I see this myth pop up occasionally, that you need to adopt a nonhuman diet to help with shifting (or even growing wings, as some who claim this are trying to become avians) and that it can prepare a person’s body for what will happen.

You actually do not need to eat anything out of the ordinary to shift, or promote shifting or the growth of anything. Yes, if you’re unhealthy you may wish to head towards a healthier state of being to achieve these things successfully, but you don’t need to adopt a nonhuman diet. Doing so is actually a bad idea!

There are three reasons for this. Firstly, while you may feel it’s crucial to eat pounds of meat per day, or abstain from vegetables entirely because you’re nonhuman, physically, until you shift, you are for all intents and purposes human. Even if your intent is to build up necessary nutrients and minerals in order to shift, by eating a diet not suited for a body that is still very much human you risk causing health problems. Canines, for example, can ingest and digest fat just fine. Most carnivores can. In humans eating too much fat can lead to a heart attack, if not clogged arteries, and eating too much protein can lead to gout. Most cats cannot eat vegetables, because it interacts badly with their digestive systems and leads to an early death. A human that doesn’t eat enough vegetables will end up with digestive issues and deficiencies. For all intents and purposes until you shift fully you are human, so it’s best to behave as such.

Secondly, the body knows just what it needs for any particular task, and living in a modern world, you should be able to get the right amount of nutrients anyway. I see some people say to “take iron supplements because you’ll need more healthy blood!” or “eat pumpkin because it promotes growth!” but assuming you’re eating a balanced diet anyway you shouldn’t have to do anything extra. To use an example, pregnancy often involves the growth of a whole new organism, a child. While some mothers go and see a doctor to find out if there’s anything special they need to do, others just go about their day and eat healthy, and give birth to a healthy baby, and they know what they need because their body tells them (they get hungrier or have cravings). Unless you’re lacking in your diet (which you should be fixing anyway regardless of nonhumanity) there’s no real need to eat a whole set of new foods.

Thirdly and rarely, doing this can aggravate or complicate existing medical issues. Flooding your body with a whole new set of nutrients it may or may not have needed could be an unwelcome shock, and lead to the development of certain medical conditions or diseases. For example, while some with food allergies only remain allergic to particular foods for the course of their life, others are more sensitive, and will quickly react to foods that are repetitively eaten over the course of of a few weeks or days. Many aren’t aware of this, so this advice can lead to worsening allergic reactions.

Some recommendations for shifting involve taking supplements and vitamins, which is not a good idea if you know you don’t have an objective reason for doing so. It is really easy to overdose on vitamins, especially when you think you need them but really don’t- for example, iron is necessary for healthy blood cells, and many people lack enough iron in their diets, but too much iron will cause you to bleed out and die. Some foods can react with each other, and cause really bad reactions even without a preexisting condition (ex. Eating both foods high in Vitamin K and foods that severely thin out the blood can lead to a blood clot over time if you’re not careful), and others may not work well with your body chemistry in particular, even if other people can eat them just fine. So you need to be careful about what you eat in what quantities.

In short, there’s no need for a customized nonhuman diet, and it’s not feasible to adopt one for anything outside of personal comfort. You can end up sickening yourself or overdosing on vitamins as well as foods, and if your doing everything else right and eating healthy then your body would naturally take the nutrients it needs from your food anyway and steer you towards what you need to eat. Please don’t alter your diet just because you’ve found out you’re a shifter or avian.