I initially went from vegetarianism to veganism figuring I would see if it worked for me, and found the vegan community to be much weirder and very openly eating disordered. Vegetarians mostly just, share recipes or talk about their local restaurants that have a great menu with lots of options or something. Vegans I encountered mostly just talked about things like circumcisions and vaccines, or would post meals of some carrots and raisins and talk about how much "healthier" they felt.
Well, since, I have been diagnosed with thyroid issues unrelated to my diet. I don't really want to focus too much on the medical problems in detail, but I do want to talk about what I encountered with vegans I talked to along the way. The first thing my doctor did was tell me that I needed to start consuming dairy or fish to get more iodine into my diet. Okay, no problem. I tried to see if anyone else had to make this change for advice.
I really had no support in this, and was just outright told to ignore my doctor. The main suggestion I got was to add seaweed to all my meals, which might be doable often, but I'm definitely not going to bust out a sheet of seaweed at a work lunch and eat it, or make sure to pack seaweed sheets for trips when I travel--it's pretty clear being exclusively vegan isn't an option for me anymore. (I was also told to cook with iodized salt, but I do already do that). And honestly, I'm just going to trust my doctor to understand this better than I do to begin with. I didn't think about my thyroid, nor iodine, until my diagnosis, so I'm not going to pretend I'm suddenly an expert just because I did like two google searches on it. I'm assuming there was a reason my doctor suggested dairy/fish and not iodine supplements, knowing I was vegan, so again, I'm just going to accept that here.
I think the last part of that paragraph was kind of preaching to the choir, but, I really want to underscore how absurd it is for a stranger who has almost no knowledge of my medical history to just tell me to ignore my doctor entirely.
Well, I don't want to share screenshots because I don't want to doxx myself. But I was told that I'm sexist and genocidal, and supporting rape by listening to to my doctor. I've seen people accuse non-vegans of all being sexist because dairy cows are female, but it was really kind of surreal to have this turned on me. It was also really weird to me how many people simply told me to not listen to my doctor as though that were an entirely normal thing to do. Doctors aren't part of some weird big meat conspiracy, and up until now, mine have always been really nice and just made sure to talk to me about briefly about plant sources protein and iron before sending me on my way.
So, I guess that was the end of my foray into veganism.