Wednesday 19 March 2008

A positive vegan news story (almost)

Switching to a vegan diet can reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes for arthritis sufferers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7301188.stm

But I see they still have to put a token anti-vegan comment in at the end (although not from the people who carried out the research). In what way is it "difficult to get enough of some important nutrients on a vegan diet"? What nutrients can you not get from plants, exactly? Do they mean that it's a good idea to think about what you eat and maybe even incorporate some foods into your diet because they are rich in certain nutrients, rather than just because they taste nice? Because everyone who doesn't actively avoid any foods (except the ones they don't like the taste of) is automatically consuming enough of all the right nutrients...

We're allowed to be told that we should eat more fruit and vegetables, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, more fibre, less salt and sugar, more 'good fats'... yet we must discourage people from being vegan. Perhaps they think that some people might not pay enough attention to their nutrition if they tried being vegan, like just leaving the meat out of their meat and two veg meal, but the thing is, if you make changes like that to your diet you have to think of alternative things to eat (else you wouldn't have anything to eat!), which does lead you to learn a bit about nutrients and what foods they're found in, so it's hardly going to be dangerous for most people. But then again, most of the world probably thinks that being vegan is just too 'extreme' simply because it's unfamiliar and so far from what most people in this country eat by default because that's what they were brought up with. Although if you'd asked me what I thought of veganism when I was a meat eater, I may well have said the same thing.

Well, I shall be something of a living experiment. You can get away with a fair amount of unhealthiness when you're younger, but when you're older it catches up with you - the more unhealthy your lifestyle is, the younger it gets you. That's my theory, anyway. So when I'm 60 and everyone else my age is suffering from various health problems, I'm hoping that I'll be doing better than most!

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