Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet · 2019-11-04 · Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet," and we have Lierre Keith here to share. Welcome, Lierre. Lierre Keith: Trudy,

Lierre Keith – Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet www.theAnxietySummit.com May 6-20, 2015

© 2015 Trudy Scott All Rights Reserved Page 1 of 34

Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet

• How young girls are being targeted by vegan groups • Lierre's story and the health challenges she faced: hypoglycemia,

anxiety, bone pain, fatigue • Moral vegetarianism or veganism and factory farming • The importance of topsoil and how it's disappearing • The nutritional deficiencies of a vegetarian or vegan diet: B12, fats,

amino acids like tryptophan, iron, vitamin D • The mood benefits of grass-fed red meat • The problems with processed soy

Trudy Scott: Welcome to The Anxiety Summit Season 3. I'm your host, Trudy

Scott. I'm a food mood expert, certified nutritionist, and author of The Antianxiety Food Solution. Our topic today is, "Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet," and we have Lierre Keith here to share. Welcome, Lierre.

Lierre Keith: Trudy, thanks for having me on. Trudy Scott: I'm really pleased to have you. I think this is an important topic

that needs to be included. You've written a wonderful book, I think it's a great aspect that we definitely need to be talking about when it comes to anxiety and depression and any mood kind of disorder. Let me go ahead and read your bio and then we'll get right into the interview. Lierre Keith is a writer, small farmer, and radical feminist activist. She is the author of six books, including The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called "the most



important ecological book of this generation." She is also coauthor, with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. She's been arrested six times for acts of political resistance. You can find more at her website lierrekeith.com; and you will see links to this and her Facebook page on the speaker blog. But I'll spell it out for you because it is a little bit of an unusual spelling. L-I-E-R-R-E, Keith, K-E-I-T-H.com. I wanted to just start with a really nice quote that was at the front of your book from Dr. Michael Eades, he's the author of Protein Power, and this is what he said: "If you have a daughter or know anyone with a daughter who is contemplating going vegetarian, please make this book available, it could be the most important thing you ever do for the long-term mental and physical health of a young woman." I'm guessing you refer to a young woman here because you were the author and you are a woman. But I'm sure everything that we're going to talk about today would apply to men as well.

Lierre Keith: It does. But there are specific reasons, I think, that teenage girls

get into being vegans that are particularly vulnerable to the propaganda of the kind of people who espouse veganism and animal rights, and they do target young girls. They'll put ads in the publications that are meant for teenage girls very specifically because they know that young girls are going to be attracted to the philosophy. And without counter information, of course, a lot of girls do sign up and do it. I speak from experience. I was 16 years old when I became a vegan and that's exactly how I got into it. I think that's partly what he's talking about is that there is a very, very specific sort of political strategy to get young women involved in veganism by vegans.

Trudy Scott: Ah, very interesting. I wasn't aware of that. But now that I think

about it, a lot of the women that I'm working with in their 30s and 40s, they say, "My daughter wants to become a vegetarian, or a vegan, or she has." I was not aware that they were being targeted. That's very unfortunate to hear, very unfortunate. Can you talk a little bit more why they might be targeting young women? Just because they feel like they may be more sympathetic to the reason for going through with it?

Lierre Keith: Yes, young girls, teenage girls, I think are a lot more sympathetic

to the message. It has to do with socialization that girls are trained



to care about relationships, to be compassionate, have care, feel nurturing feelings toward everybody, and boys are not. Boys are socialized into masculinity, which is more about control and power, having an ego, and all that kind of stuff. This is the patriarchal world that we live in. So when girls see fluffy bunnies and little baby chicks and they hear this terrible stuff about factory farming – which is all true – they care about it. They're supposed to care about it. They've been trained to care about it. And I don't think it’s bad they care about it. I think we should care about these creatures that are very tensioned and are absolutely suffering under conditions of factory farming. PETA and the animal rights people, they know that. They know this is the next generation, that's why they put those ads very specifically in magazines that teenage girls read. And this has a tremendous impact on girls’ health. I did permanent damage to my body, especially because I started so young. Your brain is not finished developing until you're at least 21, some people say 24, and you suddenly go on a diet that doesn't have basically a single thing that your brain needs. That's permanent, which is their point. You're still building that brain. It's still going through that process of encephalization and myelization, and there was a whole bunch of stuff I never got because I started so young being a vegan.

Trudy Scott: Wow. So tell us a little bit more about the fact that you had a lot of

health challenges. Tell us a little bit more about what kind of problems you experienced. I know you had problems for many years and then came to the realization that it was the diet that was impacting these health problems and how you were feeling.

Lierre Keith: It's really hard when you've sort of adopted the vegetarian or this

vegan world view. It's really hard to engage with information that is counter to that ideology, and part of the problem is that when you become a vegan, it's not just a diet, it's not just something that you eat, it's not even just something you believe, and it becomes who you are. If you really take it up, it becomes your identity. This is a scary thing for anybody who does this, whatever the ideology is, because then anybody who comes at you with information that perhaps contradicts that ideology, it's not just about an intellectual debate now. It's not even an emotional debate at that point. It becomes an attack on you. That was very much what I experienced. Even when my health began to fail, it was really hard to broaden out again and say,



"There's information I'm missing. What is it?" I couldn't do it because it was so threatening. So my health began to fail almost right away. Within maybe two years of becoming a vegan, I had already developed tremendous blood sugar problems, but I didn't know that. I didn't have a word for what I was experiencing. I certainly didn't understand the biochemistry of it. I just knew that every few hours, I had to eat or I felt like I was going to die; and that time period shrunk. It was less and less time between feeding incidents, shall we say. And by the end of being a vegan, it was like every half an hour you've got to put food in your face. You're just falling over from that blood sugar; and I didn't know that. I didn't have any way to explain why I always had to be putting food in my face. And, of course, it was all just carbohydrates, so every time I did it, I made it worse. So there's the blood sugar issue, which we can certainly talk about and the impact that has on your emotional health, which can be very profound. So that was number one. Number two was I almost immediately stop menstruating. And, again, this has a tremendous impact on the future of teenage girls and their reproductive life. I had no idea what was wrong, and for 20 years, I did not have anything like a regular menstrual cycle. In fact, I almost never menstruated at all. Now I understand, it's actually really easy. You have to eat cholesterol, and cholesterol is essentially the mother hormone. Every single hormone in your body is made from cholesterol. If you're not eating any, you can't make any other hormones. This is true for men as well as for women. It's just a little more dramatic with women because we're supposed to ovulate and then get a period, and I didn't, and I didn't understand why. My only attempts to get answers were to go to a regular doctor and they'd say, "Well, we don't know. Maybe go on a birth control pill, that will help," and I didn't want to do that. Well, so now I'm going to take some fake hormones and probably get cancer in 20 years, and they couldn't even tell me what was wrong. Not a single one of those doctors ever asked, "What are you eating?" This is a well-documented phenomenon amongst women who eat low-fat diets for the same reason, there's no cholesterol. And particularly amongst teenage girls who are athletes because their body fat gets so low from working out so hard.



And, of course, women with eating disorders or teenage girls who are anorexic, their menstrual periods stop almost immediately, and it's for the same reason. You're not eating cholesterol, you've used up all your stores of body fat, and now your body has no way to make sex hormones. So it just all grinds to a halt, and that, for me, went on for 20 years, and I didn't understand why. I had no idea what was going on. And that one at least I was able to fix. Within pretty much two weeks, I took all the soy out of my diet, and that's something we can talk about as well. I removed the soy. So all those phytoestrogens were gone. I started drinking chicken broth every day and I finally figured out that I had to be eating grass-fed beef. And those three things all happened at once. And two weeks later, what do you know; I got my period and I haven't missed one since. I mean that's how dramatic it was. I can't pretend this was anything else; it was so dramatic. So that's a real problem, especially these young women who take up this diet, this is something I've heard over and over, "Yep, haven't had a period for two years. Yeah, I almost never get my period. It's incredibly painful when I get it." All these reproductive problems, and they can't get pregnant to save their lives. Of course, they don't have the nutritional base and like an animal, can’t get pregnant. So that was another thing that happened to me was the reproductive issue. Then another really big one was that I ended up with a degenerative joint disease in my spine. And, again, people's spines aren't supposed to fall apart when they're 18. There was not a doctor that I went to who could explain what had gone wrong. They look at the MRI and they say, "It looks like you fell out of an airplane." I would respond, "Yeah, I know, it's really bad," and they can't explain it. They ask, "Did you fall off a ladder? Were you in a horrible car wreck? Did you have a skydiving accident?" I replied, "No, I was a vegan for 20 years," and that's what it was. I know and understand now sort of step-by-step how that happened. I can explain nutritionally what I did and all the deficiencies that led to that. But that one's too late; there's no going back. Eating a more appropriate human diet brought down my pain level – it's about in half of what it was, which is fabulous. I can sit up



long enough to do things like go to the movies or travel to visit my parents. That was not possible. By the end of my vegan diet in 1999 is when I stopped. I spent my life lying on the couch at that point. I couldn't stand up more than 5-10 minutes; 15 were just excruciating, and that's where it went. So I get a lot of emails from people who have joint problems on this vegan diet, and I can explain to them what they're doing and why they have to stop. I have this sort of cautionary tale: "This is how bad it can get, and the damage can be permanent." So there was that. Of course, I had the depression and anxiety. It was this terrible sense of apathy, pointlessness, you know, that terrible gray fog that you get when you are experiencing that level of nutritional deprivation. There's just no way to keep a steady mood when your brain is that deprived. So I really lost 20 years of my life just to depression. I would say that's probably the number one reason that I had vegans reach out to me because they're so exhausted and they've got this terrible depression and anxiety, and they don't understand why. They've come across some information. They've either read part of my book or someone's told them about it, and they're so confused and upset. I feel that I just have so much compassion for them because I had been there and they don't know what to do. They know that it's wrecked their lives and they're terrified to change, but they want the information because they're ready for it. So I'll walk them through it: "This is what you're doing. This is how it's hurting your brain. I know this is the hardest day of your life, but you're going to have to change the way you eat." And then I'll hear back from them in a month or six months and their lives have been transformed because they finally fed their brain what the brain actually needs to be happy. And so that's an amazing thing. I feel very honored that I'm able to help people in that regard. I'm not a doctor; I don't have a medical background. But just some basic information about how our bodies work can really change people's lives around if they're willing to accept it. Oh, I also ended up with an autoimmune disease. I have Hashimoto's and that is absolutely over-indicated. The gluten especially is a big one for that. But, again, I can walk people through step-by-step why you're much more likely to get these



problems if you're eating that plant-based diet. And that, again, is permanent. My TPO antibodies now are only at 21 and the cutoff for Hashimoto's diagnosis is 20. This is as low as it's going to get. I mean it's kind of miraculous. But I will always have an autoimmune disease because you can't turn that off once it's been turned on. I have to be really careful. I can especially never touch gluten. And you had to do all those other supportive things in the diet, and they help a little, and there's no way. But there's no going back once you do a certain level of damage. Those are the things that I did. This is the wreckage that I live with. I'm really happy to be alive. I've been depression-free since I stopped all that, and that's all good. But it really does serve as a cautionary tale that you really can just grind your body into the dirt for ideological reasons and it's pointless. You're not saving animals, you're not saving the earth, and you're not doing yourself any favors either.

Trudy Scott: Wow, what amazing results that you experienced. And it's so

wonderful that you are able to help others because when I hear you talk about this identity that you have as a vegetarian and no one can convince you otherwise. I was a vegetarian for a number of years. It was certainly not as long as you. It was in my mid 30s, actually 35. Actually, we had vegetarian climbing friends and they gave us a tape to listen to. It was by Howard Lyman, Mad Cowboy author, fourth generation cattle rancher turned vegan, and it was all about factory farming. My husband and I actually listened to it on the way to a climbing weekend in Utah, and we quit eating meat, chicken, and fish that day, that was it. But the good thing was that it taught us about the horrors of factory farming, which you talked about, and that is a terrible aspect of it. It wasn't a good thing. It definitely impacted my mood as well. And I'm fortunate I didn't do it for 20 years. But no one, at that time, could have told me I needed to consider eating meat again. It was just not even an option. So I can see why people were afraid. I have so many people who've come to see me who have been vegetarians and have added back animal protein, or vegans and added back animal protein, and see a difference, you know, they really see a difference. So it's amazing to hear your transformation



in just two weeks – removing the soy, drinking the chicken broth, and eating the grass-fed beef, and then getting your period two weeks later. That's amazing, really amazing.

Lierre Keith: It's pretty incredible. [Laughs] It's like, "Well, they were right

about everything and I've been wrong." I had to go back to my mom and say, "You've been right all these years," because she hated it, and she was absolutely right.

Trudy Scott: [Laughs] Yeah. Moms and our grandmas do know best. But,

yeah, at the time, you thought it was a good thing and you thought you were doing a good thing for the world and for the animals, and I think that's where a lot of us get drawn to this. One of the big reasons that people do get drawn to it is the moral aspect. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Lierre Keith: Yeah. And I'm always careful to start by saying that the values

that underlie that vegan affect are not the problem. So anything that pushes the world towards compassion or justice or sustainability, that's the world that we want, that we all want. And you don't have to give up those values to engage with more information and, perhaps, make a different decision about what you're going to eat, because that's still the motivating epic of my life. Those are the values we need as a culture, as a world, as a world community, so that's not the problem. I think a lot of vegetarians and vegans feel like, "This is the only option if I'm going to be a moral person," and it simply isn't. We can start with factory farming, and I think everyone with a pulse can agree that this is a horror on every level. It's a terrible waste of all our resources, all this ridiculous amounts of grain that goes to feed them, and the lives that they lead are absolutely miserable, it makes them sick. If you're eating factory farm beef, you're eating an animal that probably had liver disease, probably had holes in its stomach, was absolutely miserable for the last two months of its life, and was toxic through and through from all the horrible stuff that leaked out when their livers aren't functioning and they've got holes in their stomach. Their whole system just goes septic; and that's what you're eating. But the point is that cows are not actually meant to eat corn. They're not designed to eat grain in any way. Grain is very acid and that's why it eats holes in their stomachs. They're meant to eat grass, which is a completely different thing. Grass is cellulose, and they can digest that. They have four



chambers in their stomach, and it's actually interesting what happens inside a cow. A cow feeds the bacteria by eating the grass. The cow doesn't actually digest the grass, it gives it to bacteria. The bacteria then eat the grass and the cow's actually eating the bacteria. It's the bacteria that did this incredible thing where they eventually ferment the grass. So the cow is trading this really low-quality food, this grass, which is really nothing but cellulose, and then eating a very high-quality substance, which is massive bacteria, which is high protein, high fat essentially. So that's what's happening inside a cow. But they're not meant to eat grain. The only reason the factory farm developed was because of this movement called the Green Revolution where human beings figured out how to take fossil fuel and turn it into usable nitrogen. And then there's this mountain of corn that comes out of that. So all over the world, in all these bread baskets of the world, you have this huge excess of corn that gets produced in 1950, 1951, 1952, and now corn is so cheap that it makes economic sense. Before that, it never made any sense. Nobody would even have considered doing this. But at that moment, corn is so cheap that you can take animals off their native, very easily produced grass – I mean it's just what grows there in the prairie. You take them off of that and you put them essentially in the city, in this horrible cement-filled environment, indoors, and feed them something that they were never meant to eat, which is corn. But what it does is, it makes them get really fat really fast, so you can produce meat really cheaply. Now never mind that it's not what meat should be, it's not the life the animal should live, and it's incredibly destructive to the environment. The point is it's really cheap. And so, of course, this being this capitalist world, that won the day. But that's why factory farming was created. And a lot of the vegetarians and vegans have this strange idea – it's just an ignorant idea – which somehow this is inevitable in the raising of meat, and it's not. It's actually a very bizarre moment in history. The only reason it was invented was because of that surplus. Ultimately, it's about fossil fuel; without the gas and the oil to create that nitrogen, it would never have happened. The other thing that makes it is the six corporations that essentially control the world food supply right now. They have a monopoly, and what they can do every year is they drive the price of grain



below the cost of production. So no matter how hard farmers work, they can never make a profit, and so every year they have to produce more and more to even try to get to a break-even point. But it means more surplus. Every year, they're making more surplus, which only drives the price down further. So now next year, they have to create even more surplus. This is the terrible treadmill that farmers are on around the world, and the only reason it's true is because of those six corporations that have a monopoly. This whole, just horrible, process is then driven even further by the fact that the U.S. government has a farm bill every year. It's basically a mass of subsidies that go right to Corporate America. What they do is they look at the price of the grain, how far under are the farmers going to be this year, and they'll kick in a little bit of money just to keep the farmers in business. So they get these subsidies, but ultimately, it goes right into the pockets of those six corporations. And this is absolutely ghastly. The number one cause of death for farmers in the United States is suicide, and you can go to India and it's the same. The number one cause of death for farmers is suicide, and this is exactly why. They're basically trapped and there's no way out. There's no way, no matter how hard they work, that they can actually make a living. What it means aside from that is, again, this absolute mountain of corn every single year. So if the livestock is not driving the production of that excess corn, what are driving it are the six corporations with their monopoly, and then the U.S. government taking the subsidies. That's what makes that mountain of corn every year. As a vegan, I thought, "Oh, all that corn's being produced because we all want to eat factory farmed meat," and it's completely backwards. It’s surplus that gets used that way. This is not driven by animal agriculture. So what this means for an individual; you can eat that or not. It doesn't actually matter. Your personal consumer's choice is not going to stop that process. The only thing that's going to stop it is the political movement that's going to ultimately say that corporations are people. Take away those subsidies, take back our government from these rich corporations, and completely revise the way that we grow food around the world because this is insanity and it's just driving the planet under.



But veganism is not an option because it's not driven by animal agriculture. And that's a point I really want people to understand because they think they're doing the right thing when they buy a soy burger. They're only giving money to the people who are creating the problem.

Trudy Scott: Very interesting. Lierre Keith: Does that make sense? Trudy Scott: Absolutely, it really does. Yeah, it's totally the other way around,

which I don't think many people are aware of. Really, really important, wow.

Lierre Keith: Well, a lot of this – go ahead. Trudy Scott: I was going to say this information about the suicide with the

farmers, that's very, very sad. Lierre Keith: It's horrible, and it's called agricultural dumping. So you have

these corporations that have been able to buy this grain incredibly cheaply using those tax dollars, and then they go to poor countries and they flood the market with things like corn or rice or whatever that are literally half the price of what local farmers can produce it for, and they drive them out of business, off their land. Now these corporations have a monopoly in places like Cambodia or India or wherever, and this is what's created these just vast urban slums in places like Karachi. These peasant farmers are driven off their land. They've got nowhere to go but into the city to look for work. And all of this is made possible because of, again, that huge surplus of grain, and then the fact that countries like the United States that do agricultural dumping. It's very odd because most people who take up this kind of vegan vegetarian diet tend to be very progressive, very liberal, kind of leftist, and they think this is somehow a model about justice, and it's not. So it's "Oh, well, if we didn't eat factory farmed meat, all those poor people in Cambodia would have food," and the exact opposite is true. It's because of the American corporations taking that grain to places like Cambodia. That's what causes the starvation in Cambodia. They should be self-sufficient in food. The only reason they're not is because the farm prices have been so undercut by grain from America. And you can ask food activists from around the world,



"What's the number one thing we can do?" and it's, "Get your corporations out of our country. We know how to feed ourselves, we just want to be left alone to do it," and they can't because of the invasion of the corporate grain. So, again, it's like these people, and I know they have the best of intentions, but they've got it completely backwards. American grain is what's causing starvation; it's not going to solve the problem. What's going to solve the problem is stopping the agricultural dumping, which ultimately means stopping the surplus, the growing of that surplus grain.

Trudy Scott: Wow; very, very powerful. Really, really important to be aware of

and to know which actually came first. Lierre Keith: Yeah. Trudy Scott: So related to this, let me take a step back. So you talked earlier

about people contacting you because they are not feeling great, they're depressed or anxious, or they've got other health issues and they're wanting to know, "What can I do?" Do you find that once you start talking to people about this that they are willing to incorporate animal protein that is not from farmed sources?

Lierre Keith: I think for most people, it's a tremendously difficult moment. I

know for me, it was the hardest day of my life. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do was to take that first bite of meat. So I know what they're going to go through. They're running to me because I think they already know they're going to have to do it, but they don't know how. It’s like, "How am I going to make myself do it?" All I can say is there's a before and an after. I know it's the hardest thing. Then you're going to feel so much better that you'll know it was the right thing. And then there's all this other information you're going to have to understand about the fact that for something to live, something else has to die. That was true when you were a vegan, you just didn't know it. And now you can pick a better way. You can actually go to farms; you can raise your own food. You can be part of that cycle of life in a way that encourages more life instead of death, which really, are our only options. We can be part of that cycle that's making life happen or we can be part of the process that's destroying that cycle. I hate to say it, but agriculture is what has destroyed this planet.



It's the most destructive thing that people have done. It's really hard for people to engage with that because in this culture, we've been doing agriculture for a few thousand years. It just seems normal, natural what people do. I mean it's actually bionic cleansing. Around the world, agriculture has destroyed something like 98 percent of the old growth forests and at least 90 percent of the world's prairies have been wiped out. Really, in order for this planet to survive, we're going to have to repair all of that, which is a huge drawback from the human impact on the planet. But I don't see any other options, especially with the carbon levels as high as they are. And we can talk about that as well. All of that is what I try to tell them. There's a way to participate in this cycle that is very life-affirming, and makes you very humble about your place in it. If you do it well, then that's really the best you could hope for because there is no life without death.

Trudy Scott: I think that's very powerful. For something to live, something else

has to die. That's a very, very powerful and profound statement, and very beautiful.

Lierre Keith: It was sad to me that I didn't know that. I had to be 35 years old

before I figured that out. Really, I should have been taught that when I was 4. There should have been a culture around me that explained that. Like you need to be so humble. Like we owe our entire existence to six inches of topsoil and the fact that it rains. And what that means is that there's millions, and I mean millions of living creatures in a tablespoon of soil. We can't see most of them, but they are the ones that make life possible on this planet. I mean we're just the icing on the cake. We don't do any of that. But they are the ones that do that really basic work of life. Everything that dies has to be broken down and recycled, and they're the ones that do that work. They make the nutrients available again to the rest of us: to the plants, to the animals. Without them, life just grinds to a halt. This is really their planet. It's not our planet in any way. And just the amount of life that teams everywhere. You can take a tablespoon of soil and there are a million living creatures. You can take one square meter of topsoil and there are over a thousand different species of animals in one square meter of



topsoil, and those are animals, not even bacteria. And, again, basic work of life is done by them, and they're either degrading what died or doing various chemical transformations of those nutrients to make them available for uptake one more time. That's what keeps the cycle moving. And the problem is that every time we do agriculture, that's what we destroy because you can't rip the perennial cover off of that soil and then plow it over and over again and expect to have anything left but dust. That's the problem that we've pretty much blown through all the topsoil on the planet. As a vegan, I thought, "Oh, I'm eating this wonderful, life-affirming, sustainable, whatever, food," and it simply isn't true. In order to do what agriculture is, you have to take a piece of land, you clear everything off it, and then you plant it to human use. That's a long way of saying mass extinction because the animals that need to live there, the plants that make that home, they're all gone because they've got nowhere else to go. It's been this horrible period and we're calling it the Anthropocene now because it's so dominated by humans and the basic that has done that is agriculture. There's nothing non-violent about it. It's a war against the planet. I didn't know that as a vegan. In Nebraska, I don't know what's involved in growing corn, wheat or whatever. I just had no idea. All I knew was it didn't have a face; therefore, it couldn't be murder. Right away, I mean number one, this is an incredibly destructive process that really has no future. Every civilization that's ever existed, the longest that it can last is 2,000 years, and that's because it's the absolute endpoint when the soil gets out, it cannot last longer than that. That's number one. Number two is all those animals and plants that are just extinct because they've got nowhere to live. We've taken their homes just to grow food for us. And then for three, the actual animals that can try to live in this very, very reduced ecosystem that consists of one plant like corn or wheat. So you're talking about really small little mammals like mice. There are a few ground-dwelling birds, some reptiles or amphibians that might be able to survive. It's just mass slaughter that that grain is harvested. Anybody who has ever worked on a farm can tell you, it's a really horrible day, because every time you look down, you're just seeing ground up animal bodies all around you. Some estimates are that



it's a many as 2,000 per acre to grow something like wheat or corn. And I don't know why those deaths don't count. It's horrible, and I didn't know any of this as a vegan. I had no idea because you just think, "Well, does it have a mother or does it have a face?" and you're looking at a pile of rice. You've got no idea that an entire river was drained. You've got no idea that a wetland was utterly devastated. You have no idea the kind of biological impact that this had on a living community. You just think, "Okay, well, it didn't have a mother and it didn't have a face; therefore, it's non-violent," and it simply isn't true. Not when you step back and look at the whole picture acre by acre, or even just globally. It's an incredibly destructive activity.

Trudy Scott: Wow, very scary. I wanted to just take a step back here because I

just want to recap a few things. So we've got very different people listening to this, and I think that the message that you've got about the impact on your health and impact on the environment, impact on other animals, and the whole topsoil issue, this is important if you are currently a vegetarian or vegan, or if you're contemplating it. So that's an important message there.

And then if you are currently eating animal protein and you always have been, then go back and listen to the section where Lierre talked about the animals and the factory farming where animals have liver disease, have holes in their stomach, and are unhealthy and you're eating that meat, and that's not a good thing. So the first message is that veganism and vegetarianism is not a good thing. The second thing is if you are eating animal protein, the important thing is it needs to be good quality animal protein. And that leads us into this whole topic of what we are getting from the animal protein that is so important when it comes to anxiety and other mood disorders. Are we ready to talk about that?

Lierre Keith: Let's do it. Trudy Scott: Okay, great. I've got one more question I want to do before we do

that, and that was when you had talked about it being incredibly hard to take that first bite of animal protein. Tell us a little bit about that because there are going to be people who have to go through that. And I remember sort of making that transition. First, we ate fish, and that seemed okay. And I just never, ever



thought I would eat meat or chicken again. I just thought it would never, ever happen. It was very, very, very hard to do. So tell us; walk us through what happened with you, and then if you had any issues with digestion or what someone might need to think about when they do this.

Lierre Keith: So at that point, I could barely get off the couch without being in

excruciating pain. I couldn't sit up more than about 30 minutes at a time. The pain in my spine was so horrible. And I didn't stand up unless I absolutely had to. My life was very constrained, and I'm desperate. I mean it's just so hard to live in that level of pain. I ultimately ended up going to see a traditional practitioner of Chinese medicine, an elderly man who's been doing this his whole life; and at that point, he was probably 70. He was somebody I respected, certainly; and I have, again, a lot of respect for Chinese medicine just as a healing system. And I went to see him. You know, they take the pulses; that's their main source of diagnosis. And he took my pulses and just looked at me half in awe, half in horror. He's like, "There's nothing here. You don't have any chi. How are you breathing?" and I said, "Yeah, I'm kind of tired." I don't even know how to explain the level of exhaustion at that point. He was incredibly kind and so compassionate and he asks, "What are you eating?" I tried to explain that I was a vegan and he just said, "You can't do this. You're going to die if you go on. You can't; you've got to stop." I just started crying because I knew he was right. I was sort of the last holdout in my friendship circle. All of my other friends, including some of my family members, had also done this sort of vegetarian vegan thing, and one-by-one they had all given up. All of us did it long-term: 8 years, 10 years, 12 years, and I was the very last one who still was holding out. I had seen everybody go through it before and they had all tried to tell me, "You're going to feel so much better if you just stop this," and I refused to believe them. And, finally, he said, "Basically, you're going to die if you don't stop this." And you open the floodgate and there it is. Like all my friends, people who cared about me, people who had believed like I did, and they all knew that they felt better when they started eating meat.



That was the day. "All right. Well, I'm going to try. I'll just see what happens." I figured it was win-win. If I eat a bite and nothing happened, then he was wrong, and they were all wrong, and I could keep being a vegan. But if they're right, I'll have to admit that I was wrong about this, but I'm going to feel better and that'll be worth it. I bought a can of tuna fish because the idea of cooking in my pots and my pans on my stove, it was like a kosher person. It was like such a violation to bring meat into my house, it felt that strong to me. I didn't want it to touch my dishes and I didn't even want to eat it with my silverware. I got a plastic fork so I didn't have to touch it with my pure vegan silverware. That's how insane this can get. Now this is why I say there are very cult-like elements to this and it really is a kind of eating disorder. It felt so impure to even breathe in the house. So I did. I got a can of tuna fish, I brought it home, I opened it up, and then I just stared at it and I was like, "Well, second by second you're just going to have to do it." So I stuck the fork in and I just brought it up to my mouth and it was instantaneous. Not everybody gets something that powerful when they do it. But, literally, I could feel it going down my throat. It hadn't even hit my stomach and it was like this wave of energy just passing through me into every cell. Every limb of my body was just like, "This is what it feels like to be alive," and there was no turning back. I sobbed, just put my head down and sobbed because I was going to have to eat meat again. There was no way back. I felt so incredibly different within five seconds. And I hope your listeners are not that depleted because it's not actually an experience you need to have. A little bit better will be fine. But that was really intense, and there was no way I could deny it. I mean it was that intense. For about two weeks it was like that every time I ate meat. Eventually, you start to build your stores up again and you get more energy, more chi, whatever you want to call it. It's certainly not that intense now. I mean it always makes me feel better, but it's not where I sit on the couch and shake for 20 minutes absorbing the energy of the fish. But it is a terrible day for people, I know that. I know how hard it is. Nobody gives this up easily.



Trudy Scott: You're right about that. Okay, so this is a great lead into some of the nutritional aspects that we need to think about. Let's just talk about what some of those are and how they can actually help us with mood, anxiety, depression. And if we don't have them, how can it actually cause some of the anxiety and depression. Early on, you talked about the whole blood sugar swings component. We don't really need to talk about that. But that definitely did have an impact because of just the carbs and the sugar ups and downs; and then you're going to have this crash, and you're going to feel anxious, and you're going to feel tired. So that's definitely one aspect. But let's start with vitamin B12. That's something a lot of people know about.

Lierre Keith: Oh, yeah, B12 is a big one. There are no plant sources of B12.

There are a lot of bizarre myths in vegan reality that you can somehow get this from yeast or from eating your vegetables without washing them; you're going to get it out of the dirt. It's crazy; do not do this. Okay, just admit that it can't be done and take that B12 tablet every day. Just do it, okay, because you will get permanent damage without it. I have gotten letters from doctors saying, "Thank God you wrote this book because every week – not every day – but every week, I see these people. They come into my office, they've permanently damaged their sight or their hearing, and I can't get them to stop. Now I can hand them your book." I got a really wonderful note from a neurologist in Germany about exactly that and he said, "Please tell me when your book comes out in German because it's unbearable what they're doing to themselves." That is permanent damage, and that's what will happen when you don't have B12. This is not worth playing around with. Just take the vitamin; you can deal with the ideology later. If you are listening and you are a vegan, just take the B12; just do it. Just do it. There's no way around it; you have to have it. There are so many studies about vegans and especially vegan children that do not have enough B12, and the level of damage that happens to children's brains when they do not have B12, and even when they're given infusions of B12 in the hospital after they've been taken away from their parents, it's too late. The brain damage



can be permanent. This is not something to fuss around with, just take the B12. It's absolutely imperative for your nervous system to have it. So that's one, B12, and there's no going back from that one. The others you've got more time to wear down your own stores and then build them back up. But the B12 one, that's just crazy, and it makes me so angry that there are these big vegan spokespeople who still insist that you can get B12 from eating unwashed carrots. It should be actionable, like legally actionable because they are hurting people by putting out those kinds of myths; just crazy. So, yeah, B12. Another one – well, there's a number of vitamins that you can only get from eating animal fats and those are called fat soluble vitamins. Vitamin A, vitamin D, and somewhat K2; you're only going to get those from eating animal fats. This goes back, again, to the grass-fed beef and the pasteurized chicken. The animals that are in factory farming situations, their nutritional status is going to be nowhere near appropriate for humans. So you have to make sure that you're eating well-sourced products. In a way, this is good because it means you have to know where your food comes from. You've got to find the right farm. You've got to develop a relationship with a farmer. You have to support that farm with your money. That's really important; it's the only way they can stay in business is to have direct consumer sales. This can be done. It takes time to eat well. But it's really important on so many levels to go and find those good farms and to support them. And then what you will get in exchange is really good health. So, for instance, vitamin D. This one is really crucial. Low vitamin D levels have been implicated in everything from autoimmune diseases to depression and anxiety. It's a really big one. You cannot get it from factory farmed pigs. They are like us; they actually metabolize vitamin D by having sunshine hit their skin. If the pigs are out on pasture and they are experiencing the life that a pig should have. Lard is an incredible source of vitamin D, and there are so many traditional cultures that understand that. They might not have ever seen vitamin D under a microscope, but they know that this is a life-giving substance, and that eating that lard is an incredibly important thing.



It's a very traditional fat around the world, and that's one of the reasons why: the vitamin D. It's an incredible source of vitamin D. So if you can get bacon or ham or whatever from pasteurized pigs, it's fantastic, and you can learn how to make your own lard from the leftover bits and stuff, and then keep it in the fridge. I mean I now always have a jar of bacon grease that I do most of my cooking in. It's phenomenal stuff. And the vitamin D is absolutely linked to depression, and a lot of times you can buy vitamin D and vitamins and whatnot, different supplements. That's not a bad thing to do, but really we should be getting it through our food. You need just a baseline of nutrition, and then you can add things as needed to address whatever specific concerns you might have, whether it's physical or emotional. But you need a baseline of good nutrition first to build on. And vitamin D from animal sources, there's nothing else like it. There's no pill that's going to do that for you. You've got to eat it. So that's one thing, and you cannot get that as a vegan, and it's hard to get it as a vegetarian. So the vitamin A, the D especially, and then the K2. Another thing about animal fat and saturated fat is that your brain is almost entirely fat. I think it's like 80 percent fat. And fat is the preferred fuel for your brain, for your nervous system in general. There's a lot of mythology that your brain prefers sugar; that's not actually true. Your brain does run on glucose, but what it needs is a steady stream of glucose. What it can do is make a steady stream of glucose. You need to give it the fuel. It will then make the glucose, and the fuel it wants is actually fat. If you give it a stream of sugar, you will then be living that horrible blood sugar roller coaster because you can only stay alive at a very, very narrow range of blood sugar. If it's too high or too low, you fall into a coma and you can die. Any diabetic can tell you this. That's the problem with eating these high carb diets is you're constantly on – it's either too high or too low and you feel like you're dying every time you hit the peak or the low, and you can cycle through that cycle an hour if your blood sugar gets bad enough. Eating a diet of fat instead, first of all, stabilizes that blood sugar; but second of all, you're giving your brain what it actually wants, the fuel to make what it needs. You will



immediately feel how that completely stabilizes your mood state, and there's just nothing like it. The levels just collapse. I experienced this myself and have seen other people go through with that kind of blood sugar stuff is horrible: the crying, the rages. I had this one young guy who I became friends with - he was a vegan for about two years. His girlfriend and he got involved in the vegan community where they were living and there was a weekly potluck on Saturday nights, and everybody would go and they'd bring their vegan food. He said the thing that really made him question this was that every single time they got together, at every single event without fail, somebody ended up either crying hysterically on the floor or screaming and yelling at somebody else. He finally turned to his girlfriend and he said, "There is something wrong with us. Like nobody else behaves this way, and every time we go to this group, it's a meltdown. Why? Why are we like this?" And I was able to explain, "Yes, this is so obvious once you understand, it's the nutrition. You cannot keep a stable mood state eating that food." Anyway, that's an aside. But if you've been in that world, if you've eaten this way yourself, you know the terrible cranky feeling; the world collapses all around you. I remember sitting on the living room floor and crying because I could not find my car keys or my wallet. There was so little balance in my brain. Like the tiniest little thing would go wrong and you had no resources to deal with it, and this is why. Okay, so that's the D, the vitamin D. The next problem up is the protein. All of your neurotransmitters are made from protein. So the famous one that we all know about, of course, is tryptophan, which is the precursor to serotonin. We have these essential amino acids and they're called essential because we can't make them, we have to eat them, and tryptophan is one of them. If you don't eat any, you don't get any serotonin. There's nothing your body can substitute. There's no way your body can assemble it. If you don't have the tryptophan, you don't get the serotonin. Right now we are experiencing an absolute epidemic of depression in the United States, even among school children. It's really horrible when you look at the statistics. So along came Prozac and they gave everybody Prozac, and it probably helps a little bit for



some people. But the underlying problem is exactly this: we are eating diets that do not have enough tryptophan in them. There's no way to get that tryptophan if you're a vegan; hard if you're a vegetarian, though it can be done a little bit. But the other problem is that even if you're eating meat, you're probably eating factory farmed meat. And what those cows are eating profoundly affects the fats and the proteins in the ultimate meat and the dairy that come out of them. And because they're eating a corn-based diet, corn is very low in tryptophan, and what this means is that factory farmed animal products are also very low in tryptophan. And people like Julia Ross have proposed this is one of the main reasons that we have this terrible epidemic of depression, is that even if you ate all the factory farmed meat in the world, a lot of people still can't get enough tryptophan out of that because it's not there. It's only there in very low quantities because of the corn feeding. Factory farming has destroyed what should be very helpful products for the human template, and turns them into things that are more or less useful to us. There's no tryptophan in it; so of course, people are going to be depressed. You cannot make the serotonin without it. This is true for all your neurotransmitters, okay. They have precursors. They're proteins, they're amino acids, and a lot of them, and they’re not terribly available in plant sources. Plant proteins come wrapped in cellulose and we can't get to them. Our digestive system is not meant for it. We have no way to access anything that's wrapped in cellulose because we can't digest cellulose. We're not cows. We don't have multiply chambered stomachs that are filled with bacteria that can break it down. We've got stomach acid and so we can't do it. We just don't have the mechanism for it. So even if you're eating tons of plant protein, first of all, it's not a complete protein. A lot of these amino acids are in very low quantities. But even what's there, you can't access most of it, and so that's why it's called poor quality protein. You're not going to get what you need. Good quality protein is really important. It has to be from grass-fed beef, buffalo that's out there on the prairie, wild-caught fish, chicken that's on pasture, pasture-raised pork. But the animals have to feed appropriately to be appropriate food for humans.



So, again, it's like you can step in and be part of the circle. Factory farming is not the only option. You can reject factory farming and still eat an appropriate human diet. So that's the amino acid part of this.

And now we get to the fat part, which I'd mentioned some. So your brain is fat; it requires fat for fuel. The other problem is that one way to think about humans, and I guess all animals generally, is that we are essentially a set of electrical impulses that take place inside a watery environment. Now how is that possible? Well, it's possible because the electrical impulses run across our nerves and those nerves are insulated from the watery environment. So just like you can picture an extension cord or wiring for your house, it comes wrapped in that plastic insulation. Well, what we have in our bodies is called the myelin sheath, and that's what insulates our nerves from the wet environment. But what that sheath is made out of is fat. It's metabolized from cholesterol. If you don't have enough, your insulation is going to be really poor. So even if you have all the neurotransmitters in the world from eating good quality protein, if you don't have enough fat, they're not going to fire. You can't get the correct firing of the nerve, so your brain still can't work right without enough fat. And, again, I've seen really dramatic changes in people just from including fat in their breakfast. They decide, "All right, I'm going to eat bacon every day for a week," or, "I'm going to fry eggs in coconut oil every morning," and it's just so dramatic. "By noon, I still felt really happy, I didn't crave sugar all day, and I could go till 4:00 and not even think about food," and that's a first for them. The reason that a lot of people crave sugar – and I noticed this certainly as a vegan and in my little vegan friendship circle – we were absolutely sugar addicts, and this is one of the reasons. If you don't give your body enough fat, we have a mechanism to build fat for ourselves, but it relies on sugar. So if you don't give your body actual fat, your body then says, "All right, I'll try to make it because we've got to have it. But you're going to have to give me a whole bunch of sugar to do that." So this is why people on a low-fat diet just get addicted to sugar. They're desperate for it and that's why. Most people find that when they switch gears and start eating appropriate fat, the sugar cravings just drop away within a week or two. That's just an



incredible moment of freedom I think for a lot of people. When you stop obsessing about bagels and cookies and whatever, it's out there on the plate at work, you don't even have to think about it anymore because your brain is not craving it. So that's the fat part. There's also the omega 6 and the omega 3s. This might be getting a little technical. But most plant products are really high on omega 6s. Plants don't really need omega 3s, so they tend to be high due to these different kinds of fat, so omega 6s and omega 3s. And grain is really high in omega 6s. When you're eating these carbohydrate-based diets of whatever kind, you're getting way too many omega 6s. And omega 6s are responsible for inflammation. Now you need some inflammation in the body to carry away damaged cells, to help with healing of injuries. They have to have some, but we've got way too many. And, again, this goes back to the fact that people are eating really high carb diets. So all of that grain is high in omega 6. But also the factory farming, of course, creates, again, the meat and dairy products that are really high in omega 6s and almost non-existent in omega 3s, and that's because of the grain feeding. When you leave cows on their own to just eat grass, the omega 3 component is way higher and, in fact, meets the needs of the human template quite well. So, again, that's sort of a double-edge sword. Even if you're eating meat, if it’s factory farmed, you can't get enough omega 3. It only takes, I think, two or three days of feeding grain to cattle, either dairy cows or meat, and the measurable quantities in omega 3s in their body just drops dramatically. They burn through them themselves and then there's none left over, so they've used up their own stores. And, again, this really points us back that they're not made to eat, grain. But what this does, speaking of the brain, the high omega 6s, low omega 3s, again, has been over-implicated in all kinds of anxiety and depression and mental illnesses. And even just flipping that around can really help. This is one of the reasons that some people recommend fish oil for people with depression. You actually could fix this just by changing your diet. And, again, I really recommend having a baseline of a really good diet, and then you can add supplements if needed. But if you were eating a good diet, you wouldn't need to take fish oil, you would just have it as omega 3s because that should be what's in your animal products. The fact that they're not there is because they don't have an appropriate life.



One thing we also know about people who eat these very low fat diets for whatever reason is that they have anywhere from two to four times the suicide rate of people who eat a normal fat diet. So it really does drive a tremendous amount of suffering in human beings on these kinds of low fat diets. I also want to point out that a diet with no fat at all has actually been used as torture for political prisoners in some pretty evil places around the world because they know that within a week or two, the mental suffering is just extraordinary when you have absolutely no fat in your diet at all. It's a way to torture people without there being physical signs of torture on the body. This is totally horrifying and dreadful, evil people who know how to use this against human beings. But that's what happens.

Trudy Scott: Wow. Lierre Keith: Yeah. You know, I got a glimpse of that as a vegan. I know how

bad I felt all the time and didn't understand why. So let's see, what else can I tell you? What other questions do you have about the nutrition?

Trudy Scott: This is great. I want to just go back to a few things that you said.

The fact about a low fat diet for torture, that's just horrific. I didn't even know about that. But I just wanted to add to the comment about being sugar addicts, and I think part of that is also with the blood sugar ups-and-downs; also with the low levels of the neurotransmitters. We didn't talk about iron and animal protein and iron as a cofactor for making the neurotransmitters and that’s going to affect your mood and your sugar craving. So all of this ties in together very much and can cause all these problems that we're seeing. For folks who weren't on Season 1 of The Anxiety Summit as I interviewed Dr. Felice Jacka, the Australian researcher, and she looks at traditional diets as a way to reduce the risk of anxiety and depression in Australian women, and she found that grass-fed red meat was the most important factor. And there were a number of other studies. There was another study that looked at the DASH diet for improving mood in post-menopausal woman, and found at the start, it helps with high blood pressure, with bone health, and also had a positive effect on improving mood in the post-menopausal woman; and it did include lean red meat. So in case any of you are



wondering, there is research supporting this. And I know you've got a lot of research that you've done in writing and talking about this, so we'll make sure to share some of this stuff. Actually, I've got access to some of the research. But all in all a very powerful, and a huge impact on mood. And we didn't even talk about really low cholesterol as being affected when it comes to mental health, so that's a problem as well.

Lierre Keith: Absolutely. Trudy Scott: Yeah. Really, really, really good. Now can we quickly just touch

on one other thing related to that, because a lot of people who are becoming vegan or vegetarian will eat a lot of soy, and this was a huge problem with me. I just ate everything that was processed soy: soy butter, soy cheese, soy yogurt, soy everything. And that's problematic. So tell us a little bit why soy – certainly when it's processed – can be a problem.

Lierre Keith: There are a number of really bad things about soy. It's not

particularly edible for a lot of reasons. And when you do eat it, it's going to cause trouble all around. So one of the biggest problems is what are called phytoestrogens and these are substances that plants produce that look very much like animal estrogen, but not quite. So the problem is that they fool your body, and all over you have estrogen receptors. Obviously, women have more than men. But everybody has some estrogen just like everybody has some testosterone. And your estrogen receptors are fooled and they will try to lock onto this phytoestrogen as it floats around in your body. And now that receptor site is full, so the actual estrogen can't get in there and do what it needs to do. You've got this sort of fake estrogen that is taking the place of a real estrogen, but does not have the same function. Your body cannot actually use it in the same way. So it's trying its best, but it's not going to work, and it's blocking the actual estrogen that you do need from getting in there and doing its job. So this is a real problem. There's so much phytoestrogen in, for instance, baby formula, that feeding your child, your infant child, a soy formula, is equivalent to giving her four birth control pills a day. Nobody in their right mind would give their child four birth control pills a day. But that's what you're doing when you give your child soy formula. This is, I think, largely responsible for the precocious puberty



epidemic that we're having in the United States. The precocious puberty is especially affecting African American girls – and it's hard to get good statistics on this. But a lot of those kids were fed soy formula. If you're a woman who's on public assistance and you're African American, they will not let you buy dairy formula for your child because there are a certain percentage of African Americans who are lactose intolerant, that's a real thing. But instead, you have to buy the soy formula. What it means is that all these young Black girls got way too much estrogen as infants and now they're hitting puberty at age 6, 7, 8, which is insane. And it sets them up for an intense amount of suffering throughout their lives – physical, emotional, all kinds of reproductive problems later in life: cancer probabilities. It just totally messes with their bodies forever. It's not edible, it just isn't. It shouldn't even be sold as far as I'm concerned. It's just totally horrifying the more you look into this. And they’ve just done this vast experiment on some of the most vulnerable people in America, which is little Black girls, and nobody seems to care because of racism and sexism. It just makes me so angry what these girls are suffering. I can't imagine getting my period at age 8. It was hard enough at age 11 or 12, and there's these little girls who are already having to deal with puberty. The pain is excruciating for them, they're not ready for it. So that's the precocious puberty. I mean I've people who had 3, 4, 5-year-old girls who were already growing breasts because they were vegans and they had fed the children soy. Luckily, they saw what was happening. It'll even be noted in the charts at the pediatrician. A parent was told to feed with soy immediately. And the smart ones realized what's gone on and they'll stop. But, again, you're up against that ideology which makes it really hard. So, yeah, this is a major problem. It's not that much better for us who are grown-ups as well. It's the same problem with the phytoestrogen. It's a huge estrogen load. It acts like estrogen, but it's not quite estrogen, and it really messes with your hormones. I experienced this absolutely as a vegan, with the cessation of my mental period and all that, and then become completely regular when I took out the soy. I know that was the soy. My sister ended up with endometriosis from using soy products. There's no question that's what caused it. And partly we know that because she moved to Europe for part of the time after the



endometriosis started. They don't have soy in Italy where she was living, so she ended up having to eat just regular dairy and it went away; what do you know, no endometriosis. How did that happen? What a miracle. Then she came back to the United States, took up with the soy milk; one month later, she was right back where she started with endo and she couldn't figure out why. It wasn't until I found out all this information about soy and she suddenly saw the pattern: "What did I do to myself?" She ended up having to have a hysterectomy, because at that point, it was too late. This does have serious consequences in people's lives. So that's the phytoestrogen. Another problem of soy: All grains, or all seeds really – broaden it out. All seeds have substances that keep them from being digested by animals. The whole point of a seed it's the baby of the plant, and it doesn't want to get eaten, it wants to have a life, and it wants to be the next plant. So plants have developed all kinds of chemicals to fight us to keep us from eating them, to make their babies indigestible. And all seeds contain some of these substances and they're called phytates, and they make it really hard to digest seeds of any kinds, and that includes grains; soy in particular is very high in phytates. You can try to fool seeds into thinking that it's time to grow, and therefore, you can disable your phytates. The way you do that is by soaking them. A lot of traditional cultures have ways to soak, ferment, and encourage the seeds to start sprouting a little bit. The phytates are then disabled and it makes them a lot more digestible. You can do that with some grains, but with soy, it doesn't really matter. No matter how much you do that, there are so many phytates in that soy that they're never going to be particularly digestible. And one of the main things that phytates do in your digestive tract is they grab onto minerals and suck them out of the body. This is one of the things I'm pretty sure destroyed my spine - no matter how many minerals I ate, eating all that soy on top of it and all that whole grain without realizing there was a better way to pair it, I didn't know. I was just eating all this soy just loaded with phytates kind of substances. And, of course, it latched onto whatever minerals they were getting, which was probably not very many eating a vegan diet – but whatever I had just got sucked right out when the phytates got ahold of them.



So you're going to have just not enough minerals, and what you're going to get with that is bone and joint problems; and this is a real problem for vegans. The number of vegans I've met – or ex-vegans, recovering vegans – who will say, "I never had a cavity in my life. I went vegan at 16. By the time I was 20, every single tooth had a cavity." Denise Minger, is a wonderful young woman who's a recovering vegan. She's written a fabulous book about her experience, and the USDA food pyramid, and what this kind of diet has done to public health; that's what happened to her. By the time she was 15 her teeth were falling out of her head and she couldn't figure out why. And it was absolutely this problem: not enough minerals, and what you are eating gets sucked right out by the phytates. So soy is really high in phytates. Soy also includes trypsin inhibitors. Trypsin is an enzyme that's made by your pancreas and it's crucial to digestion. What soy is saying is, "If you eat my babies, I will make it impossible for you to digest us," and that's what it does. It inhibits the trypsin. Over time, it can actually damage your pancreas' ability to produce that trypsin. So now forever, you're not going to have enough fat to help you digest your food. This is one of the reasons that people get terrible stomach aches eating soy. I persisted in eating soy even though I knew every time I drank that soy milk; I ended up feeling really nauseated for a few hours. I did it anyway. I don't know why, I can't get back into that mindset. But even talking to people who are still vegans, when you talk about the pain that is involved in using soy products, they pretty much all had stories: "Oh, the flatulence. Oh, the pain. I'll be up all night. The diarrhea." That's the other thing, "Look, you people already know you shouldn't be eating this. You already have these experiences and you've even identified what the food item is. Why do you we persist in doing this to ourselves?" I don't have a great answer for that one. This is just one product. You could still be a vegan and not eat soy. But we all kept doing it and I don't understand why on that one, and how soy is like the truth, the light, the way. If you give up soy, you somehow admitted that you can't be a vegan, that it's a failure. So that's the trypsin inhibitors.



It also does weird things to your brain. There's an enzyme that is created in the region of your brain that's called the hippocampus which is responsible for memory creation, and there's a very specific enzyme that makes that happen. Soy actually blocks that enzyme from being created. And this is purely anecdotal in my life. But the number of especially young vegans I know who have dramatic memory problems, and they'll laugh about it. "Oh, I can't remember anything; I have to write it down. I have a calendar on my refrigerator." For example, "You're 24 years old, you shouldn't be having these problems yet," and that's what it is. Some of that can be repaired. If you get off soy and you try to do the brain repair: eat your butter, eat your coconut oil. You might be able to fix that. But, again, it's one of those things that can be permanent if you do it for too long; and that's the soy. It very specifically goes after that enzyme. You're going to shoot your short-term memory pretty bad the more you eat soy. That's a pretty good roundup of the major problems with soy. It's just not edible. If you're going to eat it, you have to do it like they do in Japan. They will use soy as a condiment; it is not a protein source. Two tablespoons a day is kind of the maximum of what they eat there. It's highly fermented, so it'll be something like miso or natto or tempeh, and they'll use it with fish broth, so it's eaten with a substance that contains a lot of minerals, which is what fish broth is. Oh, the other problem with soy is that it's also a known goitrogen. It's very, very hard on the thyroid; and you'll notice that Hashimoto's disease, which is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid, has a Japanese name because they have very high rates of thyroid problems in Japan. Even though they eat traditional soy, it still isn't great for your thyroid. Hashimoto's is what I got as a vegan, and I'm figuring that soy was the main culprit here. But when they eat it in Japan, it's a condiment, it's not a main food source, and it's eaten with fish broth. Fish broth will provide the minerals that are being destroyed and is also very supportive of the thyroid. So if you're damaging a little bit with the soy products, at least you're now eating the fish broth that should help at least support it.



It's just interesting about traditional cultures. They often have looked holistically. They've sort of figured out ways to work with this. You can't just pick and choose what you want. You can't just eat the soy and not eat the fish broth if you want to stay healthy. If you're going to eat it, you've got to do it the way that they do it there. So I think that's what I had to say about soy.

Trudy Scott: I want to add genetically modified. Most of the soy is genetically

modified, so that's another whole can of worms that we won't go into.

Lierre Keith: Yes, it is. You don't even want to touch it. Trudy Scott: I'd love to just get a name from you, you mentioned the recovering

vegan who's written a book. Can you just repeat her name? Lierre Keith: Yes. Denise Minger, and it's M-I-N-G-E-R. She became famous

overnight because she took a look at The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, and she ripped the thing to shreds. She's very young and super smart. She was only 21 when she did that. She spent three months studying it and realized that none of his data matched any of his conclusions, and she took the thing apart on her blog and it just went absolutely viral. She has since written a book that’s called Death by Food Pyramid, which is phenomenal. She’s just a wonderful person too; just utterly charming, super smart, really funny, and a great public speaker. I can't say enough great things about Denise. So that's her book. If you're interested in nutrition, everybody should read it.

Trudy Scott: Excellent, thank you. It's been great. Wow, everything you've

shared today has been absolutely fantastic. What a wealth of information you are. We really appreciate you taking what you learned and sharing it so others do not have to go through this. I think that's a really special thing that you've done; really, really amazing.

Lierre Keith: Well, thank you. It was kind of my mission. [Laughs] Trudy Scott: These things happen to us and then we want to help others. I know

that eating soy and being a vegetarian was a big part of my anxiety. I became a vegetarian when I was 35; and by the time I was in my late 30s, I was having the anxiety and the panic attacks, and it impacted me very quickly.



Fortunately, I woke up and realized that there was something in my diet that wasn't right, and went back to school to become a nutritionist and realized, "Oh, my gosh, what am I doing?" So I was fortunate that I didn't go on as long as you and some other vegans and vegetarians. But it had a very profound impact on me, and I see so many impacts on so many people. So I think this information we've shared today is going to help people who are vegetarians, maybe those who have been vegetarians or vegans and wondered why they weren't feeling good and why they are feeling good now. Then for moms and family members who've got young daughters who are thinking about it. I think is going to be very, very valuable. I really appreciate you being with us today and sharing this. I'll make sure to include where folks can get your book and your website. I'd just love to find out, are there any final words of wisdom for us?

Lierre Keith: I just want people to know that you don't have to give up who you

are and the best of what you are to eat a healthy diet. There's so much information out there and a much bigger way to understand our place in the universe than just, "Does it have a mother?" or, "Did it have a face?" There's a way better way to participate that will keep you healthy, and also can do the things you thought you were doing as a vegan. You can repair the planet; you can repair your local economy; you can help small farmers. You can do good things for animals: repair habitats, rivers, soil, and prairie. All that can happen by feeding your body correctly. It's not either-or. I know that's hard to hear as a vegan, but try to open up a little bit and get more information before it's too late for your body.

Trudy Scott: Thank you. Very, very wise words. Again, thank you so much for

joining us. And everyone, thanks so much for joining us on another fabulous interview on The Anxiety Summit, Season 3. Join us for other great interviews. And this is Trudy Scott signing off.

Speaker blog: http://www.everywomanover29.com/blog/anxiety-anxiety-depression-vegetarian-diet/



Lierre Keith, small farmer, author of The Vegetarian Myth

Lierre Keith is a writer, small farmer, and radical feminist activist. She is the author of six books including, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, which has been called “the most important ecological book of this generation.” She is also coauthor, with Derrick Jensen and Aric McBay, of Deep Green Resistance: Strategy to Save the Planet. She’s been arrested six times for acts of political resistance. You can find out more at lierrekeith.com

Trudy Scott, CN, host of The Anxiety Summit, Food Mood expert and author of The Antianxiety Food Solution

Food Mood Expert Trudy Scott is a certified nutritionist on a mission to educate and empower anxious individuals worldwide about natural solutions for anxiety, stress and emotional eating. Trudy serves as a catalyst in bringing about life enhancing transformations that start with the healing powers of eating real whole food, using individually targeted supplementation and making simple lifestyle changes. She works primarily with women but the information she offers works equally well for men and children.

Trudy also presents nationally to nutrition and mental health professionals on food and mood, sharing all the recent research and how-to steps so they too can educate and empower their clients and patients.

Trudy is past president of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals. She was recipient of the 2012 Impact Award and currently serves as a Special Advisor to the Board of Directors. Trudy is a member of Alliance for Addiction Solutions and Anxiety and Depression Association of America. She was a nominee for the 2015 Scattergood Innovation Award and is a faculty advisor at Hawthorn University.



Trudy is the author of The Antianxiety Food Solution: How the Foods You Eat Can Help You Calm Your Anxious Mind, Improve Your Mood and End Cravings (New Harbinger 2011). She is also the host of the wildly popular Anxiety Summit, a virtual event where she interviews experts on nutritional solutions for anxiety.

Trudy is passionate about sharing the powerful food mood connection because she experienced the results first-hand, finding complete resolution of her anxiety and panic attacks.

The information provided in The Anxiety Summit via the interviews, the blog posts, the website, the audio files and transcripts, the comments and all other means is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for advice from your physician or other health care professional. You should consult with a healthcare professional before starting any diet, exercise, or supplementation program, before taking or stopping any medication, or if you have or suspect you may have a health problem.

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Anxiety, Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet · 2019-11-04 · Depression, and the Vegetarian Diet," and we have Lierre Keith here to share. Welcome, Lierre. Lierre Keith: Trudy,