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I had a question from a reader about the 2005 study on German vegetarians that showed higher mortality for vegans compared to other health-conscious eaters.

The researchers asked nearly 2,000 subjects about diet, exercise and smoking habits, and then followed up over a period of 21 years, tracking deaths from cardiovascular disease, cancer and other causes. Overall, the death rate was similar for lacto-ovo vegetarians and meat-eaters (most of whom had moderate meat consumption), but higher for vegans.

But while that fact was reported in some news media, the researchers didn’t even mention it in their discussion of the findings. There were only 60 vegans in the entire study, just a little bit more than 3% of the whole study population. Given the ... Read More >

To me, being vegan is about finding the best way to live that is both healthful and humane. I often feel greater kinship with near vegetarians who are striving to live more ethically than with those who eat a strictly vegan diet for reasons of personal health.

Here, and in my examiner column, I choose to focus on diet—practical, health and philosophical aspects—because this is the area in which I have expertise. And diet has a huge impact on animal suffering. But being vegan is not about “what should I have for dinner?” It’s about “what choices can I make today to minimize animal suffering?”

Do we need some new terminology to describe that difference? How can the word vegan mean someone who ... Read More >

Dietitian Jack Norris has published an excellent overview of research on vegan diets and diabetes on www.veganhealth.org.

Please note Jack’s comments about fat in his discussion of the findings. I agree with him that adopting a very low fat diet over the long term may not be advisable. I’m also not convinced that severe fat restriction is helpful in managing diabetes; other research suggests that replacing carbohydrate in the diet with monounsaturated fats improves diabetic control. Higher fat diets may also improve blood cholesterol (as long as the diet is still very low in saturated fat).

Finally, weight loss is among the most powerful ways of improving diabetes control, so it’s very hard to draw any conclusions about impact of various dietary factors when the ... Read More >

Just published this month in the journal Osteoporosis International, a new study revealed that bone health was similar between vegan Buddhist nuns and omnivore women even though the vegans had much lower intakes of calcium and protein.

The study involved 105 vegan nuns and 105 omnivore women in Viet Nam. Average calcium intake was 375 mg per day for the vegans and 682 mg for the omnivores. (Some of the vegan women did use very small amounts of milk in meals.) Vegan women also had low protein intakes averaging around 35 grams per day compared to more moderate intakes of 62 grams for the omnivores.

Bone density between the two groups was similar—slightly lower in the vegans, but not to an extent that ... Read More >

Vegan diets usually include some excellent sources of vitamin A–but it many take a little bit of planning to make sure you get enough on a regular basis.

While vegans don’t have any preformed vitamin A in their diet (it’s only in animal foods), it can be synthesized from compounds called carotenoids found in plant foods. The best known and most biologically active carotenoid is beta-carotene.

As recently as ten years ago, nutrition researchers believed than 6 micrograms of beta-carotene produced one microgram of active vitamin A. But newer research on absorption of carotenoids shows that it actually takes twice that much—12 micrograms of beta-carotene—to produce a microgram of vitamin A. That means that vegan intake of carotenoids is actually only about half the ... Read More >

I made my yummy mushroom strudel yesterday with a few changes. As noted in the comments on that post, I found a whole wheat phyllo at the local food co-op. For this special occasion recipe, I’m perfectly happy to use the refined flour version, but I thought it would be fun to try something new. And my only dinner guest was my husband who, in addition to his other excellent qualities, will eat pretty much anything. I never really have to worry about recipe disasters.

To counteract the somewhat drier aspect of whole grain flour, I replaced the olive oil in my recipe with a combination of olive oil and melted coconut oil—a healthy saturated fat source. I would have used all coconut oil, ... Read More >

Mushroom Strudel is my favorite company dinner and I’m making it this weekend for Easter. It’s adapted from Moosewood Cookbook, an older collection of recipes that definitely puts the “lacto” in lacto-ovo vegetarian! It was super easy to veganize, though, and I’m really happy with the results.

Traditionally, strudel recipes are made with phyllo (also spelled filo) dough layered with lots of melted butter. But olive oil works very well and, in fact, the instructions on the phyllo package say that it’s fine to use oil. The filling substitutes were easy—I used Tofutti brand Better Than Cream Cheese and Better Than Sour Cream.

If you’ve never worked with phyllo dough, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is and how quickly you can ... Read More >

As a dietitian, I end up saying a lot of things that some vegan activists just don’t want to hear. When I write that some vegans don’t get enough calcium or that getting adequate zinc might be a challenge, it can sound kind of negative.

But a big part of promoting a positive image for veganism lies simply in being healthy. When scientific studies uncover health problems among any group of vegans, it discredits plant diets and gives people one more excuse to eat meat or drink milk. That’s why choosing to believe that you can get all the vitamin B12 you need by eating whole organic foods or sea vegetables has the potential to hurt farm animals. So does insisting that vegans have ... Read More >

Over the weekend I read a negative piece about vegan diets that claimed, among other things, that vegans are “anti people.” The author noted that we humans are the only ones in a cerebral position to consider matters of food choice—which lends us a certain status. Part of our decision-making, he noted, has to be about where to draw the line. He believed that when we place the rights of animals on a par with the rights of humans, we diminish humanity.

His complaint wasn’t with those who choose vegan diets, but with those who want others to choose veganism. Well, I guess that latter group would include me. But do my attempts to promote vegan diets diminish humanity?

All vegans have heard ... Read More >

A study published in this month’s Journal of the American Dietetic Association found a higher incidence of eating disorders among young girls who follow vegetarian diets. This isn’t news, and it’s not a concern for vegetarians, either.

Over the years, a number of studies have found that a relatively high number of girls with eating disorders are vegetarian. But there is no evidence that following a vegetarian diet causes eating disorders. It’s actually pretty silly to think that giving up meat could cause someone to develop anorexia!

Rather, it is likely that girls with eating disorders often choose vegetarian diets as one of many ways to control food intake and mask their eating disorder. Previous studies bear this out.

However, a number of ... Read More >