There are tons of easy alternatives for vegetable protein, including good old lentils, beans, chickpeas, etc. You don't have to go out of your way to buy tempeh or gourmet vegetarian food.
Also bear in mind that not all protein is created equal. If wheat gluten wasn't low in lysine, I'd eat a lot more of it.
1. "healthy" doesn't mean living a long life free of ailments. It means achieving your standard of athletic performance as a hobby.
2. "challenging" doesn't mean difficult. It means doing some research, buying more tempeh at once and maybe freezing it, or just buying a protein supplement.
That's already too much. I can do that, and you can do that. Our jobs are to research things and then implement them. Most people will not or can not do this. Expecting them to is a waste of time.
The way to solve this would be to de-incentivize meat production on the supply side, and encourage food distributors to fortify food with micronutrients that are commonly missing in vegetarian diets (vitamin B12, calcium, etc). Anything short of this is not going to do much except turn people off from being vegetarian.
I agree that none of this matters as long as people can eat meat. They will if they can.
Yes, that's a decent summery. Populations would be less healthy if meat just suddenly disappeared with no other changes. Although, in the United States at least, we massively over-consume meat to the detriment of our health. But we rely on it as a source of many micronutrients that we otherwise wouldn't get by default.
Additionally, these changes will never happen without regulatory changes on the supply side to artificially drive up the cost of meat production.
I'm still learning this stuff myself. But from the things I've read so far, vegans (especially the WFPB variety) can have difficulty getting: Vitamin B12, calcium[0], iron, and possibly a balanced amino acid profile if they have elevated protein requirements. A diet too high in carbs and too low in fat and protein can also cause long term problems like candida overgrowth and hormonal imbalances.
It still takes "gourmet" vegetarian food to compare to regular meat.
[0] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/animal-vs-plant-protein
I'd say that's pretty subjective. I haven't missed meat from a taste perspective. The smell actually starts to get a little bit repulsive when I go for months without it.
The rest of your point is very relevant though. I supplement with whey protein. But if it wasn't for that, I'd really be struggling to hit amino acid targets. Being an athletic vegan is borderline impossible in my opinion.
Agreed that it's really hard to be an athletic vegan, but seems doable if you hit these amino targets and still supplement with pea protein or something.
There are a great number of vegan athletes that disagree. E.g. Patrik Baboumian, one of the strongest people alive, is vegan. America's best Olympic weight lifter (maybe not currently but has been), Kendrick Ferris, is vegan. Keep an eye out for the release of the moving "The Game Changers" [1] for more.
https://vegfaqs.com/important-vegan-amino-acids/
Just looking at lysine:
> There’s no official RDA for lysine, but according to research, you typically want to aim for about 12 mg per kg of bodyweight.
> For example, a 170 lb person needs 924 mg per day, or more.
So a cup of soybeans providers 1.33 grams, oats, lentils and any bean at least a gram per serving.
Oatmeal for breakfast, nuts for a snack and a mix of vegetables with some beans or tofu for dinner and you exceed the RDA for every one of those amino acids you've listed. All healthy things you should be incorporating into your diet anyway (fiber rich). So while a single food may not meet the RDA alone, it seems very easy to meet with a combination of common foods in a plant based diet.
Not to mention nutrients that are supplemented in vegan diets often are also supplemented in omni diets (B12 in meat and Vitamin D in milk, for example, are only because of supplementation and fortification).
> It certainly doesn't taste as good, especially if you don't want to take tons of time cooking. > It still takes "gourmet" vegetarian food to compare to regular meat.
I had plenty of terrible meat meals and many amazing vegan dishes. I would say the standard American diet lacks a lot of knowledge about tasty ways to cook plants, but they do exist and they aren't hard. Ethiopian and Indian cooking, for example, have a strong tradition of plant based dishes that are easy to make. Many other cuisines can easily be adapted.