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Comment by cageface | Hacker News Reader

We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.

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I was vegetarian for 20 years, vegan for 7, yet I started eating meat and fish about a year ago. Here are my thoughts:

- I started eating animal products again for health reason; I believe many people can thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I couldn't. It makes me unhappy, but there I am.

- Similarly vegetarian and vegan for a long time, my wife started craving animal products the minute she got pregnant. And after birth she became very ill, and survived on chicken broth. In short, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

- There is no reason for anyone to eat meat twice a day; and above all there is no reason for heavy subsidies so that everyone can eat meat cheaply twice a day.

So my preferred solution: animals raised humanely and sustainably to allow for healthy, limited consumption of animal products, with products priced at actual cost in order to eliminate over-consumption.

> limited consumption of animal products

It would be more impactful get three people to reduce meat by 50% than to get one to reduce by 100%. Unfortunately, "meals that don't have a chunk of meat as their centerpiece but that are still far from vegetarian" does not have the same ideological zeal as veganism (speaking in the context of a western industrial background).

When eating out (again: western cuisine), the meat-free choices are getting better and better and I applaud that, but it seems to just get more polarized. In aggregate, either vegan or an ever bigger focus on a meat centerpiece is hardly an improvement. Low meat dishes seem to have a serious branding problem.

I have a number of friends who eat meat only 2 times per week. I used to be vegetarian for about 15 years until I met my wife and we agreed to eat meat, but only organic/otherwise sustainable and only a limited number of times per week.

When eating out, I still eat vegetarian unless I know where the restaurant got its meat from. Increasing numbers of restaurants in Amsterdam do care where their meat comes from, fortunately.

Organic and sustainable are not the same thing.

That's why I mention them both. I'm generally fine with anything that has animals outside rather than locked up in a tiny cage, but I prefer meat grown locally in a field that's not certified over meat that's technically certified but shipped from the other side of the world.

As much as I'd love to brain the next deer that's eating under my apple tree I'm also aware that that deer might have been stuffing its face at god knows what dumpster or drinking from the river downstream of town (which has a several hundred year manufacturing history so I wouldn't drink the river water).

Farming animals for meat has its problems but it does impose much stricter controls on the inputs. No farmer raising livestock for human consumption is feeding their animals contaminated food and water if there are other options available. If DuPont is upstream of your farm you're probably SOL but that's the exception not the rule.

As a rule of thumb I would say there is good overlap. In support of my claim, I suggest the report from Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food [0].

[0] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-03-09/un-report-supp...

Organic according the USDA means that you use manure to fertilize instead of biosolids and you use something like copper-based pesticides instead of glyphosate.

I don't know enough about agriculture to understand what that means, but I have heard that the US uses a different, presumably lower, standard for organic crops than the EU does.

> I don't know enough about agriculture to understand what that means, but I have heard that the US uses a different, presumably lower, standard for organic crops than the EU does.

It means exactly what you heard. The USDA Organic label doesn't mean that organic crops are sustainable. The organic label doesn't address problems associated with commercial agriculture: monocultures, wide-spread use of pesticides, fertilizer run-off into streams/rivers/ponds/lakes causing them to become hypoxic, destruction of wetlands to create arable land etc.

> Low meat dishes seem to have a serious branding problem.

I think the way you make this work is using meat for flavor rather than as a centerpiece- a lot of noodle dishes from China do this (e.g. https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/11/dan-dan-noodles/).

Exactly, the whole "diaspora Asian" thing has this figured out just fine. But every food tradition has a great variety of low-meat options, with the possible exception of pure hunter/herder communities. But in the west they are traditionally mostly restricted to home cooking and what little still made it to professional kitchens is now increasingly getting squeezed out by fully meatless choices (the choice in status meat somehow never gets less).

(I say "diaspora Asian" because I can only talk about what we get under the Asian brand in Europe, which for all I know might be completely unrelated to what actually happens in the namesake regions. But that's completely unrelated to the point we are making here: meat for flavor instead of for status, kudos to them)

> It would be more impactful get three people to reduce meat by 50% than to get one to reduce by 100%. Unfortunately, "meals that don't have a chunk of meat as their centerpiece but that are still far from vegetarian" does not have the same ideological zeal as veganism

So, work to get people to try a different appreciate meatless options; as you note, they are getting better. You can reduce meat consumption by eating meat-centered meals less frequently as well as eating some-but-less meat in each meal.

The thing is, I really don't like those dishes that bend over sideways to eradicate even the last bit of meat. I'd be fine making that steak-sized chunk an extremely rare occasion, but don't take away my little flavor bits. Polarized "we cater for vegans and for big-steak aficionados" and then controlling your dosage via some foodie variety of pulse width modulation might be fine for some, but it's not for me. When low meat options disappear from the menu to make room for vegan options while the high meat dishes stay, then people like me are likely to end up eating more meat, not less, without really wanting to.

> I really don't like those dishes that bend over sideways to eradicate even the last bit of meat.

It's not like meat is a natural part of every dish that must be eradicated at some kind of effort to produce a meatless dish, though I'd agree that dishes they start with a meat dish and take that approach are often among the worst of meatless dishes.

I agree! This has been bothering me ever since I stopped eating vegetarian. My ideal dish would have lots of tasty vegetables with a side of meat. Unfortunately I suspect that most customers would consider they're not getting their money's worth.

Your solutions sounds pretty good to me (I'm vegetarian), because you are already aware of all the bad things about that industry, but you probably also know that most of the people don't know that and aren't capable of eating meat or fish from sustainably and healthy sources. In my personal experience, there's a lack of culture that makes easier for everybody to become vegetarian or vegan rather than learning how to find that kind of products that you mentioned...

I think there's a role for consumption of meat and animal products. There's also a lot of land which cannot be used to directly generate human food in any sensible way, e.g. in the uplands. Furthermore, animals have an important role in maintaining soil quality, which is vital to ensure good crop yields.

I don't mind vegetarian. I rarely eat meat and never crave for it. However vegan just sounds horrible. Eggs and cheeses are incredible, milk, fish, prawns. Cutting them out feels like cutting half of the nutrients out of my diet. I wouldn't risk it unless I had very extensive knowledge and dedication to human dietary requirements and what which plants can provide, which I don't have and won't have.

> Cutting them out feels like cutting half of the nutrients out of my diet. I wouldn't risk it unless I had very extensive knowledge and dedication to human dietary requirements and what which plants can provide, which I don't have and won't have.

Yea, this is pretty common (as many comments above yours will also attest to). “Vegetarian” and “vegan” are awful diet plans, in that they only tell you what not to eat. People coming from a standard diets based around meat/cheese/eggs undoubtedly have a hard time, and often become sick.

Fortunately, you don’t need that much knowledge. This stuff has been figured out by dietitians. If you’re interested in what a plant-based diet could look like, check out nutritionfacts.org. Dr. Greger has a “daily dozen” checklist that will pretty easily get you to a very healthy diet. It includes: cruciferous vegetables, other vegetables, whole grains, flax, berries, other fruits, spices (turmeric, cinnamon, garlic, etc), greens, nuts/seeds, beans/legumes, water, and exercise. If you consistently knock all 12 of those out, you’ll be healthy as a horse.

Aren't fish and prawns animals? Would you still considered a vegetarian if you ate them?

Some people consider that vegetarian, but I never understood that myself. When I was vegetarian, I didn't eat fish. I did eat eggs, though. Since they were unfertilized I didn't have a problem with them, and it helped me stick with the diet for as long as I did.

>Some people consider that vegetarian,

it's a christian cultural thing, mostly catholic. because the church decided fish aren't meat.

Ah, I allways wondered about that as being stupid well, now with that institution as the cause, it makes sense.

Also Jewish people don't consider fish meat for the purposes of keeping kosher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism

If you eat fish you're a pescatarian not a vegetarian.

Vegetarianism as I encountered it was 'no meat'. Which basically meant 'no muscle from anything closer to us than a frog'.

With a vegan diet, you need vitamin B12 supplements.

Take a multi-vitamin supplement, some linseed oil for the essential fatty acids and maybe some mineral supplement if appropriate according to the blood test.

You should do that anyway no matter your diet.

Dr Garth Davis: Americans have become obsessed with Protein

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQCt3IhaUtU&feature=youtu.be...

Supplements are a scam industry and you should not be advising anyone to waste their time and money on supplements.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/supplements-are-a-30...

With a vegan diet, you need vitamin B12 supplements.

From the linked article:

> Overall, multivitamins are not recommended for the generally healthy. There’s just no clear evidence to prove that they have any benefit. A 2013 analysis of 27 trials involving more than 400,000 people concluded that there was no clear evidence that they reduce cardiovascular disease, cancer risks, or reduce all-cause mortality.

This makes no sense.

You have a vegan diet to reduce cardiovascular disease, cancer risks, or reduce all-cause mortality.

You take vitamin supplements to prevent potential deficiencies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1Ca6SsKfE

http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19562864/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/27886704/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21139125/

The need for vitamins and essential fatty acids is scientifically proven.

Better safe than sorry. Multi-vitamin supplements are cheap enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid

Fermented foods such as kimchi and sauerkraut can supply B12, as can seaweed and some other foods.

So it is possible.

AFAIK there are no good vegan sources of vitamin B12 except vegan vitamin B12 supplements.

All experts recommend vitamin B12 supplements for vegans, vegetarians and older people.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4042564/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17959839

https://www.b12-vitamin.com/algae/

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12_deficiency:

> Vitamin B12 deficiency in the US and the UK is estimated to occur in about 6 percent of those under the age of 60, and 20 percent of those over the age of 60.[1] In Latin America rates are estimated at 40 percent and they may be as high as 80 per cent in parts of Africa and Asia.[1]

Absolutely agree. I think the calls for vegetarianism and veganism can really backfire. It's not realistic to expect everyone to give up meat completely.

We should be calling for people _limiting_ their meat consumption in a way that works for them. It's far more effective to have 50% of the population limit their meat consumption than 5% eschew meat all together.

I personally eat meat about once a week, and that's something that's worked for me. I also try to source my meat and dairy from humane sources. And it's been a minimal effort. I don't feel that I've been denied meat. I can still have it once in a while, and it does not affect me in my daily life whatsoever.

Western world throws insane amounts of food away: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/02/no-time-leftover...

There are other real problems than plant-based diets.

I was surprised how much meat people smilingly throw away in NewZealand - when I was asked to "just throw it in the trashcan" around 30dkgs of perfectly delicious and cooked meal I simply refused and walked away.

My muscles were literally blocked to make that movement of my arms, swiping a plate of meal to the bin. Around ~25 other people did not have any problems with it, so I guess the problem is in me.

Not just in New Zealand. It hurts me when I see people not finishing their plate. I will eat myself sick before I will throw away food. Sadly, this has developed into a bit of a weight problem. And then there's restaurants and supermarkets which throw away enormous amounts of unsold food.

We should buy and cook less food, or maybe have a quick way of sharing left-over food with people who are hungry.

Obesity is now a bigger problem worldwide than hunger.

Is that because hunger has been diminished, or because obesity has increased?

I believe both are true.

I thought I read that obesity is growing faster than undernourishment, but I can't find a source on that now.

It looks like the number of obese [1] and undernourished [2] humans are both currently 700-800+ million.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5477817

2. http://www.fao.org/3/I9553EN/i9553en.pdf

Better to waste than to waist.

(Yes, take less on your plate, save leftovers for future meals, etc.)

That does not break down the type of food waste

For example I rarely have meat-based food waste, however, I have all kinds of Fruit, and veg food waste do to spoilage.

Meat is easy to freeze and preserve, it is hard to freeze a salad ;)

It's mostly down to only buying what you need / use really. Frozen vegetables are another option, they are often easily portionable and are a better choice than "fresh" vegetables (source: I used to work in a vegetable packing plant for a summer vacation job; the vegetables we packaged to be sold in shops the day after came from a big freezer / fridge, oftentimes we had to discard whole pallets because the brocolli had gone moldy. I have no idea how long that stuff had been in there, but given the amount of mold it must've been a while)

As much as it would be great to get everyone on plant-based diets, it's not going to happen anytime soon. So I guess, for the environment at least, fish is the best we can do until then?

It doesn't have to be all or nothing! My wife has been vegetarian since I've known her, and vegan for a year and a half or so, and I never fully stopped eating meat until about the same time she went vegan. Before that, what happened to my diet was a reduction in the amount of meat consumed, and (for unrelated health-reasons), the cutting out of most red meat (I started with pork, and then barely ate red meat for a couple years) and shortly before starting to eat a vegetarian diet, I started only eating meat when we ate out (which is maybe 2-4 times a month for us). A few close friends of ours actively try to cut out red meat on most weeknights, for example. Some other friends simply try to incorporate vegetarian/vegan substitutes once a week, or other similar amounts.

Whether your concerns are environmental, for health reasons, or about the ethical treatment of animals, you can adjust your diet as much or as little as you want and still have some sort of impact. Just like you don't have to sell your car and bike to work every day in order to cut down on your footprint by, say, biking to the nearby stores instead of driving.

I think it will happen sooner than you think, with companies like Beyond Meat working hard to ultimately make plant protein "meat" both highly palatable and less expensive.

There are a lot of people (myself included) who actually enjoy real meat and would never switch, so no it won't be happening any time soon or at all really.

Eventually that may be a socially untenable practice, what with meat consumption being linked to so many ethical and environmental issues.

Between the cancer risk posed by red and processed meat as well as the environmental damage, I expect meat consumption to go the way of smoking within a generation.

The vast majority of people in the US eat meat regularly and feed it to their children. There is no way this is going to stop in one generation. There are also plenty of cultures that have meat as their staple. Can you imagine telling Mexicans to eat vegetarian tacos for instance? That simply will never happen, it's too ingrained into culture (and too delicious!).

Smoking cigarettes and cigars was also once considered a delicious and ingrained part of many cultures. It is now clear that processed and red meats cause bowel cancer, and the environmental impacts they pose are also becoming more and more clear. Just like smoking ended in a generation I can definitely see people rejecting these products in the near future. Cultures change all the time.

I don’t agree. Diet is an integral part of one’s culture. Smoking cigarettes is a needless vice mostly pushed by marketing. I think you’re greatly underestimating how important food is to some cultures. I suggest you have a conversation about this with someone from a meat eating culture. It will give you more perspective on the staying power of meat.

I think you're under-estimating the grip tobacco had on society. Smoking was very common. Between the 1940s and 1980s over 40% of the population smoked. https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures-table...

We used to give cigarettes out in Red Cross parcels. https://www.loc.gov/resource/anrc.08956/

I know it was very popular, but 1940 was not that long ago. We're comparing it to eating meat which humans have been doing for at least tens of thousands of years. You also need to eat something, while some cultures smoke more than others, no one needs to smoke to survive.

Not necessarily cigars/cigarettes, but tobacco has also played an important role in some cultures. I doubt Native Americans were using tobacco, sometimes for ceremonial and religious purposes, due to marketing

>Just like smoking ended in a generation

It did? Where? In what world?

Here in America, which has much lower smoking rates than many other developed nations and has indeed lowered the smoking rate a lot since ~50 years ago, there's tons of young people taking up smoking and "vaping". A bunch of my tech coworkers do.

I’m Mexican and can confirm meat isn’t going anywhere. I can’t even imagine Mexico City without it. Not only does everyone eat meat but most people make a living selling it. There are taco carts on every corner.

It’s also a huge part of family life. These dishes have been passed down through the generations and it’s actually moderately offensive to suggest that it’s not socially acceptable to eat what my family has been eating for as far back as anyone can remember. I know my children are growing up learning to love all of the dishes their family cooks and enjoys together.

Given the sad state of nutritional "science" and the extremely low odds of it getting better anytime soon, I think it's just as likely we'll shortly find out that red meat reduces your cancer risk.

The science is solid. We know that red meat, especially processed red meat, definitely causes cancer. The evidence so good that the evidence is now in the same trust-worthy class as the evidence that tells us smoking causes cancer.

But red meat doesn't cause very much cancer. There's a low risk of colorectal cancer, and red meat (even processed red meat) increases that risk by a small amount.

To prevent one case of cancer from red meat a large number of people have to give it up.

I disagree with parent poster. If people can assess risk they'll see a small increase of a low risk, and decide there are other things to worry about. If people can't assess risk (the vast majority of people) they'll decide if they like bacon enough to keep eating it, just as they do with alcohol or anything else.

And eggs are bad, and if you want to lose weight eat less fat and more pasta!

I don't trust anything that comes from these people. They don't have the ability to properly test their hypotheses.

Have you missed the incredible amount of pushback in the recent past against identity politics? You may get half the population to decide it is socially untenable, but the other half will double down in response.

My meat eating wife, whose favorite food is steak, prefers the impossible burger and gets it over the real thing when we go out. I've heard other similar accounts as well. Unless everyone like yourself refuses to even try it then it's likely to catch on at least to some extent.

And honestly it seems a bit selfish to not at least try the less environmentally damaging option.

I would try it and I would eat it if it tastes good. There are a lot of different kinds of meat that would need suitable replacements though:

* all cuts of steak

* chicken

* pork

* salmon, tuna, mackerel, eel, sea urchin, shrimp...

Ground beef seems like low hanging fruit, making convincing sushi seems more difficult.

> And honestly it seems a bit selfish to not at least try the less environmentally damaging option.

I can think of several reasons people may not want artificial meat. Maybe they think it's gross (test tube meat) or it goes against tradition and culture. I don't think the "shaming" angle works well to get people to change their diet. I know I immediately tune out or get defensive when people tell me what I should do with my personal life. Especially since almost everything is "bad" for the environment. So unless someone lives in a dirt hut, eating veggies they grow themselves, wearing clothes made from their own hemp and never traveling, I really don't take what they have to say about the environment into consideration.

Do you refuse to stop anything enjoyable? I think there are often other factors worth considering. Maybe you enjoy meat, but if you also enjoy many non-meat foods, you can eat those and still fulfill the need to eat and the need to enjoy food.

> Do you refuse to stop anything enjoyable? I think there are often other factors worth considering

Other people's opinion about my diet isn't one of those factors. You can't shame someone out of doing something they enjoy.

> Maybe you enjoy meat, but if you also enjoy many non-meat foods, you can eat those and still fulfill the need to eat and the need to enjoy food

But I like eating meat so I will continue to do that in addition to eating other foods I also enjoy.

Or just perfecting lab grown meat.

You might stop eating fish to not support the finishing industry, but then you might start supporting the fish oil industry which is even worse. It's better to buy from small time local fishermen or fish yourself. Fresh fish also taste better.

Not trying to start the flame war, but this:

>We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy

Is still heavily disputed in nutrition circles.

Can you link to any material?

I really don’t think any nutritional scientist would claim it’s impossible to be healthy as a vegetarian. Whether it’s easier with meat or feasible for all people is something else

> I really don’t think any nutritional scientist would claim it’s impossible to be healthy as a vegetarian.

It is impossible for some people. Nutrition claims should always be taken with a grain of salt. For instance, the advice surrounding cholesterol over the past 30 years.

It's important here to realize that irrespective of your diet-- vegetarian, vegan, omnivore, carnivore and everything in between-- these are just labels and any of these can be bad for your health.

For example, the following highly processed and sugary foods are considered vegan/vegetarian-friendly: French fries from most fast-food chains, Oreo cookies, Fritos corn chips, Lays potato chips, unfrosted Pop-Tarts, Nature Valley Granola Bars, Graham Crackers.

I would not trust an endorsement of a diet from a health organization. Over the past 30-40 years most modern countries have been experiencing a surge in chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and strokes. If you look at the places around the globe where Western diets have been introduced (e.g., Hawaii and Polynesia, Aboriginal tribes of Australia, Inuit in polar regions etc.), you see wrecked health markers for those populations after abandoning their local indiginous diets. Health organizations have done a disservice in the realm of nutrition and health.

It's not. The American Dietetics Association states as its official position that a vegan diet is healthful and adequate for all stages of life:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864

There's currently quite a bit of debate over whether or not plant-based diets are better than other diets, but not over whether or not they are healthy.

The position statement was REMOVED on the request of Academy Positions Committee (APC) of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics for "inaccuracies and omissions". https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(15)00261-0/abstrac...

The 2009 statement linked above was not removed; a 2015 update of the position statement was retracted and re-published in 2016 [1][2]. The position has been formally endorsed until December 31, 2021.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704

[2] https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(16)31192-3/fulltex...

The 2015 version of the paper was removed for revision. It was revised and the current revision (Dec 2016) still has the same position on vegetarian diets.

https://www.eatrightpro.org/practice/position-and-practice-p...

>POSITION STATEMENT 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 in 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. Plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable than diets rich in animal products because they use fewer natural resources and are associated with much less environmental damage.

And it was never actually a big deal in the first place, because they have maintained more-or-less the same position for several decades, and the removal didn't actually change their position in a significant way.

https://retractionwatch.com/2015/11/16/inaccuracies-and-omis...

>Following the release of the “Vegetarian Diets” position paper, the Academy Positions Committee received correspondence from respected experts in the area of vegetarian nutrition, including Academy members, expressing concern about what they cited as inaccuracies in the paper. Upon receipt of the memoranda, the APC sent the paper out for a secondary external blind, unbiased review. Based on the result of these reviews, as well as the received correspondence from experts in the field, the APC voted to remove the paper from the Journal with the goal to revise and publish at a future date. Until then, individuals should refer to the “Vegetarian Diets” position paper published in the July 2009 Journal (Volume 109, Issue 7, pages 1266-1282).

This is the 2009 version:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19562864/

>It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.

Furthermore, most similar organizations take similar positions

https://www.livekindly.co/myth-buster-vegan-diets-are-unheal...

> for all stages of life

Even for babies?

This does not answer the question, but the fact that even ruminant offspring rely on milk to supplement their nutrition I think should at least create skepticism

Vegans aren't against breastfeeding.

And animals frequently eat other animals.

Ruminants are by definition able to produce all necessary nutrition in their gut. That was the point.

Though I normally encourage vegetarianism and admire vegans, I wouldn't stick to strictly a vegan diet during pregnancy.

From an economic/environmental perspective, severely limiting your intake of animal products is nearly as good as avoiding them completely, and nutritionally you're on much more solid ground.

The 2016 position says

>[Vegetarian and vegan] diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.

As long as your baby is an ideologue.

My son has been vegan for his entire life. He’s 4 now and very healthy.

I was vegan for 5 years and about 6 months ago started eating meat and dairy again for reasons unrelated to food. I was raised in a household that ate meat with almost every meal. I have personally experienced pros and cons to both lifestyles, but would argue that in practice, a vegan diet is healthier for most people due to the nature of food options available to them.

Including animal-free "milk" as an infant?

Yep, mainly coconut or almond milk. He was breastfed until he was about 22 months old.

Isn't consuming human breastmilk and being vegan/animal-free a contradiction?

Thanks for sharing & best wishes for your family's health. I hope you have allowed for proper vaccinations.

To be honest I haven't put much thought into that perspective, it's a good question. Breastfeeding was never a question for us, even on a vegan diet. I wonder what other vegans think of this question.

As I continued being vegan, I realized that the spectrum which is actually important is raw vs. processed foods, and less so meat vs plants. I think a lot of people who "do vegan right" end up just eat less processed crap in general and end up being healthy, not necessarily because of eating less/no meat. However, there are vegans that get on the "oreo diet" and just eat junk food 24/7 - those are not healthy vegans.

Thank you for the kind words, and likewise.

"I think a lot of people who "do vegan right" end up just eat less processed crap in general and end up being healthy, not necessarily because of eating less/no meat."

I agree 100%. Some of the biggest benefits of any diet are obtained by getting back to simple foods and away from highly processed foods/carbs mixed with seed oils and sugars. Ditch that stuff and you'll likely do well on just about any diet.

Just because ADA endorses it doesn't mean it isn't disputed. And by that I mean specifically vegan diets without supplementation.

You also have to account the supplements needed for a pure vegan diet. The best option is probably to buy the fish fresh from your local fisherman.

The only supplement needed on a vegan diet is minimal amounts of b12, and that’s only necessary because sanitation kills the bacteria that produce it.

The environmental footprint of a vegan diet is way lower than even that of a pescavore.

No one's disputing the footprint, they're disputing how feasible it is for all or even most people. Vegetarianism requires much more understanding and planning to ensure you ingest sufficient proper macro and micronutrients.

Edit: and you need look no further than Harvard's explanation of how to become a vegetarian and choose your foods to ensure a healthy diet: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-ve...

How many ordinary people do you think have sufficient understanding of these factors to become healthy vegetarians?

Eating a healthy diet takes work no matter what diet plan you follow. You're assuming a meat-based diet is automatically healthy when in fact the typical meat based, western diet is strongly linked to all of our most deadly diseases. You're going to be a lot better off on an even non-ideal plant based diet than you are going to be eating hamburgers and pizza.

I'll admit it's currently not that easy to follow a strictly plant based diet if you mostly eat in restaurants and don't live in a first tier Western city.

If you're willing to do your own shopping and mostly eat at home it's actually not only easy but really enjoyable to take back control of your health and what you eat.

> You're assuming a meat-based diet is automatically healthy

I'm asserting that it's harder to be nutrient deficient given a meat/fish-based diet. The only "work" in this diet is not eating too much.

> western diet is strongly linked to all of our most deadly diseases

Mostly due to overconsumption, not due to the composition of the diet. Controlling for caloric intake eliminates most differences in health outcomes between the various diets, assuming no nutrient deficiencies are present.

> the typical meat based, western diet is strongly linked to all of our most deadly diseases

The standard American diet is composed of 70% plant-based foods, which is the same ratio found in the Mediterranean diet which is lauded as one of the most healthful.

It's not the meat that's causing the issues, it's the processed plant foods and plant-derived oils that destroy one's health on a western diet. Or in other words, the horrible food quality. Any diet that doesn't include processed plant foods and oils will be an improvement from one that does, regardless of whether it includes meat.

I'm guessing you mean "minimal amounts" because B12 doses/levels are measured in micrograms. In fact a vegan diet provides no natural B12 (see note below). This is a serious gap that must be addressed by supplementation/fortification.

Supplements have challenges too (and in fact many studies show supplements to be of little value). In order to attain sufficient B12 via supplements, a person needs to consume many times the RDA value. For example, only 10 mcg of a 500 mcg oral supplement is absorbed by healthy people.

So while technically you may need minimal amounts of B12, it remains an essential vitamin. Getting it in a format which is both absorbable and bioavailable is not trivial and serves as a clue that human physiology evolved in an ecosystem which, to varying degrees, involved eating animals.

Note: For now I'll set aside probable/common deficiencies among vegans/vegetarians in B6, heme iron, the vitamins A, D3, K2, micronutrients and fatty acids DHA, CLA, Carnatine, Carnosine, Taurine, Creatine and others. In fairness, a western/standard american diet can also score poorly in many nutrients.

Fermented foods such as kimchi or sauerkraut can provide B12, but you have to get the old-fashioned variety, not the "pour some vinegar over boiled cabbage" version.

Most store-bought or restaurant kimchi has fish-sauce and/or bits of shrimp.

I can't find much support for B12 in these foods in online databases.

If these must be home-made or of similar quality, supplementation of B12 is still going to be important.

> We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy

I think you will have to back that statement up if you want to be taken seriously. I for one am certainly not going to stop eating fish and meat, I have been a vegetarian for over a year and I did not fancy it.

> I think you will have to back that statement up if you want to be taken seriously.

This is such a mainstream statement that it seems to me entirely reasonable to omit a source. You can find dozens of them by looking up "vegetarianism" on wikipedia and navigating to the "health effects" section.

> This is such a mainstream statement that it seems to me entirely reasonable to omit a source

Only in circles where alternative medicine is practiced, health-advice taken from unscholared internet-blogs and science is generally shunned.

This very extreme claim certainly needs a source to have any sort of credibility.

4.5 million Jains in India would be happy to discuss this issue, just for starters. The world is full of healthy vegans and vegetarians.

You are omitting the fact that genetics plays a huge role in the success and efficiency of your diet.

More than a third of East Asians have a deficiency in one of the enzymes involved in the breakdown of alcohol (aldehyde dehydrogenase). They cannot properly metabolize it.

Inuits have mutations in genes that code for enzymes that desaturate carbon-carbon bonds in fatty acids. This means they can handle diets that are very high in certain types of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

A mutation of the melanocortin-4-receptor (MC4R) leads to a markedly increased preference for high fat, but a significantly reduced preference for high sucrose food.

So what I'm saying is that blanket statements like "well if I/those guys can do it then everybody should be able to" have no real value. Diets are strongly influenced by and relying on genetics. Since we don't have the same genes we won't handle the same diet in the same way. Linking to statements that have since been withdrawn due to omissions also doesn't help.

Edit. Huh... getting downvoted for saying diet and genetics go hand in hand, with evidence that hasn't been retracted. If anybody was wondering why some people are never taken seriously, it's because they reject reality thinking this will change it.

I think you're being downvoted because of the "Withdrawn statements" comment. It looks like this has been posted multiple times in the same thread, but the statement was not withdrawn.

The paper liked originally was indeed withdrawn. It was corrected and subsequently republished which I didn't notice (can't edit anymore). This being said (from the paper):

> appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets

Most people's diets are not "appropriately" planned because most people never actually consult a nutritionist. This means most of those diets miss their mark and since that diet narrows the alternatives it's far easier to lose those benefits.

And can't see anything about any disbenefits of introducing animal products in that diet in "appropriately planned" quantities. Would introducing certain amounts of animal products in your diet affect in in any direction? So would adding a moderate amount of fish in your vegad diet sabotge or improve it? Or no difference?

> You are omitting the fact that genetics plays a huge role in the success and efficiency of your diet.

Not just genetics, but a lifetime of bacterial and other environmental exposures that defines your microbiome, which is obviously essential to processing all food. An environment with a long history of vegetarians will be well suited to vegetarians. Not so much if that hasn't been the case.

>Only in circles where alternative medicine is practiced, health-advice taken from unscholared internet-blogs and science is generally shunned.

Completely false. Also, unscholared isn't a word

https://www.dictionary.com/misspelling?term=unscholared&s=t

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unscholared

https://www.onelook.com/?w=unscholared&ls=a

>This very extreme claim

It isn't

So popular mainstream statements doesn't need to be backed by sources? This seems kind of strange and anti-scientific to me.

It also makes me believe less in the statements, since there is not apparently any sources that can be used to back the statements up.

It's the official position of the largest association of professional nutritionists in the US. It's hardly controversial.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704

[2] https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(16)31192-3/fulltex...

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