Diet wars: Vegans and Carnivores battle for world food supremacy
They are at opposite ends of the dining table. Vegans, who avoid all animal products including dairy, are a growing and loud movement gaining traction around the world. But Carnivores, who eat everything vegans shun – meat, eggs, and animal fats, and nothing else – are also growing in numbers.
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Burger joints have launched plant-based patties, only vegan meals were served at the recent Golden Globe awards, and you can now buy fake meat in supermarket aisles.
Veganism has reached peak fad. There is even a ‘Veganuary’ movement currently underway to encourage people to make January animal product free.
January has also been pronounced World Carnivore Month.
While Vegans only eat from the plant kingdom, avoiding all animal products including dairy and even honey — and their tribe includes big names like Elle Macpherson, Miley Cyrus, Ellen DeGeneres, Joaquin Phoenix, Ruby Rose and Stephanie Rice — capital C Carnivores only eat from the animal kingdom – everything a vegan avoids.
This isn’t the taunting of a contrarian at a BBQ as they bite into a steak, but who actually eats a balanced diet, the Carnivore movement is truly as extreme as a hard core vegan – it’s just that fish, meat, dairy, and eggs form the entire diet. And the movement is rapidly growing. Last year, Carnivores had their first conference in Boulder, Colorado fronted by Dr Shaun Baker, author of The Carnivore Diet.
Baker has not touched fruit or vegetables for three years and does not have scurvy. In fact, he is in good health.
Other high profile carnivores include Canadian professor Jordan Peterson who took up the caveman cuisine after his daughter Mikhaila Peterson went carnivore and claimed it cured her juvenile rheumatoid arthritis among other things.
Peterson lost 22kg and says he too has overcome auto-immune conditions, psoriasis and depression.
There are more than 1000 members of the Aussie Carnivores group on Facebook and their numbers are growing daily. Surprisingly, many are ex-vegans.
Luke Miller was a vegetarian at age 20, then he became a vegan. He is now a chop-chomping carnivore.
“I am an ex-vegan and I know what it did to my health and I do not want anyone to follow the same diet,” the now 22-year-old says.
In fact the Adelaide university student and YouTuber is so convinced the vegan diet it unhealthy that he turns up at vegan protests to eat meat in front of them.
“I don’t say anything, I just eat meat and they are usually aggressive and hostile and some guy wanted to stab me and I filmed it to show the world how mentally unstable they can be.”
Miller claims the vegan diet made him sick.
“I was experimenting with diet for optimal health and I had the idea fruit and vegetables were meant to be helpful but I got really sick, lost a lot of weight, I went down to about 50kg, my normal weight is 64kg so I just wasted away. In the end I was bed ridden with infections and I was severely depressed,” he said.
For his own survival, he started eating meat.
“I just made the switch to an all meat diet and mental health improved, I was depressed and anxious, and all of that went away.”
Now back at 65kg, his day on a plate is a literal meat tray.
“I eat a variety of animal foods, beef, seafood and I also drink blood which I get from the butcher,” he said.
Low Carb doctor Paul Mason, a sport medicine specialist, says he has treated many ex-vegans.
“If you are looking at the vegan diet it is not sustainable from a health perspective if the don’t supplement,” Dr Mason said.
“They usually get sick with nutrient deficiency, B12 deficiency and depression is very common. Often they get too skinny, we are starting to see some athletes try vegan and their performance suffers.
“The carnivore movement includes your silicon tech types who are looking for an edge to recovering vegans and there are a surprising amount of ex-vegans who have made the full 180 degree switch.
“I wouldn’t call myself a carnivore doctor, but I do see a lot of vegetarians and vegans who end up introducing animal food back into their diet with significant benefit.”
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Dr Nick Fuller, obesity expert with the University of Sydney, said the carnivore diet was simply not nutritionally balanced.
“Excluding fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds will result in you not meeting your fibre requirements which will put you at increased risk of disease, including type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease. These are the very foods we should be including in our diet, not only for our health but also slimmer waistlines,” he said.
While the carnivore and low carb proponent’s diets go against current dietary guidelines (by avoiding saturated fat and carbohydrates like grains and starchy vegetables) there are doctors who are converts.
Dr Mason and Dr Rod Taylor have used themselves as guinea pigs.
“When I first read about the low carb diet in a medical journal, I thought it was bullshit. I had metabolic syndrome myself, and it contradicts everything I learnt in medical school, so I tried it on myself and my blood pressure improved, my blood cholesterol improved. I went low carb via keto and improved my health out of sight,” he said.
Dr Rod Taylor, a Melbourne-based anaesthetist formed the Low Carb Down Under group which boasts 80 medical doctors in its ranks.
He is a firm believer in a diet heavy in meat and saturated fats, which helped him, and many of his patients lose weight, but again, it goes against everything we have been told – and they learnt in med school.
“We’ve been eating it for a million years and now we are being told its bad for us? The low fat, high carbohydrate recommendations has led to massive amounts of diabetes and obesity.”
The meat lovers also wade into “conspiracy” territory when they question the influence the Seventh-day Adventists Church has had over the establishment of the nutritional guidelines we still abide by today.
“You do risk being seen as a conspiracy theorist, you’re talking alternative agenda and political lobbyists but that is where the facts lie,” Dr Mason said.
One of the biggest players in the vegan space is Sanitarium, makers of Weet-Bix and other plant- based health foods.
“Sanitarium is owned by the Seventh-day Adventist church and the religious belief of the church is that meat is impure and leads to carnal impulses,” Dr Mason said.
Kellogg’s founder was also a Seventh Day Adventist Church member.
It is fact that Lenna F. Cooper, the founder of the US Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics which set the dietary guidelines in 1917 was “a protégé of Dr John Harvey Kellogg, director of the Seventh-day Adventist sanitarium in Battle Creek”.(Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame, inducted 1993).
Today, the vegan movement has its teeth firmly in environmental issues: animal cruelty and global warming associated with meat production. But the movement has attracted ire from the public because of traffic stopping protests and raids on farms.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison dubbed them “green collared criminals”.
And sometimes their choice comes with a big side serve of sanctimony like the case of Perth vegan Cilla Carden who took her neighbours to court over the meat smells coming from their BBQ.
Greg McFarlane from Vegan Australia, a lobby group set up “to promote veganism through the media, through government and institutes and public campaigns” became vegan 25 years ago because of the “horrors” in the animal food industry.
McFarlane says there are around 500,000 vegans in Australia.
But meat lovers hit back with the fact that cropping depletes the topsoil.
“Running ruminant animals on pasture regenerates the topsoil, cropping denudes it,” Dr Mason said.
The Dietitians Association of Australia states vegans should take a B12 supplement or eat fortified foods.
“We don’t need to eat animals at all, you just need to take a B12 supplement,” McFarlane said.
Former Olympic gold medal swimmer Stephanie Rice embraced veganism when she retired from competitive swimming in 2014. She credits the diet with helping her keep trim and restoring her health.
“I was 24 and finished swimming seven hours a week and not wanting to put on a whole stack of weight, so I was conscious of that and I did not have to be restrictive, so that was a big winner for me, I could eat till I was satisfied.
“Once I was eating vegan I became a lot more aware of animal welfare and environmental impacts and that cemented my choice,” the 30-year-old says.
“I don’t judge either way, everyone goes on their own health journey and make their own choices, but I feel like now it is way more trendy, it’s very much a trend which is great and I hope it sustains,” she said.
As for the noisy vegan, Rice defends them.
“There is definitely a very vocal vegan community and I am all for what they stand for, I just don’t feel the approach is necessarily is going to get the result they are after,” she said.
“That is how I approach it, it is a choice I have made for my life and I don’t expect others to do what I do, we have our own body, I think softly educating and not being pushy and sharing benefits to inspire people to try it.”
Again, Dr Fuller is not a huge fan of veganism either.
“Abstaining from animal products makes it quite challenging to meet your nutritional requirements,” Dr Fuller said.
“As with all diets, in the short-term you will feel great with the accompanying weight loss and associated feelings of better health, but longer-term you will not only stack the weight back on as your body fights the weight loss, but you will develop nutritional deficiencies from lack of vitamin B12, iron and calcium in particular.
“This will result in you feeling lethargic and over time you might end up with brittle bones.”
The other big issue is cancer. Fibre mostly comes from plants and is well documented for its health benefits. Studies have also linked red meat consumption with bowel cancer.
The low carb crowd, who claim their diet makes people lose weight, also hit back on the huge body of evidence.
“There is evidence that goes in both directions, but diabetes and obesity are a far bigger risk for cancer and bowel cancer,” Dr Mason said.
What’s irrefutable is human dietary history. We evolved to be omnivores and the shape of our teeth proves it.