Experience Report: 2 Weeks On a Raw Vegan Diet

I've been doing a mostly raw vegan diet these last two weeks.

As an interesting side effect, I didn't have any alcohol (except on fridays) and no coffee, though I did cheat a little bit by drinking green tea, and I had maybe 3 or 4 cups of coffee throughout the whole time. The coffee turkey led to some interesting withdrawal symptoms.

After the first week, I decided to reintroduce bread, and I decided not to look extremely closely at the label of hummus and some spelt grain spread, because I developed extreme cravings for those two things and the other option would have been to step down to a cooked vegan diet, which presented no challenge at all, as I already know I can do that.

There were no cravings for sweets (interesting), no cravings for alcohol (very reassuring!), and none for meat (yeah that was pretty neat).

Digestion was not a problem -- to the contrary. If anything, it was better. With a somewhat meaty and fatty diet, I always had some acid reflux issues. On raw vegan, this was gone. As for what came out at the other end... well, let's just say it was shockingly much.

My conclusion is twofold.

One is that this is not sustainable in the long run for me. Too many variations of taste, temperature and consistency go amiss, at least as long as one doesn't buy a desiccation machine and a juicer (which I definitely won't do just for an experiment). Fermentation can make things interesting, but what it all boils down to (haha, pun so intended!) is that everything has extremely strong tastes - either very sour, or very salty, or very sweet. There are no in-betweens. Nothing is mild and gentle. To my surprise, this is exactly the quality that makes meat so tasty - it's good precisely because it doesn't taste like very much.

And also, keeping this kind of diet healthy would require amounts of planning ahead that I am simply not prepare to invest.

One fun and very instructive part: It's incredible how fast raw food will rot. For example, I took raw oatmeal to work, ate a bit at about 8am, and forgot to put it in the fridge. At 1pm I thought I'd have a bite. By that time, the thing had already gone bad. And that, my friends, is why we invented cooking in the first place!

On to the positive: I had been going through a year-long spell of low energy. I came home from work and only wanted to watch a few videos and go to sleep. I put it down to the job, which indeed was quite stressful.

But over these two weeks my energy level improved with every day. It was truly amazing. My gf felt it, too. ;-) I even took up reading, like, actual books, again, which was utterly out of my reach for at least a year. (This might actually be due to drinking no coffee.)

What I take from it is this: I'll dive even more into vegan cooking than I did in the past. I'll have way more raw stuff in my diet. I'll reduce non-vegan options to when I eat at a restaurant or am invited to parties.

But for a long-term diet, raw vegan is completely and utterly unsustainable. You'd have to put in tremendous amounts of planning, reserve lots of time just for eating (a salad just takes way longer to eat than a steak or pasta), and even then you'd have to start supplementing B12 at some point. Not to mention that it is rather expensive, since you'd have to buy organic fruit in large quantities all the time. But for a short spell, just to lose a bit of weight, it's actually a fine option.

The Road To Vegan World-Domination

If I were a vegan, (which I am not and never will be), and my goal was to convince meat-eaters to become vegan, here's what I should not do:

Tell people that meat is murder, and try to convince them on moral grounds and with all the brute force of my strict, stringent, wonderfully compelling logic.

Here is what I should focus on instead:

Convince people with the glow of my renewed energy. Seduce them with extremely delicious, beautiful food. Add my greens to their barbecue. Actually enjoy my own food and let them see my enjoyment.

You see, I am a not-quite-but-almost-vegan for the simple reason that I enjoy the food I cook for myself. I look forward to that wonderful Koshari, that intensely aromatic Chili Sin Carne, this excellent Curry with tofu and greens. I really like my oatmeal and my smoothie. And I'm truly sorry, but I just don't feel for the poor cows, even though I know I probably should. It's just not there, on an emotional, visceral level. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but the fact is I could not care less even if I tried real hard.

Forget logic and morality. People are rarely ever won over by those. Their experience is that meat tastes yummie and that society won't punish them for their creature comforts. And the simple fact is that experience trumps rational reasoning. It doesn't matter whether that seems unfair or illogical or just plain wrong to you. That's just how humans work. If you actually want to make the world a better place, instead of being comfortable on the moral high ground, you better start working with nature, not against it.

Let's assume that the goal is to reduce suffering. Then, turning 1% of the population into 100% vegans is way less effective than turning 30% of them into people who eat small amounts of meat.

It's also less catchy, of course.

The danger of veganism

Over the past few years, I have become convinced that you can eat a vegan diet that is mostly healthy, while minimizing your carbon footprint and contributing less to animal suffering.

So that is a good thing.

Still, I was always a bit uneasy about the whole thing.

The problem is, veganism has a name. A cutesy (though somewhat stupid), easy to remember name.

That makes it incredibly easy and seductive to change your diet (as hard as that is), and then to think, that's it, now I've got that whole ethical lifestyle thing down.

Where there's a name, people like to identify with it. People don't incorporate veganism into their lives - they ARE vegans. That's dangerous business.

Just do a youtube search for veganism and try to determine how many channels there are, just about that one topic.

The truth is, of course, that nutrition is only one part of a much larger set of issues. You will never have that ethics thing down, because that is an ongoing process, and you will always have to weigh the proposed benefits against your convenience, your resources, and your preparedness to actually change yourself.

You will never live a perfectly ethical life. You will never reduce your footprint to absolute zero. As long as you are alive, you will produce suffering.

So now you don't eat meat. But you drive a car. Or maybe you don't own a car, but you use public transport, and then there's that rare instance when you call a taxi. And that money you have in your bank account? You can be sure that some part of it will be invested in a company (which will invest it in another company, etc), and somehwere down the line it will end up in some field office of the mafia. You can try and buy your clothes from some "fair" company, but good luck checking their actual practices, and better luck not buying any gas or electricity that has any bad impact.

You will always have your hands dirty. It's unavoidable. That is the one catholic teaching that I, strangely, agree with.

Don't be fooled by da vegan scammerz!

Every so often, I happen upon videos of vegan recipes, where it is claimed that the thing in question "tastes just like the real thing".

Examples are down below.

As an omnivore with some recurring vegan leanings -- an on-and-off vegan, so to speak --, I can tell you one thing with almost 100% certainty: While those foods often do taste real great, they usually taste nothing at all "like the real thing".

The worst offender in this category was a "mousse au chocolat" that we did on a vegan cooking course. It was made with avocados and dates (and chocolate of course). Yeah it was sweet and chocolatey, but it completely missed the mark with regard to consistence and overall fluffiness (and alcohol, which was sorely missing, because, duh, vegans apparently can't drink a little of the goodey stuff, either).

While I realize and -- to a degree -- respect what those people are trying to achieve, I believe they're doing their own cause a disservice.

Look, I had a wonderful, wonderful "egg salad" with toast last night, based on tofu and lima beans. It tasted excellent. But calling that thing "egg salad", and expecting anything like real eggs, was just setting myself up for disappointment. Things don't work that way. Tofu does not an egg replace, pretty much regardless of what means of torture you apply.

Why can't it simply be "delicious creamy tofu salad"? I believe that vegan recipes deserve their own identity, and have a right to their very own, very unique taste.

Examples of "meat-alike" vegan recipes:

"Fat Head", "Supersize Me", Nutrition and Counterarguments

I recently watched this video called "Fat Head" on youtube. It's basically one long counter-argument by a certain Tom Naughton to the well known documentary "Supersize Me" by Morgan Spurlock. It seems to advertise a high-fat, low-carb paleo diet, or at least something close to that. I recently switched to a high-carb, low fat, somewhat-80/10/10-ish diet (though not so extreme by far). I thus have a lot of interest in the matter, so let me break down my view of the movie and its points:

• There is no obesity epidemic

I'm absolutely not sure about this. I also don't find it very relevant when it comes to my own life. I don't want to be obese, regardless of how many obese people there are. I don't want to carry around all that extra weight, I want to look good and be healthy and energetic. I don't really need to think that there is a huge global crisis just to find out that health, energy and good looks are excellent goals to strive for. Apart from that, I do think it's pretty much a given that we have got a lot heavier during the last half century; I'm just not quite sure if I'd call it an epidemic, though.

In the movie, they also claim that the numbers for the BMI got changed just so more people would be labeled "obese". Yeah, I don't know about that. But I think that the BMI is only a very blunt instrument. It also wasn't even intended as a health indicator by its inventor, and it doesn't take a few factors into account that really, really do matter, such as gender and muscularity.

• McDonald's is not to blame for the obesity epidemic

As the movie puts it, "If you eat 5000 calories per day, you'll get fat no matter what." I couldn't agree more. Spurlock put on a diet that was bound to make him fat and sick, and then blamed it on fast-food. The problem is, he would have got fat and sick just as much if he had eaten high-quality beef steaks and fatty sauces at the cost of $ 50,- per meal. It's not the fast food per se, it's food of high caloric density and fast carbs.

I also agree on the other point: "Nobody forces you to eat at McDonald's". Not a lot to add here, really. If McDonald's is the sole provider of children's playgrounds in some areas, then it's not Mickey D who is to blame but the government that should provide them. Suing a company for selling food everyone knows is unhealthy (at least if you overdo it) is simply ridiculous.

• Spurlock faked his data

I am, in fact, pretty convinced that this one is true. He wanted to make a point which was partly valid, and he wanted to make a convincing and entertaining movie, so he exaggerated some stuff. I'm fairly certain, without having done the maths myself, that Spurlock didn't get 5000 calories per day from 3 McDonald's meals. There's a reason why Spurlock refused to publish his food log. Still doesn't make fast food the best dietary choice, though.

• Fat is not related to heart-disease (i.e., the lipid hypothesis is wrong)

Well, as long as the overwhelming majority of doctors disagree and tell me that the two are, indeed, very much related, I think I'll go with that, thanks a lot.

• Our ancestors ate nothing but meat, so it must be good for us

Yeah, admittedly I exaggerated a bit there myself. The claim is that our hunterer/gatherer ancestors, before we invented agriculture, ate lots of meat (and some fruits and vegs), so our biology is obviously adapted to this and it must be good. There are lots of issues with evolutionary arguments on principle, and in this specific case, there also seems to be a huge pile of missing data. While it is true that longevity declined and bone-structure got worse after the agricultural revolution, this might in part be due to people living together in larger groups, thus spreading diseases, to replacing fruits/vegs with grains, and to several kinds of changes in social structure.

In short, we don't know how much meat they actually ate, the fruits they ate were certainly different from our modern fruits (which are much higher in sugar, for one), and it doesn't follow that "old is always good". After all, we do live longer, work less, and are probably in better health than people a few hundred thousand years ago. (And every single point in that sentence is debatable itself, so there you go...)

Executive Summary

To sum it up, I still think that a largely plant-based diet is good for me, that fast-food is pretty bad, and that the so-called "paleo diet" is a fad. But I'm also happy that someone put in the effort to debunk some of the glaring idiocies of "Supersize Me".

An Evolutionary Argument For Veganism

Lately, I have become addicted to the videos of a certain young lady named Kerry McCarpet. She's witty, eloquent, and I just love that British accent of hers - I could watch this video of hers over and over, just to hear her utter the phrase "betwixt the hand and the gob" again and again.

I also agree with a lot of what she says, even though I'd probably be much more cautious in some respects. Her mind is more speculative than mine. I think this is a good thing - it makes for inspiring and lively videos. At the very least, she does what many vegans sadly don't do - she explains her reasons for believing the way she does.

However, let's focus on the one negative thing I found, shall we?

Here, and at a few other places, she presents an argument for high-carbohydrate/low-fat veganism: Evolution shows you what we should eat; our body runs on sugar, our blood cells seem modeled on chlorophyl to some extent. Therefore, we should eat a high-carb vegan diet.

(Personally, I think the chlorophyl argument has a chemist weeping somewhere, but that's just an aside.)

There is a general problem with arguments from evolution. When you try to argue that one specific trait is good, it is of course tempting to say that this trait has survived for so long, so it has to be good - right?

Well - no, sadly. When you do that, you will always end up going in circles.

See, the theory of evolution was invented to explain how we (and all the other species) ended up where we are. But that doesn't tell you anything about whether one specific trait is "good" (i.e., well-adapted) or not. After all, (the theory of) evolution necessarily has to explain the bad along with the good - or to put it differently: In evolution, there is no such thing as good or bad.

The theory of evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive.

We evolved to love sugar and salt, and this is reflected in our taste buds. And we evolved to have a strong sense of empathy, which we may judge as a good thing. But we also evolved to be primates with a rather nasty habit of dropping bombs on each other, and we evolved to have an overweight brain that lets us to fancy stuff like cooking our food, and making hamburgers. We cannot predict, from a merely evolutionary standpoint, which ones of those traits will still be around in a million years.

If you were in possession of a time machine (or a supernatural gift of foresight), and you were to peek into the far future to tell us how this whole game of natural selection actually turned out, that would be something entirely different. Then you could tell us whether red hair will prevail (it doesn't look like it will, to my utter dismay), or whether we will become more peaceful (again, not the obvious winner... *sigh*). But as things are, evolution cannot be used to argue for or against any one lifestyle. It is entirely possible that only the most territorial and aggressive will survive. There may be lots of other arguments against this, but evolution alone just can't tell you.

I suspect that, at its heart, this is really a vitalist argument. It sees evolution not as a blind process guarded by natural laws, but as an intentional agent. It is extremely tempting to fall into this trap - I think even Dawkins once remarked that it is almost impossible to talk about evolution while avoiding it - so this is not a damning accusation at all. It's totally understandable.

After all, the situation is extremely frustrating. We're still left with a guessing game when it comes to something so fundamental as our choice of food. We just don't know enough about nutrition to give definitive answers to the most rudimentary questions.

Personally, I'm going for a "part-time vegan" style, and while I might change this in he future, I'm fairly certain about one basic principle: I will never submit to one philosophy of nutrition to the absolute exclusion of all others. There will always be some meat in my diet - probably very, very little -, some fish, some oil, some cooked and some raw foods - and probably lots and lots of fruits and veggies. But even this diet, which I consider the most rational choice I am currently capable of, is based on guesswork, word of mouth, and personal experience.

Vegan Food, A Beginner's Experience

My topmodel girlfriend and I recently attended a cookery course. A vegan cookery course.

All in all, it was interesting, but not exactly convincing. Ultimately, the revelation was that vegans can eat somewhat tasty food, but it pales to dark shades of grey in comparison with actual, delicious, omnivore food.

Let's start with presentation. I've been convinced for quite some time that vegans are physically incapable of making their lifestyle look good. I know that there are plenty of delicious vegan recipes out there - but the way most vegans present their cause makes it seem like a dull, new-agey, moralistic affair. If I book a cookery course at a local education center, I don't need to be proselytized. I know all the arguments already. I just want to cook, learn some fundamentals about vegan cooking, eat some good food, and generally have a good time. More specifically, I really don't need a rant against microwaves (not related to veganism in the slightest), Monsanto (somewhat related, but still not the point), dairy (the antichrist and Klassenfeind of practically every alternative ideology of nutrition).

In short, if you want to pitch your food to me, then seduce me with its delicious taste, not with various intellectual and moral reasons for why I should accept second-rate dishes.

Since we're talking about the food itself... well.

The first recipe that really stood out was a vegan "meat ball" thing. It was funny because the teacher insisted it tasted "almost like real meat balls", when in reality it had nothing whatsover to do with real meat. It's always funny when people who have not actually tasted meat in 5 years think they know how it tastes, and think they know it better than a notorious carnivore such as myself. But still, this recipe made it into our treasury. It's easy to do, (somewhat) good for your health and extremely tasty, especially if you combine it with a perfectly non-vegan, dairy-based garlic dip.

The second one is more of the "fascinating" variety. They called it "vegan mousse au chocolat". To be honest, if you served that thing to me in a restaurant under that name, I'd probably sue you for fraud, gross misconduct and crimes against humanity. It's based on avocados, chocolate (big surprise), and dates. I mean, it actually tastes just fine, I might make it for myself some day. I ate some of it this morning as a bread spread. It just doesn't have the intensely chocolate-y, fluffy, deliciously unhealthy qualities of my cream+eggs based mousse au chocolat.

You can get by on vegan food. You can survive, probably even without getting deprived of B12. If you really want it, and are prepared to put in the hours of searching, you might even find a few recipes that are genuinely great. But if you're a real connaisseure, a gourmet with a deeply rooted love of extremely delicious food - those soy and almond milk recipes just won't cut it.

I am not a vegan. I sincerely hope I never will be.

I eat lots of vegan food. Sometimes I eat meat. But regardless of how this develops in the foreseeable future, I will not be "a vegan". I don't want to identify with my food habits. I have enough labels as it is, thanks a lot.