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What Vegans With PCOS Actually Need to Know About Food
Yes, you can still eat bread. Clearing up the misleading information out there about polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and plant-based eating
“I have a problem,” a friend recently told me. “When I eat vegan, I eat a lot of carbs.” I wanted to push back but didn’t know where to begin deconstructing her comment; it felt like a distillation of everything wrong with the way we’re taught to think about health and food. At the same time, I understood her. If you, like my friend and me, have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a complex hormonal disorder that affects about 10 percent of women, you’ve likely heard all sorts of punishing, and misleading, claims about how you should be eating.
PCOS is linked to insulin resistance, and it can put people who have it at increased risk for infertility, diabetes, endometrial cancer, and other conditions. Despite this condition’s prevalence, doctors are still not sure how it works, and many people have never heard of it. That’s given an opening to all manner of internet gurus, who urge people with PCOS to cut out everything from soy to gluten to bananas. And the recent resurgence of low-carb/high-fat diet trends like keto have created an environment where PCOS-havers are encouraged to slash their carb intake — even to rely on animal products to manage their condition. “[T]he best diet for PCOS includes eating animal protein,” one popular blogger writes.
These claims contrast with what doctors who specialize in PCOS told me. According to Eleni Kandaraki, an endocrinologist at Hygeia Hospital in Greece: “Vegan diets concentrate on the intake of grains, vegetables and fruits, which all help to ward off PCOS and its comorbidities. Thus, it can be a nice type of diet to stick to.”
If I were newly diagnosed and looking for resources on being vegan with this condition, I wouldn’t have found much to be encouraged by.
For me, being vegan was non-negotiable. I won’t eat animals who live and die in the most hideous ways imaginable (raised by an industry that, it can’t be stressed enough, is destroying our planet). Humans have no…
