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Comment by msiyer | Hacker News Reader

I am not surprised at all. I am from India. Most people I knew in my childhood were vegetarians. I knew a few wrestlers who practiced in the "akhadas" of Varanasi. Big guys, all "Hanuman" devotees, celibates (Brahmacharis) and vegetarians. Sushil Kumar the wrestler, Olympics medal winner, is a vegetarian: https://www.petaindia.com/blog/sushil-kumar/

EDIT: People are getting triggered left and right. Man, this is the truth in the East. We were\are mostly vegetarians. Only recently did we start eating western food. Only recently did we see people getting terribly obese and chronically sick.

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What's surprising?

You can get enough protein from milk based products and eggs.

One scoop (40g) whey contains 25-30g protein

Eggs are not vegetarian.

Eggs are not vegan, but they are vegetarian ("ovo-vegetarian")

Please read the definitions clearly. How can an animal product be vegetarian? Does it even make sense?

Ovo-vegetarianism = eggs + vegetarian food. This is certainly not eggs = vegetarian.

I'm just explaining what is actually being communicated in the veg culture (at least in the US). Just about any vegetarian and vegan knows the distinction: vegetarians are known to consume dairy/eggs/honey, vegans do not. If a vegetarian doesn't eat eggs, they will say "I'm a vegetarian, but I don't eat eggs either"

So basically when you read "vegetarian" you can safely assume it's shorthand for "ovo-lacto-vegetarian"

You're using a definition of "vegetarian" that is not standard in the US (and, I'm guessing, Europe). Vegetarian = foods other than animal flesh. Vegan = plant based foods only.

Different diets are practiced by all manner of different communities in the US for many different reasons. There are more possible variations than we could ever agree upon terms for.

Some people consider honey non-vegetarian because it comes from animals. Some don't eat the crackers shaped like goldfish. Some will eat dairy, but only if it's known to be processed without certain animal-derived additives. I once met someone who had a simple rule: he didn't eat anything with opaque eyelids.

(Personally, I just aim for 99.9% vegan and I don't worry if some sauce has a tiny bit of fish dust in it.)

If milk or honey can be considered to be part of a vegetarian diet, then presumably unfertilised eggs can too. Roughly speaking, at least in the UK, if you don't eat dead animals you are vegetarian, and if you avoid all animal products where possible then you are vegan.

Mind you, the only people I know who have eaten human placenta all classify themselves as vegan.

Language confusion. In the west, "vegetarian" usually means "milk and eggs, but no meat". I understand that in India it normally implies lacto-vegetarianism (ie milk but no eggs or meat).

This wasn't always the case, by the way. Originally, "vegetarian" in the west was usually used to mean what we now call vegan.

Protein isn't the issue. Even now, most plants have as much %DV protein as calories. Back then, when carbohydrate content of plants was much lower, it would have been difficult to get inadequate protein.

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