excerpted from: The Challenge of Going Vegan
The Well Column, New York Times |
By TARA PARKER-POPE
| April 16, 2012, 6:50 pm 583
Can a Vegan Diet be Healthy?
From Bill Clinton to Ellen DeGeneres, celebrities are singing the benefits of a vegan diet. Books that advocate plant-based eating are best sellers. But is eliminating meat and dairy as simple as it sounds?
As countless aspiring vegans are discovering, the switch from omnivore to herbivore is fraught with physical, social and economic challenges — at least, for those who don’t have a personal chef. The struggle to give up favorite foods like cheese and butter can be made all the harder by harsh words and eye-rolling from unsympathetic friends and family members. Substitutes like almond milk and rice milk can shock the taste buds, and vegan specialty and convenience foods can cost two to three times what their meat and dairy equivalents do. And new vegans quickly discover that many foods in grocery stores and on restaurant menus have hidden animal ingredients.
see NYT for the rest of the story.
Dr.Wilson replies:
The problem with going vegan is that there really isn’t a healthy way to eat vegan. We evolved as omnivores–there is no documented record of any primitive society that has thrived by eating vegan. Vegetarian diets are a relatively new concept with very little science to support their health benefits. Go vegan if you must but don’t complain about the adverse health effects of doing so.