This article is not to stand on a soapbox and to lament on the reasons for either vegetarianism, veganism, or is it strictly for the purpose of defending carnivores across the planet. Instead, I’ve written this article as more of a story of what I’ve found through countless hours of research, attending lectures, performing experiments on my own body, and ultimately finding a ground that I am comfortable standing on in regards to morals, food, the environment, and the spiritual thread that weaves it all together.
When I was a sophomore in college, I had a food plan that allowed me to eat 3 times a day at the local cafeteria. While the food wasn’t awful, there was always room for improvement. The salad bar was lacking color, resembling a bleached rainbow laid out on plastic floral dishes. The Hot Lines consisted of “Low Carb Wraps” where you could choose your choice of wrap, either spinach, whole wheat, or white. I’d always choose the spinach or whole wheat, as it was the healthier “whole grain” approach to eating well. The meat that was served was borderline disgusting, but being a lazy college student, it was better than the alternative of making something in my room on a hotplate, or going out to eat every day.
The Wing Dings and Wing Zings that the university served by the coop-ful was unappealing to me, and I started becoming aware of the food that I was eating. I stopped drinking cow’s milk and migrated to soy milk, or the chalky chocolate soy milk. I reduced my meat intake and for 2 or 3 months, I tried the vegetarian diet.
Physically, nothing changed. But emotionally, mentally, I felt like I was doing the world a service by eating a plant-based diet. After a few months, I moved home for the summer and fell back into the old ways of eating, which included classic Mid-Western fair, like pork chops, mashed potatoes and corn-on-the-cob. I can’t say I felt any different, aside from the moral issues that I began to accept regarding the treatment of animals. I would occasionally YouTube a video or two on slaughterhouses in order to see what really happens. The question lingered with me, and I was in a state of uneasiness in regards to my diet. Should I eat meat, or shouldn’t I? Does the killing of another animal for my own food help or hurt me, the environment, global karma?
Fast forward two years and I am dating a vegetarian. With her support, I try the lifestyle out again, but this time with a vengeance. My goal was to really live the life of a vegetarian, to take all leather out of my life, to live on whole grains, leaves, cruciferous vegetables, and anything else that came to my mouth without being killed.
She cooked me quite a few delicious vegetarian meals, and I slowly discovered the interesting recipes to be made with rice, tempeh, tofu and other soy products. I was hooked on the notion of vegetarianism. The more I read, the more support I found for my moral way of life — I eat without killing others. I felt superior to others for my take on health. While I was carrying around an extra 30-40lbs of fat around my midsection, I still felt like I was as healthy as I could be.
The next big turning point for me was when I was introduced to a maverick in the business world that I still look to for guidance. This guy was a raw foodist, and lived an incredible life. I made the mental link between raw veganism, which is to eat only “whole, fresh, ripe, raw, organic fruits and vegetables, one at a time when you’re hungry until you’re full”, and incredible health. I started my obsession with researching raw foodism, and read the top books by Dr. Douglas Graham (The 80/10/10 Diet), T. Colin Campbell (The China Study), Brenden Brazier (The Thrive Diet) and a host of online and offline publications.
I tried raw foodism while I lived with my parents after I graduated college. I tried in vain to live on a diet of raw vegetables. I started with juicing to get all of the green leafy vegetables that Dr. Graham urges. My Breville Juicer was my best friend, replacing the coffee or espresso that I would enjoy in the morning with an 8oz cup of kale, carrot and apple juice. The flavor was great, but the sugar buzz was annoying.
I later learned from Dr. Graham that juicing removes the pulp from fruit, which acts as a mechanism to slow down the absorption of simple sugars into the bloodstream, effectively negating the “sugar high” that I was getting from my juice. No sweat, just drop the juice and gnaw on the raw veggies.
Not. Whatever I did, I still could never get a taste for raw kale. Too bitter for me, but I do know others like it. Was my palate telling me “this is not right for you” or was it saying “I’d rather have gummy bears and caaaaaaaaaandy”? Was it an evolutionary clue to how I react to things, or was it just my mind telling me that it was happier eating less nutritious food?
During a 4 month bicycle trip through Europe with my vegetarian girlfriend, we started adding fish to our diets. The fact that there was just about zero salads for sale between Madrid and Rome still shocks me, but we made due. A footlong loaf of frenchbread, stacked with a tomato spread and local sliced cheese made up the majority of our meals. We would regularly make lentil and pasta dishes, as these were the carbohydrate-rich foods that everyone knows to be the best. I can still remember sitting in a rotunda in Girona, Spain, boiling lentils next to the fountain, hanging out on park benches, pulling gulps from a bottle of red wine.
When I returned back to Michigan after the trip, I felt like I really needed to clean up my diet, as the last month in Rome consisted almost solely of pasta, wine, bread and sedentary work. I had managed to add a few pounds to my waist, and felt weaker than I had in months. Yuck.
Moving to Ann Arbor after the trip, I found a 7-year raw foodist who was living only about a mile away from where I was living. I met Ellen at one of her free lectures at a health food store in Livonia, and quickly felt like she know what she was talking about. With little disposable income at that time, I decided to take a leap of faith with my health and sign up for her radical 30-day raw trial program. As I was preparing for the 30 days of eating raw, I quickly realized that a Vitamix blender, with a $450 price tag, was one thing that I MUST have in order to be successful. Again, I put faith in the wind and purchased the blender.
To me, it was the ultimate test. Could I live a raw vegan lifestyle and thrive? If so, I’d take off where my business mentor did and forage the trail to a compassionate, healthy diet of only fresh fruits.
Ellen was a student of Dr. Graham, and had worked with him multiple times. One book that he wrote was “Grain Damage” where he broke down the problems with gluten, insoluble fiber, and the leaky gut associated with the consumption of grains — notice I didn’t say overconsumption. His thesis was that grains were the cause of more internal problems than meat. How weird is that, that this guy thinks that whole grains are bad for you! I took his advice and dropped grains. Living on crates of clementines, watermelon, blending bananas and spinach for a meal – I was living on a diet that consisted of 80-85% carbohydrates, which were almost all fructose. Usually under 10% was fat, and about the same for protein, giving me the classic 80/10/10 diet that Graham and the rest of the big raw foodists support.
In thirty days, I had some interesting results. I lost the fat I had gained while in Rome and the resulting trip through California and Arizona before arriving in Ann Arbor. I had a sense of mental clarity that I hadn’t experiences in a long time, and I was very happy. A wave of euphoria washed over me after day 21, and I felt incredible for the remaining 7 days. The first 10 were full of nasty headaches, the next 10 with stomach problems and slight depression.
After the 30th day, I “celebrated” with a big plate of whole grain pasta and pesto, being one of my favorite meals. The problem was — it made me feel like absolute garbage. It was like I gave myself permission to eat bad food, although it was vegetarian, just because it was vegetarian. That, in and of itself, is one of the biggest fallacies of vegetarianism and veganism. The notion that morals outweigh the fact that crap ingredients can only make crap food… it’s mind-blowing.
After that first meal, I kept my breakfasts nice and raw, slurping green smoothies or eating a paw of bananas. I’d regularly eat a bushel of grapes for lunch, or blend up a mango-banana smoothie. The food was delicious. In the evenings, I started my affair with tempeh and eggs, making hash. This lasted a few months, and the weight slowly came back on. My strength was still low; I was feeling weak and lethargic.
Again, I had to wonder WHY. Why was I feeling slow, tired and weak when I was eating the superior diet?
While I don’t consider myself a religious person, I am very spiritual. When I started practicing Buddhism, I learned of the Noble Eightfold Path. On this path, the following tenates are laid out:
- Right View
- Right Intention
- Right Speech
- Right Action
- Right Livelihood
- Right Effort
- Right Mindfullness
- Right Concentration
These simple ideals rang true in my heart and I began on a path of my own to live them. Right Livelihood started for me when I quit bartending. Right Intention, to me, was solidified when I stopped eating animal flesh, with my moral compass pointing to compassion over dinner.
I literally struggled with the notion of eating meat, as it was against the tenets of the Buddha, and against my moral judgement. I would have nightmares of eating meat. I’d watch all the new food documentaries like Food Matters and Food, Inc., which would keep me strong in my position – meat is bad. Meat is murder. Meat is the unnecessary killing of animals for our benefit.
The next step in my quest for health and strength was to start taking physical exercise more seriously. I joined Hyperfit USA, the CrossFit gym in Ann Arbor. The class times were difficult on my schedule, but I stuck to it. The workouts were intense and fun, but hellish at the same time. Squatting, thrusters, rows, and kettlebell wings, all mixed in with sprinting, tire flipping, weighted pullups and other incredibly hard tasks made the experience fun and very rewarding. I was growing stronger, but not at the same rate as everyone else in the gym. Not to be outdone, I started looking at their technique. While I was new, my technique was still solid. What was different was that I was the ONLY vegetarian at the gym, and I was the most out-of-shape.
I overheard about a weekend barbecue that the gym had before I had joined where they “ate Paleo”. I took mental note and the next two weeks, I researched this Paleo lifestyle. It turns out that it is a way of eating as modeled by our Paleolithic ancestors. The basics are to eliminate grains and legumes from the diet, along with all processed foods and refined sugar. This included all things that have gluten (grains like wheat, barley and rye), peanuts (legumes), and just about everything that comes in a package. There was a stress on eating meat, and this was something I just wasn’t ready to do.
I asked the guys at the gym if I could alter the Paleo lifestyle to be vegetarian. With a belly-laugh, the instructor told me that it was impossible, as meat was one of the main staples of the diet. I was again lost in my quest for health.
A few months passed, where I was eating the standard raw breakfast and either Indian for lunch/dinner or something from home, like lentils, tempeh, or eggs. I was getting slightly stronger, but my recovery always was slow, and I kept feeling like I was behind on my muscular maturation.
A series of events caused me to leave Ann Arbor for a road trip to Gainesville, FL to stay with my best friend for a month. While sleeping on his couch, I decided to give meat another shot. I made another bad decision and ordered a double pulled chicken bbq sandwich at a local joint. It was as mouth-wateringly delicious as I remembered it, and I was happy to be back. The next day, I picked up ground lamb and made a recipe out of the Primal Cookbook, a cookbook based on Paleolithic recipes.
The food was delicious and I honestly slept better than I had in MONTHS. Even though I was on a couch, I slept like I needed to. I “thumbed” through the digital cookbook and made as many recipes as I could with the cookware that was available. At that point, I made the choice to try the Paleo lifestyle. I knew that removing all processed foods and grains from my diet would be beneficial, as it was in my raw food days, but hopefully I would be able to add muscle to my body.
Fast-forward 5 months, including a few week-long trips outside of my home, and I’m still eating a Paleo diet. Grain and gluten free, high quality meats when I can find them, free-range organic eggs, organic mixed salad greens, sweet potatoes, organic whole-fat butter, and olive oil. My diet revolves around real food that hasn’t been pre-processed (aside from the cold-pressed oil).
The final piece of my lifestyle that needed to be revamped was my moral take on eating meat. I still do not believe in the sick cycle we have in America and are forcing other countries to adopt. Taking cows, for instance, who are naturally set to eat grass, and forcing them to eat grains (which have government subsidies), limiting their ability to walk around, then slaughtering them in inhumane ways… it disgusts me to this day.
I found EatWild.com which is a website that has links to local organic ethical meat and dairy farmers all around the United States. While there isn’t one near me in New Orleans, there is a great organic farm that I am volunteering at. Hollygrove doesn’t have any livestock, but they do have a great permaculture system, if that’s possible without livestock. Flipping compost, picking crops, having a relationship with the food that doesn’t include driving to Wal-Mart. That, to me, is what ethics are about.
Further, to press the point of the importance of livestock in a successful permaculture farm, it would be impossible to fertilize the land if it weren’t for the manure of the animals, and their passive way of spreading it with their feet. The fungi that thrive in the manure, which break down the organic matter and happily accept the droppings of birds that carry seeds, when in turn sprout and grow into plants… this is what the life cycle is all about. Mother Nature, the ultimate planner, knew what she was doing when she put cows in a field with grass, mushrooms, a stream, and birds flying overhead. Removing one piece of the puzzle leaves you with a broken system. That, to me, is the problem with vegetarianism.
When I was living the veg lifestyle, I was the firmest believer that we didn’t need a ton of protein, that plant protein was the best form of protein available. This, as far as I can tell, based on my reading, researching, lecture attendance and self-experimentation, is bunk. In order to maintain the muscles I’ve built in the past 5 months, I need to consume a level of protein that is not possible on plants alone. This does not, however, negate the need for plants in a healthy diet. Often times, I eat a 5-6 egg fritatta with as many colored greens, root and tuber veggies as possible. The end product is mouth-watering, healthy, and supports muscle development and a lean body.
So, I urge all my friends who are vegetarians, vegans, raw foodists, processed food connoisseurs, to look into the podcasts, articles, links and quotes below. Take an open mind, try these ideas on. See if they resinate with you, if they solve some of the problems you’ve had with your own health. See if there is a hidden secret that you missed that these will uncover.
I wrote this, in complete honesty, because I care about the people in my life. It’s not to create a fight, but to offer my candid perspective on what I’ve found over the course of 3 years of toying with a diet that has lead me to what I believe is the optimal human diet.
I encourage you to reply with your insights. If you want to challenge anything I’ve written, I am happy to create a dialog around it. Please provide any scholarly review of your stance so I can see where you’re coming from and formulate an educated reply.
Links:
Crossfit: http://www.crossfit.com
(A form of high-intensity exercise)
Mark’s Daily Apple: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
(Author of “The Primal Blueprint”, similar to Paleo with acceptance for some dairy)
Primal Success Story: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/there-are-no-limits-there-are-only-plateaus/
Buddhism and Vegetarianism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_vegetarianism
Leaky gut, as caused by gluten (grains): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_gut
Eat Wild: http://eatwild.com/
Podcasts: (FREE)
Latest in Paleo: http://www.latestinpaleo.com
The Paleo Solution: http://robbwolf.com/category/podcasts/
(The most scientific podcast on the subject, in a Q&A format, where some very interesting questions get answered)
Books:
“The Paleo Solution” by Robb Wolf – http://goo.gl/SNUHl
“The Primal Blueprint” by Mark Sisson – http://goo.gl/2MTfP
“The Primal Cookbook” by Mark Sisson – http://goo.gl/fgKJO
