Archive for the ‘Vegan’ Category

by Anai Rhoads

Notorious for being one of the most outspoken and controversial former vegans, author of The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith, has not skirted in her belief that the vegan diet is detrimental to our health and to the environment.

As many of my readers know, it’s not often that I provide an alternative perspective to plant-based diets.  In fact, it has never been done.

As a vegetarian for the first 29 years of my life and a vegan for the last decade, the following may come as a surprise to many of my readers. However, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to interview the author, who has ignited a fierce storm within the community.

The following is my conversation with Keith.

In your book, The Vegetarian Myth, you share your two-decade long journey with veganism. What initially sparked your interest in plant-based diets?

I was 16 when I went vegan. My mother was living in Brookline, MA, which was the home of the Kushi Institute. So there were lots of macrobiotic people in the area. My sister, who was 14, became friends with a girl at her high school whose family had moved to Brookline specifically to be near the KI. That was my introduction to the whole world of natural foods and specialized diets. Macrobiotics was too arcane for me—I didn’t understand a lot of it—but I was taken with the basic idea that animal products were bad and whole grains and vegetables were good. As destructive as veganism ended up being, one thing I learned from the macrobiotics that I appreciate was the rejection of white sugar and other processed foods.  I was not a junk food vegan, ever. I got a good grounding in the rejection of industrial foods. Of course in the end, sugar is just sugar, whether you call it “complex carbohydrate” or a potato or a Snicker’s bar. But I didn’t know that then.  I also didn’t realize that the soon-to-be-ubiquitous soy foods were industrial waste products manufactured by Dupont, or how canola, corn, and soy oil are made. All of those are industrial products, and all are substances that humans have never eaten before. Still, if I had been eating white flour and white sugar all those years, the damage could have been worse. 

I also learned in health class in school that dietary fat was the root of all nutritional evils—the low-fat paradigm was just getting off the ground. That was really the beginning of an eating disorder—I would have sworn I could feel my arteries clogging while the teacher talked about it. Suddenly the idea of dietary fat made me feel physically disgusting. This intense, immediate body dysmorphia.

And then I found all the political literature, Diet for a Small Planet and the like. That was the final convincing. Factory-farming is dreadful, horrible, torturous, and I wanted nothing to do with it. I also believed the myth that American grain could cure starvation, if we would simply stop feeding it to cows.

So veganism was a complete package. I think most of us who have tried it are taken by the simplicity and the beauty of it, that with this one act we can supposedly cure so many injustices. It’s not true, of course, but I had no counter-information and no reason to question.

What caused you to turn against veganism and why do you now consider the vegan community as a cult?

My health failed catastrophically. I have severe, permanent damage to my body from veganism. It’s hard not to be bitter when I will live I pain for the rest of my life.

I would not say that the vegan community is a cult. That’s too strong. I would say that it has cult-like elements. Being a vegan means overriding the profound animal impulse to be fed, day after day after day. I speak from experience: only the truly fanatic can keep that up over years. And I say that with great affection—the world only changes because of fanatics, because of people who have that kind of passion and single-minded focus. But we’re not the most pleasant people to be around.

When a vegan’s health starts to fail, it’s rare that she gives up veganism without serious trauma and struggle. And she will most likely lose friends as she begins to question. If this was just a dietary preference, there would be no struggle, no trauma, no painful end to friendships. But being a vegan isn’t just what you eat—it’s who you are, and it’s a totalizing identity, usually kept in place by a community of true believers. Other vegans will simply refuse to believe that this diet could do harm to anyone’s health. The rejoinder is always, “Well, they did it wrong.” You could not have done it better than me and my friends. I would not even eat ketchup if it had sugar in it. And we all ended up a mess. When ideology outweighs physical reality, including someone’s physical pain, that is a cult mentality. Ideology cannot sledgehammer the world into the shape we would prefer. Believe me, I tried, and I learned the hard way that it can’t be done.

Finally, I have been physically assaulted by vegans. Could you find a more extreme psychology than assaulting people because you don’t agree with them? Ever hear of the Taliban? You don’t like my book, don’t read it. Normal people engage when they don’t like an idea. That, or they shrug their shoulders and turn to other concerns. But the vegan mindset has produced people who are willing to physically hurt people who disagree with them. What else to call that besides fundamentalism?

You discuss the health issues you experienced while you were a vegan.  Can you tell our readers more about your condition, what it is and if you’ve recovered?

Is there anything more boring than other people’s health problems? Severe hypoglycemia, gastroparesis, a degenerative joint disease at age 18, infrequent menstruation, intransigent depression and anxiety, a rare form of eczema, skin so dry it hurt, profound exhaustion, and finally an autoimmune disease.

Taken one by one, for readers who find this sort of thing interesting, the blood sugar issues are fine as long as I don’t eat more than maybe 40 grams of carbohydrate a day. That’s permanent. My insulin receptors aren’t coming back. Vegans, if you are constantly craving food—especially carbs or sugars—you are blowing through yours as well. The human body was never meant to handle that amount of sugar. I had to eat every two hours, then every hour, then basically semi-constantly, and it was dreadful. The amount of adrenaline that requires has left me with exhausted adrenal glands and a dysregulated cortisol pattern that nothing and no one has been able to correct.

One result of all that insulin-demanding food is gastroparesis, which diabetics often get. Adrenaline suppresses the body’s ability to produce hydrochloric acid. If you do that three times a day for years, you will do damage. I was nauseated and bloated every day for years. The medical people were mystified. Finally, I consulted with a doctor who works with recovering vegans and he knew in ten seconds what was wrong. He told me to take betaine hydrochloride supplements and it was a miracle. It helped instantly. I’ve been taking those for I think eight years now—healing is long and slow, but it is happening.

I have degenerative disc disease. It’s a Grade IV derangement at at least four levels. People’s spines are not supposed to fall apart at age 18 for no reason. The reasons behind my condition only became clear to me when I read Weston Price’s extraordinary book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, and the companion volumes by Sally Fallon (Nourishing Traditions) and Ron Schmid (Native Nutrition). Humans, especially our bones and teeth, need nutrient-dense animal foods. We need the protein, the minerals, the fat and the fat-soluble vitamins only available in animal fats. I wasn’t getting any, essentially. Not compared to the levels we need. And our bodies can’t absorb minerals without fat. And to compound the situation, all those whole grains I was eating contain tons of phytates, which are chemical substances that plants use to fight back—they don’t want to be eaten, either. Phytates bind with minerals in the digestive tract, making then inaccessible to us. So what few minerals I was getting, were being carried right back out. It’s no wonder my spine fell apart. By the end of my vegan career, I couldn’t sit more than 30 minutes and only stood in five minute bursts. I lived my life on the couch from the pain.

Adding back good-quality animal fats and proteins produced a miracle. I will always be in pain with physical restrictions, but I’m in substantially less. I can go to the movies. I can go out to dinner. I’ve even flown across the country, sitting up for 6 hour stretches. You have no idea what it’s like to go from such a small, constrained world to one where I can semi-function enough to have a social life. Of course there are times when I regret all I could have done—gone to law school, earned a living. Life below the poverty line is no fun. And constant pain is exhausting. But I remember how bad it was, how bad it could be.

The amenorrhea stopped two weeks after I removed all the soy products from my diet, and I haven’t skipped a period since. That was stunning. And really scary. I was basically on birth control pills for twenty years. The phytoestrogens in soy products are chemicals, not food. Please take this seriously. My sister got endometriosis from soy products and had to have a hysterectomy. It is really, really serious.

Eating lots of good animal protein and fat produced a miracle in stable mood state. I’d say that’s the number one complaint that recently-ex-vegans write to me about. The depression lifts, sometimes in 48 hours, and the world goes from grey to color. They are so grateful to have their lives back.

The dry skin healed up after three days of animal fat. That was amazing, too. I didn’t realize that skin could actually bend with me and not hurt. The dyshidrosis went away the moment I stopped eating grain.

And now it looks like I have Hashimoto’s. Once the immune system is turned on, it never really turns off. I have to be very strict about never eaten grain, especially gluten grains, again. It remains to be seen whether there’s any help for the profound exhaustion that I live with every day.

Had you discussed your health with a nutritionist or was it just an “ah-ha” moment that led you on this path?

It never occurred to me that my righteous vegan diet—which was supposed to be so good for animals, the planet, and human health—could possibly be causing me these problems. That’s what I mean about the cult-like mentality. It was unthinkable. Vegans, if you are reading this, please think it. Please. Before the damage is permanent. There’s a whole generation of us out here who already tried it and we ended up a mess. You’re allowed to learn from our mistakes. For four million years our species has been eating nutrient-dense animal foods. Ideology cannot change the biological needs of your animal body.

I was once a strong proponent of soy, but now campaign against it after experiencing adverse hormonal effects. Just how dangerous, in your opinion, is soy?

Don’t touch the stuff. Ever. If you want to eat a tablespoon of miso now and then with fish broth, that won’t hurt. But everything else, no. Especially the soy milk and fake meat products. They are industrial waste products that act as drugs–many of them are serious endocrine-disruptors and cause cancer. Why would anyone want to eat food that was manufactured? Let alone manufactured by Dupont? Yet the industry has spent millions to market these products as groovy and green, and environmentalists, of all people, have fallen for it. It’s truly bizarre.

A good place to learn more about the dangers of soy is here.

What is your advice to mothers who use soy-based formulas for their babies?

Stop, stop, please, stop. Giving a baby soy formula is a hormone load equivalent to four birth control pills a day! Let that sink in. That has got to be a bad idea in anyone’s book. Please do not let your ideology get in the way of your baby’s health.

Over the last decade, as a vegan, I have witnessed many who have taken several missteps in their diets. Would you say plant-based diets are generally healthy but aren’t employed properly? Is there a common ground that should be taken into consideration if one chooses to remain vegan?

A vegan diet does not contain enough nutrients for the long-term maintenance and repair of the human body. Give the body enough bulk calories and it will limp along, but you’re on drawdown the whole time. If you are currently a vegan, the first important thing is to remove all the soy. The second is to add coconut oil, which is one of the only plant sources of saturated fat. Those will help as stop-gap measures.

You mention in your book how the blood and bones of animals feed the soil and keep it alive. What are your thoughts on vegan-organic farming and how do you think it compares?

It’s an absurd project. The living world needs its full cohort of community members to actually keep living, never mind be resilient. I don’t understand wanting to drive animals from the world, especially in the name of helping animals. What we have got to do, if there is any hope for this planet, is to repair the perennial polycultures—the forests, grasslands, and wetlands—and help the animals come home. And then finally take our place as members of those biotic communities instead of destroyers. That’s how we lived for our first 4 million years. It’s only in the last 10,000 that we’ve become monsters. Agriculture is the most destructive thing that humans have done to the planet. More of the same won’t save us.

You have a new book coming out. Can you tell our readers about it and when it will be released?

The book is called Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. It’s co-authored with Aric McBay and Derrick Jensen. Read about it here.

(From: 19 May 2009)

by Anai Rhoads

Editor’s note: Soy is highly controversial and studies are not yet complete. Read why soy may not suit all individuals here.

AnaiRhoads.org — With more public interest in healthy and organic goods, there has been an influx of new products hitting the U.S. marketplace.

Organic soy foods have seen a favourable rise in sales and demand over the last two decades. This is partly due to more consumers looking for alternatives to animal-based foods and their desire for healthier products in general.

However, there are two considerations consumers should take into account before purchasing soy products – the carbon footprint involved in bringing the products to local markets and if the products are organic. 

The Cornucopia Institute released a new report that exposes how companies dupe consumers into believing their products are organic, when in fact they are not.

For example, soybean products produced in China are labelled as “natural,” when they are actually laced with toxic chemicals. U.S. companies import soybeans from China and label them organic, which is misleading.

China’s “natural” soy is bathed in the toxic solvent hexane in order to separate soy oil from the protein and fibre. Hexane is a neuro-toxic chemical that contaminates the soy and other foods, is an air pollutant, and has been known to pose serious occupational hazards to workers. The chemical has been banned in America, but is routinely employed in China.

“Importing Chinese soybeans or contributing to the loss of rain forests by shipping in commodities from Brazil just flat-out contradicts the working definition of organic agriculture,” said Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute.

A scorecard was introduced in the Cornucopia report, Beyond the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry, that evaluated organic soy brands by their policies. Some proved to be environmentally friendly, working closely with local farmers, while others are merely agribusinesses that exploit consumer trust.

Cornucopia assembled a soybean foods rating system respecting the fundamental tenets of organics based on a national survey of the soy industry and reviews of import data.

“The report’s good news is that consumers can easily find, normally without paying any premium, organic soy foods that truly meet their expectations,” said Charlotte Vallaeys, a Cornucopia researcher and primary author of the report.

According to the report, Dean Foods topped the list of companies that continuously fails to support soy from domestic organic acreages. After acquiring Silk, which supplies a variety of vegan Silk Soy products, the company abruptly dropped U.S. farmers and instead quietly made a deal with China in order to cut costs. While the dairy giant has been paying less for the soy, U.S. consumers are continuing to be charged premium prices.

“White Wave (Dean’s marketing division for Silk and Horizon organic milk) had the opportunity to push organic and sustainable agriculture to incredible heights of production by working with North American farmers and traders to get more land in organic production, but what they did was pit cheap foreign soybeans against the U.S. organic farmer, taking away any attraction for conventional farmers to make the move into sustainable agriculture,” said Merle Kramer, a marketer for the Midwestern Organic Farmers Cooperative.

Companies that scored the best were Eden Foods, Small Planet Tofu, and Vermont Soy, all of which work directly with North American organic farmers.

Editor’s note: Soy is highly controversial and studies are not yet complete. Read why soy may not suit all individuals here.

by M. Butterflies Katz

AnaiRhoads.org — From questioning farmers at the local farmer’s market and elsewhere, I’ve learned that many organic (and even non-organic) gardeners use blood and bone fertilizer on a regular basis. I question what to purchase with our dollars: food grown with chemicals that damage the soil’s fertility and our own health or food grown in blood and bone; the by-product of an industry that exploits animals. I accompanied a local organic certifier on an inspection, which made buying organic food less desirable because of my strong stance on veganism. I needed a solution to this problem. I never thought I would get my hands in the dirt with the worms, but I decided to help grow the food (vegan-organic) for Shangri-La, Gentle World’s Vegan Paradigm Center on the north island of New Zealand.

We started with two large plots for vegetables which were a success; watermelons beyond what we could eat, delicious sweet corn, excellent potatoes, and tomatoes to give away free to everyone we knew! The gardens could have been more successful, but it was enough to inspire me to want to learn all I could. These large garden plots are surrounded by native forest reserve. The pristine rivers, that come straight to us from the surrounding woods, flow by the gardens as our irrigation source, if necessary. (It usually rains enough to water the gardens naturally.)

Since that initial attempt, we have continued to grow our own produce, as much as possible. In addition, we have planted hundreds of fruit trees: mandarins, oranges, avocados, pears, plums, apples, feijoas, peaches, blueberries, nectarines, cherimoyas, sapotes, figs, passionfruit, grapes, macadamias, walnuts and almonds.

The ‘Veganic’ gardening system avoids chemicals, as well as livestock manures and animal remains from slaughterhouses. Fertility of the soil is maintained with vegetable compost, crop rotation, mulching, and other methods. We’ve recently tried double-digging.

Soil conditioners/fertilizers that are vegan include:

Lime provides calcium and magnesium for your soil. Calcium is essential for strong plant growth and aids in the intake of other nutrients. Most plants prefer a fairly neutral soil pH for optimum growth. Lime can be used to raise the pH level or ’sweeten the soil’, if necessary. Your soil can be tested to see if you need to raise the pH level. Lime is used by some for breaking up heavy clay soil. Reducing the acidity of the soil is the primary purpose for using lime in the garden.

Gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate) Gypsum is used where more calcium is needed without raising the pH.

Dolomite – a finely ground rock dust and preferred source of calcium and magnesium.

Rock Phosphate is used for its phosphorus content. Phosphorus is an essential element for plant and animal nutrition. It is mined as phosphate rock, which is formed in oceans as calcium phosphate. The primary mineral in phosphate rock is apatite.

Rock Dusts (or Stonemeal) are slowly released into the soil and are used in an effort to re-mineralize soil that has become depleted through industrial and agricultural practices. Rock dusts can be applied directly to the soil, in combination with other fertilizers, or added to the compost. These products have a highly stimulating effect on microbial activity.

NB: Rock dusts are considered ‘vegan’, but the mining of them can be detrimental to the region where they are mined from. Use them sparingly.

Rock Potash or potassium or wood ash – Potassium is an essential plant nutrient that enhances flower and fruit production and helps ‘harden up’ foliage to make it less susceptible to disease. Rock potash is very slow-acting. The potash is released very gradually as the mineral weathers. This can take years. Use it when preparing the soil before planting.

Hay Mulches – Using a thick layer of hay to cover the earth will suppress weeds, as well as feeding the soil with organic matter as it breaks down. It will also encourage more worms to live in your soil. Put gardens to sleep over the winter and cover them with a very thick layer of hay mulch.

Composted Organic Matter – fruit and vegetable rinds, leaves, and grass clippings. A compost pile consists of food waste, i.e. peels from the kitchen, covered by course material like leaves, hay, or grass clippings. The object is to create layers of food material alternating with covering material to allow aeration. When a bin is full, the pile is flipped and covered by black plastic or weed mat to protect it from rainfall and create heat. It can be flipped again after a period of time, so the bottom becomes the top. Cover again and within a couple of months, depending on your climate, nature’s master recycling plan will have taken its course and you will have vitamin rich soil.

Green Manures or Nitrogen-fixing crops – ‘Green Manure’ is a cover crop of plants tilled into the soil. Fast-growing plants, such as wheat, oats, rye, vetch, or clover, can be grown as cover crops between garden crops and then tilled into the garden as it is prepared for the next planting. Green manure crops absorb and use nutrients from the soil that might otherwise be lost through leaching, then return these nutrients to the soil when they are tilled under. The root system of cover crops improves the soil structure and helps prevent erosion. Nitrogen-fixing crops such as vetch, peas and broad beans (fava beans), and crimson clover add some nitrogen to the soil as they are turned under and decompose. Cover crops also help reduce weed growth during the fall and winter months.

Liquid Feeds such as Comfrey or Nettles act as an organic liquid compost.

Seaweed (fresh, liquid or meal) is used for trace elements. Seaweed is best used harvested fresh from the sea as opposed to washed up and sitting on beaches. Some veganic gardeners use bulk spirulina or kelp meal (used for potash and trace minerals).

Neem – The Neem tree is known as the wonder tree in India. Neem has been in use for centuries in Indian agriculture as the best natural pesticide and organic fertilizer with pest repellent properties and insect sterilization properties.

Green Sand – used as a soil amendment and fertilizer and is mined from deposits of minerals that were originally part of the ocean floor. It is a natural source of potash, along with iron, magnesium, silica and as many as 30 other trace minerals. It may also be used to loosen heavy, clay soils. It has the consistency of sand but 10 times the moisture absorption.

EM Bokashi – EM means Effective Micro-organisms and consists of mixed cultures of beneficial, naturally-occurring micro-organisms such as lactic acid bacteria, yeast, photosynthetic bacteria and actinomycetes. Bokashi is a Japanese term that means ‘fermented organic matter’. It is a bran-based material that has been fermented with EM liquid concentrate and dried for storage. Bokashi is a product which you add to the compost to aid in the fermentation of the organic matter. (EM Bokashi should be stored in a warm, dry place out of direct sunlight).

‘The No Till method’, which ironically rhymes with ‘NO KILL method’ is a practice that does not till the earth and kill worms in the soil. It is more gentle, from a vegan standpoint, and worm castings are an excellent fertilizer for the soil.

Vermiculture, Vermicastings, Vermicomposting or Worm Castings – Worm castings are a rich, all-natural source of organic matter with lots of nutrients and moisture-holding capabilities. Earthworm castings are known to have an extraordinary effect on plant life. Castings improve the soil structure and increase fertility. Re-establish natural worm populations in your garden. Composting worms love cool, damp and dark environments (like under black weed mat or a thick layer of hay mulch), and will breed optimally when these conditions are maintained.

Alfalfa meal, Flax Seed Meal, Cottonseed Meal and Soya Meal are sources of nitrogen.

Epsom Salts are an excellent source of magnesium.

Returning to Hawaii from New Zealand, I went to a natural food store and found tomatoes with a sticker saying ‘Vegan Tomatoes’ grown organically with neem oil and vegan fertilizer. There must be others who feel similarly and are requesting growers to elevate their standards. Organic certifiers should not allow the use of blood and bone anymore because of the United Kingdom’s problems with Mad Cow and Hoof and Mouth diseases. By growing our food veganically, there is a greater hope of eliminating transmittable diseases and bacteria. Growing ‘veganic’ is a healthier and more compassionate alternative to chemical or even organic agriculture. I never imagined what a fulfilling experience it would be to work hand in hand with nature and witness this miracle of life; that of growing your own food, vegan-organically.

For more information:

Veganic Agriculture Network

Vegan Organic Network

Butterflies has been a proud vegan for a quarter of a century, and has lived communally for 25 years. Her life’s passion is to spread the vegan message. Towards that end, she publishes informative articles and is a professional vegan chef. She is also a full-time volunteer for a non-profit educational organization. She co-authored Incredibly Delicious; Recipes for a New Paradigm by Gentle World.