Farting: Why Vegans Quit Veganism (Indigestion & Ethics)

I mean you can't have an ethical
movement that requires people to be flatulent 24 hours a day you can't mean no like we do you want to be ethically right or do you want to be farting all day it's so sad to me this is a 16 year old or 17 year old he doesn't know how to ask the right questions you know that's what it's not that she has the wrong answers that she doesn't know how to ask the right questions so you have an ethical commitment and that ethical movement becomes inconvenient in a very real and meaningful sense because you're having horrible indigestion I understand that where do you go next you know what I mean like how can it possibly make sense to go back to killing and eating dead animals at this stage I just wanted to be a morally good person I wanted to feel healthy and I wanted to look healthy just do problems I had never previously had to just do problems I could eat whatever I want and I'd be fine but now I was feeling bloated nearly every single day I felt yeah there are people who feel that good nutrition and good digestion are their birthright you know that it should be completely non problematic to be full and lean and vibrant healthy it effortlessly so to speak and the reality is most of us have some ideas about nutrition that come from our grandparents and they may be terrible and wrong people feel that way about relationships do people feel the way about love they think love should be easy they think like you they think like you should need any education or effort to make a relationship work or to fall in love or be in love and someone has to see you down and say no it's hard work you know your diet and your digestion specifically it's not something we're born being good you stopped paying attention for a split second you make one mistake and for the next 12 hours thing damn I screwed that up and I wish we went to one a Middle Eastern restaurant I can't even call it Middle Eastern it was a falafel restaurant there was nothing middle-eastern about it we had vegan falafel with hummus we had 12 hours of horrible indigestion we both had like no sleep that night woke up ill rested as hell so we have bad digestion and it means you don't sleep are glad you can't sleep it was awful and you sit there you go goddamn it those people don't know how to cook beans that must have been made with raw chickpeas or just barely cooked you've noticed of taking the chickpeas just barely warmed them up on the plate we are not mountain goats that can just show up raw vetches and digest them I don't even know if it's that easy for the mountain goats maybe they also suffer with hours and hours and maybe you give chickpeas to mountain goats it doesn't go so well I don't even know they can tolerate chickpeas ibonus yen so today okay the way that she says it is kind of insane just be honest but like you know I understand she's 16 or 17 yeah somewhere in that ballpark there go on yeah um sorry I don't judge her as harshly as a an older person but yeah okay I know she's like 16 but still I can't I mean I feel energetic so Wow I'd stop swimming by this point so I didn't need all that extra protein in energy at this time so I was like IFA cannot work and I was feeling pretty good and then about into the third month of my vegan journey everything just started going downhill I think I first started basically just feeling tired oh and I had these like jelly muscles all I'm saying is waiting like weight lifting will make you feel a lot better and she didn't try that at all when she was vegan she started weightlifting after she won by eating meat her hand I mean the timing of when she quit doing the only sports she was doing could be related I think there were there were kind of big overarching things here and then there were little underpinning things I think it's interesting that at no stage in this process did she consult science of any kind like what were the cultural influence influences in her life her friend group or peer group and then YouTube personalities including freely and Caitlin shoemaker and a couple others I don't remember precisely everyone she she mentioned she would probably others she doesn't test bag high school dropout test bag wow there's a great influence in your life and she just she said she met with the nutritionist that was an apparel of the nutritionist is a complete piece of [ __ ] I mean that the nutritionist endorsed the most unscientific low protein and was a terrible influence on her like oh so like the one part of your diet that's normal is rice so let's eliminate that and have you living just on raw fruits and vegetables it's terrible terrible advice basically for anyone but yeah unfortunately the nutritionist could have been a voice of reason and wasn't the nutritionist you know endorsed even more I need more insane diet you know but look okay in terms the big overarching issue a lot of people whether they're sixteen or thirty six really feel that diet and nutrition is something that's easy or ought to be easy or even instinctual or you know I mean I remember a political magazine it was an ecological radical or extremist magazine and it's saying as it was the most ridiculous thing but our society can't possibly endure because in modern Western society people can't even feed themselves and I remember reading that's their other interesting things remember reading that I thought you know it's it's really interesting that for someone else reading this would find that plausible or compelling that like in society you know like people ought to be able to grow their own food you know that's really what it's saying in effect but in reality historically in every period of time I mean the first step on the progress of civilization is that we stop having to spend 98 percent of our time gathering and farming our own food I mean that's exactly the points that we have any society at all means that you rely on other people to feed you or there are other people to produce you know you're in process your food the you you take the huge leap from gathering you know fruits and berries and someone to doing things like processing wheat into into flour and then making flour into bread and no not everyone makes their own bread one person is the baker and someone else is the candlestick maker you know that that's but remember just reading that and thinking that's interesting you know who is the person reading this who finds that convincing you know a convincing criticisms I mean who isn't but I mean likewise on a much more broad unexamined level there are people who feel that good nutrition and good digestion are their birthright you know that it should be completely non problematic to be full and lean and vibrant healthy it effortlessly so to speak and the reality is most of us have some ideas about nutrition that come from our grandparents and they may be terrible and wrong you know what I don't know what your grandparents are I don't know don't let's not get into our actual grandparents here but you know most of us you know unless unless your grandparents were really like path beating nutritionists from the 1920s you know there were some of the first people jumping on the science bandwagon it's like the odds are those those dietary choices and habits and and just cultural traditions are totally unhealthy totally unscientific and and also just maybe way more time consuming a lot of that sort of that one of those results were based on the assumption that every family had a housewife or servants a lot of the most just don't fit into modern life in terms of the pace of modern life waking people wake up now we need a power bar you know I remember so scientific research the percentage of people eating breakfast cereal was going down the presenters people eating power bars is going up and you know why right who needs a bowl who wants to spend time cleaning a bowl after they eat breakfast right but yeah that that to me is kind of a big overarching thing and then at no point I'm I think most I don't think thirty six year olds are so different from sixteen year olds in that way and no point is there a questioning of of some kind of scientific source yeah obviously if your diet isn't working you should change it up I know she's younger but like you know she said she just kept going on this rice and vegetables diet which it's not she always felt hungry she always would adjust Yeah right um and I it also is important to note that she was reporting symptoms I was poor digestion right and she mentioned that her mom has IBS so it could just be like you know some family um inheritance I don't see it that way I think the thing is most people don't even know the questions to ask when they have that kind of problem like you and I mean I'm I'm 39 years old I've lived all over the world so yesterday I look I still have problems with my digestion but I at least know the question to ask at least live a life where I can find out what's wrong and try to fix it yesterday I had awful indigestion that kept me up late and ruined my night's sleep it happens and I asked Melissa we almost the same thing you know three meals yesterday I asked most oh did you have a digest you know so I figured out the one thing that caused my indigestion was basically the one thing I eat that you didn't eat they okay so that's what that was that's what caused that problem I'm not gonna eat that again and in a very systematic way as life goes on I learn about those things and look into them the number one problem with the vegan diet is beans is that even the great the number-one problem are beans I mean come on sir it's plural it sounds wrong to say it is it is beans the problem is beans beans are the problem beans are fantastically healthy and most national guidelines you know United States health guidelines and other other countries national guidelines they're encouraging everyone to eat more beans and most people don't know how to cook beans they don't realize just how much time and energy has to go into boiling beans beans are not like beef in that way hey you do it again I don't know if you ever even did that when you were mere you ever take you like ever make a raw steak it cooks for a remarkably short period of time a lot of things in the meat eaters diet like protein sources are big and heavy you know and hard but you cook them for these very short periods of time chicken is not like that by contrast but a lot of the forms of meat you throw the ground beef even yeah throwing ground beef in a sauce pan to make tacos at home you toss it through and if you wait till it turns brown and then it's done and that's it and beans are not like that in order to be digestible beans and lentils need a lot of cooking and when I saw is the first time I did this my first time watching the whole video born I clicked through it I completely assumed the problem was exactly lentils or means other things like that that are hard to digest if she didn't know there were no in this case I don't know what to tell you I mean maybe it's kale kale it [ __ ] hard to digest yeah I do I mean you've seen me I once had a huge salad of kale and you said to me afterwards like I don't think you can possibly digest that you were right I mean you know we're not cows we can't digest massive quantities of a lot of those raw green vegetables like like kale we're not you know we can we can eat lettuce but you know lettuce as it exists today is a hundred percent of the product of human intervention in in whatever want to call it know unnatural selection you know selective breeding of these plants you know in nature of plants like lettuce and including let's have a lot of indigestion latex in them you know I should have rubber in them to prevent protect themselves against insects and predators I mean most of broccoli doesn't exist in nature broccoli this wonderful unbelievably nutritious food does not remotely resemble its its wild ancestor what evolution produced in the wild you know this is this is human selection that's the species Thanks so I mean some things are very healthy for us and very easily digestible some things are natural but are completely unhealthy for us like tobacco and cocaine those are plants you can just eat them out of your backyard in theory you can grow your own tobacco we can grow our own cocaine until someone arrest you for it and just eat them out of the yard and there you can grow your own aconite if you don't know what aconite is a kadai tis an incredibly powerful poison it was 100% natural I'm sorry what's up up there with strychnine in terms of deadly poisons in the world you know but I totally sympathize I totally relate to this thing people feel that way about relationships - people feel the way about love they think love should be easy they think like you they think like you shouldn't need any education or effort to make a relationship work or to fall in love or be in love and someone has to see you down and say no it's hard work whether that's in terms of listening or communicating or whatever it is or organizing your schedules no I mean being in love and being in a loving relationship takes effort something you work at you know and you know your diet and your digestion specifically it's not something we're born being I don't think people are born being good at you know this kind of relationship I mean I think you know in every relationship we learn I have more experience with ships than you do but we still are learning together we're learning how to live together how to have a highly productive highly effective life I think every good relationship you do that both parties you know do that you know I think most people sorry I'm so old now I'm 39 when I was younger didn't mean no like when I was your age you know being in a relationship and learning how to not lose your temper with the other person when they do things that really legitimately like Vickie's lose your temper that used to be more proper for me sure when I was 23 25 sure you know um you learn you know those are learned behaviors it's not it's not something you have just from growing up out of the womb and I know people want it to be easy and whether it's love or diet or digestion people deeply yearn for this music beauty also people want to be beautiful without in the effort people want to be fit and lean and lift a lot of weight without a lot of effort and you know weight training is incredibly repetitious I mean it is interesting in some ways but I mean you know sir it's unbelievable so well how I'm gonna do this morning I did a hundred push-ups that I want if the floor looks exactly the same when I'm looking through the floor doing those push-ups it's hard work it's repetitious its detail-oriented and and you know what this has in common exercise in digestion and if you screw up once you can regret it for 12 hours 24 hours a week you know I mean like if you like even something like a pushup if you mess up and you go down your wrists the wrong way if you're lifting weights and you drop the weight on your foot you stop paying attention for a split second you make one mistake and for the next 12 hours thinking damn I screwed that up and I wish we should we went to one a Middle Eastern restaurant I can't even call it Middle Eastern it was a falafel restaurant there was nothing middle-eastern about it it was a totally you know like white Western hipster you know falafel restaurant there was nothing authentically middle-eastern about that's fine we had vegan falafel with hummus we had 12 hours of horrible indigestion we both had like no sleep that night woke up ill rested as hell so when you have bad digestion it means you sleep arkla that you can't sleep over it was awful it was just awful didn't taste bad didn't taste bad really you know okay whatever just say didn't taste bad going down and you sit there you go god damn it those people don't know how to cook beans that must have been made with raw chickpeas or just barely cooked a ghost of taking the chickpeas just barely warmed them up on the plate I don't think there was anything else wrong with it but with the chickpeas of the hummus there aren't a lot of Susman I think it's just the chickpeas they were feeding us raw chickpeas guess what human beings are not goats you can promise that is true it absolutely problem if the ingestion was so horrible they just don't like there was enough I must to account for that I think it had to be more than just that but you know we are not mountain goats that can just show up raw vetches and digest them I don't even know if it's that easy for the mountain goats maybe they also suffer with hours and hours and maybe you give chickpeas to mountain goats it doesn't go so well I don't even know they can tolerate chickpeas but you know beans have evolved anyway it's not worth getting is the biology of it but no it's it's not easy and like I said look like with working out if you make one little mistake then you really have a reason to regret it for many hours or maybe many days you know eating dried ground up this is a topic I can't speak on but look okay you know so for me another big issue raised by this you know it's so sad to me this is a 16 year old or 17 year old who doesn't know how to ask the right questions you know that's what it's not that she has the wrong answers that she doesn't know how to ask the right questions so you have an ethical commitment and that ethical commitment becomes inconvenient in a very real and meaningful sense because you're having horrible into the estrin I understand that where do you go next you know what I mean like how can it possibly make sense to go back to killing and eating dead animals you know how can that positive the next step there have to be some other questions there has to be some other source of inspiration maybe it really was that me why did she go to the nutritionist in the first place must have already had a problem she was trying to solve when she went to the nutritionist she didn't tell it in that order but she went she tried to get medical help from a pseudo-scientific pseudo medical professor professional who put her on an even worse diet and then she just gave up so this does cause people to drop out of the of the vegan diet but you don't I think most 36 year olds have the same problem if they encounter a problem with veganism or they feel bad they don't know where to go they don't know how to how to facture they don't know what questions to ask but like the question am i getting enough protein is a legitimate question and she should have asked herself that she said herself was a really low protein diet she was not um she apparently didn't ask that question and didn't try to remedy it or didn't try to try to search things up you know I just want to say I mean this is a totally different light on this issue you did make a video once like veganism chasing a feeling I think right the youtubers name was Tori right yeah she was she went vegan and was chasing the health you know the good health the vibrant energy were that people talked about while being on a vegan diet I think that was mentioned in a really low-key way here just a sense that veganism would solve all your problems or improve your health and it really does hurt one or two months she said she was feeling like really energy yeah I'm healthy and then after three months she was having problems no right yeah I think I look I mean you know I don't know what to tell people culturally or practically I mean you can't have an ethical movement that requires people to be flatulent 24 hours a day you can't mean no like we do you want to be ethically right or do you want to be farting all day like it's a real problem it's a real issue with beans being most obvious problem beans kayo a lot of the foods you know we promote as healthy are not easy to digest especially not when people are ignorant about how to cook them yeah I just remembered I'm still a member of the Detroit vegans Facebook group and somebody posted about their son who's in middle school I believe and he got she got a letter from his teachers saying that his flatulence is disturbing the class since he went vegan he farts so much in class that it's actually a problem in school you know like you want people to stay vegan but you have to like you know go through your diet and see what's causing issues and it's not it's not easy it's not really straightforward and yeah but I I don't think it's just exclusive to the vegan diet too because know from what look for my respect look look I'll end it on this note but from my perspective it's not exclusive to the vegan diet it's not exclusive to diet and I already made the comparison to exercise but I don't think I ever told you this anecdote I was once sitting down with a woman who had a background of doing humanitarian work and she had converted to Buddhism she become quite a pious Buddhist although not that intellectual or well-informed but estable with the actual philosophy and core the religion is and she said to me kind of angrily and self-righteously why can't someone make a textbook for the pali language pali is the name of a language the most ancient language that buddhist philosophy in it why can't someone d why can't somebody make a textbook that'll make learning Pali easy you know and she filled and titled this that learning learning this language ought to be easy and I just sat there I stuck to my guns I didn't say in the mean way I said why she said what I said why would it be easy yeah and you know she was self righteous she was giving defensive and offensive answers but I said to her if somebody told you they wanted to learn ancient Greek to read philosophy would you say that should be easy who someone solely they wanted to learn Latin to read Cicero we said oh that's gonna be easy look why would this be easy you want to learn an ancient language you don't want to learn it well enough to just be able to get around the airport or ask where is the bathroom or ask is this food vegan you're wanting to read this at a level that's really advanced you know even for a native speaker of that language like why would that be easy I just kept asking her that and it did actually profound by the end of the conversation it profoundly changed her perspective because she was struggling to come up with answers feeding yourself I hate to say it why would that be easy living a life an ethical life living a morally upright life why would that be easy you know cuisine cooking beans cooking them well so they taste good and they're easily digestible why would that be easy all of these things are hard and they always have been I think through all of human history you know what I mean why would they be easy for a 16 year old it's it's goddamn hard and the reality is the role that used to be played by our grandparents and our parents and teaching these things exactly these things how to be physically fit out of a good diet how to cook whether you think of that as housekeeping being housewife or cooking for yourself or whatever and what it means to be morally upright to be righteous to be ethical that used to be the grandparents role and right now that role is being played by YouTube and this girl really is an example of that she's an example of both how people can get positively motivated and bright and bushy-tailed and try their best and also how tragically that so often leads to them you know losing their motivation and dropping a bonus Yin