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Comment by StriverGuy | Hacker News Reader

I would reword plant-based to be plant-centric. Vegan/Vegetarian diets have many many issues (xenoestrogen, B12 deficiency, reduced sex hormone levels just to name a few) and are not a normal consumption pattern for genetic omnivores like us humans.

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And most of those are actually misinformation. B12 being the only real one, but that isn't an issue because you can just supplement it. The B12 from meat comes from supplements anyways, so there is no difference. Just cutting out the middleman.

And B12 is found in soil bacteria, which before our filtered and cleaned food supply, would probably have usually found its way into our guts.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4765460/

Or as dr. Gregor says, "cut out the middle moo." ;)

Exactly this. It's mind-blowing what kind of questions my well-educated ask about being a vegetarian. "Where do you get proteins from?" or "What about iron?". Really?!

The only real thing missing is B12 and of that the body needs so tiny amounts that every idiot can supplement it easily.

Not a vegan but B12 is easy to get (I have Crohns and B12 deficiency is fairly common), 1 energy drink is ~250% of RDA (They are stuffed with it).

Vitamin D, too, especially if you don't eat dairy. I managed to develop a deficiency which caused seriously low bone density.

The only reason I found out was because I got a compression fracture of one of the T vertebrae while snowboarding (just riding, too---no crash or anything like that). My point being that I felt otherwise completely normal so somebody with a sedentary lifestyle may not notice until it gets really bad.

Vitamin D facilitates calcium absorption; my calcium levels were normal. I think regular diets are more resistant to lower vitamin D levels because they contain more calcium on average.

Actually they're estrogen blockers and slightly increase testosterone. Meat eaters have lower testosterone than vegetarians. This is all found in Dr. Gregor's videos on yt.

Omnivore does not mean "should eat meat along plants. It just means you are allowed to digest it (although our gut is NOT evolved to digest either herbs OR meat).

We are biologically herbivores. We cannot digest raw meat and we have to flavour it to make it appealing. Our digestion system, jaw, and other features are those of a herbivore, and we develop atherosclerosis from eating too much fat, unlike any non-herbivores.

We are biologically omnivores. We can digest raw meat, however Homo sapiens has always had access to fire - unflavoured, blue, fillet steak is my favourite meal - delicious!

We’re pretty poorly adapted to be herbivores. We can’t eat most plants at all, and we can’t eat most parts of most plants we do eat; because we can’t digest cellulose. Some staple foods require cooking; potatoes and beans for example. Many other plants, like spinach, are much easier to digest when cooked.

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