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Oct. 25th, 2015 02:57 amGood essay about how vegans torpedo themselves.
I've been critical of Virginia Messina, aka The Vegan RD*, for a long time. Jennifer Winograd succintly explains why.
A few of my own thoughts:
I'm very interested in the sociology of the hard sciences. What studies are decided on, and why that is; how studies are conducted, and why that is; how the results of a study are interpreted, and why that is; and how these interpretations are disseminated to the public, and why that is.
I'm not particularly academic or writerly. Language is not my best friend. But if I could, I'd like to come up with a critical theory of nutrition, informed by veganism and anti-speciesism, that draws upon the existing body of critical science studies as well as hard data. Because I really think that the current narrative being deployed by 'evidence-based' vegans (Virginia Messina and Jack Norris, and their followers) at best underestimates and at worst totally dismisses the effect of social construction upon both diet and the science of nutrition. Without critically examining why nutritional guidelines are what they are and how they came to be, their positions devolve into circular reasoning.
Their biggest concern is that many people who are vegan for a period of time return to eating animal products; to that end, they've accepted the premise that many vegans must be failing to meet their nutritional needs. By bringing the vegan diet closer to mainstream nutritional guidelines, they hope to strengthen the movement and retain more vegans. It's not scientific curiosity that motivates them, and that's fine, but they have to own it.
I like Jennifer's comparison of going vegan to quitting smoking. No, the two situations aren't exactly the same. But what it points out is that being vegan is not following a diet. It's quitting a certain class of substances. And even without physical addiction, there are a lot of reasons why quitting might not stick that have nothing to do with health. I'd argue that failing to eat enough calories, and/or bending to social pressure, along with simply wanting a position of power back, are enough to explain a large majority of ex-vegans. Along with positive encouragement (which may or may not take the form of nutritional advice), a more powerful social stigma against eating animal products would go some way towards preventing ex-vegans.
And yeah, nutritional advice can be helpful. But rigid guidelines -- and theirs are rigid, unrealistically so -- only stigmatize veganism. I'm fairly confident that no one has ever gone back to eating animal products because they didn't eat three or more servings of legumes a day. I like legumes, personally. But there are too many vegans who don't like them, or don't do well eating them. There's no point in pretending they don't exist, or in exaggerating the challenge they face. Not when protein (yes, including lysine) is found in sufficient quantities in most corners of the plant kingdom.
And I'd criticize their focus on meeting US dietary recommendations, particularly calcium. Most culture's diets contain ~500mg or less per day of calcium. It's been suggested by John McDougall** that, since the active transport pathways for calcium ions reach saturation at 500mg/24 hours, anything above that amount is not useful. Even if that proves not to be the case, without proof that vegans are in any more danger of calcium deficiency than milk drinkers, I'm skeptical that vegans have to pay particular attention to calcium and struggle to meet the US recommendation of 1000 mg/day, which has not been shown to have any preventative value. "Because an authority says so" isn't an argument.
There seems to be a need to look as rational as possible, both in the sense of 'as conventional as possible' and 'as data-centered as possible', among the skeptical vegan micro-culture. I fucking love science too, but I fucking hate the dismissal of philosophy, of sociology, of all considerations of the influence of culture, that is science fandom at its worst. With skepto vegans, it's their excessive focus on quantitative nutrition; literal bean-counting.
I haven't completely written off skeptical inquiry. For one thing, it was useful to learn that most B12 supplements are used in 'animal' feed***. I'd been avoiding synthetic B12 for many years, and had developed some symptoms of deficiency. Learning this fact put the final nail in the coffin of not supplementing. In the future I might make my own kombucha, or do something else; but for now the easiest way for me to get enough B12 is to periodically take a supplement. "Naturalness", per se, doesn't matter, and to be fair I should have taken B12 anyway. But the stigma was there, and stigma is important. Knowing that carnists are getting B12 from the same place as vegans takes all associated stigma off of veganism. I think vegans should be more scientific; scientific thinking sets you free from a lot of traps.
But ideology is always already there, and needs to be acknowledged as being there. Everything Messina and Norris write is shot through with ideology. Debunking obviously-wrong pro-vegan claims can strengthen their arguments. But I don't regard attempts to 'teach the controversy' and muddy the waters regarding nutrient intake as being particularly useful. If people want to eat a (veganized) conventional American diet, out of taste or habit, that's cool. And I don't deny it can be healthy. It's the insistence on it for health reasons, and for what I suspect are other reasons, that makes me tetchy.
(*The very name puts up a red flag! There are many vegan RDs, but she sets herself up as the sole authority.)
(**Yes, I quote his articles often. He's a jerk, but a smart jerk)
(***The words 'animal' and 'human' are put in quotes as the terms denote a power relationship within society, not the biological reality of species difference.)
I've been critical of Virginia Messina, aka The Vegan RD*, for a long time. Jennifer Winograd succintly explains why.
A few of my own thoughts:
I'm very interested in the sociology of the hard sciences. What studies are decided on, and why that is; how studies are conducted, and why that is; how the results of a study are interpreted, and why that is; and how these interpretations are disseminated to the public, and why that is.
I'm not particularly academic or writerly. Language is not my best friend. But if I could, I'd like to come up with a critical theory of nutrition, informed by veganism and anti-speciesism, that draws upon the existing body of critical science studies as well as hard data. Because I really think that the current narrative being deployed by 'evidence-based' vegans (Virginia Messina and Jack Norris, and their followers) at best underestimates and at worst totally dismisses the effect of social construction upon both diet and the science of nutrition. Without critically examining why nutritional guidelines are what they are and how they came to be, their positions devolve into circular reasoning.
Their biggest concern is that many people who are vegan for a period of time return to eating animal products; to that end, they've accepted the premise that many vegans must be failing to meet their nutritional needs. By bringing the vegan diet closer to mainstream nutritional guidelines, they hope to strengthen the movement and retain more vegans. It's not scientific curiosity that motivates them, and that's fine, but they have to own it.
I like Jennifer's comparison of going vegan to quitting smoking. No, the two situations aren't exactly the same. But what it points out is that being vegan is not following a diet. It's quitting a certain class of substances. And even without physical addiction, there are a lot of reasons why quitting might not stick that have nothing to do with health. I'd argue that failing to eat enough calories, and/or bending to social pressure, along with simply wanting a position of power back, are enough to explain a large majority of ex-vegans. Along with positive encouragement (which may or may not take the form of nutritional advice), a more powerful social stigma against eating animal products would go some way towards preventing ex-vegans.
And yeah, nutritional advice can be helpful. But rigid guidelines -- and theirs are rigid, unrealistically so -- only stigmatize veganism. I'm fairly confident that no one has ever gone back to eating animal products because they didn't eat three or more servings of legumes a day. I like legumes, personally. But there are too many vegans who don't like them, or don't do well eating them. There's no point in pretending they don't exist, or in exaggerating the challenge they face. Not when protein (yes, including lysine) is found in sufficient quantities in most corners of the plant kingdom.
And I'd criticize their focus on meeting US dietary recommendations, particularly calcium. Most culture's diets contain ~500mg or less per day of calcium. It's been suggested by John McDougall** that, since the active transport pathways for calcium ions reach saturation at 500mg/24 hours, anything above that amount is not useful. Even if that proves not to be the case, without proof that vegans are in any more danger of calcium deficiency than milk drinkers, I'm skeptical that vegans have to pay particular attention to calcium and struggle to meet the US recommendation of 1000 mg/day, which has not been shown to have any preventative value. "Because an authority says so" isn't an argument.
There seems to be a need to look as rational as possible, both in the sense of 'as conventional as possible' and 'as data-centered as possible', among the skeptical vegan micro-culture. I fucking love science too, but I fucking hate the dismissal of philosophy, of sociology, of all considerations of the influence of culture, that is science fandom at its worst. With skepto vegans, it's their excessive focus on quantitative nutrition; literal bean-counting.
I haven't completely written off skeptical inquiry. For one thing, it was useful to learn that most B12 supplements are used in 'animal' feed***. I'd been avoiding synthetic B12 for many years, and had developed some symptoms of deficiency. Learning this fact put the final nail in the coffin of not supplementing. In the future I might make my own kombucha, or do something else; but for now the easiest way for me to get enough B12 is to periodically take a supplement. "Naturalness", per se, doesn't matter, and to be fair I should have taken B12 anyway. But the stigma was there, and stigma is important. Knowing that carnists are getting B12 from the same place as vegans takes all associated stigma off of veganism. I think vegans should be more scientific; scientific thinking sets you free from a lot of traps.
But ideology is always already there, and needs to be acknowledged as being there. Everything Messina and Norris write is shot through with ideology. Debunking obviously-wrong pro-vegan claims can strengthen their arguments. But I don't regard attempts to 'teach the controversy' and muddy the waters regarding nutrient intake as being particularly useful. If people want to eat a (veganized) conventional American diet, out of taste or habit, that's cool. And I don't deny it can be healthy. It's the insistence on it for health reasons, and for what I suspect are other reasons, that makes me tetchy.
(*The very name puts up a red flag! There are many vegan RDs, but she sets herself up as the sole authority.)
(**Yes, I quote his articles often. He's a jerk, but a smart jerk)
(***The words 'animal' and 'human' are put in quotes as the terms denote a power relationship within society, not the biological reality of species difference.)
