Vegan goes back to meat after claiming diet brings on 'early menopause'

'What an awful woman,' people said, following her announcement. Photo / Instagram

A vegan influencer who followed a gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, meat-free diet has admitted she's taken up meat eating again.

Virpi Mikkonen, 38, says her vegan diet "brought on early menopause", including hot flushes and a lack of periods, the Sun reports.

The award-winning blogger, who spent years advocating for plant-based eating online and has published four cookbooks, has left followers furious with her decision.

Since she announced she's been eating burgers, furious vegan followers have taken to Twitter to express their outrage.

Holy cow she was doing it all wrong. She looked at the fad way of eating. HER diet was at fault not THE plant based diet. Silly her.

— Tommy (@CotteeTom) May 27, 2019

They claim she was never doing veganism right in the first place and it is wrong to blame her vegan diet for the early menopause.

Eating only raw foods is an #extreme diet and has nothing to do with veganism. If doing so makes you sick, and you'd rather stab animals in the throat than cook a veggie burger, then you never had #vegan values to begin with.https://t.co/CLVzEmHeHj

— Sam Ⓥ (@saminalrights) May 27, 2019

Virpi says she first sought help after developing a rash on her face. A specialist advised her to stop eating so much raw food and introduce meat into her diet.

For the vegan blogger, breakfast used to consist of a cold-pressed juice of celery, cucumber, fennel and parsley and the blogger had barely eaten meat for 15 years.

The Finn said she has now added meat and eggs to her diet, despite at one point referring to eggs as "miscarriages of chickens".

She says she feels more energetic, is sleeping better and has noticed an increase in motivation. Her hot flushes have stopped and her period is back.

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A post shared by VANELJA | by Virpi Mikkonen (@vanelja) on Oct 19, 2018 at 5:08am PDT