6 Vegan Diet Myths That Deserve a Closer Look
Veganism is a lifestyle built around eating plant-based foods and choosing products that don’t come from animals.
People choose it for a range of reasons: personal beliefs, animal welfare, health, and the environment.
Because a vegan diet excludes entire food groups, it’s often seen as restrictive. And that leaves plenty of room for myths, including some that flat-out contradict each other:
- It’s the healthiest diet in the world.
- It’s the least healthy diet in the world.
- You can’t build muscle on it.
- You can’t perform well in sports on it.
- It makes you gain weight.
- It makes you lose weight.
Quite a list. Let’s untangle some of it.
Vegans can’t be strong or successful athletes – true or false?
False.
A lot of people worry that a vegan diet can’t support demanding training or high-level athletic performance.
But plenty of elite athletes around the world challenge that idea. Their success shows that a balanced, varied vegan diet can support performance at the highest levels. Examples include:
Patrick and Venus Williams (tennis)
Nimai Delgado (bodybuilding)
Kendrick Farris (Olympic weightlifting)
Meagan Duhamel (Olympic figure skating)
Lewis Hamilton (Formula 1 racing)
Kyrie Irving (NBA basketball)
Scott Jurek (ultramarathon running)
Nate Diaz (martial arts)
Ariel Rosenfeld (an Israeli ultramarathon runner)
Gal Fridman (an Israeli windsurfer)
And the list goes on.
The takeaway? When a diet is balanced, varied, and provides all the essential nutrients an athlete needs, being vegan doesn’t have to stand in the way of improving performance or competing at the highest levels.
The athletes above compete in a wide range of sports, each with its own physical and mental demands. Their examples alone don’t tell us that a vegan diet benefits one sport more than another, or that it falls short in a particular discipline.
There are dozens of myths about vegan diets. Many are simply wrong, passed from person to person without scientific backing.
A varied, nutrient-rich, balanced vegan diet—with consistent B12 supplementation—can support good health, participation in any sport, and impressive progress toward your performance goals.
Haggai Leffler — The Vegan Athlete
