So U think Vegan is healthy?

[Aractus]

Just a reminder that if anyone wants to debate this properly I am certainly interested.

The meaning of vegan has changed since my generation were children. I watched a video with Alex Jamieson where she explains this as well, that when she became vegan it was for her health not for animal welfare and since that time the entire meaning of vegan has shifted - and I agree with her.

Vegans do make the claims that a vegan lifestyle is better for health and better for the environment, but the nucleus to their lifestyle is the desire not to consume animals. And the problem with this is they make claims that are wrong - like that meat, fish, dairy and eggs are actually unhealthy for humans, this isn't true at all. In fact, red meat is the most nutrient dense food that there is, there is more nutrients in cattle liver then there is in any other natural foods that we consume.

Vegans have no scientific understanding of the human digestive process. There's just one thing I want to bring up here: enzymes. Do you know what an Enzyme is? If you had a very very basic knowledge of biology you could answer this easily, it's a really simple thing. enzymes are proteins that break down the nutrients in foods to be used by our bodies. Herbivores have enzymes that break down cellulose so that it can be metabolized. All mammals have a enzymes for breaking down lactose, although for most mammals that enzyme does not persist past the juvenile stage.

One of the things that happens when people switch from one way of eating to an extreme diet is that the imbalance in enzymes causes weight loss, but this is only temporary. What happens is, for instance, if you stop eating meat or grain altogether and just eat fruit and veg your digestive tract won't have enough enzymes to break down all the nutrients and you'll in fact pass a number of calories straight out. If you persist in eating this way - or any way for that matter - you cause the composition of enzymes in your digestive tract to change to adopt to your diet.

Soy is one of the most harmful products for this process. It interferes with how you should be digesting food, and that's why it's not healthy to over consume soy products. That's not opinion, it's science. So when I see vegans claim that you can have healthy pseudo-meats, what I hear is their claim that artificial processed foods containing soy and msg are going to be as healthy or healthier than the meat alternatives, and this simply is not true.

Vegans believe all deficiencies can be corrected with supplements, this just is not true. You have to work with the process in which the body works to break down nutrients using its enzymes, not in a way that simply doesn't work. B12 is a really interesting example on this one - many vegans will actually not want to say which health supplement vegans should take, and this is because vegans who take supplements in the form of a pill still become B12 deficient, and then have to be given it through IV. This is an example that although it may sound on paper as if a supplement will correct a deficiency, real world examples show that the supplements are not absorbed the way in which the same nutrient is directly from the whole food source.

Much of the information being spread by the vegan movement is FALSE. Take for instance 30 Bananas a Day - very well known and vocal. Yet the two people behind the 80/10/10 "Raw to 4" raw vegan diet, Freelee and Duranrider, have absolutely no diet expertise and yet people listen to them for health advice. Their problem isn't that the diet itself is bad, it's that the diet is bad long term. Using a vegan diet as a "short term cleanse" eg for up to 1 week is not an all bad idea doing that will reorganise the enzymes in your digestive tract, and when you go back to eating normally they'll reorganize yet again and it's not a bad way to give your system a rough kick, however the problem with them and with Douglas N. Graham the originator of 80/10/10 is that it's basically just a sugar high. It's not healthy, it's not wholesome it's just a sugar high. And people that are on it are simply experiencing that sugar high whist depriving their brains of the food it needs and becoming addicted to sugar.

Here's Doug Graham with one gullible young woman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIBMEGI7e8I

Who's since gone away from veganism after 80/10/10 gave her teeth cavities and other health problems and onto paleo (search through her other videos). It's true that going from one extreme to another isn't necessarily the best idea, however at least she's no longer unhealthy.

So these health claims are unethical in my opinion. Veganism can be helpful to people, however it can also be harmful. There is no solid scientific data that shows that humans can thrive on a vegan diet, and if you choose to follow it you are a guinea pig in an experiment - it's fine to do the experiment, but it's wrong to tell other's that it's the right way to diet.