health q & a | your health questions answered
By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS
FROM VEGAN TO KETO: MYTHS ABOUT NUTRITION
Q:
I want to eat healthy. How do I sort out the marketing hype from the science in the diet wars?
A:
— Kurt, Seattle
The original title of THE VEGAN MYTH this article was going A vegan diet is defined by what’s to be “The Trouble with not in it. As long as you don’t Vegans.” It was provocative eat foods that once had a face, and catchy, which certainly you can be a vegan. Vegans make would have prompted a lot all kinds of recommendations of people to read it. for foods you should eat, but But the “trouble” with vegans the fact is, you can eat a 100 isn’t confined to vegans. It’s really percent junk-food diet and still the trouble with nutritional be a vegan as long as it meets politics, which have become the single requirement: no as partisan and divided as animal products. Congress. Facts matter little, So let’s bust myth number allegiance to your nutritional one: A vegan diet is not by orthodoxy take precedence over definition healthy—it’s just a science, and if you’re on the diet without animal products. wrong “side” of things, you’re Personal story: I’m a fan not only stupid and uneducated, of the pizza pie. It’s my one you’re also morally bereft. non-low-carb food vice. Recently So this article is really about I grabbed a slice of what looked the marketing claims made for like a gloriously cheesy pizza popular diets, misconceptions from the self-serve section at about things like “vegan” and “keto,” nutritional politics, and “know-nothing” science. I’ve been accused many times of being antivegan; what I really am is antimishealthy tip! information. If you choose your Let’s see if diet from what can be we can sort out hunted, fished, plucked, some of the or gathered, it won’t myths, truths, matter much which and misconcepdiet you’re on. tions in the diet marketing wars, and come up with some basic, non-partisan facts we can all agree on.
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Whole Foods, and when I took a bite of it I thought I had been poisoned. Every molecule of my health-aware consciousness said, “Bad. Food. Abort. Mission.” I took it back to the counter, only to find that it was the “vegan pizza.” I asked for the ingredients, and what I saw confirmed my worst suspicions. This was a chemical stew of unpronounceable ingredients, fake flavors and texturizers, chemical stabilizers, extracted soy proteins, and a baker’s dozen of things no selfrespecting health fanatic would go near. I did a similar inspection of the ingredients list for vegan donuts, vegan “chicken,” and vegan “turkey.” All I can say is—if you do
eat this stuff, don’t read the ingredients list or you’re likely to experience a serious amount of cognitive dissonance. But let’s say you do veganism as it was intended to be done, with an all-whole-foods, plant-based diet rich in nuts, berries, and vegetables. You’re not out of the woods yet, because you have to make sure your diet is healthy. You can’t get everything you need from a vegan diet. Those who say you can are not informed by science, they’re just sticking to the party line. Despite claims to the contrary, there’s no B12 in plant foods. There are what’s called B12 analogues in plants—molecules that look suspiciously like B12
WINTER 2019 | AMAZING WELLNESS
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11/15/18 4:44 PM
