‘Most People I Know Who Went Vegan Have Gone Back to Eating Meat’
Irvin St-Louis converted to veganism aged 21, back in 1996, long before the diet became a cultural phenomenon and everyone started eating avocados. The choreographer and personal trainer was impressed by reports of the plant-based diet’s health benefits in books such as The China Study and as part of the Rastafarian principle of Ital, which promotes a vegetarian wholefood lifestyle. If it didn’t come from a plant, it didn’t make it on to his plate. ‘I was dogmatic about veganism,’ St-Louis says.
But nearly two decades of religiously avoiding animal products took a toll, he believes. ‘I had heavy inflammation in my knees, tendinitis in my elbows and my lower back was killing me,’ the 49-year-old says. These aches and pain may have simply been consequences of ageing, or general wear and tear. But, one day, in early 2017, he got turned on to Instagram accounts promoting carnivore diets, in which all plant-based foods are eliminated in a attempt to address chronic ailments. For him, that was when the vegan bubble began to burst.
After eight months of researching the 100% animal product diet – its advocates point to Inuit communities as evidence of a historical lineage – he began steadily moving back to meat. Then, in 2022, he effectively went full carnivore. Over the course of a couple of months, after an initial fortnight of ‘keto belly’, his joint pain faded until it was ‘completely gone’ and the cutting of carbs saw him lose 4st 10lb – bringing him down to a more reasonable 17st. ‘I’ve built more muscle in the last two years than ever,’ he says. ‘When I was vegan, it was almost impossible.’
St-Louis now eats meat for every meal, but concedes that he occasionally adds lettuce, pineapple and onions to his plate as flavoursome accompaniments. ‘I do indulge here and there,’ he says. An average day sees him eat about nine eggs and a handful of sausages for breakfast, a few quarter-pounders for lunch and whatever meat he can stack up on for dinner.
While St-Louis’s story is extreme, it’s also emblematic of a broader narrative shift. Once hailed as a panacea, veganism now faces scrutiny from former adherents turned sceptics.
Not so Easy Being Green
You only have to look at the Buff Vegans’ Instagram page, 37-year-old Novak Djokovic’s tennis form, the biceps of the world’s strongest vegan Patrik Baboumian or serial ultramarathon champion Scott Jurek, to appreciate that many people do still thrive without animal products. Hit documentary The Game Changers made that point forcefully, while also inviting criticism for ‘cherry-picking’ research warning of the risks of meat-eating and trumpeting the benefits of veganism.
When the Netflix film came out in 2018, featuring a host of famous athletes and strongmen, such as Lewis Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, it looked as though veganism was on an irrevocable path from fringe movement to mainstream diet choice. Everyone seemed to be turning vegan. It was a kale-fuelled frenzy of meat-eater renunciations. The Economist predicted 2019 would be, ‘The Year of the Vegan’, and that same year, 250,000 people signed up for the Veganuary campaign, embracing plant-based diets for the month of January (more people than in the four previous years combined). A few years later, chocolate-maker Cadbury issued an apology to ‘plant-based Britain’ for not producing a milk-free bar sooner, while baristas at cafes started checking if you wanted ‘normal milk’. All the while, the collective horror around factory meat production and dairy farming grew, as details about animals’ appalling conditions came out into the open.
But five years after the cultural zenith, many formerly evangelical vegans are now publicly disowning the diet, while research from the consumer insights platform GWI revealed that the number of people who identify as vegan has dropped by 15% in the past two years. Meanwhile, one of The Game Changers’ co-producers, Schwarzenegger, said last year that eggs, salmon and chicken remained ‘staples’ and, in 2020, boxer Mike Tyson ditched veganism after a decade in search of greater strength and vitality ahead of his unlikely boxing comeback.
Other celebrities have reneged on their endorsements of the diet, too – such as the poster child for plant-powered living Miley Cyrus (whose ‘brain wasn’t functioning properly’), Cyrus’s ex Liam Hemsworth (who had to get surgery to remove a calcium-oxalate kidney stone) and Zac Efron (who struggled to digest the amount of vegetables he was eating). While survivalist Bear Grylls issued a frank mea culpa last year for preaching the benefits of a vegan diet. Now, like St-Louis, he follows a largely carnivore diet consisting of meat, eggs, dairy, fruit and honey. ‘I was vegan quite a few years ago – in fact I wrote a vegan cookbook, and I feel a bit embarrassed because I really promoted that,’ Grylls said.
‘For a long time, I’d been eating so many vegetables thinking it was doing me good, but just never felt like it had given me any good nutrients compared to the nutrient density I get from basically blood or bone marrow – red meat,’ the former elite soldier added. ‘I’ve tried to listen to my body more, tried to listen to nature, and I don’t miss vegetables at all. I don’t go near them and I’ve never felt stronger, my skin’s never been better, and my gut’s never been better.’
Crunching the Numbers
Consumers don’t seem to have the stomach for vegan products either – at least, not to the extent of the industry’s over-optimistic projections. In the UK, sales of ‘chilled meat alternatives’ consisting of ingredients such as pea protein, tapioca and mycoprotein fell 17% from 2022 to 2023; vegan food company Meatless Farm was rescued from administration; and shares of meat-free Beyond Meat have plummeted from $230 in 2019 to just over $7 now. Elsewhere, vegan restaurants from LA to Macclesfield are reintroducing meat to their menus to save their businesses, while formerly devout vegans are organising ‘recovery’ retreats to help others eat animal products and replenish bodies, which some claim became malnourished.
Chris Geisler, a podcaster and men’s coach, spent 24 months following a vegan diet before turning back to beef. ‘I could name 20 people who went vegan and went back to meat,’ he says. ‘Most people I know who went vegan have.’ He, and many of his friends, wholeheartedly tried veganism but were left disillusioned. ‘If I’m trying to save the planet but suffering as a consequence, what am I trying to save?’ Research does suggest vegan diets exact a far lower toll on the environment than meat-rich lifestyles, and Geisler does acknowledge the huge ecological impact of meat overconsumption, but says his experience as a vegan led him to become more conscious about what he consumes. Geisler now only eats meat if it’s local and organic, including venison (according to The Guardian, the overpopulation of deer is causing its own environmental disaster in the UK) and game.
‘People often initially feel great on a vegan diet,’ says holistic nutritionist Jade Leighton, who counts plenty of former vegans among her clients. Often their previous diet was full of poor-quality meat and processed foods, she adds, and through going vegan people start to consume a greater diversity of vegetables and antioxidants. An energising feeling, the vegan glow, can arise as a result of reducing consumption of inflammatory, processed foods, Leighton says, along with lifestyle and mindset changes.
A short-term study on 11 sets of twins recently showed that vegan eaters had lower cholesterol and body weight than their meat-eating counterparts. However, Leighton warns that a ‘nutrition gap’ may begin to show itself within a few years, in the form of fatigue, poor skin health and even hair loss. Biohacking pioneer Dave Asprey, who pursued a raw vegan diet for six months, claims to have ‘started getting intense brain fog, fatigue and even broke a tooth because [he] was so mineral deficient.’
Growing Pains
But Andrea Rymer, registered dietitian at The Vegan Society, who has been vegan for almost 10 years, insists that a plant-based diet including fortified foods and supplements can give you everything you need – as Djokovic, Jurek, Hamilton and co clearly demonstrate. ‘When it comes to diet, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all, and nutritional needs vary based on age, gender, physical activity and even metabolic stress,’ she says. However, seeing as vegan diets are generally much higher in fibre than omnivorous diets, vegans need to eat more food to meet their calorie requirements and maintain their weight. ‘This could be difficult for someone with a smaller appetite or higher nutritional requirements,’ she says.
There is also evidence that veganism reduces the risk of certain cancers, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but there have been laments from within the vegan movement on how factions, and companies, cast the diet as a cure-all.
‘When I first went vegan, and you told people you were vegan, they thought you were completely bonkers,’ says Toni Vernelli, policy head at Veganuary, and a vegan for more than 30 years. ‘That’s all changed now.’ There are still millions of vegans across the world, and while faux-meat sales may have peaked in the UK, total sales of plant-based and wholefoods are increasing. Brits are among those eating more veg, one in every three meals sold at the sandwich chain Pret are now veggie or vegan and Vernelli credits ‘the movement’ for ‘definitely moving a lot more people to flexitarianism, now they see that plant-based food can be tasty… That’s been the real success’, she adds.
There are growing pains in any industry, and while there may be contractions, the overall trajectory does remain upwards. ‘There was just a huge proliferation of vegan products,’ she says. ‘Suddenly, we had 10 different types of vegan burgers, sausages and chicken nuggets.’ New brands popped up left, right and centre. ‘We were like, “We don’t need another vegan burger.”’
But is the average pork sausage more nutritious than a vegan sausage? ‘It depends how you define nutrition and what your nutritional goals are,’ says Eric Robinson, a behavioural scientist and professor in psychology at the University of Liverpool, who recently self-studied the effects of a vegan diet versus those of an omnivore. A meatless wiener will typically have a healthier macronutrient profile than a traditional pork sausage, he says. Broadly speaking, they tend to be lower in saturated fat, but higher in fibre and with similar levels of protein and carbs. During Professor Robinson’s study, published last year in Physiology & Behavior, he observed how he was feeling – and how much he weighed – during periods of veganism and meat-eating. His conclusion? ‘The likely benefits for my health, the environment and reducing animal suffering outweigh the minor inconveniences,’ he wrote. Aside from his brief meat-eating experiment for the study, he has been vegan for four years and remains committed. ‘I don’t feel any different, other than being a little slimmer because of it.’
Clearly, there isn’t just one solution to individual and planetary health when it comes to what we eat. Still, veganism is here to stay, with an estimated 79 million adherents across the world. But should we all be vegan? The answer to that isn’t as obvious as it seemed just a few years ago.
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