Is Veganism Unhealthy?
A case study of a poorly planned vegan diet
An increasingly popular trend in the vegan community has been the onslaught of vegan YouTubers with sizable followings deciding to change their diets.
Over the last few months, a number of popular figures have left veganism including Bonny Rebecca, Kalel, and Rawvana to name a few.
All of these creators made videos outlining the many reasons why they are no longer vegan, breaking the news to their followers and triggering a slew of responses from other YouTubers analyzing their reasoning.
The most recent addition to this group and the most personally shocking is Alyse Brautigam of RawAlignment. Brautigam posted a video on March 18th explaining to her 781K (and falling) subscribers why she has decided to begin eating meat and eggs after five years following a series of restrictive vegan diets.
As a follower of Alyse since I went vegan almost three years ago, I was floored by this news. Although she was not necessarily an “inspiration” per se, her channel was one of the first few that I found after beginning my vegan journey.
I never expected her to be apart of the group as in the past she has hosted a webinar about how to pursue veganism and seemed extremely devoted to the lifestyle.
Alyse cites longterm health issues as the reason for this change in her diet. She explains that she had been suffering from migraine headaches, chronic sinus congestion, brain fog, memory loss, extreme appetite loss, and inability to communicate properly or articulate herself, which have all had an understandably negative effect on her wellbeing.
These are issues that she has evidently faced for a number of years but were considerably worse in the last few months. She claims that these issues are as a result of her “external environment that had toxic mold in it”, referencing her time living in Hawaii.
Following the discovery of this external factor, she became very interested in finding any solution to this issue, leading her to eventually leave Hawaii. After this move, she noticed an improvement in a number of her symptoms except for the brain fog and issues with communicating.
Months later after believing she was mostly healed of her symptoms Alyse returned to Hawaii to visit a friend and was disappointed to find that her physical symptoms returned in about “15 minutes.” As before, these symptoms were attributed to her assumed sensitivity to mold resulting from Hawaii’s damp environment.
While in Hawaii and continuing to experience symptoms some of her friends shared with her that they had recently changed their diets (I would assume from a vegan diet to diets including animal products, but this is not made clear) and had experienced positive changes in their digestive and brain health.
Alyse discusses prior research that she had done into alternative medicine choices to help the brain such as ways to improve “mitochondrial functioning and repairing or replacing damaged neurons and glial cells.”
Much of this research had led her to believe that grass-fed beef and salmon would help accomplish these ends (no reputable scientific sources were found to back up her claims.) One can assume that these conversations with trusted friends encouraged her previous inclination to turn back to animals foods.
Following this visit to Hawaii upon returning home Alyse continued to feel the negative symptoms that were brought on by being reintroduced to the environment that she believed caused these issues.
This was the final straw, as she explains that one night she decided to eat 8 oz. of salmon to test out the claims found in her alternative medicine research and the assumed experiences of her friends.
Miraculously, the next morning after eating the salmon she felt better — “zero congestion, and zero brain fog, zero migraines, zero lack of clarity, I felt the best that I had in probably like 3 years.” After one night of eating salmon.
This was the first dietary changes that had improved her health although she has tried many over the years as she says “I lived on a fruit farm and tried to eat raw vegan…switched back to cooked vegan food, I tried high carb low fat, low-fat high carb, juice fasting, water fasting, all the things.”
From this point in the video on, Brautigam continues to explain that this dietary choice has helped her greatly and that she understands that many may disagree but it is her choice in continuing her health journey and she hopes everyone supports her.
This is a sweet sentiment to ask of followers, the only problem being that all of the claims that Alyse makes against veganism are based in pseudoscience and only exist to hurt the vegan community, a group which Alyse has directly profited from with her business and channel.
Brautigam believes, as I mentioned, that the cause of the symptoms that she felt was due to toxic mold in her home in Hawaii.
In the video previously linked about leaving Hawaii, she talks more in depth about the specific research that she had done regarding mold illness and had previously provided a number of links in the video description which have now been removed.
This video and the mold illness claims made by Alyse were discussed in detail by Swayze Foster, Unnatural Vegan on YouTube.
Foster explains that the claims made by Alyse throughout her are not scientifically sound, including a quote at the beginning of the video stating, “only about 25% of people with allergies are allergic to mold. 10% of Americans are allergic to mold, and for about HALF of them the allergy may result in an actual illness”, that was unable to be found in any publication and misrepresents scientific findings.
Foster also explains that in trying to further back up her claims Alyse “links to a site that literally makes money [selling mold tests] off of people’s fear of mold illness as a source…to inform you about mold illness.” All in all, showing that the chances that Alyse has any scientific proof that she was actually suffering from mold illness are unlikely.
During the discussion of why she is no longer vegan, Alyse does explain that she had bloodwork done shortly after moving away from Hawaii while she was still experiencing severe symptoms.
The results showed that she was “low and deficient in almost everything, my hormones were out of balance, like way out of balance, and I had a high candida infection.” This showed that there was something considerably wrong with her health, but was “mold illness” really to blame?
Upon viewing her two most recent “What I Eat In a Day” style videos (here and here), there does not seem to be a mention of any kind of supplementation. This is not to say that Alyse does not necessarily supplement in any way but it is definitely not something that she is showing to her subscribers.
This is frustrating given the fact that vegan multivitamins that provide all of the daily vitamins and minerals necessary, including b12, are cheap and easily accessible.
The fact that Alyse chose to instead turn to eating animal products contradicts the claim on her website that “the main message she shares via social media is the concept that ‘We are all worthy of following a plant-based diet in abundance in every aspect of our lives,” when she could have taken an inexpensive multi-vitamin to take care of her numerous deficiencies.
The real reason why I, and I imagine many of Alyse’s longtime followers, take such issue with the way in which she has decided to portray her leaving veganism is that she did so through pseudoscientific claims and alternative medicine which stand to further claims that veganism is an unhealthy diet.
For years now Alyse has made money off of veganism and “healthy living.” In her video, she says that it is naive of vegans to say that they would never abandon veganism even if they were facing health issues.
I am confident in saying that any vegan who is following a well-planned vegan diet is not naive at all in this belief due to the official position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics being that “these [vegan and vegetarian] diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes” but that “vegans need reliable sources of vitamin B-12, such as fortified foods or supplements.”
Meaning that as long as one is meeting all of their nutritional needs, through a non-restrictive and supplemented vegan diet, health issues such as Alyse had, including deficiencies in “almost everything” will not be an issue.
Veganism is not the issue here. Veganism was not the cause, nor was salmon the solution for Alyse’s “mold illness.” Poor planning of diet resulting in deficiencies in vitamins and minerals, combined with a reliance on pseudoscience for diagnosis and treatment of symptoms is the real problem here.
Claiming that a plant-based diet was the cause of these issues only serves to hurt the argument that so many try to make that vegan is a healthy, environmentally conscious, and ethical alternative to an omnivore diet.
And Alyse — take a Sudafed.
