In Defense of the Vegans

Or how intermittent fasting changed my stomach, and my mind.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a fussy eater. As a kid, I didn’t like most of what I was fed. I don’t know if it was the style of regional cooking I grew up with or if I was just too sensitive to the act of eating itself. Either way, food never brought joy. It was just something I had to get through. Subsistence. The idea of eating for pleasure felt like a vague concept other people indulged in. And the idea of overeating—even vaguer. I could never understand how or why people did it.

When I got into alcohol, eating became even more perfunctory. I ate just enough to function. I didn’t care for popular restaurants, didn’t chase food trends. I was indifferent to it all until I was much older. That’s when running entered my life—and everything changed.

Like autumn for a tree in northern Europe, a lot of old habits began to fall away. I quit drinking, quit smoking, and somewhere along the way, I took up intermittent fasting. There’s no conclusive proof that it’s great for you, but I’ve stuck with it ever since. Sixteen hours a day. And something very specific happened through that practice: my attitude toward food changed.

Not in a gourmet, foodie way. But in a deeper, physical sense.

Earlier, I still focused on how food tasted. But after months of fasting, that priority began to shift. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, how food felt after I ate it became more important than how it tasted. I started to notice which foods sat lightly, and which ones didn’t. What made my system hum, and what made it groan.

It wasn’t some philosophical or moral shift. I did no work from my end. The fasting simply created a space in which I could feel these things more clearly.

That’s where the vegans come in.

As I started paying attention to my body’s response to food, I noticed something about animal products. Meat—especially red meat—felt heavy and unwieldy. It sat in my stomach like a stubborn guest and made my whole system feel slightly off: dense and sluggish. Even the pores on my skin felt like they’d sealed shut. I’d shower, hoping to feel lighter, but the discomfort would only fade the next day.

Fish was better than chicken, and chicken better than meat. But none of them felt clean in my body—except, oddly, sushi and sashimi. (But that’s another story.)

Milk, too, started to feel wrong. I used to end my meals with a glass of milk, but it began to feel like it overstayed its welcome—bloated, sticky, too rich for the role it played. I replaced it with a millet drink, which felt like a song. Gentle, unobtrusive, easy.

Now, of course, there’s no shortage of data or ideology to support veganism. It’s been praised, critiqued, co-opted, and memed into oblivion. I have no interest in arguing either side of that debate.

What I do want to say is simple: we should all try to eat more mindfully.

Yes, taste matters. There’s joy to be found in food. But maybe, just maybe, we should pay more attention to what happens after the taste fades. To how we feel after the meal. Most of us just get on with our day once we’re full. But if we paused, even briefly, to notice what our body is saying—what it likes, what it doesn’t—we might eat better. Not by ideology, but by intuition.

There’s plenty of science to support every diet on earth. But sometimes, your own feelings are the best evidence.

So am I vegan? God, no. I’m not even into moderation. I’m into minimalism. I don’t want to eliminate things like steak or whiskey. They still bring color to life. But I prefer to keep them as tints. Little dabs of pleasure. Occasional and intentional.