Health

Vegan Diets Are Safe for Children

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported about a preschool in Jersey City, NJ that offers only vegan food. The article kind of made me cringe. It made veganism look like a somewhat nutty, somewhat elitist diet that denies kids cupcakes at birthday parties.

But at the very least, it didn’t question the safety of vegan diets. An article in Slate magazine did question it, though. Science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer said that she “couldn’t help but wonder: Can kids actually get the nutrients they need on a […]

By Ginny Messina|2016-04-11T06:54:09-04:00April 11th, 2016|Tags: children, Health, Nutrition|25 Comments

Vegan Diets are Dangerous? Here is What the Research Really Says

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic suggest that vegans should know something about diet planning in order to make sure they are meeting nutrient needs.

Their conclusions were published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. The paper doesn’t say anything that is particularly alarming, and, with a few exceptions, there isn’t much in it that I would take issue with.

But the Cleveland Clinic press-released the findings, giving the media a chance to scaremonger about vegan diets—and you know how much they like to do that.

As is often the […]

By Ginny Messina|2016-03-19T11:49:20-04:00March 19th, 2016|Tags: Calcium, Fat, Health, Iron, Nutrition, Omega-3 Fats, Protein, vitamin B12, Vitamin D|14 Comments

Pinto Beans or Tofurky? How Food Choices and Motivations Affect Vegan Health

When it comes to vegan diets and health, a couple of misconceptions often pop up on blogs and in social media. One is that whole-food plant-based people are healthier than plain old vegans. Related to that is the belief that vegans motivated by ethics choose less healthy diets than those motivated by health.

Is it true? Do ethical vegans care more about animals than their own health? Research—or in some cases, the lack of research—casts some doubt on this.

Obviously, you can be vegan and still eat a pretty junky diet. There […]

By Ginny Messina|2015-03-16T11:23:18-04:00March 16th, 2015|Tags: Ex-vegans, Fat, Health, Soy, veggie meats, vitamin B12|43 Comments

Vegan Diets and Heart Health

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) publishes—in addition to their peer-reviewed journal—a glossy bi-monthly magazine with short articles on food and nutrition topics. It’s a nice magazine (although needless to say, the content doesn’t always make me very happy.)

The latest issue is devoted to vegan diets. I was invited to write an 800-word article on vegan diets and heart health for the magazine’s website, which you can read here. Unfortunately, they omitted the references I included with the article (it’s for dietitians, after all) so I’ll list them at the end of this post for […]

By Ginny Messina|2013-07-03T08:49:23-04:00July 3rd, 2013|Tags: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Health, Heart health|8 Comments

Notes from the 6th International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition

I spent 3 days at the 6^th International Congress on Vegetarian Nutrition this past week in Loma Linda, CA. Held every five years or so, the event is hosted by the School of Public Health of Loma Linda University and is considered the premiere conference on plant-based nutrition. It brings experts and researchers together from all over the world and its proceedings are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the most prestigious of all nutrition journals. I was honored this year (and a bit terrified, since I felt very much out of my league) to be […]

By Ginny Messina|2013-02-28T15:20:56-05:00February 28th, 2013|Tags: Calcium, Fat, Health, Nuts, Protein|46 Comments

Ten Tips for Staying Happy and Healthy on a Vegan Diet

There is a long list of reasons why people fail on a vegan diet and return to the world of cheese sandwiches and fish fillets. They might have developed overt deficiencies or vague symptoms of poor health. Some ex-vegans say that they experienced depression or foggy thinking or fatigue without animal foods. Others struggled with challenging social situations or with cravings for animal foods.

The following ideas for staying happy and healthy on a vegan diet are all things I’ve written about before, but I wanted to condense them into a sort […]

By Ginny Messina|2017-11-01T17:14:47-04:00September 12th, 2012|Tags: Beans, convenience foods, Ex-vegans, Fat, glycemic index, Health, Iron, legumes, Mental health, Nutrition, Omega-3 Fats, Resources, Supplements, Umami, vitamin B12, Vitamin D|77 Comments

When Vegans Get Cancer

The only thing that can make me forgive Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees for going over to the dark side (disco) in the late 1970s is the fact that he was a vegan—an “ardent vegan” no less, according to Wikipedia.

Gibb, who was only 62, died last week of colon cancer. It’s unfair when anyone dies of cancer at such a relatively young age, but especially so when they are doing all of the right things—Gibb didn’t drink alcohol either—that should protect against this disease.

I’ve lost three friends to colon cancer. Two were vegetarians who died in their early 50s, […]

By Ginny Messina|2012-05-29T09:48:53-04:00May 29th, 2012|Tags: cancer, Health|126 Comments

Vegan Diets, Critical Thinking, and 9 Blogs You Need to Read

I had the great pleasure of speaking to the members of the Vegan Chicago Meetup last week. In addition to being warm and welcoming, this is another group on my list of organizations that aim to promote an evidence-based approach to vegan advocacy. Before my talk on the Seven Habits of Healthy Vegans, event organizer Dave Sutherland introduced the group’s Vegan Chicago Baloney Detection kit—a guide to critical thinking for vegans, which is based on material from Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World.

Detecting baloney is no easy thing. Resources on veganism are packed […]

By Ginny Messina|2012-02-21T13:35:28-05:00February 21st, 2012|Tags: Health, Nutrition, Resources|40 Comments

Fat in Vegan Diets and Tips for Optimal Nutrition

In case you missed it, Jack had a good post last week about fat in vegan diets.

And if you’re looking to maximize nutrient intake with attention to just a few details, take a look at my post on the 7 Habits of Healthy Vegans on One Green Planet. (This is a very condensed version of a talk I’m giving in Chicago next week. Hope you can be there if you live in the area!)

By Ginny Messina|2012-01-30T11:44:19-05:00January 30th, 2012|Tags: Fat, Health|7 Comments

Vegan Nutrition: Sometimes the Devil Really is in the Details

Dietitian Elisa Rodriguez published a great interview with Jack Norris on One Green Planet last week. In talking about our book Vegan for Life, Jack noted that there are benefits to a “holistic” view of nutrition, but that his biggest contribution has most likely been in helping vegans understand that “micronutrients matter.” That’s because “being deficient in vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D, iodine, omega-3s, iron, or zinc results in real consequences.”

It’s tempting to think that eating a variety of whole plant foods—the big picture or holistic approach—without attention to detail, is good enough for meeting nutrient […]

By Ginny Messina|2011-11-15T11:21:04-05:00November 15th, 2011|Tags: Health, Nutrition|4 Comments