Veganism, the strict practice of abstaining from the consumption and use of animal products, is on the rise. Reportedly, there are about 1.6 million vegans in the United States. The trendiness of being vegan dwarfs their actual representation in the population and a closer look at vegans tends to reveal something not quite right. Occasionally, a news story pops up where a vegan does something that most folks would find utterly bonkers such as wanting to feed dogs vegan diets, harassing meat-eating restaurant patrons, sitting idly by while a vegan baby dies of malnutrition, and most recently, shooting up people at a YouTube office.
We don't mean to cast aspersions, but are vegans nuts? Join us for this episode of The Health and Wellness Show where we explore this question and the very real underlying dietary reasons for why this may be so.
And stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment, where she speaks about the inappropriateness of vegetarian diets for pets.
Running Time: 01:43:49
Download: MP3
But it's still a fad, this vegan-ism, driven by social media momentum. We all know that. Just like gender re-assignment- in the context of social acceptance, that is. What other energy or agendas the trans movement may represent, even in a modality as innocent as personal liberation, is debatable.
But no one suggests a causal link between mental illness and gender-dissociative behaviors or considers the overwhelming psychiatric histories of people who elect for sex reassignment or the the fact that the APA has turned the psychiatric institution into a transgender factory mill by enforcing the 'gender affirmative' stance far and wide. That would be too much of a buzzkill; people tend to react with anger when you present these facts. But, the fallacy therein about the trans population is based on cognitive dissonance, while this tripe about vegans and insanity is based on hot air and bad science.
And as for the YT shooter, you are feeding into the tribal paranoia that has allowed so many otherwise rational people to assign judgement upon a dietary fad based upon the actions of its adherents. If you want to say that taking my bread butter-side down(no butter, rather) is a causal link for insanity[read: fuel for vilifying the Other], then you've missed out on some vital formative education from the great Dr. Seuss.
'Evidence' that vegetarian diets are linked to mental disorders has been published via flim-flam research studies, which will always state that their methodology either does not prove a causal role or will outright admit that the population sampling was potentially flawed, because they're scientists and they have to. Pro tip: you have to find the actual studies, not the secondary literature, which in the case of the proposed linkage between vegetarianism and insanity, will most likely be by some nameless hack.
Meanwhile, mental illness continues to be an unspoken scourge. Anti-psychotics and benzodiazepine are habit forming and give people a lifetime of failing health. Opiods killed 52,000 in 2015 and another 20.5 million aged 12 or older admitted to addiction. The five deadliest shootings in United States history since 2007 and every one of them was carried out by males with all the red flags, not to mention Parkland, which history will remember as a textbook example of untreated mental illness leading to spilled blood.
Here's a real article(below) put up by a non-profit which describes risks to mental health brought on by foods, most of which, I'm sorry to say, comes from meat toxicity. It even has that warning about B-12 and suicidality critics of veganism are so fond of mentioning. At any rate, let's all fall back on 'fair and unbiased,' what do you say?
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