Plant Based Dilemma

OK, I got whistled in, so I'm in! Unfortunately, because it's me, it's going to be an essay.

TL;DR up front: With care and flexibility, you can work this out, IMO. Still, I'd encourage you not to make a purely-by-choice (non-medically dictated) major dietary change based on one source (or even a few) that are in the advocacy camp.

Background: I'm vegetarian, have been for 48+ years. For 20+ of those years, I was married to a meat-eater/hunter. (Widowed, not divorced - long ago now.) This makes me believe that dietary "mixed marriages" can work.

What it takes for them to work, IMO, is entering the situation with caring, kindness, flexibility on both sides. "Let's you eat just like me, OK?" is not a defensible idea.

You two (maybe) have one factor that limits flexibility. I understand Wahl's Protocol to be an eating strategy - quite a specific one - that some find helpful in managing MS (multiple sclerosis), a profoundly serious and potentially debilitating disease. I even know someone who follows the protocol, and understand that some people report quite dramatic positive results (reduced symptoms). If that's why your wife is trying Wahl's, that's a big deal. Your marriage is yours to negotiate, but personally I'd never expect my spouse to flex what he actually ate in ways detrimental to his health (and he wouldn't have expected that of me). That would extend to dietary experiments, possibly long-ish term ones, to see if they helped.

Still, I think there will be ways you can co-exist. Cooking completely separate meals is always an option, though an extreme one. If only one of you cooks, that may be an imposition on the one who does the cooking, and IMO there should be some compensatory adjustment in shared routines for the time that takes, at minimum.

There's significant overlap between Wahl's and WFPB, in the range of veggies/fruits, and some fat sources. The issue would be that - from what I read - most of your key protein sources would be off-limits for your wife, and most of hers off-limits for you. Cooking the overlapped part in common, then having separate proteins, is the obvious option. The proteins needed be complicated cooking productions.

In my "mixed marriage", there were meals we routinely ate separately, i.e., most weekday breakfasts/lunches. I don't know whether that's true for you. We also ate separately (together) at restaurants. That left the remaining dinners to work out. In our case, my husband liked vegetarian foods, would happily eat them for dinner when we ate at home, and get most of his meat/fish in the other meals. That made it easy. We alternated cooking dinners, but both cooked vegetarian meals. On the rare occasion, he'd cook meat to eat alongside the vegetarian food. On the even rarer occasion (usually when we had guests), I'd cook meat (obviously didn't eat it). It was pretty stress free for both of us.

Your case is a little more complicated, but I'd encourage you to discuss it with your wife, in an open-minded way. "Could we make this work, so we both can eat what we want/need, without it being unevenly burdensome or a source of conflict?" is the question. Just my opinion, obviously.

A few more comments, from my background and experience.

Obviously, I have some understanding of the benefits of eating plenty of plants, even though I'm 'only' ovo-lacto vegetarian. A fair fraction of my protein comes from plants, and I routinely target 800g+ of varied, colorful fruits daily . . . and exceed that more often than I fall short. In addition, I eat nuts, seeds, and other plant foods daily.

My nutritional bias - pretty well supported by nutritional research not by me but by actual experts - is that the average person would materially improve their odds of long term good health if they ate more than the generally recommended 5 servings of veggies/fruits daily. In reality, most people don't even eat very close to that 5, according to surveys.

I'm much more skeptical that fully plant-based eating is essential for good health, let alone the best course. I'm aware of Gregor, admittedly haven't read his book.

I'll give you my generic opinion on all books that advocate a statistically unusual eating style: Seek out critical reviews, and weigh the totality of evidence. Look at credentials. Look at the quality of sources, i.e., a site selling vegan supplements is probably more biased than a major, respected academic or medical institution or nutritional group. There are a lot of poorly-scienced very popular books with eating recommendations, some of them written by people with persuasive letters after their names. It's a lucrative field.

That's not a dig at Gregor, his science or his sincerity. I don't know Gregor. However, there are a lot of biased sources evangelizing for plant-based eating these days, most of them have lots of footnotes, quote experts, some make a good case, but some cherry-pick and misrepresent, too. Caveat emptor.

On questions of nutrition for plant-based eating, I think this is a great science-based, dietitian-run, non-supplement-selling, expert source:

https://veganhealth.org/

AFAIK, they've not reviewed Gregor's books or ideas, but they have excellent nutrition-information content for plant-based eaters. It's worth checking out from a how-to perspective.

Personally, I think vegetarian, vegan, fully plant based eating are fine things that can be very healthful, but they're not automatically healthful.

Any form of good nutrition requires learning and attention to implement in one's life, and the plant-based styles require a little more of it than do omnivorous styles. Humans evolved in an environment where, for thousands of years, most societies have consumed at least some animal-sourced foods. That doesn't make eating animal protein required (with a few quibbles around the edges about B12, D, etc.), but it does make me somewhat skeptical that an eating style that is limited in human history is the very, very best way of eating.

That said, clearly there are many good reasons to be vegetarian, vegan, or plant-based. Obviously I think so, because I'm in that camp, or at least the near neighborhood, myself. I just think it's important to be clear-eyed about the pros and cons, because there are some of both.

Whatever you decide, I wish you good nutrition, good health, and a happy marriage. All of those are great blessings in life, and each is worth care, attention, and nurturing.