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B12 and iron are the only thing vegans struggle with. It's not that difficult. Most vegans are more healthy. I don't necessarily think the answer is vegetarianism or veganism personally. Our bodies haven't evolved to eat what we are eating period, they also haven't evolved for how long we are living. Most people are not properly eating unless they understand nutrition and are paying attention to their diet. So I'm not sure what the difference would be. Vegans generally understand nutrition better then the average person and eat more healthy. Lots of our food needs to be fortified.

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I never said they're the answer. I said one is a more reasonable approach than the other. If you're worried about whatever you're worried about, I think arguing for vegetarianism would work better than arguing for veganism. More people care about an animal not getting killed than one not getting milked. People don't want to have to worry about supplementing this or that, on top of going out of their way to make sure none of their food has ever been sniffed by an animal.

I don't see why our food needs to be fortified. A balanced meal containing meat, vegetables, and grains is enough to give you everything you need. And that's what we pretty much evolved to eat.

And I don't agree with your statement about our lifespan (nor do I understand its relevance). The maximum lifespan has not increased. The mortality rate has improved substantially due to modern medicine and living conditions. But we still live as long as we "evolved" to live.
 
Most vegans are more healthy. Vegans generally understand nutrition better then the average person and eat more healthy.

Again, anecdotal statement without scientific basis. From my personal experience dealing with quite a few vegans it is actually opposite. Most of them miss work more due to sickness, they are usually not athletic, they do not have good sense of humour and a lot of them do not research any scientific data on nutrition or consult nutritionist before committing to veganism. There is a lot of them who eventually go back to vegetarianism or become meat eaters due to variety of health problems they encounter while being vegan. When I ask why they switched - most typical answer is "because I care about animals" ( not because it is healthier)
 
I don't see why our food needs to be fortified. A balanced meal containing meat, vegetables, and grains is enough to give you everything you need. And that's what we pretty much evolved to eat.

I agree mostly, although I do not think we evolved to eat grains. Even know we eat mostly processed grains. Grains became our dietary item only in last 10.000 years or so when people learned how to prepare ( cook, grind, etc) them properly. If you look at cavemen diet I think it is closest diet to what humans evolved to eat. Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, eggs, mushrooms, etc. Whatever you can hunt, trap or find and collect.
 
I agree mostly, although I do not think we evolved to eat grains. Even know we eat mostly processed grains. Grains became our dietary item only in last 10.000 years or so when people learned how to prepare ( cook, grind, etc) them properly. If you look at cavemen diet I think it is closest diet to what humans evolved to eat. Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, eggs, mushrooms, etc. Whatever you can hunt, trap or find and collect.

That's why I used the qualifier "pretty much". I understand that mass-consumption of grains only began with agriculture. But they do provide good nutrients, and are an easy source of calories. What a balanced meal consists of today is not wildly different than what we ate as hunter-gatherers.
 
Again, anecdotal statement without scientific basis. From my personal experience dealing with quite a few vegans it is actually opposite. Most of them miss work more due to sickness, they are usually not athletic, they do not have good sense of humour and a lot of them do not research any scientific data on nutrition or consult nutritionist before committing to veganism. There is a lot of them who eventually go back to vegetarianism or become meat eaters due to variety of health problems they encounter while being vegan. When I ask why they switched - most typical answer is "because I care about animals" ( not because it is healthier)
Yep all purely anecdotal from both sides. But I definitely know very healthy vegans who are great athletes. I know studies have supported Vegetarian's and vegans being healthy but I don't have any in front of me. If I get interested over the weekend maybe I'll post a couple of them.
 
I never said they're the answer. I said one is a more reasonable approach than the other. If you're worried about whatever you're worried about, I think arguing for vegetarianism would work better than arguing for veganism. More people care about an animal not getting killed than one not getting milked. People don't want to have to worry about supplementing this or that, on top of going out of their way to make sure none of their food has ever been sniffed by an animal.

I don't see why our food needs to be fortified. A balanced meal containing meat, vegetables, and grains is enough to give you everything you need. And that's what we pretty much evolved to eat.

And I don't agree with your statement about our lifespan (nor do I understand its relevance). The maximum lifespan has not increased. The mortality rate has improved substantially due to modern medicine and living conditions. But we still live as long as we "evolved" to live.
The older we get the less we absorb vital nutrients. That's is why we need more food fortified or need to supplement otherwise it would lead to diseases and other health problems, arguably they do even with because people eat poorly. B12 is a good example of that, anyone over 50 needs to be eating foods fortified with it or supplementing. Eating the foods you listed isn't enough due to a few factors one of which is the lower levels of vitamins and minerals in the food we eat. That is why it is fortified back into food. Some of which is fortified in the food itself some of which is fortified into animals diets. Iodine would be lacking in most people's diet especially people not living near the ocean or consuming ocean food. We fortify iodine into the foods animals eat and into our food such as salt. Vitamin D is lacking in most people and needs to be fortified. calcium is fortified a lot although there is debated about wether it should be. There are many other examples of this.
 
Broncster read this interview.... lots of great answers and explanations why vegetarianism will not save the world.

https://matadornetwork.com/bnt/why-vegetarianism-will-not-save-the-world/
I'll read it more thoroughly later but a cursory glance shows lots of criticism of it, a lack of studies and research and a lot of opinion in that article. It looks like attention grabbing on a hot topic. Also I'm not vegan and don't think the world should go vegan. I think we need to adjust how we eat and reducing meat consumption will help the environment and improve most people's diet. Very few people in the USA eat very healthy. The food industry itself is not going to help people change that. Eating vegan is a healthy lifestyle choice that is sustainable for people who choose it. Forcing them to stop and shaming them is what you are irritated that they do.
 
The older we get the less we absorb vital nutrients. That's is why we need more food fortified or need to supplement otherwise it would lead to diseases and other health problems, arguably they do even with because people eat poorly. B12 is a good example of that, anyone over 50 needs to be eating foods fortified with it or supplementing. Eating the foods you listed isn't enough due to a few factors one of which is the lower levels of vitamins and minerals in the food we eat. That is why it is fortified back into food. Some of which is fortified in the food itself some of which is fortified into animals diets. Iodine would be lacking in most people's diet especially people not living near the ocean or consuming ocean food. We fortify iodine into the foods animals eat and into our food such as salt. Vitamin D is lacking in most people and needs to be fortified. calcium is fortified a lot although there is debated about wether it should be. There are many other examples of this.

No argument about supplements. Plus it is way more convenient for me to pop a capsule of fish oil Omega-3's then eat a 2 pounds of mackerel required to get the same amount of DHA and EPA;)
 
Improvements are happening that are great. They are also necessary because of the growth of that industry. That doesn't mean more doesn't need to be done or that it isn't a problem. I also assume when people cut back on eating animals they would also be more conscience of their source for the meat they buy and get them from sustainable better places.

I wasn't insinuating improvements don't need to be made. I was giving the regulatory background and a very short explanation of at what price point we tend to increase regulations. It's generally agreed that we cannot disrupt everyone's life with onerously costly environmental regulations unless there is imminent danger.

I don't think cutting our meat consumption will do anything but displace consumption of then cheaper meat to poorer areas of the world. Increased meat consumption from underdeveloped nations has been a talked about trend on Wall Street for a decade now. They are coming out of poverty at astonishing rates, and as they do they consume more meat.
 
As broncster said, I think most vegans don't wear leather. My sister was a vegan for many years and she didn't wear leather or any other animal product. She wouldn't eat honey or anything with gelatin, either.

That said, my sister has a psychotic break that probably had a lot to do with malnutrition when she was a broke college student. After her recovery she started eating meat again.

Just stopping in here to agree with you. I had a nephew who went the same way. A really gentle, decent fellow who got righteous about not eating anything animal and then had serious dysfunctional psychology. I don't see the honey thing, though. Isn't that food the bees make to feed themselves? Oughta be no issue there.

kinda sad how we are prone to go to logical exremes and hurt ourselves or others.
 
I like Guinness. It pairs very well with a rare steak.

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I agree mostly, although I do not think we evolved to eat grains. Even know we eat mostly processed grains. Grains became our dietary item only in last 10.000 years or so when people learned how to prepare ( cook, grind, etc) them properly. If you look at cavemen diet I think it is closest diet to what humans evolved to eat. Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, eggs, mushrooms, etc. Whatever you can hunt, trap or find and collect.

I disagree with your statements here strictly on scientific reasoning. First off, the paleo-diet was not consistent and there was no singular evolutionary diet. The diets were highly localized and you are leaving out one, if not the, main staple.

Vegetables aren't likely to make up much of the paleo diet. They were bitter tasting and in general veggies don't add much caloric value. Hungry people aren't going to sustain on something that would amount to the nutritional value of eating grass. Also, modern vegetables have been highly selected for obvious properties and have little semblance to what may have been consumed 10,000 years ago. The anti-grain argument should apply the same here.

Eggs. How many ground birds were there producing scavengable eggs? Eggs are protein and protein was hard to come by back in the day.

You leave out any mention of roots, ferns, cottontails, etc. Humanity has evolved on starch based foods for much, much longer than 10,000 years. Why do you think we were able to evolve into cultivation-based societies? Because we had been consuming and sustained on starch for a very long time. We have an enzyme called alpha-amylase that digests starch. Wheat, corn, potatoes, roots, ferns, cattails... the starch is all the same mixture of 2 compounds: amylose and amylopectin. We could not have evolved to agriculture based societies without the ability to digest starch with this enzyme. There is a strong deductive reasoning argument that these societies could not have formed without an evolutionary adaptation toward a grain-based diet.
 
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If everyone switched to vegan it would not be instantaneous. It would be a transition that would not be difficult to manage. The environmental impact would be less. We could sustain the planet just fine with non animal sources of food.

I'm all for it (So long as I can still eat meat and cheese)
 
I disagree with your statements here strictly on scientific reasoning. First off, the paleo-diet was not consistent and there was no singular evolutionary diet. The diets were highly localized and you are leaving out one, if not the, main staple.

Vegetables aren't likely to make up much of the paleo diet. They were bitter tasting and in general veggies don't add much caloric value. Hungry people aren't going to subside on something that would amount to the nutritional value of eating grass. Also, modern vegetables have been highly selected for obvious properties and have little semblance to what may have been consumed 10,000 years ago. The anti-grain argument should apply the same here.

Eggs. How many ground birds were there producing scavengable eggs? Eggs are protein and protein was hard to come by back in the day.

You leave out any mention of roots, ferns, cottontails, etc. Humanity has evolved on starch based foods for much, much longer than 10,000 years. Why do you think we were able to evolve into cultivation-based societies? Because we had been consuming and subsiding on starch for a very long time. We have an enzyme called alpha-amylase that digests starch. Wheat, corn, potatoes, roots, ferns, cattails... the starch is all the same mixture of 2 compounds: amylose and amylopectin. We could not have evolved to agriculture based societies without the ability to digest starch with this enzyme. There is a strong deductive reasoning argument that these societies could not have formed without an evolutionary adaptation toward a grain-based diet.


Hey, nice post! Few things - eggs do not only come from birds;)... there was plenty of reptiles to scavenge some eggs from them as well. I watched BBC documentary "Walking with cavemen" - great show discussing human evolution and some factors in diet which led to us as we know it, please watch it is awesome. There were giving examples how hominids started scavenging for bone marrow of carcasses first, that led to use of tools to break bones, then eventually tools to hunt and so on. Long story short meat made us what we are today. This article seems to support it. And they as well discussed a different relative ape which starved itself to extinction because its diet was vegetarian and primarily depended on roots of the plants which eventually were harder and harder to come by with draughts that plaqued the Earth for centuries at that era.
https://www.livescience.com/23671-eating-meat-made-us-human.html

At the end of the day it is all just speculations and theories but the facts that we as humans have numerous biological and physiological adaptational mechanisms to depend and survive on both animal and plant products tells simple thing - we are omnivorous by nature. Anything going extreme away from it will lead to health problems.
 
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