Detecting baloney is no easy thing. Resources on veganism are packed with good and not-so-good information, and how are you supposed to know the difference? (It can even be difficult for health experts. If the critical evaluation of research isn’t part of your college curriculum–and it sure wasn’t part of my dietetics program–it can be hard to learn these skills unless you have good mentors in your professional life.) Add in the fact that evidence-based nutrition tends to be kind of unexciting, and it’s no wonder that vegan nutrition sometimes seems overwhelmed by exaggerated health claims, nonchalant dismissal of nutrition concerns and recommendations that are based more on stories and belief than evidence.

Someone asked me recently why it matters whether vegans understand how to interpret different types of research and claims about diet. If vegans want to believe that cow’s milk causes osteoporosis or vegetable oils clog your arteries, or all processed foods are evil and disease-promoting, who cares?

But I think those misconceptions matter. As I’ve written about before, there is plenty to lose when vegans are given inadequate health information. And from an advocacy standpoint, I can’t imagine a good future for a movement based on inflated and unsupported claims, no matter how attractive they sound.

Back in the mid-1990s—when the internet was young, and I don’t think there was even such a thing as a blog—I was part of a group involved in the creation of an email list called sci-veg. It was a forum for  those devoted to scientific understanding regarding vegetarian and vegan issues. The list attracted a diverse group of participants—vegan dietitians and nutritionists, experts in other fields related to veganism, and those who simply wanted to discuss the issues in a factual, evidence-based way.  Sci-veg was successful in bringing a solidly scientific perspective to the various topics. It’s really too bad that it’s not still around, because I don’t think there has ever been another place on the internet where a group of people so carefully evaluated claims about nutritional, environmental and ethical aspects of veganism.

There are, however, a number of blogs that fill the gap, written by ethical vegans who are committed to critical thinking and scientific integrity.  They aren’t afraid to question the prevailing vegan dogma or ask unpopular questions. You may not always agree with them, but they produce some of the most thoughtful and provocative reading on the vegan internet. The authors of these blogs would have been right at home, and extremely valuable voices on sci-veg.

Paleo Veganology

Pythagorean Crank

Say What Michael Pollan

Skeptical Vegan

Speciesist Vegan

The Rational Vegan

Vegan Skeptic

Vegan Scientist

And it goes without saying that Jack Norris RD  is on this list, right? There is absolutely no place on the internet to find a more unbiased treatment of the research on vegan diets.

In case you haven’t seen them, here are a couple of blog posts from the past week that struck me as worth sharing. One is Jack’s discussion of the safety of cyanocobalamin, a cyanide-containing B12 supplement. Some vegans are choosing to seek out supplements that provide methylcobalamin due to fears about consuming too much cyanide. Jack’s post provides some perspective on this. The bottom line is that there isn’t enough cyanide in these supplements to be worrisome.

Also, take a look at this comment from TheVeganScientist, and you’ll see that if you want to be scared of something, it should be flaxseeds, not cyanocobalamin. (I don’t think you should be scared of either, though.)

The other important issue is that methylcobalamin appears to be less stable than cyanocobalamin, so it may not be as reliable a source of the vitamin. If you choose to use it, you may need much, much more than the 25 micrograms of cyanocobalamin that I recommend. Some are advocating use of methylcobalamin without pointing out this important difference in dosage requirements.  

The other blog post that caught my eye this past week is from Gena Hamshaw. It asks important questions about how we market veganism, and looks at the potential downside of campaigns that employ simplistic, unsupported, and sometimes hurtful messages. It’s a long post, but well worth reading.   

Finally, I’ve posted an updated speaking schedule for the Vegan for Life team (that would be Jack and me). If it’s convenient for you, I hope you’ll try to attend one of these talks. (Jack’s presentation on what the science says about vegan nutrition is probably the single best overview of this topic.) We’ll be updating the schedule as needed.

The findings from these types of studies may or may not always be relevant to vegans, though. Although fiber isn’t an issue for us—we get plenty of it—vegans still need to emphasize whole grains because these foods are important sources of zinc in plant-based diets. Even so, a few refined treats—like regular pasta or fresh ciabatta bread from the bakery—are okay. And for many people, these occasional deviations from a “whole foods” diet make it easier to eat healthfully overall or to be vegan.

I’ve written before about the importance of acknowledging people’s fears and perceived barriers about going vegan. Our job as change makers on behalf of animals is to put those fears to rest by making dietary change as easy and realistic as possible—without promoting practices that compromise health, of course.  And the nice thing about nutrition research, as opposed to popular nutrition dogma, is that it shows us that a healthy vegan diet is less challenging than most people imagine.

The other good news is the growing availability of vegan choices in stores and restaurants. We still have a long way to go in that regard—often there is only one vegan offering on a restaurant menu—but it’s getting better all of the time. In a post last month, for example, blogger Erik Marcus pointed out the ease of finding vegan fare at fast food restaurants.

Many other blogs are endeavoring to make veganism less forbidding and more appealing by lifting barriers and emphasizing easy practices. For example, Chicago vegan Christine Cook is posting daily tips and menu ideas on her blog It’s Easy Being Vegan, and Daelyn Fortney has posted a Guide to Going Vegan (The Realistic Method) on This Dish is Veg.

Whether or not everyone will find it truly easy to go vegan, it’s definitely getting easier all the time. That’s the news that we need to share with new and potential vegans.

Reference:  Williams PG. Evaluation of the evidence between consumption of refined grains and health outcomes. Nutrition Reviews 2011 Epub ahead of print.

And if you’re looking to maximize nutrient intake with attention to just a few details, take a look at my post on the 7 Habits of Healthy Vegans on One Green Planet. (This is a very condensed version of a talk I’m giving in Chicago next week. Hope you can be there if you live in the area!)

This study was funded by the National Dairy Council and administered by the Dairy Research Institute. Two of the researchers work for the Dairy Research Institute. I don’t generally get too excited about sources of funding for nutrition research because they don’t affect the findings. They can affect how those findings are interpreted, though. Needless to say, I have a pretty different perspective from these researchers. But even so, I feel confident that the data fall in favor of plant sources of calcium.

Using both the USDA’s MyPyramid (the research was done before the release of MyPlate), and data from the NHANES study (a national survey of food intake), the researchers looked at what happens when you replace a serving of a dairy “composite” (a mixed serving of milk, cheese and other dairy foods) with a nondairy “composite” that provides an equivalent amount of calcium. The nondairy composite consisted of 71% fortified orange juice, 18% fortified soy milk, 10.5% leafy greens, and 0.5% fish with bones, reflecting average contribution of these foods to American diets.

So what happens when you replace dairy with this assortment of foods? Intake of protein, certain B-vitamins, phosphorus, and zinc drop. However, all were still high enough to meet the RDAs, with the exception of zinc which was marginally low. (Vitamin D was low in both the dairy-rich and dairy-free diets.)

Here are some other things that happened when dairy products were replaced with nondairy foods. The amount of saturated fat and sodium both dropped. And the amounts of vitamin A, potassium, and magnesium all increased. The study didn’t analyze vitamin C, vitamin K, iron or fiber, none of which are found in dairy products and all of which would be provided by the nondairy composite.

So we can flip this around and look at the effects of replacing plant sources of calcium with dairy foods: Doing so causes a drop in fiber, vitamins A, C, and K, and in the minerals potassium, magnesium and iron. Vitamins C and K, and potassium and magnesium are all important for bone health, by the way.

Had the study been done in lacto-ovo vegetarians it would have shown that those who remove dairy foods from their diet need to identify good sources of zinc and vitamin B12. But we know that, and we all—hopefully—make sure we are finding other ways to include these nutrients in our diets.

This research confirms that milk and other dairy products have nothing to offer that you can’t get elsewhere. And so there is never any reason to participate in the suffering that lies behind milk production.

Reference: Fulgoni VL, 3rd, Keast DR, Auestad N, Quann EE. Nutrients from dairy foods are difficult to replace in diets of Americans: food pattern modeling and an analyses of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2006. Nutr Res 2011;31:759-65.

The short answer is that you definitely need the flaxseed (or some equivalent food) and you may need the DHA supplements.

Flaxseeds and a handful of other plant foods provide an omega-3 fat called alpha-linolenic acid or LNA which is an essential nutrient. This means it is absolutely necessary in your diet. Best sources for vegans are flaxseed and flax oil, chia seeds, hempseed oil, walnuts or walnut oil, canola oil, and full fat soyfoods. You can check the vegan food guide to see how much of these foods to eat. (The information is in the bottom right section of the guide.)

The other omega-3 fats are DHA and EPA, two closely-related fats typically found in fatty fish, and to a lesser extent in some sea vegetables. They are not considered essential nutrients because humans can synthesize these fats from LNA. Whether we can make enough for optimal health is a big question, though. Vegans have lower blood levels of these fats than people who eat fish, but how much this matters remains unclear. The jury is still out on the health benefits of DHA and EPA intake. These fats may protect against heart disease as well as dementia and depression, but the findings are conflicting. The good news is that if you choose to take supplements of DHA and EPA (and I do), there are vegan sources derived from algae.

The important thing to remember, though, is that the two types of omega-3 fats are not interchangeable. Whether or not you’re taking  supplements of DHA and EPA, you still need a source of LNA, like flaxseeds. And, even with a good source of LNA in your diet, you may benefit from supplements of DHA and EPA, especially if you’re at risk for heart disease or depression.

Is it possible to maintain a weight loss? Absolutely. By no means do I want anyone to think that they are completely doomed to gain back weight that they’ve lost. But for many, long term maintenance of weight loss is difficult, and it’s good to understand that there are real reasons for this. In the meta-analysis that I referred to in my last post, the authors summarized some of this difficulty:

Health care professionals and participants often express frustrations, believing that if a reduced energy intake is maintained (or decreased even further as was done in some studies) weight loss should continue. This appears not to happen, even when weight loss interventions are continued. However, if weight-loss interventions are discontinued entirely, weight regain is likely to occur.

Although we’d love to say that the “new way of eating” that supports weight management eventually becomes second nature, the truth is that it’s a full-time job for some people. In the New York Times article referenced in my last post, Dr. Kelly Brownell of Yale University—who has been at the forefront of obesity research for decades—said this about people who successfully maintain a weight loss: “You find these people are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.”

An article in last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune summarized the strategies that have been successful for people registered with the National Weight Control Registry. This is a database of people who have maintained a weight loss of at least 30 pounds for a year or longer. Among their common habits: They practice “consistency — relatively little food variety and the same pattern daily; no splurging.” And they monitor themselves with weekly weigh-ins, and calorie or fat gram tracking.”

The Chicago Tribune touted this as “Good news on the weight loss front.” Seriously? It’s “good news” that some people maintain their weight loss only because they never have a treat, and they obsessively monitor every bite of food?

Certainly this is not true for every single individual who loses weight. Some people maintain their weight loss with relative ease. And I share these quotes from experts not to be depressing or discouraging, but so that you can have compassion for yourself if you haven’t been successful with weight loss. As well as compassion for others who struggle to lose weight. An inability to maintain a permanent weight loss is not a personal failure. And it does not mean that a person doesn’t care about his or her health.

So…should you try to lose weight?

I’m certainly not-anti weight loss, and I’ve given suggestions for how to maximize success with weight control. But whether or not you should be counting calories is a personal decision based on your own experience and goals. For those who have struggled unsuccessfully with weight management all of their lives, a healthy lifestyle that doesn’t focus on weight loss—exactly the same recommendation we would make to anyone, no matter what their body size—may be the better choice. (Take a look at the stories on the Stop Chasing Skinny blog for some inspiration.)

What’s the vegan issue? Whether or not someone will automatically lose weight on a vegan diet depends on what their diet was like before and their current vegan choices. But generally, veganism becomes a weight loss diet only when it incorporates enough food restrictions to guarantee reduced calorie intake. There is no such thing as an “eat all you want and lose weight” diet unless your food choices are pretty limited. This turns veganism into just another “diet.” And veganism—which is for everyone, whether or not they want to lose weight—is way bigger and better than that.

But the latest research on weight management—some of which was highlighted in a recent article in the New York Times (see below)—raises questions about the pursuit of a slender body.

The evidence suggest that the majority of people who lose weight regain as much as 95 percent of it within five years.   And it’s not necessarily just because people can’t stick with the plan that helped them lose weight.  Dieting changes metabolism in ways that boost hunger and affect calorie use. People who diet may have to exercise more and cut back more stringently on calories to maintain their weight loss compared to same-weight people who haven’t dieted. In short, significant weight loss sends your body into starvation mode where all it wants to do is accumulate fat.

Do people who lose weight on a vegan diet have any advantage in this regard? We don’t know. A handful of studies show that low-fat vegan diets—which achieve calorie reduction through food restrictions—produce weight loss in the short term, but none that show how people fare four or five years down the road. If they regain their weight, then they may perceive a vegan diet as ineffective or may perceive themselves as embarrassing vegan failures. (I wrote earlier this year about the potential problems that arise when veganism is defined as a “weight loss diet.)

But that’s just one issue. The other is that anywhere from 14 to 31% of weight loss is comprised of lean tissue—muscle and bone. When weight is regained, not all of that lean tissue is recovered. This is especially important as people age. Muscle loss—called sarcopenia—is common with aging and it’s linked to osteoporosis, risk of falling, and overall decline in physical function. The reasons for sarcopenia aren’t that well understood, but weight cycling sure doesn’t help. It can produce what’s called “sarcopenic obesity”—too much fat, too little muscle.

You can counteract the problem to some extent through diet and exercise. Extra protein may be beneficial for weight loss (and satiety), and it might protect muscle while you shed pounds. Beans are an ideal food in this regard since they provide both fiber and protein—kind of the dynamic duo for hunger management. But for some people on reduced calorie diets, it may be difficult to consume enough protein without including some soy products or veggie meats in menus.

The biggest problem occurs when people drop too many pounds. A meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that a weight loss of 3 to 4.3% of body weight is often successfully maintained over several years. While that may not sound very exciting, these small weight losses can have significant health benefits.

For many people, however—especially those who have dieted unsuccessfully numerous times—resolutions that focus on healthy lifestyle rather than on dropping pounds could be the best and smartest option. It’s hard to believe that, though, when everyone is telling you that you should be trying to lose weight. And the promotion of vegan diets for weight loss is a part of that relentless and potentially damaging message.

So, if you’ve been on the dieting merry-go-round over the years without much success, switch the substance of your New Year’s resolutions from weight to health:

• Be diligent about exercise, especially weight training. It’s crucial for everyone who wants to maintain good health as they age.  The Health at Every Size paradigm suggests that rather than planned “exercise” you should simply engage in activities you enjoy. I guess that might work for some folks, but it sure doesn’t for me. Since my favorite activity is sitting in front of the fire with a good book and a glass of wine, I’d be in trouble if I didn’t absolutely force myself to exercise. I do it because it’s good for me; it’s never especially enjoyable.

•  Eat healthfully. You know how to do this—pile on the veggies, beans and whole grains. Work on the problem areas that sabotage your health—whether it’s too many cookies, too much alcohol, or a love affair with potato chips. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that certain plant foods need to be banned. That’s a fad diet way of thinking.

•  Go vegan, or at least get started on the transition. Eating more plant foods can improve your health no matter what your body size. And, a vegan diet is guaranteed to make your diet more respectful and compassionate. I can’t imagine a better New Year’s resolution than that.

For more information, take a look at the excellent New York Times article referenced above

Here are references to some of the research discussed in this post:

Methods for voluntary weight loss and control. NIH Technology Assessment Conference Panel. Consensus Development Conference, 1992. Ann Intern Med 1993;119:764-70.

Newman AB, Lee JS, Visser M, et al. Weight change and the conservation of lean mass in old age: the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study. Am J Clin Nutr 2005;82:872-8; quiz 915-6.

Sumithran P, Prendergast LA, Delbridge E, et al. Long-term persistence of hormonal adaptations to weight loss. N Engl J Med 2011;365:1597-604.

Chaston TB, Dixon JB, O’Brien PE. Changes in fat-free mass during significant weight loss: a systematic review. Int J Obes (Lond) 2007;31:743-50.

Beavers KM, Lyles MF, Davis CC, Wang X, Beavers DP, Nicklas BJ. Is lost lean mass from intentional weight loss recovered during weight regain in postmenopausal women? Am J Clin Nutr 2011.

Lee JS, Visser M, Tylavsky FA, et al. Weight loss and regain and effects on body composition: the Health, Aging, and Body Composition Study. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2010;65:78-83.

Franz MJ, VanWormer JJ, Crain AL, et al. Weight-loss outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of weight-loss clinical trials with a minimum 1-year follow-up. J Am Diet Assoc 2007;107:1755-67.

Of the groups that are devoted strictly to promoting vegan diets, I’m pretty picky about where my dollars go. Given my own professional and activist efforts, I’m very disinclined to support those organizations that endorse questionable nutrition information, or that exaggerate health benefits of vegan diets. As I’ve noted many times on this blog, I think that those efforts are harmful in the long run to vegans and the animals we want to help.

And I have a fondness for grassroots efforts, even though I recognize that big and splashy media-savvy projects play a role, too.

It’s no secret that I have a soft spot in my heart for Vegan Outreach. And it’s not just because I recently co-authored a book with the group’s president. (I was a VO supporter long before that.) It’s because I appreciate their savvy and straightforward approach to advocating for animals. They target the sector of the population most likely to be receptive to a vegan message, they are impeccably honest in how the message is presented, and they work to maximize the impact of every dollar spent.

The type of work that Vegan Outreach does isn’t splashed across the news every other day but, there is evidence that their pragmatic and tireless efforts pay off big time for the animals. The people at Utilitarian Essays certainly think so. They say that “[A] single dollar donated to Vegan Outreach is expected to prevent between 100 days and 51 years of suffering on a factory farm.” It’s a big range, of course, since the numbers depend on some estimates. But even the lower end of that range is remarkable; it suggests that a $25.00 donation prevents nearly seven years of suffering.

Another organization that has been on my radar quite a bit over the past several years is Compassionate Action for Animals. This is a regional group based in Minneapolis-St. Paul. They are well-organized, and they employ an extensive array of grassroots activities to promote veganism and respect for animals. CAA says that they strive “to use the most accurate and reliable information available in our efforts to educate people about animals.” As a result, their website is a wealth of good, dependable information for activists.  I think they serve as a model for other city- or regional-based vegan activist groups.

And finally, I’m stepping up my donations to the Vegetarian Resource Group. This is another group that may lack the glitz factor, but they remain one of the handful of places on the internet where you can get unbiased, evidence-based, reliable information on vegan nutrition—which is way more important than being glitzy.

So that’s how I’m spending at least some of my money this holiday season. It’s for the animals, and I’m grateful to those who work with integrity and wisdom on their behalf.

Past research has suggested that young women who follow “vegetarian” diets are more likely to have restrained eating habits, or a tendency toward eating disorders—probably because some women with eating disorders adopt a vegetarian diet as a socially acceptable way of controlling food intake.

But these studies have typically lumped vegetarians and semi-vegetarians together and then compared this rather diverse group to omnivores. This new study is different, however, because it compared different subgroups of vegetarian and semi-vegetarian women.

In addition to describing their own general eating habits, the college-age women filled out questionnaires about their eating behavior and their attitudes toward food. They also answered questions about the factors that affected their food choices. The women were classified as vegetarian (including vegan), pesco-vegetarian, semi-vegetarian (no red meat), flexitarian (limited red meat), and omnivore.

There were several interesting findings. First, the semi-vegetarians and flexitarians showed more restrained eating behavior compared to both the omnivores and the vegetarians. In fact, the vegetarians and pesco-vegetarians were not at any higher risk than the omnivores in this study. Not only that, but among the vegetarian and “vegetarian-oriented” women, the more restricted their diets—that is, the fewer animal products they ate—the less likely they were to show signs of disordered eating.

The researchers theorized that the reason for this might be that semi-vegetarians and flexitarians are more likely to restrict animal foods as a form of weight control than vegetarians. They found that  “consistent with their restraint scores, semi-vegetarians and flexitarians reported that they were more concerned about weight control and less concerned about animal welfare than the other subgroups of vegetarians.”

This gives us some important insight into the issue of veganism and eating disorders. When young girls and young women adopt a vegan ethic, and change their diet accordingly, there is no reason to think they are at any greater risk for an eating disorder. However, a focus on weight control—no matter how it’s achieved—may raise risk for restrained eating habits.

Reference: Forestell CA, Spaeth AM, Kane SA. To eat or not to eat red meat. A closer look at the relationship between restrained eating and vegetarianism in college females. Appetite 2011. Epub ahead of print.