Advantages and Disadvantages of being Vegan

Are you tired of it?...

Are you tired of the barrage of information on as to whether or not veganism is good or bad? If it’s healthy or unhealthy? Good or bad for our planet or economy?

Me too. Which is why, when I became plant based (diet consisting of majority plants) 4 years ago, the first thing I did was churn through books and studies to better inform me on my decision. But what led to this decision?

Health has always been my north star. When I was 8, we went to Bath Spa. My mum told me the spa water was minerally rich and good for you. I literally chugged that spa water down until it made me sick! The point I’m trying to make here is that I value my health over short term satisfaction. And that puts me in a fairly unbiased place because it means I cannot be overcome by subconscious drivers of pleasure as easy as someone else.

And that’s what I want you to do whilst exploring this topic with me. We has humans have an amazing ability of paying attention and learning about something until the information presented conflicts with a belief that we hold great emotional attachment too. But we don’t necessarily throw a paddy. We instead work back from our emotions rather than from logic.

For example, if you really liked chocolate milk, and I told you that chocolate milk was a killer of small children, you might say things like “well it never killed me or my family and we love it… you have to look out for the dairy farmers… people who don’t like chocolate milk are boring” etc.

You’re practicing cognitive dissonance because you’re being presented with information that should make you change your behaviour. Instead you create a false argument to continue to do this behaviour.

And it’s the same for vegans. There are many vegans who will deny certain mineral deficiencies because they’re so emotionally attached to the idea of only relying on mother nature for their sustenance. We will explore this later

So let us begin with the advantages and disadvantages of being vegan

Health implications

When we look at a sensible diet, vegan or omnivorous, the closer we stick to a plant based diet, the better. To argue against this, you would have to say that there is a negative consequence of consuming as many of your recommended daily calories from fruit and veg, as possible. This is a pretty crazy argument since all of our essential nutrients come from plants. We have for hundreds of years, evidenced that a reduced consumption of plant based vitamins and minerals results in:

• scurvy (vitamin C)
  
• anemia (iron deficiency)
  
• infertility and nerve damage (vitamin B12)
  

So we can safely assume plants are good. So the other question is what happens when we increase the consumption of animal products?

• type 2 diabetes http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677007
  
• heart disease and all cause mortality https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803089/
  
• cancer (china study, linking dairy casein to cancer rates)
  
• alzheimers and vascular dementia https://p.widencdn.net/zbsj0b/Diet-and-Alzheimers-Disease-Fact-Sheet
  
• erectile dysfunction https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20487239/
  

Full Post available at www.revitalizeclinic.co.uk/blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-being-vegan

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