a convenient way of dismissing what someone has to say without having to evaluate the ideas they present. It’s intellectual laziness. Any claim, whether it’s presented by me or someone with a string of initials after their name, should be approached with a balance of skepticism and open-mindedness.
I don’t want anyone to blindly believe what I have to say without critically thinking about my arguments – but I also want to discourage people from viewing authorities as infallible. Credentials don’t prevent someone from falling into the trap of confirmation bias, or making analytical errors, or promoting an agenda due to financial or personal interests. And lack of credentials doesn’t prevent someone from learning via autodidacticism, or observing errors in a claim, or pointing out logical inconsistencies in an argument. No one has a monopoly on critical thinking.
It’s fine if people don’t agree with me, but I hope they do so after thinking independently about what I have to say.
Your most vocal critics have been the raw vegans at 30 Bananas a Day, a forum for fruit-loving meat haters. Why are these raw foodists so intent on preserving Campbell’s reputation when he is not a raw foodist and hasn’t studied raw foodism? I get that Campbell is low-fat, and so are they, but I don’t see why they think “The China Study” defends what they are doing. They should at least agree with you about wheat, right?
What I’ve noticed about the 30BAD-ers (not sure how much this applies to vegans in general) is that they tend to build piecemeal arguments for raw veganism. No one credible supports them completely, so they nab snippets of “evidence” from various corners of the nutrition world to justify how they eat. Random studies about AGEs and substances in cooked food to cover the raw portion, Ornish et al to justify low fat, and Campbell to totally annihilate animal products. It doesn’t matter that Campbell isn’t a raw advocate – they easily tune that part out and extract from his work only what they need to claim meat is evil. I think that’s why they’re so attached to him and frothing-at-the-mouth-rabid about keeping his reputation pristine. He’s the most influential figure they have to bring a scientific rationale to their ethical veganism.
How important is the health argument for veganism? Is veganism a viable philosophy if vegans have to acknowledge that they might be sacrificing their health for their ethics?
I’ve met vegans who’ve said point-blank that they care more about animals than about their health, and that they’d continue eating a vegan diet even if it weren’t the healthiest choice. That’s not a stance I agree with personally – I believe humans can be far more useful in the world when we’re nice n’ healthy – but I can respect that some people feel that way and choose to make an unconditional commitment to veganism.
Bottom line, some people will always perceive consuming animal products as an act of cruelty, and for them, that perception alone is enough to make veganism a “viable philosophy.”
Some people do well on a vegan diet at first, but then suffer problems like sluggishness, dental problems, slow wound healing and cloudy thinking. Yet even when these problems are related to nutritional problems, it often takes a long time for vegans to make that connection. Why do people become inflexible in their diets, not thinking to change even while experiencing bad results?
Three cheers for cognitive dissonance!
No one wants to believe that a diet they’ve spent so much time following and defending could possibly be flawed. Massive denial ensues. Plus, when facing health problems, most vegans go to pro-vegan health resources like the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine or vegan websites, where they’re told (not surprisingly) that it must be something other than diet stirring up trouble. It’s hard to get accurate information when all of your trusted health sources are innately biased and parroting the same group-think.
What are the most common health problems that vegans (both raw and cooked) face?
For raw vegans, dental problems take the cake. Decay, enamel thinning, receding gums, sensitivity, tooth mobility from bone loss: you name it, raw vegans are getting it – some more quickly than others. I’ve talked to people who think their fillings are falling out because their bodies are “detoxing” them, or that their teeth are getting loose so that newer, prettier, shinier ones can sprout in from below (no, I’m not kidding). This does seem to be something that supplementing vitamins D/K2/A and calcium greatly improves (dental well-being – not wishful interpretations of physiology), so I usually recommend that whenever a vegan brings up the topic of teeth.
I don’t know if dental health takes such a high-speed nosedive on cooked veganism like it does on raw, but anecdotally, the children of vegan moms seem especially prone to dental woes, including problems with enamel formation and baby teeth that get cavities almost immediately after erupting. This usually has to do with a deficient diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding.
Raw vegan women are also known for ceasing menstruation. In the scientific world, this is called amenorrhea. In the raw vegan world, this is called “being free from toxins,” because reproductive abilities are a clearly a sign of disease. Raw vegan men are also freed from the shackles of a sex drive and typically experience a libido plunge.
Hair loss, brittle nails, and slow wound healing also tend to crop up in raw vegans, especially ones who’ve stuck unwaveringly to the diet for a while.
I’m less familiar with the common problems of cooked vegans, though I imagine thyroid issues from ODing on soy could be one.
Vegans often cite the American Dietetic Association’s position paper on a vegetarian diet, which states that veganism is fine for all stages of the life cycle. My main problem with the ADA (as far as their stance on vegetarianism) is that they always put ethical and religious vegetarians and vegans in charge of the position papers for a vegetarian diet. And most of the reviewers of the position papers (often all of them, depending on the year) are religious or ethical vegetarians and vegans too. Do you have any problems with the ADA?
I love the ADA. Any organization that supports the USDA food pyramid, receives corporate sponsorship from health-savvy companies like Hershey’s and Coca-Cola, and tries to monopolize public nutritional information clearly has our best interest at heart. Hand me my six-to-eleven servings of gluten, please!
I really can’t understand why the ADA appoints people who have ethical or religious investment in vegetarianism to write “objective” papers about its healthfulness. If they let a bunch of beef farmers write a position paper on low-carbing, it’d get called out immediately. With the ADA’s most recent paper on vegetarianism, the bias is pretty obvious when you compare the summary at the beginning to the actual body of the paper: They take a bunch of studies showing that vegans are more prone to skeletal fractures, tend to have higher homocysteine than vegetarians and omnivores, have lower DHA concentrations in their breast milk, may be deficient in vitamin D and iodine, and haven’t been sufficiently studied during pregnancy – and then conclude that veganism is “healthful and nutritionally adequate” for “all stages of life.”
The dearth of research on vegan pregnancies is particularly bad because if a mother is low in even one or two critical nutrients, it can have life-long repercussions for the child – birth defects, irreversible neurological damage from B12 deficiency, on and on. In my opinion, it’s fairly irresponsible of the ADA to imply veganism is healthy during pregnancy and lactation when this hasn’t even been studied.
Most vegans believe there’s nothing missing in the vegan diet that a few supplements can’t fix. Is there anything wrong with that way of thinking?
Absolutely. If someone’s goal is to meet all the government-assigned RDAs, it’s possible to do it with a mixture of vegan foods and supplements – but that doesn’t take into account that plant forms of some nutrients are much less bioavailable than animal forms, or that people can have vastly different conversion rates for things like beta carotene to vitamin A or ALA to DHA, or that minerals in some vegan foods are phytate bound and won’t actually be assimilated. What happens on paper doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s going on biologically, and a person’s ability to get everything they need from a vegan diet depends on more than what goes in their mouth. That’s why some people crash so quickly on veganism even when they’re doing everything “right.”
On top of that, synthetic vitamins and minerals aren’t always absorbed well and are often missing the cofactors needed to make them usable. I don’t think supplements are worthless by any means, but they aren’t always effective for patching gaping holes in a person’s diet.
Are there any nutrients other than B-12 that are difficult or impossible to get on a vegan diet?
This one’s tough to make any blanket statements about, because it depends so much on individual circumstances. Diabetics, vegan children, people with thyroid problems, or vegans eating very low-fat diets can have trouble converting enough beta carotene to vitamin A. And most vegans won’t be getting much vitamin K2 unless they’re regularly eating natto (which, in my opinion, resembles regurgitated cat food marinated in slug slime – but to each his own). Zinc, EPA, and DHA can be low in vegans as well.
What are some of the most fallacious arguments that proponents of the vegan health argument make?
Oh, this is fun. The biggest one is definitely that we’re physiologically suited for vegan diets and that our digestive anatomy hasn’t changed in the last two million years. I don’t know how people come up with this stuff. Some of my favorite declarations:
“Meat rots in your colon!”
“If you can’t hunt an animal down without tools and tear it apart with your teeth and hands, then you can’t be adapted to eating flesh.”
“Chimps and bonobos are our closest genetic relatives, and they’re vegan frugivores, so we should be vegan frugivores too. The chimps that hunt are just corrupted and confused.”
I also hear this one quoted sometimes: “You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I’ll buy you a new car.” (Written by Harvey Diamond, who, after 25 years as a vegetarian, started uncontrollably craving steak and now eats meat again.)
Most health-motivated vegans also cling to an oversimplified interpretation of the lipid hypothesis, for obvious reasons – it’s nice for vegans to think that cholesterol is an evil villain and anything that raises it internally or contains it exogenously will clog up your heart. And then there’s the claim that the Plant-Based-Diet Doctor Cronies (Esselstyn, McDougall, Fuhrman, Ornish, Barnard, et al) have “proven” that veganism trumps meat eating – when in reality what they’ve shown is that cutting out processed foods, refined grains, “corn sugar,” and vegetable oils brings marked health improvements over the junky cuisine most people eat. No shocker there. The Standard American Diet is the epicenter of everything you can do wrong with food, so any direction you move away from it is bound to bring positive changes (at least initially).
Raw vegans, at least in some circles, are also fond of stating that humans will produce adequate B12 internally without the need for supplementation.
Can veganism also be a problem psychologically?
In general, any diet or lifestyle choice that promotes an us-versus-them mentality can start warping your view of reality and how the world operates. Veganism tends to be incredibly black and white: you’re either vegan or you’re an animal murderer; you’re either living ethically or you’re cruel and immoral; you’re either saving the world or you’re destroying it; on and on. There’s very little sensitivity for the enormous grey zones surrounding ethical choices, and virtually no appreciation of the fact that animal cruelty is only one of many sources of suffering in the world. Is a vegan who sits at home watching Comedy Central more ethical than an omnivore who busts his bum building houses for Habitat for Humanity?
Specifically with raw veganism, many people can’t handle the pressure of social situations involving cooked food, so instead of learning how to deal with food-related discomfort and anxiety, they hole themselves off and become socially isolated. Or they start interacting only with other raw foodists, which perpetuates the whole group-think mentality and places diet at an unhealthily high priority. I’ve known raw foodists who cut ties with friends, family members, and even their significant others because they valued their diet more than their relationships. And heaven forbid you run into health problems and start questioning the party line! That’s enough to get yourself exiled from the raw world. Toss some self proclaimed “raw vegan gurus” into the mix who make unfounded promises about health and longevity, and you’ve got yourself something that starts resembling a cult.
Can other proscribed rules for eating, such as low-carb or the paleo diet, become as dogmatic as veganism?
Absolutely. I think veganism is more prone to it because of the political elements involved – but any time you stick a bunch of people with specific beliefs together with little exposure to other viewpoints, some degree of dogmatism is inevitable.
When someone jumps off the conventional nutrition boat (S.S. Food Pyramid) and finds a diet that radically improves their health, it’s natural to become very passionate about it and emotionally invested in its legitimacy. And that can lead people to cling blindly to an ideology, parrot the group-think they’re surrounded by, and ignore any evidence they don’t like.
So to answer this question, yes. There are paleo True Believers and low-carb True Believers just like there are vegan True Believers. Although I’ve generally seen fewer of the first two than the third.
From what I’ve observed, vegans have a strong tendency to be non-religious. Is food the new religion?
I think that’s true of cooked veganism, but I encountered quite a few religious raw vegans and many more who identified as spiritual but not religious. There are raw vegan Christians who quote passages from Genesis as validation for veganism, Essenes who believe Christ was a raw food vegetarian, and followers of the “Hallelujah Acres” diet who interpret the Bible as advising a mostly raw, vegan diet for humans. Then there are lots of folks into Eastern religions and yoga who embrace the concept of ahimsa/nonharm and avoid animal products based on that.
But at the same time, I also met some raw vegans who sincerely believed they could eat (or fast) their way to enlightenment, or who seem to obsess over diet as a way to fill some other void in their life.
Is food the new religion? That’s an interesting way to frame it. In some cases, I think people who tend to question religious doctrine also question traditional views of health and nutrition, which leads them to alternative diets. With raw veganism, especially in certain factions, there is a somewhat religious set-up and pressure to be an unquestioning believer. I think that trend is there with regular veganism as well, though it might not be quite as pronounced. Maybe people are seeking a homogeneous, tight-nit community created by shared diet ideology, since they aren’t getting it in a church or mosque or synagogue. I really don’t know.
Is there an upside to veganism that’s lost when you start eating animal products again? Or is veganism nothing but an unfortunate set of self-restrictions for guilt avoidance, with the better solution being to get over ethical objections to eating animals?
If there’s an upside, it’s the sense of community and camaraderie that comes from being part of a highly insular group. When you’re vegan, you know your vegan brothas’ and sistas’ always got your back. It’s sort of like being in a gang (minus the bling and intentional killing). You have an automatic family just because of your food choices.
But once you return to the Land of the Savage and start eating animal products again, you lose that kinship and support system. You’re shunned by the vegans who onced embraced you and loathed by the omnivores you annoyed with your former self-righteousness. So the abandonment of veganism leaves one existentially alone, with little choice but to mope and engage in neurotic behavior such as blogging or stalking vegan relatives online.
But apart from that, I don’t think veganism offers anything that can’t be achieved through well-planned omnivorism, self-flagellation, or Scientology.
