My response to an article by Christine Egan entitled Hey, Vegetarians and Vegans: You’re Not All That Healthy.The original article is at BLISSTREE.com. Author Christine Egan says:

“Some…of my vegetarian friends basically subsist on a steady diet that includes: Hard cheeses, French fries, pizza (meatless, of course), soft cheeses, breads, ice cream, vegetarian burgers, semi-soft cheeses, onion rings, mac-and-cheese from a box, cereals, pasta, microwaveable vegetarian meals, cookies, cake, anything vegetarian and pre-packaged, energy bars, wine, beer, hard liquor, and many, many vegetarian burritos. It’s a good thing they’re not preachy.

Some of my vegan friends aren’t much better: They consume basically the same diet I describe above, with necessary dietary substitutions including non-dairy ice cream, pretend eggs, and fake cheese.

… many of my vegetarian and vegan friends are unabashed processed food junkies. If all you ate every day of your life were the “foods” I rattled off above, I wouldn’t consider you to be healthy, and, more importantly, you shouldn’t, either. In fact, I would consider you to be woefully unhealthy, mostly because your diet is crap. I don’t care how much you work out or how thin you are. Those things don’t negate your terrifyingly over-processed diet…”

I agree, though to be picky, Christine should substitute the all encompassing word omnivore instead of carnivore, as the latter implies meat exclusively. Sadly, I have encountered too many preachy vegans and vegetarians who look like death warmed over, and whose diet I find undesirable.

My response to Christine’s article:

People classify themselves into categories: vegan, vegetarian, paleo, frugivore, carnivore, raw, macro etc. yet how much attention do they pay to what they ingest, the source and conditions of productions? Do they assume that because they eat within a particular label, they are healthy? Or are they making a ‘lifestyle statement’ regardless of any potential health consequences?