Vegetarian/Vegan vs. Traditional foods

[idigchaitea]

I have been a fan of traditional foods for quite some time--like whole milk (raw if I could afford it!), good quality meat, preserved foods, good quality butter, and organic fruits/veggies.  But now my husband has been doing tons of research on how bad animal products are for you.  He's never been more passionate about something.  I have always disagreed with vegetarianism because people have been eating meat since the beginning of time--they survived on meat and berries, right?  I do realize that the meat industry in America is horrible and I am definitely afraid of what I'm eating.  I wish I could afford to raise animals myself so I'd know for sure it was a good source. 

I'm just feeling so confused right now.  How can I be a traditional foodie and DH be vegan?  I feel like I could be swayed in his direction, but I want to know what is best for our family.  Please give me any advice you have--from both points of view.  We are also trying to lose weight, so any success stories would be encouraging.  Thank you.

[Sayward]

Well, I consider myself a traditional foods vegan. I eat whole unprocessed organic foods in ancient preparations (soaked/sprouted, cultured/fermented, etc). I don't think eating traditionally and eating veg*n are mutually exclusive, and I certainly believe that forgoing animal products is healthier for my body and better for the environment.

That said, these sorts of 'versus' topics are not really allowed on this board, and I'm expecting this thread will either be heavily modded or bah-leeted.  =)

[frugalmum]

i consider myself a traditional foodie and i am about 90% vegan.  Sometimes a little less or a little more.  I agree with your DH about animal products *in moderate to large quantities* as being bad for you but there really is no evidence that a diet that is ~8-10% animal products is harmful for you, and in fact it might be good for you.  Even Dr. Fuhrman admits this in "Eat to Live."

i think there is also a big difference between an ideal child diet and an ideal adult diet.  I can't say exactly what the proportions should be but it goes to reason that growing children need "high growth" foods like meat and dairy in ways that adults do not.

I would suggest reading 'Eat to Live" and following the omni plan he offers.  I aim to eat mostly unprocessed vegan foods with small amounts of dairy and meat.  When I am careful and avoid refined flours, sugars, eat tons of greens, the weight melts off effortlessly.

[ambereva]

I eat an almost exclusively vegan whole foods diet. I've recently reincorporated salmon and pastured eggs back into my diet, but no more than 2-3 servings a week. I find that the way I eat is very much in line with TF philosophies, except for not eating the meat part. I still embrace the traditional preparations, etc. Like pp's said, they are not mutually exclusive.

Oh, and I lost 80 pounds eating this way and moving. The moving part is really important. Moving a lot.

[Smokering]

What kinds of research is your DH using to back up his claims? Remember that this is a v*ganism vs TF argument, not a v*ganism vs SAD argument. To my knowledge, most studies about meat-eating use CAFO meat, which has quite a different nutritional profile to pastured meat. He needs to prove that pastured animal products, prepared in traditional ways (ie. not being seared to death on the barbecue or smothered in MSG/hydrolysed vegetable protein-laden sauces) are bad for you. Nourishing Traditions has lots of references to studies proving the value of animal products in diet - they're not well-referenced, unfortunately, but contain enough clues (ie "researchers in Switzerland") that you could probably dig up the originals via the internet. Your husband might not have seen the other side of the issue - and yes, he does have to address the fact that many traditional societies have avoided most debilitating Western-type diseases and achieved impressive lifespans, good bone structure etc, while eating highly animal-based diets. How does he account for that?

You also need to look at the effect of your diet on you as an individual. Some people seem to thrive on a vegan diet, others seem to thrive on a totally animal-based diet (the Masai, f'rinstance). If YOU feel sick/tired/lackadaisical/otherwise icky without meat, in a way it doesn't really matter if the research says you "should" feel better.

I don't think it would be impossible to have a household in which one partner was TF and one vegan, but it'd be something of a pain. You could "share" sourdough, ferments etc, but if you're used to cooking with animal fats and using chicken broth to braise veggies, etc, that might be more of an issue (although not insurmountable).

Oersonally I'm convinced of the value of TF eating, so if DH wanted to go vegan or vegetarian I wouldn't join him. But we'd take another look at the evidence for both sides until we hopefully arrived at the same conclusion.

[Koalamom]

Please Mods, don't erase this thread.  I so need this discussion as I am struggling with going vegan after eating meat.  I feel that me just looking at websites isn't enough for me.  I need the advice/support of other mamas I know and trust here in this site.

[plantnerd]

I don't see why you couldn't work this out.  I'm sure dh is a big boy and able to manage his own diet.  I guess I would begin making a lot of veg, fruit, and grain side dishes with dinner and a meat for me and the kids, and let him worry about anything else he wants to add or supplement with.

[CherryBomb]

Originally Posted by Smokering 

What kinds of research is your DH using to back up his claims? Remember that this is a v*ganism vs TF argument, not a v*ganism vs SAD argument. To my knowledge, most studies about meat-eating use CAFO meat, which has quite a different nutritional profile to pastured meat. He needs to prove that pastured animal products, prepared in traditional ways (ie. not being seared to death on the barbecue or smothered in MSG/hydrolysed vegetable protein-laden sauces) are bad for you. Nourishing Traditions has lots of references to studies proving the value of animal products in diet - they're not well-referenced, unfortunately, but contain enough clues (ie "researchers in Switzerland") that you could probably dig up the originals via the internet. Your husband might not have seen the other side of the issue - and yes, he does have to address the fact that many traditional societies have avoided most debilitating Western-type diseases and achieved impressive lifespans, good bone structure etc, while eating highly animal-based diets. How does he account for that?

[Koalamom]

Does your Dh currently follow your Tf diet?  If so, how does he feel on it.  That is really what it comes down to.  If he feels crappy then perhaps it is the best for him to seek a different diet.

I am not one to talk as I feel good when eat meat, but my brain thinks it is bad for me.  What has really helped me is a book called the 3 Season Diet.  It talks about eating meat during the winter amd less or none in the summer and has some really good info to back it up and it just makes more sense.

[Smokering]

Just wanted to add: Traditional Foods doesn't mean heavy on the meat and dairy, necessarily. One diet that's mentioned approvingly in NT is the diet of the Roman soldiers - mostly grains and fermented cabbage, with only a touch of animal protein in the form of fish sauce. There are plenty of dairy-free traditional diets, and some that are meat-free but get their B12 and K2 and so on from eggs and dairy, and some that only eat seafood, etc. And in many societies meat itself is only used as a "garnish" - just flecks of it through rice, or whatever - but the animal fat (good for absorbing fat-soluble vitamins) and broth (good for all sorts of things!) are used as well. Broth is considered a protein sparer, meaning that it makes animal protein go further. And just a touch of meat apparently makes other protein sources (beans and rice) WAY more nutritious.

So if you're worried about affording ethical meat, that kind of diet might be a good option. Or you could "down" actual meat and "up" other animal products that are easier to find ethical sources for - where I live it's really not that hard to find decent-quality free-range eggs, for instance. And even fancy pastured lard is really cheap compared to meat. Would your DH be game for that, or is he pushing for absolutely NO animal products?

[GoGoGirl]

Originally Posted by idigchaitea 
How can I be a traditional foodie and DH be vegan?

If you're like me and my DH, it's pretty easy as long as you each make most of your own food.  And when one of you gets on your soapbox about how your way of eating is the best, the other one just rolls their eyes.    There are a lot of threads on here about how to handle it when members of a family don't eat the same way.  I think it helps if you can identify the foods that you can all agree on (for me and DH, that's vegetables) and try to base your meals around that.  Then you add some TF components, and he can add some vegan components.

As for weight loss, when I started following the Eat to Live plan (vegan with almost no grains, oils, or sweeteners) I lost all my baby weight and then some. 

[Magelet]

One thing that's very poinent to me, is that while there have been people eating traditional diets of all sorts who were as a people extremely robust and healthy, there have not been people traditionally eating VEGAN diets.  While some groups ate very high/almost all animal product, other groups ate very little, and mostly fish or eggs or milk, or sometimes even getting much of their animal food from insects.  However there haven't been groups of people who traditionally ate vegan and thrived.

Personally I don't need more evidence against vegetarianism for me, beyond the fact that if I don't eat some animal products with great frequency, I feel terrible.  Really awful.  After 2 vegan meals in a row, and I start to feel like crud, no energy, ravenous no matter how much I ate, I feel so much better with some butter, some milk or eggs or cheese or a little meat or fish.  But I don't need a lot of meat. I need some but not a ton.  DP starts to feel sick and weaken quickly as well if he doesn't eat enough animal products (particularly meat). We eat very little meat, a pound of ground beef or a chicken stretched over a week, or sometimes a pound of fish, sometimes a few anchovies and about 6 eggs a week (between the two of us), plus plenty of milk, cheese, and butter.  But for us, it's really really vital to have that animal protein.  We eat it sparingly because we can't afford the high quality stuff in anything other than small quantities.  The cat LITERALLY eats more meat in a week (possibly 2x) than the two of us combined, because we feed him conventional quality meat (which is cheap), and that's part of having a carnivore as a pet.

We both lost a lot of weight (getting us down to and maintaining a healthy weight effortlessly when we started eating TF (probably the biggest part of this is eating very little sugar), though we've been eating more grains and legumes and less veggies the past two months and feel like we've both put on a few pounds, so we're trying to increase our veggies and decrease our grains.  Our diet at it's best is loads of fresh veggies, a good bit of whole grains (sometimes properly prepared) and legumes (always properly prepared), plenty of fat of all kinds, and sparing meat.).  Once we cut out processed foods and sugars, and replaced them with healthy TF foods, for us, it has been so easy to maintain healthy weights.

I personally feel very strongly about the importance of a TF diet, and don't beleive that most people/anyone can be properly nourished on a vegan diet.  The fat soluble vitamins, and many other important nutrients are just not there in their absorbable forms.  I do think that a TF ovo-lacto vegetarian diet can be sufficiently or even extremely nourishing if you have high quality dairy products and eggs.  (A pescetarian diet is also certainly perfectly nourishing enough.)  but no animal products at all?  I think one is ruining their health, and their offspring's health (for women), to eat that way.  JMHO.

[ambereva]

Originally Posted by Magelet 

One thing that's very poinent to me, is that while there have been people eating traditional diets of all sorts who were as a people extremely robust and healthy, there have not been people traditionally eating VEGAN diets.  While some groups ate very high/almost all animal product, other groups ate very little, and mostly fish or eggs or milk, or sometimes even getting much of their animal food from insects.  However there haven't been groups of people who traditionally ate vegan and thrived.

Personally I don't need more evidence against vegetarianism for me, beyond the fact that if I don't eat some animal products with great frequency, I feel terrible.  Really awful.  After 2 vegan meals in a row, and I start to feel like crud, no energy, ravenous no matter how much I ate, I feel so much better with some butter, some milk or eggs or cheese or a little meat or fish.  But I don't need a lot of meat. I need some but not a ton.  DP starts to feel sick and weaken quickly as well if he doesn't eat enough animal products (particularly meat). We eat very little meat, a pound of ground beef or a chicken stretched over a week, or sometimes a pound of fish, sometimes a few anchovies and about 6 eggs a week (between the two of us), plus plenty of milk, cheese, and butter.  But for us, it's really really vital to have that animal protein.  We eat it sparingly because we can't afford the high quality stuff in anything other than small quantities.  The cat LITERALLY eats more meat in a week (possibly 2x) than the two of us combined, because we feed him conventional quality meat (which is cheap), and that's part of having a carnivore as a pet.

We both lost a lot of weight (getting us down to and maintaining a healthy weight effortlessly when we started eating TF (probably the biggest part of this is eating very little sugar), though we've been eating more grains and legumes and less veggies the past two months and feel like we've both put on a few pounds, so we're trying to increase our veggies and decrease our grains.  Our diet at it's best is loads of fresh veggies, a good bit of whole grains (sometimes properly prepared) and legumes (always properly prepared), plenty of fat of all kinds, and sparing meat.).  Once we cut out processed foods and sugars, and replaced them with healthy TF foods, for us, it has been so easy to maintain healthy weights.

I personally feel very strongly about the importance of a TF diet, and don't beleive that most people/anyone can be properly nourished on a vegan diet.  The fat soluble vitamins, and many other important nutrients are just not there in their absorbable forms.  I do think that a TF ovo-lacto vegetarian diet can be sufficiently or even extremely nourishing if you have high quality dairy products and eggs.  (A pescetarian diet is also certainly perfectly nourishing enough.)  but no animal products at all?  I think one is ruining their health, and their offspring's health (for women), to eat that way.  JMHO.

Magalet, I see we're both in the Bay Area! I'd be happy to meet up with you to demonstrate how malnourished and weakened my vegan diet has left me, any time!

[marimara]

Ok I'm not even going to read the other posts and only give my opinion.  First of all, I think it's total crap that we can't host these types of discussions for FEAR of it being deleted or what not.  That's bogus IMO.

I will tell you right here and now that I have officially been on both sides of this fence. I can only offer you my own experiences.  The amount of information out there is vast and often misguided.

I prefer Michael Pollan's "eat real food, mostly plants".  I prefer this because high quality produce is cheaper and easier to come by in my neck of the woods than high quality animal products.  As my 4yo dd said the other day, we have flat teeth and sharp teeth and that means we're omnivores.  Humans have evolved and adapted to eat a wide range of foods and be healthy and prosper on any variety provided it is free of chemicals, pesticides, or any other man made stuff.

There is the China Study, which is widely criticized and there is Sally Fallon who is also widely criticized. It is up to you to decide what makes you feel better.  There is no right and wrong.  Period.  Humans can survive and thrive on all kinds of food, all meat, no meat, all veggies, high carb, low carb, you name it humans have done it.  The most important thing is to avoid pesticides, chemicals, hormones, artificial anything, and to avoid the things that don't agree with you.  

You will lose weight as long as you take in less calories than you expend.  Period.  There is no black magic, voodoo.  Didn't you read on the news about the guy who ate twinkies and lost weight?  Simple-calories in vs calories out.

[Toolip]

Originally Posted by marimara 

You will lose weight as long as you take in less calories than you expend.  Period.  There is no black magic, voodoo.  Didn't you read on the news about the guy who ate twinkies and lost weight?  Simple-calories in vs calories out.

I don't believe it is that simple. 

[ambereva]

Originally Posted by Toolip 

Originally Posted by marimara 

You will lose weight as long as you take in less calories than you expend.  Period.  There is no black magic, voodoo.  Didn't you read on the news about the guy who ate twinkies and lost weight?  Simple-calories in vs calories out.

I don't believe it is that simple. 

It's generally not a good idea to use personal belief as a rebuttal to physics, though.

[Toolip]

Originally Posted by ambereva 

Originally Posted by Toolip 

Originally Posted by marimara 

You will lose weight as long as you take in less calories than you expend.  Period.  There is no black magic, voodoo.  Didn't you read on the news about the guy who ate twinkies and lost weight?  Simple-calories in vs calories out.

I don't believe it is that simple. 

It's generally not a good idea to use personal belief as a rebuttal to physics, though.

There's personal belief in all of it, your theory and mine.  There's "evidence" supporting the idea that it is not as simple as "calories in calorie out."  I didn't want to get into because I'm still researching and I don't have all the facts at my finger tips but it is not just a mythical belief that I pulled out of thin air.  You didn't provide anything but your personal belief either I'm hoping some more well read mamas will chime in and help me with the facts that I am not able to supply right now.

I haven't gotten to finish yet but I am reading "good calories bad calories" and "eat fat, loose fat."  They both address this issue.

[ambereva]

Originally Posted by Toolip 

There's personal belief in all of it, your theory and mine.  There's "evidence" supporting the idea that it is not as simple as "calories in calorie out."  I didn't want to get into because I'm still researching and I don't have all the facts at my finger tips but it is not just a mythical belief that I pulled out of thin air.  You didn't provide anything but your personal belief either I'm hoping some more well read mamas will chime in and help me with the facts that I am not able to supply right now.

I haven't gotten to finish yet but I am reading "good calories bad calories" and "eat fat, loose fat."  They both address this issue.

I didn't provide a personal belief? Or posit a theory.

After you finish reading Good Calories Bad Calories I'd be happy to discuss Taubes theories, at length!
 

[Magelet]

Ambereva, it's possible that some people are healthy and strong long term on a vegan diet, but my expeirience (which is admitedly biased towards TF, given my circle of friends/coworkers) is that I know a huge number of former vegans who felt great for a while (a decade or two even), and then their health slowly started to fall to peices, and only repaired upon adding healthy (grass-fed, raw, pastured etc) animal products back into their diet, and a lot of vegans who are very very sickly and weak, and I personally know no one who has been vegan (as compared to ovo-lacto vegetarian) for a prolonged period of time and maintained their health.  There may be some people (like you) who thrive on a vegan diet long term and over generations, however I beleive for the large majority of people, it is not a healthy diet.

I agree that weight loss is not as simple about calories in/calories out.  Different foods (while they may burn with the same calorie amounts) are processed differently in the body, and some are more likely to be stored as fat than others.  It's not my area of expertise (once I discovered that I thrive on this diet, I became a lot more focused on how to cook it and eat it than the science behind it.), however there are equally valid theories that are extremely counter to the "calories in, calories out" theory. 

[ambereva]

Originally Posted by Magelet 

Ambereva, it's possible that some people are healthy and strong long term on a vegan diet, but my expeirience (which is admitedly biased towards TF, given my circle of friends/coworkers) is that I know a huge number of former vegans who felt great for a while (a decade or two even), and then their health slowly started to fall to peices, and only repaired upon adding healthy (grass-fed, raw, pastured etc) animal products back into their diet, and a lot of vegans who are very very sickly and weak, and I personally know no one who has been vegan (as compared to ovo-lacto vegetarian) for a prolonged period of time and maintained their health.  There may be some people (like you) who thrive on a vegan diet long term and over generations, however I beleive for the large majority of people, it is not a healthy diet.

I agree that weight loss is not as simple about calories in/calories out.  Different foods (while they may burn with the same calorie amounts) are processed differently in the body, and some are more likely to be stored as fat than others.  It's not my area of expertise (once I discovered that I thrive on this diet, I became a lot more focused on how to cook it and eat it than the science behind it.), however there are equally valid theories that are extremely counter to the "calories in, calories out" theory. 

And I know a huge number of vegans who ARE healthy and strong. Neither of our personal experiences have a bit of relevance to this debate.

Whether a food is stored as fat has absolutely no bearing on actual total body mass. Weight and fat are not the same thing. A person's body mass is a product of energy expenditure in relation to fuel consumed, it is simple physics. Now if we want to talk about body composition, we can start looking at what specific foods and physical activities contribute to fat vs. lean mass, that's an interesting topic! And one I'm ALWAYS happy to discuss! If someone wants to argue that total body mass is more complicated than energy in/energy out, though, they're going tohave to come up with a much better source than Gary Taubes or Sally Fallon. Which isn't to say that there isn't value in either of their bodies of work! But neither is exactly a bastion of scientific credibility.