I FLUNKED out of veganism the first time because I wasn’t getting the vitamins and micronutrients I needed. I was out of balance. I went to the doctor feeling lethargic and vaguely unwell and was told I had two options: give up being vegan or start taking large amounts of nutritional supplements. I chose meat and dairy. The quantities of pills I had to take irritated my stomach and I wasn’t willing to tough it out.
That was two years ago and I’d been vegan for three. Then veganism exploded into the mainstream. Celebrities from Natalie Portman and Serena Williams to Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton have all declared themselves to be vegan. At first I figured I had done my trial and knew where I stood. But I’ve looked into the environmental and health impacts again, and am having second thoughts.
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Vegans made up just 1 per cent of the US population in 2014. Three years on, an additional 16 million Americans – 5 per cent of the nation – had joined the club. In the UK, their numbers are smaller but also growing. A 2016 poll suggests that just over 1 per cent of Britons never eat meat or animal products. , that’s a more than threefold increase in 10 years. The trend is hippest among 15 to 34-year-olds. Stores and restaurants have jumped on the bandwagon with “plant-powered” menus, vegan supermarket shelves and vegan farmers’ markets. In short, veganism is the new foodie movement. But is it really healthier for humans and the planet? And did I make the right choice?
People cite a range of reasons for going vegan, from an opposition to animal cruelty to a desire to help cut greenhouse gas emissions. The basic principle is to abandon all animal-derived products, particularly in food. That means no meat, fish, milk, cheese or eggs – even those laid by free-range chickens, which are still debeaked and can be packed as densely as nine birds per square metre. Most dietary vegans also avoid honey, because it is produced by bees. Ethical vegans oppose the use of all animal-derived products (see “Living on the veg: 10 things you thought were vegan but aren’t”).
For many, the dietary constraints of veganism raise genuine health concerns. Meat, fish, dairy and eggs aren’t just tasty, they also supply essential nutrients. Cutting them out can leave you in a nutritional hole. Humans evolved on an omnivorous diet, so can we really get everything we need from plants alone?
The short answer is yes, sort of. If you’re considering going vegan, you will need discipline to cover all the bases. Macronutrients are easiest. Vegan fats come from things like olive oil, nuts and avocados. Carbohydrates are in high supply in fruits, grains and beans. Protein is abundant in lentils, quinoa and tofu. Getting enough of all these doesn’t necessarily mean bland menus. A burrito with half a cup each of black beans, brown rice and avocado, plus a quarter of a cup of tofu will provide you with 25 grams of protein, or about half of the recommended daily amount – and a third of your daily carbohydrates too.
“People cite a range of reasons for going vegan. Opposing animal cruelty is one”
That said, plant proteins often lack essential amino acids present in animal-based proteins such as those found in milk, so vegans need to seek out alternative sources. Lysine, for instance, is an important building block of muscles and skin. It is plentiful in beans and legumes, and other essential amino acids can be found in seeds and chickpeas.
Like vegetarians, vegans don’t eat seafood, so miss out on a convenient source of the omega-3 fatty acids, which help build our cell membranes. Without these nutrients, our bodies can’t make the hormones that control artery expansion and blood clotting. They also keep our hearts beating regularly and our brains firing. If you’re habitually consuming negligible amounts of omega-3s, “that’s probably going to affect cognitive function in some way”, says David Rogerson at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. In childhood, low omega-3 levels can be associated with attention deficit disorder and behavioural problems like hyperactivity, anxiety and temper tantrums. Omega-3s have been found to help with sustained attention in adults too, and taking more is correlated with lower rates of dementia.
That’s why vegans have a healthy obsession with seeds and nuts. Chia and flax seeds, walnuts and leafy vegetables contain alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3. Eating enough to meet daily recommended doses can be tricky though (see Healthy you, below), so an easier solution is to take supplements made from algae oils.
Supplements can also be useful for vitamin B12. Like omega-3s, it is essential for our brains to function and not getting enough can cause dementia, among many other problems. It is one of the most commonly cited nutritional challenges for vegetarians too, although one review found that B12 deficiency is more frequent among vegans.
Healthy caution
Vitamin B12 is made by bacteria in the guts of some animals, like cows, and omnivores get it from eating meat. Vegans and vegetarians can fill the gap with fortified breakfast cereals. Nutritional yeast is another good source. It sounds unappetising, but actually has a pleasant, slightly cheddar-like flavour.
and breastfeeding women, as well as children, may need to be particularly aware of their diet. There have been of and and physiological disorders in . The UK National Health Service says it should be possible to get most nutrients from a balanced diet, though vegans may need to take supplements or fortified foods, and the NHS advises speaking to your doctor about getting all the nutrients you need.
Without dairy, vegans must rely on green vegetables like broccoli and kale for calcium. Iodine, important for thyroid function and metabolism, can come from seaweed or cranberries. Iron is available in green vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds. They contain a form that is harder for our bodies to use, so the US National Institutes of Health that people who don’t eat meat get nearly twice as much plant-based iron as those who do.
All of which goes to show why my biggest challenge when I went vegan was having to think about what I was eating far more than before. It can be hard, and occasionally lonely, to abstain from meat and dairy, simply because they are what is readily available in stores and restaurants. Having friends who shared recipes with me was essential and, in the end, I liked my new food so much that I frequently still eat vegan.
It was a fuzzy sense that meat and dairy production weren’t great for the climate that made me stop eating them in the first place. Looking at the evidence now, it turns out I was right. Studies show that if we all went vegan, two of the biggest environmental problems – greenhouse gas emissions and clearing land for agriculture – would be slashed.
“We use an enormous amount of the world’s land for animals or animal feed,” says Jonathan Foley, director of the California Academy of Sciences. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on the planet is used to graze livestock. On top of that, a third of all cropland is used to produce additional food for them. What if we instead used that land to produce human food? Livestock eat more protein than they return for human consumption – between 3 and 20 times more. So Foley argues that one obvious way to feed billions more people is to eat more of the plants we grow, and feed fewer animals.
The livestock industry is also a huge source of greenhouse gases. In part, this is because pastures and fields replace forests, which normally suck up and store carbon dioxide. In addition, like any industry, the livestock sector uses large amounts of fossil fuels, plus ruminants like cows notoriously burp methane. All told, the FAO calculates that livestock farming is responsible for 14.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – on a par with all trains, cars, ships and planes. Cows are the worst offenders, responsible for two-thirds of the total, and crucially for the vegan cause, it’s not just because of meat production. .
“Vegan plates have the smallest ecological footprint. Soy protein causes 4.5 times less deforestation than meat protein”
A solution might be to switch to soy lattes. It takes at least 45 times as much fossil fuel energy to produce 1 kilocalorie of milk protein as it does to grow one of soy. Soy plantations are, admittedly, a driver of deforestation, but tofu and soy milk aren’t their main product. Animal feed is, says Charlotte Streck, director of the Climate Focus think tank in the Netherlands. “Even if we all replaced meat with soy, we would still have a huge decrease in soy production because so much of it is for animal consumption,” she says. In , Climate Focus found that 26,700 square kilometres of forest are cleared each year to graze cattle and grow crops to feed livestock. Soy plantations, by contrast, account for 6000 square kilometres of cleared forest each year.
The bottom line is that giving up meat will massively reduce your carbon footprint, but going the extra mile to become vegan will drop it even more. If, like me, you only eat meat a few times a week, going vegan will double the emissions you cut out of your footprint (see Your choice, below).
Ray Pierrehumbert at the University of Oxford has studied the environmental impact of various diets. If we are going to feed a burgeoning population set to hit 9 billion before 2050 without massive environmental degradation, we will have to do it with plants, he says. Which raises a potential problem with growing veganism. Vegan foods, like coconut oil and nut butters, frequently aren’t locally grown. If a significant portion of the population were to abandon meat and dairy, more plants would have to be moved around, which would offset some of the carbon savings of more people quitting meat and dairy. Sure, but not much, says Pierrehumbert. He points to that broke down the emissions over the entire life cycle of Brazilian beef production, and found that those from transporting meat all the way to Europe made up just 2.5 per cent of the total. That suggests the added emissions from transporting more greens would be negligible compared with livestock emissions, says Pierrehumbert.
There may be economic benefits to people shifting towards plant-based diets, too. Those who eat a lot of meat have higher rates of coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Marco Springmann at the University of Oxford has looked at the costs of these illnesses. He estimates that if the entire world went vegetarian, we could avoid 7.3 million early deaths each year – 8.1 million if everyone were vegan. The healthcare savings would be worth more than $1 billion each year. “The biggest amount of [agricultural] subsidies go into livestock,” says Springmann. “We could take those and redirect them to meet more environmental and health goals.”
All of this has helped me make up my mind. By the time you are reading this, I will have eaten all the non-vegan food I have left at home, and will once more be following a vegan diet. I will have to be more disciplined about getting enough of the nutrients I need this time around, and have started planning some standard meals to do that. I’m hoping it will be a bit simpler than my last foray. As celebs promote vegan lifestyles and supermarkets start to cater for the trend, sourcing ingredients and planning meals gets easier.
And I know already that the food won’t be all drudgery, despite common perceptions. For the years I was vegan, I celebrated Thanksgiving – a traditionally turkey-centric meal – with other non-meat eaters. It has always been my favourite holiday and I was worried at first that a vegan version would be lacklustre. I was wrong.
Every year, we gave our annual thanks around a table full of Brussels sprouts and vegan “cheddar” biscuits, fake sausage stuffing and mushroom gravy. Tempeh or seitan or some other meat substitute usually made it onto the table, too. For dessert, we had pumpkin cheesecake made with cashews. It was bountiful and delicious and not lacking in anything, least of all joy.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Living on the veg”
