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Comment by chukye | Hacker News Reader

6 is a big NO. The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by plant based diets. Humans need meat, without it we get sick. B12 can't be found in plants, there are plenty studies that shows how sick we get if we eat ONLY plants.

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In case you are serious, vitamin B12 is produced by single celled organisms. It is found in algal (seaweed) and fermented foods, too, not just animal based foods.

Almost every study about responsible plant based diets shows it has healthier than average outcomes. I say "almost" just as a hedge, I don't know of any.

By all means, eat whatever diet you want and don't feel bad about it, but do it for factual reasons and don't invent facts to justify your preferences.

RE: The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by plant based diets

Do you have any studies that back up your claim that humans need meat to live a healthy life?

Several governmental bodies worldwide state[1] that one can live healthy using a plant based diet and The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine[0] even recommend a plant based diet for good health and disease prevention.

Did you know B12 is produced by bacteria and that some meat eaters are low in B12 and need to supplement. Animals in factory farms are being fed B12 supplements[2].

You might want to research this further so you're better informed next time you state information as fact. Or watch this documentary - https://gamechangersmovie.com/- it's on Netflix.

[0] https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition

[1] https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-vegan-diet/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK396513/

[2] https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/carnivores-need-vitamin-b1...

btw, please don't do like these guys https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/14/vegan-parents-starved-toddler... feed your babies with meat, we don't have technology (yet) to eat only plants.

This is one isolated case of parents who were probably quite dogmatic and ill informed and they were fruitarians - mainly eating raw food, so probably not living on a well-balanced diet.

The article even states that a vegan or vegetarian diet is fine for kids[0]. So again please read articles properly next time and don't make generalised statements based one some headlines you read.

[0] "Babies and young children on a vegetarian or vegan diet can get the energy and most of the nutrients they need to grow and develop from a well-planned varied and balanced diet."

Please stop. You've made your point and continuing to push it is just going to cause a flamewar.

I'm sorry, here are some articles that supports me when I say that plant-based diet are not good for your health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1331544/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26493452/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00223...

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/4/943/4597049

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15072869/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/30061399/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466124/

I'm not a huge fan of nutrition, so that's why I take too long post these, anyway don't believe me or in any article, test on yourself and tell me.

Plant-based diet might be good for environment, but for sure are not good for your health.

Thanks. But none of those articles say that a plant based diet is not good for your health and that you need to eat meat instead. Your last link about mental disorders for example even says there is no evidence that a plant based diet causes mental disorders and it even states "vegetarians are in good physical health".

I would recommend to read these articles properly next time and not make generalised statements like you've done.

You can live a healthy live without meat or dairy products.

We can't feed the whole world using a meat heavy diet as it's just too resource intensive and destructive to the environment. A shift to a more plant based diet is inevitable - that's why I'm thankful to people like Ethan Brown and his team working on meat alternatives that are as good or better than animal meat - to make this transition easier for people who just can't give up animal meat.

Vegetarians can eat animal products like milk and cheese, which do contain vitamin B12. "Meat" refers to muscle and other foods derived from animal death, but does not refer to animal products like milk, cheese, and eggs.

There are indeed people who have medical conditions that make their life dangerous with a plant-based diet. For people without such conditions (the majority of people), science on negative effects of plant-based diet seems to focus on certain deficiencies (such as deficiency of zinc and iron, or omega-3 EPA and DHA fatty acids). These deficiencies can be avoided by consuming specific plant-based sources, such as certain seaweeds for EPA and DHA.

For most people plant-based diet is probably completely safe and when debating this issue, the bottom argument of opposition to plant-based diets usually boils down to one thing: the god-given right or even necessity for man to eat other animals (be it because of it being natural to eat other beings in nature, because "plants have feelings too", or because of traditions or humans dying if they don't eat meat). This rests on ignorance of science, self-centered attitude and violence. Industrial-scale animal production for food is an abhorrent machine by any humane moral standards and most people use these counter-arguments because they like how meat or cheese tastes and they want to close their eyes.

Hunting or fishing or growing your own meat is much less evil than the animals-for-food industry but the nature ecosystem could never sustain current amounts of meat consumption. Also it has to be understood that in developing countries masses of people cannot afford to be fancy about what to eat and what not. In developed countries however... I think we should not consider ourselves "developed" if we kill 10x our own human populations amounts of animals each year for food based mostly on the fact that we are used to it and that meat tastes good. As more and more people realize this, the demand for plant-based diets goes up.

Nice discussion folks.. BUT, there is an argument that never makes sense to me "the nature ecosystem could never sustain current amounts of meat consumption", so how can nature sustain amounts of PLANT consumption IF we all change it to plant-based diets? This does not make sense since for 1 piece of meat we need to eat dozen of different plants; plants as food have a huge impact in nature too.

Your logic breaks down when you consider the fact that humans will never consume as much plant matter or water as livestock.

In fact, the creation of meat is a wasteful process, requiring up to 25kg of grain and 15,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of steak. [1]

1: http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report-48-WaterFoo...

The animals eat a lot more plants for a pound of meat they gain than humans would need if we only ate the plants. We are in the first day of this year and already over 120 million animals have been killed in the US for food. Approximations on amount of animals killed each year for food in the USA vary, but it is in tens of billions. Can you imagine the strain natural ecosystem would need to sustain to support tens of billions of new animals every year? We are already on the edge when feeding those animals with industrial crops.

Humans are not ruminants. We can not survive on hay. We can survive on the high-nutrition parts of plants, but creating these parts is resource-intensive. In some cases the whole plant is simply difficult to grow (pests, fertilizer, etc.) and in other cases we don't get very much food from each plant.

There is a whole lot of tree attached to a cashew.

Goats and sheep are happy to eat the weeds on a rocky hill, and cattle do almost as well.

Other food animals are happy to eat disgusting waste. Pigs, chickens, and catfish are especially willing.

> There is a whole lot of tree attached to a cashew.

There is also a whole lot of cashew attached to that tree, and the same tree produces more, year after year.

Exactly! Humans to survive need to combine a lot of fancy vegetables, we can't live eating grass...

I'm not sure how you reconcile this with the existence of healthy individuals who have eaten nothing but plants for decades. I myself have not eaten meat in about 5 years, and I just had a health check-up with full blood work. My doctor said "whatever you're doing, keep doing. You're healthy and I don't recommend changing a thing."

I bet you live in San Francisco :D /jokes a side; for you to be healthy without eating meat you need to eat a large variation of plants, it's not only one, it's not only one meal by day. It's not easy and have a great impact in nature too, meat have all we need and is simpler. Also, humans that are fed only with meat are able to eat once a week (or less).

Again, please share the studies to back up your claims. You're either trolling or just very poorly informed and spreading misinformation without checking it.

And how do you reconcile the fact that animal agriculture is a large contributor to ecological destruction and greenhouse gas emissions. Here is the result of a 5 year Oxford Uni study that recommends adopting a more plant-based diet to reduce your personal carbon footprint[0]

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

I'm sorry, here are some articles that supports me when I say that plant-based diet are not good for your health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1331544/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26493452/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00223...

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/90/4/943/4597049

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15072869/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/30061399/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466124/

I'm not a huge fan of nutrition, so that's why I take too long post these, anyway don't believe me or in any article, test on yourself and tell me.

Plant-based diet might be good for environment, but for sure are not good for your health.

Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. It strictly lowers the signal/noise ratio.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Aren't there a lot of people currently following vegetarian diets and not getting sick?

No. They need to supplement B12 and some other nutrients that are not found in plants.

You can still follow a plant based diet and use supplements derived from non-animal sources.

They're not found in meat either. B12 comes from bacteria out of dirt.

In fact industrial animal agriculture frequently has to supplement b12 to animals as they are commonly deficient.

This is just not true. You're probably thinking of vegans who aren't allowed to have cheese, milk, and eggs. Vegetarians can easily get B12 in their diets.

Vegetarians get B12 from the animal products created from animals which supplemented B12. Everyone is supplementing B12 regardless of their diet, it's just a matter of how many steps removed from the supplement that people seem to think makes a difference (it doesn't).

It is a technical problem, not a law of nature. B12 and other nutrients will be produced by plants, insects or bacteria in sufficient supply by the end of the decade, given the amount of interest vegetarian diets receive. Some investment will come from space companies, which need to shorten the food chain.

> The most part of diseases of this decade are caused by plant based diets.

I'm not sure if you are being serious. Approximately 3% of the US population claim to be 100% plant-based, and you are saying that this 3% is responsible for most part of diseases?

I'm sorry, what I wanted to say is: "The most diseases of this decade are caused by every kind of food that are not meat"

The B12 meat has is from supplements given to the cows, chickens, etc. That's just meat eaters supplementing B12 with more steps.

Plant based != no meat.

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