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Comment by reizorc | Hacker News Reader

I've watched many of these videos. These people have put their bodies through hell: 25 day water fasts, eating only fruit for months, high carb/low fat vegan, raw vegan, 1200 calories a day, urine therapy!? then they wonder why they get gut and other issues.

Usually, they then ignore medical advice, especially when it involves taking antibiotics, and try to cure themselves through wishful thinking and more diet. After that predictably fails they are then magically cured of all ills 8 hours after consuming eggs and fish.

They're HAVE got some serious issues and it's not a plant based diet.

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Agreed. A lot of those people got to veganism through some kind of eating disorder or some other social problem. They started out looking at the world with a different lens than your typical western adolescent or young adult. Some of them thrive on attention and drama.

The usual vegan dietary issues can be solved with a few supplements and a lot less drama.

I watched rawvana her videos occasionally for some recipe ideas.

My wife and I are not vegan, but vegetarian. It sounds like a bad idea to strictly follow a YouTuber without checking in with a nutriologist or doctor when you are full vegan though.

I would still watch her videos though even after this drama. She has some tasty recipes :)

MDs get very little instruction on nutrition FWIW, although they would be helpful in terms of longitudinal monitoring.

But perhaps they can refer you to the right person :) In any case, this might depend on the country as well. Where I'm from (Belgium) doctors have been helpful regarding nutrition as well. YMMV though

Ah yes, I'm showing my US bias :). I was just surprised to learn this from a (US) doctor friend!

Pioneers!

But seriously, the first person to ever eat curdled milk from a pouch made of intestines must have been really fucking weird. There was probably someone eating cow shit in the village square, looking like a complete moron, and it never picked up because, 1) yuck and 2) no nutrition. But the cheese person started a whole thing. Does innovation happen at the fringes, with vastly more failures than successes?

The article is headlined "The Weird World of Vegan YouTube Stars", but it's not about vegans. It's about the weirdo microminority who punish their body with daily enemas, 30-day juice cleanses, and believe that menstruation is the body's way of shedding "toxins".

Any sufficiently large group has it's outliers, zealots, and weirdos.

Raw-foodies / fruitarians are the weirdo subset of vegans. Flat-earthers are the weirdo subset of Christians. Sovereign Citizens are the weirdo subset of Libertarians. White Nationalists are the weirdo subset of Conservatives. Parents who speak exclusively to their kids in Klingon are the weirdo subset of Star Trek fandom.

The guy who spoke to his son exclusively in Klingon wasn't a Trekkie, he was a computational linguist; his interest was in language acquisition, not Star Trek fandom. The kid never even saw an episode of Star Trek. He was specifically interested in Klingon because of it's limited vocabulary and grammar.

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