Some of you may remember the 2004 documentary Super Size Me which depicts filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eating three meals from McDonalds every single day for 30 days and always supersizing the meal whenever suggested by a McDonald’s employee.
By the end of the 30 day fast food spree, Spurlock had gained 25 pounds and was suffering from liver dysfunction and depression according to his doctor.
Spurlock’s girlfriend (now ex-wife) during the documentary was Alex Jamieson, author of The Great American Detox Diet and a well known and longtime celebrity vegan.
When ideology trumps scientific facts, however, dietary obsessions die hard. On her blog Delicious Vitality, Jamieson shocked her fans by announcing that she had quit veganism.
A vegan for 13 years, Jamieson said that a whole foods, plant based diet helped her initially resolve some health problems. Â She also said it felt “clean and right” given what she had learned about the industrial food system and how horribly animals are treated in confinement.
Then, she said things began to change a few years ago. Â The burger that used to disgust her made her salivate. Â She had overwhelming urges to order salmon instead of her usual salad with tofu.
She said at first she denied her cravings and figured she was just mineral deficient.
More nuts, more juicing, more sea vegetables. Â For over a year, she tried everything in the vegan playbook to get the cravings to stop.
To her dismay, the cravings for meat and eggs continued and did not abate.
Jamieson writes that about that time she started to notice that most of her clients and readers were not vegan. Â Some of those who were vegan were not thriving and were even sicker and heavier than before they started an all plant based diet.
She noticed that shame was a common emotion experienced by vegans who began to eat meat again. This caused her to hide the secret of her cravings for meat and eggs even more tightly.
Finally, Alex decided that she had to experiment and see how her body responded to animal foods again. With the support of a few trusted friends, she began eating eggs.
Her body welcomed the change and wanted more!
But still she guarded her secret, stealthily buying animal foods and sneaking home to eat them in solitude.
It shocked her to realize that she had developed an eating disorder after 12 years as a vegan! Â The thought then occurred to her that she could help a lot of people by coming out of the closet and admitting her struggle and need for animal foods.
Doing so terrified her, however. Â She recalled the vicious backlash from the vegan community when celebrity vegan Ellen Degeneres admitted that she was eating eggs from her neighbor’s happy chickens.
Not so compassionate after all, are we? Â She thought.
Alex Jamieson describes her new truth with regards to animal foods as follows:
“People can still love animals and care about protecting the environment AND honor their own animal bodies and consume the foods that they need.
I believe you can love and care about animal welfare and still consume them.
I believe humans are animals. And some animals need to eat other animals to be healthy. Some do not.
I believe we should restructure the way animals are raised so that they live in more natural, comfortable, humane surroundings and stop force-feeding them 80% of all antibiotics used in the US.”
I applaud Alex Jamieson for her courage in writing a letter to her fans that will no doubt bring much ridicule and criticism from the vegan community.
Unfortunately, I don’t agree with all of Alex’s new truth. Â She also states that:
“I believe that a vegan, whole-foods diet saved my life and is a delicious, valid, healthy style of eating for many people.
I believe that a vegan diet should be promoted as one of many possible ways to get the body and life that people crave.”
While a vegan diet may prove helpful as a very short term, detoxifying solution for some people, it can never and will never prove to be a valid way to long-term health else there would be at least one traditional culture that practiced it successfully with multiple generations of fertility, healthy children, and degenerative and chronic disease free people demonstrating it’s positive effect.
Such a culture did not and does not exist according to the anthropological studies of Dr. Weston A. Price.
Not a single successful vegan population group could be cited by the science ignoring 2017 vegan documentary What the Health either!
Consider yourself warned, would-be vegans!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
@dean wiebe I’m not particularly a fan of debating on Facebook but thought I’d chime in. The “points” you made are largely empirical. Humans have been eating meat for 2.6 million years. No vegetarian, much less vegan culture has ever existed. Meat for thought.
I don’t care if she is out. This was a great documentary explaining the damage that fast foods do to the human body.
Vegetarian/vegan is still sooo in here down under in Australia. We are roughly 20 years behind the rest of the world on many things lol. I think if one was to posit themselves as a vegetarian/vegan recovery specialist or doctor they would do well beyond their wildest dreams quite soon.
I read her blog post yesterday. Good for her!
That is why this type of story needs to be outed big time not because I care if people eat vegan, but because the people who are in the limelight preaching these falsehoods are hurting other people.
It’s one thing to eat as one wants … this is indeed a private matter. But with the vegans telling the world that this is a healthy way to eat and Alex Jamieson preaching this for years while eating meat and eggs in the closet at home, then that is where you have the draw the line as this is problematic for the people who are listening to this message.
I posted this article about Alex (the original piece she wrote) on my Facebook page a couple of days ago, and got some pretty interesting responses. Here’s one of them:
“Wow. You’re actually promoting material from Alexandra Jamieson, the fad diet guru who was NEVER actually a vegan,and is now tapping controversy to make money??!
” This woman was all about fad dieting and putting unnecessary and extreme restrictions on a plant-based diet and wanted to call it “vegan.”
http://www.examiner.com/article/alex-jamieson-was-never-vegan-the-first-place?cid=rss
I think it’s pretty sad how low those who defend the plant-based philosophy will stoop to try to prove their point about why this kind of diet is supposedly so healthy. I pointed out that whether this person agreed with Alex or not that there was plenty of evidence otherwise, as well as testimonials, to support the idea that human beings need animal foods to be healthy – the biggest one being the long history of humans consuming meat and animal foods since the dawn of time for nourishment.
@Sarah; Gorillas have huge canine teeth http://google.com/images?q=gorilla+teeth, yet they are very near vegan, eating only some grubs and termites on occasion.
Here’s some “propaganda” from the other side. Food for thought. 🙂
1.A carnivore’s teeth are long, sharp and pointed. These are tools that are useful for the task of piercing into flesh. Omnivore’s (meat and plant eaters) teeth are similar to that of carnivores. Man’s, as well as other herbivore’s teeth are not pointed, but flat edged. These are useful tools for biting, crushing and grinding.
2.A carnivore’s jaws move up and down with minimal sideways motion. The jaw motion of an omnivore is similar. These are tools that are useful for the tasks of shearing, ripping and tearing flesh and swallowing it whole. Omnivores swallow their food whole and/or with simple crushing. Man’s, as well as other herbivore’s jaws cannot shear, but have good side to side and back to front motion. These are tools that are useful for extensive chewing, crushing and grinding of grains and other high fiber foods. Animal flesh cannot be crushed, ground and chewed with the tools Yahweh gave man without some degenerating process such as cooking or frying.
3.A carnivore or omnivore’s saliva does not contain digestive enzymes. Man’s, as well as other herbivore’s saliva is alkaline, containing carbohydrate digestive enzymes.
4.A carnivore’s stomach secretes powerful digestive enzymes with about 10 times the amount of hydrochloric acid than a human or herbivore. The pH is less than or equal to “1” with food in the stomach, for a carnivore or omnivore. For humans or other herbivores, the pH ranges from 4 to 5 with food in the stomach. Hence, man must prepare his meats with laborious cooking or frying methods. E. Coli bacteria, salmonella, campylobacter, trichina worms [parasites] or other pathogens would not survive in the stomach of a lion.
5.A carnivore’s or omnivore’s small intestine is three to six times the length of its trunk. This is a tool designed for rapid elimination of food that rots quickly. Man’s, as well as other herbivore’s small intestines are 10 to 12 times the length of their body, and winds itself back and forth in random directions. This is a tool designed for keeping food in it for long enough periods of time so that all the valuable nutrients and minerals can be extracted from it before it enters the large intestine.
6.A carnivore’s or omnivore’s large intestine is relatively short and simple, like a pipe. This passage is also relatively smooth and runs fairly straight so that fatty wastes high in cholesterol can easily slide out before they start to putrefy. Man’s, as well as other herbivore’s large intestines, or colons, are puckered and pouched, an apparatus that runs in three directions (ascending, traversing and descending), designed to hold wastes that originally were foods high in water content. This is so that the fluids can be extracted from these wastes, now that all the useful nutrients and minerals have been extracted and the long journey through the small intestine is over. Substances high in fat and cholesterol that have been putrefying for hours during their long stay in the small intestine tend to get stuck in the pockets that line the large intestine.
7.Animal flesh, composed of the most highly complex type of protein that exists, requires vast amounts of uric acid to process. Uric acid is released into the system in amounts necessary to break proteins down into amino acids. Uric acid is a toxic substance responsible for the aging process and must be flushed out and dealt with. That is one of the jobs of the liver. In relative terms, a carnivore’s liver is a tool designed with the capacity to eliminate ten times as much uric acid as the liver of man or other plant eater.
8.A predator has a gait, large paws and claws, which enable him to hunt, chase and trap his prey. These are tools meant to kill. Man’s gait, as well as other herbivore’s is designed only for mobility. Examine your hand, fingers and fingernails. Is this an apparatus properly designed for catching, trapping, killing and ripping apart cattle, hogs, chicken and fish? How does this work for picking fruit from trees or harvesting vegetables? The foods your hands were meant to gather are typically, high in water content, high also in fiber to sweep the wastes out of those intestines, and collectively contain every vitamin and mineral necessary to sustain human life.
9.A carnivore’s frame of mind is totally geared for hunting and killing. Man’s frame of mind is compassionate, friendly and reveres life. When the lion spots another furry animal, something might instinctively click in his head that tells him to hurry up and get dinner. When man spots a furry animal, rather than show his children how to take its life and eat it, a more likely instinct is to pull over, get the camera out and take a picture. Put a young baby chick and an apple in a crib with a six-month-old baby. What will he instinctively attempt to eat and play with?
10. Man is not a natural hunter. Every predator, in order to go hunting, MUST be hungry. Man cannot go hunting if he IS hungry! He must have a meal first. Hunger must precede a predator to go hunting. Hunger must follow man’s desire to go hunting, it cannot precede it.
Congratulations on your ability to cut and paste.
I find your response quite rude. I would hope anyone here could share info respectfully and have it received respectfully.
The only problem with your list of facts is, well, they are almost all incorrect. Those that aren’t flat out wrong are taken out of context. Humans are scientifically PROVEN to be omnivore. Telling people otherwise is wrong on many levels. You should stop unless you have a PhD, MD or DO after your name.
Who could resist a juicy steak?!!
haha