"Cheerful Pickle" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Hi, gang,
Three months ago, under medical advice, I adopted a vegan
diet (no animal products, though I have not yet totally
weaned myself off of honey but
will
Quoted message said:probably be off it, too, in a month or so) to aid the
healing of my heart. In the process, I found out that the
diet also reduced my esophageal
reflux
Quoted message said:symptoms by 75%.
Yesterday, I discovered this newsgroup.
I am a bit confused about some concerns I see in this
newsgroup. First, I see where there is concern about
vitamins being vegan. In looking at the list of
ingredients, I see no way of telling the source of the
vitamins
and
Quoted message said:minerals. Besides, vitamin C, for instance, should be
precisely the same chemical whether it comes from a bush,
from a goat or from a test tube.
IMO, if you're on the diet for health reasons only, then
searching for minutiae probably isn't going to be something
you'll have to do, unless your doctor thinks that a pill
with gelatin in, or iron from animal sources will harm you.
In that case, I'd listen to him or her. Otherwise, it's
probably not that important.
When people are on a vegan diet for ethical reasons, it's a
different matter. That's why they make sure they're not
consuming or using animal products even in very tiny amounts
(at least as far as is reasonable).
Quoted message said:Second, I see concern about sunscreen being vegan.
Sunscreen in something very important to me, having
already had over 100 skin cancers (of all kinds known to
medical science). In looking over the list of ingredients
in my sunscreen, all I see are things whose names make it
sound like they are made in test tubes and not in either
animals or plants.
The thread about sunscreen involves the fact that ethical
vegans avoid products that are derived from animals because
they don't wish to contribute to the raising of farm animals
for meat. Unless your doctor tells you that an animal-
product derived sunscreen would harm you, then by all means
keep on using whatever sun screen you need to use.
A lot of the conversations in here involve ethical vegans,
which are very different from vegans who are merely on the
diet for health reasons. Veganism involves not only a diet,
but a lifestyle, if one is doing it for ethical reasons.
They avoid wearing leather clothing, fur, etc. as well. Much
of veganism has nothing to do with diet.
If you're on a vegan "diet" then talk to your doctor about
how strict you need to be to stay healthy. It's quite
possible that a tiny amount of gelatin in a vitamin capsule
or a little cheese in a spaghetti sauce won't harm you.
Quoted message said:Besides, who eats sun screen, anyway? Yuk, now that is a
nasty thought.
Veganism for ethical reasons isn't about eating, it's about
a total lifestyle of avoiding animal and animal-derived
products. Some won't eat white sugar because it was filtered
through bone char, even though there is no bone material in
the sugar itself.
Quoted message said:Additionally, as many skin cancers as I have had, there is
no way in the world I would drive myself crazy to find
"vegan" sunscreen (whatever that is) for the
one
Quoted message said:bottle of sunscreen I buy a year for protection for the
very few times I actually find it absolutely essential to
venture out into the sun.
Ethical vegans want to find vegan sunscreen because they
seek to use as few animal products as possible. If you're on
a diet for health reasons, these kinds of things should be
irrelevant to you.
-Rubystars
