Poor health is not limited to physical symptoms, but may include mental problems as well (e.g., depression). Signs of poor mental health that one may (commonly) observe or encounter in the raw/fruitarian community and vegan communities (more often in the raw vegan community) include: severe obsessions with food and/or dietary "purity," eating-disorder behavior patterns (binge-eating), and, sometimes, incredibly hateful fanaticism (e.g., some of the fruitarian extremists), and so on.

Awareness of FTT obscured by self-censoring due to moral ostracism. Hard statistics are not available on the incidence of FTT. Many if not most of the people with FTT self-censor themselves; that is, they switch to a diet that works for them, and leave the raw/veg*n community. Anecdotal evidence suggests that FTT is very common--the usual result--of following a strict fruitarian diet for a long term, while it presumably is much less common with conventional (and relatively diverse) cooked vegan diets. (The narrower the diet, the more likely FTT, per anecdotal evidence from raw diets.)

Note also the possibility, though, that FTT may be more common among veg*ns in general than one might think--consider the number of former veg*ns around, and the ostracism (discussed earlier) that usually meets anyone speaking out about why they may have abandoned the diet. The ostracism syndrome very commonly--and also very effectively--shuts out awareness of FTT in the raw vegan community. That it may also do so in the wider vegan community is well worth considering, especially given the similar prevalence of reflexive pat answers in response to any mention of examples that could raise the possibility of FTT.

Psychological patterns: Feelings of superiority and recitation of mantras result in blocking of contrary information. Observation of this type of behavior pattern--at its most visible, perhaps, in rawism--suggests a more general rule: Habitual recitation of such standardized replies or catechisms has a predictable long-term psychological effect, similar to ostracism, on those who engage in it. It tends to screen out awareness of the topic even as a worthy question open for discussion at all, let alone serious consideration.

Finally, contributing to both the patterns of ostracism and screening of awareness can also be a circular, self-fulfilling prophecy that fosters a superiority complex which feeds on itself, further perpetuating matters. The form it takes is the following: Since any failures to thrive must be failures to comply with the recommended dietary guidelines, then those who fail must not be complying, because they are not intelligently following the guidelines like those of us who are succeeding. Thus, those who fail tend to be assigned second-class status as lesser, unworthy information sources. Those who succeed, on the other hand, are obviously the ones doing it right and the ones to be believed. Yet both sources are just as "anecdotal."

Such a sense of arrogance, then, sets up another psychological block to really listening to those who might have contrary information. Thus, in some cases, not only is the information reflexively rationalized, it may not even be fully "heard" to begin with.

• Excuses and rationalizations the "party line" reaction to FTT. The most common response to FTT among raw/veg*n diet advocates is to blame the victim or outside factors, i.e., the "party line" response is excuses and rationalizations. A few of the common excuses raised are as follows.
  • Detox--the favorite, and unfalsifiable, rawist excuse. Your problems are all detox--you have not been on the diet long enough to become "pure." The standard, almost religious, excuse is that unless you faithfully follow the "one true religion and science of the raw vegan diet" you will never reach the "promised land" or "afterlife" of "paradise health." As wild and as crazy as this characterization may sound, it is a fairly accurate (albeit sarcastic) depiction of typical extremist claims. Also note that some conventional veg*ns make similar, though less outrageous, claims.

  • Deficiencies on the "ideal" diet? It may be a minor deficiency--you need to take supplements; or, an alternate form: it may be a minor deficiency--be sure to eat enough of certain (quite) specific plant foods.

  • Overlooked minor details. You need to fine-tune your diet (more, or yet still more), or change some single one or another of a potentially lengthy list of minor details to succeed. (If everything has to be just exactly right with little margin for error, however, what this shows instead is the narrowness and relative unworkability/impracticability of the diet.)

  • If all else fails, blame other factors. The FTT is of course due to outside factors: you didn't get enough rest, you didn't get enough exercise, you are under stress, you need expert advice which I will happily provide if you will pay my high fee, you lack sufficient faith in the dietary regime or are too impatient, and so on.

  Many of the rationalizations and excuses given by raw vegans are discussed in a number of the articles on this site: Idealism vs. Realism in Raw Foods, Assessing Claims and Credibility in Raw and Alternative Diets, and others. Similar excuses, if more sophisticated, are commonly proffered by conventional veg*n "diet gurus" as well.

• How often are diet gurus honest and humble? However, the one thing I have not observed to date is for a (prominent) raw/veg*n advocate to actively admit the obvious: that the raw/veg*n diet is arguably unnatural, and while such diets may be helpful or beneficial for some people (particularly in the short run), other people may experience FTT in the long run, because the diet might not be suited for them. What I am suggesting raw/veg*n diet advocates do is to openly admit the following:
  1. The advocate does not have all the answers in the field of diet/nutrition, and there is no "perfect" or "ideal" diet that applies to everyone.

  2. The diet the advocate promotes might not work for everyone (or, more accurately, probably does not work for everyone). If the proposed diet does not work for you, then you should try another diet; after all, the diet must serve you, and not the other way around.

• Your personal health and well-being are far more important than raw/veg*n dietary dogma or any other idealistic dietary dogma. In particular, your health and well-being are more important than someone else's obsession with eating a (100%) raw vegan diet, or with someone else's idea that "meat is murder," and so on.

• For some diet gurus, dietary dogma is more important than the health of their followers. It is my opinion that many raw/veg*n advocates regard dietary dogma as being more important than the health and well-being of their followers. (Not that this is conscious, of course--actions speak louder than words in signaling such behavior.) This opinion is based on seeing many raw diet advocates rationalize the massive failure (in the long-term) of the dietary programs they advocate. At some point, one must open up to reality and admit that raw diets can be extremely good short-term diets (at least for some people), but that their record as long-term maintenance diets is very poor.

• Diet gurus may blame victims if their diet does not work. However, instead of admitting the obvious, i.e., that their dietary dogma is flawed, many raw diet advocates rationalize and blame the victim, often ignoring the serious health problems their followers face. To a lesser extent, the same attitude--dietary dogma is more important than people--appears to be present in the conventional vegan community as well. I hope that you share my opinion that such circumstances reflect badly on the raw/veg*n "diet gurus" who engage in the above.

Difficulty of resolving the question with nutritional calculations done "on paper," opinions from nutritionists, or with clinical studies done to date. It appears that the assumption vegan diets can/will work for everyone is often based on the fact that the diet (assuming it is well-planned) meets nutritional requirements "on paper." Or it may be based on the opinion of vegan nutritionists dealing with vegan patients; though here one must be skeptical given the inherent vested interest of the nutritionist, and the above-mentioned tendency to characterize not just some, but all, problematic outcomes as due to "failure to comply" (or "didn't implement the diet intelligently or meticulously enough") rather than "failure to thrive."

Also, occasionally one will see a pro-vegan nutritionist make statements to the effect that after a year, the majority of people on vegan diets are doing fine. However, accuracy questions aside, as pointed out elsewhere repeatedly on this website, successful short-term results--even for a year or two (a year is a very short period of time in the context of long-term success)--do not necessarily predict long-term success on vegan (particularly raw vegan) diets; and to presume they do is naive at best. (If the patient has previously been eating the SAD/SWD diet, then in contrast, any one among a range of possible sweeping dietary changes based on adding a large percentage of more natural foods to the diet stands to be an improvement in the short-term.)

Self-selection effects present a barrier to accurately assessing incidence rates. Alternatively, the assumption vegan diets will work for everyone may be based on extrapolations from results of clinical studies done to date. The problem here, however, is that there seem to be no clinical/epidemiological studies that have been performed on long-term vegans that are not composed of self-selected groups. (See comments on FTT in the earlier section, Drawbacks to Relying Exclusively on Clinical Studies of Diet, for a discussion of how the self-selection effect, by default, "censors" data that might be obtained from any failures on vegan diets.)

This may continue to be a problem for the obvious reason that suitable vegan populations to study are small to begin with, and long-term veganism involves a major lifestyle change. To avoid self-selection effects and accurately assess incidence rate, randomly selected test subjects must maintain far-reaching dietary changes for the lengthy time periods required (at least a few years, as a starting point) to arrive at meaningful results. At present this represents a major hurdle to scientifically assessing incidence rates of FTT.

Note: As of approximately 1997/1998, vegan advocate Michael Klaper, M.D. had begun attempting to put together a study looking at both successful and non-successful vegans, which appears to be the first-ever of its kind. See http://www.vegsource.com/klaper/study.htm for additional information. Although not a longitudinal study, it does aim to compare groups who have been on various vegetarian diets--including vegans who have been successful and ex-vegans who have not--with the objective of uncovering the factors and potential physiological mechanisms behind why some individuals thrive on a vegan diet and others do not.

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(Rationalizations about the Evidence for Omnivorous Diets from the Fossil Record and Comparative Anatomy)

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SEE TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR:
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 PART 6 PART 7 PART 8 PART 9

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GO TO PART 1 - Brief Overview: What is the Relevance of Comparative Anatomical and Physiological "Proofs"?

GO TO PART 2 - Looking at Ape Diets: Myths, Realities, and Rationalizations

GO TO PART 3 - The Fossil-Record Evidence about Human Diet

GO TO PART 4 - Intelligence, Evolution of the Human Brain, and Diet

GO TO PART 5 - Limitations on Comparative Dietary Proofs

GO TO PART 6 - What Comparative Anatomy Does and Doesn't Tell Us about Human Diet

GO TO PART 7 - Insights about Human Nutrition & Digestion from Comparative Physiology

GO TO PART 8 - Further Issues in the Debate over Omnivorous vs. Vegetarian Diets

GO TO PART 9 - Conclusions: The End, or The Beginning of a New Approach to Your Diet?

Back to Research-Based Appraisals of Alternative Diet Lore