The Pegan Diet: Is It Right for You?

by | Updated: December 4th, 2016 | Read time: 4 minutes

Paleo + vegan = pegan. Makes sense, right?  Blend two different approaches into one, combine their names and this is what you get—a hybrid. But can a combination of these two dietary approaches really exist?

The Pegan Diet: Is It Right for You?

According to Mark Hyman, M.D., it can. He states, “I vote for being a pegan or Paleo-vegan, which is what I have chosen for myself and recommend for most of my patients. Keep in mind that most of us need to personalize the approach depending on our health conditions, preferences and needs.”

But how can this work? Let’s start with commonalities.

A vegan diet, as well as a Paleo approach, includes eating plenty of fresh, local, in-season produce. When I was vegan, and similarly, over the past decade since I’ve been Paleo, it’s been my experience that many people in both groups share an appreciation of shopping locally, reducing our carbon footprints and doing our best to support sustainable measures of sourcing food.

Both eating styles, when executed properly, also share a focus on eating good fats and avoiding the bad kind. Avocados, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil and raw nuts in moderation are fair game and highly recommended in both diets.

Each diet also has a true version and many variations stemming from the real deal, some of which are fairly accurate and others that are far from it. It’s easy to follow either diet the wrong way, with no benefit to the individual or the planet. I recall a friend in college from my vegan years who subsisted on cereal, soymilk and bagels. Technically, he was vegan as he wasn’t eating any animal products; but he was far from healthy! Similarly, one who takes an Atkins-esque approach to the Paleo diet (eating no carbs) isn’t True Paleo either.

Finally, both diets seem like smart options when one is trying to clean up her current routine, to eat more vegetables, to be more mindful of where food comes from and to reach certain health goals. My reason for becoming vegan was to attempt to figure out why I was sick all of the time. For me, two years of eating soy products, both fermented and not, grains and no protein led to being even further away from the optimal health I so desperately coveted.

In actuality, both approaches have more in common than not, and the single factor that separates the two is quite obviously, the protein source. The other reason I was vegan was ethical.

My Paleo experience

So how does one go from that to completely Paleo? Well, it certainly didn’t happen overnight. It began with an intense craving for fish about six months into my two-year stint. I was dreaming about eating fish regularly, and waking up feeling guilty. I pushed it off as long as I could and eventually found myself giving in to what I’d later call the gateway protein: fish.

I found my balance with the ethics by coming to terms with what felt right to me: a belief that humans are at the top of the food chain, and it was eating animals that allowed our brains to evolve into what they are today.

Anthropologist Leslie Aiello suggests, “What we think is that this dietary change (discovering meat) around 2.3 million years ago was one of the major significant factors in the evolution of our own species.”

Animal welfare is still critically important to me, and the sourcing of protein is not something that should be ignored. I won’t bend on buying fish that’s not wild, meat that’s not grass fed and poultry and pork that are not pasture-raised.

I realized that by boycotting all meat and fish and animal products, I wasn’t actually doing anything to help the cause.  Avoiding the Monsantos of the world made plenty of sense, but to lump those atrocities together with the local farmer who is trying to do the right thing by raising grass-fed beef and blacklisting him, too, would hamper further progress.

It’s not until we, as a society, begin to put forth much more effort to support those right in our own communities who are trying to do right by the planet that we’ll begin to see some real progress made.

Find your own balance, and use as many different eating approaches as it takes to figure out what suits you best. It only took me about three decades to find mine, but once I did, it stuck—and to this day, I’m so glad for all the experiences I’ve had being vegan, following The Zone, the Blood Type Diet, the American Athlete’s High-Carb approach and even the hippie regimen I grew up with, thanks to my mom.

All provided such a wealth of information and experience that I can now share with clients to help them figure out their path to optimal health.