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Vegans Are Cannibals: The Truth Behind The "New Vegan High"
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March 24, 2011
5:56 pm
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Pskaiy:

Which claims are you looking to reference? The biology of human starvation is well-understood (see comment 8 above), as are our daily protein requirements and the fact that there is no storage facility for amino acids except in our own muscles and tissues.

Let me know which part of it you're having trouble with and I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.

JS

March 30, 2011
7:22 am
Nicole.
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Um, yeah if you feel sick and weak after you go vegan then you ARE doing it wrong. I actually gained weight when I went from vegetarian to vegan, it really isn't that hard to eat a healthy vegan diet. Don't blame all vegans just because there are a few morons who don't know how to feed themselves properly.

March 30, 2011
8:02 am
Mary R
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Wow. I had no idea. I have been vegan for 5 years. I work and I am currently in studing law. I enjoy hiking and writing. My husband (also a vegan of 5 years) runs marathons. I had no idea I was supposed to be feeling like crap. When should I start expecting the weakness and malaise to be setting in?

March 30, 2011
11:22 am
Peace Is Coming For
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Cannibalism is a word. Words have meaning. I don't think that word means what you think it means.

If it means to metabolize your own existing tissues during periods of malnutrition, then 50% of the world are cannibals. You just called every starving person on Earth a cannibal. Shame on you. Not hyperbole my a$$.

Autophagia is a word. It means to physically eat one's self. With your mouth. This is not cannibalism, because cannibalism means you eat OTHER PEOPLE. Obviously vegans don't do this.

Regardless of your hyperbolic, insensitive, and erroneous use of language, the content of this article seems to imply that non-vegans are immune to B-12 or K-2 deficiency. Is this the claim being made?

Improper intake of nutrients causes malnutrition. If all necessary nutrients are consumed, health will occur regardless of source.

Anecdotally, the only people I have ever known who had B-12 deficiency were 2 non-vegans.

March 31, 2011
7:33 am
Paul Verizzo
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Stumbled across this; I don't usually leave comments.

Veganism, especially raw types, are psychologically no different than any religious cult. Think Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate, and so many others. Facts are either ignored or twisted to fit their view.

Another simple fallacy is generalization. Mary R above says she and her husband are healthy vegans. But they probably cook at least some of their food (it takes little to reverse the tides of malnutrition), or perhaps they supplement, or perhaps (gasp!) they cheat. Lots of evidence that many healthy vegetarians/vegans cheat. (No, Mary, I don't have it at my fingertips.)

The third possibility is that a given healthy vegan is an outlier. Body By Science, Chapter One, should be required reading every week for a year in school. It explains how we look at outliers in any endeavor and think, "I can do that, too!" But you can't.

Research has shown, (sorry, again, Mary!) that some raw foodies crater only months into the diet, others can take a decade or more. It's that old YMMV in real life.

There is zero science supporting veganism or especially, the raw form. All the sciences point towards being animal eaters with sides of plant matter.

Deal with it, vegans.

April 1, 2011
10:53 pm
js290
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Veganism seems like an eating disorder. The body catabolizing itself is the result of glucose metabolism. The body will break down its own protein and convert it to sugar if that's what it's been conditioned to use for fuel.

I think the more generalized explanation without indicting vegans is to simply point out fat metabolism healthy, sugar metabolism is not. People should be free to choose and figure out how to do that. Ultimately, when we observe someone who's healthy, whether herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore, it's more important to figure what they are not eating rather than what they are eating.

BTW, Paul, the first chapter of BBS actually references Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan.

April 15, 2011
7:00 am
Victoria
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I think people need to understand there are different kinds of vegans. You get people who geniunely have eating disorders and use veganism as an excuse, or people who are misinformed about veganism, or people who eat really really well and more than enough food and a healthy balanced diet - just not animal products.
I classify myself as a vegan for humanitarian reasons. I love meat and I miss it. But I wont support the way animals are farmed. It hardcore.
Please watch this link:
http://www.meatvideo.com/
That said. I will gladly eat a massive juicy steak if I know where it has come from. If it is from a small farmer who has free range facilities hell yeah.
And I go out of my way to source what I can from the little guy. But for the rest I just wont eat genetically modified tortured animals or their by products

April 22, 2011
3:38 pm
Whitesnake
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What annoys me most is the constant lies and misrepresentations they portray.
If you want to be a veggie muncher then so be it just stop crapping on about it and trying to convert all and sundry.
Thank you for this insight!

April 24, 2011
9:22 pm
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WS:

But it's no fun to be morally superior if you can't flaunt that over others!

Victoria:

Plenty of animals died to feed us corn, soybeans, strawberries, bananas, and bulgur...we just don't have to look at them, because they died off-camera of starvation when we took their land to plant our crops.

I agree, however, that factory farming is a disaster for the planet -- and that's true whether it produces soybeans or cattle, which aren't any more suited to eating grains than humans are.  Now that I have a freezer, I may actually take the plunge and buy a half beef from one of the local ranchers instead of buying by the cut.

js290:

It's the same high you get from fasting.

Paul:

Yes, there is a religious component.  And you're absolutely right about the outliers: there are substantial genetic differences in human abilities to process plant-source nutrients.

Mainly, though, I don't think a diet dependent on chemical supplementation and continual availability of fresh crops flown in from every corner of the globe is either sustainable or a good idea.

JS

April 28, 2011
2:19 pm
Amber
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I think you need to do better research. Going vegan helped me kick depression. I'm more active, I finally quit smoking, I'm a healthy weight and I have more muscle than I did when I ate meat. I've vegan for 3 years. Raising animals for food is a waste. It takes large amounts of grain to feed a cow, grain humans could be eating. Humans are not made to eat meat. Our dention (teeth) and digestive tracts prove this. Also, we're the only animals that have serious health problems from eating meat. Do better research and stop talking based on a few bad eaters who happen to be vegan.

April 29, 2011
4:05 pm
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Amber:

Any diet is an improvement over eating randomly...and even though Doritos and Mountain Dew are vegan, I'm sure you eschew that sort of junk, which is a huge improvement by itself.  I'm glad it's working for you...but I suspect you would find yourself doing even better with some carefully chosen animal products.  Keep yourself open to it, especially if you find yourself without the vigor you used to have.

As far as grains: grain should not be fed to cattle any more than it should be fed to humans, and industrial grain production is destructive and unsustainable no matter who eats the end product.  I don't like eating GMO soybeans either directly or by proxy.  I talk about this at length here.  

Grains are fed to cows in order to make them as fat as possible as quickly as possible.  Furthermore, cattle are only fed grains during the last few months of their life, because if we do it for too long they get sick and die.  There is a lesson here for us all.

"we're the only animals that have serious health problems from eating meat."

What health problems?  Humans are supremely adapted to eating meat, with specific mutations in ApoE genes that allow us to process large amounts of fat.  Our health problems come from eating grains -- as we can easily see from the fact that in every case where humans took up agriculture, our lifespan, stature, and brain size decreased, and our disease burden increased.  And the China Study (the original science, not the fraudulent misrepresentation by T. Colin Campbell) shows that meat is associated with less heart disease.  What's associated with greater heart disease?  Wheat consumption. 

Humans have consumed animal flesh since we were still chimpanzees.  Consuming animals is what allowed us to grow our big human brains.  The anthropological record is very clear on this.  

JS

May 5, 2011
12:09 pm
Dan
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Doritos are certainly not vegan, you dolt.

May 5, 2011
5:39 pm
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Dan:

Really?  The ingredients list reads "Whole Corn, Vegetable Oil (Contains one or more of the following: Corn, Soybean, or Sunflower oil) and Salt."  They also claim "Contains No Preservatives."  Even the Salsa Verde flavor is vegan unless there's an animal product hidden in "Natural Flavors."

Obviously the cheese flavored versions aren't vegan.

Keep in mind that I was vegetarian once, so I'm not ignorant of the issues (including animal vs. vegetable rennet in cheese).

JS

May 9, 2011
2:55 pm
Angelcruise
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Like 1 poster stated above - Vegans must learn how to feed themselves!! There's an Extreme Intelligence in Nature that makes Great Sense, but 1st *Do Not Kill is an Immutable Law of the Universe* Sorry to say, but beyond that Meat Eaters have have a Bad Scent!!

May 9, 2011
5:11 pm
MarkD
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While the premise is (admittedly) hyperbolic, I like how it makes you think. Like how any diet that causes you to burn fat stores is by default a 'high fat' diet.

I particularly liked the comment "Plenty of animals died to feed us corn, soybeans, strawberries, bananas, and bulgur…we just don't have to look at them, because they died off-camera of starvation when we took their land to plant our crops." I like to ask folks that start to talk about land use for plant based vs animal based diets if they have ever spent any time on a farm. If you've ever been in a pasture used for raising cattle, you know how green and alive it is versus the barren desolation that is left after corn or wheat is raised on land. I think we can agree that factory farms of any sort are horrible things!

I'm new to this blog and was also impressed that the author has left up dissenting comments, including links to the (gasp) dreaded vegan propaganda, and not just deleted them. Try posting anything pro paleo on a veggie site and see how long it lasts.

I have a couple of veggie friends who have started to falter in their religion as they have seen the progress I've made since going paleo. One was inspired by the 140 pounds I lost and has lost about 40 pounds on a low fat, low calorie vegetarian diet, but has stalled out and another who is normal weight and was peer pressured into going vegetarian by other friends (I do live in San Francisco) but admits to me he's not doing as well in the gym and feeling tired.

I think it is important that folks that have become vegetarian because they honestly believe they are doing something positive for the environment, a noble goal, could be doing a lot MORE if they were avoiding factory food of all kinds rather than avoiding animal products. I'd invite them to go out and see what a cow pasture looks like then a corn field after a harvest. I'd challenge them that the cow pasture is more sustainable, creates rather than destroys top soil and supports an ecosystem rather than destroying one.

May 9, 2011
9:11 pm
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Angelcruise:

"Do Not Kill is an Immutable Law of the Universe"

I could be snarky and post videos of chimpanzees flailing monkeys to death here, but instead I'll just note that eating meat is what made us human -- because it allowed us to grow big brains by sacrificing our plant-digesting guts.  Only the technological advances created by those big meat-powered brains have allowed us to come up with ways to feed ourselves with ground-up seeds.

Unfortunately, they're not nearly as nutritious, and they leave the land barren.

MarkD:

Absolutely.  This is about as harsh as I'm willing to get...because, as I said, I used to be a vegetarian.  And vegans are absolutely trying to do the right thing.  They're just not plugged in to the realities of ecology, which are that animals are the way that nutrients are returned to the soil -- and that the soil dies without them.  

By monocropping cereal grains, we're strip-mining topsoil, transporting it into our mouths, and dumping it into the nearest body of water.  The "waste" of grazing animals is nutrients being returned to the soil in the form of poop and piss -- nutrients that must otherwise be replaced with ammonium nitrate and other petroleum-derived fertilizers.  I talk about this at length here.

And no, I feel no need to censor opposing viewpoints.  People can see how dissent is treated here versus (say) 30BAD, and draw their own conclusions about where they're getting complete and trustworthy information.  

Welcome!  I'm glad you're here, and I hope you'll continue adding to the discussion.  And congratulations on losing 140 pounds...that's an entire extra person worth of weight you're not carrying around!

JS

May 11, 2011
3:22 pm
Frequent reader
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Regarding going beyond the IF pattern:

I suspect that the deep autophagy resulting from a 7 to 10 day fast is good -- maybe one or three times in a lifetime.

Two reasons:

1) Given that autophagy isn't random, occasional deep autophagy seems likely to destroy noxious cross-linked proteins and aggregates, and likewise cells that are misbehaving (for example, because they're several steps along the path to malignancy).

2) It's more than paleo-plausible that we're well adapted to occasional prolonged fasts, and perhaps even reliant on them, just as we're reliant on more routine stressors, such as intense, tissue-damaging exercise.

Full disclosure: I haven't yet persuaded myself to fast for more than 48 hours or so.

May 12, 2011
12:52 am
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Frequent reader:

That's an interesting thought, and you might be correct.  Perhaps every 5-10 years?  

The problem with fasting beyond 48 hours is that you definitely start losing muscle mass, you're very likely to become sick, and it strongly affects your ability to get anything done.  You'd really have to block out that week as a vacation from work, and it's tough to allocate one of your 2-3 vacation weeks to fasting when you'd really rather travel somewhere and enjoy yourself.

JS

May 13, 2011
9:29 am
Cathy
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Ah, interesting that you were vegetarian once. I tend to find the ex-veg*ns are those who feel the need to protest the most. This may be a form of defence, but you're not under attack. Vegetarians and vegans are simply people who choose not partake in the needless exploitation and abuse of sentient life that is animal agriculture (98% of which is factory farming in the US, and a switch to less intensive methods would necessitate a vast reduction in the consumption of these products).

If you feel attacked by the choices others make, try looking more deeply at the ethics your own choices, rather than trying to scrape together so-called evidence against those who are simply choosing to eat in a way that is compassionate, equitable and good for the planet.

I'm a well-informed, switched-on vegan who takes care to supplement B12 and get DHA from sustainable sea algae. Of course there are fringe practices / fad diets that are harmful, but these cannot be used as a valid argument against veganism. Similarly I would not claim that all omnivores are gambling with their health simply because a subset who follow the Atkins diet are putting themselves at high risk of heart disease. Please try and avoid straw-man arguments.

Best wishes from a peaceful plantarian

http://www.environmentfilms.org/EF/Making_the_Connection.html.

May 13, 2011
9:44 am
Cameron
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To anyone out there who is swayed by an internet post with a lack of references, try getting your information from the highest regarded dietary bodies in the world, such as the American Dietetic Association:
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes."

For the full paper: http://www.eatright.org/about/content.aspx?id=8357

Grumpy opinionated blog posts are fun and all, but don't base your life, and that of the other creatures we share the planet with, on them.

Vegan for 11 years, 100kg, really need to lose some weight actually 🙂

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