Q&A: Is Veganism Unnatural and Unhealthy?

Question: 

If being vegan necessitates having to eat food that have been fortified with nutrients artificially just to maintain a healthy body, does that mean the vegan diet is unhealthy?

Answer:

No, the vegan diet is healthy. Vitamin B12 is a necessary nutrient that does not come from plants. However, vitamin B12 is also not an animal product. Rather, vitamin B12 is derived from bacteria. As the vegan diet does not forbid food derived from bacteria, vitamin B12 in fortified food or from pills can be taken as part of a vegan diet.

In terms of whether taking an unnatural food is unhealthy, the answer is no. Processed or unnatural food is not necessarily unhealthy. This is the "appeal to nature" fallacy. There are no toxicology reports that prove that vitamin B12 is toxic and there is no scientific evidence that food that is processed is necessarily more toxic than food that is unprocessed.

What is natural?

There is significant industrialization nowadays that it's very difficult to know what is natural or unnatural food.

The main problem with the term "natural" is that it is not scientific. There is no consistent definition.

Natural foods and all natural foods are widely used terms in food labeling and marketing with a variety of definitions, most of which are vague. The term is often assumed to imply foods that are minimally processed and all of whose ingredients are natural products (in the chemist's sense of that term), but the lack of standards in most jurisdictions means that the term assures nothing. In some countries, the term “natural” is defined and enforced. In others, such as the United States, it has no meaning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_foods

Most people believe that a natural product is one that has not been chemically altered or processed. However, even cooking a product chemically alters it, and so do we classify the cooked beans we ate as natural or not?

Some go as far as to say that a natural product is not cooked and is completely raw (see raw foodism). Natural food is only natural if you can pick it from the ground or from a tree and there is no human intervention thereafter.

However, even with this raw food definition, there is a problem because raw and unprocessed food is not necessarily healthy.

Death cap mushrooms

Death cap mushroom are very natural. You pick it from the ground and do not process it in any way. However, if you eat a death cap mushroom, you will die.



Take another example. A multivitamin is highly processed yet it is healthy. The Harvard School of Public Health recommends you take a multivitamin every day.

Then there is water. Natural water is water from a pond. Pond water can provide us with nutrients. For example, pond water contains vitamin B12.

If vitamin B12 is found in pond water, why not drink pond water?

Pond water is likely to also contain dirt and feces. It is cleaner and healthier, rather than drinking natural pond water, to drink water from a tap, bottled water, or filtered water, all of which are processed and unnatural.

Of course, filtered water does not contain vitamin B12. However, vitamin B12 pills do contain vitamin B12.

Why not just take vitamin B12 pills?

Many will argue that vitamin B12 pills are not natural. But tap water or bottled water is not natural either. Pond water is natural. Do these people drink pond water rather than tap water?

Pond water may contain vitamin B12 but it also contains harmful germs. Likewise, meat contains vitamin B12 but also saturated fat and trans fat.

Supplements are not necessarily unhealthy

Some supplements are healthy and some supplements are unhealthy. Death cap mushrooms are natural but toxic. Aspirin is artificial, processed, but healthy.

As I said, tap water is unnatural and may even have flouride in it. Even salt is commonly fortified with iodine. Why is everything else in our lives unnatural (even non-vegan food) but we demand natural vegan food?

Is it just an excuse?

Conclusion

It is very hard to find food that is natural. Chances are, food is processed to some degree. Even if we grow a banana, we are taking seeds, sunlight, water, etc and then processing these in soil to grow a banana. If we did something chemically similar in a laboratory, would it be natural or not? Chemical reactions happen everywhere and humans intervene to start these chemical reactions. What really matters is not whether something is natural or not but whether it is toxic or not or if it is healthy.

Is Almond Milk Unhealthy? Sustainability of Milk and Chemophobia

When I googled "almond milk," near the top was a Sydney Morning Herald article titled The Unhealthy Truth about Almond Milk, which would make anyone think that almond milk is bad for you. When I read through the article, I realized that the article mainly focuses on the environmental problems with almond milk production. Growing almonds uses a considerable amount of water. That being said, dairy milk production results in significant water use as well, and all the deforestation issues linked with soy production also apply to dairy milk because dairy cows eat soybeans, and most soy is grown not for human consumption but for the meat and dairy industry:

Another impact of the dairy industry on the Australian environment is by its massive use of water and land area. In 2004-2005 the dairy industry was responsible for 19% of all the water used in Australian agriculture. This is more than 12% of all the water used in Australia. Cows need a lot of land to graze on (if they get the opportunity) and the production of their feed also takes up a lot of land area. The production of cattle feed is a major reason for deforestation and is putting pressure on nature both in Australia and overseas.

In terms of the environment, dairy milk is not ideal not only due to water and land use but also due to methane and manure produced by cows. Cows consume a considerable amount of feed (soybeans). A more sustainable option includes eating insects (e.g. Exo cricket bar) because, unlike cows, insects are cold-blooded and therefore don't require energy to keep their blood warm. Insects can also be stored in trays that can be piled vertically making it more space efficient. Another option is algae (e.g. Thrive algae oil), which is being used considerably now in Soylent. The latest Soylent iterations use algal oil or algal flour. Algae is a very efficient converter of simple sugars into protein and fat. Unlike animal products that convert plant sugar and plant protein into animal protein and animal fat, algae plants are clean and sterile areas where bioreactors convert simple plant sugars into algae protein and algae fat. There is no need to kill animals or wipe away their blood and manure.

Focusing back on the Sydney Morning Herald article, the article mainly discusses the environmental issues facing almond milk. It does, however, briefly mention health issues:

Even the watery carton version can be a good source of vitamin E, which helps with cell regeneration in the body. It's also full of omega 3 fats, which are handy helpers for balanced mental health and cholesterol levels. That's about it, though.

Some brands only contain 2 per cent almonds, while the other 98 per cent of your expensive "milk" is water with some emulsifiers, and sometimes the odd sweetener thrown in, along with nutrients such as vitamin A and D that have been artificially added. Nutritious.

Basically this says nothing. The first paragraph states that almond milk contains vitamin E and omega 3 fats and then says "that's about it, though" suggesting that almond milk has very little nutrition. But this is not a huge problem. For example, pure filtered water contains no vitamins in it. It just contains water. But is this a problem? No, water is important. Furthermore, if we are to eat or drink based on nutrient density, we wouldn't drink milk because all milk has little nutrient density as measures by the aggregate nutrient density index (ANDI). Almond milk's ANDI score is 19 and soy milk is 31. Simply put, green vegetables have the highest nutrient density as measured by the ANDI score. Green vegetables have ANDI scores of around 900 or more whereas all milks have ANDI scores below 50. The bottom line is that if we wanted high nutrient density we'd drink a green smoothie. However, most people who drink coffee do so to get caffeine, and the milk is designed to mask the bitterness of the espresso and to cool the beverage down. Dairy milk, soy milk, almond milk, and coconut milk all achieve this.

The second paragraph about how almond milk contains only 2 per cent almond is, in my opinion, not a big issue. If you put a handful of almonds into a blender and only put in a little bit of water, the resulting mixture will be extremely thick and creamy. It would not mix well with coffee and would be very high in calories. The almond milk content in almond milk varies from 2 to around 15 per cent, but the bottom line is that you cannot put too much almonds in almond milk otherwise it would cease to be an almond milk and would become almond butter.

When the article states that almond milk is mostly water with emulsifiers, sweeteners, and vitamins artificially added it, it is appealing to chemophobia. RationalWiki defines Chemophobia as follows: "Chemophobia is the fear, distrust, or dislike of anything seen as 'chemical.' Like various other 'phobias,' its use is non-clinical as it is not recognised as an actual irrational fear, but rather describes a set of prejudices against chemicals." Basically everything is made up of chemicals, and adding emulsifiers, sweeteners, and vitamins to almond milk doesn't make it unhealthy. To read out the ingredient list of almond milk and announce that it contains many complicated sounding chemicals is completely irrational and appeals to the prejudice that many hold against science and scientists.

The Aeon article aptly titled ‘Chemophobia’ is irrational, harmful – and hard to break describes it best:

[E]ven as much of the world became cleaner, the anti-chemical movement became so polarised that all artificial chemicals are now considered tainted. This false assumption has led to a popular demand for products that are ‘natural’ or even ‘chemical-free’.

In reality, ‘natural’ products are usually more chemically complicated than anything we can create in the lab. To demonstrate, I broke down the components in an ordinary banana. (For brevity’s sake, I omitted the thousands of minority ingredients, including DNA.) Here is the result:

INGREDIENTS:

WATER (75%), SUGARS (12%) (GLUCOSE (48%), FRUCTOSE (40%), SUCROSE (2%), MALTOSE (<1%)), STARCH (5%), FIBRE E460 (3%), AMINO ACIDS (<1%) (GLUTAMIC ACID (19%), ASPARTIC ACID (16%), HISTIDINE (11%), LEUCINE (7%), LYSINE (5%), PHENYLALANINE (4%), ARGININE (4%), VALINE (4%), ALANINE (4%), SERINE (4%), GLYCINE (3%), THREONINE (3%), ISOLEUCINE (3%), PROLINE (3%), TRYPTOPHAN (1%), CYSTINE (1%), TYROSINE (1%), METHIONINE (1%)), FATTY ACIDS (1%) (PALMITIC ACID (30%), OMEGA-6 FATTY ACID: LINOLEIC ACID (14%), OMEGA-3 FATTY ACID: LINOLENIC ACID (8%), OLEIC ACID (7%), PALMITOLEIC ACID (3%), STEARIC ACID (2%), LAURIC ACID (1%), MYRISTIC ACID (1%), CAPRIC ACID (<1%)), ASH (<1%), PHYTOSTEROLS, E515, OXALIC ACID, E300, E306 (TOCOPHEROL), PHYLLOQUINONE, THIAMIN, COLOURS (YELLOW-ORANGE E101 (RIBOFLAVIN), YELLOW-BROWN E160a), FLAVOURS (3-METHYLBUT-1-YL ETHANOATE, 2-METHYLBUTYL ETHANOATE, 2-METHYLPROPAN-1-OL, 3-METHYLBUTYL-1-OL, 2-HYDROXY-3-METHYLETHYL BUTANOATE, 3-METHYLBUTANAL, ETHYL HEXANOATE, ETHYL BUTANOATE, PENTYL ACETATE), 1510, NATURAL RIPENING AGENT (ETHENE GAS).

This exercise illustrates a larger point. The distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals is not merely ambiguous, it is non-existent. The fact that an ingredient is synthetic does not automatically make it dangerous, and the fact that it is natural doesn’t make it safe. Botulinum, produced by bacteria that grow in honey, is more than 1.3 billion times as toxic as lead and is the reason why infants should never eat honey. A cup of apple seeds contains enough natural cyanide to kill an adult human. Natural chemicals can be beneficial, neutral or harmful depending on the dosage and on how they are used, just like synthetic chemicals. Whether a chemical is ‘natural’ should never be a factor when assessing its safety.