A Saudi food activist and former vegan questions whether veganism is for your health, and for the planet.
Vegans reading this post might want to think twice about forgoing a slice of turkey this Thanksgiving. Saudi Arabia-based blogger, Tasha of Voracious Eats, runs a well-known vegan cooking site featuring no animal products. This week she made a monumental announcement: Veganism has caused a severe decline in her health, and she has begun eating meat again. And she is back to excellent health.
Of course, the process was not nearly so simple as that. In her post she describes how the vitamin supplements she was taking weren’t being absorbed by her body, leading to fatigue, depression, pain, indigestion, weight loss, and memory loss.
In a follow-up post, she describes the reaction of the global vegan community on the internet. She received death threats, but also a lot of support. It turns out that many well-known vegans eat small amounts of animal products to preserve their health. But not all of them admit it publicly.
A long-time food activist, Tasha learned that veganism may not be as good for the environment as she once believed. Farms can’t be sustained without animal waste, including blood, bones and manure.
The planet can’t sustain huge amounts of grain production, as Tasha writes:
The truth that as a vegan I did not like to face is that most places on this planet are not suited for annual grain agriculture, but for a mix of plant and animal husbandry. Most ecosystems on this planet simply cannot support annual grain agriculture, and the urging by vegans for the inhabitants to adopt a vegan lifestyle anyway is damning them to an eventually desiccated land base and inevitable starvation. Saudi Arabia, where I live, is one of those places.
From now on, she plans to eat fewer imported foods and dine on local goats that graze on desert shrub near her home.
More Green Posts by Hannah Katsman:
Can the Biolite Stove Generate Green Cooking for the Middle East?
Breastfeeding in a Hijab: Public Breastfeeding in the Middle East
Hannah writes a blog on efficient cooking, Cooking Manager.
Author: Hannah Katsman
Hannah learned environmentalism from her mother, a conservationist before it was in style. Once a burglar tried to enter their home in Cincinnati after noticing the darkened windows (covered with blankets for insulation) and the snow-covered car in the driveway. Mom always set the thermostat for 62 degrees Fahrenheit (17 Celsius) — 3 degrees lower than recommended by President Nixon — because “the thermostat is in the dining room, but the stove’s pilot light keeps the kitchen warmer.” Her mother would still have preferred today’s gas-saving pilotless stoves. Hannah studied English in college and education in graduate school, and arrived in Petach Tikva in 1990 with her husband and oldest child. Her mother died suddenly six weeks after Hannah arrived and six weeks before the first Gulf War, and Hannah stayed anyway. She has taught English but her passion is parental education and support, especially breastfeeding. She recently began a new blog about energy- and time-efficient meal preparation called CookingManager.Com. You can find her thoughts on parenting, breastfeeding, Israeli living and women in Judaism at A Mother in Israel. Hannah can be reached at hannahk (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
I am coming into this a little late. But I have been vegan for almost ten years and am just researching, for myself, on going back to be a vegetarian.
This is in direct reply to All-Vegan’s post.
1. Many people I personally know fear vegan retribution if they “sell out”. I have seen a little more than a dozen people physically attacked enough they had to go a hospital because in the attackers words after it happened “They sold out.” If she said she received death threats, I’m pretty sure she actually did.
2. You missed Tasha’s most damnable point against veganism. The ecosystems that we rely on for our food are being destroyed by monoculture farming. Grains, soy, and corn are practically tearing apart the top soil that some time from now our agricultural land will be desert; just like the middle east. Most if not all vegans (including most if not all meat-eaters also) support such farming. We are supporting the inevitable end of the world, where not only millions of animals that rely on those ecosystems will die, but we will also.
I find it morally superior to go and take a fish out of lake, or go to a local family ran and own farm for some goat cheese, that continuing to support an agricultural practice that will wipe off most animals from this planet if not stopped. Most vegans, believing they are being ethical in their choices by eating soy and other grains instead of other foods from local, family sources, are actually harming not only the animals, but humans more.
In general ;p
Thanks for sharing your theory, All-Vegan. Anything is possible, I suppose.
Personally I do not buy it. I did not know about Voracious Vegan/eats until her lengthy diatribe describing how she rediscovered how wonderful meat eating was. Well that is all well and good except for the inconsistencies. She says she was sickly and had no energy, but if you go back and read some earlier posts she brags about how much energy she has. She says that her first non vegan meal was a steak, but in her follow up rant about how everyone is being mean to her, she claims that she started eating a little cheese then worked up to an egg and finely to meat. Lastly I do not believe she has gotten death threats. The idea of Vegans sending death threats to anyone is on its face laughable. What! I’m going to kill you and your whole family because you have a different diet from me? ridiculous! Actually I suffered through all the replies to her blog and the majority of them are from meat eaters commending her for her choice. The minority of critical posts were respectful and also soundly attacked by the pro meat posters for their views. don’t believe me go read it for yourself. Here’s what I think, I think she saw how much attention Lierre Keith was getting with The Vegetarian Myth and decided she could do the same. Well that is exactly what has happened isn’t it. She comes out with an anti vegan rant, says she is being attacked and the whole meat eating world rushes to her defense. Dozens of blogs post articles with headlines like “Saudi Blogger Gets Death Threats for Quitting a Vegan Diet” and she becomes famous overnight. She will undoubtedly continue to write about her oppression and probably write a book about her experiences escaping the “vegan cult”