Is A Vegetarian Diet Really Healthy?

As those of you who have attended my cooking and raw food classes over the years will attest I take the greatest pleasure and delight in the sheer amazing deliciousness and wonderful complexity and variety of plant-based meals.  I have literally spend a life-time promoting and celebrating plant-based meals - both in my own home and in my personal chef business, which is aptly called "Serene Cuisine" and whose genesis and specialty has been largely based on those very celebrated plant-based meals. The sheer extravagance of the plant kingdom with its plethora of flavor, color and complexity still awes me.  Life would, indeed, be dull and my appetite truly diminished were it not for my friends in the plant kingdom.

However, all of that being said, today's blog post ultimately becomes a cautionary tale, as it explores how my allegiance to a strictly plant-based diet may have affected my health over a period of time.  Even though I appeared to tolerate a plant-based diet over the course of many years, I wonder if the diet did, in fact, create subtle stressors and nutritional deficiencies, that went largely unnoticed, but that ultimately undermined the fullest expression of my health potential?  Was the expression of my life force less than what it would have otherwise been?  I will never know for certain as all of this falls under the category of conjecture and speculation.

What I do know is that, though I appeared to tolerate a vegetarian diet, I did, in fact, reach a point when, no matter how well I complied with all the positive aspects of plant-based eating, my health unexpectedly began to unravel in a dramatic and alarming way and that no matter what I did I could not get well again until I began to include some animal products in my diet.

So, what does my diet currently look like?

Some of you would say that my diet does not appear to have changed all that much.  I still eat an inordinate amount of plant-based dishes.  I love them.  In fact, I thrive on them.  But, I find that I thrive even better when I include a nice dash of animal protein on the side.  And you can be certain that the animal products that I choose to eat are always the highest quality, humanely raised animal products that I can possibly procure.

My own personal experience with a vegetarian diet has led me to wonder if animal products are actually essential to health?

There are a few folks out there that would say they are.

I consider the Weston A. Price Foundation among the most compelling.  The WAPF, despite the popularity of the high carb, low fat diet that is characterized by the current U.S government dietary guidelines, continues to promote the importance of humanely and traditionally raised foods and, in particular, animal products in human diet.  You can find a selection of articles on their website.  The information that I obtained through the foundation certainly helped shepherd me through some of the struggles I experienced during the process of my own dietary change.  In fact, I refer you to what I consider a thorough treatment by Chris Masterjohn on the subject of the vegetarian diet and its more typical nutritional deficiencies.  Chris raises an excellent point, by the way, about the inclusion of shellfish in a largely vegetarian diet as shellfish consumption helps mitigate much of the need for animal products in the diet.  So, any vegans out there might want to consider the option of becoming a bivalvevegan, as shellfish, naturally devoid of a central nervous system, might be considered a less sentient life form.

Ultimately, life is about personal choice and for those of you who would like to continue to eat a vegan diet, the most extreme plant-based approach, I refer you to another article by Denise Minger, in which she lists some guidelines that she believes may optimize the vegan diet.