Virgina Messina: Disease Shaming And Vegan Diets

I think most people here know that Virginia Messina R.D. is one of the top vegan nutritionists and nutrition book authors around. She blogs too and recently had a post I found interesting having lost two friends to cancer. My friends were health nuts, athletic, and vegan. They tried every treatment under the sun, one even losing her home and her life savings. They still died.

From

http://www.theveganrd.com/2014/12/vegan-diets-cancer-and-disease-shaming.html

Lately, I’ve been seeing quite a few stories about people with cancer in my facebook feed. Several of my FB friends have breast cancer or have been treated for it. Others are dealing with news of cancer in their loved ones.

 

Most of the comments on these posts are appropriately supportive and sympathetic. But you can always expect that there will be a few that are downright cringe-inducing. If the person with cancer is vegan, it’s a good bet that someone will suggest that they must have been a “junk food” vegan. That they probably ate “tons of soy” and cooked with “unhealthy olive oil.” (Actually, both of those foods are more likely to be protective against cancer than harmful, but that’s a story for another post.)

 

Aside from the fact that such comments are incredibly rude (even for facebook), trying to blame someone for their disease is not the least bit helpful. Worse, some vegans with cancer blame themselves. In one instance, a vegan who was diagnosed with cancer before the age of 30 said that it wasn’t surprising since she had been overweight and ate a junky diet. But, cancer in your 20s is unusual even among people who eat the worst diets.

Goes both ways, ive seen plenty of vegans placing blame on non vegan unhealthy eaters that have cancer and or various other diseases.

I think most people here know that Virginia Messina R.D. is one of the top vegan nutritionists and nutrition book authors around. She blogs too and recently had a post I found interesting having lost two friends to cancer. My friends were health nuts, athletic, and vegan. They tried every treatment under the sun, one even losing her home and her life savings. They still died.

 

From

http://www.theveganrd.com/2014/12/vegan-diets-cancer-and-disease-shaming.html

 

Lately, I’ve been seeing quite a few stories about people with cancer in my facebook feed. Several of my FB friends have breast cancer or have been treated for it. Others are dealing with news of cancer in their loved ones.

 

Most of the comments on these posts are appropriately supportive and sympathetic. But you can always expect that there will be a few that are downright cringe-inducing. If the person with cancer is vegan, it’s a good bet that someone will suggest that they must have been a “junk food” vegan. That they probably ate “tons of soy” and cooked with “unhealthy olive oil.” (Actually, both of those foods are more likely to be protective against cancer than harmful, but that’s a story for another post.)

 

Aside from the fact that such comments are incredibly rude (even for facebook), trying to blame someone for their disease is not the least bit helpful. Worse, some vegans with cancer blame themselves. In one instance, a vegan who was diagnosed with cancer before the age of 30 said that it wasn’t surprising since she had been overweight and ate a junky diet. But, cancer in your 20s is unusual even among people who eat the worst diets.

Of the five top-selling imported “extra virgin” olive oil brands in the United States, 73 percent of the samples

failed the IOC sensory standards for extra virgin olive oils analyzed by two IOC-accredited sensory panels. The

failure rate ranged from a high of 94 percent to a low of 56 percent depending on the brand and the panel.

None of the Australian and California samples failed both sensory panels, while 11 percent of the top-selling

premium Italian brand samples failed the two panels. Sensory defects are indicators that these samples are

oxidized, of poor quality, and/or adulterated with cheaper refined oils.

http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211finalreduced.pdf

Then there is other contributors to cancer as we already know.. air pollution, second hand smoke, overcooked food, inactivity, etc..