Lierre Keith, small farmer, author of The Vegetarian Myth, was interviewed on the Anxiety Summit by host of the Anxiety Summit, Trudy Scott, Food Mood Expert and Nutritionist, author of The Antianxiety Food Solution.
Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet
- How young girls are being targeted by vegan groups
- Lierre’s story and the health challenges she faced: hypoglycemia, anxiety, bone pain, fatigue
- Moral vegetarianism or veganism and factory farming
- The importance of topsoil and how it’s disappearing
- The nutritional deficiencies of a vegetarian or vegan diet: B12, fats, amino acids like tryptophan, iron, vitamin D
- The mood benefits of grass-fed red meat
- The problems with processed soy
Lierre shares some of her story and why she wrote her book:
I get a lot of emails from people who have joint problems on this vegan diet, and I can explain to them what they’re doing and why they have to stop. And I have this sort of cautionary tale: “This is how bad it can get, and the damage can be permanent.” So there was that.
Of course, I had the depression and anxiety. It was this terrible sense of apathy, pointlessness, you know, that terrible gray fog that you get when you are experiencing that level of nutritional deprivation. There’s just no way to keep a steady mood when your brain is that deprived. So I really lost 20 years of my life just to depression. And I would say that’s probably the number one reason that I had vegans reach out to me because they’re so exhausted and they’ve got this terrible depression and anxiety, and they don’t understand why.
She shares about the horrors of factory farming:
we can start with factory farming, and I think everyone with a pulse can agree that this is a horror on every level. It’s a terrible waste of all our resources, all this ridiculous amounts of grain that goes to feed them, and the lives that they lead are absolutely miserable, it makes them sick. If you’re eating factory farm beef, you’re eating an animal that probably had liver disease, probably had holes in its stomach, was absolutely miserable for the last two months of its life, and was toxic through and through from all the horrible stuff that leaked out when their livers aren’t functioning and they’ve got holes in their stomach. Their whole system just goes septic; and that’s what you’re eating.
And a lot of the vegetarians and vegans have this strange idea – it’s just an ignorant idea – that somehow this is inevitable in the raising of meat, and it’s not. It’s actually a very bizarre moment in history.
Here is Lierre’s wonderful book – The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
Leirre also shares this author and book as another resource:
Denise Minger, is a wonderful young woman who’s a recovering vegan. She’s written a fabulous book about her experience, and the USDA food pyramid, and what this kind of diet has done to public health; that’s what happened to her.
Here is Denise Minger’s book Death by Food Pyramid: How Shoddy Science, Sketchy Politics and Shady Special Interests Have Ruined Our Health
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I found the talk about vegetarian diets interesting. I have been a vegetarian all my life and certainly have not had the problems that you allude too. It’s all a matter of the choices one makes. Nor do I feel anyone tried to influence me one way or the other. I wonder what you ate to have the effect you did.
Renee
Hi Renee
Thanks for sharing and I’m so pleased you have not had health problems. I have just found that folks who are prone to mood issues – anxiety, depression, irritability, anger, low blood sugar symptoms etc – do better with animal protein. This is why I invited Lierre to share her story.
I ate a lot of processed soy products (soy milk, soy cheese, soy yogurt and gosh, even soy “butter”, tofurky etc) in the USA and much of it was, unknown to me at the time, mostly GMO too. We also ate plenty of healthy veggies (I’ve always loved my veggies), lentils, chickpeas and other legumes, plus grains (other than gluten grains).
Trudy
In the Eat Right For Your Bloodtype diet, type A does well on a vegetarian diet. I don’t follow that diet but I do believe blood types must mean something.
I’m not type A and have estrogen dominance. I was mostly vegetarian, eating a lot of soy, and suffered from the nutrient deficiency both Trudy and Lierre discussed 🙁 Eliminating soy and eating high quality pastured animal products helped me heal as well.
With Hashimoto, I have to have animal protein to heal. And, it is working. We too, ate lots of soy, GMO etc., which triggered the Hashimoto.
Currently, we have 4 friends that are vegetarians, and they are coming on strong about why we have to become vegetarians. We respect their decisions, we respect that every person is different, and we don’t understand their mission to to convert everyone to their belief system. We never experienced that before. And, when we have parties, we accommodate all of our friends food sensitivities and preferences. We wish we would receive the same gift back.
I’m glad Renee did not have the experience we did. It is nice to hear her story.
Thanks for sharing Karin – we live and learn with our diets don’t we? often the hard way unfortunately!
I agree that we need to respect other decisions in all areas of our lives – and this is one of them for sure
And yes, it’s good to hear Renee’s story
Dear Trudy, this is my second season listening to you interview and I just had to say you are doing an excellent job! I like many of your skills – you stop & summarize, touch on all the points that are being made, allow space for the speaker to present, ask questions directly and with thought, keep the interview moving along, just great. Thanks so much for your hard work and attention! There is a lot I could say about the science behind animal protein in one’s diet and development of the human body… I spent 15 years being a vegetarian, with times of veganism, in my reproductive years. Several miscarriages led to lots of biological study. Once I decided to add new zealand lamb in my tomato sauce, I was able to carry a pregnancy to full term. So thankful for her presence and abundant joy and will be certain to enrich her thyroid development with some fish broth. Many well wishes to everyone’s choice in food and best decisions to nourish their beings, Rachel
Thanks for your lovely feedback Rachel 🙂
And thank you for sharing your wonderful story about you and your baby girl – big smiles here 🙂 She’s a lucky little girl to have her mom so informed
I love this and agree: “Many well wishes to everyone’s choice in food and best decisions to nourish their beings.”
Trudy
Soy has high phytates, what about nuts and other seeds?
Hi Sheri
Yes, nuts and seeds do – which is why soaking helps or why some say to avoid them (like Dr Peter Osborne)
Trudy
Trudy,
A huge thank you for inviting Lierre Keith to this summit. I’ve studied both health and sustainable ag for years and have listened to more summits and seminars than I can remember, but I don’t believe I’ve enjoyed anyone’s talk more than Lierre’s. Her story was most interesting and her knowledge is spot on. She is a unique person of real vision and obvious character. I’m sorry she had the struggle but pleased we all are benefactors of it. Thank you, Lierre
Mike
Thanks for your great feedback – Lierre will be stopping by the blog and I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear this. If you haven’t yet read her book, do get it – she is a beautiful writer! and of course goes much deeper than we could in an hour interview
I am also sorry she had to struggle but am also pleased we all are benefactors of it. She really is very special
Trudy
This interview was excellent. I appreciated getting all the specifics and details. (And ditto to everything Rachel said about Trudy’s skill as an organizer/interviewer.) Thank you!
thanks Karen!
I can recommend reading the book, Cows Save the Planet, by Dr. Judith Schwarz. Also, watch the Ted-X video with Alan Savory (see: http://www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/cows-save-the-planet-by-judith-d-schwartz/ ). Request that the person who is confronting you with a belief that veganism is the only way to save our food supply (way of life, society, planet) please read the book, watch the video, before conversation continues.
The basic premise is that proper, ancestral ways of grazing cattle actually builds topsoil. Allowing pastureland to flourish helps sink carbon (a good thing which STOPS global warming). Bio-dynamic, organic farming is a self-sustaining system. There are farms in Vermont which have added inches to their topsoil (yes, inches!!!) in something like 5 years by grazing responsibly!! More topsoil means more water. It can take centuries to add topsoil to this degree! They are not only not “ruining the planet” for everybody, they are improving it for everybody.
This will give you scientific and ecological information to share when someone fires at you that your diet (as a meat eater) is destroying the earth.
Our co-op has many members who are vegan and who preach – some polite, some not – at those of us who practice WAPF principles and who include animals as food. They are often dogmatic, close-minded and unwilling to support dietary choices outside of their own. There is an almost religious fundamentalism – a militantism – to this attitude, an insistence that one is morally wrong by eating meat, which I don’t understand.
I was a vegetarian in years past and I found the diet very unhealthy for me. Nevertheless, I support the right of someone to pursue this dietary choice.
A case could equally be made that the acres and acres of wheat and soy production and GMO / round-up use required to grow the food sources vegans need is destroying our soil …and poisoning all of us, even if we don’t eat wheat or soy! The mid-west is being strip-mined of its soil by industrial growing of GMO soy and wheat.These industrial grain farms certainly do not allow acres to rest (use green manure crops and not harvest, in other words, allow the land to lie fallow); no profit would be made.
We are seeing the creation of deserts in the U.S. with these practices …right now, for example, how will CA create the water needed to sustain life and farming? They need to talk to these farmers in Vermont! Quickly!
Industrial farming’s answer is to use toxic poisons which end up everywhere much like the “pink” in the Cat in the Hat. How does that pink get cleaned up?
Small organic family farms – including animal husbandry – will be the saving grace of our food supply and our precious soil: the use of animals in farming – with organic, bio-dynamic, sustainable practices – is absolutely necessary to producing healthy vegetables for both meat eaters …and vegans.
Laura
Beautiful Laura – thank you and thanks for those resources: Cows Save the Planet, by Dr. Judith Schwarz. and the Ted-X video with Alan Savory
Thanks Trudy!
Ditto to your brilliance in moderating!
Let me add information about Denise Minger (author of Death by Food Pyramid, mentioned above).
At some point in the conversation with a staunch vegan The China Study will inevitably come up, as the final answer to the absolute, proven superiority of the plant-based diet. Denise took it upon herself to so thoroughly research and refute this study that Dr. Chris Masterjohn (well-known in the Paleo world with a PhD in Nutritional Science and everybody’s go-to nutrition guy) has deferred to her work on this subject.
Her refutation is a barn- burner! And she is herself, a former vegan.
See: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
and
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/?m=1
and
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/denise-mingers-refutation-of-campbells-china-study-generates-continued-debate/
Laura
Thank you – now I am going to have to read her book and possibly have her speak on the next summit!
Trudy, Denise Minger was the speaker at the Awards Banquet at last year’s annual Weston A. Price conference in Indianapolis. What a compelling and engaging speaker! You’ll enjoy having her on your summit for sure. By the way, I see Allan Savory, mentioned above, is the speaker this year, taking place in Nov in Anaheim:
http://conferences.westonaprice.org/main-conference/
Thank you so much for a beautiful job of moderating Lierre’s talk. I have been listening and researching through so many podcasts and summits on health. This talk correlated with the best of what I’ve researched so far. I am going to try and do my part to support the nurturing of our planet and compassionate and healthy human life. This knowledge is for everyone so we can all participate in this regrowth.We can heal ourselves with the ancient wisdom of “the circle of life.” It’s all there: the animals enriching the topsoil, growth of healthy plants and animals that give back to the planet, eating the healthy animals and the plants to nourish our bodies. Our industrialized & capitalized civilization has just buried it and made a simple, beautiful thing unrecognizable.Lierre and Trudy, keep doing your important work of information. I loved this talk.Thank you again so much.I’m with you!
Elaine
Thank you for the lovely lovely feedback – so glad you’re with us and I’ll make sure Lierre sees this!
You have a beautiful way with words and I love your reference to “the circle of life.”
Trudy
This was the first talk I listened to on this summit. I thought it was really good though I don’t believe soy should be completely demonized. People that have too much estrogen can benefit from soy (& other plants with phytoestrogens) since it doesn’t have as much of an effect as naatural estrogen or xenoestrogens. Xenoestrogens are everywhere in pesticides, plastics, BPA lined cans. So many people these days have too much estrogen. Clearly eating GMO soy is harmful as well as eating all of the soy products that are readily available. Being vegan without getting healthy fats & eating a lot of wheat & sugar is also terrible. Everyone is different, clearly, but I believe in a “pegan” diet as the best guideline(:
Thanks Katie – sharing a link to Dr. Mark Hyman’s “pegan” diet description http://drhyman.com/blog/2014/11/07/pegan-paleo-vegan/
I have been a vegan for nearly 20 years and my mood is way better than it was when I ate animals (eat real food, no processed soy). Being made to eat animals would make me miserable without a doubt. If one is vegan for reasons of animal suffering or environmental reasons, then I somehow don’t think eating animals would make one happy. Each to their own.
Thanks for sharing Madeleine – as long as you have zero anxiety, no depression and perfect health then you’re on to a good thing and are making it work. My goal with this interview is to reach vegans and vegetarians who do have mental and/or physical health issues and get them questioning if their diet is a factor
If you haven’t read Lierre’s book I encourage you to read her perspectives on environmental concerns when you are vegan
Trudy
Well said – I’ve been vegan for 34 years and vegetarian for 41 and I’m the same way – and I too would be miserable if my diet was killing animals and contributing to the climate crisis.
Love to hear Lierre Keith, she stirs something inside of me. Thanks for including her in your summit.
I was one of those young women who was vulnerable to the propaganda of veganism. John Robbins’ Diet for a New America convinced me that I had to be vegan or else I was committing terrible crimes against the Earth and every living being on it. I had a hard time living alongside non-vegans, I will be quite honest about that.
I had terrible hormonal symptoms and anxiety and crushing depression as a vegan but I kept on, assuming they had no connection. I am recovering now that I know more about MTHFR and orthomolecular medicine. With the help of summits like this, I am doing well again.
I developed a digestive illness (ulcerative colitis) which forced me to stop being vegan after seven years. It was very hard on me. I couldn’t eat anything I was used to eating. I remember after my diagnostic colonoscopy, I had chicken soup. I was so ashamed. I left all the little chicken pieces at the bottom of the bowl.
GAPS protocol helped me recover. Dr. Campbell-McBride speaks about young girls becoming vegan as well. Believe me, I thought she was crazy when I first heard her. Then I became so ill, that I opened my ears and after having tried everything I could think of, I listened.
I think I damaged my brain as well as my digestive system. To say I was stubborn would be an understatement.
#exvegan
Linda
Thank you so much for sharing. I know this will an important message for other vegans who feel they are “committing terrible crimes against the Earth and every living being on it”.
I am so glad you are now recovering!
Trudy
Thank you for the information. I’ve personally tried vegetarian/vegan diet twice in my life. I thought I was doing something healthy. Both times I ended up tired, with a low immune system response & unable to maintain a normal body temperature. Returning to cooked/animal foods restored my health.
I’m sure I was meant to pick up my IPad this morning since I’ve been avoiding the internet because I’m so upset with animal abusers.Especially disturbing is the illegal cat and dog meat industry in Asian cultures because the superstition promotes torturous boiling and skinning animals alive, and beating them to make the meat taste better..and, believing flexibility will be yours if you consume a cat’s spine once a week. Naturally, I’m struggling to include meat more frequently into my diet to help heal me of Hashimoto’s, depression, anxiety, and fibromyalgia even though a naturopath advised me of this over 20 yrs ago. The effects are such that now I’m on total disability. Depression stops me in my tracks from organizing my pantry and cooking habits to cooperate with my very capable anti aging doctor…I feel like such a pathetic failure because each new book or new regimen I buy into I find is not to my tastes so I waste my very limited funds then I either don’t eat or resort to eating junk and feeling defeated. Lierre and the other author she recommends are doing the work I thought I’d do once I got well to help others who became ill after vegetarianism left them malnourished. I’d earned a BS in Nutrition before the Age of Enlightenment and I thought to revive my ambition in like manner and help others who are suffering as Lierre has. Yet, depression was the missing piece..until this Anxiety Summit I somehow only made the connection to bio identical hormones. Brain fog, no doubt, because You have been beating the drum over and over..I just didn’t hear until today while reading the comments. Now I have to try to get the player to work so I can try to focus on the interview..I get tired just thinking of the effort needed to focus or apply myself to commit to a task..but I’m so grateful for these books and Summits and for you, Trudy ! Thank you. I’ll keep trying to believe I can recover with you spoon feeding the hope and knowledge I’ve been starving for.
I also condemn the horrific feedlot and slaughterhouse industry practices of animal abuse in western cultures. I assure you I do not only condemn Eastern cultures because animal abuse is world wide and rampant. It’s just that at the moment very graphic internet images are necessarily being displayed to further Animal Protection efforts and I can’t turn away even though it creates conflict within in my need to heal myself with animal protein as medically recommended. Just needed to clarify this..
Thank you for sharing Angela – and yes we often have this conflict when we need to heal ourselves. The feedlots really do have to go
Angela – yes keep believing you can recover and stay hopeful. There are often many moving parts and puzzle pieces we need to put together so keep listening
Was it all of the GMO soy that was eaten that caused the “disorders” in and to the body/mind/spirit? I’m not convinced we need to eat animal protein.
I’m sure the GMO soy was/is a big factor
My mom does not have a stomach and is not able to eat foods that are super solid – especially not meat. She is involuntarily a vegetarian. She does not feel well at all. How can she get “meat” in her diet without actually eating meat?
Hi Abby Jane
I would find a nutrition professional to work with your mom and ask them about bone broths and a free form amino acid blend.
Trudy
Please please replay Lierre Keith’s intview ?!
Angela – I’m afraid the voting is now closed and Lierre’s won’t be replayed
I was a 30 year vegetarian/vegan/including 7 years raw food. Gluten/dairy free 22 years. Never felt better than those 7 years ‘raw vegan’, and I am blood type ‘O’. I am careful of multiple food sensitivities. I started eating meat again 4 years ago (tempted into ‘moderation’ by the cook where I worked). I gained 20, now 15, unwanted lbs., and have had major, major, fatigue for three years, now, and ironically, now, for 1st time, feel I am falling into pyruloria (yep, score, do not taste the zinc sulfate, and am totally isolating : ) while being a meat eater!
Last 1 1/2 years Paleo, absolutely has not improved my symptoms in anyway. (and all the diets I do ‘smartly’). I’ve added some more carbs via Adrenal rest diet, and including other suggestions there, I am improving a little. I can not do HCL supplements due to hx of ulcer (due to accident/nsaids rx).
I am dreaming of being raw vegan again. I like the taste of meat, and the ease of socializing including it, just not the killing/treatment of animals, even though I shop free range, grass fed, etc.. And a latest clue is that maybe reducing histamines for me, is a next step. I do not tolerate (or the opposite, use quite a lot of) so many on the histamine list, since childhood.
I do have hashimotos (numbers low but i feel like crap) Dx since eating meat, and none of the recommendations there have changed anything either. (med professional included). We sure can be complicated!!!
I thank you for this wonderful summit. You and the speakers have done a great job. I have a close family member who accepted/was put on Benzodiaz’s and he and family around him are really, really, desperately struggling with increase of symptoms, especially when he has tried to get off, twice.
And, my adult daughter, on the other hand, is one of those emotional rollercoaster vegans, perhaps not as open, or educated, about healthy vegan diet, who I wish would be open to many suggestions!!!! The irritability and moodiness make it difficult to get that info across!
Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing – interesting about low zinc now you’re eating meat! and you’re welcome
Trudy-Thanksalot for your inspiring work-re Vegetarian–I would like to know why diet is used in religions-Jewish+Eastern religions advocate it-also when I became a lacto-vegetarian-I developed multiple chemical sensitivities–so bad that the smell of perfume would send my BP skyrocketing,also nausea etc.
Everyone is different in response to the Veg. only diet-but IMHO-it is BAD-BAD-BAD-as homo sapiens evolved on an omnivorous diet,and have the corresponding metabolic pathways-thanks for listening……….v152
Hi Jennifer
Thanks for sharing. I’m not sure if there is a question here (I would like to know why diet is used in religions-Jewish+Eastern religions)- please clarify
Trudy
Happy, healthy vegetarian of 33 years representing! As a teen I realized I wanted to try to live by the principle of ahimsa/ do no harm. But I know and I’ve always said what works for me isn’t necessarily good for someone else. I am very grateful I can be well and limit my support, financial and otherwise, of the torture of animals. I want absolutely no part in the insane cruelty going on this very second in CAFOs.
Robin
Thanks for stopping by! I’m glad you’re happy and healthy! And I’m with you and want no part in CAFOs CAFOs are Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or factory farms for folks who may not be familiar with this acronym
Hi Trudy,
great site and great information.
I’m vegan and do well on it. I had worse pyrrole disorder problems when I was omnivorous prior to age 23.I think people can avoid meat and still be perfectly healthy. We all have to make decisions on what we eat. I could never eat meat again because I love animals so much. 🙂
As for animal protein being healthy, what did the animal eat? Probably plants. The most powerful animals on the planet eat mostly greens. 🙂
Ed.
Ed
Thanks for stopping by and sharing – glad you’re doing so well! Most of my anxious clients do better when consuming quality animal protein.