I was thrilled to come across these and other vegan goodies. But when I reported my finds on facebook, a few people voiced concerns. Was the tofu GMO? Wasn’t there sugar in the seaweed salad? And shouldn’t I be shopping locally?

I do shop mostly—but not exclusively—locally. And there is no shortage of tofu in my life since I live five blocks from the local food co-op. I’m still excited to see tofu at Costco, though, and happy to buy it there. Because the more that people see vegan food in stores—especially stores like Costco where food is cheap—the more they might be willing to eat those foods.

I’ve lately been re-reading the book Animal Impact by Caryn Ginsberg. If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it. It’s  a valuable resource for anyone who advocates for animals, whether it’s by promoting veganism, spay/neuter, homes for shelter animals or protection for wildlife. Caryn’s advice is real-world practical and focused. She reinforces what many of us know—but may need to keep reminding ourselves. That is, we need to make animal-friendly actions “possible, simple, fast, convenient.”

My friend and co-author JL Fields recently blogged about her success in making veganism more convenient; she convinced a local restaurant to offer vegan options on their menu. Breakfast items, no less. Not a veggie burger, but vegan French toast and tofu scramble. That’s an amazing feat.  (Although maybe not for JL given her activist and people skills. In fact, there needs to be a non-profit devoted to funding JL’s travel around the country so she can meet with chefs to advocate for more vegan menu items.)

Getting restaurants to offer vegan menu items is good activism. So is eating at those restaurants, even if we’re not especially crazy about supporting establishments that serve meat. Because if nobody buys the vegan French toast, why would the restaurant offer it?

Yesterday, I chatted with some twitter friends about the pros and cons of moving vegan foods like Beyond Meat to the meat section of grocery stores. I see it as a good thing since it would put those vegan options right in front of people who might not otherwise seek them out. Others found the whole idea to be icky; they didn’t want their vegan food in such close proximity to meat.

I get that. I try to avoid going anywhere near the meat counter. But I’ll do it if it pushes vegan food another few inches into the mainstream. Because, what’s comfortable for us isn’t really the point of veganism, right?

As an activist and a public health professional, I’m well aware of the fact that others don’t see vegan choices quite the way I see them. One of the most important truths that Caryn Ginsberg points out in Animal Impact—and something that I guess should be obvious, but often isn’t—is that “I am not my audience.”

How I view veganism is not how my audience views it. I see it as (relatively) easy. Many people don’t. Yet, some activist efforts seem aimed at making it as hard as possible. You don’t just have to be vegan—you also have to shop locally, scrutinize labels to make sure that every six-syllable ingredient on the food label is vegan, and cook everything from scratch. (And then we hide the vegan food where no one can find it!)

Not everyone likes to cook (and an aversion to cooking is not a moral failing). And not everyone can afford to buy local/organic food. (Being strapped for cash is not a moral failing, either.) With some guidance, though, everyone can be vegan or can at least start taking steps toward a more vegan lifestyle. We can build roadblocks to that or create paths. Assuring availability of a wide range of all types of vegan foods at stores and restaurants, and making them easy to find, puts more vegan food in the path of those who are open to trying it.

And, I’ll let you know about that vegan French toast. When I visit JL in Colorado Springs in July for the launch of Vegan for Her, I’m definitely going to ask her to take me to the Cliff House for breakfast.

Sometimes a new twist on a holiday can make it as good, or even a whole lot better than the way it used to be, though. Thanks to the efforts of Canadian animal advocacy group Liberation B.C., and their brilliant Cow Ribbon campaign, Mother’s Day has become the perfect day to advocate for farmed animals.

A cow ribbon is a symbol of concern for dairy cows—suffering mothers who are forced to continually reproduce and then immediately give up their newborn calves. Wearing a ribbon isn’t just symbolic, though. Since most people don’t have a clue about the cruel practices behind dairy production, this is your chance to tell them. Someone is sure to notice and ask about your cow ribbon. Jasmin Singer of Our Hen House wrote last year about the great grocery store conversation she had in response to hers.

If you don’t have time to order a cow ribbon from Liberation BC you can buy a roll of cow ribbon (or you crafty types can make your own in a pinch with white grosgrain ribbon and a black magic marker). Then prepare a little elevator speech about the abuse that is inherent in dairy production, and head out to the grocery store for some great Mother’s Day activism.

Lately, though, people seem to be abandoning their cast iron pans. They are worried about the iron leaching into their food and causing iron overload.

It’s true that cooking in cast iron (and also stainless steel) can increase the iron content of your food. (1)  It’s also true that high stores of iron may be unhealthy, promoting both heart disease and cancer, although this is a theory that has lost some ground lately. (2,3) Iron accumulation in the brain is also linked to Alzheimer’s disease, although whether the accumulation is a consequence or a cause of the disease isn’t known. (4)

Still, iron is a pro-oxidant, which means it can promote harmful oxidative processes in the body, and it’s wise to guard against excessive amounts of stored iron.

So, should you toss your cast iron pan? For a number of reasons, I don’t think you need to do so. First, while cooking any kind of food in these pans can increase its iron content, it’s really those foods that are both liquid and acidic that take up the most iron from these pans. So if you are cooking spaghetti sauce or applesauce in your cast iron pan every night, then, you’re probably getting lots of extra iron. If you’re browning tofu a couple of times per week, you’re only getting small amounts of extra iron.

Second, if your cast iron pan is well-seasoned, it may take up less iron. That thin film of oil is thought to create a barrier between the food and the iron in the pan

And finally—and this is really the thing that made me think about writing this post—we need to remember that when it comes to nutrition and chronic disease, the rules are different for vegans. For example, we can afford to indulge in some refined grains—like pasta or a piece of fresh ciabatta bread—because our diets are already packed with fiber and all the other good things that come from whole plant foods. We can worry less about the amount of fat in our diets because we eat good fats from plants.

And we definitely have less reason to be concerned about excess iron. People with the highest levels of stored iron are usually those who eat a lot of red meat. In the Framingham Heart Study, people who ate at least seven servings of whole grains per week had the lowest stores of iron. (5) I eat way more than seven servings of whole grains per week and I’ll bet you do, too. The reason whole grains protect against iron overload is that they contain phytates, compounds that bind iron and lower its absorption. Vegans absorb much less of the iron in their diets than people who eat meat and therefore tend to have lower stores of iron in their bodies. This is especially true for young (premenopausal) vegan women because they lose iron every month through menstruation.(6)

According to the Food and Nutrition Board, vegans require nearly twice as much iron as meat eaters because of this lower absorption. A little extra from a cast iron pan—especially when it’s used to cook foods that aren’t especially acidic—is not likely to hurt us. And it’s probably helpful for those who are struggling to maintain a healthy iron status.

1.            Brittin HC, Nossaman CE. Iron content of food cooked in iron utensils. J Am Diet Assoc 1986;86:897-901.

2.            Zegrean M. Association of body iron stores with development of cardiovascular disease in the adult population: a systematic review of the literature. Can J Cardiovasc Nurs 2009;19:26-32.

3.            Zhang X, Giovannucci EL, Smith-Warner SA, et al. A prospective study of intakes of zinc and heme iron and colorectal cancer risk in men and women. Cancer Causes Control 2011;22:1627-37.

4.            Castellani RJ, Moreira PI, Perry G, Zhu X. The role of iron as a mediator of oxidative stress in Alzheimer disease. Biofactors 2012;38:133-8.

5.            Fleming DJ, Tucker KL, Jacques PF, Dallal GE, Wilson PW, Wood RJ. Dietary factors associated with the risk of high iron stores in the elderly Framingham Heart Study cohort. Am J Clin Nutr 2002;76:1375-84.

6.            Waldmann A, Koschizke JW, Leitzmann C, Hahn A. Dietary iron intake and iron status of German female vegans: results of the German vegan study. Ann Nutr Metab 2004;48:103-8.

Right now, JL and I are in the process of creating a community around the ideas and concepts that we talk about in our book. We’ll be launching veganforher.com at the end of May, a site dedicated to sharing information and encouraging dialog among vegan and vegan-curious women. We’re going to talk about everything under the sun—food, nutrition, clothes, body image issues, animals, and all the challenges and joys of being vegan—whether you are already vegan or just kind of thinking about it.

You can sign up for our email list right now so that you’ll receive the very first post when we launch the site in May. Please also follow Vegan for Her on twitter, facebook, and pinterest.

And a note to my male readers: please don’t go away! This blog is still for everyone. And—just a little teaser for now—I’m working on a book for next year that will be of interest to at least some of you.

Paul is the senior statistician on the EPIC-Oxford research project—an investigation that has provided some of the most important current information about vegan and vegetarian nutrition—and he is widely known and respected in the nutrition research world.

You can read the interview here.

Obviously, both of these things can’t be true. In fact, I know that the second one isn’t, and I don’t think the first one is, either. My recommendations for staying healthy on a vegan diet are exactly as hard as they need to be. I take no blame, or responsibility for the nutrient needs of humans. They are what they are, and I do my best to help people meet them based on current understanding of nutrition. Yes, I err on the side of caution. We’re wise to be a little cautious in our recommendations regarding veganism, a way of eating that has no cultural or historical underpinning.

I don’t think that this detail and specificity are necessarily off-putting or scary to new or potential vegans, either. Instead, candid observations about the potential pitfalls of vegan diets, with straightforward guidelines on how to avoid them, make our advocacy trustworthy.  Jack recently posted this comment from someone who had (I’m assuming) heard one of his presentations on vegan nutrition:

“I directly credit my final willingness to make that leap [to becoming vegan] to your nutritional research presentation, especially as veganism applies to athletes. That information, presented so honestly, specifically, and with no misleading window-dressing or skewing of facts, is what gave me the confidence to try it out and we are thriving!”

As for my alleged lack of concern about vegan health—it makes no sense. The image of veganism, and therefore the fate of animals, isn’t served very well by a population of vegans who are staggering around in poor health. Anyone who cares about animals needs to care about the health of vegans.

So yes, guidance toward dietary choices that reduce chronic disease risk is an important part of advocacy. But a message that veers into fear and fear-mongering about food choices isn’t.

Why are some vegans eager to believe that certain plant foods, or sometimes, whole categories of plant foods are so dangerous that they need to be avoided at all costs? Where is the evidence that a plain old vegan diet that includes all kinds of plant foods (ones that have been part of cultural diets for centuries) is harmful to health? Marla Rose, who blogs as the Vegan Feminist Agitator had an excellent post on this recently. She says:

“Unless there is something radically and uncommonly wrong with one’s body, that person has serious allergies or addictions, no, a little oil, a little sugar or some carbs won’t likely kill anyone. It just won’t. This is absolutist and fear-based thinking that is not rooted in science or fact.”

And

“ Instead, it becomes a form of zealotry and, because we are still a small minority of the population, this then becomes associated with veganism to the public at large, which already considers how we live to be extreme and requiring the discipline of a mountain-top dwelling monk as it is.  […] We should be doing everything we can to remove the barriers to compassionate living, not putting up more arbitrary and personal hurdles that have nothing to do with it.”

This is it exactly. After all, we’re not just selling veganism, but selling lifelong, successful, no-turning-back veganism. It means ensuring that vegans have the information they need to stay healthy, while stripping away prohibitions that don’t serve much purpose for vegans or for animals.  To me, these don’t seem like especially threatening concepts.

Please read Marla’s post The Slippery Slope of Nutritional Surveillance. She’s an inspired writer, and her observations are spot on.

I know very well that some vegans struggle with their health, because I hear frequently from those who are looking for help. Most who contact me are animal advocates who are experiencing nutrient deficiencies (diagnosed through blood work) or they simply don’t feel well.

These are not people who are eating junk-food vegan diets. Anyone who gets sick from eating a diet based on potato chips and cookies will usually have a fairly good idea of why they got sick, and they also know how to take some steps to fix that. Instead, those who write to me are usually eating what they believe to be a healthy diet, based on whole plant foods. They are also very motivated to stay vegan.

Writer Sayward Rebhal describes that motivation in  a recent blog post about her experience with failing health. She was determined to make a vegan diet work, to reclaim her health without abandoning her commitment to an ethic that she describes as the “cornerstone of my life.”

Not everyone expends as much effort. The latest blogger to bail on her vegan diet is Alex Jamieson of Super Size Me fame. I remember seeing that movie quite a few years ago and rolling my eyes at Alex’s observations about nutrition. I had pretty much the same reaction when I read her story about why she returned to eating meat. She claimed that her cravings for meat were a sign that she needed to be eating it. Jack has some comments on that in his post on the topic.

With the exception of those who have extensive intolerances to numerous plant foods—leaving them with few plant food choices—I believe a vegan diet is a safe option for everyone. But, I can’t know that for an absolute fact because it’s something that is impossible to prove.

Instead, the burden of proof lies with those who say that a vegan diet failed to support their health. And so far, I’ve not yet heard a story from any ex-vegan that sounded convincing. I was not convinced by Lierre, or Tasha or Alex.  Again, it’s not to say that I know that they could have recovered their health on a vegan diet. I don’t know what they were eating and I didn’t see their blood work. It’s just that their stories are all so flaky and misinformed and filled with holes, that they invite skepticism. So, until someone actually presents some evidence to the contrary, I continue to believe that vegan diets are safe for everyone.

But yes, some vegans struggle more than others to stay healthy. Nutrient needs vary among individuals so some people may need to work a little bit harder to obtain everything they need. And some vegans are not getting enough of what they need because they are eating diets that are too restrictive and/or they are not taking appropriate supplements. My initial recommendations for someone who is craving meat or dairy are these:

• Add umami to your diet.
• Eat more concentrated sources of protein—soy, seitan and beans.
• Add some healthy fats to your meals—nuts, avocado, and foods cooked in small amounts of vegetable oils.
• Check your diet against the food guide and supplement recommendations from Vegan for Life.

Most of the claims against veganism can be countered with a few science-based observations, but it’s not so easy to change the minds of those who firmly believe that meat is a dietary essential. Probably the best we can do is to make sure our own diets are health-supporting and that we share good evidence-based nutrition information with other vegans.

Material presented at the conference included reviews of earlier research as well as new findings from the most current studies. Even where the information was familiar to me, though, it was informative and interesting to hear perspective from the researchers themselves.

Some findings that were presented at this year’s conference:

• Vitamin B12 continues to be a problem for vegans (and often vegetarians) who don’t supplement.
• Higher protein diets do not appear to raise risk for osteoporosis. To the contrary, protein appears to be protective, and vegans who eat more beans and veggie meats may have a lower fracture risk. Vegans who fail to get adequate calcium put themselves at risk for poor bone health. (Jack recently wrote about protein and bone health, too)
• Replacing certain animal foods in the diet–especially processed and red meats–with plant foods reduces risk for chronic disease. No surprise here. In contrast, we face an uphill battle if we want to demonize dairy foods from a health perspective. The science does not support any particular danger of consuming these foods. (There is evidence, however, that skipping dairy is a good way to shrink your carbon footprint.)
• Higher fat plant foods are good for you. The research on nuts suggests myriad health benefits. New, hot-off-the-press research presented at the conference also suggested that there are benefits to including olive oil in plant-based heart-healthy diets. At the very least, there is no reason to think that it is harmful.

The conference gave me confidence that the themes that come up often on this blog are well supported by the evidence. That is, vegans do need to pay attention to certain nutrients. And, there are no plant foods that need to be avoided completely on a healthy vegan diet. And finally, while there is abundant evidence supporting health benefits of a plant-based diet—ie, a diet that contains mostly plant foods—it’s difficult to build the case for veganism without bringing ethics into the picture.

My impression is that most of these temporary vegans have had reasonably good experiences with finding satisfying food. Most have also run up against challenges, due in part to a lack of preparation or knowledge.

I haven’t seen any of these experiments morph into an actual embrace of veganism. But some have said they will eat more vegan meals after their experience—which is good. And I suspect that in writing about the appealing vegan foods they’ve found, they may help others see veganism in a more encouraging light.

So, in the interest of keeping those experiences positive, here are some thoughts and advice for anyone who is trying on veganism—or at least a vegan diet—for a week or two.

You won’t develop nutrient deficiencies in seven days.  You can eat the worst diet in the world—vegan or otherwise—without doing yourself much harm over the short term. If you do find yourself deficient in iron or some other nutrient at the end of the week, blame your omnivore diet. It’s your usual habits that affect your health, not brief deviations from those habits.

There is no particular food you have to eat. You can be vegan without tofu or kale or green smoothies. (I’ve been vegan for 20+ years and have never once had a green smoothie for breakfast.) You should be able to find plenty of vegan foods that you like, so skip the ones that don’t appeal to you.

You will not detox or go through withdrawal. There is no known physical withdrawal from animal foods. And your body is processing toxic compounds all the time, no matter what kind of diet you eat. If you feel faint or cranky or fuzzy-brained, it probably means you aren’t eating enough. Or maybe that you need a little more protein or fat in your meals. There are plenty of both in vegan foods.

Fun foods are okay. The vegan experience is not about being an ascetic; it’s about not using animal products. Certainly you won’t feel especially great if you build your diet around chips and soft drinks. But it’s fine to have some treats and enjoy a little bit of decadence. There are vegan beers and wine, and (incredibly excellent) vegan versions of ice cream and cup cakes.

With a few exceptions, veggie meats and cheeses do not taste like their animal-derived counterparts, so don’t expect them to be the same. Instead, enjoy them for what they are. Reacting to his first experience with veggie bacon, meat scientist and temporary vegan experimenter David Hayden said that it tasted nothing like “real” bacon. But it was good, and he claimed that he’d eat it again.

Watch Meet Your Meat or read Vegan Outreach’s Why Vegan booklet. Veganism is more than a diet and more than a lifestyle. It’s an ethic. Understanding the “why” of veganism is just as important as experiencing the “how” if you want to know what it’s really like to “be vegan.”

Cut cravings with satisfying condiments. You may think you’re missing meat and cheese, but it could just be that you’re missing umami. Called the 5^th taste, this flavor/experience is abundant in animal foods. And also in plant foods if you know where to look. It’s as simple as a sprinkle of ume plum vinegar or a dollop of ketchup.

These foods are your friends: hummus, peanut butter, almond milk, vegetarian baked beans, veggie burgers, soup cups, mixed nuts, fruit. They are convenient, mostly portable and mostly healthy. A PB&J sandwich and an apple can save the day when you are away from home and can’t find vegan food.

Vegan cuisine can also be as gourmet as you want it to be. The foods listed above will get you through the week with minimal effort. But, if you’re a foodie who loves to create elaborate meals, this can end up being an incredibly fun culinary experience. Check out the recipes at Olives for Dinner, Serious Eats, Post Punk Kitchen, and La Gusta, and start experimenting.*

You won’t like everything. Every meat eater has a bad meal now and then and the same is true of vegans. Don’t judge vegan food on the basis of a few negative experiences or a lack of planning. Vegan food is wonderful. Hopefully, you’ll keep coming back to enjoy it after your week-long experiment ends.

* Thank you to my twitter friends Angela, Jason, Danielle, and Mike for pointing me towards great gourmet vegan food blogs.

One of the things that presented a little barrier for me right from the start, though, was that my advisor wanted me to begin my doctoral career with a “small animal research project” just to get a quick publication and a little bit of research experience. It was a conversation that took place just after I had adopted a shelter kitten who turned out to have feline distemper and appeared to be dying.  I was distraught as I tried to explain to my advisor why I wasn’t going to do a “small animal research project,” all the while sobbing about my kitten. I still remember the look on this poor professor’s face as she tried to figure out how to deal with this crazy new student.

Anyway, I changed advisors (a big relief to both of us, I think), completed all my course work including four (four!) excruciating semesters of statistics—and then took a leave of absence to teach nutrition to dietetics students. Then, my husband successfully defended his PhD dissertation and got a job at the National Cancer Institute in Washington, DC. We moved, I got another job that I really liked, and I never finished my doctorate.

That was as close to vivisection as I’ve ever come. Not only have I never done it, but I also will not promote it.  And I’m always a little surprised when I see other vegans doing so–using animal research to discredit meat or milk, or some other dietary factor, and to support vegan diets. Certainly, animal research can be effective in this regard; these studies are fast and cheap, and they allow types of research that can’t “ethically” be done in humans.

But while these studies come across my computer screen almost daily, I have no problem giving them a pass. For one thing, animal research is always the weakest of all evidence. Animals are different from humans in important ways. And feeding isolated compounds to animals doesn’t tell you much about what happens when you feed actual food to humans.

But just as importantly, as a vegan, I don’t promote animal-use. And, citing animal studies as evidence for anything translates to an endorsement of animal research. Citing it in support of vegan diets suggests that it’s okay to exploit one group of animals in order to protect another.

Something similar happens when vegans single out particular animal foods as being especially harmful. Several weeks ago, I received an email newsletter from an animal rights group highlighting a study on red meat and lung cancer. It linked directly to the study abstract which concluded that “A high intake of red meat may increase the risk of lung cancer by about 35%, while a high intake of poultry decreases the risk by about 10%.”

That’s hardly a vegan message. And since most people already view chicken meat as healthier than red meat, it probably only serves to perpetuate existing beliefs about poultry consumption, while encouraging a behavior that leads to more suffering.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, in his famous 1963 letter from the Birmingham Jail wrote: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

He wasn’t talking about animals, of course, but it’s an observation that works well for animal advocacy.  Vegans advocate for all animals. And even when we want to advocate for other things–like human health–we shouldn’t do it by endorsing a system that tortures mice, and rats, and monkeys and dogs and cats. And we shouldn’t do it with messages that can have the unintentional consequences of encouraging people to eat one type of animal while avoiding another.