Eating more fruit and vegetables 'improves mental wellbeing'
nhs.uk
nhs.uk
If the UK is anything like the US, there are some obvious confounding factors, with the most obvious being that poor people cannot afford to eat more fruit and vegetables, and that poor people are actively persecuted in our society. Hence you get studies that output the above headline.
This isn't really news people.
I'd put convenience above cost in most cases, there are worse but more convenient foods easily available that store for longer, require less preparation and in terms of fat/sugar adjusted taste buds taste better.
Which is why my no-deal Brexit survival stash is a couple of kilos of Puy lentils, a bottle of olive oil, and a box of stock cubes!
Dog food also tastes surprisingly good. I never fed my dogs anything that I didn't try first (which I suppose may be weird, but oh well). I can say that some dogs really like the taste of liver, but aside from that kind of thing, dog food is surprisingly good. Some of the wet canned food rivals prepared human meals in my opinion, though the price is a bit higher. I can't remember the brand, but I remember one "beef stew" which was insanely good. I would have happily had it as a meal.
It seems like soylent.com is still around. I think they are making meal replacement drinks. Not my cup of tea, but at $1.80 per meal, it's fairly cheap and convenient. Not sure about taste (I think I'd go for the dog food myself!) However, it is almost exactly the average price for meals I cook for myself, so I'm not sure it's a great deal price wise. The same is also probably true of dog food to be fair.
What are the ingredients? How much do you get? $5 per meal is not cheap.
"Based on prior research, we included a rich set of commonly observed predictors of well-being as control variables (see Dolan et al., 2008 for a review of this literature). These include socio-demographic variables such as age, household income, gender, relationship status, number of children and education. Such controls are important as it is possible that fruit and vegetable consumption would co-vary with, for example, income – someone becoming richer and as a result enjoying higher well-being scores and changing their food related behaviours. We also controlled for the presence of long-standing health conditions as well as health and lifestyle related behaviours such as walking frequency and smoking behaviour – again potential confounders that could bias any estimates of the relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption and well-being."
While I do think a lot of research in the social sciences is of questionable value, there's no need to shoot from the hip just for the snarky HN comment.
>They took account of many potential confounding factors, including age, income, marital status, number of children, employment status, smoking status, exercise levels (measured by days each week on which they walked for at least 10 minutes at a time) and whether they had a longstanding health condition.
>The study has limitations, however. The most important is that this type of observational study can't tell us whether the fruit and veg consumption actually causes improved mental wellbeing.
While the longitudinal design and the adjustment for potential confounding factors helps to make the results more robust, there may be something else unaccounted for at play here. The possibility that people who feel happier are more likely to choose healthier food, for example, cannot be ruled out.
Its a responsible and cautious summary.
A litany of secondary factors. But they're all direct effects of eating more veg. That's more than correlation.
Randomized controlled trials are better, of course.
Even if you think epidemiological methods are sound, at best they can only generate hypotheses that then need to be tested in clinical trials. Instead, these hypotheses are often prematurely trumpeted to the public as implicit fact in the form of media headlines, dietary guidelines, and well-placed commission reports like this one.
Tragically, more than 80%(3) of these guesses are later proved wrong in clinical trials. With a failure rate this high, nutrition epidemiologists would be better off flipping a coin to decide which foods cause human disease.
(1) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2018.00105... (2) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698337 (3) https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...
Ref: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
> The difficulty is in knowing whether fruit and veg is actually the cause of their improved mental health. Researchers took account of factors such as people's age, income levels, marital and employment status and general health, and compared the same people's results over time. This approach helped to make the results more reliable. But we can't be sure that the results don't show, for example, that people eat more fruit and veg when they feel more cheerful, rather than the other way around.
* Sous vide: It's very easy to learn and make for juicy and delicious food easy.
* Meal prep. Rather than cooking everyday of the week, spend two hours or so prepping meals for the rest of the week so that you don't have to cook.
That said, the problem is that such knowledge isn't that widespread, although it's widely available on youtube university.
The "my way or the highway" approach is only really valid when children are involved so that advice is quite limited in terms of value.
https://www.luckyvitamin.com/p-555407-luckyvitamin-easy-iron...
I have to take iron but I struggled for many years, most iron pills cause me lots of digestive distress. These ones don't, at all. I even can take them on an empty stomach. Pretty much a godsend.
More sensibly, time and money poor people should invest in a slow cooker. You can cook a huge variety of different cheap and easy meals with one. It also allows you to prep in the evening, then put it on to cook in the morning, so you have dinner ready to go the instant you get home.
https://www.amazon.com/My-Sous-Vide-My-101-Immersion/dp/B071...
An ordinary ziploc type bag works fine for sous vide as long as you don't submerge the opening. I've used them for that many times. It's a bit awkward and takes a little more time, but no big deal.
I would think a pressure cooker might be a practical solution to the "no time to cook veggies" - I use mine to do things like steam a bag of prewashed and cut kale in under 5min.
The effects of social discourse and corporate indoctrination are a thing.
A lot of people believe it’s a duty to support American companies by purchasing their packaged foods.
Advertising branches out of government propaganda research. It’s powerful stuff.
Sorry for the rant, if that tone is coming through. But no, the problem is not that poor people aren’t trying hard enough, which is what these kinds of responses seem to boil down too. The problem is people without wealth are exposed to way too much risk and hardship to ever have a chance (or even enough resources and time) to act strategically the way people. Everything is tactical, everything is about just staying upright.
It doesn't matter how much food (discipline) you've got if your water supply (time, money) is dry for a month.
I think the biggest thing you need is to have the skill to understand where the time/money tradeoff pays off. If you have a low paycheck, it doesn't make any sense to work overtime and then not have time to cook a meal. If you have a family, you might be talking about making $20 and spending all of it at Mac D's. These kinds of things add up as well. If you need a car to maintain a hectic schedule, it can easily end up costing you as much as your entire food budget.
These things are super hard and I think people, whether poor or rich, get it wrong all the time. Prioritisation is also super hard. It's easy to get in your head "Oh, I should have a least X" and so you go out and get X, even though you don't actually need it. Then you get stuck in an inefficient part of the curve for all of the other things that you do need.
In that way, the stigma of poverty is often worse than the poverty itself. If you accept your poverty and cooly make the right choices all the time, then you can live on very, very low levels of money. You can even do so very comfortably and be happy. But if you fight against it, loose heart and try to be "like everyone else", then it's this terrible downward spiral that you can't get out of.
And it's kind of stupid because you can work out the math a million times over and say that people should be able to live on $X or make time for Y, but nobody teaches people how to be poor and happy. We collectively send the message that poor is bad and that only through increased money will your life get any better.
I honestly wish we taught more life skills in high school. Most of the academic stuff people ignore and forget anyway. I'm happy I know about ionic bonding, how titration of acid works, etc, etc because I have used it to make beer and cheese. But it's just not relevant to the vast majority of people on the planet. How we get away without teaching basic skills like managing a budget, shopping, finding a place to live that you can afford, finding and doing well at a job, etc, etc, etc I just don't understand.
Money is a huge problem if you are poor. My point is just that you can substitute frozen vegetables for whatever you are eating and it can be the same exact price. It does take more time to make, and is less convenient than unhealthy options. This is what I mean by time and discipline.
There are comments about vegetables having a high cost per calorie, but this misses the important point that many unhealthy, poor people are obese in the US. By swapping a meal at McDonalds or packaged snacks at the convenient store for some pasta with frozen vegetables, you may not be getting the same calorie/dollar value. But getting enough calories is not the issue for most poor Americans, getting enough vegetables is.
I'm not talking about fancy meal prep either. Roast some broccoli in the oven, boil some noodles. Add salt, pepper, butter. Done. Don't like broccoli? Swap it for something else.
Note: I'm not counting potatoes, rice, and other carb-rich foods here as veggies.
The market where I am pushes you towards things that are not fruits and vegetables.
We cook and eat well on the weekends, we try to reserve food for the week and I continue to be amazed by people worse off than us that are working as much as we are _and_ a part time job on top of it.
Pick the right type of fruit, and you'll be done in less than 1 minute. You probably just spent more time than that writing a post about how you don't have time to eat fruit! - just think how much better your life would be had you spent that minute eating a banana.
(Many types of vegetables do require cooking, but, again, you have options: bell peppers, onions, spring onions, most types of lettuce...)
Jesus. 3 hours! That sounds awful. I'm unhappy when my commute is more than 20 mins each way.
What sort of meals are you comparing? To cook a steak, sausages, bacon and eggs and things like that can take more time than cutting up some vegies and making a basic salad. A lot of veggies like beans and lentins can be stored dried, their shelf life is infinitely longer than meat and bread.
> I applaud everyone who manages to cook every day and I strive to do so
It sounds like your comparing cooking to takeaway/frozen rather than comparing cooking veggies to other food.
For those interested in protein, or feeling full, chicken is one of the cheapest things you can possibly buy. In NYC, fresh vegetables, and (god forbid) organic, is one of the most expensive things you can buy. In my experience, buying ingredients for a full salad with relatively fresh ingredients is almost as expensive as going to a moderately priced restaurant. It's crazy.
If what I said sounds wishy-washy, it's because no one's defined what a unit of animal product versus a unit of fruit and vegetables is, when doing this price comparison.
It might just be because the weather here doesn't give us Mediterranean-like weather conditions and a lot of stuff has to come from places like Mexico and California (it seems from what the local grocery stores are stocking).
What isn’t expensive in NYC?
There are 310 million people in the USA who don’t live in NYC
Your contention that it costs almost as much to buy ingredients for a salad as going to a moderately priced restaurant, don't make sense to me. Even a "basic lunch in the business district" costs $16. That's pretty close to my entire weekly budget for fruit and veg. According to this site you could by a kg of tomatoes, a kg of apples and a kg of potatoes for $12. That's a hell of a lot of food.
When I first moved to Japan I cooked vegan meals at home. Since I got married, I eat a small amount of meat and fish with my wife (I still like vegan cooking). First, I should point out that I didn't eat dramatically more fresh fruit and veg as a vegan -- definitely more beans and grains, and probably a bit more veg. Fruit stayed about the same. My budget for food (which I track pretty closely) has almost exactly doubled per person since adopting more animal products. I spend about $2500 per year per person on groceries now, while I spent about $1300 per year per person on a vegan diet.
One thing that might stand out is the really, really small values there. Food is cheap compared to about every other expense as long as you are cooking for yourself. If you find yourself trying to cut back on your grocery budget, I will suggest that for most people there are almost always better ways to save that money.
I'm not sure what I'm missing. That's only 1466 calories according to Google, mostly from the potatoes—which are not particularly healthy. For $12, it is not much food. An average man eating 2500 calories per day would be spending $143 per week with this diet (of potatoes!). How do you get it to $16/week, including fruits?
For me, at least, fruits and vegetables are the most expensive part of my diet. And I can't afford to buy organic or shop at the farmer's market. It's worth it for me, but I don't pretend it is cheap.
The Geography of Poverty and Nutrition: Food Deserts and Food Choices Across the United States Allcott, Diamond, and Dubé:
We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts.
Fruit and vegetables are cheap in the UK. To look at prices, just visit any UK supermarket's website (e.g. asda.com, tesco.com, sainsburys.com etc). Lidl and Aldi can be cheaper, but often the cheapest of all are small independent grocery stores.
Sure go to your local supermarket it’s way overpriced and expensive. Go to your local green grocer or market and by seasonal produce, it’s cheap, really cheap. Even the stores like Aldi and Lidl are pretty cheap if you are short on time to go shopping round your local green grocery / market.
Where fruit and vegetables are expensive is time, you have to prepare a meal vs putting a ready meal in the microwave for a few minutes.
Its not really news, i agree, but to a lot of people it is.
I agree that correlation is not causation in a lot of cases, but in this case its kind of true but it depends.. Raw is a lot better than cooked.
Its also the difference between real physical wellbeing from nutrients/sugars, and percieved psychological wellbeing from eating certain foods.
Apple pie might be more of a psychological wellbeing than raw apples which is more physiological, although cooking can bring out different types of nutrients in some cases.
This is simply not true.
In fact, the least expensive foods are fresh vegetables.
Aside from the homeless, most poor people have some means to cook as well, giving them access to an astonishing variety of meals.
Meat, milk, cheese, often expensive.
Fruit and veg is the cheapest thing in the store.
Processed/fast foods are more than likely the culprit in so many ways, it seems wherever you are in America, you're arms length from something massively processed, salty, fully of fats/sugars etc..
Same for Canada.
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/calorie-per-dollar-list/
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/applying-protein-per-doll...
But thanks for the data points, very helpful.
Fruits and Veg are super cheap.
A 10 lb bag of potatoes is $5 at Safeway in SF. That makes quite a number of 'servings' of McD's fries.
Avg ground beef price in US is $5.50/pound in 2018, 1.8 ounces in McD hamburger = 62 cents for the meat.
Wonderbread 20 pack of buns is $3 = 15 cents for the bun.
A slice of tomato, bit of lettuce = not much.
So the burger made at home is less than 90 cents.
The soda is surely less expensive, especially on sale.
So at least for 'fries, burger and coke' in the cheapest place, it's still cheaper to cook - and of course the 'expensive' part is the meat.
It's very inexpensive to buy and cook vegetables, and most fruits are cheap as well.
Meats etc. get a little tricky, but still cheaper than fast food.
I'm really surprised at the comments indicating otherwise, this is pretty easy to see for people that buy food, I didn't think this would be contentious.
I don't think it does.
Your thesis was:
> the least expensive foods are fresh vegetables
This is a vague claim. Are you looking at the price per
- unit?
- weight?
- volume?
- calorie?
A cup of milk is a lot more nutritious than a cup of lettuce. A dollar of sardines is a lot more nutritious than a dollar of apples.
In most cases, fruits and vegetables are nutritionally more expensive than flour, potatoes, milk, eggs, meat, etc.
> So at least for 'fries, burger and coke' in the cheapest place, it's still cheaper to cook - and of course the 'expensive' part is the meat.
I have never claimed that fast food was cheaper than cooking at home.
It's not vague at all.
By basically any nutritional measure, Fruit and Veg are the best deal. Even on the basis of protein, which might sometimes be tricky on 'mostly F&V diet' - it's cheaper - see your own data points for the many Veg's that have a ton of protein, on a cheaper basis than many meats.
"A cup of milk is a lot more nutritious than a cup of lettuce." - but maybe not more than a larger serving of Spinach, which is considerably cheaper.
"I have never claimed that fast food was cheaper than cooking at home."
The theme of this branch of the thread is that 'poor people can't afford to eat healthy' due to things like cheaper fast food' etc. - which is rubbish.
There are claims made by the USDA [1] which are totally misrepresentative, to the point of a lie. They claim anyone living >1 mile from a 'large grocery store' is in a 'food desert' - and that the problem lies in tons of 'Quick-e-mart' type places with terrible foods. The problem with their thesis is that '1 mile' is not far to go for groceries, that (almost) everyone does have access to fresh food, and that it's substantially cheaper than the crap in Quick-e-mart. The data essentially validates that 'poor people' are making bad nutritional choices quite on their own, not due to some kind of 'systematic problem'. They are buying crap from Quick-e-mart on their own volition, for whatever reason, not because they are coerced into it due to cost.
The fact is that a decent diet is available for relatively low cost to anyone that has the means to cook.
I takes a little bit of thinking, but not that much, and yes, some food products which should be more accessible (and possibly healthy) such as some processed foods, meats, dairy etc. are not very accessible, but they are also not necessary for a healthy diet.
[1] http://americannutritionassociation.org/newsletter/usda-defi...
Not really:
https://efficiencyiseverything.com/applying-protein-per-doll...
> but maybe not more than a larger serving of Spinach, which is considerably cheaper
While 100g of spinach almost has as much protein as 100g of milk, it's also 3 times more expensive.
> The theme of this branch of the thread is that 'poor people can't afford to eat healthy' due to things like cheaper fast food' etc. - which is rubbish.
I don't disagree with you.
In that case the U.K. is nothing like the US because frozen vegetables are cheap, convenient and easy to cook. If you don’t want to eat vegetables that’s fine but in Europe it’s not going to be because they’re unavailable. A vegetarian diet is cheaper than an omnivorous one.
Worse than “can not afford”, they do not have access to fruit and veggis to start with. Do a search on “food desert” or “poor access fruit”. It is not good.
Why is this statement so persistent? Vegetables are the cheapest food there is. Lentils have long been a staple of students. Poor people are poor because they are bad with money and make poor decisions. That is why they don't eat vegetables.
> Poor people are poor because they are bad with money and make poor decisions.
you seem like a hateful person. i dont understand how, faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, how you can hold this in your heart. I truly hope you don't believe this.
but seriously. you are discounting family wealth, education, racism, and just plain bad luck. your assertion is so hateful it would almost be comical if there weren't so many people pushing this hateful and destructive ideology
We evolved from apes where most of our group are frugivores or herbivores. Hell, if our bread wasn’t fortified with things like niacin and vitamin c most people would have scurvy and tons of other crap wrong with them. We probably should get more of our vitamins from the source!
Fruits in terms of calories are essentially sugar, and despite the fiber, more than 1-2 a day will start to impact insulin, fat storage etc. negatively for most people. Especially fructose-heavy fruit.
Non-starchy vegetables are not nearly as sugar or calorie dense, can be eaten in much higher volume with little effect, and as such should be thought of much differently than fruit.
(non-avocado) Fruit falls more in the dessert/candy category IMO.
My rule of thumb is for vegetables to form the bulk of my intake (in terms of volume), with 1-2 cups of fruit per day as "dessert".
Basically, I treat most non-starchy vegetables as "free" - eat as many as you want. It's a mistake to think that fruit/starchy vegetables (pumpkin, potato, etc) are in the same category.
So yes, do avoid fruit juice, soda, smoothies, alcoholic beverages, ice cream, etc; but avoiding whole fruit is probably premature optimisation.
https://nutritionfacts.org/2017/02/23/can-you-eat-too-much-f...
The fiber makes all the difference in the world when it comes to metabolism of sugars.
1 was done on diabetics with groups eating more or less fruit, but no mention is made of what the rest of their diet was in relation to sugar/carbs. It mentions no impact to their weight or diabetes, but would their diabetes + weight have improved by cutting carbs, sugar & fruit?
The other study was n=17 so not very solid.
What's more interesting is research where fruit, sugar, and carbs are removed entirely or almost entirely (keto). T2 Diabetes is commonly reversed and weight loss adherence increases.
I feel like this is nothing really groundbreaking news. I don't have any scientific sources or proofs so maybe I'm retarded, but it was always obvious to me that physical and mental health are largely interlinked. People who exercise regularly are more likely to have better mental health, perhaps even regardless of their diet (counting out extreme cases). People who make an effort to eat more fruit and veg to improve their physical health generally are also practicing the mental discipline needed to stick to a long-term plan/goal, which will mean better mental wellbeing as a result.
Will this study do any good to motivate people to eat more healthily? The cynic in me tells me no, because everyone already knows fruit and veg are good, yet many will still refuse to incorporate them into their diet and choose to eat convenient junk instead. The people who are already eating fruit and veg already know it is making a positive impact on their health, I guess this is another form of confirmation for them so they can continue?
So I ate raw lettuce; raw tomato etc etc
It changes your perception of eating. Less flashy but much more gentle and stimulating at the same time.
Here's a write-up with sources: https://nutritionfacts.org/2018/09/04/how-many-servings-of-f...
Fruit shall be more popular than ever after we replace the content with meat.
So, no you wouldn't put ketchup in a lemon, but you might have what appears to be a typical ketchup packet,appears to be made of plastic, but is actually some mix of properties of different organic skins.
The auto-immune benefit was just one of many benefits they claimed. Both also suffered from depression and they said those symptoms went away as well.
For an unbiased review of foods, go here: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/
That sort of batshit crazy magical thinking isn't worth discussing. Period.
The article the GP posted has the money quote:
>The idea that alcohol, one of the most well-documented toxic substances, is among the few things that Peterson’s body will tolerate may be illuminating. It implies that when it comes to dieting, the inherent properties of the substances ingested can be less important than the eater’s conceptualizations of them—as either tolerable or intolerable, good or bad. What’s actually therapeutic may be the act of elimination itself.
Similarly, breatharians make claims about their diet and built businesses around giving advice to people regarding their diet.
Both the Petersons and breatharians make huge claims about their purported diet, but don't have the evidence to back their claims up. There isn't even evidence that the Petersons follow their own diet advice. There are only claims and consultation fees.
For another example of the same sort of outrageous obviously false claims (similar to breatharianism) see the "fasting girls." (One of which died of starvation while being monitored)
Here http://meatheals.com/ and of course those of Petersons
> There isn't even evidence that the Petersons follow their own diet advice. There are only claims and consultation fees.
What they do to earn their living is irrelevant. Including your convenient disbelief (in the name of "evidence") of their factual reports. Unlike you, I take what people say with face value in order to establish a prima facie case -- there is no need to believe or disbelieve.
Had I listened to the Internet cynics like you I would not have resolved my own chronic condition.
No, it is very relevant. There's a blatant conflict of interest and that you chose to ignore it, and just take them on their word without evidence, speaks volumes.
I wish you luck in treating your chronic condition.
"Conflict of interest" and "complete lack of evidence that so-called practitioners even practice their diet" don't mean that their report is automatically false, it just calls into question their integrity and their report's basis in reality.
Unless a person is lying -- like that notorious vegan did when submitting a deliberately false report to meatheals.com -- one's report is indeed factual. Intelligent people are not stupid enough to blindly believe what others say, instead of taking it at face value in order to establish a prima facie case.
Cynicism won't get anyone very far in life.
Antioxidants have been a failure of nutritional science, in the same vein as the high-grain diet. That means vitamin C has been way overrated. In fact, it has better uses in skin care but that's a different story.
Can anyone comment?
As long as you get enough fiber, eat plenty of vegetables (and dry fruit like almonds, nuts, etc), and in general follow a low-carb diet, fruit intake is nothing more than a psychological boost, and makes you nutritionally worse off. Change my view.
Fruits and vegetables have fiber, which slows sugar absorption, hence no blood sugar spikes. Of course, if you eat 10 bananas daily, then it is not healthy.
Also, some vegetables contain lots of sugar too.
https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/02/02/the-number-one-global-...
These "studies" are so intentionally deceiving since they take lower income people who gorge themselves on processed junk and them claim "eating more fruit and veg" helps. You could also say "eating more meat" would be beneficial as opposed to processed junk.
I'm disappointed that so much of diet "science" is so corrupted by politics and business agenda. But that's been it's history since kellog's "eat cereal" nonsense and "an apple a day" PR stunt.
There is nothing inherently good about fruits or vegs. An "apple a day" isn't going to keep the doctor away. And vegetables aren't inherently "healthy food". If you only eat apples and vegetables, you will deteriorate physically and mentally and maybe even die.
It's like walking on all fours. Sure I can get from point A to point B on all fours, but it's not optimal. We were built to walk on our legs. The same goes for food. We were built to be omnivores.
The fact that no human society ( or pre human society ) existed on an all meat or all veg diet should be a dead giveaway.
Frankly, as a one time vegan myself, veganism should be labeled an eating disorder. Human beings should be eating a balanced diet.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancest...
I think you’re right that veganism is modern, as without modern scientific knowledge eating a healthy diet without milk, cheese, or eggs is very difficult.
Veganism is a different story, as you well know. I think that it's unfair and wrong to call veganism an eating disorder though. If you're a vegan for moral/philosophical reasons, and ensure that you keep your vitamin and mineral levels healthy, whether by supplements or dietary choices, how is that an eating disorder? That's like saying that conscientious objectors to the draft had a mental disorder.
EDIT: I guess this only applies to Veganism.
Or pregnant women taking folic acid to prevent birth defects? https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/pregnancy/fo...
Or giving vitamin d to newborns? https://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/breastfeeding-special-circ...
Should these practices be stopped because they aren't "natural"? Are breast fed babies not "eating correctly"?
Also, your argument is a classic example of an appeal to nature[2].
1: https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/livestock-biosecurity/cobalt-def...
To say "no, being a vegan is wrong because you can't get full nutrition from eating plants" is an invalid argument, because most vegans aren't arguing only on a health basis.
They say be nice in guidelines, and yet won't do anything about people outright accusing others in comments.
All the major dietetics and health organizations in the world agree that vegan and vegetarian diets are just as healthy as omnivorous diets. Here are links to what some of them have to say on the subject:
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.
Dietitians of Canada
A healthy vegan diet can meet all your nutrient needs at any stage of life including when you are pregnant, breastfeeding or for older adults.
The British National Health Service
With good planning and an understanding of what makes up a healthy, balanced vegan diet, you can get all the nutrients your body needs.
The British Nutrition Foundation
A well-planned, balanced vegetarian or vegan diet can be nutritionally adequate ... Studies of UK vegetarian and vegan children have revealed that their growth and development are within the normal range.
The Dietitians Association of Australia
Vegan diets are a type of vegetarian diet, where only plant-based foods are eaten. With good planning, those following a vegan diet can cover all their nutrient bases, but there are some extra things to consider.
The United States Department of Agriculture
Vegetarian diets (see context) can meet all the recommendations for nutrients. The key is to consume a variety of foods and the right amount of foods to meet your calorie needs. Follow the food group recommendations for your age, sex, and activity level to get the right amount of food and the variety of foods needed for nutrient adequacy. Nutrients that vegetarians may need to focus on include protein, iron, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.
The National Health and Medical Research Council
Appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle. Those following a strict vegetarian or vegan diet can meet nutrient requirements as long as energy needs are met and an appropriate variety of plant foods are eaten throughout the day
The Mayo Clinic
A well-planned vegetarian diet (see context) can meet the needs of people of all ages, including children, teenagers, and pregnant or breast-feeding women. The key is to be aware of your nutritional needs so that you plan a diet that meets them.
The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada
Vegetarian diets (see context) can provide all the nutrients you need at any age, as well as some additional health benefits.
Harvard Medical School
Traditionally, research into vegetarianism focused mainly on potential nutritional deficiencies, but in recent years, the pendulum has swung the other way, and studies are confirming the health benefits of meat-free eating. Nowadays, plant-based eating is recognized as not only nutritionally sufficient but also as a way to reduce the risk for many chronic illnesses.
British Dietetic Association
Well planned vegetarian diets (see context) can be nutritious and healthy. They are associated with lower risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers and lower cholesterol levels. This could be because such diets are lower in saturated fat, contain fewer calories and more fiber and phytonutrients/phytochemicals (these can have protective properties) than non-vegetarian diets. (...) Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of life and have many benefits.