Some of you may remember the 2004 documentary Super Size Me which depicts filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eating three meals from McDonalds every single day for 30 days and always supersizing the meal whenever suggested by a McDonald’s employee.
By the end of the 30 day fast food spree, Spurlock had gained 25 pounds and was suffering from liver dysfunction and depression according to his doctor.
Spurlock’s girlfriend (now ex-wife) during the documentary was Alex Jamieson, author of The Great American Detox Diet and a well known and longtime celebrity vegan.
When ideology trumps scientific facts, however, dietary obsessions die hard. On her blog Delicious Vitality, Jamieson shocked her fans by announcing that she had quit veganism.
A vegan for 13 years, Jamieson said that a whole foods, plant based diet helped her initially resolve some health problems. She also said it felt “clean and right” given what she had learned about the industrial food system and how horribly animals are treated in confinement.
Then, she said things began to change a few years ago. The burger that used to disgust her made her salivate. She had overwhelming urges to order salmon instead of her usual salad with tofu.
She said at first she denied her cravings and figured she was just mineral deficient.
More nuts, more juicing, more sea vegetables. For over a year, she tried everything in the vegan playbook to get the cravings to stop.
To her dismay, the cravings for meat and eggs continued and did not abate.
Jamieson writes that about that time she started to notice that most of her clients and readers were not vegan. Some of those who were vegan were not thriving and were even sicker and heavier than before they started an all plant based diet.
She noticed that shame was a common emotion experienced by vegans who began to eat meat again. This caused her to hide the secret of her cravings for meat and eggs even more tightly.
Finally, Alex decided that she had to experiment and see how her body responded to animal foods again. With the support of a few trusted friends, she began eating eggs.
Her body welcomed the change and wanted more!
But still she guarded her secret, stealthily buying animal foods and sneaking home to eat them in solitude.
It shocked her to realize that she had developed an eating disorder after 12 years as a vegan! The thought then occurred to her that she could help a lot of people by coming out of the closet and admitting her struggle and need for animal foods.
Doing so terrified her, however. She recalled the vicious backlash from the vegan community when celebrity vegan Ellen Degeneres admitted that she was eating eggs from her neighbor’s happy chickens.
Not so compassionate after all, are we? She thought.
Alex Jamieson describes her new truth with regards to animal foods as follows:
“People can still love animals and care about protecting the environment AND honor their own animal bodies and consume the foods that they need.
I believe you can love and care about animal welfare and still consume them.
I believe humans are animals. And some animals need to eat other animals to be healthy. Some do not.
I believe we should restructure the way animals are raised so that they live in more natural, comfortable, humane surroundings and stop force-feeding them 80% of all antibiotics used in the US.”
I applaud Alex Jamieson for her courage in writing a letter to her fans that will no doubt bring much ridicule and criticism from the vegan community.
Unfortunately, I don’t agree with all of Alex’s new truth. She also states that:
“I believe that a vegan, whole-foods diet saved my life and is a delicious, valid, healthy style of eating for many people.
I believe that a vegan diet should be promoted as one of many possible ways to get the body and life that people crave.”
While a vegan diet may prove helpful as a very short term, detoxifying solution for some people, it can never and will never prove to be a valid way to long-term health else there would be at least one traditional culture that practiced it successfully with multiple generations of fertility, healthy children, and degenerative and chronic disease free people demonstrating it’s positive effect.
Such a culture did not and does not exist according to the anthropological studies of Dr. Weston A. Price.
Not a single successful vegan population group could be cited by the science ignoring 2017 vegan documentary What the Health either!
Consider yourself warned, would-be vegans!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Awesome! That was the one thing that kept me from really liking that documentary.
My Chiro was vegan for many years until he noticed a decline in health (even with his expertise in optimizing nutrition) and had to start including meat. He says people often see huge health improvements from going vegetarian/vegan at 1st because they often go from processed junk to lots of fresh produce, which is great for cleansing, but then see a decline in health long term. There’s a site called http://beyondveg.com/ that is for people who are not thriving as a vegetarian.
Lots of animals are vegan or near-vegan and do fine. Deficiencies can happen on any diet. Search for vegan/non-vegan bloodwork and you’ll find some good, some bad. I wonder what hers showed. Me, I’ve been eating organic, unprocessed lacto-vegetarian + a dozen or less eggs/month for nearly two years now. (I also love nutritional yeast on popcorn and in soup.) In the first year I had some noticeable detox symptoms, e.g. bad smells, skin eruptions, which are much less now. In fact, I barely have any body odour at all anymore. I feel great, and don’t crave meat at all. I’ll eat it once in a while, such as at special occasions, but I don’t buy it. I believe staying relatively alkaline is important to stave off all sorts of disease (search for pleomorphism), and vegetarianism makes it easier. I also believe living foods are much better than cooked or frozen. If only I could get raw milk easily in Canada. 🙁
I’m glad that she listened to her body, and didn’t hide behind her “brand” instead of being honest about her experience. It’s unfortunate that high profile people can get locked into a specific lifestyle, but it comes with the territory, especially when you are suggesting YOUR lifestyle is better.
I struggle with eating animals on a daily basis, and my best solution is to give them the best possible, most natural life…end it quickly…and honor that by using everything (whether for my food, other animal food, compost, etc).
Recently I had lunch with a vegetarian friend, and it shocked me that every single item was hugely processed soy or canola and out of a box or bag. I told my husband that whole food eaters are the new vegetarians in terms of being mocked/ignored. We always make sure we cook only vegetarian when she visits, but I doubt she even considered what she was serving.
That is my biggest issue with vegan/vegetarianism…often it’s a diet filled with mock-chicken and lots of chemicals/fillers. I eat quite a few vegetarian meals without even thinking about it, but in the end, I need my meat/dairy/fat!
Every good point you raised in this article was negated by your hypocrisy at the end. You cannot praise somebody for listening to her body and determining what foods she needed with one hand, and then turn around and condemn an entire food movement for doing the exact same thing with the other.
And for everyone who is going to bring up your point about how there have never been any exclusively vegan cultures, (1) there have been a lot of cultures that we know nothing about, and to claim that just because we haven’t heard of them they don’t exist is absurd, and (2) animal flesh provides quick and easy nutrients during times of famine, or when the crops native to the area are nutritionally insufficient. Now that we live in a time of imported food, cultivated non-natives, and supplements, this argument is completely invalid.
Is there really no way to be truly healthy as a vegan? Just because our ancestors didn’t do it doesn’t meant it can’t be done… or does it? I know would never feel well as a vegan, but is that 100% true for everyone?
Amanda inactivist…. we may need those canines for many reasons…but we are lacking in the digestive system of a cow…. our digestive system is most like a pig (if not exactly) and no one argues that they are naturally omnivores.. but to each his own.. just dont tell me I can;t eat meat.
You’re an inactivist, and you’re okay with other speechless beings being harmed. “Best Speech You Will Ever Hear” by: Gary Yourofsky.
Here’s to admitting that you are starving. Good for her!
Sheesh! Eat what you want whether you are knowledgeable or stupid, or if you want to kill yourself or live longer and a certain way. Its your body, your life, cause you answer to yourself and to God (that is, if you believe in Him). But, I also believe information should be put out to the public for their “consumption”, their use, if they want to. Do you want to act according to knowledge or ignorance? Your choice.
I don’t think canine teeth prove that we need meat. There are some tough fruits and veggies we have to shred through.