The Pegan Diet: 21 Practical Principles for Reclaiming Your Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World

I bought this thinking it was a book about how to eat a paleo diet as a vegan. The front of the book says Paleo + Vegan = Pegan. I feel this is misleading. Maybe I should have read further. Whatever, I have returned as the book is not vegan only.

I was predisposed to like this book. I am vegetarian but not vegan. I have a strong dislike for the meat-heavy diets that abound today from Atkins to Paleo. But I found much in this book that raised my eyebrows. For openers, the author claims that the best of Paleo and Vegan are the same but for the sources of protein. Totally inaccurate. Not all of us jumped on the “bread is bad” bandwagon. Then he goes on to divide carbs into “slow carbs” and those that are bad for you. But the “slow carbs” he lists are all veggies which have functionally NO carbs! I know this because my daughter has diabetes and I've been obsessively carb counting for over two decades now. Meanwhile, “starchy” carbs like potatoes? He claims those should be limited to under half a cup a day. Be serious. Where is my energy supposed to come from? Carrots and kale? We then move on to a serious discussion of why it should be okay to eat animals so long as they were treated humanely. The author mansplains to us that “the debate shouldn't be meat vs. plants. It should be regenerative agriculture vs. industrial agriculture”. He goes on to discuss the ills of industrial agriculture, whether plants or animals are being raised. He goes so far as to “implore you to consider advocating for regenerative farming to prevent all of the unnecessary harm that occurs during industrial farming.” His argument is basically that since industrial farming of plants also kills animals, you should support “regenerative agriculture” and go ahead and eat meat. As if we haven't already thought through our decision. While I certainly understand that industrial farming at any level is suboptimal, the author is attempting to get vegans to rethink their stance and instead oppose industrial farming – while supporting “regenerative agriculture” in terms of both plants and animals. In other words, this book is not about supporting your choice to be vegan. The chapter itself is titled “Eat Your Meat as Medicine” followed by “By Picky About Poultry, Eggs, and Fish”. And that's pretty much where he lost me. BOTTOM LINE: This book is not for vegans or vegetarians. This author disrespects your life choices and, frankly, doesn't even understand them.

If you are looking for a diet book, look elsewhere. Mark Hyman offers a common sense, well researched, and not afraid to call it like it is approach to eating. I first ran into his work about 3-4 years ago after receiving abnormal lab reports…my liver enzymes were out of whack and I was so tired that I needed five 8 oz cups of morning coffee just to function each day. In my mid-50s at the time, I was mentally and physically exhausted and ready to call it a day by 3:00 p.m. I was not overweight and followed religiously what I thought was a great diet based on medically sound books from the 1990s which I discovered were now sorely outdated. An alternative medicine doc locally told to me get off of wheat and that was Step 1 in the right direction. Within 48 hours of doing so, I didn’t even need coffee to get going, but I was still wiped out and doing some serious soul searching for a new me. A couple of days later, my wife and I were panning through new books at Costco. She pointed to books that she thought I might enjoy reading. I bought both of them. One of them was Food: What The Heck Should I Eat? (Hyman, 2018). That book grossly altered the way that we now think about food. (Dale Bredesen’s The End of Alzheimer’s was the other book…another excellent, different sort of read.) The Pegan Diet is a continuation of Food: What The Heck Should I Eat? - more common sense, more updates. I highly recommend both books. Three years or so after first adopting Hyman’s “farmacy” and “food is medicine” philosophy, my only wish is that we had more medical practitioners just like him. Dr. Hyman is bold, unapologetic, and very practical in what he writes. I have since read and incorporated several of his works into my daily routine. Although I continue to age, I now feel at least 20 years younger. My brain is sharp, I have amazing energy, and I no longer crash in the middle of the day. I cannot say enough!