The True Dangers of Veganism

Veganism isn’t the answer…

Many people have turned to veganism and vegetarianism for a solution to their health problems. Yet, many people’s motives for being vegan are incorrect. Let’s get the dirt facts…

First, there is no such thing as veganism anywhere else in Nature. Going beyond the animal kingdom, right down to the very soil that plant-life comes from we find an almost cannibalistic relationship occurring between organisms.

Lady Eve Balfour, founder of the British Soil Association discovered in her research that soil organisms liquefy minerals and feed them to the plants they are associated with in trade for the plants sugary sap. In other words, soil organisms actually eat “plants milk”. Not just that, we find that the mycorrhiza fungi actually cast filament nets in loops around their symbiotic partner plants with the explicit intent of capturing, killing and eating predatory parasites that want to eat their partner plants.

Once one of these pathogens are capture by the fungi their organs are eaten first and given to their partner plant in exchange of the sugary sap.

What does this mean? It means that over 85% of the plants eaten by vegans and vegetarians are actually carnivorous. So if a vegan eats a carnivore, does that mean they’re still vegan? Talk about a paradox…

Not to mention, plants are living, feeling creatures too. For all the compassionate vegans, consider that for a moment – plants have feelings too – how do you think those plants feel being ground to death in your Omega Juicer?

Moving on, let us have a look at how farming works on a microscopic level. Due to the nature of soil organisms as we just learned, we find that soil that has natural decay from a variety of animals, including the meat, blood, hair etc. and plant scraps is produces the healthiest soil, right down to the bacterial diversity.

Crops grown in strictly vegetarian soils (farm land that has little to no compost, rotation, crop variety and little to no natural death of animals) suffer significantly compared to crops grown on “composts” comprised of a variety of both plant and animal scraps. The immune systems of the soils of the ladder are much stronger and produce significantly healthier soil and plants. And where do we find soil like this? Well, right out in the wild of Mother Nature of course, where the circle of life once thrived in symbiosis.

It’s also important to mention the obvious self-sabotage that occurs on a vegan or vegetarian diet. Weston A. Price discovered through his 30 years of travel and experimentation that no single indigenous culture on the planet was strictly vegan or vegetarian, all consumed some form of animal product and many praised them. The unhealthiest cultures were gauged by their dental health – a major indicator of health. What he found was that the cultures that swayed more to a vegan and vegetarian diet (not by choice but by circumstance) were nutrient deficient, infertile and physiologically imbalanced. Today we find the same, that vegans and vegetarians show higher amounts of the following health problems:

• Depression
• Nutrient Deficiencies – omega fatty acids, protein, zinc, iron, and b-12
• Tooth decay
• Weight gain
• Hormonal imbalance – adrenal fatigue & thyroid disorders
• Infertility, Low Sex Drive, Etc.

How Plant-based B-12 Causes B-12 Deficiencies

The 1-5 Year Vegan High: The Junkie in Disguise

Sometimes a person can will their way a few years through misguided veganism before their high wears off. There are a few reasons for this. First, b-12 can store in the body for a few years before it is depleted and the negative side effects kick in. These symptoms include anemia, impaired eyesight, panic attacks, schizophrenia, hallucinations and nervous disorders, anxiety, depression, fatigue, loss of balance and poor circulation. One study found that a very high percentage of inmates in psychiatric wards suffers from low serum levels of B12. 1 Another study shows Vitamin B12 deficiencies in breast-fed infants of strict vegetarians. 2

Additionally, as many vegans put their own health at risk for the fractionated perspective and illusion of saving the planet, they are supported for a short time via the process of gluconeogenesis. This is a process in which the stress hormone cortisol increases to catabolize protein to feed to the brain. Part of the process involves the secretion of adrenaline – another stress hormone.

The result, is a euphoric junkie in disguise as a world saving super hero, completely unaware of their self-created adrenaline high. Eventually their adrenals fail and after about a year they start to have significant hormonal problems and eventually begin to display the classic burnt-out junkie appearance.

Calcium Deficiencies – Tooth Decay & Osteoporosis 

So, you can get protein from a vegan diet (ideally well-cooked potatoes, mushrooms and fruit) and you can get your intestines healthy enough to produce their own b-vitamins; however, calcium is more challenging for vegans. Few foods contain dietary calcium, mostly diary foods, some well-cooked leafy greens and nettle leaf. On the other hand, ALL foods contain the competing mineral phosphorus.

This makes it very easy to have chronically higher phosphorus to calcium, which is not good. When the phosphate is chronically higher than the dietary calcium, there is an increased functioning of parathyroid hormone and prolactin and those tend to overload the cells with calcium increasing nitric oxide leading to the loss of energy and inflammation that retards the regeneration of the body. Not to mention, prolactin and parathyroid rob calcium from the hard tissues (bones and teeth), putting vegans or anyone calcium deficient at a greater risk for osteoporosis and tooth decay – something very prevalent in the vegan community.

Cholesterol Deficiencies – Low Sex Drive, Infertility & Hormonal Imbalance

Summarizing so far; vegans can get adequate protein if they avoid grains/legumes and go for potatoes, mushrooms and fruits. They can also get b-vitamins, and if they’re consuming at least 2 cups of well cooked kale a day, they can even avoid low calcium. However, the major and unavoidable problem you will face on a vegan diet is the lack of dietary cholesterol.

First off, yes, the liver does produce some cholesterol, but usually not enough for optimal hormonal production. This is because stress increases the cells need for cholesterol and well, most people today are stressed. Secondly, eating dietary cholesterol is actually inversely related with high cholesterol. You see, high cholesterol is caused by two things that have nothing to do with eating it.

The thyroid hormone is responsible for the cellular utilization of cholesterol, so hypothyroid is going to impair the cells ability to use cholesterol, causing it to become elevated in the blood. Next, the liver has the major job of excreting unused or excess cholesterol. So liver impairments going to cause high cholesterol too, which can be caused by having a protein and carbohydrate deficient diet, amongst other things.

Getting back to the point – only animal foods contain dietary cholesterol, so vegans will forever be deficient in cholesterol. And guess what you need cholesterol for? Producing your hormones.

All hormones start off with cholesterol, which is then synthesized with vitamin A (retinol from animal foods), and turned into DHEA (the mother hormone, that creates all other hormones. So, a diet devoid of cholesterol usually means low androgen hormone production and a consequential increased reliance on stress hormones like cortisol. This explains the low sex drive and fertility issues vegans tend to experience, as well as low energy, thyroid issues and adrenal issues.

Good Meat vs. Bad Meat

Paradoxically, the research of Weston A. Price shows us that the healthiest and longest lived people did not exclude animal products from their diets. They did however consume more plants than animals, they fished and hunted, ate a wide variety of foods that were local, seasonal and from the wild of their own backyards, had community, tribes and family and essentially were a part of a much bigger life game.

Veganism or other dietary isms; you could say, are small life games usually played by an individual. Even the environmentalist vegan is looking at a small percentage of the big picture without much discernment. Levels of intelligence could be measured by the ability to discern and make differences but you really have to look. You cannot be a sane environmentalist and not understand the microbiology of the soil. And yet, many anti-meat activists cannot or do not tell the difference between toxic, commercially farmed meat and wild-game or local, small farm raised animals.

If we compare the differences, we find a simple truth; bad meat is bad and healthy meat is one of the oldest superfoods in town. Saying all animal products are bad is like saying all water is bad without noting the effects that between bottled, fluoridated water has on the body compared to wild structured spring water sipped from Mother Earth.

The problem isn’t animal foods; it is the toxic means in how they’re raised, slaughtered and the gluttonous fashion in which they are consumed. Even the science is skewed; the studies that suggest meat is harmful is highly flawed. Commercial, processed lunch meat and even fast food meat is grouped into the same category as wild-game and pastured animals. Not a single study has been done on the effects that healthy, wild-game meat consumed by indigenous people has on the body. We can only note the dramatically lower levels of disease prior to industrial farming.

Out of the studies that have been conducted, we find that the harmful effects of consuming meat have nothing to do with the meat itself. Rather, is is the toxins, chemicals, carcinogens and anti-biotics that are present in commercial meat that are doing the real harm.

But Being Vegan Made Me Healthier

Now you may be wondering how some vegans or vegetarians stay healthy and the answer is, they don’t. The better question to ask; perhaps, is how you gauging what it means to be healthy? Is it by their weight? Thin does not mean healthy; in fact, the healthiest cultures such as the Inuit and Serbians are what we would consider “over weight”. So if we are gauging wellness solely on appearance, we have missed the mark.

If someone achieves vibrant health on a vegan diet, it was perhaps a short-term solution. From my experience and 10 years of nutritional coaching, I’ve seen veganism and vegetarianism to be a helpful short-term solution that can help one detoxify, lighten their overall food intake and become an overall more balanced consumer. It’s not so much the act of not eating animal products that gets them healthier either. It is usually a result of eliminating chemical laden, processed, refined foods as well as industrial farmed animals and produce that does the trick. Otherwise, let us consider the facts of Nature, there is no spices that are truly vegan or vegetarian if we trace things back far enough. And furthermore, throughout history humans with limited access to animal products have often gone to great lengths to include at least some animal products in their diet.  And they’ve done that for a reason.

Bottom line, there is no permeant solution. Perhaps veganism helped you overcome toxicity or even cancer. However, what is medicine one day may become a problem the next. if your diet is making you unhealthy, you may be saving a few beings, however, at the risk of the human race. This is not an ethical solution – we are harming the most important beings on the planet capable of contributing to the greatest good of the greatest number of dynamics of life.

What Should We Have for Dinner?

So what should we eat then in a world of gastronomic confusions? The answer is and has been simple…eat real food, not too much with a lot of variety.

If you can, hunt, forage food, grown your own or purchase your animal products from small, local, biodynamic farms that keep the integrity of Mother Nature’s biology and ecology in order.