Are you run down? Uninspired? Overweight? Loosing your hair? Not smelling too fresh? Malnourished? Overnourished? Too fat? Too thin? Too old? Too slow? Has your head come off? Well worry no more! Because now, for a limited time, when you go vegan you’ll be better, faster, stronger, thinner, younger, more attractive than every before, and markedly less decapitated! But don’t just take my word for it! Check out these studies! No time for the fine print? They say go vegan! Veganism: the blanket solution for everything that’s every gone wrong in your life and the world ever. Hi it’s Emily from Bite Size Vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. Recently I released my second interview with long-time vegan, ultra-athlete, and registered dietitian Matt Ruscigno, wherein we discussed the problem of exaggerated vegan health claims, as well as Matt’s simplified approach to nutrition. In that video, Matt said a couple of things that didn’t go over too well with many of you, some of which were interpreted as a license to eat animals and their byproducts. As the video didn’t really give adequate context to or time for Matt’s thoughts, which is on me, we wanted to do a follow-up video delving deeper into his arguments for accuracy when it comes to vegan health claims. Before we get into it, I wanted to address something important. A good number of the comments on Matt’s last video were personal attacks against him, some very scathing in nature. Now I am never in favor of censorship, nor do I feel I have the right to tell anyone their opinion, but I would ask that even if you disagree with a guest of mine, which even I do sometimes, to please phrase your disagreement without personal attacks. The people I have on my channel are giving their time freely to share their expertise and insights. You may not like or agree with what they or I say, but I’d simply request respectful discourse. This being YouTube, I’m aware that isn’t necessarily going to happen, but I wanted to at least put it out there. As a consolation, perhaps, you are free to write whatever attacks against my character you desire. Enjoy. Now let’s dive into the discussion of the dangers of exaggerating vegan health claims. Emily: Matt, I wanted to thank you for coming back on to the channel and taking time out of your schedule to be here and to go into some more depth about some of these concepts. Matt: Yeah, I’m happy to be here and love chatting with you and love talking about this. Emily: What to you is the danger of exaggerating health claims when it comes to the goal of creating more vegans in the world? Matt: Sometimes it looks like vegans will say anything to convince people to be vegan and that I think is problematic. Let's point to the evidence when people say “Well can I be healthy?” Yes you can. Here is the evidence that shows you can get the nutrients you need and you can even reduce your risk for disease. Getting people to eat healthier is a multi-billion dollar industry. We have all these supplement companies and Naturopaths that want to sell you all sorts of goofy mushrooms from South America and essential oils that absorb through your skin and make all sorts of health claims and I don't want veganism to be in that category. So let's get veganism out of that world of making crazy health claims. I'm wearing two hats because I'm first and foremost an ethical vegan, I have been vegan almost 20 years now and I have also been in the nutrition field for another 12 or so. The reason that I find this so interesting is that science is very complicated and there are a lot of factors to take into consideration when we are talking about diet and health outcomes and we have lots of evidence that eating plant based has benefits and I do a lot of talks with non-vegans at professional conferences and what not and I say look we are really lucky we have decades and decades of research, you know, longitudinal studies like the Adventists health study and then also some short term studies showing what mechanisms of plants are beneficial: the fiber, the antioxidants and the nutrient density. We have all this evidence that points to eating more plants is beneficial. But a distinction is that doesn't equate to veganism they're are not the same and that's the point that I try to make. Emily: So even if these studies aren't speaking to strict veganism we also have a good number of studies even going back quite some time looking at the negative impact of animal products on health and with those, even if we have the studies that you are talking about these longer term studies aren't saying necessarily strict veganism with these other studies and of course we have now the world health organizations has come out with classifying processed meat as a carcinogen how can we look at those studies then at least from the health perspective and not say that okay eating any animal products is bad and is unhealthy and thus veganism is the ideal from a health perspective Matt: I think like the WHO report is really helpful in showing that animal products aren't health foods. They may supply some nutrients that people need and that is true and this is what the meat industry loves to point to it's an important part of a healthy diet, blah, blah, blah. What they leave out is that you can easily get these nutrients from plant foods, but what the evidence points to is something like the WHO is that these products should be reduced. Let’s say you eliminate processed meat and red meat, your average person who isn't a vegan or thinking about veganism is going to say: ok then I will eat more chicken, turkey, eggs, I'll drink dairy. That’s how they interpret it, my point is to vegans and advocates of veganism to make sure we are not seeing this only through our vegan lens. That there is an important distinction because people want to continue doing what they are doing and that is eating animal products they want to keep eating animal products. How do we get them to not? Well, I think we point and focus on the ethical argument and then when they ask questions about health we can say: well, we have all this evidence that says vegans are very healthy and that veganism can even help reduce chronic diseases because we do have that evidence, does that make sense? So, that is where ethics comes in, you can't argue against the suffering that animals go through in order to produce food, you know, that is something that we can always point to and to me a much stronger argument and that ethical veganism is different than plant based for health, they are different things and I think that a lot of people know this and understand it but sometimes in promotion the two get confused. I will give you an example, like Dr. Esselstyn has done fantastic research as well reducing heart disease and he has the papers to back it up, he has been doing this a long time but his plan doesn't include oil, he is very much against oil, olive oil, any oil. So, as vegans do we point to this and say: Hey look go vegan and that means no oil. Do we need to be that strict? Well, that is where it gets complicated. Emily: One of the concerns that came up in the comments section of your previous video was you had mentioned something about how you have seen there is evidence of people that have been on paleo diet even and reduced cholesterol. One of the concerns that came up was this could be number one a momentary reduction, the cholesterol could go down but what are really the long term effects? Cholesterol levels are one indicator of health or they are a biomarker they are not necessarily talking about disease outcome. Do we have any studies on the long term impact of either paleo or eating animal products in general versus the long term effects of veganism and a more holistic perspective on that? Matt: Got it, So when I bring up paleo in these kind of talks my point is that when paleo folks can also see research through their own lens and they can point to peer reviewed studies that show look lower cholesterol levels, lower weight, all sorts of things are reduced and this is legitimate research that is showing this but an important difference is with vegetarianism and veganism we have decades of research paleo does not have that. Almost no other dietary pattern has the depth of research that vegetarianism has. You know, veganism on a lesser scale. We look at the first Adventist health study which followed folks a few decades ago and about half of those people were vegetarian and that's where the evidence points to: look these folks live longer, their life expectancy is being increased if they are vegetarian and that is great evidence but only a very small percentage of them were vegan. Now we have the Adventist health study 2 which follows 100,000 people it's a humongous cohort, maybe the biggest that has ever existed. Now 10% of that group is vegan, which is great, because we have shown an increase in the number of vegans within Adventists and I think they are ahead of the curve with plant based nutrition so it's great to see that there is an increase there and we will see that in the rest of the population and so we can actually say: it's not just cholesterol levels which are one risk factor but it's all of these risk factors are adding up to point to longevity. This all points to lower rates of these chronic diseases. Another important consideration is the concept of risk. There are many risk factors and what we can do by eating plants and good nutrition, is reducing those risk factors. That doesn't mean that you won't get that disease, it means you are much less likely to. Do some vegans get cancer? Yes. Do some vegans get heart disease? Yes. Is the risk reduced for the population? Absolutely. But those are two different things, you know, we can't make claims that are absolute and that's an important distinction because I see vegans doing that too often. Emily: Personally I always say I can eat really well, I can do my fitness routine and things like that and I would not be surprised if I died early because of stress, even as a vegan. Matt: Right and so let's take this idea of stress and we can relate it to Dr. Ornish and his groundbreaking research in preventing and reversing heart disease. He really is ahead of the curve, amazing research, he showed that you can reverse a disease, which is a crazy concept: you have it, you do some things, you don't have it anymore, that is phenomenal, right? But, his research involved meditation and stress reducing techniques and that affects our health, like you said, and his diet also included low fat dairy and fish. That is not veganism, right? We use this to promote veganism but the diet he was using was not totally vegan. What does that mean, well it complicates things for us. The reason I talk about this stuff is because occasionally I will have someone at one of my talks say "Well, I hear all this and I see all this evidence but you have to be a raw food vegan that only eats non-GMO and organic. That is the only way to eat healthy. I'm like well...show me the evidence. Well everyone knows this, haven't you seen the vibrations pyramid? I'm like what are you talking about? You know, and these are people who are advocating for veganism and they are very very strictly defining it. I think that is problematic because what if that is the only vegan, non-vegans know, this person talking about the vibration pyramid and you have to be raw vegan to be healthy. Those things aren't true, that's not real and to me that's what problematic. Fake meat, vegan meat, whatever you want to call it, you can say oh it's processed it's not part of a healthy diet, you need to eliminate processed foods. Well, the Adventists eat fake meat in a can. It's an important part of their diet. You go to Loma Linda and the shelves are stocked with all sorts of fake meat that is in a can and these are the people where our strongest evidence comes from. Well, they are eating it so does that mean you have to eat it? Well, I wouldn't make that claim. But I would say that you can eat it, right? So let’s not get, we get caught up in these details, you know, that eating some veggie sausage with your dinner will kill you and you might as well be eating the real thing. I have heard vegans say that and it is not the case. That is the danger of this, getting too caught up in these health arguments. Emily: Alright, well thank you so much again for your time I really appreciate you coming back on and kind of going into greater depth with this. Matt: Good, happy to. I hope this deeper look into this important topic was helpful in clarifying Matt’s position and lending proper attention to the issues. As Matt said, we have decades of research on our side on the health aspects of eating a plant-based diet, and we certainly have iron clad ethics to back up any doubts. Personally, if being vegan was the most unhealthy way I could eat, I’d still be vegan, because the impact on the planet and more importantly the animals, is undeniable. Fortunately, a whole foods plant-based diet just happens to be ridiculously healthy as well. Now I’d love to hear what you think about the need for accuracy when it comes to the health side of veganism. What are your thoughts on what Matt had to share? Let me know in the comments! If you enjoyed this video, give it a big thumbs up. If you’re new here, do hit that big red subscribe button down there for more awesome vegan content every Monday, Wednesday, and some Fridays and to not miss out the on the rest of the Vegan Athlete series. If you want to help support Bite Size Vegan, check out either of the support links in the video description below or click on the Nugget Army icon or the link in the sidebar. Now go live vegan, keep nutrition simple, and I’ll see you soon. I wish veganism fixed everything... My life would be awesome...