I came across a piece that I think might be of interest to others. Especially to those that like facts and figures. It’s one of the chapters in a nutritional guide. The guide was updated in the spring of this year. I’m not sure whether this sort of info was included in the previous version. But anyways, the book’s title is Nutrition Guide for Physicians and Related Healthcare Professionals. It’s intended for medical personnel. Precisely, for physicians, nurses, and other heath care practitioners that represent conventional (or mainstream) medicine.
As you may know from personal experience, conventional medical professionals look at human body from a perspective of evidence. Plus, most of the time they look at it as an assemblage of individual parts. And the most outrageous thing is, for treatments, they heavily rely on pharmaceutical drugs, antibiotics, and other wellbeing-destroying stuff.
What caught my attention is the following statement:
Vegetarian and vegan diets can be balanced and healthy for all stages of life, provided appropriate preparation and planning is given.
Then the chapter gets into the whats and whys regarding this claim.
Again, that’s a mainstream medicine! The one that says to get a shot to prevent a flu and prescribes Advil for a headache.
Note, “vegan diets” encompasses all plant diets. Meaning, it includes raw veganism. In fact, the diet was mentioned and described there. In other words:
A raw vegan diet can be balanced and healthy for all stages of life, provided appropriate preparation and planning is given.
It’s like your family doctor prescribing you a week of raw cranberries and grapefruits to get rid of your sore throat! Not bad for the days when the Big Pharma got nearly all the voice…
Now “all stages of life” means exactly that. It includes infants, babies, older children, pregnant women, and elderly people. Technically, the news about the parents who get charged because they’ve been “starving” their offspring shouldn’t be popping up anymore. And, really, shouldn’t have been at all (democracy has become a mere mask nowadays, and needs to be looked under some kind of a microscope to see it).
I was surprised that even fruitarianism was considered, as it’s quite restrictive in what you can have. Fruit is essentially what fruitarians live on. The fruit can be sweet, non-sweet or fatty, like apples, tomatoes, or avocados, respectively. I haven’t tried the diet myself but I always had an impression that it’s unsustainable in the long term.
Of course the key words are “provided appropriate preparation and planning is given“. This might be tricky. The trickiness lies in being able to acquire essential nutrients that are known to be present in small amounts in plant foods. The ones that are mentioned are iron, calcium, zinc, and vitamins B12 and D. I’d also add vitamin K2. In regards to iron, calcium, and zinc, my opinion is they can be obtained without much problem if you have various greens and veggies regularly (like kale, beets, spinach). So, in the end, I think it comes down to three: B12, K2 and D. Having said that, if research was to identify deficiencies of the Standard American Diet, which for the most part can be applied not only to Canada and US, but the whole North American continent, you can imagine how long the list would be!
A few other points from the chapter:
- in developed countries between 1 to 10% of people are vegetarians. The percentage of raw vegans is not there obviously. It’s negligible if you think about it. The countries considered were Canada, US, and countries of European Union
- majority of those on the plant-based diets, as you may guess, are ladies
- whatever diet you follow, it’s advised that it’s low in fat, sugar, and salt, while rich in fruit, veggies, wholegrains, and fiber. Nothing new, pretty much
Main references:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-49929-1_20
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-49929-1#toc
https://www.google.ca/ (image)