During a recent Interview “Salt” star, Angelina Jolie, said the secret to her beauty was a big juicy steak.
She didn’t always eat red meat and at one time followed a strict vegan diet until she said it almost killed her.”I was a vegan for a long time, and it nearly killed me. I found I was not getting enough nutrition,” Jolie said. She went on to say that she “loves red meat”.
If someone like Angelina Jolie can’t get enough nutrition from a vegan diet with her financial ability to access the best vegan foods and even personal chefs, is it really realistic for the average person to follow a vegan diet and be healthy?
With vegetarian and vegan diets gaining popularity in the western world, it will be interesting to see if others report similar nutrition problems from following an ‘animal friendly’ way of eating.
What are your thoughts concerning vegan diets. Participate in the poll and comments bellow.
Making sure a vegan diet is healthy
Any radical diet, be it vegan, vegetarian, or high-protein (meat-based), can be dangerous if not well designed. It might be trendy to go vegan, but fads can kill, remember slap-wrap bracelets?
When cutting out all animal products, it is important to incorporate foods or supplements that provide nutrients not found in plants.
According to the American Heart Association, a prospective vegan or vegetarian should make sure they are getting enough iron, protein, vitamin B-12, vitamin D, calcium, and zinc.
Fortunately meat is not your only option
- Protein: Beans, whole grains, are leafy green vegetables.
- Iron: Beans, spinach, dried fruits, and brewer’s yeast.
- Vitamin B-12: Fortified soy beverages and vitamin supplements.
- Vitamin D: Sunlight light and algae supplements.
- Calcium: Green vegetables and soy-based foods.
- Zinc: Nuts, grains, and beans.
Angelina Jolie probably became vegan to loose weight, and ended up eating to few calories. I’ve been vegan for 12 years and I’ve never had any health problems, I’m a blood donor so my iron levels are obviously good. My brother has been vegan for coming on 5 years and he runs marathons. So it’s the same with any other way of eating: you have to think a bit for it to be healthy. It’s the same for omnivores as for vegetarians and vegans.
Oh people. Former Vegan is right.
Some people are genetically able to live and thrive on a vegetarian diet.
Some people aren’t. Angelina Jolie may not be one of those people.
How hard is that?
I can’t digest starches and most sugars. I get sick, chronically ill. Beans, soy, grains, potatoes, yams, sugar, corn syrup, what have you. Organic, non-processed, it doesn’t matter. My digestion goes haywire. I started to get Crohn’s disease before I figured it out. I only eat small amounts of those things occasionally, and now I’m fine. How could I possibly make it as a vegetarian?
I couldn’t.
People always think they know what’s good for everyone else. The self-righteousness of it is ridiculous.
I don’t think that eating the animal saves any animal lives in harvesting of vegetables. Often more farmland is used to feed livestock, and therefore eating meat causes more animals to be killed in harvesting grains. Also, surely there are farming methods that can reduce the number of animals killed in the harvesting of vegetables. It is more efficient to eat grains than to eat animals fed by grains. For instance it takes at least 10 pounds of grain to make one pound of meat. I want to reduce suffering as much as I can, rather than saying suffering is unavoidable, so why not inflict even more suffering.
I was Vegan for 10 years and thought I was very healthy. I started to learn more and more and it turns out that almost NO food is completely vegan!!
EG hundreds of field mice are killed by vegie harvesting machines
I’d prefer 1 cow feed several people than hundreds of mice killed for some vegies!
I don’t eat all meat, I wont eat anything that is unusually cruelly raised, but I do eat some meat.
It took me a while to be able to stomach it, but really quickly after eating it I suddenly had more energy and felt healthier than I had in all the time I’d been Vegan. I think many Vegan’s probably think they are healthier than they are because they have forgotten how good it can feel to be truely healthy.
You are so full of it, not funny its been proven time and r\time again y\your so called best diet is extremely dangerous and has killed lots of children due to malnutrition the ones lucky enough to survive are highly undeveloped
Veggie yes, but vegan? Many have egg whites.
Anyone who claims a vegan diet is “how humans were meant to live” is down right mis-informed. If you want to see the true impact of a vegan diet just look at any study that follows children being raised vegan. Even when the nutrition of the child is monitored so nutrients are obtained in the proper balance and necessary supplements are given, children raised vegan still grow and develop slower than children raised on heath omnivore or even vegetarian diets. Clearly humans do not thrive with this life style so why are people still harping about the “benefits”. Yes reduced fat diets high in plant products have been linked to decreased risk for many chronic diseases but reduced fat + high produce does not equal vegan. Why do people feel the need to take everything to the extreme?
Being vegan is GREAT, I’ve been doing it for almost a year now! After I read a book on being vegan and the downside of eating animal products, it grossed me out! Animals don’t need to be tortured..besides cow’s milk claims to “prevent osteoporosis” but it acually causes it! broccoli alot of calcium.
just listen to your body everyone is different. Like, if you’ve been eating animal products your whole life then suddenly switch to vegan mode..then yes, your body will have complications with the new diet at first! That’s why you should start as a vegitarian first and work your way up.
PS: I can understand that Jolie might feel guilty about eating meat and simply needed some external thing to blame for her recidivism (“I don’t WANT to eat meat, but if I don’t, I turn green and my arms fall off…”). Anyone who’s gone on a vegan diet probably has some strong feelings about eating meat, so I’ll assume she feels at least a little defeated about going back. But meat’s a hard habit to kick. It took me years, first cutting out beef (which I never liked), then pork, then turkey, and finally, chicken. My dad refuses to eat veal because he thinks it’s immoral, but he eats lamb once a week. Go figure. We’re complex creatures. The only thing we must never do is lie to ourselves about what we’re doing.
I’ve heard this one a million times. Jolie should skip the lame excuses and just admit that she likes eating meat. Maybe she was lazy in choosing foods. I suspect she’s just a liar. A vegan diet is perfectly healthy, if you simply make sure you’re getting a proper balance–just like any other diet. I’m not a vegan or a vegetarian (I eat fish), but I have friends who absolutely insist that I’m eating the “wrong” way. It’s food. Eat what you like, and I’ll eat what I like. Not OK? Tough.
Read up on the soy/rainforest destruction thing.
That soy is mostly for livestock consumption, comparatively little is fed to humans. http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/42354
I’ve been vegan going on seven years. I was veg for about 5 years before that.
I ran two marathons last year and am running two more this year. My bloodwork is fantastic and I’m healthy. Your experience is NOT the norm and, frankly, shouldn’t be blamed on the vegan diet. Perhaps you weren’t eating enough fat/protein (sounds like it), perhaps you just weren’t eating enough calories. Hell, maybe your personal body chemistry requires different macronutrient percentages.
Newsflash, many omnivores are anemic. Many omnivores (most people, actually) are vitamin D deficient. It’s not only vegans getting osteoporosis. Or breaking bones. Or any other health issue. Humans eating a variety of diets have problems. Some of that is imbalanced diets (and those high in processed crap and chemical un-foods) and some is just the individual’s body.
This post just reads like scaremongering.
As does the original article.
Why not ask all the vegan endurance athletes how THEY feel? There are a couple vegan Iron Man winners, distance runners like Scott Jurek, etc. How about all the healthy famous vegans? Just because Jolie couldn’t be arsed to use all her money and get a nutritionist/ chef doesn’t mean that veganism is unhealthy. it just means she didn’t do it properly. Or that she is looking for a good excuse that’ll get her off the hook for eating animals again.
If I could eat soy, I might think about it, but since unfermented soy makes me sick, I think I will stick to the way I eat (which is healthy, but not vegetarian).
Angelina Jolie is wacked. I can’t stand her. I’m a new vegetarian for about 8 months now. I feel great, so much better than before when animals were rotting in my colon. I never watch Angelina Jolie movies. She’s just a mediaslut. I wonder why she cares so much about foreign babies, when there are American babies needing homes just as much. I hate fast food companies too….I can’t comprehend how people can eat that garbage. For me, vegan eating is not an “endless parade of rice and beans” although I LOVE rice and beans. Just have to be creative, and willing to try new things. AND GIVE UP THE WHOPPERS AND BIG MACS ugh.
I have been vegan/veg for 12 years. I dont follow any special diet. I CURED rheumatoid arthritis and migraine headaches in two months after getting off animal products! My circulation and flexibility improved too! I did have two problems. I had low energy and my hair was shedding. I didnt pay much attention to the low energy because that was normal for me. And the shedding hair didnt become a real issue until a few years ago. The one fault I had was i didnt supplement the B12, which is the only nutrient you cant get from a plant source. Once i started the B12 about 4 months ago, my hair is thicker and growing like a weed and my energy is much improved! I havnt noticed any other problems at all. What people dont realize is that the body is addicted to meat, just like people are addicted to cigs or ETOH. So, its best to get off it slowly over time so as not to send the body in to shock…thanks
If you’re going to call someone out on spelling or grammar, especially someone whose first language doesn’t appear to be English, you may want to check your own post for flawless usage (your/you’re).
This is a diet blog, perfect English isn’t necessary.
Here’s the thing–everyone who says that Vegan is best or Meat is best–you are all ignoring one important fact: Different people have different biochemistries and metabolisms. A vegan diet is definitely simple and healthful for some people. For other people, a vegan diet could make them very ill–just as happened to Angelina Jolie and me. Unlike Jolie, I still don’t eat my fellow mammals, but I HAVE to have animal protein in my diet. That’s the way I was made. I don’t know if it’s because my blood type is o+, as some researchers have said, or if it’s some other metabolic issue, but when I eat eggs, fish, fowl, and dairy, in minimal amounts, I feel healthy and have energy, and think clearly. When I eat vegan, I have no energy at all, feel like I’m in a fog all the time, become anemic, and get irritable bowel. I know other people who have had the exact opposite experience. Our bodies are not all the same. That’s why one kid can live on PB&J, and another kid can die if he even tastes it. Food is not the same for everyone. That’s why high carb diets make some people lose weight and some people gain weight. Deal with it people. We’re all different. The key is figuring out what’s right for our own bodies, while hopefully causing as little suffering to our fellow creatures as possible.
I eat am not a vegan in any sense of the word but neither am I some steak worshipping supplicant. Whether Vegan or omnivorous, I believe both diets are viable from a nutritional and moral standpoint.(Omnivore means eats both plant and animal matter, not anything you see.) I think people should be educated on the facts before they make a decision and defend it with a blind fanaticism bordering on cult-like. Both sides have used half truths to further their agenda, and honestly,I’ve never seen such faulty logic before in my life from both sides.
The claims that humans were “designed” to only eat vegetables(from the vegans) or meat(from the other side) is nonsense. First with theory that, since meat is cooked and not a natural process, that meat has to be modified to be eaten and therefore not part of the natural human diet. The same could be said of the multitude of beans and vegetables that have to be cooked in order to be palatable or digestible. So invalid point for both sides. (Side note: If all you need is the internet for access to nutritional content, meal plans, and what deficiencies to be aware of for a diet; what did pre-internet, pre-medicine, pre-supplement, pre-grocery store delivered goods man do?)
While certain people have been proven to be healthy while maintaining either lifestyle that doesn’t mean everybody can live that lifestyle. All people are not the same. People have different activity levels, genetics, environmental conditions, accessibility, etc… No one diet is suitable for all humans. I only eat about 1000 calories a day and function quite well and maintain my health while in a high intensity job. Most people would find this impossible to maintain for the years I’ve been working this job. It depends on the person.
As far as the ease of the diets, I believe a healthy lifestyle requires a significant level of commitment. Both diets require cooking for yourself at home and meal planning. Vegans with poor meal choice decisions fare just as bad as everyone else who makes poor meal choices.
Both diets requires you to cook your meal most of the time. Broiling, sauteing, braising, grilling, frying, etc… Cooking is usually involved and requires time no matter what the dish is. And I’m pretty sure anything can be cooked in an unhealthy manner.(Double bacon cheeseburgers or deep fried okra)Also,anything you burn while cooking is going to contain carcinogens. Whether it be hot dogs or grits. It’s a moot point, just don’t burn stuff while cooking.
Health
Meat can be unhealthy but that doesn’t mean all meat is unhealthy. I think the fact that cholesterol is required by the human body to form a majority of the hormones responsible for keeping us healthy is a little known fact. Moderation is the key for all things in life. Anything in excessive amounts can be dangerous for us. Water can be poisonous in sufficient amounts. Healthy fat consumption is key in both diets. In a properly balanced Vegan diet you can get all the nutritional items you need. The key is properly balanced, just like in an omnivorous diet.
IRON
I TYPE IN ALL CAPS!!! Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. Iron deficiency vs Iron poisoning.
Fact 1) It’s easy and and a viable option to get enough
iron with a vegan diet with the proper planning.
Fact 2) Iron poisoning is 99% caused by iron
supplementation, alcohol abuse, genetic diseases
and is rarely achieved through diet.
On to hormones and pesticides.
Unless you only eat 100% organically grown/raised food then this is a dead argument. Only a small portion of meat consumed is organic, free range, grass fed, and hormone free. On the other hand only a small portion of produce grown is genetically pure, grown in a manner that doesn’t strip the land of its nutrients requiring fertilizer(from where???) and pesticide free. These products are rare, scarce and economically hard to obtain. Once again a moot point for both sides. (Side not: All meat and vegetable can contain parasites and other infectious life forms but how often do infections occur. Statistically-wise, not “In today’s news, a single man died due to (fill in the blank)”
All produce contains certain “nasties” to a degree. From rat feces in grain silos to ammonia in meat to artificial enrichment chemicals to chemical contamination from industrial processing to plastic ingestion from plastic packaging and so on and so on. The only pure food is on some deserted island, free from man, which, by the way, means we don’t have access to it.
Disease
Science points to a diet heavy in meat to be a factor in causing several forms of cancer. Science also points to genetically modified plant foods as being the cause for a multitude of increases in various allergies (i.e.gluten) resulting in the inability to consume a majority of food stuffs.
Genetic modification vs hormone treatment
Most food stuffs have been subject to one of the above. For meat, it is common knowledge that hormones are used to make the animal bigger, in a shorter amount of time, with less food. The presence of hormones in a significant amount has been found in meat produced from animals treated with them. I believe everybody can agree this causes it own unique sets of problems.
On the other hand genetically modified food (GMF) has been on the market since the early 90′s. Since the results of the Human Genome project have been published, bans on GMF have steadily increased. The problem is scientists found out that you get a 2 for 1 deal when changing genetic code. They found this out after GMF was on the market. When scientists thought they were changing one aspect of a subject, they found out two things were actually changed. In GMF, no one can be sure of the other unintentional change and what the consequences may be for the people consuming the products. GMF is much more widespread than people think. Don’t believe? Just look in to corn.
Moral of the story: No hormones, No GMF.
Cruelty: Animal and Human
The animal cruelty side of the business is well documented. Not all livestock is treated with such cruelty but too much of it is. That is easy to agree with. If more people knew where there meat came from there would be massive changes to the meat industry. As far as “Meat is murder” I agree also to an extent. On the other hand, everything that is living dies. Most of the time quite painfully. It is very rare that a wild animal dies in its sleep. Most of the time it is due to starvation, dehydration, disease or being eaten by something that doesn’t care if you’re dead before the first bite is taken. I honestly believe organic,free range cattle has a significantly better life than its wild counterpart could ever have. No predators, no competition for resources, and even health care. But we know how much cattle is free range.
A subject hardly ever covered is the human suffering that goes into agriculture. Once again, know where your food comes from. A lot of fruit is farmed/picked by people who are little more than indentured servants and sometimes are indentured servants. My friend’s Aunt worked 12 hours a day everyday during rice season in Cambodia and still didn’t have enough money to afford a house with a bathroom. Now in America she’s considered middle class.
Quick quiz: Does anybody know where most chocolate is produce? If you said South America “somewhere”, you would be wrong. Two thirds of chocolate is grown in west Africa with a majority of the rest from southeastern Asia. Do you know what it prevalent in the Ivory Coast? Child labor. And what else, you say? Slavery. Read the report “A Taste of Slavery: How Your Chocolate May be Tainted: It won a George Polk award. Agriculture has it’s own share of cruelness to it as well.
Last note. Anybody remember the tomato recall? What about the lunch meat recall? Just saying.
There are a lot of comments here (angry comments) about how meat causes cancer and how a vegan or vegitarian diet is best and more healthy in preventing cancer. It’s NOT a solution in and of iteslf.
Michelle Thomas, who was an actress on the wildly popular TV show Family Matters died of cancer at the young age of 30. She had a rare stomach cancer and was a LIFE LONG STRICT VEGITARIAN. She didn’t drink or smoke. I don’t point this out to join in the argument, I point this out b/c I was diagnosed with cancer 12/29/10 so I am truly looking for answers and I am tired of all the nonsense out there that is obviously posted by people with personal agendas (all over the internet).
My honest to goodness beliefs are: chemicals in drinking water cause cancer. Pesticides cause cancer. Chemicals in soil in which vegetables and fruits are planted cause cancer. Inhaling toxins on a daily basis causes cancer. For goodness sake, SEX can cause cancer (HPV). So, while you cut out meat it doesn’t exempt you from getting cancer.
Let’s all use our heads and not our personal agendas to present logical answers that some of us need.
I don’t care who wins or loses this argument. I do know that I have seen it documented that vegetarians have smaller risk of getting cancer, but it depends on what type of cancer we are talking about here. To me, cancer is cancer. Obviously being a vegetarian did not save Michelle and I am only positive that there are thousands of other vegetarians that have died of cancer who are not famous.
There is no ONE quick solution for preventing cancer. If there were no one would ever get it b/c it is a devastating desease that EVERYONE fears. If someone told me I could have prevented cancer by eating my hat I would have done it.
Vegetarianism is NOT ENOUGH. Green tea is not enough (been drinking that since 1996). Diet is not enough. There are many things that have to be done to at least attempt to prevent cancer. It is not just diet.
The day I was diagnosed I bought a water filtration system and I won’t even let the cat drink tap water. Unfortunately Whole Foods is ridiculously expensive so I have bought a vegetable wash to clean my fruits and veggies before eating them. I think that’s what people are trying to say when they say being a Vegan is expensive. My food budget is $100 a week and I have a family to support. I spent $78 of that budget at Whole Foods and hadn’t even gotten beyond the oranges yet.
Eat all the vegetables, beans, fruit you want. I ALWAYS have and still managed to get cancer. I believe in preventative medicine, but my doctor has advised me that there are no known 100% surefire preventative methods. Vegans get cancer less than meat eaters. I will give you that, but vegans still get cancer.
The thing that will hopefully save my life is that I caught my cancer in stage one by paying attention to my body.
Wow! Every writer here appears to have valid points. I am sure that a vegan diet is the healthiest for some people, but not all. I grew up frequently visiting my grandparents’ farm where they raised (grass fed) beef cattle on a 300 acre farm in Tennessee. Feeding calves bottles when their mothers could not prompted me not to want to eat them (the cattle, not my family, Hah!). I didn’t eat beef for 17 years, and I rarely eat meat now. I was an ovo-lacto vegetarian for 9 years UNTIL I was pregnant, at which time I began craving country ham. For those of you who don’t know, it is salt cured ham similar to prosciutto, likely the farthest food from vegan in existence. Nature? Nurture? We are not all the same. My Irish/French/Cherokee genes and my husband’s Russian/Spanish genes do not seem to require the same exact foods for optimum health. Is it possible that for some that come across as militant, that diet is approached as a religion–thus the panicked seeming references to meat? By the way, eating meat probably did contribute to my grandfather’s death. Though he ate a lot of vegetables and fruits, he also ate sausage and biscuits almost every breakfast of his life. His body just gave out. I am sure he had clogged arteries. He also had hypertension, for which he took a pill every day starting when he was 97. He was 99 years old, living in his own home, still gardening a bit when he passed away.
I am a vegetarian all my life. I have full body checkups regularly. No doctor has told me that I am going to die.
With more than half the population in India being vegetarians, we should not have been a populous country, if this were true.
Venkat
I have to aggree with this statement.
EXCESSIVE SUGAR IS A KILLER!
Any diet that has to be supplemented with supplements/vitamins isn’t healthy.
The only people who should need special supplements are those with medical conditions. If anybody else needs ‘em, they’re not eating right.
My wife and I have been vegans for nearly 11 years and we are very healthy. I am almost 66 years old and can run 2-3 miles without stopping, climb 12 flights of stairs (2 steps at a time), sprint for 5 minutes with an 8 pound weight in each hand and have a total blood cholesterol of 127 mg/dl. My wife has similar stats. Anyone who says the vegan diet doesn’t work or isn’t healthy just has not done it right. The Hallelujah Diet & Lifestyle is the way to do vegan.