How to Become a Vegan Eater? | Hacker News Reader

How to Become a Vegan Eater?

2 pointskitkat_new3 comments

I slowly would like to transition to a vegan diet.

However, just avoiding animal products and eating more and more vegan dishes doesn't cut it as you most likely will miss out on a lot of nutrients.

It looks like I need to supplement B12 and eat stuff such that I get all nutrients.

Sounds easy, but isn't. There are already thousands of B12 supplements, which all seem to be working differently. High dosing B12 seems to facilitate cancer when you already have sufficient B12. I seems like I need to consume small doses. 3 times a day a bit, because the digestive system can only process so much at a time. Most supplements I found seem to work differently, why? how? which one?

Then nutrients. There are lists of nutrients to watch. My idea was to go through each nutrient and find dishes for them (i.e. dishes containing certain green stuff, corn and nuts, etc.) or create them by myself (yeah no way) and eat as much as required for each nutrient.

However it feels like I end up with way more food I could eat and it is really complicated. e.g. when I want to gain iron I shouldn't drink tea or other things, because it makes iron reception more difficult. For other things, the opposite is true. Already eating a for a day or week feels like it requires a scientific project in planning, and at the end of the day I need to make the things I eat, too while still having time for other things.

any tips?

The vegan cheat sheet: https://vegancheatsheet.org/ has a bunch of links for recipes and that kind of stuff.

There's also a lot of videos on youtube for cooking.

In terms of vitamins Deva puts out a bunch of vegan supplements. Ofc the most important is B12, secondary to that is probably Vitamin D. They contains other stuff like iron and all that but it's probably not needed on a healthy plant based diet.

Nutritional yeast also has B12, as does a lot of fortified foods (nut milks).

> However, just avoiding animal products and eating more and more vegan dishes doesn't cut it as you most likely will miss out on a lot of nutrients.

It does cut it, and except for B12 pretty much every study says that a well balanced plant based diet is perfectly healthy. However the question becomes what is well balanced? Well non plant-based people are also not eating particularly healthy.

The serious answer to the question is to go see a plant based dietician for questions about nutrition. Depending on your location you can find them on happycow.org. You should also get a blood test as you're starting and somewhat regularly (6 months? a year?).

In terms of what I eat: a lot of rice and beans. And a smoothie to cover some other nutrition.

Also stuff like Huel seems to be promising to match a nutritionally complete meal.

Are you starting with meat? If so maybe start vegetarian and then work towards being vegan as you figure out solutions.

My reading of the B12 and cancer literature last I looked was that it wasn't as clear as some papers made it seem. I got the sense that the hypothesis that it exacerbates cancer might have been sort of post hoc to explain unreplicated findings. If you search for "mendelian randomization" and B12 and cancer, for example, IIRC, you'll find studies suggesting the prostate cancer B12 association (the only one remaining) isn't "real". But I could totally be wrong and haven't read into it in a while so I could be convinced of the opposite of my current understanding.

I think I'm the end you just have to do what you think you can one step at a time.

I don't supplement and have been vegan for a decade, and a vegetarian for 5 years before that. My yearly blood tests show everything has been fine since day one. I eat what most people do, just the vegan version. Luckily plant-based meat alternatives are everywhere these days.

A lot of the nutritional misinformation out there is deliberate to scare people off. It's not a conspiracy theory to say that the meat and dairy industries spend millions promoting their products and scaring people off vegetarian and vegan diets.

My advice is to watch the documentary Forks Over Knives and maybe read the corresponding book, The China Study. I personally avoid vegan websites and groups as their meals are super complicated to make. I don't have time for that.

Map out your fave meals then looks at how to make them vegan. It's super easy and you really don't have to worry about nutrients etc. People have been desperately searching for some nutrient that negates a vegan diet, and they think they found one in B12. They have not. 40% of Americans are B12 deficient, and this is after livestock being pumped full of B12 supplements themselves!

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