Howard Jacobson, administrator of The China Study Facebook Page, saw my article on the NHANES meat and mortality study and asked to do an interview with me. The interview is about 30 minutes. Click here for the FB page or click here for the direct mp3 download.
On Thursday, I did a 20-minute radio interview with Janine Bandcroft of Winds of Change radio program out of Victoria, BC.
Click here:
Winds of Change: Jack Norris RD, Eric Nordal, and Ashlee Piper – Vegucated
We covered the basics of vegan nutrition.
(Apologies to Matt Ball, co-founder of Vegan Outreach – I refer to you as “my friend” and not by name.)
The U.K.’s Vegan Views just printed an interview that Ginny and I did with Paul Appleby:
Vegan dietitians for life: Interview with Jack Norris & Ginny Messina
Paul is the lead author and statistician of many published studies on vegetarian diets and I was honored that he wanted to interview us.
If you’d like to hear an interview with me on Our Hen House about the ex-vegan phenomena, please click here.
I would like to thank Jasmin Singer and Mariann Sullivan for having me on to discuss this important topic that is not often addressed by vegan advocates.
On January 4th, I posted Part 1 of my interview with Erin O’Sullivan of Animal Voices podcast:
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Vegan Nutrition But Were Afraid to Ask, Part 1
Part 2 is now available:
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Vegan Nutrition But Were Afraid to Ask, Part 2
Of the interviews I’ve done, these are my two favorite because we covered so many things other than the 10 nutrients vegans need to be aware of and vegetarian disease rate statistics. Erin’s questions were great! I look forward to her coming up with another batch some time.
I have a few tidbits:
1. I recently did an interview with Animal Voices:
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Vegan Nutrition But Were Afraid to Ask, Part 1
This was different than my typical interview as the host, Erin Sullivan, asked a lot of interesting questions that I don’t normally get, but that I think many vegans are wondering about. We weren’t able to cover everything, so there will be a Part 2.
2. Please share this blog!
I was talking to a vegan advocate and supporter of this blog and we were trying to figure out how to get the information about staying healthy out to more vegans. The best thing we came up with is just for vegans who know about it, to share it with others. I know that some people might be hesitant to share my information because it can make a vegan diet seem hard, but here is an example of where it has paid off which I received just today:
“I directly credit my final willingness to make that leap [to becoming vegan] to your nutritional research presentation, especially as veganism applies to athletes. That information, presented so honestly, specifically, and with no misleading window-dressing or skewing of facts, is what gave me the confidence to try it out and we are thriving!”
It is important that vegans make sure they get enough calcium, vitamin B12, and iodine so that down the road, they don’t have an irreversible health problem. This doesn’t only help them, but it will prevent them from going on to tell everyone how unhealthy a vegan diet made them. In addition to sharing this blog, sharing the nutrition recommendations for vegans at VeganHealth.org can also help vegans who might otherwise have no idea about such things.
3. My favorite vegan dietitian, Ginny Messina, has some Easy Resolutions for a Healthy Vegan New Year that are worth checking out!
Happy new year, everyone!
You have to get up pretty darn early to beat Ginny to the punch!
Over at TheVeganRD.com, she is promoting her latest podcast interview (which I look forward to listening to today).
Well, it just so happens that I also have a newly released podcast interview that I did with Sentients Radio (link).
In it, host Sarah Downs and I discuss some of the pitfalls people might encounter when becoming vegan and we also spend a decent amount of time discussing whether the issue of vitamin B12 makes the vegan diet unnatural. Too much time, some might think. 
Some odds and ends:
1. If you haven’t checked out PeaCounter.com in awhile, I have made it a lot more user-friendly over the course of the last few months. The latest improvements are to allow you to choose either US or metric units when calculating BMI, Ideal Body Weight, or Energy Requirements, and to allow for commas in place of decimal points on those pages (as some people requested).
2. Don’t forget that you can support JackNorrisRD.com by using the Amazon and Pangea (the Vegan Store) links in the sidebar of the website.
3. You can click here for a video of my Vegan Nutrition: What Does the Science Say? talk that I gave to the San Francisco Vegetarian Society in March of 2012. I have placed a permanent to link to this talk on the About page of JackNorrisRD.com.
Thank you!
To sum up the results of my reader survey, it appears that most people want to see my answers to questions, even if not always well-researched (as long as I point that out). People were not as interested in having me pass on media reports of non-veg related nutrition and health info, so I will not pass those on. Also, if you don’t know already, you can receive my blog in one daily digest via email by clicking on subscribe in the upper right hand of the website and choosing the email option. That means no more than one email per day.
I am a bit backed up with blog posts, so I might make a few today. Never fear – it won’t continue at this pace.
Because people are interested in my answers, you can read a whole page of Q&A that I recently did for Earth Balance’s website, Jack Norris R.D. Answers Your Plant-Based Nutrition Questions!
I will paste the one Q&A that I thought might be the most new to my blog readers:
Beth Mickens asked:
A close co-worker and I talk a lot about our differences in diets. While she is a devoted Paleo, I am a devoted vegan. Her and I are both very informed about both diets and continuously debate about what diet is best for our bodies. While we both agree a gluten-free diet, low in carbs and higher in protein and fat seems to be ideal, I’m really interesting in hearing what the RDs say about following what we call a “Vegan Paleo” diet… one that contains no animal products but is focused on the concept of eating a higher amount of protein and healthy fats? Another thing she commented to me that I really want to know… as a vegan, will my skin lose elasticity faster (causing me to look more aged at a younger age) than a meat eater based on the fact collagen is only found in meat? (assuming I don’t use ANY products on my face). Help me bust that one!!
Answer: There has been one four-week clinical trial that put people on a low-carb vegan diet, which they called “ECO-Atkins” with positive results. I personally don’t think it’s necessary for most people, but if someone feels good on it, then more power to them. I’d say the same about gluten-free. Gluten has become an easy molecule to hate but it’s just a protein that most people can break down into amino acids as they do with most protein. Some people have an autoimmune reaction against it, but that puts it in good company with a host of other proteins. If you have celiac disease, then avoiding gluten is very important, but a knee-jerk reaction to avoid gluten by people without celiac disease is, in my opinion, a waste of time and energy. For what it’s worth, one study showed that avoiding gluten can have harmful effects on beneficial gut bacteria.
In terms of looking old because of not getting enough collagen, just make sure you are getting enough protein by eating at least 2 servings of legumes (including soy foods) or quinoa per day. There has been no research indicating vegans have collagen issues and many vegans look younger than their age. People often mistake me for being 10 years younger than I am. I don’t know that it’s only due to being vegan, but the high level of antioxidants in the vegan diet might be at least part of the reason I stay looking relatively young.
Maria of LimeTreeLife has posted a 20-minute audio interview of me talking about how it came about that I became a dietitian and a recap of vegan nutrition.