Iron – The Vegan RD

Taking Responsibility for the Health of Vegan Children

No doubt you’ve heard about the legislator in Italy who is proposing to make it illegal to raise kids as vegans. Italian lawmaker Elvira Savino wants to see jail sentences of up to seven years for parents who feed their children only plant foods.

The proposed bill describes veganism as “a diet devoid of elements essential for healthy and balanced growth,” It’s ludicrous. Given what we know about nutrient needs, there is no reason to think that children of well-informed vegan parents are at risk for […]

By Ginny Messina|2016-08-18T09:57:38-04:00August 18th, 2016|Tags: children, Iron, Omega-3 Fats, vitamin B12|13 Comments

Vegan Diets are Dangerous? Here is What the Research Really Says

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic suggest that vegans should know something about diet planning in order to make sure they are meeting nutrient needs.

Their conclusions were published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. The paper doesn’t say anything that is particularly alarming, and, with a few exceptions, there isn’t much in it that I would take issue with.

But the Cleveland Clinic press-released the findings, giving the media a chance to scaremonger about vegan diets—and you know how much they like to do that.

As is often the […]

By Ginny Messina|2016-03-19T11:49:20-04:00March 19th, 2016|Tags: Calcium, Fat, Health, Iron, Nutrition, Omega-3 Fats, Protein, vitamin B12, Vitamin D|14 Comments

New Vegan Nutrition Primer on Iron

Iron deficiency anemia is a serious and common public health problem for people eating all different kinds of diets. While vegans don’t seem to develop anemia any more often than people who eat meat, we do have higher iron needs. It’s hard to know just how much higher those needs are for individual vegans, though, since requirements depend on a number of other factors—including how much iron you have stored in your body and what the rest of your diet looks like.

You probably already are eating a diet rich in […]

By Ginny Messina|2016-01-22T07:20:55-05:00January 22nd, 2016|Tags: Iron, minerals, Nutrition, phytates, phytic acid|9 Comments

7 Reasons to Eat Meat? Here Is Why They Are All Wrong

In some ways, it’s good news when someone writes another article about “why we should eat meat.” The arguments are so weak that it just reinforces the truth: meat eating can’t be defended.

The most recent of these pieces lists seven reasons why writer Christina Sterbenz “refuses” to stop eating meat. So, let’s look at them.

1. Meat has heme iron which is more easily absorbed.

Vegetarians do have lower stores of iron—which may be to our advantage—but the evidence suggests that meat eaters are just as likely to develop outright deficiency. And, the fact that iron in plant foods […]

By Ginny Messina|2013-10-01T13:24:00-04:00October 1st, 2013|Tags: Iron, Meat|57 Comments

Iron Nutrition: Why the Rules are Different for Vegans

One of my vegan cooking gurus, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, recently posted directions for producing perfectly browned tofu. She advises making it in a well-seasoned cast iron pan. I don’t have a cast iron pan, but am thinking about getting one. I eat tofu every single day, and love when it’s perfectly browned, so it deserves its own cookware.

Lately, though, people seem to be abandoning their cast iron pans. They are worried about the iron leaching into their food and causing iron overload.

It’s true that cooking in cast iron (and also stainless steel) can increase the iron […]

By Ginny Messina|2013-04-04T14:56:14-04:00April 4th, 2013|Tags: Alzheimer's disease, Iron|25 Comments

Ten Tips for Staying Happy and Healthy on a Vegan Diet

There is a long list of reasons why people fail on a vegan diet and return to the world of cheese sandwiches and fish fillets. They might have developed overt deficiencies or vague symptoms of poor health. Some ex-vegans say that they experienced depression or foggy thinking or fatigue without animal foods. Others struggled with challenging social situations or with cravings for animal foods.

The following ideas for staying happy and healthy on a vegan diet are all things I’ve written about before, but I wanted to condense them into a sort […]

By Ginny Messina|2017-11-01T17:14:47-04:00September 12th, 2012|Tags: Beans, convenience foods, Ex-vegans, Fat, glycemic index, Health, Iron, legumes, Mental health, Nutrition, Omega-3 Fats, Resources, Supplements, Umami, vitamin B12, Vitamin D|77 Comments

Recommended Supplements for Vegans

Just days before everyone was talking about the Voracious [ex-] Vegan story, I received a severe scolding from a reader for my stance on supplements (this was in response to my post on omega-3s). She was adamant about the fact that “whole plant foods” can easily provide everything we need.

An effort to prove that a whole foods vegan diet is the ideal or foolproof diet of all humans gives rise to all kinds of potentially harmful myths. These include the unfounded […]

By Ginny Messina|2010-11-28T13:19:06-05:00November 28th, 2010|Tags: Calcium, Iodine, Iron, Nutrition, vitamin B12, Vitamin D|179 Comments

Do Ex-Vegans’ Stories Make the Case Against Vegan Diets?

When I read the recent blog post by Tasha, who used to be The Voracious Vegan, it felt like déjà vu all over again. Just a couple of months ago I was blogging about another woman—Lierre Keith—whose vegan diet made her so sick that she had to go back to eating meat and, in the process, she learned about how “nutritious” cholesterol is, became an advocate for a type of sustainability that depends upon animal foods (ie, learned that it’s more ethical to eat animals than to be vegan), and […]