Captain_Coconut
Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2018
- Messages
- 988
I was vegan for 7 years, vegetarian for 3 or more before that. Going vegan was great for the first couple of years, the rest was pretty miserable. I think the same benefits can be had - without the terrible deficiencies that set in - by simply restricting animal product consumption to 3 or 4 days a week, or just one meal a day. The trouble is that the quality of all vegan foods has declined significantly in the past decade (more atmospheric pollution and less rich top soil) so it is going to be even harder to do it right than it was even a decade ago (e.g. levels of glyphosate in vegan foods, jet engine exhaust on organic foods, general absorbed car exhaust from the truck transport of fresh vegetable). Overall the advantage to being vegan is probably the same as short lived advantages to caloric restriction or most restrictive diets - it gives your body time to compensate and heal whatever damage has been done from the thing you are excluding (which is contaminated and otherwise healthy... unless PUFA, generally speaking)- and it likely reduces ones toxic load a bit - but after that one will run out of reserves and then nutritional deficiencies set in. As with a lot of restrictive diets - there is a certain euphoria that comes in during the compensation / healing phase - when the body adapts to running off of reserves the efficiency effect of bypassing the burden of assimilation creates a euphoric health state- it doesn't last forever. RP writes frequently about the caloric restriction benefits being primarily due to toxin avoidance - in this day and age when nearly everything is contaminated defensive measures like activated charcoal and carrot salad really seems the most practical to me when compared to running away from everything.
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