Anecdotal Evidence & Indoctrination

"Why I don't believe vegans on health advice"
Louisbettong

I was a vegetarian for the first 18 years of my life, not by choice, because I was convinced that meat (and fat) was "bad" and would cause health problems. Convinced might not be the right word, while one vegan argument suggests that we are indoctrinated to eat meat from a young age, I was indoctrinated against meat for the first 18 years. I detested meat, this might be a hard thing for people to understand if they eat meat generally. Imagine if the site of eating a juicy cooked to order steak made you feel like vomiting, I can barely imagine it myself.

Well after I moved out of home, I began to eat meat (and enjoyed it) selectively, so it was not very often and generally stuck to my indoctrination apart from the odd steak now and then. I did however eat a lot of carbohydrates, rice, pasta, bread and the like. Years went by, my conditioning would fluctuate with the amount of exercise I did. You could never call me fat, but the amount of fat I carried was not commensurate with the amount of exercise I did (often twice a day). Well one day I became quite sick, with something similar to what I had seen before. It was some kind of intestinal or bowel problem, It was crippling.

I will not go into the gross details, but due to the symptoms, I could not stay awake, would have to go to the toilet almost every hour depending if I ate and the cramping in my stomach was excruciating. Working out was out of the question, I had lost so much weight it was not funny. I was working as an engineer and this was not going to be acceptable way of living to me, I was losing time at work, used all sick leave and took holidays, I had to do something.

I was lucky to have been working with the old polish guy who would tell me all sorts of (what would sound like really weird) stuff to most people. Some stuff was about WWII and the like, but he also mentioned this crazy fat diet that he did, I honestly thought he was a nut because of how much fat he ate. I was wrong.

Lucky that I had no options and my condition was getting worse, he told me that my diet could fix it and to give it two weeks, I listened out of desperation and ate what he suggested. Within three days I was feeling better and was back at work within a week. After two weeks all the symptoms were gone and I was back at training again. After eating like this for some time I was also surprised to note that the additional fat that I carried for most of my life disappeared (stomach fat was gone), I was training pretty hard. Most of this I know now was due to the increase in animal fat with the elimination of carbs from my diet.

This video reminded me of that time. For this reason I will never stop eating meat for any reason. I of course respect everybody's right to eat how they please, but don't expect me to feel sorry for cows and pigs feelings, I will eat them and be thankful they keep me alive.

Therefore my indoctrination was not broken by anecdotal evidence, it was changed due to experimentation. I know how my diet effects me, I have tried both.

LB