The Vegan Diet: 5 Pros and Cons to Consider
By: Abena D
Tags: Health, Weight Loss, Vegan

A few points to think about regarding the vegan lifestyle

Photo by Adli Wahid on Unsplash

Just like vegetarian, the vegan diet excludes any kind of animal products, such as meat, fish, milk and milk products, eggs, honey, animal fat, or gelatin.

Some vegans opt for the diet because of health reasons or weight loss. For others, it’s for ethical grounds like preventing animal cruelty and eating more sustainable foods.

Even though many people have documented their vegan journey with fantastic results, some still find it tough to keep up with this lifestyle. Before you decide to take up the vegan diet, it’s a good idea to weigh the pros and cons and see if it’s the best fit for you.

Pros of the Vegan Diet

Whether you’re going vegan for ethical, health, or environmental reasons, the gains are considerable. So you can decide to plow this path if the benefits are relevant to you.

High Nutritional Quality

The vegan diet encourages you to load up on nutritious foods, including whole grains, fruit, vegetable, and legume. As it is plant-based, vegan food has low calorie and saturated fat content and is rich in vitamins, fiber, iron, magnesium, and folate.

A good number of people on regular diets lack the kinds of nutrients the vegan diet affords you. Research has shown overtime that of all types of diets, vegan reigns supreme in terms of the highest nutritional quality.

All of the high nutrient quality translates to remarkable health benefits for you. Studies suggest that there is a link between vegan and vegetarian diets and the management and a reduced risk of many chronic diseases. These include some cancers, heart disease, hypertension, obesity, high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, and eye-cataracts.

Better for the Environment

A good number of people are adopting a vegan lifestyle because they feel it’s sustainable for the environment.

There’s a growing concern about the influence of different livestock and their rearing practices in the environmental community. It is not like the typical dairy, meat production, and poultry farming. By cultivating vegan-friendly plants, you see that there is less resource use (land and water).

Then again, no animals get harmed or killed to produce vegan-complaint foods. Concerns about animal cruelty and the drive for more civilized treatment of animals are reasons many people opt for the vegan diet.

Not just this, veganism may lower the risk of global warming as cows emit more greenhouse gases (methane) than animals do. Some studies even suggest that the vegan diet trumps the popular Mediterranean diet in terms of maintaining the planet.

Promotes Mindful Eating

Mindful eating involves being conscious, attentive, and heightening the sensations and experience of the meal. Here, you need to concentrate purposely on how you eat instead of how much. You also don’t pay any attention particularly to the nutrients, or calorie count.

This practice is all about creating a healthier relationship with food, and many people have turned to mindful eating to deal with losing weight.

While the vegan diet and mindful eating are not the same, they share certain elements. Vegans are highly selective of the kinds of food choices and get rid of some food classes, unlike omnivores. They often practice mindful eating as a part of their meal planning process.

A case in point is the regular American diet. There is the ease of fast food drive-thrus, convenience stores, and coffee shops. You can quickly grab a quick meal without paying attention to the eating process — chewing, tasting, and savoring the meal until you’re full.

However, the vegan diet pushes you to find foods you enjoy and are suited to your meal plans. Or you may have to be careful, focused, and thoughtful of what you pick out to eat. All of these are critical parts of mindful eating.

Manage Food Expenses

The vegan lifestyle may help you to cut down on your food expenses. The catch is that it depends on what types of foods you consumed before choosing this eating style and what you decide to eat after.

The truth is that dairy products, meat, and seafood are costly. The prices of some ready-to-eat mixes like takeouts and TV dinners can equally be on the high side.

When you cut out these foods from your diet, you’re able to manage a considerable amount of food expenses linked to them.

Vegan foods are usually budget-friendly. No doubt, fresh produce and plant-based alternatives can be pricey, but they’re less likely to be as costly as a full animal-based diet.

Potential Weight Loss

Research links plant-based eating with significant weight loss. Yes, this may not be the driving force to your choice of going vegan. But be aware that taking up this lifestyle means getting rid is high-fat and calorie foods and potentially losing weight.

A vegan diet is a useful tool for improving body fat mass and weight. That’s why many people adopt veganism to manage their weight and prevent obesity. So if you struggle with sticking to a weight loss plan, the vegan diet may just be the answer to your prayers.

Cons of the Vegan Diet

While the vegan diet may be overall healthier for you and the environment, not everyone can adopt the lifestyle. Several drawbacks you may want to consider include:

Restricted Food Choices

Perhaps, the vegan diet is the most limited variation of a plant-based diet. If you’re currently on a regular diet of most kinds of foods, expect to cut out a large part of your standard weekly menu. This sort of limitation may be too strict and intense for some people.

You’re not just cutting out foods or products from animals, but also by-products including, milk, bones, leather, egg, and fat.

What’s more, numerous traditional home recipes, groceries, and restaurant foods usually have at least one animal by-product. For instance, you find animal fat in cake mixes, and omega 3 fatty acids in juice (from fish).

Many vegans tout the diet as one with a wide variety of food. But this is subject to what you may have been previously used to eating, causing it to seem restricted at the start.

Cause Potential Nutritional Deficiencies

While the vegan diet is generally healthy, it can be lacking some essential nutrients. Studies reveal that calcium, vitamin B-12, vitamin D, protein and omega 3 fatty acids are some of the nutrients vegan diets tend to be deficient in mostly.

We need calcium to form bones, aid muscle contractions, and other vital functions. To up calcium intake, vegans can eat more leafy greens, sesame seeds, some dried fruits, and calcium-fortified foods like yogurt, cereal, and plant milk.

Vitamin B-12, or cobalamin, is mainly sourced from animals. The body needs it to produce blood cells and boost nerve function. A lack of this nutrient can result in a chronic condition known as pernicious anemia. Good sources of vitamin B-12 for vegans include some fermented foods, seaweeds, and mushrooms.

Another nutrient the vegan diet is low in is protein. The good news is that there is a fix for this. The body requires building blocks referred to as amino acids to main the organs, muscles, and other vital functions.

Naturally, the body may not be able to produce essential amino acids. You can only get them from the foods you eat. Animal proteins are loaded with all the essential amino acids, while plant proteins lack one or more is. Hence, you need to eat a variety of food to get essential amino acids.

Most diets lack vitamin D because most of this vitamin comes from sunlight exposure. In the vegan diet, good sources of vitamin D include UV light- exposed Maitake and Portobello mushrooms. During the winter months, you can get vitamin D from fortified nut milk.

Finally, a vegan diet lacks two vital two omega-3 fatty acids called eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid. These are necessary for healthy brain, eye, and heart function. Foods like flaxseeds, chia seeds, pumpkin, walnuts, and soy provide an omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid. Your body then transforms this into the other two forms.

Hard Time Dining Out

It’s pretty easy to shop for vegan-friendly food — just look at the labels and read the product information. However, when you’re eating out at say a restaurant or a friend’s home, it is tricky to get access to the ingredient list. That’s why most vegans have a hard time dining out.

Not many restaurants provide details of vegan or vegetarian foods on their menu. Still, you may be able to make one from the salads or side dishes served. The gag is you need to ask to be sure that these dishes weren’t prepared with animal products.

At times, asking may not be particularly helpful. This is because even with the best intentions, staff or friends and family make wrong assumptions that plant-based foods are vegan as long as they don’t contain dairy.

This isn’t always the case as the broth in vegetable soup, for instance, may have been flavored with animal bone. Your best bet is to dine in vegan-savvy restaurants or better still, bring a recipe along to share and enjoy when eating at someone’s home.

False Hopes and Unrealistic Promises

Of course, a vegan diet possibly offer amazing health benefits and healthier weight, there is no fixed guarantee. It is not a quick-fix fad diet. You still need to pay close attention to the kinds and amount of food you choose to eat.

These days, there is an alarming rise in the number of unhealthy, heavily-processed vegan foods, containing just as much fat and calories as their traditional foods.

There is an increasing number of heavily processed vegan foods. Many times, these foods are just as unhealthy — containing more fat and calories — as their traditional counterparts are.

While the vegan diet has proven health benefits such as a lower risk of heart disease, you still need to put in the work. And for some people, this may be disillusioning and tiring.

You may need to become familiar with carefully reading nutrition labels and ingredient lists, especially in you decide to follow the route of consuming processed foods.

Foods that you may mistake to be animal byproduct-free may contain honey, gelatin, casein, whey, or any other non-compliant vegan foods. Hence, to stay healthy, you need to stick to foods that provide the necessary vitamins and nutrients.

Social Exclusion

Vegan diets may be popular and normalized now, but adopting this lifestyle may lead to unsolicited opinions from family, friends, colleagues, and other acquaintances.

Plant-based foods are readily available in most places. But understand that people who aren’t aware of ways to accommodate your food choice may exclude you from social gatherings.

Besides this, your diet can come under sarcastic scrutiny, or you may be invited and encouraged to try out foods that aren’t vegan-friendly. Others may question you and challenge your reasons for picking this lifestyle.

To deal with these issues, you can seek guidance from other vegans in your community and build a network. While you reach out to like minds, also exercise patience with those people in your circle who are not well-informed about the vegan diet.