Yep, you saw that right. The problem with vegan diets. Coming from me! A vegan diet is one that abstains from eating any animal products. Meat (including Fish), Milk & other dairy, Eggs, honey (and then usually if you’re vegan you won’t wear leather or use animal tested products).
All good stuff in my book. So where’s the problem?
Well, in what I just said.
Eh??
A vegan diet abstains from eating the above. Fine. A vegan diet just tells me what you don’t eat. Not what you DO eat.
I can be a vegan living on junk food, crisps, chips, Oreo cookies (yes, they are vegan apparently!), processed foods and so on.
That’s not a healthy diet in my book. And yes, I do still eat the above sometimes. You may catch me with my hand in a giant bag of Pop Chips (my current favourite brand), but the point I’m trying to make is that vegan diets only describe what you exclude from your diet and not what you include.
That’s why I prefer to use the terms PANLO. Or more specifically PANLO 80/20 to describe what I eat. Plant-based, Alkaline, Natural, Live/Lightly Cooked, Organic. For 80% of the time or plate. More details on this eating approach here: http://harikalymnios.com/how-to-fuel-yourself-for-success-at-work-home-and-in-life-feel-super
In reality, when people ask I usually say vegan (or gluten free vegan, to be specific! Try finding choices like that around!). In actual fact I sometimes follow that with ME-gan, (my version of vegan), or if I have time and it’s appropriate – PANLO 80/20.
PANLO explains what I do eat. Vegan explains what I don’t eat.
That’s the problem with vegan diets. (I’m sure we can find a few others too – not least the fact when you say vegan, you can often get looks of horror or people trying to make an exit! Or that some vegans can be preachy, or with death on animal eaters. And I’m not hear to talk about those issues right now. There’s enough other people doing that).
What do you think about this? What kind of ‘diet’ philosophy do you follow? Let me know below.
Find out more about me:
http://youtube.com/thethoughtgym
