Alex Jamieson, the fad diet guru who has been exploiting the media to promote her form of "vegan" over the past few years, has recently announced she's no longer vegan. The thing is, she was not vegan at all -- ever. This woman was all about fad dieting and putting unnecessary and extreme restrictions on a plant-based diet and wanted to call it "vegan."
She is now joining the growing group of so-called "ex-vegans," which are really nothing more than people who were never vegan in the first place. Veganism is about adhering to the idea of ahimsa and refraining from contributing to the use and exploitation of other beings as much as humanly possible. These "ex-vegans" however, are just a bunch of fad-dieters who clearly miss the bigger picture.
Veganism is not a diet or a cleanse and as Ginny Messina pointed out so clearly, this is exactly how and why the health argument fails veganism. These people are not vegan because they want to avoid exploiting animals and treating them as property, they eat a plant-based diet because they think it is best for their health.
Then, when they decide to go back to consuming animal foods, they pull this crap about "listening to their bodies." That's about the most scientifically unfounded load of garbage excuse possible! The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics clearly states that a vegan diet is appropriate for ALL people at every stage of the lifecycle.
These people and most of their followers are not vegan and never were. They probably ate their oil-free, sugar-free, plant-based salads while online shopping for leather shoes and buying tickets to take their kids to the circus. We need to start calling these people out before they ever even get a chance to be "ex-vegan."
She says herself, "I believe you can love and care about animal welfare and still consume them." That's missing the WHOLE point of veganism! Clearly, this woman was NEVER vegan and what makes it even more annoying is that she spends most of her letter blaming actual vegans for being "purist" or "attacking." This is typical defensive behavior -- direct the blame on someone else.
We need to stop letting these fad dieters get away with calling themselves vegan in the first place. They're not. Either they get the big picture or they don't. No matter what their bodies are "telling them," these people just don't care about the fact that animals are exploited and treated as property. It's a fact, plain and simple, they simply aren't and never were vegan in the first place!
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