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Comment by jvagner | Hacker News Reader

I've been doing a 30 day vegetarian challenge this month. It hasn't even been hard. Pizza is already not working for me. You can guess where I'm going in January.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going back.

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Going vegan is also easy, so many amazing recipe books and blogs, off the shelf goods, restaurants.

Going vegan isn't easy at all, I even doubt it's possible if you care about your protein intake. Plant sources are very carb rich and more and more evidence suggests high carb, low fat diets aren't good for humans. There is simply no way to get enough protein from plant sources unless you wanna eat highly processed tofu every day. A full vegan, high protein diet would require eating low carb tofu at least 2 meals a day. Otherwise you need to accept taking exorbitant amounts of carb to get enough protein (basically, from beans). Seeing that how popular weightlifting in young Americans (especially males) today, suggesting "vegan diet is easy" is intellectual dishonesty.

I'm not arguing anything about ethics or availability or cost of vegan diet. There is simply no evidence suggesting full vegan diet is healthy. The most alarming thing about vegan diet is that you'll have absolutely no source of Omega 3 except expensive açai berry and walnut (all other plant sources have trace amount of Omega 3). So in a vegan diet you get excess amount of carbs (especially sugars) and Omega 6 which causes inflammatory diseases. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171113095430.h...

If I were vegan I would eat Trader Joes low carb tofu, avacado, açai berries and walnut every day, all day and supplement it with high fiber veggies like broccoli, and brussel sprouts. This is simply not feasible and practical from a cost and social aspect. Eat too much fruits to get cheap, and widely available calories and you'll get bizarre amounts of fructose. Good luck with that.

i'm a certified personal trainer, a competitive strength athlete, best friend is a nutritionist and doctor, and we can look at a selective subset of science and studies all day long but i'll go with the research i've selected and believe in, the cohorts i know and socialize with and whose examples i can see, and the actions i've decided on.

even if we take inactive, S.A.D. eaters out of the mix, there are healthy and unhealthy examples of most eating modalities. ultimately, i'm of the belief that paining over any "healthy" modality will increase harm, and not-paining over any "healthy" modality won't.

in the end, we meet our end. until then...

You see, I don't care about Xs Ys of this thing, neither should you, or neither should anyone. I need a laundry list of things that I can eat on a vegan diet and when I look at this list I see either things that are not good for me to eat (high sugar food) or things that are too expensive (avacado, walnut) and when I eliminate these two categories I'm only left with tofu, broccoli and brussel sprouts. I can't see how eating tofu, broccoli and brussel sprouts every day is supposed to be "easy". People like variety.

I have no problem with veganism (ethics, sustainability) except the diet is too restricted to be healthy.

I know plenty of people who are vegans and also compete in some form of extreme athletics (ultramarathons, triathlons, rock-climbing, etc.). It's definitely possible to be healthy and vegan at the same time. The difficulty is that being vegan requires a conscious analysis of what you are eating, and most restaurant/packaged food is not vegan.

Also, unless for some reason you are allergic to legumes, beans can be had for very cheap anywhere in the US, and if you can't afford $3 for a week's supply of spinach or bell peppers you probably can't afford housing either.

Meat is even more expensive...

A pound of lean turkey breast is almost 900 calories, has 130 grams of protein (meets daily value even for heavy weightlifters), 34 grams of fat (of only ~7 grams is Omega 6) and in my local Trader Joes I can get this for $5. How's this expensive compared to say broccoli. 1 pound of broccoli is $3 at the same Trader Joes but is only 150 calories. So a 900 cl broccoli would be $15.

A vegetarian diet is not made of broccoli.

Calories per dollar list: https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/

But you need more than just protein! Where would you get fibre, vitamins, minerals if you just eat turkey? Also, you think if you are only paying $5 for a pound of meat that some corners aren't being cut somewhere? (guess what, they are! incredibly cruel treatment of the animals, damage to the environment, excessive use of antibiotics, poor and unsafe working conditions for humans working at the factory "farm" (although I don't care about them personally), rancid meat)

> Going vegan isn't easy at all, I even doubt it's possible if you care about your protein intake.

Literally millions of people are proving you wrong every day.

> There is simply no way to get enough protein from plant sources unless you wanna eat highly processed tofu every day.

Tofu isn't even highly processed. It's essentially a cheese made from water that's had soybeans soaked in it.

Maybe they don't care about their protein intake.

A vegan diet is easy if you're coming from an already health-conscious diet, meat or no meat. Before going vegetarian/vegan, I was already paying attention to what I ate, cooking at home for almost all of my meals, and generally educating myself about nutrition and diet.

Going cold turkey from the kind of person who eats out for most of their meals, or generally doesn't cook much from scratch, to the kind of person who cooks their own meals using plant-based ingredients is going to be difficult, no matter what. Not only do you have to learn about what kinds of ingredients and recipes are at your disposal, you also have to get good at cooking (which is not just some skill you are either blessed with or aren't).

My wife & I live in a medium COL city, and eat a vegan diet for 2 with plenty of splurging (both w.r.t. $ and health) and very good nutrition, without breaking the bank. I'd say including our spending on treats or non-homemade convenience ingredients like Beyond Burgers and the like, we spend around $100 a week for 2 people and eat like royalty.

With a little bit of effort, I could probably reduce that spending by about half, and still have a variety of meals (ranging from asian stir fries and thai curries to BBQ and healthy pasta).

To anyone trying to get started, I'd say the main things to look into are: * Legumes. Beans and Lentils are versatile and dirt cheap if you buy dried. We have an instant pot that makes cooking them even easier, but you can get by with just soaking and a pot on a stove. * Vital Wheat Gluten & Seitan. I don't mean store-bought Seitan (though it's good, it's very expensive). Buy some vital wheat gluten at a health store or on the internet, and make some seitan meatballs, sausages, anything. It's an excellent source of protein, and you can do so much with it. * Tofu. There are a few different kinds of Tofu, as well as other soy products like Tempeh (fermented soy). Tofu comes in such varieties as silken (very soft, used to make stuff like vegan cottage cheese, or in baking), firm/extra-firm (used for stuff like stir fries or baking), and if you hit up your nearest asian market, you'll find a bunch of others like already fried tofu, tofu skins (yuba), etc. * Nutritional Yeast. I use it in a lot of ways, but it's basically a cheesy/nutty seasoning. It's definitely a staple. Try it on avocado toast. * Veggies. Figure out which veggies you like and how you like them cooked. Roasting is a good go-to for most. Get a variety of color, and check out your local farmer's markets, CSA/Crop-Shares, or local farms for cheaper produce. * Cheese made from nuts. You can make homemade cheeses using cashews. This is more on the "I miss cheese" side of things than health, but I mean, it's cashews, it's not artificial or anything.

As far as health, nutritional science changes it's mind about certain things every so often. You can see the general consensus flip from "Eggs are bad" to "Eggs are amazing", and this happens with all sorts of things. People used to avoid fats, now they try to eat fats. I personally try to limit my carb intake, but I'm not gonna feel bad if I eat a certain amount of carbs through legumes or non-starchy vegetables. I have a protein target I try to hit (which is pretty easy to do especially using seitan, peanut butter, nutritional yeast, and other such protein-packed goodies), and I don't go over a calorie limit, and that's all I track when I track. The mix of carbs to fats varies day to day and it's been working for me. You might feel better with extremely low carbs, or you might not ever get many fats.

It's also not a requirement that no one eat any meat or animal products ever. Before going vegetarian I was "flexitarian" and would occasionally eat meat when I was out and about. Now I eat mostly vegan at home, but when I'm out I sometimes get something with eggs or cheese. The current rate of meat consumption is not sustainable on an environmental level, even if you don't care about the ethics.

But it looks like I've rambled on for long enough. I just wanted to point out some of the ways a vegan diet is accessible both from a cost and a nutrition stand-point.

Plant and legume sources are also very fiber-rich, which offsets most of the carbs, even in fruits. While fruits have lots of sugars, the fibers also slow the digestion of the sugars.

Kelp is high in Omega 3s, as are Brussels sprouts. They're not as high as meat sources but they're still sufficient.

The vegan diet is extremely low in Omega 6s...not sure why you would think it's high, since grain-fed meat is the primary source of Omega 6 in the Western diet and dwarfs any source you'd find in the vegan world by many order of magnitude.

Not sure why you're speaking with so much authority. I regularly bike 50-100 miles per day. I rock climb 2-3 times weekly. I follow StrongLifts. I'm vegan and don't obsess over my diet. I simply make an effort to eat a lot of healthy, whole foods. I feel great. I have tons of energy. It's been five years without issue.

Further, from my reading on the topic the evidence supports the healthfulness of a WFPB diet. Eating this way isn't hard nor expensive. It can be socially inconvenient. It can take time to learn the ropes if you're transitioning to cooking and eating healthier. But it's worth it!

For those of us that don't bike 50-100 miles in a day, balancing nutrient intake with caloric intake is very difficult on a vegan diet.

Should be easier for you since you're burning fewer calories and consuming fewer nutrients.

Nutrient requirements don't increase nearly as much as caloric requirements under high activity. Additionally, vegan diets with enough nutrients tend to be calorie heavy.

So flipping that around, my point is that it's difficult to have a healthy vegan diet that gives you enough nutrients, without an extremely high activity level.

What on earth are you talking about?

In a Whole Foods plant based diet you eat nutrient dense foods. For instance, substituting date sugar (dates mechanically powdered) for sugar.

How long have you been eating this way? What are your relative strength numbers

> Going vegan isn't easy at all, I even doubt it's possible if you care about your protein intake

Virtually nobody who eats enough calories per day is protein deficient. Even eating just one relatively low-protein source of food, like brown rice, for all your daily calories will get you over a sedentary protein requirement.

> Plant sources are very carb rich and more and more evidence suggests high carb, low fat diets aren't good for humans

This is also just not true. [1]

> There is simply no way to get enough protein from plant sources unless you wanna eat highly processed tofu every day. A full vegan, high protein diet would require eating low carb tofu at least 2 meals a day.

Addressed above. False. Beans, peanuts, peas, hemp, spinach, soy (of all kinds: tempeh, edamame, and tofu) are all packed with protein

> Seeing that how popular weightlifting in young Americans (especially males) today, suggesting "vegan diet is easy" is intellectual dishonesty.

Veganism in the general population is pretty uncommon. So it's not surprising that it's also uncommon in the world of weightlifting. But just to provide a counter-example: Patrik Baboumian. Patrik, a vegan, holds several heavyweight lifting records [2].

> There is simply no evidence suggesting full vegan diet is healthy

False [3][4]

> The most alarming thing about vegan diet is that you'll have absolutely no source of Omega 3 except expensive açai berry and walnut (all other plant sources have trace amount of Omega 3) So in a vegan diet you get excess amount of carbs (especially sugars) and Omega 6 which causes inflammatory diseases.

Flax, which is extremely cheap, is an excellent source of Omega 3s.

[1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-study-find...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrik_Baboumian

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662288/

[4] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/89/5/1627S/4596952

Hate facts

I'm trying to have a civil conversation and I tried to express everything I know and my opinions. This sort of "if you don't agree with me you hate facts" is not a good way to discuss anything.

No your facts are “hateful” and so nobody will engage with them. It’s a joke on hate speech

> There is simply no evidence suggesting full vegan diet is healthy.

It looks like you've been living in the low-carb bubble, like many others here on HN. I find it weird when people who identify with being rational drink the kool-aid promoted by anti-vaxxers like Dr. Mercola and ignore the positions of the ADA[1] and the BDA[2].

You should really look into where your information is coming from.

[1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864 [2]https://www.bda.uk.com/news/view?id=179

You know that there are vegan athletics, even bodybuilders? Just google for e.g. "famous vegan bodybuilders".

lol, what? You can get all the protein you need from lentils, beans, whole grains - none of which are processed. And before you go all, oh but they are not complete proteins, quinoa is a complete protein, and all you have to do is mix legumes and whole grains in a meal and you have complete protein.

What's this have to do with potentially self-aware fish? Did I miss something in the article?

I think the implication is that unnecessarily killing sentient creatures is immoral. The link is between potentially discovered sentience and abstinence from an industry that inflicts upon them suffering and death.

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