Vegan diets have been growing in popularity over the last decade. Roughly two million people identify as vegan in the UK and this year 580,000 signed up to participate in Veganuary.1 The UK is the number one leader in vegan product launches and vegan takeaway orders quadrupled between 2016 and 2018.2 Commonly cited reasons for taking up veganism include animal welfare concerns, adopting a healthier diet, and environmental concerns. This article explores vegan diets – are they all they’re cracked up to be?
Basic Nutrition
There’s a reason why one of the most repeated pieces of nutrition advice is to make sure there’s variety within the diet. For optimal health, our diet must include a variety of vital components made up from macronutrients and micronutrients, which will come from a variety of different foods. For a well-functioning, healthy body, the best thing you can do is to make sure your diet covers all these essential nutrients:
Macronutrients:
- Fat – important for vitamin absorption, insulation and energy storage
- Protein – the ‘building blocks’ of the body and important for growth/healing
- Carbohydrate – best energy source, important brain fuel
Micronutrients:
- Vitamins and minerals – their presence is vital for the body to be able to smoothly perform normal day-to-day functioning
Different micronutrients play different roles which is why it’s so important to include a wide variety of foods within the diet to make sure you’re hitting them all. For example, Vitamin C is linked to better immune function which means a stronger ability to fight off colds.
Let’s talk about vegan diets…
Vegan diets are typically promoted as very healthy diets, commonly cited that they are based on eating fresh fruit and veg, with lower saturated fat intakes due to not eating any meat or dairy. This certainly may have been true many years ago, however nowadays, there are so many highly processed vegan products on the shelves, that adopting a vegan diet doesn’t necessarily mean eating lots of fresh food.
Vegan Diets and Nutrition
A vegan diet can be a healthy diet, if thoroughly researched and thought through. However, deciding to go vegan without carefully considering your nutritional needs could be potentially harmful. As previously mentioned, our diets need to include a good variety of vitamins and minerals for optimal health. As humans, we evolved as carnivores and from a basic biology standpoint, we were made to eat meat and animal products. Some of our most important micronutrients, such as Vitamin B12, are only available from animal products. Therefore, if you choose to adopt a vegan diet, it will be necessary to take supplements as your diet cannot naturally provide you with everything you need.
It’s important to make sure you’re getting enough nutrients at any age, but especially so if adopting a vegan diet as a child or teenager. There is already concern that teenage girls don’t have sufficient levels of iron, leading to anaemia. A vegan diet would increase this risk as red meat is a reliable source of iron. Calcium is another nutrient to keep an eye on in younger people whose bodies are still in a period of development. Calcium is vital for strong healthy bones and teeth. Dairy is a great source of calcium so a lack of this in the diet would increase the risk of calcium deficiency and stunted growth.
Protein intake is another consideration. It’s true, there are many sources of plant protein, such as lentils, beans, soy etc. However, these foods don’t necessarily have a high level of bioavailability. Bioavailability is the amount of available nutrients which can be absorbed into the body from a particular food. This rate depends on things such as whether we have the right enzymes to break foods down, fibre content, and how the nutrients are structured within the food. Animal protein has the highest bioavailability, for example we can absorb 98% of the protein contained within an egg. However, the protein in plant sources is tightly bound and just because a food contains x amount of protein, it doesn’t mean we absorb and get the benefit from it all. A lot of it will pass through us and be excreted.
A vegan diet isn’t automatically a good quality diet. Due to the rising popularity of veganism, retailers are catering more and more for vegan diets which means a high availability of vegan fast foods, ready meals and desserts. Whilst it’s great that vegan diets are more catered for than ever before, it also means that it’s possible to have a vegan diet which is entirely made up of ultra-processed foods with no fresh fruit or vegetables. For example, you can call yourself vegan for the good of the planet and just eat a diet of chips with no variety. This has potential for nutritional deficiencies and health problems.
Vegan Diets and Environmental Impact
Vegan diets are largely pushed as the most sustainable diets for the sake of the planet and future populations. Yes, the world needs to reduce its meat consumption, however if hypothetically everybody ate a vegan diet and we stopped having cattle, it would actually be unsustainable for the environment. Cattle play a vital role in biodiversity and maintaining topsoil, let alone they make use of a lot of land which wouldn’t be useful for any other purpose. They play an important role in our ecosystem.
Another environmental consideration is water usage. Vegetables use up a lot more water in production than animal products. For example, avocados which tend to be grown in subtropical regions, need huge levels of water irrigation. Surely, when trying to reduce our carbon footprint, we need to consider the environmental impact and source of all of our foods, not just animal products.
Following the same theme, vegan doesn’t necessarily mean lower carbon footprint. Many of the components which make up vegan diets will have been flown halfway across the world from other countries. Eating locally sourced animal products could have a lower carbon footprint then vegetables which took a lot of water production to grow and were flown halfway across the world. Additionally, with the rise of industrially produced vegan products in supermarkets – these products also come with a carbon cost from production and packaging.
If not vegan, then what?
If you’re wanting to adopt a healthy diet with the lowest impact on the environment, veganism isn’t necessarily your best option. Instead, why not consider choosing a diet which is predominantly plant-based, with a small proportion of meat and/or animal products such as eggs? You’d be getting a varied diet for optimal health, plus from an environmental viewpoint, a focus on buying local, seasonal produce will mean a lower carbon footprint.
Did you find this article useful? Why not share it online? If you’re unsure about what type of diet is the right one to adopt for you, why not book your free 20 minute discovery call with Hattie now!
References
- Veganuary (2022). Veganuary in numbers. Available from: Veganuary 2022 | Home | The Go Vegan 31 Day Challenge (Accessed 12th January 2022)
- Viva (2022). Statistics about Veganism. Available from: Statistics about veganism | Viva! The Vegan Charity (Accessed 12th January 2022)
