#but instead am very uncomfortable with the connection between veg diets and women going so widely unchallenged

[agrarianradfem]

The women and veganism post  Though I think many people are expecting a post outlining why I believe women shouldn’t go vegan, that isn’t actually the case. I don’t care if you’re vegan, want to become vegan, etc. I also don’t believe it’s impossible to be a healthy vegan. And I feel I need to toss the disclaimer on even though in none of my posts have I advocated against individuals choosing vegan diets, instead focusing on why veganism for humanity is, I believe, not a sustainable nor more inherently ethical diet. 

The history of much of vegetarianism is tied to religion, with vegetarian diets supposedly more religiously pure diets. Though a number of religions have had leaders advocate for vegetarianism, such as Buddhism, my studies and my audience are mostly Western, so it’s a more Western framework I will work within. Vegetarianism is also found consistently through the history of Christianity. As Aaron Gross, a Ph.D professor of theology stated, “‘One of the most striking things one discovers in comparative religion is that the potential moral danger of meat eating is a major theme across religious traditions’” (x). In Christianity, this can be seen with traditions of vegetarian monks, vegetarian Christian leaders, and the abstaining from meat during Lent. In the Bible, only once Eve committed the grave sin of eating the apple, did humanity begin eating the animals. Therefore, not only is consumption of meat tied to humanity’s impurity, but to Eve’s failings. Women are responsible, in Christianity, for the consumption of animals.

Never having recovered from original sin, women in the Christian church had to work harder to make it into heaven than men. During the Middle Ages, we see the rise of anorexia mirabilis ("miraculous lack of appetite"), which referred almost exclusively to women and girls who would starve themselves, sometimes to the point of death, in the name of God. Two of the most famous of these fasting girls, Mary of Oignes and Beatrice of Nazareth, both claimed to vomit from the mere scent of meat alone (Fasting Girls, Joan Jacobs Brumberg). Anorexia mirabilis was frequently coupled with other ascetic practices, such as lifelong virginity, flagellant behavior, the donning of hairshirts, sleeping on beds of thorns, and other assorted penitential practices. It was largely a practice of Catholic women, who were often known as "miraculous maids". With their markedly sinful bodies, these women refused food, mutilated their breasts and hips, and inflicted other pain on themselves in order to become ‘more pure.’ Although today, devotion to God as a reason for limiting diet is no longer popular, women have substituted a body marked sinful because of women’s weakness derived from Eve for a body marked sinful by body fat. Although I’m not saying that veganism is an eating disorder, a simple good search of ‘why should I go vegan?’ returns page after page of results that highlight that veganism will help you lose weight, banish cellulite (a female secondary sex characteristic), and get rid of lower tummy pooch. Get rid of your marks of gluttony. This is especially true with raw veganism pages. When you click on videos made by vegans, you stumble upon videos like this (x) where the video host uses the words ‘clean’ to discuss the vegan food and how she feels cleaner eating her raw vegan diet. Veganism is still tied to purity with this emphasis on ‘cleanliness.’ Clean eating turns up instagram accounts of vegan (and vegetarian, though they often post a lot of vegan recipes) social media influencers who promote how ‘clean’ they feel and how ‘clean’ the food is. Sometimes fish gets a pass on being impure (a similarity with Christianity).

The focus on clean eating (and the secondary benefits like ‘detoxing your body of toxins’ which your liver does anyway) reaches religious fervor. How can you tell? Many ex-vegans, especially popular bloggers, when they come to decide veganism is no longer for them, they post these incredibly long posts about why they are no longer vegan, many saying they feel run down, have low iron levels, hypothyroidism, or blood sugar control problems. One blogger, coming out as no longer vegan writes: “My body started craving the “bad” stuff. Namely, meat.” (x). When attempting to exit veganism, some popular ex-vegans have received death threats and hacks (x), (x). When purity ideology leaks into diet choices, especially when applied so aggressively to women (I haven’t found death threats and comments to the same degree with male ex-vegans, in fact didn’t see any), then this is quite coercive. For women looking to leave veganism, this backlash can be incredibly harmful and could keep them vegan even if they are feeling sick while being so. Stop moralizing food - it perpetuates a culture extremely detrimental to women’s health (which is what we all want anyway). On the topic of health, vegans and vegetarians like to cite the Seventh Day Adventist study on longevity as proof that vegetarianism and veganism increases lifespan by about ten years. Yet, when compared to the Mormon Longevity Study, there is no significant difference. The Mormon study finds that Mormons, who as a population eat more meat than Adventists yet have the same strong community ties, focus on spirituality and family, and abstaining from alcohol and smoking, have a lifespan of 9.8 years longer than the average American (x, only easily accessible source though many popsci articles will cite the 10 year number for adventists). Therefore, it appears that meat eating is not the tragedy to human health the Adventist study appears to demonstrate. Additional studies used to support vegetarianism and veganism, like the China Study and the Seven Countries Study, have been proven to have extremely poor study design (x), (x). So a vegan diet can be healthy, but the connections to purity, the ideological fervor and anger at ex-vegans, and the weak science backing veganism as a panacea need to questioned, especially because 79 percent of vegans and 59 percent of vegetarians are women. I have too many oreo and chikin strip gobbling vegetarian and vegan friends who firmly believe that just because they are getting adequate grams of protein and supplementing with b12 that they are being healthier than meat eaters (and let’s all admit to the popular ‘unhealthy vegetarian/vegan facebook memes we’ve all seen). Of course the standard diet of the Western world isn’t healthy - there are so many oxidized fats in fast foods, too many calories, and too much sugar - but that doesn’t mean that moving to a whole foods diet is less healthy than a vegan diet. Make the choice that works for you, but please remember on a class analysis scale that nothing, especially something so important as diet and so dominated by women, is above criticism. I don’t buy that women are vegetarian/vegan at higher numbers just because women are more compassionate/health conscious than men and I don’t think you should either.