My dear veganistas, sproutarians, banana faithful, hi carb, low carb, Tooks, Brandybucks, Bracegirdles, and Proudfoots.

I wanted to share an idea on the Internet, and no better place than this wonderful collection of thinkers, doers, tryers, movers, and shakers! (and you know, blenders.)

I'm a guy in my 20's and have been a vegan for just one year of my life so far (and ovo/lacto for 6 months prior to that), but as well as embracing a myriad of other natural health and lifestyle practices all the same, have had a dramatic body (and then mind, and now existential) transformation as a result - already. In fact many transformations or big (certainly physical) things that I noticed, only took months, even weeks for some discoveries.

I've been shocked at the UNANTICIPATED bodily benefits of veganism that came out of nowhere (though yes vegan is only one factor along with eating exclusively organic (and much of it self-grown, and super fresh and living and richly-fed), eating with TRULY good digestion (a rarity even emong people who eat organic and/or 'more whole' foods than the S.A.D.), having strong circadian rhythms, and intimate contact with nature in every way I know), that I am clearly this way for life as far as I can ... prophesy.

Yep...big natural health freak here. One who doesn't like EMFs, plastics, stress, underwear, corporations, the government, tax, ... annnnnnd I'll stop at that one. you get the point.

Now that my introduction's out of the way, let's get to it:

Long now, have I observed a pattern in nutrition - which is that if YOU produce a given vitamin (whether it be D3 from the sun instead of eating fish or fowl eggs, or A from beta-carotene instead of 'bio-available' ready-made retinol in organ meat), it just seems to be a better option over all. Not only can you avoid vitamin overdoses (i.e. toxicities, leading to even death such as the observed case of liver being eaten prominently in certain arctic populations in times past), but there just seems to be something nutritionally wise in YOUR body making it instead of getting it pre-produced by another animal (and this is not even addressing the issue of toxins that accumulate as they make their way up the food chain just like nutrients to, but let's just assume everything is pristine and isolate the factor of nutrition here). It's bound to be better for the body, kind of like burning your own body's fat yourself rather than having liposuction.

From what I've read time and time again, our gut (and other factors) appears to make any self-conversion/synthesis/absorption/production happen efficiently (even well enough for ALA --> EPA/DHA), if you simply know how to (and do) nurture it - and, like in the example of B12, simply give yourself enough environmental exposure (cobalt!) to the minerals, and the healthy bacteria abundant out there in nature (and destitute in modern, clinicial, microbially-unbalanced, city/suburban life). I know - easier said than done. I myself don't live in a city or suburb, thank God, and I even help grow most of the organic vegetables I eat every day (or wild craft some / grow sprouts when travelling) - also, thank God. Rare, I know - but it's what we should all be doing. I do NOT believe in B12 supplementation (for me ... but for city vegans immersed by a sea of inflammatory factors while isolated from nature - quite possibly!) - trust me I get enough mud, soil, dirt and silt all over my skin, through my lungs and everywhere else that I probably get enough B12 from that factor ALONE. And I haven't even talked about the gut and B12 yet.

I'm also a big environmentalist, and that definitely has been a reason I decided to turn to plants for my nutrients instead of 'low carb' animal products, despite Paleo's tempting draw cards of ketosis, 'high' fat benefits and 'OHHHHHH, THE NUTRIENT DENSITY!!!' in general, which - turns out - if you really want to, is all possible in veganism anyway (sprouts!) and you know I really think all this macronutrient ratio stuff is totally interchanagble (and has a HUGE and massively understudied relationship with exercise, fasting, and body movement in general), now that I have read, and tried what I have (and boy have I discovered some things there). Sure, Ketosis can't be induced when eating a certain percentage of carbs (unless under some super extreme thershold of fasting, I'm not sure, though I'd guess higher fat ratio is a healthier way to induce ketosis than simply 'less food in general', even if sprouts), but I will say that broadly speaking, I firmly believe that ANY ratio of macronutrient intake provides enough of what ALL three give to the body, so long as OTHER factors are in play in a beneficial manner, as mentioned before. (And majorly, the gut as a deciding factor also.)

So, with that in mind - for a while now, I've increasingly subscribed to my own mantra when in comes to nutrition: BE the animal. Don't eat the animal. *I'm* an animal. I don't need to eat another to be another. MAKE my vitamin A, MAKE (/get) my B12, MAKE (/get) my D, and everything else which I know can all be obtained outside of eating animal foods (and both externally or internally, like vitamin synthesis and even transmutation of elements in the gut, if I simply help all those buddies down there for once and be gentle enough with them so they can DO their work...in (parasympathetic) peace), and not only is it better for the environment (and again safer due to the body's own mechanisms of self-regulating synthesis) but I actually feel for some reason, at the end of the day - that it is just generally superior, nutrition- and health-wise. (And that's important to me, as a health fanatic.)

Sure I don't have some study to quote (nor have I directly read any to the effect) - this is my own independent conclusion that has arisen out of everything I've read, experienced and tried, and thought through - I've gleaned enough now to shamelessly declare this opinion, even if it doesn't sound that scientific: it's like one's being more 'vital', or something, and almost like 'nutritional' physical exercise in a way. I think there's logic in this theory, and that it makes sense.

And in this light, I've even stopped eating mushrooms (especially once fully vegan) because I've been so committed to the idea - they're more similar to animals than plants, and no - I DON'T want these 'pre-produced' animal-like versions of those vitamins that are (or can be) interestingly in mushrooms, thank you very much!

But more recently ... as I've accidentally ingested the odd stray fermentation fly in my sprouts, or the odd green caterpillar hiding among the stems of my deliberately unwashed and still slightly soily organic chives, it's opened me up to an idea. What if it's honestly NO inferior to eat animals that are SO close to the nutrient's immediately-preceding form (even if it's only by accident that it happens) - their bodies practically the SAME food they're eating (at least it sure looked like it in the case of the teensy green caterpillar I literally thought was a piece of grass until the split second I saw it move along with its tiny yellow head as I put it in my mouth) - and so this idea of 'going to the source' in nutrition should be looked at more holistically here?

Rather than say 'I'm vegan', maybe it should be: 'I'm low food chain'?

Granted, I am not a believer that animal foods are fundamentally UNhealthy - and also note, I've not said that I'm a raw vegan - practically, I mostly am, usually am, or often go for spells of exclusively being so, but don't really see nutritional wisdom in avoiding e.g. the off cooked sweet potato for its incredible beta-carotene nutrition when there's indeed so many general factors in health that 'override' or influence the health differences between the caretenoids in cooked sweet potato and those generally existing in sprouts, e.g. - yes, I do believe animal foods are more problematic (even if they are 'pristine', organic and grass-fed etc. etc. etc.) - but I still do kind of 'respect' the idea of 'well-done' Paleo (in that it at least 'kind of works' to its own extent), if e.g. you heed Chris Kresser's words that if you're going to eat meat then it should be 'full spectrum' animal eating rather than just modern isolated muscle meat and nothing else.

So I already acknowledge the nutrition that is in animal foods - I'm not stupid and see that things are just a matter of a 'more healthy' or 'less healthy' nutrient gathering out there.

But even within my 'ideal' blueprint for nutrition - maybe some animals and animal products, actually CAN be acceptable, within that paradigm?

Maybe, if it's looked into, there might actually be a BIG difference, here, between eating salmon sashimi (an animal that eats smaller fish and invertebrates), and live but tiny fruit fly larvae (which only feed on...plants)? (And maybe even vegan humans, could be pretty safe as a nutrition source since their diet is simpler and only eat...plants? Jk.)

HANG ON THEN!!! Cows (and sheep!) are the SAME level on the 'food chain' as the green caterpillar I found in my chives. And furthermore - chicken, is HIGHER than cow since it eats animals itself.

Dang it. How weird to think of cow as 'low food chain' then - how can that make sense?

Is my whole idea FOILED - or could the lifespan of the animal (and/or that of the nutrient going through it, in terms of by the time it gets to me, and also the complexity of the animal food itself surrounding said nutrient), still make a big nutritional difference between beef and a meal of, well, locusts and wild honey?

Indeed, cows and sheep digest their phytonutrients MULTIPLE times - and surely the time and journey through a small insect is in general much faster and simpler compared to that. (even in the case of an insect followed by a chicken, and then its egg, is a quicker and possibly simpler journey than the same B-vitamin that winds up in the muscle meat of a cow at the butcher's - or at least, a different journey, and end-result nutritional context. And this needs to be explored, and determined whether it is significant.)

So maybe instead this could be called The 'Low Nutrient Miles' Diet. (like Low Food Miles.)

I mean, yes, I know one doesn't NEED nutrients from animals anyway. So there's no need for it. But maybe there's also no need for such importance on plant exclusivity, if my idea (summarized by the example of 'beta-carotene > retinol'), is one of the main reasons you're vegan. (Because for me, it is.)

Sure, a part of me becoming vegetarian originally was simply the discovery that 'I don't need (and shouldn't have) to kill an animal just to get my nutrition (what with all the pain, fear, and environmental strain that it usually entails)' - but I ALSO now am increasingly conscious of consciousness in all living organisms, both animals and us - I believe there's a lot that we don't know, and a lot we ought to be mindful of (though of course I still choose to survive, and to 'be', so I must get my nutrition from somehwere) - but this EVEN includes plants - and I really need to get round to reading that book 'The The Secret Life of Plants' (1973) because I'm starting to think that consciousness is in every single living being (and even in inaminate objects), just at different LEVELS and/or expressed in different ways, all on a gradient scale, and that the passing of nutrients and atoms from one organism (or rock) to another is just how the universe works.

But simply from a human health 'cause and effect' perspective - maybe this whole concept is a more enlightened way of looking at dietary nutrition, (certainly a new way), where, raw wild honey, indeed, no longer needs to be segregated into a 'second class' status of foods, to be flatly avoided if you're a 'true' committer to (dietary) veganism - but that actually, everything is on GRADIENTS.

It's a more enlightened view, in other words - more nuanced, sophisticated, mature - of nutrition, diet and health, if this is the way you approach it. (all nutrition-based - cause and effect. No other nonsense.)

'Cause I sure don't base my decisions on blind adherance to a label, badge or creed.

But if we want labels - if we want cool clubs - sure! Bring on the LFC camp (low food chain)! HCLFC! LCLCF! (HCRLFC?)

Fight fight fight!

But seriously though - I think the concept is compelling enough for someone to actually write a (big) book about it and see what existing research says. Explore the idea.

Low Food Chain. Low Nutrient Miles. Whether plant OR animal (or bacterium, fungus or rock).

Thoughts?

I think you are really smart and well spoken. What do you do for work?

What would your guess be?

C'mon guys - what are your thoughts on this nutritional philosophy? It kinda fits into the 'living foods' idea quite well in my opinion - I guess - as it still means you do that as much as possible: as 'original' and fresh foods as possible (sprouts are the best, you are literally eating not only still-living but still-growing foods (whole, in-tact, living organisms) which are indeed, as non-animal as you can get; I don't think it gets any more 'low nutrient / low pre-processing' than that, apart from the minerals in pieces of rock! But only that, a raw, alive wiggling lil' green caterpillar shouldn't be anathema but more holistically seen as 'not too different' to plant food after all)...

If you can define low on the food chain as anything that doesn't run away from you when you try to eat it, I think it could work.

@ rawr

Maybe you would get more of a response if you gave us an abridged version of your idea.

sounds like you're trying to say that eating worms and flies is a sound nutritional paradigm. if that's what you want to do and you think it makes sense from a wholistic pespective, then go for it! that's the problem with analyzing dietary choices using one lens (like low food chain), it leads to weird results - better to bring all aspects together then choose.

sounds like you're very conscious and doing well. well done.

low food chain makes more sense for the omnivore, not for comparing eating cows to sprouts on a continuum.

this "sprouts are the best" mantra doesn't fly with me personally. again it's looking at only one food aspect.

Well one thing that I think is interesting, and I'm not sure many people think about, is that nutrients are (over time) in a constant state of re-birth, transport, re-appropriation, transmutation (I believe in Kervran's hypothesis), deposit, withdrawal, give, take, almost like reincarnation if you will.

ALL atoms are. Everything, physically, is.

We are merly a vessel of various atoms while we live (some of them in our body a short time to serve a brief purpose, others in our body our whole lives, and then back into the ground on to the next destination and context whatever that will be), and when you see the picture more largely like this you start to see that there is NO such thing as 'original' form of a nutrient. The plant isn't the beginning of it, and not even the rocks from which it drew ITS minerals from!

After all, nutrients (as opposed to minerals) are mere molecules made up of elements (basic ones, C, O, H, N) which are all transmutable and simply allotropes, isotopes, variations of bonds to each other, and so many of them producable in our own body after all.

So my phrase 'low nutrient miles' starts to make no sense - everything is an ANCIENT element! But rather, it should be called 'low nutrient processing' or something like that - almost like thinking 'don't eat highly processed foods'. All I know is, complex animal foods are - under this paradigm - possibly inferior, to (let's say) 'simpler' (or pre-cursor) forms of the what make their way to the same end result in our bodies anyway.

And to me, that is a healthier way.

My guess is you are a writer, a blogger.