I have been vegetarian for 20 years. The reason I started has always remained the primary reason, which is simple: I don’t want to eat animals. Not even ones that I raise, because I cannot choose to kill them. I grew up on a small farm. and I know how the world works, so this is not a case of naivety. I relate to animals the same way I do to people, and I would just as soon eat a human as I would a cow.

I was a vegan for four years, a diet I chose under a recommendation, from an ayurvedic doctor, to treat chronic acne and cysts, as well as body pain (I have since been diagnosed with FMS, but this was the 80s before the syndrome was named). My skin cleared up beautifully, but I eventually suffered from nutrient deficiency…primarily B vitamins. I began eating animal products again….eggs and goat dairy and cut down on grains and soy. This is primarily how I still eat today. I had a vegetarian pregnancy and am still breastfeeding my two year old. She is robust and thriving. I am also not limiting her diet to vegetarian and her dad is not a vegetarian.

I wanted to chime in because your post was beautifully written in that you simply described your personal choices and then invited us to share the same. Many of the above comments contain the same tone of “my way is the best way” that righteous vegans are often accused of. What is important to me is this: DIET IS PERSONAL. Bodies are different and there is not a one size fits all diet solution. Sometimes paleo or raw or vegan may be helpful for one person for a lifetime, for another, just a few months or years. Elizabeth Lipski, gut health author extraordinaire, says that our digestive and immune system “blueprint” is set by 2 years of age, and impacts us the rest of our life…perhaps regardless of how hard we try to “eat well”. There is so much we don’t know about how our bodies work, what they need, when they need it or how. I am vegetarian and for me that means health. I support everyone in finding what health means to them. To your readers…just please don’t proselytize your “truth” to others…live and let live.

Thanks for this blog…it truly is fantastic. I wish you luck on your new home. xo

So we all just need to listen to our bodies and eat what makes us feel good (and not good in the way that a brownie full of processed sugar makes us feel right after we eat it, I mean long term good).

I don’t know how to put it any plainer than that. I applaud everyone here who has been polite about this but I don’t want you convincing some impressionable young mind out there that they’re just a normal variation going in an evolutionary direction that will eventually separate from the rest of the species, so why not adopt a diet that ultimately will destroy their health.

I can’t be sanguine about this. For three years I suffered from menstrual problems that would have sent any woman with health insurance running screaming for the phone to get an appointment with their GYN. I didn’t have health insurance and none was forthcoming. It was so bad the first day or three of the cycle that I often had to stay home and use rags from the rag bags to supplement my usual period repertoire.

Last year I read something at the WAPF website about vitamin A and how people with certain health conditions can’t convert beta carotene (and healthy people can’t convert it *efficiently*). I decided to find a natural source of A to supplement with and found one that was from fish liver oil.

Lo and behold, suddenly my period problems improved dramatically. I used to get this weird cramping on one side before all heck would break loose. If I have kept up my A supplementation for the previous month, I no longer have that pain. The flow has lightened to the point that I can go out in public on the first day again and not have to go to the bathroom every half hour to make sure I’m not leaking.

It’s a miracle. It makes me wonder how many women have gotten hysterectomies or been put on weird, damaging drugs because their doctors never figured out what was going on.

And I’m angry. Furious. Because the government allows food sellers to record the presence of vitamin A content on the labels of plant foods, even though not a single plant food in the entire world contains the vitamin. Beta carotene is no more vitamin A than a lump of clay is a brick. Nutritionists are no better, routinely lying to us about the best sources of vitamin A, informing us that they are plant foods such as carrots.

That kind of crap encourages the militant vegan groups. I’m furious. I despise them. If I could shut every one of them down, I would. I’m not a violent person, but I’d love to disgrace them all into oblivion. They should be ashamed of themselves.

How many more nutrients do we have to find this stuff out about before it shuts those groups down? Fats? B12? Minerals, which half the time aren’t bioavailable in plant foods unless you cook the hell out of them, but we’re told it’s “healthier” to eat them raw?

Do me a favor? Whatever is going on with you, quit telling people it’s “just a natural variation” (not a direct quote from you I don’t think, but that’s the idea you are trying to get across). If you’re really curious about why you’re so different–and you ARE different–then go find out. It’s entirely possible no doctor will be able to help you. They don’t want to hear about health problems unless those can be cured with some fancy new drug. But you never know. You might get lucky.

Whatever the case. I know that some vegans who try to eat meat again have problems digesting it because their bodies have stopped making the necessary enzymes. Maybe that was your problem and maybe not. Maybe you didn’t really try every type of animal food you could–maybe you didn’t know about pasture-raised. You’re reading this blog, so I doubt that’s the case, but I have been wrong many times before and will be again.

But whatever it is, you’re not normal. I have no problem with you adjusting to your health situation as you feel moved to do. But don’t go around misleading people who don’t know any better. We suffer too much from that in this culture as it is.

And if by some unlikely chance you are some kind of a mole from PETA or wherever, you can take this to heart: If I ever get the chance to shut PETA down, nonviolently of course, I will jump to it. And I am not by far the only one. Know this: Some of us have been hurt by believing in the vegan ideology–not just the diet part, the *ideology* part–and we are NOT happy about the outcome.

I’m just glad I wasn’t trying to have another child. I have reason to believe my daughter’s kidneys were malformed because of my lack of natural vitamin A intake during my pregnancy with her, as it is. She’s lucky she’s not blind too. Think about that next time you want to reassure someone that vitamin-starving their bodies is a fab idea. If you don’t care about the adults, the kids have no say in the matter.

http://forum.zeroinginonhealth.com/

inspired me to “take the red pill”.