In February, my post To Quit or Not to Quit Veganism briefly mentioned ex-vegan blogger and holistic health counselor Alex Jamieson. Jamieson had just written an article about how she was no longer vegan.

Then a couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by the producer of The Current, a radio show in Toronto. They were doing a story on Jamieson’s choice to no longer be vegan and the backlash it entailed, and wanted to interview me.

The Current’s story aired on May 15 (link). None of my comments were included, which is probably just as well because I wasn’t very eloquent.

After listening to the show, I have further thoughts on Jamieson’s experience with veganism and since she continues to publicly talk about it, I feel okay about doing so, too. In fact, in her interview, she says that she might some day return to a vegan diet so this is in the spirit of helping her or people like her.

I definitely have sympathy for Jamieson – it must have been very stressful to feel like you could no longer eat a diet that you have been promoting. If I started to believe that I could no longer be vegan because my health was failing it would be quite disconcerting.

Here is Jamieson’s story from what I can piece together:

She ate a lot of junk food most of her life, and she also had iron deficiency issues. She went vegan and felt great for about 10 years after which she started having cravings for animal products. At a certain point, she started menstruating too frequently. She tried adding “mineral rich” foods and iron supplements and it didn’t help. She tried eating foods higher in protein (as I pointed out in my previous post, none of the foods she mentions eating for protein are terribly high in protein). She started eating eggs which made her feel a lot better, and then added back meat. She now eats 75%+ plant foods and her menstrual cycles have normalized and she feels good. When speaking about it in the interview, she attributes her improvements to “animal protein.”

Let’s go through the usual suspects:

Vitamin B12 – Jamieson doesn’t mention B12 anywhere. But her symptoms are not indicative of B12 deficiency.

Choline – Jamieson starts out craving, eating, and feeling better from eggs. Eggs are high in choline. But once again, her symptoms don’t seem to be typical of choline deficiency. I did some searching and found an article, which I do not consider reliable, suggesting that choline deficiency can cause liver problems, “resulting in excessive estrogen produced during menstrual cycle leading to hormone imbalance and endometrial cramps (link).” Severe choline deficiency can cause liver problems, but I don’t know where they got the part in quotes and if there is any direct evidence for it. Still, choline deficiency is a potential culprit.

Iron – Except for the fact that she never says she got her iron levels tested, there’s little question that she likely had iron deficiency given her history of it and the fact that she was having frequent menstruation. The question is whether she could have improved her iron deficiency by way of adding vitamin C to her meals and doing the other typical things that are recommended such as avoiding tea and coffee at meals.

Cholesterol – In watching some of her videos Jamieson appears to be on the thin side and her diet sounds very low in fat. A low-fat diet with low body weight could theoretically lead to low steroid hormones (made from cholesterol) leading to menstrual disruption (though admittedly less frequent menstruation, not more, in most cases). And eggs are probably the easiest way to get cholesterol, so a craving for eggs could make some sense.

Cravings

Can you crave foods because they have cholesterol, choline, or iron and you are deficient? Can you crave fat? It’s hard to know – there is very little research on craving nutrients during deficiency. And if a low fat intake (leading to low cholesterol) was a problem, why didn’t she just crave higher fat, higher saturated fat, or higher choline plant foods?

When I haven’t eaten in a while, I crave the versions of foods that contain more of those nutrients and with less fiber, presumably so that my body can get the nutrients faster. While an apple will provide carbohydrates, when real hungry I prefer cookies or juice. It doesn’t mean that’s the best or only way to get those nutrients on an ongoing basis.

If someone has gone for years on an exceptionally low-fat diet and has depleted their fat stores to the point that they are having low-cholesterol and hormone irregularities, combined with iron deficiency, it seems plausible that they might crave the food that is most quickly going to replenish those nutrients such as eggs (cholesterol) and meat (iron).

In searching around, I have found that there are other low-fat vegans who have egg cravings (link), so apparently it’s not unusual.

Probably the most obvious thing about eggs, when it comes to what separates them from other foods sensually, is the sulfur smell, which I find rather disgusting and it’s hard for me to imagine craving them unless you really have a serious deficiency! The sulfur smell is probably due to a high level of sulfur-containing amino acids (cysteine and methionine). Could it be those amino acids that people are craving in eggs? It seems possible, but unlikely since those amino acids are also in tofu in decent amounts, yet these people don’t crave tofu. Not a lot is known about sulfur and nutrition, but it’s something to consider.

Animal Protein

Jamieson repeatedly refers to what she needed as “animal protein.”

What we know about physiology and nutrition would indicate that there is nothing important about animal protein that separates it from plant protein except in cases of extremely low intakes. On the other hand, we shouldn’t rule out that she had extremely low intakes.

In her video on food cravings (link) Jamieson tells people that if they are craving protein, to add hemp seeds to their diet. I cannot find reliable info on how much protein hemp seeds have, but it looks like the highest amount being tossed around is 5 grams per tablespoon. Unless you are blending a whole lot of hemp seeds, you aren’t going to get large amounts of protein from that ratio. How about a Tofurky Italian sausage instead, with a whopping 29 grams of protein?!

Jamieson mentions that she was flirting with orthorexia, and people with orthorexia are unlikely to even consider processed foods like Tofurky.

I don’t think protein was likely her problem (or her main problem), but if you think you’re low on protein, eat something with some serious protein. Most of the vegans I know who are not failing to thrive do eat processed foods, and I’d venture that a good 1/3 of my food intake is processed. It is disappointing to hear about people who quit veganism to take up eating higher-fat, higher-protein animal foods when they could have tried the higher-protein, higher-fat plant foods but didn’t because they are processed.

Don’t Forget the Shellfish!

Oysters and clams are high in cholesterol and they are not capable of suffering. If processed vegan foods don’t help, then ex-vegans might consider trying oysters and clams to see if that would solve their problems before eating products from conscious animals.

Privilege

At minute 19:00 of Jamieson’s interview on The Current, the interviewer talks about how having the luxury to debate our food choices comes from a “very privileged place” and suggests that this whole conversation is “navel gazing”.

I object. Calling veganism “privileged” is a common dart thrown at it, usually by people who are, themselves, living relatively privileged lives. We should keep in mind that the farmed animals are the least privileged of anyone in discussions about whether to be vegan or not. Eating gourmet cheeses and steak, or being any sort of “foodie” is a privilege. Buying fair trade bananas and chocolate is privileged. The forty-hour work week and child labor laws only can happen in privileged societies.

So, while I agree that many people in the world do not have the option to eat a vegan diet (for one thing, some people don’t have access to vitamin B12 supplements or fortified foods), just because everyone cannot do something doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing for the rest of us to do. It’s not a good excuse for middle-class (or wealthier) Americans and Canadians to embrace farmed animal exploitation just because some other people are too poor to buy vegan packaged products at Whole Foods.

Conclusion

I do not want to blame the victim – Jamieson had failing health as a vegan and there might not have been any way to help her that we know of. And I think it’s commendable that instead of going from vegan to all-out paleo, she went from vegan to 75% vegan.

In her interview on The Current she says, “I may go back to a completely 100% plant-based diet. If and when that’s appropriate for me. I’m not ruling that out. The only problem is that I’m no longer welcomed back into that vegan community. I’ve been shut out of that conversation to help people be healthier in that way, to even promote plant-based living because I’m somehow a heretic.”

I would welcome her back.

Alex, you could be the first high-profile ex-ex-vegan – think about it!

Support JackNorrisRd.com

Please share and/or like my posts! Thanks!
I greatly appreciate donations of any amount at PayPal (click here).
Consider a gift basket from Pangea through the link below for Mother’s Day or some other holiday!

Amazon.com Gift Cards – E-mail Delivery

Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet from Amazon.com

The recent controversy explained in my post To Quit or Not to Quit Veganism spurred me on to update the introduction to VeganHealth.org, “I was Vegan for A While, But…”.

Before getting to that, there is one more recent ex-vegan story, that of John Nicholson, as described in the article, From vegetarian to confirmed carnivore.

John Nicholson says that after having tried everything to cure his irritable bowel syndrome as a vegan, eating ox liver and rare steak cured it within 24 hours. Wow – maybe I was wrong and it is, indeed, the spirit of the dead animal that can perform such miracles.

I’d have more sympathy for these ex-vegans if their stories didn’t sound so strange, and if they didn’t swing from one extreme to the other. Nonetheless, there is no denying that Nicholson’s health improved when he went back to eating animal products.

Here is the article:

“I was vegan for a while, but…”

Let’s start with the good news: Vegans have a much lower risk of type-2 diabetes than do meat-eaters – in fact, it’s not even close. Research has also shown that vegans have a slightly lower risk of cancer by virtue of our diets.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of the story. While many people thrive on a vegan diet, others have a hard time. When someone is committed to reducing animal suffering, there are often solutions to these dilemmas, and finding answers has been a major focus of my nutrition writing. While bringing attention to these issues might not initially attract as many people as claiming that a vegan diet is a health panacea, getting people to stay vegan long-term is the more important task because every vegan who fails to thrive provides reasons for many people not to try veganism.

Macronutrients: The Bigger Picture

Something as simple as not eating enough calories might be a problem for an uninformed person who decides to eat vegan for a few days. They might only be aware of low-calorie vegan foods (e.g., salads, vegetables, fruits), and eating only these foods for a day might leave them feeling hungry and weak.

Of course, many advocacy groups are actively trying to educate people about the wide variety of satisfying vegan foods. In promoting the diet, each person could help prepare potential vegans for the real possibility that they won’t feel good if they don’t choose some calorie-dense foods.

In addition to calories, a lack of protein in the diet for a few days could lead to someone feeling less than optimal and wanting to eat animal products. While severe protein deficiency is certainly nothing to worry about on a vegan diet, if someone doesn’t know what high-protein vegan foods to choose, they could go from eating large amounts of protein (on an animal-based diet) to much smaller, less satisfying amounts on a vegan diet. Legumes (beans, peanuts, peas, lentils, soy), seitan, and quinoa are the best sources of protein for vegans. Include a few servings of these foods each day – maybe even each meal.

While a low-fat diet might improve someone’s health in the short-term, it might not be ideal over longer periods. If you are avoiding all added fats and you start to crave animal products, it might be time to add some fat back into your diet. People tend to think of animal products, and especially meat, as “protein,” but they are actually about 50% fat in many cases.

It’s theoretically possible that some vegans’ cholesterol levels might get too low on a low-fat, low-calorie, and/or low-saturated fat diet, leading to a low production of steroid hormones. In this case, adding plant saturated fat, such as coconut oil, to the diet, could improve their health. There is not much research into how low cholesterol levels must go, on average, to inhibit steroid hormone production and it may be very rare for this to happen. Two studies have shown vegans to have sex hormones on par with meat-eaters (1, 2), but one report showed vegan women to have lower levels of estrogen (3). A few anecdotal reports provide some evidence that low cholesterol problems might be an issue for some vegans (see Bonzai Aprodite’s story of regaining her health as a vegan, Facing Failing Health As A Vegan).

While the science is still in the early stages, it appears that some people genetically do not do well basing their diet on carbohydrates (see Dieting by DNA? Popular diets work best by genotype, research shows). For those people, the eco-Atkins type diet, high in plant proteins such as soy meats, legumes, and seitan, might be a better choice than a higher carbohydrate, low-fat diet.

Finally, if you find yourself craving animal products, it could be because you have a strong preference for the taste of glutamate, also known as umami. You can read more about foods high in umami in Ginny Messina, MPH, RD’s article, Is Umami a Secret Ingredient of Vegan Activism?

Micronutrient Deficiencies

Vitamin B12 in plant-based diets has long been a source of controversy and myths, so much so that a large portion of this site is dedicated to discussing B12. Although it rarely happens quickly, these myths have led to many vegans getting B12 deficiency. If you do not get a reliable source of vitamin B12, the chances are high that you will, at some point, find your health failing.

The need for calcium on vegan diets has also been surrounded by misleading ideas. Many vegan advocates have suggested that animal protein, including milk, is the main cause of osteoporosis in Western countries. Following this line of logic, it would make sense that vegans do not need to worry about osteoporosis since they are not eating animal protein. The research actually shows that vegans, like non-vegans, should try to meet the calcium recommendations for the greater population. Vegans are at a disadvantage in this area because our diets tend to contain much less calcium than your typical animal-based diet, so we must make an effort to ensure good sources of calcium on a daily basis.

More often than not, vegans who come to me with severe fatigue are suffering from vitamin D deficiency. This is not just a vegan problem, many people develop vitamin D deficiency in this era of sun avoidance. But vegans are at a slight disadvantage, on average, because we get less vitamin D in our diets. Make sure that you have a reliable source of vitamin D.

Although it appears to be a small percentage, some women develop iron-deficiency anemia after becoming vegetarian. If you think you are at risk, see the article on Iron for tips on increasing iron absorption from plants.

Iodine is a nutrient that most vegans rarely think about but a 2011 study showed that vegans do not get enough. Especially if you eat soy, you should make sure you are getting some iodine.

DHA is an omega-3 fatty acid that is important for cognition. A short time on a vegan diet is not likely to cause any sort of deficiency, but long-term vegans should take a supplement.

Finally, some vegans might not get enough vitamin A and zinc, depending on their dietary choices. Vitamin A is easy to get through orange vegetables, though eating them daily is critical to this strategy. Zinc is trickier and some vegans just opt for a modest supplement of 50-100% of the RDA.

For more information on all of these nutrients, please see the Daily Recommendations for people on plant-based diets.

Support JackNorrisRd.com

Please share and/or like my posts! Thanks!

I greatly appreciate direct donations – you can enter any amount:

If button doesn’t work, please click through to website. Thank you!

If you buy anything from Pangea through this link, you not only support me, but also the good people at Pangea who painstakingly research their products to minimize any impact on animals, the earth, and workers.

Amazon.com Gift Cards – E-mail Delivery

Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet from Amazon.com

References

1. Thomas HV, Davey GK, Key TJ. Oestradiol and sex hormone-binding globulin in premenopausal and post-menopausal meat-eaters, vegetarians and vegans. Br J Cancer. 1999 Jul;80(9):1470-5. | link

2. Key TJ, Roe L, Thorogood M, Moore JW, Clark GM, Wang DY. Testosterone, sex hormone-binding globulin, calculated free testosterone, and oestradiol in male vegans and omnivores. Br J Nutr. 1990 Jul;64(1):111-9. | link

3. Goldin BR, Gorbach SL. Effect of diet on the plasma levels, metabolism, and excretion of estrogens. Am J Clin Nutr. 1988 Sep;48(3 Suppl):787-90. Review. | link

Sayward Rebhal, of Bonzai Aphrodite, has an excellent post about her struggles to stay healthy as a vegan. When I got done reading it, I thought “This is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying!” It sounds like she had not been aware that there is a group of vegan health professionals who do not promote very low-fat diets or dismiss any concerns about protein.

Her post is here: Facing Failing Health As A Vegan

In contrast, another (now ex-) vegan blogger, Alex Jamieson, posted yesterday that, “I’m not vegan anymore.”

Jamieson became vegan for health reasons, but it appears that she later came to be a vegan for more than just health, in which case it is disappointing that she didn’t try to do more to figure out why the diet might not have been working for her. Taking a vitamin B12 supplement or getting tested for iron are two things that are easy to do and that could be the culprits in many of these cases of ex-vegans.

While I do not dismiss all cravings for meat as being simply in people’s heads, and I think Jamiesons’s cravings for meat might really have indicated a nutritional deficiency, it is very frustrating to see people talk about getting in tune with their bodies as though it’s some legitimate stand-in for nutrition science.

Jamieson says, “At first, I thought: ‘I must be mineral deficient. Or maybe I need more concentrated protein. I’ll eat more sea vegetables. I’ll just add more nuts and hemp seeds and drink more green juice. Then the cravings will stop.’”

Those are not terribly concentrated sources of protein. It sounds like she was on a very low-fat diet, too, something that might have caused cravings.

In any case, it is not the leftover remnants of the spirit of the animal that is making her feel better. Her body might require some molecules, or mixtures of molecules, that she was only able to find in animal flesh. But if that same mixture of molecules could be reproduced outside of an animal, it would satisfy her body’s needs.

Support JackNorrisRd.com

I greatly appreciate direct donations – you can enter any amount:

If button doesn’t work, please click through to website. Thank you!

If you buy anything from Pangea through this link, you not only support me, but also the good people at Pangea who painstakingly research their products to minimize any impact on animals, the earth, and workers.

Amazon.com Gift Cards – E-mail Delivery

Vegan for Life: Everything You Need to Know to Be Healthy and Fit on a Plant-Based Diet from Amazon.com

Dr. Ben Kim is a chiropractor who has a blog on personal and environmental wellness. In March of 2007, he wrote a piece called More Thoughts on Earthlings Documentary, Including Potential Problems with a Strict Vegan Diet. His article was just recently brought to my attention and I’d like to comment on it publicly because I think there are other ex-vegans out there who have had a similar experience to Dr. Kim.

In his article, Dr. Kim talks about the film Earthlings, which many of you will know is a film that documents the horrible ways that we humans treat animals. He talks about the importance of minimizing animal cruelty and was even vegan for four years. The first two of those years he felt well and the second two he failed to thrive.

Dr. Kim stuck with the diet through his two years of poor health because he trusted the books and “prominent physicians” who were advising him that a strict vegan diet was the best choice. He then found out that many of these people were not actually strictly vegan. He does know of some strict vegans who don’t cheat but they have health problems.

After eating what appears to be relatively small amounts of animal products for three months, Dr. Kim says, “My energy came back, my cravings disappeared, I stopped having skin breakouts, and most notably, I felt physically strong again. I vividly remember going from being able to do about 3 sets of 10 pull-ups before getting exhausted to being able to do 100 full body weight pull-ups within 20-30 minutes….”

Dr. Kim lists his strict vegan diet: “…plenty of fresh leafy greens, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, celery, sprouts, many varieties of steamed greens, steamed root vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, hard squashes, carrots, and red beets, whole grains like brown rice and quinoa, a wide variety of fruits (including avocados), legumes like chickpeas and red beans, and small amounts of raw nuts and seeds.”

He gives a quick review of some of the typical concerns with the vegan diet, including B12, but he doesn’t mention supplements or fortified foods as a source, suggesting that he probably wasn’t getting any B12.

Okay. So, I really dislike it when someone tries a certain diet for years, and then when it doesn’t work, the proponents of the diet say, “You just did it wrong.” However, there are some glaring reasons why Dr. Kim might have failed to thrive.

Obviously, if a vegan is not taking B12 supplements or eating fortified foods, for more than two years, chances are excellent they are going to get fatigued and have mental issues.

Secondly, if you read Dr. Kim’s description of his diet you have to get well into his list before you come across a plentiful source of protein (quinoa), and the most reliable sources that most vegans rely on, even raw foodists, are listed second to last and last!

When someone asks me what I eat as a vegan, the first thing I tell them are legume products – refried beans, soy foods, peanut butter, chili, bean burritos, lentil soup, etc. If these foods are only an afterthought, then there should be no surprise that someone trying to do 100 chin-ups in 30 minutes is going to have trouble retaining muscle mass.

Reading a few posts on Dr. Kim’s site, it is clear that he places a high value on eating unprocessed foods. So I’m guessing he is not going to be real open to eating a Tofurky or seitan sandwich for more protein. But what about tempeh, peanut butter, lentils, and peas?

Dr. Kim says, “Truly, if I could thrive on a 100 percent vegan diet, I would go back to it this instant. How could I not after having watched Earthlings?”

Indeed. I hope Dr. Kim will give it another try with plenty of high protein foods which are staples of most vegans I know who do not cheat on the diet and are thriving. And a vitamin B12 supplement would help quite a bit also. Is this such a high price to pay in order to end your support of animal agriculture?

The results of a survey from Western Washington University on current and former “animal product limiters” has been released in the journal Appetite.

With a cross-sectional survey that is not randomly selected, it is pretty hard to draw any strong conclusions, but I thought there were some interesting findings:

More details can be seen in the abstract.

Reference

Haverstock K, Forgays DK. To Eat or Not to Eat: A Comparison of Current and Former Animal Product Limiters. Appetite. 2012 Mar 1. Epub ahead of print. | link

Ginny Messina: Being Picky About Vegan Nutrition

Help combat veg recidivism, as discussed in this post by Erik Marcus that appeared on Psychology Today’s site, by “liking” Vegan For Life (click here to like).

Thank you!

I received a ping back from an ex-vegan and ex-animal rights activist, Paleosister. She writes:

> “Jack Norris, who I remember seeing speak at AR 2003 and greatly admired, writes that we should try to consume as little animal flesh (and other animal products) as possible. Quite frankly, you’re missing the point, Jack. The world is being destroyed due to agriculture; entire ecosystems are ruined—the habitats’ of animal populations destroyed—because of the foods vegans and the left are promoting.”

Some background: Paleosister is another person who failed to thrive on a vegan diet. She writes about that:

> Another common response is simply disbelief that it’s really possible to experience a physiological change with just a bite of meat….the first time I sat down to eat meat, I thought, “that is the strangest thing. I actually do feel better!” Then, for the first time in nearly a decade, I didn’t have suicidal thoughts for an entire hour!

First of all, I want to say that I feel bad that Paleosister had poor health and suicidal thoughts as a vegan. It is a serious problem that some people don’t thrive on the vegan diet, and we should not blame the victim.

I suspect that part of the problem is that vegan propaganda often includes the message that “diets based on whole grains, legumes, nuts, fruits and vegetables provide all the necessary nutrients.” For one thing, they don’t – they don’t contain vitamin B12. But the mantra also simplifies the situation regarding a lot of other nutrients.

For too many years, groups promoted such an idea. Instead of making sure that vegans were getting enough protein, we talked about how it was impossible not to get enough protein. Instead of telling vegans to get enough calcium, we told vegans that calcium isn’t important. Instead of telling people to get a regular source of vitamin B12, we downplayed the need. Instead of telling vegans to get a normal amount of fat, we have promoted very low-fat diets.

In fairness, much of the vegan community has changed its tune since the 1990s and now many urge vegans to make sure they get enough of these nutrients. Also in fairness, some research has indicated that low-fat vegan diets can help effectively treat heart disease and diabetes. And since studies have shown vegetarians (vegans and lacto-ovo) to have good health over time, and many of us feel just fine, we didn’t think there was a problem.

Paleosister apparently did not find any help for her health problems when she looked. I do not know what she tried, nutrition-wise, and what she didn’t. She says:

➢ It’s not the placebo effect. It’s most likely not even the effect of any nutrient we know of.

It is highly unlikely that there are any essential nutrients required by a large portion of the human population that are not currently known – the success of soy infant formulas and tube-feedings indicate this. However, there are a variety of non-essential nutrients that some people might not make enough of when following a vegan diet, especially if their bodies have been dependent on those substances from animal products up until the point of going vegan.

The fact that many children whose mother’s were vegan from conception and who are vegan from birth (except breast-milk), grow and thrive, is proof that meat, dairy, and eggs are not needed to produce healthy human bodies (at least in many cases).

I am becoming more and more concerned about promoting “healthy eating” along with veganism. So often, when someone goes vegan, they make other changes that they think are for the better – no more junk food or very low fat. It seems safer, from the perspective of animal protection, that new vegans eat as closely as they were to the way they previously had eaten so that they feel similarly; that is, unless they were previously feeling badly due to poor diet.

We should also not view ex-vegans who failed to thrive as our enemies. Who can blame someone for eating meat if they felt terrible as a vegan? I understand that we believe animals have a right not to be killed, but there would be a very strong incentive to reshape such views if we felt miserable if we didn’t eat animal flesh. It would be nice to be able to work with such people who still care about animals but cannot be vegan, rather than vilifying them; or their vilifying us for that matter.

Our message needs to become more nuanced if we want to minimize the problems we see with failure to thrive.

Now back to the point that Paleosister says I don’t get:

> The world is being destroyed due to agriculture; entire ecosystems are ruined—the habitats’ of animal populations destroyed—because of the foods vegans and the left are promoting.

No matter what humans eat, there is going to be environmental harm. I do understand that monocrops are generally bad for the environment, but I do not agree that vegan foods, in general, are significantly worse than grass-fed animal foods.

In the U.S., most animal foods are made using monocrop feeds. It does not seem realistic to feed 300 million people (or six-billion), grass-fed animal products as the bulk of their calories.

If most people switched to a vegan diet, an enormous amount of land currently grown for feed crops could be turned back into natural ecosystems, and that would be a huge gain. And at the same time it promotes an ethic of respecting the lives of animals.

If you haven’t heard yet, Tasha the The Voracious Vegan has gone back to eating meat (I had never even heard of Tasha before she went back to eating meat).

Ginny Messina responds to the ex-Voracious Vegan’s blog post about her journey: Do Ex-Vegans’ Stories Make the Case Against Vegan Diets?

One comment from me. Tasha writes:

My first bite of meat after 3.5 years of veganism was both the hardest and easiest thing I’ve ever done. Tears ran down my face as saliva pooled in my mouth. The world receded to a blank nothingness and I just ate, and ate, and ate. I cried in grief and anger, while moaning with pleasure and joy.

This is the exact same reaction I have every time I eat a Jokerz candy bar!

Rhys Southan of LetThemEatMeat.com just posted an interview he did with me about veganism.

Click here.