A vegan diet could affect your intelligence | Hacker News Reader

A vegan diet could affect your intelligence

bbc.com

54 pointselorant71 comments

From the article:

"Other [nutrients] are found in vegan foods, but only in meagre amounts; to get the minimum amount of vitamin B6 required each day (1.3 mg) from one of the richest plant sources, potatoes, you’d have to eat about five cups’ worth (equivalent to roughly 750g or 1.6lb). Delicious, but not particularly practical."

And yet when you investigate plant sources of b6,

Banana:

Vitamin B6 per 200 Calories 0.8mg (49% DV)

Beef: Vitamin B6 per 200 Calories 0.4mg (21% DV)

Interesting! Very interesting! I wonder what percentage of readers of this article are going to investigate what this authoritative science writer says for themselves? After all, why not trust the expert with a graduate degree working for the BBC?

So which is it, is the author unable to investigate in the most basic manner the actual B6 content in foods, when she apparently has a doctorate, or is this some sort of propagandist trash article with an agenda? Because I'm not sure what other options there are based on the way the quoted paragraph is written.

Moreover, what are the implications for the BBC's editorial standards that something like this was greenlit?

The BBC really needs to be listed as an unreliable source.

I get these same arguments from non-vegans all too often. I then have to have the same discussion that takes a nontrivial amount of time and effort. I’m also usually told I’m wrong or should still rethink my dietary choices. We don’t need to go down this road again.

See the rest of the discussion for what they’re point out. It’s bunk.

I was just pointing out that the vast majority of BBC articles posted on HN are junk ... did you mean to reply to me?

It used to be the case that BBC was a byword for reliability and impartial reporting but in my opinion it has really taken a nosedive in the last 15 years (my personal theory is the establishment gutted it after the 2003 invasion of Iraq because they were a little bit too impartial).

People see a BBC article claiming something controversial and they’re like oh my god this changes everything because they’re still under the impression it still has any kind of journalistic heft but really it is little better than buzzfeed these days.

I’m agreeing with you but adding my experiences for the discussion.

I’m sorry I misunderstood. I hope you don’t mind that I took the opportunity to clarify my position just because I felt it had to be said, not because I’m arguing with you :-)

No worries. Maybe I’d be better understood in a room instead of in text. This article is a good example of the bbc doing exactly what you describe. Presenting something controversial and not true to clickbait.

Even better: Chickpeas, canned, 1 cup 1.1mg of vitamin B6 55% DV Source: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB6-HealthProfession...

And let's not talk about their claim that omega3 cannot be found in plants or that vitamin D can only come from supplements...

> is this some sort of propagandist trash article with an agenda?

I'm seriously thinking this is paid journalism.

The BBC published this article a mere 5 days earlier:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health...

A much more balanced article if you ask me. Both journalists are freelancers.

>A much more balanced article if you ask me.

The word you were looking for wasn't balanced, but "pro-vegan". The article you linked is indeed different; where TFA cited many academic papers, your preferred article seems to have traded most of that sort for unbacked pseudo-scientific assertions such as (paraphrasing) that there's often no such thing as a nutrient deficiency, because your body will simply adapt to make better use of the stuff it's lacking in, like iron.

Seriously? She names a study on 555 Kenyan school kids and draws really farfetched conclusions.

Here's a study on 8000 UKers that shows the opposite, controlling for lots of factors:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790799/

She only shows the small study and self-derives a conclusion, while ignoring the big study... Hmmm.

Also see "the adventist studies" which were the first or a long string of studies showing the general health benefits of a plant based diet over an omni diet.

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

Bonus, the China Studies:

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

You're changing units though, which in turn changes the outcome. The authors point was made about nutrients per volume, which is a rough approximation of how people actually eat food. While there are people who think "today I want 500kcal from beans and 75kcal from bananas..." they are relatively scarce.

When cast in units people actually do consider when eating (mass and volume) the authors point stands. Beef is more nutrient dense as a function of mass ~50kcal/, therefore you need a higher mass of plant matter to get equivalent nutrients.

Whether omnivores eat an equivalent mass of meat as vegetarians eat of plant matter is an interesting side question; I bet not.

I'm going to go with the latter

While this article seems to have a lot of factual errors, their core contention -- the root of the justification for the article's existence -- is that vegans have a lot of deficiencies. That is the point that needs to be questioned, and often seems like scaremongering more than reality.

And as always, it's pretty simple to take a multivitamin and call it a day, presuming one isn't so militant that an ingredient in that is objectionable.

There is little evidence multivitamins are helpful and some that they are harmful.

We're talking specifically about people with deficiencies. Yes, vitamins are very helpful for people with deficiencies.

> Along with the children who received soup with added oil, they also did the best on a test of arithmetic ability.

So huh, really, it was the extra calories, not the meat per se.

> In the winter months, when the sun is weaker, omnivores living in the UK have nearly 40% more vitamin D3 in their blood than vegans.

...Because milk is artificially supplemented with D3! Funny that.

> No one has looked into how this might be affecting their cognitive abilities yet

So don't be a scaremonger?

> As for Gandhi

That renowned nutritionist!

It's a very "appeal to emotion" kind of article for a freelance journalist that claims to be "science".[1]

See what the same BBC published just 5 days earlier.[2]

1: https://www.zariagorvett.com/

2: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health...

> As for Gandhi, he eventually abandoned his illicit relationship with meat, and went back to vegetarianism.

That was a commitment he took for his mother when he went to study law in England. While today the UK is a hotbed of veg*nism, back then Gandhi had trouble eating well while being veg in London, and started seeking out other vegetarians. He eventually found a vegetarian society, and it is through that society that he became exposed to Henry David Thoreau and his Civil Disobedience.

The rest, as they say, is world history.

There is a wide variety of vegan diets. You could eat only potato chips and drink soda and be vegan. Saying “vegan diet” by itself is pretty meaningless.

In fact "vegan diet" is almost contradictory. One could argue it is short for "the diet part of the vegan lifestyle".

Vegans try to behave in a way that does not harm of commodify animals as far as practicable. Besides the diet this includes attitudes to clothing materials (leather, wool), entertainment (horse back riding, bull fights, zoos, petstores), and much of animal testing. One cannot really just take the diet bit and still call it "vegan". Likewise food is technically not vegan, it is "suitable for vegans".

The term that IS appropriate here is "plant based". "Plant based food" and the "plant based diet" are what the author actually, more accurately, wants to say I believe.

Plant based by itself doesn’t mean much either.

What do you mean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant-based_diet

And a person "being vegan" clearly means something too.

Just "vegan diet" and "vegan food" are, well, I'd call 'm short cuts. They're needlessly unspecific or even a little contradictory. Like saying "I eat vegetarian": I understand what one tries to say, but it is not entirely correct usage of language.

My point is that to make any connection between plant based diet and health you need to be more specific. You can eat balanced meals with fresh vegetables and good ingredients or you can eat pretzels or potato chips the whole day and drink soda. Both are plant based but the outcome will probably be different.

Exactly, and that's where the term "whole food plant based" comes to rescue. There a serious list of MDs backing this group of diets based on strong evidence.

'Correct' language is determined by usage. If something is commonly used by a group of language speakers, that is the correct usage within that language. If you want to be really pedantic you can say that it forms a particular dialect, just as teenagers in school and presenters at an academic conference may both speak very different but equally correct forms of English within their dialects

Vegan diet is not contradictory at all: the diet someone who is vegan would try to have, one not involving animal products. The meaning is completely clear and the term is entirely appropriate to use

This is incorrect. B12 is made from bacteria widespread in the “wild environment “, but almost completely washed it of the modern diet. The only reason non-vegans don’t typically have to worry about B12 is that cyanocobalamin or other B12s are added into common foods. There’s an argument that cyanocobalamin is bad for you though as your liver creates cyanide in processing it for use in your body. Here’s the quote from the article.

“”” One of the most well-known challenges for vegans is getting enough vitamin B12, which is only found in animal products like eggs and meat. “””

What you say may be true, but regardless of how it came to be, it's my understanding that b12 deficiency is much more common in vegans than meat eaters. So vegans do have to be careful in the short term. Maybe in the long term they should campaign for b12 enriching common vegan foods.

I’d rather choose my B12. Predominantly B12 fortified foods use cyanocobalamin because it’s cheap, but it’s not the best for your health.

We have fully entered a market cycle where people routinely pay more for foods which have fewer ingredients than cheaper alternatives. There are reasons for it (extending shelf life or cheapness), but it is sort of odd to pay less for more “stuff”.

We all take the supplement.

> it's my understanding that b12 [deficiency] is much more common in vegans than [omnies]

Nope. Just slightly more common. And I think by the rate that B12 awareness is growing in the vegan movement we will soon see that vegans in general (so without only counting the non B12 supplementing ones) have better test results.

Also the reason B12 is in much of animal products (especially the non grass fed, bio-industrially "produced" animals), is because those animals get B12 supplements in their feed (to the benefit of the animal's health(!)). So indirectly the omnis often take the same supplement.

"Widespread" doesn't necessarily mean that sufficient quantities make it into the diet of humans.

Some herbivores harbor a reserve of the bacteria in their digestive tract. Perhaps that's because eating widespread bacteria doesn't give you enough; the B12 must be concentrated somewhere.

Also, humans spend very little time eating. It's much more believable that a cow (which eats all day) somehow ingests enough B12 from widespread bacteria than a human which eats for a few brief periods.

This is a pretty well written article. Hopefully people read past the headline. The most important bit being "could" affect. Some limited tests have been done on kids which found some difference but its not clear if it has any effect on adults.

It also sounds like a vegan diet with a few nutritional supplements could entirely solve the issue. At the very least we know that we can hugely reduce our meat consumption with positive outcomes.

How is it well written? They make claims about massive swaths of the global population based on a single study from an African school giving kids snacks.

The article didn't seem to assert them as fact and only suggested that from the limited research, this seems to be the data.

Seriously? My self and a few other in this comment section point out why we think the article is total rubbish. And that for a jounalist who claims to be "science". BBC sunk even lower in my estimation today.

Here an article they publish 5 days earlier:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health...

Kombucha is a great vegan source of B12, one of the key nutrients mentioned in the article. The B12 in kombucha actually comes from the culture itself.

Neat!

I have more energy since shifting towards a vegan diet-- mid-day slumps are rare now and I have more energy after work in the evening as well.

Work on complex coding and DevOps tasks continues as before.

Was your previous non-vegan diet actually good? As in high on fibrous veggies, moderate amount of complex carbs, low on sugar and high on high quality protein?

When people switch to vegan they essentially rely more on home cooked meals and stay away from junk it doesn’t mean that a vegan diet is better than a non vegan diet of the same quality.

If you switch from twinkies to lentil patties and cauliflower rice it’s no wonder that you feel better.

I came here to say this. When I switched from a typical American diet of crappy carbs, soda, and other sugar based crap to a, High Fat, High Protein diet, I got a ton of energy, slept better, etc. While I see a ton of value in my dietary choices, it was the lack of sugar that made life better.

I did the keto diet for the majority of last year to lose weight. It was extremely successful and I lost 75 pounds. I noticed the exact same thing you did in regards to energy levels and overall just feeling better. My energy levels did not fluctuate at all during the day, even post heavy meals. I also didn't seem to have any of those random days where you just feel like you're dragging along.

Probably due to eating less simple carbs and sugars.

I had the same results from both a vegan diet and a whole foods diets.

Both diets largely excluded processed food (I'd eat tofu, fermented sauces in both, and some high quality ham in the whole food diet).

I think that the large ratio of vegetables and lack of simple sugars was the cause more so than the meat.

I get a similar boost when following body-building diets, these include simple sugars around training time and highly processed whey isolate. I have always used them to drop weight too so you're running at a calorie deficit. On those diets I've felt fantastic except the day after the binge day (you need to have a surplus once every 7-10 days to avoid starving).

Yep, I feel a definite boost in decisiveness when I take my morning B12 lozenge. Which we should all be taking btw...

I bounce back and forth. I don't notice any difference in thoughtfully planed diet that does or does not contain meat. I'm pretty active (marathon runner, weight lifting etc) so I'm particularly sensitive to diet changes. It's hard to be vegan without food prep which is what can really skyrocket your health

I’m an “aspiring” vegan, so basically “not” a vegan. I continue to eat meat but I am gradually moving to a more plant based diet. Since cutting down meat consumption I have noticed some neat side effects like nicer stools, less sweaty and less joint pain and also I feel a little less guilt for all the sins of an excessively meat based diet.

Personally I believe meat has a place, but we have gone way to excess, but some people do feel the need to eat meat every day and I don’t judge. Most people could eat a lot less meat though and not really notice it.

The only source study cited is of schoolchildren receiving a snack in a low income nation. This is bad scientific reporting, they way overstep their bounds, typical BBC article.

Check out this much larger (n=8000 instead of n=555) and more in depth study in a developed nation (UK).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790799/

Teaser quote:

    In a large representative population study
    of more than 8000 British men and women,
    intelligence in childhood was associated
    with a vegetarian diet in mid-adulthood, and
    this was independent of educational
    attainment and social class.

Great to see they mentioned creatine and carnosine. Creatine in particular is notable for its proven effectiveness as an athletic supplement but it has a host of other, lesser-known benefits[0]. It's only found in animals, although your body does produce baseline amounts from other amino acids.

0. https://examine.com/supplements/creatine/

What a weak article and study. I am not familiar with BBCs content, but I would have expected it to be better quality.

What was weak about the article and study?

"Others are found in vegan foods, but only in meagre amounts; to get the minimum amount of vitamin B6 required each day (1.3 mg) from one of the richest plant sources, potatoes, you’d have to eat about five cups’ worth (equivalent to roughly 750g or 1.6lb). Delicious, but not particularly practical."

Chickpeas, canned, 1 cup 1.1mg of vitamin B6 55% DV Source: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB6-HealthProfession...

And let's not talk about their claim that omega3 cannot be found in plants or that vitamin D can only come from supplements...

Yep, that was a total strawman argument. I read it, and wondered why potato was chosen? Just to make the point, I guess; but that speaks to the sensationalist urge plaguing the author.

There was also no information about any conflicts of interest. I'd be interested in knowing if there were any?

I don't know much about this, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but plant based omega 3's have a horrible conversion rate don't they?

They have a lesser conversion rate, but what most paleo/anti-vegan arguments neglect to mention in terms of plant omega-3 sources is that if you simply eat more total ALA, the net omega-3 will be the same to your body. Seems obvious, but people never seem to acknowledge that. It's not such a lesser conversion rate that this isn't practical or possible. Not to mention there's studies showing alternative benefits of ALA despite having less conversion rate overall. Similarly with krill oil -- there's less EPA/DHA compared to fish oil per gram but it's utilized differently by the body and has shown variations in bioavailability when measured (krill vs fish oil is an ongoing topic of interest).

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/3-types-of-omega-3

From the linked article:-

- not all omega-3s are created equal. Among 11 types, the 3 most important are ALA, EPA, and DHA.

- ALA is mostly found in plants, while EPA and DHA are mostly found in animal foods like fatty fish.

- Alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is the most common omega-3 fatty acid in your diet.

- It’s mostly found in plant foods and needs to be converted into EPA or DHA before it can be utilized by your body for something other than energy.

- However, this conversion process is inefficient in humans. Only a small percentage of ALA is converted into EPA — and even less into DHA (3Trusted Source, 4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source).

- When ALA is not converted to EPA or DHA, it is simply stored or used as energy like other fats.

- Some observational studies link a diet rich in ALA to a reduced risk of death from heart disease, while others show an increased risk of prostate cancer (7Trusted Source).

- This increase in prostate cancer risk was not associated with the other main omega-3 types, EPA and DHA, which seem to protect against this cancer (8Trusted Source).

The linked article has links to sources.

Am on phone, so I don't want to type much, but it's a clickbaity headline, paired with a very weak and flawed study that makes it impossible to include literally anything.

"Intelligence", a concept that is difficult to define and has no agreed measurement method or standard.

"could" a pseudonym for "might" which is also a pseudonym for "might not".

One thing is for sure, if you go vegan you need to learn to compose your diet to ensure your body gets everything it needs. It is not impossible or even difficult. It just costs a little bit of effort, that's all.

Seriously BBC?

The plant based diet (the diet component of being vegan) is found adequate by the WHO for all stages of life.[1]

Now this article if full of picking some studies that have proven that in some case something was wrong with a some form of plant based diet, or less optimal than the form of omni diet the control was on.

And this is true! There are unhealthy plant based diets, and there are quite healthy omni diets. And --thanks BBC for pointing it out once again-- us plant eaters should be careful of some nutrients we may lack (as should omnis) AND some forms food we may over consume (as should omnis). Pretty much the only one that plant based eaters are more lacking in than omnis is B12. Otherwise plant eaters usually score overall BETTER than omnis, but sadly the BBC leaves this information out of this article (meat industry promo piece), gladly they published this kind of info in a separate article 5 DAYS EARLIER.[2]

There are a whole lot of diets within the plant based diet. A particularly healthy one, according to research, is the Whole Food Plant Based diet. And most MDs (which are quite a few) recommending this diet do underline the need for B12 supplementation (both in plant eaters and in omnis).

While this article come with a study of 555 Kenyan kids being given omni food scoring better than the group given plant food. Ok.

Let me show you this study:

> In a large representative population study of more than 8000 British men and women, intelligence in childhood was associated with a vegetarian diet in mid-adulthood, and this was independent of educational attainment and social class.[3]

It's bigger (n=8000), it in a developed nation (UK), it controls for all kinds of factors and concludes a correlation between intelligence and vegetarianism. No causation though. But I recon the 555 Kenya school children study also did not prove causation.

So? Why would the BBC publish such a piece? In clear contradiction to something they published 5 days earlier? An article that cherry picks to the point it's sneakily suggestive? Every one may judge for themselves but I think it is paid/compensated journalism, at a govt owned outlet. Needles to say, the BBC lost some more point for me today.

1: https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/the-largest-organiz...

2: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health...

3: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790799/

This post will most likely be ratio'ed pretty quickly.

According to the game changers documentary, even meat like chicken has to have added vitamins like b12 which is the only reason meat eaters get that extra vitamin, so supplementing is for all

TL;DR There is no scientific study proving one way or the other and whether you are vegan or not if you do not care about the quality and diversity of what you eat it will probably affect your body and your brain.

Wild, sustainably caught fish is the diet to go for if you care about the environment and your own health. I'm not going to give flak to vegans, their self-sacrifice is indicative of real care for their fellow beings.

*for those who can afford it. Also, sourcing sustainability isn't an exact science in most first world countries.

I really doubt wild fish can be sustainably caught. We shouldn’t be fishing them at all, I’d claim.

Small fry like common wild sardines found in cans are not a problem for sustainability.

They're less toxic too, being so low on the food chain and having a short lifespan. Good source of omega-3s and other nutrients, since you eat the whole fish.

>Wild, sustainably caught fish is the diet to go for if you care about the environment

But not if you care about fish.

I'm always gobsmacked hearing talk like this...from people that apparently have been taught to view animals as...just machines, tools for humans, as if they don't have a life of their own. Just atoms at the disposal of humans. "Stock." Somehow the limit of our "care" is killing them at a rate ("sustainably caught") that enables we can go on doing so.

"Self-sacrifice"? Is it a self-sacrifice for you to not, say, own slaves or eat people? No. Those things seem wrong so you don't do them, or they doesn't even occur to you as options, although they used to be societal habits. Not eating animals seems like that to me.

Everything dies. As long as it is ethical and not torture, I don't see an issue with fishing. Veganism lowers the brainpower output of a human enough to make the overall output works integral substantially impacted. That brainpower lost could be used to alleviate animal suffering like AI models substituting animal testing, etc etc. I personally am using my brain power to create Roylent. It'll solve our food crisis without any plant or animal deaths. Contact me if you are a VC/Angel interested in funding the revolution in eco/carbon friendly, suffering free food.

>Everything dies.

As a step in an argument, this doesn't look promising. And..?

>As long as it is ethical and not torture, I don't see an issue with fishing.

Yes, sure, people have to decide for themselves where on the scale of life from bacteria/viruses to, uh, humans, they draw the ethical "eat/not eat" line.

I couldn't parse/understand the two sentences after that, sorry. Good luck with your product... Oh, without plant deaths?! hehe. Sounds like you have something more complicated than a single dividing line.

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