Vegan Goes Carnivore, Gets Healthy

Vegetarian diets aren't as healthy as most people assume.  John Nicholson shared his story of transformation with The Independent.

Two years later, we decided to stop eating meat because we used to see all the cattle taken away to the slaughterhouse and we were growing a lot of our own food anyway. That's where the adventure into vegetarianism, wholefoods and healthy eating started. 

People didn't really get us and I was considered a bit of a freak for my diet. But then in the mid-Eighties, copying American guidelines, the British government's healthy-eating advice changed and it started encouraging people to base their diets on carbohydrates rather than protein and fat. By the early Nineties, the whole "five-a-day" thing came into play and diets that included a lot less animal and saturated fat and even vegetarianism became the default healthy-eating advice.

From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

There are a few points to make here.  First, note that government dietary recommendations changed (first in the US) in the late '70s and early '80s.  It just so happens that's when obesity rates began to skyrocket in the US.  Besides the chart to the right, you can also view a time progression that illustrates it even more vividly.  Is it a coincidence?  Possibly, but I don't think so.

Second, when one removes meat from ones diet, one has to make up the volume somehow.  Few "vegetarians" and "vegans" make up that volume with vegetables.  They make it up with grains.  Consequently, most "vegetarians" are actually "grainitarians".  The problem with basing ones diet on grains is that humans aren't designed to do so.  Our digestive systems can't extract a grain's full nutritional value, and grains aren't all that nutrient-dense in the first place, when compared to meat and veggies.  Plus, grains cause insulin spikes that lead to fat storage, and inflammation that leads to joint pain, digestive tract issues and even heart disease.  For a full list of issues with eating grains, follow this link.

Back to Mr Nicholson...

We were very smug about our lifestyle, which we thought was both healthy and morally correct.

Is anyone more sanctimonious than vegans?

But after about six or seven years of being vegetarian, we both started to get slowly and progressively more ill.  The first thing was I started to develop what was later defined as irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS.

Right on cue...

By 1998, it was absolutely chronic. I went to doctors but nobody had a clue what to do about it.... I became clinically obese. I’m 5ft 10in and at one point I was 15 stone [210 lb ~ OS]: quite an achievement on a wholefood, low-fat, (and by this point) vegan diet. On top of that I had one of the highest cholesterol levels that the doctor who took it had seen – 9.2 – and in 2001 they put me on statins.

Yep.  Multiple symptoms of excessive carbohydrate consumption, particularly grains.  Some people are more sensitive to it than others, of course, and Mr Nicholson is probably one of them.

I would take food diaries to the doctor, who would tell me everything was fantastic, and congratulate me on not eating butter, cream and cholesterol. When I asked doctors whether I should change my diet, they told me no.

Even doctors are subject to human failings, like following conventional wisdom despite all evidence to the contrary.

I felt upset to leave veganism behind and took some convincing. In the end, I thought I might as well give it a go. The first thing I ate as part of my new diet was ox liver, so I really threw myself in at the deep end.

Organ meats are some of the most nutritious stuff one can eat.

The second thing I ate that day was a rare steak. That was when I had a transformative experience.... After 24 hours, I never had another IBS episode again. It went overnight. 

I stopped filling my entire meals with carbohydrates – wheat, rice and potatoes – and introduced all meats, butter, cream, lard and goose fat.   

I dropped three and a half stone [49 lb ~ OS] within the first six months. And it wasn’t just weight; what was really freaky about it was that I dropped loads of body fat, going from 28 per cent to 13-14 per cent. In fact, the entire composition of my body changed so I went from being apple-shaped to triangular. And this wasn’t doing a new fitness regime, it was just a change in diet. Even my cholesterol has gone down (on a high-fat animal diet full of cholesterol!) and is now 5.1. I stopped taking statins three years ago.  

My new diet went against all the health advice at the time, which was pretty much eat less meat, fewer animal products, and eat more fruit, vegetables and wholegrain carbohydrates, but I’d never felt better.

Granted, not everyone's experience is as dramatic as Mr Nicholson's.  He's probably more sensitive to the effects of grains than most people, but everyone can benefit from a diet of meat, veggies, fruit, nuts and seeds, little starch and no sugar.