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The Healthy Vegan, the Unhealthy Vegan and the Contrarian
Hold on to the fibre. Contrarian philosophy is often mistaken for wisdom.
For many, the emergence of scientific evidence pointing towards the health benefits of eating plants (and the dangers of an omnivorous or “near-carnivorous” diet (1)) is taken as a personal affront. Because food is a personal experience best enjoyed, it is understandable that an intuitive response to plant-diet positivity may unfortunately be taken personally.
Beyond the science, the plant diet has been linked with concerns on animal cruelty and even global warming, which provides additional venom to the debate on why we should make our diets sustainable. As such the vegan diet is possibly perceived as “pure” as far as ethics and nutrition, in an almost holistic manner. Whereas concerns about animal rights and global warming are both logical and altruistic, it may not be clear that it is still possible to be an unhealthy vegan.
This is a point made clear by Dr T. Colin Campbell in his book “Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition” (2). The clearest issue with many vegan foods currently being promoted is that the more processing plants go through, the…
