The five most-asked questions about vegan health

No one is ever interested in your diet, not really, until you become a vegan. Then, suddenly you’ll find that everyone is interested in what you eat, and is keen to give you advice, opinions and ask questions. So, following on from last week’s post preparing some evidence-based answers to common questions I’m asked about the environment, I thought that this week I’d assemble a few responses to some common health questions.

Question number one: where do vegans get their protein from?

Cue vegan rolling around on floor laughing! This has got to be the most common question that I get asked. And people are usually surprised at the answer, though I suspect many still don’t believe me. Guess what – plants contain protein too! Unless you are suffering from an underlying health problem or not eating a balanced diet, then protein deficiency is not really an issue. In fact, you probably don’t need as much protein as you think. An average person requires just 0.9g of protein per kilogram weight. So, for an average 70kg person that works out at 63g of protein per day, or about 10% of daily calorie intake. A cup of chickpeas in a curry provides 39g of protein, so you’re already halfway there.

Question two: Don’t vegans need to take a lot of supplements?

It is true that vegans need to supplement their diet with vitamin B12 because this is not available in the foodstuffs we eat. You can do this either by taking a daily B12 tablet or liquid, or by eating foods that have been fortified with B12, like some plant-based milks and nutritional yeast. Vitamin B12 is actually found in the soil, so in the past people consumed it from poorly washed fruit and vegetables, and also from meat as the grazing animals absorbed it from the soil. However, these days many meat-eating people are also at risk of vitamin B12 deficiency due to modern food production methods, such as higher hygiene standards in washed vegetables and intensive animal rearing. Animals may only pass on B12 in their meat if they too have been given supplements in their feed. Better just to take a supplement yourself.

Question three: How do you manage without cheese?

Otherwise known as the ‘ah, but cheese’ excuse. Personally, I don’t miss cheese. I never get a craving for it and never have done  since I became vegan. However, if you do there is a reason for this craving. Cheese actually contains an addictive substance, so it’s not the cheese you’re craving it is the casein it contains. Dr Neal Barnard has even written a whole book explaining this – it’s on my to-buy list. Now, this chemical is there because it encourages the baby calf to keep going back to his mum to feed. Remember, the cow’s milk evolved to feed her baby calf – not humans. Like any mild addiction, you just need a bit of willpower to give it up. So stop eating cheese – it won’t kill you. And there’s a whole range of vegan cheese on the market these days, so try one of the alternatives.

Question four: Haven’t humans evolved to eat a varied omnivore diet?

This is often accompanied by reference to the presence of canine teeth in the human jaw, i.e. ‘we’re designed to eat meat’. OK, so yes, as the human race has evolved meat has become part of the average diet, but this does not need to continue for a number of reasons. Just because we did something in the past, for example, slavery or smoking, does not mean that we need to continue doing it in the future if the evidence tells us that it is wrong, bad for us, bad for the planet or bad for the thing we are doing it to. The evidence is out there – humans do not need to eat meat to survive and are better off health-wise without it. A varied diet does not have to consist of ‘meat and two veg’. A properly constructed vegan diet is just as varied – more so, in my opinion. In fact, vegans are generally better educated about nutrition and often take great care of selecting their food choices.

Question five: Don’t you ever miss bacon?

Short answer: no. Since the day I decided to stop eating meat I have never had the urge to eat it again. I’ll admit that I had to get used to eating tofu, as I came to veganism with a bit of prejudice about tofu. I think it was from my days learning vegetarian cookery when we had a go at making our own tofu. But things have changed since then, and nowadays there’s whole range of faux meats available. You don’t need to soak beans and live on lentil stew if you don’t want to. It has never been easier to eat a varied vegan diet. What’s more, the evidence indicates that bacon and other meat processed with nitrates are carcinogenic, so who’d want to eat it anyway?

But the biggest myth is that vegans are all as thin as rakes, pale and pasty people who knit their own yoghurt. That might have been the 1970s stereotype, but vegans these days come from all walks of life and in all shapes and sizes. Someone once said to me, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not exactly a thin vegan are you?” (It was one of my best friends, so I wasn’t the least bit offended.) When we first adopted a plant-based diet we both lost about 10kg each. Since then, as my body has become used to the vegan diet, my weight has stabilised. I fact, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I had to embark on a vegan weight-loss programme to shed a few extra kilos. Maybe the vegan Magnums had something to do with it?