About ten years ago, i stopped eating wheat and other similar grains, because they didn't really agree with me. After a while of that, i started getting the urge to eat fish. At that stage in my life i couldn't really think of a good reason not to, so i did. I never started eating dairy or eggs again - and i still don't touch them. And i didn't start eating other meat until several years later, when i went to work in Afghanistan. I also started eating bread again while i was there (and drinking alcohol, after a year off it - but that's another story!).

The years off wheat etc were definitely beneficial and starting eating it again didn't seem to do any harm. And i'm certain that the years of being vegan were good for my health long term too. I'd quite like to go back to being vegan, but i couldn't be bothered with the hassle nowadays - and i've developed a taste for meat too1 ;-)

I was responding to your "anecdotal hypothesis that vegan chicks are crazy"!

That's not a problem, that's a good thing! But nobody has 14 years worth of B12 stored!

Doctors are best avoided, in my opinion. You don't stay healthy long if you start taking the pills they love to dish out. I don't need a doctor to tell me whether i'm healthy or not. It's my body and, unlike a lot of people, it seems, i'm well enough in touch with what's going on with it to know how healthy i am.

None of the vegans i know are skinny! And some of them do quite physically demanding jobs. One's a rigger, for example, and a dive trainer. I did building work quite a bit of the time when i was vegan - i had to drink a litre of soya milk a day to get enough protein.

Yeah, i agree. I know from experience that a vegan diet can damage young children. They definitely need animal products to develop normally.

If you're vegan, i hope for your sake that you don't take supplements - because they throw out your body's natural balance and probably make you less healthy. It's totally possible to get all your nutrient needs from a vegsn diet - and to be healthier than your average meat eater - but you have to be on the ball.

I was vegan for 14 years and i was healthy. I've got quite a few long term vegan friends who are also healthy. None of us take or took supplements.

The fact that there are millions of severely bipolar meat eaters kinda undermines your theory, i'm afraid.

That's not true. There are a few non animal sources if B12. I was vegan for 14 years and i didn't just seem healthy, i was healthy - healthier than i would have been if i was a lacto vego.

Or, maybe, "plattitudes"?

So am i, i'm pleased to say!

Democracy: the right to choose between a bunch of self serving bastards who don't give a fuck about you and a bunch of self serving bastards who pretend they do give a fuck about you.

Prattle?

They're not building my next iPhone!

Maybe the nocebo effect is responsible for MRSA. If people stop believing overuse of antibiotics is responsible for it, maybe it will go away! Maybe if people stop believing thalidomide causes birth defects, those defects will magically disappear.

But most people don't think about the side effects of the drugs they accept from quacks willy nilly - if they did, they probably wouldn't be so keen to take them. Fortunately my mum was one of the smarter ones and refused the thalidomide the quack tried to give her when she was pregnant with me. (In her old age, she used to accept drugs from the quack, so as not to offend them and to keep them onside, but she didn't take most of them. She lived to be 86.)

The fact is that there's a vast amount of proven and well documented detrimental side effects of pharmaceutical drugs - and a big proportion of the use of those drugs is totally unnecessary.

Yeah, i agree. There's no real reason to waste money on homeopathics.

But most of the things that quacks hand out antibiotics etc for don't need a real cure. The quacks should be telling them to go away and stop wasting their time. But, instead, they dish out pills because their silly patients want them. Giving people harmless homeopathics isn't hurting citizens nearly as much as giving them harmful (unnecessary) antibiotics.