I have tried most fad health diets by now. I have been vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan, fruitarian..added in fish..I have tried paleo, primal..auto immune paleo..

I have anklyosing spondylitis, ulcerative colitis, with peripheral neuropathy and fibro..and it's going away. Ankylosing spondylitis is not sopposed to go away. Im regaining more and more feeling in my toes. Im happier I look better I smile more.

Im on a meat only diet. I do eat some vegetables and coconut oil..but mostly I just eat meat drink water. Simple.

It sounds nuts but its working and at 34 I feel better many days than I did at 20. Its saving my . Ive had so many ppl tell me plant based diets will heal me. They all just made it worse.

I cant even find a Dr that will support my meat based keto diet, even though Im off all steroid meds, nsaids etc..and can walk normally again.

I could not find a vegan protein that works in place of meat. Rice protein is the best I can tolerate, but even still the disease does not go into proper remission unless I just eat eat and greens. Nuts, beans, legumes cripple me in days.

Its been enouugh for me that I know the data on keto is true. Personal experience trumps others opinions on whats good for you to eat.

"I make exceptions for my fish oil that I consume every morning for my health and for family/friend events where veganism is not really possible or appropriate. I compare the family/friend exception to slavery: if all of your family and friends had slaves but you still wanted to interact with them, you would just have to deal with their slaves serving you when you visit their homes/parties. Also, if nonvegan food is going to waste anyway, we are willing to eat it as the animals have already died or been exploited, just as everyone in America reaps the economic benefits of being in one of the wealthiest countries (which resulted partly from slavery and other unethical measures)."


Are you saying that in your mind, your compare your friends and families decision to eat meat, with the keeping of slaves?

I have felt this way, and far worse in the past, as a vegan. I could never come here with a post that is going to change a persons mind. Noone changed mine. I beleived that eating meat was like murder at one point in my life. I no longer beleive unsupplemented veganism is a healthy route to any kind of diet, for my own reasons..and I will go on a limb here and say that I think it can be fairly harmful if not supplemented properly..and even then many ppl are going to have issues and need to eat animals. That fact alone, changes for me how I view the death of those animals, and the language I apply to the narrative. You might say that I lie to myself, to make death sound nicer or so that I can better cope with that reality. The reality for me is all things die, and death is all around. I don't have to like it, and in fact, I dont. I might be etheist, Im not really sure, but I have chosen to not be caught up in lifes details at ths time.

I also dont care to pathologize the world around me, or it's people. The only person I have heard properly articulate this for me, is Jordan Peterson when he said when we do this we create a kind of hell, and when enough of us do this, we bring everyone else with us.

I love humanity for it's idealism. I also think often it can become part of our own undoing.

There is a lot of stuff posted in this thread about nutrition that I used to believe, and reading it now tbh I feel a little uncomfortable about it. I don't mean to offend anyone here.

Take care and at least supplement all your vitamins. Noone is getting enough either way.

Well to be hoenst one hand is not enough to count the positive lifestyle changes one can implement to help cardiovascular problems, so i am also skeptical of plant based diets doing the whole stuff alone

To add something to your point Raptorrr is the thing i love about keto is it isn't really known. Jamie is a really nice example of what I mean.

When you see people go vegan it is usually their first choice, so they try to leave behind a chaotic lifestyle and go for a healthier one - it works - they think it is because of the vegetarian diet - they do not explore additional possibilities or options.


The thing about people on keto though, is they usually went through hell to get to a point where they research enough and learn enough to give such an extreme diet a shot.

In this regard, the main thumbs up is how many possibilities did we explore before judging ourselves happy and healthy?


For me personally, (nutritional ketosis, intermittent fasting, prolonged fasting, two or three types of meditation, wim hof/cold shock, heat shock, daily exercise, proper sleep, to name a few) I always explore as much possibilities towards hapiness as I can, and at the moment I feel like meat is a part of it.

I also admit that I still want to change a whole lot in my diet, but it takes time and money so only time will tell

Feeling good is different from being healthy though. I haven't seen many people on all meat diets but it doesn't sound very healthy.

If all you're doing is restricting yourself to meat, you're restricting yourself on quite a lot of nutrients. I would suggest at least getting bloods taken to see if you're deficient in anything.

Shawn Baker (a former doctor) is on an all meat diet and his blood results are shocking. He has very high cholestrol, high blood urea nitrogen (the amount of waste protein in your urine which is hard on the kidneys and liver and can lead to kidney stones), very low testosterone, and quite suprisingly, very high blood sugar levels making him diabetic, despite eating no carbohydrates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxC_76sUIf8

Did you miss the part where I had a life threatening disease? I assume feeling better in that case DOES equal greater health, with test results thats proved it.

Believe whatever you like. A simple google search will bring up countless studies for people to read. I wont post that stuff here, because it becomes an ego war of vegans vs w/e else etc posting studies. There are all sorts of garbage people can find in quick google to support whatever claim they want to make today. It took me over a decade of constatly failing health and obsessive reading and taking to Dr's I paid a lot of money to, to get to the conclusions I am at now. I am not about to argue the entire details of that with a bunch of vegans on the internet.

I didn't mean to annoy you or anything, and it's completely up to you what lifestyle changes you want to make. I do genuinely feel empathy for you and hope you get better, all I am saying is that you should still do check ups to see if there's anything you should be eating because feeling better is different from actually being better as I have said.

I'm glad to see this thread is still going, as I and my housemates have kept up with our vegan diet that we started all due to this thread. As it has been over 7 months, we have had many conversations relating to this, and I at least have formed a slightly more nuanced view of the matter.

To answer your question, I do believe that eating animal products that come from factory/industrialized farming is morally akin to slavery or at least supporting an industry that uses slave labor. I am assuming here that most, if not all, of the animals farmed are conscious beings. If they were not conscious, they would not experience any feelings or sensations, as consciousness of some form is a precursor to sensation (unconscious things do not feel anything).

If we assume the cows in the slaughterhouse are conscious and feel pain, even if it is a different or "less complex" form of pain than humans feel, then supporting the industry that causes them this pain is morally akin to supporting businesses that use slave labor. However, let me rehash a point I made earlier in the thread:



As I said before, traditional Kobe beef cows are massaged, fed well, treated nicely, etc. My grandfather also ran a small farm for some years where he treated his chickens and ducks quite well before painlessly ending their lives and eating them. In both of these cases, I do not really see a moral problem with the eating of this meat. The same goes for eating eggs that one just finds in a field of free range chickens.

My point is that we can use our intuitive senses to get a pretty good idea of how much animals actually suffer during their lifetimes. It's pretty obvious, at least in my opinion, that these factory farms are horrible places to exist as an animal, and if we assume these animals are consciously experiencing those horrors, it is immoral to eat them and support the industry that perpetuates industrialized animal production.

Now, I have also experienced some health benefits from being 98% vegan for these 7 months. My skin is clearer, my hair seems a bit healthier, my bowels are much happier, I have experienced no loss of muscle mass, and I just feel cleaner and less groggy. I have also expanded my palate and been able to savor a multitude a new flavors - both good and bad.

But I try not to judge people who continue to eat dairy and meat, although I believe in 100-200 years this practice will be seen as barbaric. I do not want to be complicit in what I view to be an immoral system, but it is possible that others do not see a moral problem with factory farming (maybe they don't know about it or believe animals to be unconscious) or that they are consuming humanely-grown animal products. Whatever the case, this diet has produced net positive effects for me so far, but to be totally honest I am yearning for the day when I can eat a chicken shawarma sandwich with lab-grown chicken.

Just logged in here after over a year and I'm happy to see that people are considering the philosophy of veganism (as further discussed in another recent thread here on insects).

Just thought I'd share some fun stuff.



An analogy to the justifications we give for eating animals, as presented in Charles Horn's book, Meat Logic:



And a summary of the madness:



The beauty of veganism is in its simplicity. Heaven on Earth cannot be without it. Maybe we won't get there, but we can try.

P.S. Vegan girlfriends are the best



P.P.S. Who here likes rap music?

I made a post a few days ago in response to all this.

I'm not sure what happened to it, oh well

I was vegan almost 5 years. very passionate about the topic.

My health deteriorated and got worse for about 8 months until i reintroduced some animal products again. I dont know why, I was sad to quit veganism. but I do feel somewhat liberated.

I developed IBS type symptoms that seemed to dissipate when i started eating animal products, for some reason i still get severe bloat, gas, diarrhea when i eat beans, legumes, most fruits, I restricted my diet to a very select few foods before eating some fish and eggs.

My health has gotten far better since.

I love the idea of veganism, and i tried it from most angles i can think of, but I highly doubt the health of eating just plants, the digestability, the true suustainability. My vote now goes to small sustainable farms, grow plants and animals. kill plants and animals. dont support monsanto. I think killing your own chicken and eating for a few days vs buying imported grains is more ethical in a couple of ways.

There is no way to live without something else dying.

I made a very detailed post a few days ago but i dont know what happened to it.

I may make a more detailed follow up but i am heading to bed now.

I spend quite a bit time thinking about the ethics of eating. To break it down as simply as possible, beyond any particular diet, the disconnect from the sources of our food is what enables unethical practices.

Food doesn't come from the grocery store. It comes from huge banana plantations in Central America where the workers have an average life expectancy of 35 due to pesticide exposure. It comes from CAFO's where 100,000 head of cattle are packed into a warehouse belly deep in their own excrement.

When you see the practices in CAFO's, dairies, and slaughterhouses, the obvious and rational response is go vegan and try not to contribute to that. Yet, when faced with the environmental impact and human rights issues of avocado production, no one is so quick to give up the guac.

Ultimately, it comes back to reconnecting and taking personal responsibility for understanding where our food comes from. Direct connection is best: grow it, raise it, forage it, catch it, hunt it yourself. However, it's difficult to provide all your own food, ideal, but fairly unrealistic. So necessarily we need to rely on others. Supporting your neighbors and local farmers directly and through farmers markets and local businesses builds a resilient foodweb that that can survive resource shortages and food scares. It offers the opportunity to directly interface with your food production without having to give up your 9-5 and become a full time farmer.

Sometimes we have to rely on the supermarket, and that's okay! Having year-round access to food from all over the world truly is a blessing. It also gives us an opportunity to make a vote with our meager dollars. When we choose the organic mango it directly translates to less dangerous chemical applications in fragile ecosystems like the Amazon and better health, wages, and quality of life for the workers on that farm and their families. When we choose products that are produced with high quality standards, we contribute to better health and quality of life for ourselves and our own families, while sending a message that we demand higher standards in food production.

Each and every day you get to make choices that impact your own health and ripple out across your communities and around the world. Vegan, carnivore, omnivore, breathatarian; whatever. Ethical eating is rooted in compassion, let's remember to be kind to ourselves and one another as we each grow in our own understanding, in our own time.

I like this, I agree.

It is entirely possible to produce all the food you eat, I have seen many people do it. It just requires dedication and land. and animal products, self sustaining on a vegan diet would only be possible in very small pockets of the world. In my home country South Africa there is no way of self sustaining on a vegan diet, wintertime does not yield nearly enough produce.

I have at most lived about 60% on food I have grown, I could have upped that number to perhaps 90 if I chose to slaughter animals/eat eggs.

I think producing your own products is the goal. supermarkets have dulled our sense of where things come from. In south africa many of the underpriveledged children have no idea where food comes from. there are programs that go to teach people that food comes from the ground and not the supermarket. supermarkets make a massive disconnect and keep you tied to the monetary system.

If you want cannabis, yeah you could buy it, but growing it yourself is far more rewarding, if you want potatos, same applies.

Veganism is a bit extreme and potentially can lead to a highly unbalanced diet if not carefully moderated and maintained. Vegetarianism is much more manageable and can be easily balanced.

More veganism and less animal meat would also mean less zoonotic diseases, right?

Also, not a new disease, but antibiotic resistant genes can evolve in the meat industry. Wild/natural meat does not have this issue though.

Something to consider when voting with your money at the supermarket. If I'm thinking about this incorrectly please let me know.