Hacker News Reader

Comment by lordofgibbons | Hacker News Reader

> I think the world would be a better place if everyone went vegan.

Strongly disagree. I absolutely hate that animals have to be killed for us to eat meat. And the industrial scale cruelty of factory farming gives me existential dread. But I have yet to see a healthy looking vegan person.

I've lived in a couple of very liberal cities with vegans, and every single one I met looked... just sick and unhealthy.

But I think we're on the same page w.r.t the best end-goal. I can't wait for cultured meats so we can stop inflicting so much cruelty on farm animals.

View on HN

> But I have yet to see a healthy looking vegan person.

This anecdata is so wrong and only serves to degrade the conversation. I can only imagine you have some sort of bias that convinced you this was worth sharing.

There are a wide range of people who are vegan with various aesthetics, just as with any diet. There is also a selection bias as veganism can attract people who have health issues that they are treating with diet. Your judgement of the efficacy and impact of a lifestyle being based on some people you've met tells me your way of thinking about the world is deeply flawed and shallow.

Wow tell me how you really feel. Who am I going to believe angry people on HN or my own lying eyes?

There are plenty of replies raising the issue of empirics vs anecdotal evidence. However to add to the anecdotal, there are many top level vegan athletes out there - Lewis Hamilton, Venus Williams to name a couple of particularly famous ones. It’s worth looking up though as it does show that it’s at least possible to be vegan and much healthier than the average person (depending on your definition of healthy I suppose).

Eh, I think there are several reasons to favour the empirics we have on the subject over anecdotal experiences, which are going to be coloured by problematic biases (toupee fallacy, etc).

When we look at the data on the subject, both in terms of shorter term RCTs looking at biomarkers and longer term observational data, vegan diets seem non-inferior to the other top-tier dietary patterns we see for lifespan and healthspan (med, lacto-ovo vegetarian etc).

That said, I’m sympathetic to the view that with currently available foods one does have to be more mindful of diet than when on an omni diet - I think that’s true. But when an omni dieter looks unhealthy we just say “that guy looks rough” and when we see a vegan who looks unhealthy we say “vegan diets make you look rough”.

> But when an omni dieter looks unhealthy we just say “that guy looks rough” and when we see a vegan who looks unhealthy we say “vegan diets make you look rough”.

many such cases. People have no idea about how much their bias influences their perception of the world and then share the output of that worldview as if it is relevant to reality

Yep, and we can even see it in others. I have little doubt that if the person I replied to was a passenger in a car, the driver got cut off by someone and they responded by making a sweeping generalisation about people of that race/gender/religion driving poorly they’d be able to identify the same bias at play.

As I say, my thesis is that these double standards/logical contradictions are intellectual tools to protect us from our cognitive dissonance. We’re not really operating from a set of logically coherent principles for the most part.

I say this without judgement or any belief that I’m not doing the same thing in a million areas in my life. Just to point out that this is why I lean more towards cultivated meat than outreach activism when it comes to veganising the world!

Just out of interest, in what way do you see them as unhealthy? Mostly that the concept of health can vary wildly.

I would also say that i have seen the complete opposite to you, alas this is all anecdotal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com