{"id":1489,"date":"2019-11-15T15:50:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-15T15:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/?post_type=health&p=1489"},"modified":"2019-11-15T19:20:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T19:20:12","slug":"health-risks-of-being-vegan","status":"publish","type":"health","link":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/health-fitness\/health-risks-of-being-vegan\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Risks of Being Vegan"},"content":{"rendered":"
Little grabs the attention quite like the latest health scare and whether it is a website trying to create click bait or a magazine or newspaper seeking to increase sales, a story about X, Y or Z either killing us or conversely giving us near-eternal life is never far away. Given this fact, it is no surprise that there are lots of vegan-based medical scare stories and articles claiming links between veganism and various illnesses, diseases and health issues.\u00a0But is there any truth in such stories and what are the real health risks of being vegan (or more accurately, the health risks of following a vegan diet)?<\/p>\n
So many of the stories that feature in even respected news sources are based on questionable \u2013 at best \u2013 science. Indeed, even some articles in well-regarded scientific journals tend towards the sensational rather than the fact-based and so picking out the truth from all of these stories is far from easy. Also, it is often the case that solid scientific research can be misrepresented by a headline that oversimplifies a particular issue or an article that fails to explain the caveats or confounding variables.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s why we\u2019re here, so before you start panicking and calling for the doctor after reading the latest vegan health warning, read on as we consider the possible health risks of a vegan diet (and if indeed there are any at all).<\/p>\n
Many people choose to follow a plant-based diet because they are keen on the health benefits of being vegan<\/a>. As such, to lots of people it will seem strange to suggest being vegan might actually be bad for their health. Nutritional science is a very complex area, with lots of interacting variables that mean it is very hard to categorically say one particular food, group of foods or even a wider diet of one sort or another is definitely giving health benefits or cause any health problems or nutritional deficits.<\/p>\n Unless we can clearly identify and understand the mechanism by which something is happening, the picture is often too unclear for any respectable scientist to make an absolute claim about a given food. For example, we know that vitamin C is essential for healthy skin and bones, wound healing and a number of other functions. But we also know exactly how this process works and the mechanics of how the body needs and uses vitamin C. And, it is also well understood what happens when someone has a vitamin C deficiency (that is, scurvy!).<\/p>\n In contrast, when it comes to a much broader issue such as \u201cbeing vegan\u201d, nobody at present can provide a detailed picture as to why exactly not eating meat, dairy, eggs and other animal-based products would be detrimental to health.<\/p>\n In essence, that is all we can say a vegan diet is: one without animal products. Beyond that, there is no such thing as a \u201cvegan diet\u201d because what one vegan eats can be so incredibly different to the diet of another vegan. The so-called vegan diet is actually an infinite number of different ways of eating non-animal foodstuffs. That spans everything from someone who lives on sweets, vegan ready meals and beer, right through to someone who is eating a meticulously planned and perfectly balanced diet packed with fresh fruit and veg, wholegrains, legumes and all the essential micronutrients the body needs.<\/p>\n Clearly, someone in the first camp has many more possible health risks than someone in the latter group. So, if we are asking the questions \u201cwhat are the health risks of being vegan?\u201d it is important to explain what we really mean and what sort of vegan diets are referring to.<\/p>\n As we have said, trying to get a clear picture of the pros and cons of any diet is very hard unless we understand what specific problems that way of eating has and understand exactly why they create a particular health problem.<\/p>\n There are various types of study that seek to look at this issue but all of them have problems. One report that recently made big headlines was about the idea that both vegetarians and vegans are at a greater risk of stroke<\/a>. The study behind this was published in the British Medical Journal and showed that those following a plant-based diet had a 20% greater risk of having a stroke.<\/p>\n The study was an observational one that looked at almost 50,000 people over a period of up to 18 years. It analysed information from the EPIC-Oxford study and looked at health outcomes for the group, of whom around half ate meat, around a third were vegetarian or vegan and approximately a sixth were pescetarian.<\/p>\n Whilst it claimed that non-meat-eaters had three more strokes per 1,000 people, because it was an observational study it is impossible to understand what precisely caused the strokes. Dr Frankie Phillips, of the British Dietetic Association, highlighted the drawback of such (observational) studies by saying, “They looked at what people ate and followed them for years, so it’s an association, not cause-and-effect.\u201d<\/p>\n Whilst the study did try to balance out factors, such as smoking, exercise and previous medical history, there was still no way of knowing what caused the higher incidence of strokes. As the BBC reported, \u201cThe association may have nothing to do with people’s diets and may just reflect other differences in the lives of people who do not eat meat.\u201d<\/p>\n This ultimately comes down to the issue raised earlier and unless we can very specifically isolate what it is about not eating animals that is a health risk and understand how that mechanism works, we cannot accurately say there are any health risks, per se, to being vegan.<\/p>\n The British Medical Journal<\/a> piece may not prove any direct link between the vegan diet and, for example, increased stroke risk but what it can do is act as a good starting point for further investigation.<\/p>\n The scientists involved thought that the increased incidence of strokes might be down to lower levels of vitamin B12<\/a>. They commented that further research was necessary to determine if this was the case but studying individual nutrients and establishing causality is far easier than when certain types of diet are being looked at in more general terms.<\/p>\n Moreover, whilst we cannot say there is a single entity that we can call a \u201cvegan diet\u201d, we can perhaps go as far as saying that there might be certain individual nutrients that vegans are more likely to be deficient in.<\/p>\n There are certain nutrients that are mostly present in animal-based foods or are best absorbed and utilised by the body in their animal-derived form. People are often concerned about protein but most people in the developed world probably eat too much, not too little, of this macronutrient and there are certainly so many great vegan sources of protein<\/a> that it is rarely an issue.<\/p>\n But what are the nutrients vegans might not be getting enough of that could, in a badly planned vegan diet, potentially cause health problems?<\/p>\nNo Such Thing as One Vegan Diet<\/h3>\n
Problems with Assessing Risk<\/h3>\n
Specific Nutrients<\/h3>\n
Potential Risks of the Vegan Diet<\/h2>\n