My first year eating vegan

It is now a year since I went vegan, and I wanted to blog about the experience. In some ways it has been incredibly easy, particularly when I've had the time to explore new foods and recipes. In fact that's been an exciting aspect of it - a great many foods and recipes that I have tried over the last year I may never have tried had I not gone vegan, so paradoxically, vegan eating has expanded my culinary experiences! On the other hand, when out and about, when time is short, or at some restaurants or other's houses, it can be quite tough in a 99% non-vegan world.¹ Possibly the hardest thing is dealing with people thinking you've gone nuts, or maybe that's just me being paranoid! Fears for my sanity aside, one common reaction from others has been, and continues to be, concern for my health. Touching, but quite unnecessary! I think the issue is exacerbated by my slender build, which means that as I lost weight with the dietary change, I was told by others at times that I looked gaunt. However, I am extremely confident that my health has only improved since going whole-foods plant-based. In fact, there should have been more fears for my health if I had stayed with my former dietary habits, and I have data to "prove" it! :)

Pre-vegan
Early last year I was fed up with feeling unhealthy. Although I was not overtly overweight or ill, I was often lacking energy and always craving something - another coffee, some chocolate, etc - to "get energised". I didn't like the direction my health was heading, so I started reading various books on longevity, health and nutrition. In February, I changed my eating habits to cut down on high-GI starchy foods and eat more legumes and protein-rich foods, based on Tim Ferriss' book. This included lots of lentils, but also salad greens, plus chicken, kangaroo and tuna. I ate some pretty weird stuff during this period (just ask Tash!), especially at breakfast. Lentils, spinach and a couple of boiled eggs was a staple.. makes my stomach turn to think of it now. I also got into some fairly light exercise.

Before I started this, I took some baseline measurements, including weight, %body fat, circumferences and cholesterol levels. Below, I'll share how these things have changed since February last year.

I started feeling more energetic pretty quickly, and having some goals was good. I lost a couple of kilos and then got a bad case of the flu and unwillingly sweated off some more.

Vegan, whole-foods, plant-based eating
It wasn't until May that I read "The China Study" and decided to go vegan. I started playing around with new recipes, etc around mid-May and then had my last meat meal on 4 June. Since then I'd say I have knowingly been 99+% vegan. The < 1% are when I've been caught unprepared, particularly early on, by cheese or other dairy products. I'd guess I'm probably about 70-80% whole-foods, with sugar, oil and other processed foods hard to avoid.

Most importantly, I feel so much better than I did 16, even 12 months ago. I never feel lethargic even though I generally have been sleeping 1-2 hours less per night. I never have sugar/fat/salt cravings. I also feel a sort of spring in my step, although this quickly became the new norm. One of the most striking things is how much better I feel after meals. After a healthy, whole-food vegan meal, there isn't any of that sleepiness you get after a heavy animal-product heavy meal. I used to catch every cold being passed around but have caught one, maybe two at most and they have been very mild.

Now for the numbers... a lot of these haven't been updated for a while, but things have been pretty settled the last 6 months or so, so I don't think much would have changed.

Cholesterol
I had my total cholesterol measured at 5.1 mM on 11 Feb 2011. This doesn't alarm GPs and doesn't cross the 5.2 or so barrier that is the general warning level in Australia. Certainly, heart disease risk escalates appreciably from 5.2-6.2 and dramatically above 6.2, but people with levels of 5.1 still die from heart attacks. In fact, in the US, 35% of heart attack victims have cholesterol levels between 3.9 and 5.2 mM. Cholesterol levels also correlate with other chronic diseases, like strokes, type 2 diabetes and many cancers. During the China Study research in rural China (where heart disease was very rare at the time), the average cholesterol level was 3.3 mM and the range was 1.8-4.4 mM. Additionally, a trio and well-respected heart disease researchers and doctors (including Dr Bill Castelli of the famous Framingham Heart Study), say they have never seen a heart disease fatality in a patient with cholesterol below 3.9 mM.² Surely that's where you want to be on the cholesterol scale?

I was very confident from the science I had read, that my cholesterol would drop to below 150, and I don't want to be an unnecessary drain on the medical system, so I've only had one subsequent cholesterol check-up this Feb. Unsurprisingly, it is now in the "heart-attack proof" zone, at 3.4 mM.

% Body Fat
Body fat percentage is a strong indicator of risk for a number of diseases. The American Council on Exercise has some guidelines on percentage body fat for men.³ Getting below essential body fat of 2-5% is dangerous. Body builders often encroach on this limit on competition day. Depending on sport, athletes typically are 6-13%, while "fit" men are commonly 14-17%. "Average" is 18-24% and obese is anything over 25%. In February last year, I started out at 23.8%, and by August this reached 17.9%. I'm actually a couple of kilos heavier now than last August, so I presume I would be at the lower end of the Average bracket.

More importantly from a health perspective, though, my abdominal fat (aka visceral fat) went from 20.6 to 9.9%. Abdominal fat is highly associated with negative health consequences, such as diabetes type 2, metabolic syndrome, cancer, heart disease etc. Some hypotheses relate to the proximity of fat in this region to the portal vein and thence the liver.

Waist circumference
Australian government guidelines warn against waist measurements above 94 cm for men. I was surprised I was a smidge above this last Feb, but I may not be measuring very well. Nevertheless, this is certainly in better territory now.

Well that's enough of my gory personal details for now.

1. According to a 2009 survey of 1,202 Aussie adults, 5% identified as being vegetarian and 1% as vegan, although the numbers strictly adhering to those eating styles was significantly less.
2. The China Study, p. 79.
3. http://www.acefitness.org/blog/112/what-are-the-guidelines-for-percentage-of-body-fat/

Dukan and Atkins

Long time no post! I've heard lots in the media about the "Dukan Diet" lately, so I decided to look it up. Apparently this diet has been popular in France for some time, but has only just really made it here to Australia, and at a casual glance it looks scarily similar to the Atkins diet. The big issue with low-carb diets like Atkins and Dukan is that although most people lose some weight, they actually get less healthy, sometimes dramatically so - such as the sudden cardiac death of a 16-year old. It is timely that the latest two videos on NutritionFacts.org relate to Atkins-style low-carb diets. No surprise that for anyone wanting to lose weight and get more healthy, I reckon a whole-food plant-based diet is the way to go. It's pretty simple really - eat more plant products in their most unrefined state and get rid of animal products and refined sugars, fats and oils. If you like something a bit more programmatic, there are plenty of possibilities, eg. the Engine 2 Diet or Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live are two of the more commercially successful.

Part 1:




Part 2:

The Mad Cowboy

Howard Lyman, aka "The Mad Cowboy", is a remarkable man. If you don't have an hour spare to take in this whole talk, watch the first 15 minutes to hear most of his story. He is an entertaining speaker, with a few funny one-liners, including some about mothers-in-law. The rest of the talk deals mostly with the court case against him and Oprah - seems the audience were a bunch of legal types. Still interesting, if you have the time.

PS I have removed ads from the blog - they were ugly and not making any money to put towards charity anyway.

Bias in nutrition research

One of the most confronting things I have discovered this year is just how pervasive big agri-business is in spreading misleading nutritional information. One way they do this is to fund or sponsor research studies (see video above). Although it is at the end of the book, one of The China Study's most interesting sections was about this. Not only do the big dairy, meat, egg, etc companies and associations sponsor research that just happens to come out with favourable results, but they have representatives on all the important decision-making boards, committees, councils, including those that formulate dietary recommendations, such as the food pyramid taught in schools. If I had not read about it from a reputable source and seen it corroborated numerous times since, I would have just put it down to crazy conspiracy theorists, but it is scarily true. Do you find it hard to believe that dairy can really be that bad for you? Where does this warm and fuzzy glow about dairy come from? In part, taste preferences dictated by our hard-wired tendency to seek high calorie, high fat, high protein, animal-based foods. But, we are also assaulted from a young age by dietary recommendations and advertising telling us that dairy is an essential part of a healthy diet - recommendations drafted with the help of dairy industry representatives!

Well, most of the detailed information in this area comes from the USA. It couldn't be that bad here in Australia, could it? Wrong! Here is a recent example I saw; Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) fund research projects each year. This is a small blurb circulated around university research offices earlier this year:

MLA's Human Nutrition Research Program is seeking applications for expressions of interest for research projects which will increase understanding of the Nutritional value of red meat, contribution of red meat to health and effective, healthy and sustainable red meat dietary strategies for promoting health and managing health conditions

How unbiased could the research possibly be when the grant descriptions are as loaded and directional as this? Oh, and by the way, you can read more here, including how the Australian Government matches MLA funding dollar-for-dollar. That's right, our tax dollars go towards helping a red meat industry body fund studies "to provide credible and sound nutrition evidence to support the essential role of Australian red meat in a healthy diet." Meanwhile, billions more of our tax dollars go to treating cancers every year, with even the very conservative Cancer Council admitting that red meat consumption is associated with increased cancer risk.

Book Review: The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss (Pt 2)

The author of this book is a marketing aficionado and he has accrued himself a very sizable following - one of his blog posts has over 4,600 comments!  The book has been in the best-seller lists since publication December last year, particularly in the US, it has been right at the top of "diet" bestseller booklists and it has over 1,500 reviews on amazon.com already. By comparison, The China Study - published 2006 and possibly the most remarkable book I have ever read - has 'only' ~ 1,000 reviews. The 4-Hour Body is a fairly lengthy book, coming in at 592 pages; I think large parts of it are based on Tim Ferriss' blog posts. In fact, you can read much of the content of parts of this book for free by reading old posts on Tim Ferriss' blog.

Basically, the author says he has spent a lot of time "self-experimenting" and the book details what he has found. I'm going to try to summarize each chapter in a single sentence each, followed by some analysis.

The tomato effect

I don't want this blog to become just a syndication of NutritionFacts videos, but I thought this one was too good to pass over. It is also highly relevant, considering the focus I have previously put on diet and heart disease - including the work of Caldwell Esselstyn.

Check out these lines from one of the papers highlighted:

The fact that a low-fat, fibre-rich vegan diet is likely to reduce risk for most types of cancer, ischemic heart disease.. obesity, diabetes, hypertension, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, gallstones, renal stones, appendicitis, diverticulitis, hiatal hernia, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, and possibly the chief metabolic complications of pregnancy - disorders which collectively are responsible for the majority of the deaths and hospitalizations in Western society - should be sufficient to recommend it.

...

I suspect that the simple injunction, 'Do not eat animal products' has the potential to do more for world health than all of the abstruse wisdom in all of the world's medical libraries.

Book Review: The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss (Pt 1)

When I started this blog, one of the first things I wanted to do was write some reviews of books that I have read this year that have launched me down this health + nutrition road. Or, as some may call it - obsession! :) The problem is that some of these books are so packed with good info (yes, I'm looking at you, China Study), it is daunting to even think about reviewing them. Yet, what has really delayed me is that I wanted to go through these books in a roughly chronological order, so it shows how my thinking has evolved over the course of the year. The speed bump comes due to the fact that "The 4-Hour Body" was the first book I read on this journey, but it is a probably the trickiest for me to write about. I have decided to "serialize" my review into multiple blog posts, so that it is less daunting!

Around the start of this year, I was feeling rather unhealthy. I felt unfit, unwell in many respects and overweight. The latter might come as a surprise to people who have known me for any length of time, as I have always been of very slender build (a greyhound as I heard one GP say). Indeed, for my height, the number on the scales was perfectly normal. But, I knew I was 8-10 kg or so heavier than when I felt my healthiest, and after a very inactive past few years, it certainly wasn't muscle. A pot-belly on a skinny dude isn't much more use than on a solid guy. In fact, percentage-wise its probably even worse! Perhaps most worryingly, I found it hard to stay on top of sugar cravings and unhealthy snacks. So, I had a vague idea I wanted to lose some fat, "get in shape" and most importantly, feel healthy again.

Another bit of background - I read fairly widely, and often in areas that may surprise some people, eg. investment books, organic gardening, motivational, parenting, biographies, productivity, popular science, psychology, etc. One book I read not too long ago was "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss. I'll let you read up about it if you have never heard of it. Even if I only take something small from books like that, I find they give me some inspiration. It was certainly an intriguing book at the time.

When I found out early 2011 that Tim Ferriss had another book, despite the title, I was interested in reading it.

Next installment coming soon...

Eggs and cholesterol

I was confronted with wall-to-wall ads for "World egg day" when I visited Yahoo today. The video above covers some of the reasons why you might want to make it "World egg-less day."

Yet, vegans and other ethical eaters would not eat eggs even if they were the extremely healthy. Why so? Don't the hens just give up the eggs for us to eat? What's the harm? "Battery hens" or "cage eggs" are the common responses - hens being forced into incredibly tight wire cages in lightless barns, unable to move or see daylight. Yet, vegans and many other ethical eaters don't eat "free range" eggs either. What's with that?! Well, there are two ways of looking at it. The vegan ideal is to avoid contributing to animal exploitation, so it wouldn't matter how well the hens are treated - they could be in your backyard - they are still being exploited. What about people who abstain for less idealistic reasons? Two main things:

Charitable giving

A quick note that I will post in the not-too-distant future about poverty and charitable giving and the book that made me start thinking about this - hence the link that now resides in the top right of the side-bar to thelifeyoucansave.com. You may also notice a number of links to Amazon.com products - anything purchased from amazon after clicking through to their site from my links will result in a small commission for me. Any revenue from this blog will be donated to Oxfam Australia. Until 30 November, donations to their East Africa Food Crisis Appeal will be matched by the Australian Government, so that will be the first destination.

Peter Singer interview

When we were young(er) and childless, we used to watch Talking Heads on ABC fairly regularly - quite a nice casual interview show. Here is an interview with Peter Singer from 2007. If you don't know who Peter Singer is, suffice to say that he is a remarkable Australian who has had a great worldwide influence. I found the interview interesting. Parts 2 and 3 are featured below...

Part 2:


Part 3:

Best speech you will ever hear?

Best speech you will ever hear. That's the title of this YouTube video with over 300,000+ views. You can be the judge. I will not try to prejudice you one way or another. To help you, though, I'll also point you towards this insightful critical appraisal (below). Save it for after you've watched the whole of Gary Yourofsky's speech, though.

Steve Jobs dies at age 56

Whether you are an Apple fan-boy/girl or not, you have to admit that Steve Jobs changed the world through his company and vision. He passed away yesterday, aged 56. He was a rare 7-year survivor of pancreatic cancer, almost certainly due to having a much less common, less aggressive form - an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. I unknowingly, and coincidentally, posted about pancreatic cancer just last night.

If you haven't already seen it, below is a short inspirational video of Steve Jobs addressing Stanford University students.

Pancreatic Cancer - Largest Ever Prospective Nutrition Study

How did I miss this one?! To give a little background, my main research project at the moment concerns pancreatic cancer. Until we started on this project, I knew nothing of this disease. Now, I know it is the most deadly major human cancer. The survival stats are grim. The most commonly quoted – 5-year survival – is only 5%. Compare that to other common cancers: breast - 87%, melanoma - 86%, prostate - 95%. An even more telling statistic is the median survival time - only around 6 months for pancreatic cancer. That means most newly diagnosed patients won't see out a year. Surgery is normally not an option and/or ineffective; most patients already have metastases at diagnosis; radiation and chemotherapy have minimal effect on disease progression. It is a truly scary disease, and, although the odds are slim, my hope is that my research group may be able to contribute in some way to improving our understanding of the disease, at a biochemical level. Maybe even contribute towards the development of new, more effective treatments.

So, when I become aware that the largest prospective nutritional study ever published shows strong, statistically significant links between animal fat intake and pancreatic cancer, and that other studies show similar links with animal protein and lactose to pancreatic cancer, it strengthens my resolve to remain on a plant-based, whole-foods diet. How could I go to work every day with an aim to contribute in some small way to lessening the burden of this disease, while at every meal consuming foods that are unequivocally associated with its incidence?

Ranking anti-cancer veges

For a nutritional science geek like me, the new NutritionFacts.org site is a must - check it out if you're interested in these kinds of things. The site and its informative videos are delivered by Dr Michael Greger, whose aim is to put up a new short video every day for a year. No mean feat considering how thoroughly researched his videos are. What's more, he has put up a vast number of "back-catalogue" videos.  When I first discovered it, I spent way too much time looking back through these and one of the most interesting was "#1 Anticancer Vegetable." There is also a prequel to this - "Veggies vs Cancer."
These kinds of studies have a lot of caveats and have to be taken with a grain of salt, but nevertheless, I think it is interesting, and the big picture stuff - ie. what veges have the biggest anti-cancer effects - certainly fits in with epidemiological and population studies.

Veggies vs Cancer:


#1 Anticancer Vegetable:

Extremism

"Don't do nothing because you can't do everything. Do something. Anything!"

   - Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

For generally good reasons, most people are very wary of extremism. Extreme political or religious views have resulted in some of the world's worst tragedies. Unfortunately, a vegan diet is viewed by many as extreme. If you forget about cultural conventions, and really think about it objectively, choosing not to eat animal flesh, milk or their eggs isn't all that extreme. Even influential avid meat-eating food critics like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (The Guardian, UK) and Mark Bittman (New York Times) are espousing the importance of markedly decreasing our meat consumption

I think many people who might agree with the logical reasons for eating plants - health, ethics or environment - but just can't bring themselves to change, are scared off by the finality of it all. "What, never taste meat/cheese/eggs again??" And so they do nothing. The biggest benefits to health, animal welfare and the environment, I believe, are going to come from fully adopting a whole-foods plant-based diet, but this is just too hard for many people to do, let alone all-at-once.

Well, it doesn't have to be binary - black or white; vegan or carnivore. There are so many other ways to approach this, and change doesn't have to be instantaneous. I think the important thing is to set yourself some rules or guidelines, because the "gonna cut down a bit" approach doesn't work, as most weight-loss dieters would know. Here are some possibilities:

1) Trial period
Try going 100% whole-foods vegan for a pre-defined trial period, say 1 month. You probably want to have a lead up period to explore new recipes, etc first. Many people who suffer chronic health and/or weight problems take this approach and find their health improves so dramatically and they feel so good that they don't go back to their old ways. This is the approach advocated in the very popular Engine 2 Diet book, which points out that even those who go back to eating meat, etc. find it easier to scale right back on these foods compared to previously. The advantages of going cold turkey (literally) are that: (i) you are more likely to see health benefits, (ii) the boundaries are clear-cut and easy to remember, (iii) tastes adapt. The last one is very significant, because by going cold turkey, you give your body a chance to respond. It is known that fat receptors get down-regulated over a period of weeks, salt sensitivity very quickly adapts to reduced salt intake, cravings for sugar decline, etc.

2) One meal at a time
What about moving to a vegan breakfast? My favourite is porridge with fruit and soy milk, but there are so many other possibilities. If you're a cereal and milk kind of person, most cereals are already vegan. Try every non-dairy milk available at the local store - most have soy, rice, oat and almond. Chances are you can find one that is at least bearable, maybe even palatable. Now, try using that one for a week,.. two weeks. It is surprising how quickly tastes adapt. Once breakfast is sorted, try veganising lunch - there are lots of vegan sandwich fillers. Salads are a great vegan lunch that's healthy. You can quickly add chickpeas from a can to make it more filling and give extra texture, without taking much effort. For dinner, you might have some current dishes that are already vegan and some that can be veganised with little effort. There are also vegan versions of just about every recipe you can think of - try googling "vegan" + your dish's name. Best of all though, check out some vegan food and cooking websites and try some wholly new dishes. There are so many good vegan recipes online.

3) Weekday vegetarian
One approach that has become popular is the "weekday vegetarian." There's a TED Talk (free) and even a Kindle book ($2.99) on the topic (I haven't read it). For people who remain to be convinced of the ethical issues surrounding animal products or just cannot bare to change, but are aware of the health and environmental issues, and want to do something about it, I think this is a very powerful approach.

4) Meatless Monday
A small, but positive step in the right direction is gaining popularity, particularly in the USA - Meatless Monday.

Whatever the approach, doing something is always going to be better than doing nothing.

What's more, it is never too late! I will end with a link to an example of this. In 2009, Former High Court Judge, Michael Kirby, at age 70, was confronted with the facts about modern animal agriculture and decided to change his eating habits. Read about his experience in this 1 October 2011 article from The Australian.

Healthy foods keeping the kids happy

I thought this story on the 7:30 report last night was interesting - in summary, a school in South Australia has found a "dramatic effect" on kids behaviour (for the better!) when they switched to a diet free of "artificial colours and preservatives" for just two weeks. A (somewhat cynical) scientists' point of view could be that it is all just psychosomatic, but luckily I'm not that cynical. :) However, I did think it was interesting that there were a few shots of the kids eating fruits etc during the story. Maybe "artificial" stuff the kids ditched also tended to be highly refined, high saturated fat, high sugar, high GI, low fibre "convenience" foods. And just maybe they were replaced with more whole food items like fruit: rich in vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants, fibre, lower GI, higher in complex carbs and lower in fat? Personally, it doesn't matter what the mechanism(s), the point is that it is likely that less refined foods, either because or in spite of lacking "artificial" ingredients can improve some/many/most children's behaviour.

A Cure for Diabetes (Type 2)

Science news today - a team at the Garvan Institute in Sydney announced they have found a gene implicated in the development of type 2 diabetes following high fat intakes. Kudos to them. The press release ends with speculation about the future development of drugs to target this "to see whether we can protect against or even reverse diabetes in mice." This is pretty typical in most basic medical research in other debilitating disease areas, eg. cancer. What the article doesn't make clear is that type 2 diabetes is overwhelmingly a disease of diet and lifestyle, which can be cured today in the majority of cases, with no new drugs and at no great expense.

A dangerous idea

Jonathan Safran Foer is in Australia for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I found his book "Eating Animals" to be one of the most thought provoking I have ever read, and I could identify with him - a 30-something recent father who had been on and off vegetarian, and was re-examining what he ate and why. Click through to the link above for a little SMH article about him and his visit, but if you like to be challenged, provoked or inspired, I dare you to read Eating Animals.

Underwater astonishments

OK, I'm a bit addicted to TED Talks, but this video was too awesome not to share. Specifically the octopus at the end (it's only 5 minutes)...

Can we eat to starve cancer?

This TEDTalk video is about looks at angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels) and its role in diseases, particularly cancer. Notably, the speaker shows a list of foods with known anti-angiogenic properties...