Warning: this may turn into a slight rant.
I enjoy watching vegan youtubers, I think their lifestyle is fascinating and I wish I had the self-control to eat vegan for a week. But one thing I cant stand is when vegans pretty much bash other diets. As someone who sees herself working as a nutritionist later on in life I think that someones diet is personal to them. Of course there is a difference between eating healthy and eating unhealthy but there are multiple ways to eat healthy. So when I found myself watching videos from certain vegan youtubers replying to other youtubers videos or commenting on non-vegan diets and making absolutely absurd statements that had not an inch of truth to them, it got my blood boiling a bit and I decided I needed to put in my two-cents.
When vegans say that you will get fat from eating fat: Please go read a metabolic biochemistry textbook, you need fats in your diet. Fats contain something called essential fatty acids, and as the name implies these fatty acids are essential. This means we need them in our diet and that our bodies aren’t capable of producing them on their own. There is however a difference between fat from a battered sausage and fat from an avocado, or from salmon. Know the difference between healthy fats and unhealthy fats. Oh also! One gram of fat contains 9 kilocalories while one gram of protein or carbohydrates contains only 4 kilocalories, so you get more bang for your buck when you eat healthy fats.
When vegans say that you shouldn’t recommend a high-protein diet: Is too much of one type of food ever a good thing? No but just as with fats, protein is constructed from amino acids, and some of these amino acids are essential. Once again meaning we need to obtain them from our diet. Do vegans have a point when they say that people don’t need to eat a chicken to get their protein? yes they do, protein can be obtained from many food sources but an easy and quick way to get all your essential amino acids at once is to eat an egg white. They don’t only contain all the essential amino acids our body needs, but they also contain these in the right amounts!
When vegans say that having a high-carb diet is optimal because all your cells run on sugar: Yes, yes your whole body runs on glucose and glucose is sugar. But once again before you start to make statements like that, go read a fucking textbook. Your body needs fats and it needs proteins and it needs certain vitamins and minerals to function properly but you know what your body doesn’t need? carbohydrates! and you know why? because our bodies are so wonderful and have evolved in such a way that any sugar our body needs for energy can be produced by the body from substances attained through eating fats and proteins. Vegans however are right when they say that carbohydrates provide the body with a fast source of energy. Since carbs are already in the form of glucose, or fructose, or galactose they are more easily utilized as energy whereas protein and fats need to be metabolized and transformed to release their energy.
So moral of this story/rant is that before you go making a video criticizing what some one else has chosen to eat, do your research. Don’t just make blind statements because you’re a vegan and you feel fine eating your high-carb diet. Have some common courtesy and respect for other peoples choices, or at least make sure that if you are going to criticize the way someone eats that the information you’re providing is accurate.
