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Omega-3 Fats in Vegan Diets: A Quick Primer

[updated 9/3/20]

There continues to be much confusion among vegans about the differences between the two types of omega-3 fats. If you take supplements of DHA (or DHA and EPA), do you still need to eat flaxseeds? And if you are eating flaxseeds, do you need those DHA supplements?

The short answer is that you definitely need to include foods like flaxseeds that provide essential omega-3 fats and you may need the DHA supplements.

Flaxseeds and a handful of other plant foods provide an omega-3 fat called alpha-linolenic acid or ALA which is an essential nutrient. […]

By Ginny Messina|2020-09-03T11:21:38-04:00January 19th, 2012|Tags: Fat, Omega-3 Fats, Supplements|57 Comments

More on Vegan Diets and Weight Control

I want to offer a bit of follow-up to my last post on weight control, and address some of the comments and emails that the post generated by looking at three important questions.

Is it possible to maintain a weight loss? Absolutely. By no means do I want anyone to think that they are completely doomed to gain back weight that they’ve lost. But for many, long term maintenance of weight loss is difficult, and it’s good to understand that there are real reasons for this. In the meta-analysis that I referred to in my last post, the authors […]

By Ginny Messina|2012-01-09T15:15:44-05:00January 9th, 2012|Tags: weight control|27 Comments

Should You Go Vegan to Get Skinny?

Here comes the New Year with all its fresh-start possibilities. We’ve survived the season of caloric abundance and millions of us are ready to shed a few pounds.

But the latest research on weight management—some of which was highlighted in a recent article in the New York Times (see below)—raises questions about the pursuit of a slender body.

The evidence suggest that the majority of people who lose weight regain as much as 95 percent of it within five years. And it’s not necessarily just because people can’t stick with the plan that helped them lose weight. Dieting changes metabolism in ways […]

By Ginny Messina|2012-01-01T11:59:14-05:00January 1st, 2012|Tags: Diets, weight control|73 Comments

Vegan Non-Profits, and How I’m Spending My Money this Holiday Season

It’s that time of year when my stack of unpaid bills is not the tallest structure on my desk; it’s outranked by the mountain of holiday appeals from non-profits. Most of my end-of-the-year donations go to organizations that work to relieve poverty, promote animal rights and veganism, or help animals in my local community. But with so many groups doing exceptional work, I have to prioritize.

Of the groups that are devoted strictly to promoting vegan diets, I’m pretty picky about where my dollars go. Given my own professional and activist efforts, I’m very disinclined to support those organizations that endorse […]

By Ginny Messina|2011-12-17T13:54:38-05:00December 17th, 2011|Tags: Resources, Vegan activism|3 Comments

Vegetarian Diets and Eating Disorders

A study published in the journal Appetite took a new approach to examining the relationship between vegetarian diet patterns and eating disorders. I just wrote it up for the ADA’s vegetarian nutrition newsletter, and it’s such interesting research, that I wanted to share it here, even though Jack has already blogged about it.

Past research has suggested that young women who follow “vegetarian” diets are more likely to have restrained eating habits, or a tendency toward eating disorders—probably because some women with eating disorders adopt a vegetarian diet as a socially acceptable way of controlling food intake.

But these studies […]

By Ginny Messina|2011-11-30T13:25:58-05:00November 30th, 2011|Tags: Eating disorders, Mental health, Nutrition|20 Comments

Should You Become a Vegan Nutritionist?

Many readers of this blog have written to me asking about how to become a vegan nutritionist. It’s such a common question—I hear it several times a month—that I’ve created a separate page for my rather lengthy answer. You can read my thoughts and ideas and advice about getting involved in the field of vegan nutrition here.

Jack also has an excellent article on this same topic, covering quite a few additional points, at VeganHealth.

By Ginny Messina|2011-11-29T11:49:46-05:00November 29th, 2011|2 Comments

A Vegan Thanksgiving Celebrates Good Food, Activism and Hope

Clove, a rescued turkey at Animal Place

When I sit down with friends to carve the Tofurky on Thanksgiving, it always feels a little bit like lighting a candle in the darkness. People eat meat every day, of course, but somehow a holiday that places such intense focus on the carcass of one particular animal—and is responsible for the slaughter of some 45 million of them—is especially hard for those who care about animals.

Because Thanksgiving feels so heartbreaking to some of us, it can be […]

By Ginny Messina|2017-11-23T16:36:29-05:00November 22nd, 2011|Tags: Celebrations, Thanksgiving, Vegan activism|16 Comments

Vegan Nutrition: Sometimes the Devil Really is in the Details

Dietitian Elisa Rodriguez published a great interview with Jack Norris on One Green Planet last week. In talking about our book Vegan for Life, Jack noted that there are benefits to a “holistic” view of nutrition, but that his biggest contribution has most likely been in helping vegans understand that “micronutrients matter.” That’s because “being deficient in vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D, iodine, omega-3s, iron, or zinc results in real consequences.”

It’s tempting to think that eating a variety of whole plant foods—the big picture or holistic approach—without attention to detail, is good enough for meeting nutrient […]

By Ginny Messina|2011-11-15T11:21:04-05:00November 15th, 2011|Tags: Health, Nutrition|4 Comments

Countering Claims Against Vegan Diets

Several months ago, I was asked to respond to an article about the “dangers” of vegan diets that had been published in At the Wedge, the newsletter of the Wedge Community Co-op in Minneapolis. It was written by a holistic nutritionist who, among other things, counsels “recovering vegans.”

People abandon vegan diets for all kinds of reasons, but those who are “recovering” from this way of eating obviously believe that being vegan damaged their health and that it may very well damage yours, too.

This isn’t a term that crops up in mainstream nutrition circles. I’ve never heard it from any of […]

By Ginny Messina|2011-11-08T13:20:45-05:00November 8th, 2011|Tags: anti-vegans, Ex-vegans, Health, Nutrition|17 Comments

U.S News Rates Vegan Diets (and Gets a Few Things Wrong)

U.S. News brought together a team of nutrition experts to rank popular diets commonly used for weight control. According to the report, the best diets were “relatively easy to follow, nutritious, safe, and effective for weight loss and against diabetes and heart disease.”

At the head of their list were the DASH and Mediterranean diets — not too surprising since these are well-studied approaches to eating that have a good track record for protecting against disease. The surprise was that a vegan diet ranked pretty low on the list (below Slimfast and Jenny Craig!) While it seemed that the […]