It will seem obvious to most people that when emergencies happen they will have to change up their diet. Paleo and Keto adherents won’t be able to afford their respective diets as the economy collapses (and probably can’t now) and even just old fashioned ham and eggs meals are going to be out of reach. I know that many people will struggle with this reality but most people on these diets will adjust.
There is one group I’m going to focus on though that I don’t think will easily adjust and that’s vegans. Notice I didn’t say vegetarians.
All of these diets are products of the first world. In the case of veganism, and some other diets, they are only possible through massive first world style intervention in nature. In the vegan world they dream of there would need to be massive inputs of chemical fertilizer on gigantic corporate farms just to feed America’s population and we’re already out of fertilizer. Paleo diets also require first world intervention because it relies on what is essentially hobby farming which is only economically feasible because the fairly wealthy (in relation to the rest of the world) are willing to pay premiums for grass fed small farm beef and free range eggs.
All these things are also only possible because the first world solved the problem of food seasonality. For most of human existence you ate what was in season and during that season you hopefully were able to store some food for the winter. Since we didn’t have refrigeration, mass produced canning jars and daily grocery deliveries to Whole Foods the majority of your diet was what you could get. You had pumpkins in the fall, peas in the spring and rodents in between if you weren’t lucky. If you farmed or lived by a farm you weren’t giving away beef at cheap prices and one or two foxes would decimate your chicken flocks.
These diets are a product of first world success.
But I’m going to pick on vegans because they are more militant in their diet – it’s not a diet for them it’s a lifestyle and a culture.
Vegans also do things like try to make cats “fruitarians”
Or poison each other with their poorly understood diet:
A vegan subscription service has a lot of explaining to do after a number of people reported intense stomach issues and even organ failure after consuming the plant-based foodstuffs.
Over the weekend, the Daily Harvest vegan smoothie and victuals company issued a statement recalling its French Lentil + Leek Crumbles because they were, as the announcement put it, “causing gastrointestinal issues” in some customers.
But it turns out “gastrointestinal issues” is something of an understatement — for weeks, Daily Harvest customers had been taking to social media to discuss bizarre conditions they got after eating the crumbles.
One such sufferer, Luke Tashie, told NBC News that he went to the hospital after having “extreme liver pain” following the consumption of the Daily Harvest crumbles.
“The surgeons that consulted with me were so perplexed,” Tashie told NBC, “that they seriously considered removing my gallbladder.”
Although the Daily Harvest statement itself was pretty boilerplate, the company’s social media response left much to be desired.
In spite of publicly issuing the recall on Sunday, NBC noted that accounts that claimed to be associated with Daily Harvest had begun responding to customer complaints as early as last Wednesday, in response to testimonies on a subreddit associated with the company.
Or admit to severe illnesses their diet caused after deciding to quit – but that they hid from followers (illness details begin around 7:18)
So that’s why I’m picking on them. Now interestingly vegetarians, who eat eggs and drink milk, don’t suffer the same illnesses vegans do. But they do suffer the same “depressive episodes” according to this study from the Journal of Affective Disorders
Here’s the abstract:
Background
The association between vegetarianism and depression is still unclear. We aimed to investigate the association between a meatless diet and the presence of depressive episodes among adults.
Methods
A cross-sectional analysis was performed with baseline data from the ELSA-Brasil cohort, which included 14,216 Brazilians aged 35 to 74 years. A meatless diet was defined from in a validated food frequency questionnaire. The Clinical Interview Schedule-Revised (CIS-R) instrument was used to assess depressive episodes. The association between meatless diet and presence of depressive episodes was expressed as a prevalence ratio (PR), determined by Poisson regression adjusted for potentially confounding and/or mediating variables: sociodemographic parameters, smoking, alcohol intake, physical activity, several clinical variables, self-assessed health status, body mass index, micronutrient intake, protein, food processing level, daily energy intake, and changes in diet in the preceding 6 months.
Results
We found a positive association between the prevalence of depressive episodes and a meatless diet. Meat non-consumers experienced approximately twice the frequency of depressive episodes of meat consumers, PRs ranging from 2.05 (95%CI 1.00–4.18) in the crude model to 2.37 (95%CI 1.24–4.51) in the fully adjusted model.
Limitations.
The cross-sectional design precluded the investigation of causal relationships.
Conclusions
Depressive episodes are more prevalent in individuals who do not eat meat, independently of socioeconomic and lifestyle factors. Nutrient deficiencies do not explain this association. The nature of the association remains unclear, and longitudinal data are needed to clarify causal relationship.
In other words we don’t knw that these diets cause depression and it’s just as likely depressed people go on these diets.
But back to the ex-vegan testimony we glimpse what the problem post-collapse is for this diet (and some others) which is that part of the vegan lifestyle is the constant quest for supplements to make them feel better. This is not different than the gym bro who has his stack of BCAAs and Amino blends or the Paleo eater who is putting butter and MCT in their coffee. But what distinguishes vegans is two fold and will cause problems for them and people around them:
The vegan culture pressures people to remain vegan at all costs. People who quit are viciously attacked. Your vegan friends or relatives will have internalized that fear of being ostracized.
Big corporations have poured billions into advertising the idea that veganism is not only healthy but sustainable. It is neither but like many things people are told by the tv you won’t be able to easily convince people to re-examine those ideas.
This second point is important because if we are de-industrialized you won’t be able to grow enough veggies to have a vegan diet. Vegans around you will hinder your survivability if they don’t get on board with that.
And since vegan health is supplement reliant you’re going to see them decline quickly while resisting getting on board with new the realities. The most basic of which is you having unlimited choices of what to eat is a first world luxury. Inflation makes for interesting diets:
The last time we had inflation this bad your parents were getting served “Tuna Oriental Pancake Supper” – you’re going to get some similar recipes in your repertoire in the coming years.
If you have a vegan loved one or if you’re a vegan stock up on B12 and D vitamins. But also sit down and get ready to explain to them or your inner voice that the time of special diets is coming to an end.
https://www.instagram.com/oldtimeypistolero/
Source link
Author Rob Taylor
