Potential Problems with a Strict Vegan Diet

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Potential Problems with a Strict Vegan Diet

By Dr. Ben Kim DrBenKim.com

I'm grateful that my recent blog entry on the documentary Earthlings generated widespread interest (more than 12,000 unique views within 48 hours of its posting), and that it caused many of our readers to consider the impact that all of our daily food and lifestyle choices have on other living creatures.

The following comment left by a reader named Mike Lautermilch gives voice to what I feel is one of the main messages of Earthlings:

 

"When we feel we must kill an animal for some legitimate purpose, death should be instantaneous, unsuspected, and as non-traumatic as possible. If at any time, for any reason, it looks as though a quick, non-traumatic death of an animal is not possible to deliver, then it should be postponed until it IS possible."

I'm confident that Mr. Lautermilch would agree that this philosophy of minimizing unnecessary suffering is also applicable to how living creatures should be treated at all times, not just to how they should be treated in the moment before they are about to die.

A handful of readers wrote in to ask why I believe that it is difficult for most people to experience their best health while following a 100 percent vegan diet for more than several years.

I have come to this belief through my own personal experiences and also through my experiences as a health care provider.

For some of the reasons mentioned in Earthlings plus personal health purposes, I chose to adopt a 100 percent vegan diet in the summer of 1999 following a 14-day water fast. I stayed on this diet for close to four years. But I only felt like I was optimally supporting my health for the first two of those years. The last two years were marked by low energy, constant cravings for some animal foods, skin breakouts, and emotional lows that I had never previously experienced.

My strict vegan diet consisted of plenty of fresh leafy greens, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, celery, sprouts, many varieties of steamed greens, steamed root vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, hard squashes, carrots, and red beets, whole grains like brown rice and quinoa, a wide variety of fruits (including avocados), legumes like chickpeas and red beans, and small amounts of raw nuts and seeds. I also drank fresh lettuce-based vegetable juices a few times a week.

Why did I stick with this diet for the two years during which I suffered with health challenges? Because I had faith in the books that I had read on this topic, and in the guidance that a few prominent physicians had given me. If these doctors and the folks I read about in books could be healthy on a pure vegan diet for decades, I was convinced that I could follow their footsteps.

At some point during my trials as a non-thriving strict vegan, I found a series of articles by natural health writer, Chet Day, that outlined some of the potential problems with being on a pure vegan diet for the long term. These articles were a real turning point for my health, as they helped me to finally snap out of my cloud of unquestioning faith in people who insist that a pure vegan diet is the best diet for everyone.

I added organic eggs from free-range birds, cod liver oil, and a small amount of fish to my diet. Over a period of about three months, this minor adjustment to my diet lifted the quality of my health in a significant way. My energy came back, my cravings disappeared, I stopped having skin breakouts, and most notably, I felt physically strong again. I vividly remember going from being able to do about 3 sets of 10 pull-ups before getting exhausted to being able to do 100 full body weight pull-ups within 20-30 minutes (in sets, with rest in between sets). To have my stamina and strength come back in such a short period of time was a remarkable experience.

Shortly after restoring my health by adding a few clean animal foods to my diet, I discovered that the folks who had originally convinced me to follow a pure vegan diet actually added small amounts of raw, organic cheese and, in one case, organic eggs to their meals. To put it simply, I was astonished that they felt that "sprinkling a little goat's cheese on my salad" was not an important point to share with folks who are desperate for comprehensive guidance on how to recover from serious health conditions