There are plenty of very healthy meat-avoiding people in the world. Malnutrition is also a problem in the world. Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem.
Good point. I'm not sure expensive meat is that healthy either. We'd probably eat more cheap meat than expensive meat though, so if it's all unhealthy then we might want to think of cheap meat as more-unhealthy.
Vegetarian food that isn't straight up dried commodities like beans either costs a lot of money or takes a lot of time to prepare in comparison to meat, and the working poor of this country have neither.
It takes exactly the same amount of effort to make vegetarian food as it takes to make a dish with meat, cooking some lentils with vegetables and cottage cheese takes literally twenty minutes for example. And we're currently discussing why meat substitutes are expensive and how to lower the prices.
I can make a complete surf-n-turf meal for a shorter amount of time than that, on top of the fact many people hate things like lentils and cottage cheese. When discussing meat replacements, you have to not just look at cost, but what people are actually willing to eat and take time making when given any choice whatsoever (and most people will choose things that take less time and do not taste like lentils and cottage cheese).
Many people hate surf and turf. How about we don't start a pointless discussion about individual foods when there are endless variations at all levels of preparation complexity both with and without meat?
The question is how feasible it is? Is it a trivial change in lifestyle? Is it more expensive or cheaper? Can you make it work with the basic fare that you find everywhere, or do you need to shop around for plant products that are more exotic?
I’ve been vegan for 5 years. I was raised vegetarian, but I also cooked a chicken the night before I went vegan. It is feasible and as time goes on it gets easier and easier.
Only recently have I started spending more than $200 a month on groceries and that’s because I’ve started weightlifting. I can get by on much less.
Is any change in lifestyle trivial?
I’m able to go to my local grocery store for everything I need. I go to my local Asian market because I like the noodles and spices though, but that isn’t necessary at all.
Food deserts exist but that is a bigger problem with general accessibility to food, and is not a good argument to a plant-based diet, imo.
a poster addressed that, and now you have 4 more questions, none related to nutrition - and, hilariously, prefaced by the common but ridiculous "the question is" (implying there's one) rhetorical device.
All the questions are related. I am aware that some people can make it work, but if you remove cheap meat, who do you affect? Poor people. My question is, can poor people also eat a plant based diet with minimal malnutrition risk? All the questions are in reference to that.
All I see about plant based diets say the same shit without answering the though questions. They always say, "it's possible to be a health vegan if you watch your nutrition". Well that says precisely nothing. It is a carefully crafted message to not upset militant vegans.
The impression I get from that message is that it is far easier to be healthy if you don't avoid meat. You don't have to watch your nutrition much. You just have to use common sense.
It’s very easy to eat healthily and cheaply on a vegetarian or vegan diet. In the UK I used Quorn or lentils as a major protein in a lot of my cooking, now I’m in Berlin I’m alternating between soy chunks, seitan (both of which I have to flavour myself), lentils, tofu, four types of preprepared tinned beans, soy milk, and cheese.
Most of these options have cheap subtypes. The most expensive part of my cooking is the fancy stuff that isn’t strictly necessary, like fresh basil or pre-made pastry, and even those are not hugely expensive.
> The impression I get from that message is that it is far easier to be healthy if you don't avoid meat. You don't have to watch your nutrition much.
The obesity crisis in the developed world, combined with the low rate of no-meat diets, rather contradicts that.
> You just have to use common sense.
How do you define “common sense” such that this sentence differentiates between the effectiveness of meat and non-meat diets?
The idea that meat needs to eaten in the quantity and frequency that it’s currently eaten in the west to maintain a healthy diet is a recent idea. For my grandparents growing up most meat, especially things like chicken was a luxury reserved for special occasions. It’s also always interesting to me that when this argument comes up people are suddenly very interested in standing up for “the poor”, there are a whole host of other, more important ways inequality can be addressed at it’s root.
Historical diets were nothing like modern vegetarianism. They also were not super heathy, oftentimes missing nutricients and causing diseases from the lack of them.
In my experience (omnivore -> vegetarian -> vegan), going vegetarian is not too difficult. Going something like pescatarian, or even just eliminating red meat -- that's downright easy. I am not a particularly great cook, but my grocery bill dropped noticeably when I went vegetarian because I was buying more vegetables for the first time in my life. Even when eating out I had to make very few adjustments. Most restaurants around me have great vegetarian menus. I feel like it's not a particularly difficult transition to make.
On the other hand, going vegan was harder. Part of this is how good you are at cooking. Part of it is that you have to research a bit more. I take supplements (D3, K2, B12) as a vegan. I never worried for a second about my nutritional input when I went vegetarian. And again, if you're going pescetarian and still eating a fair bit of cheese/eggs, I just really doubt nutrition is a concern for most people. But after going vegan, suddenly I had to actually think about some of these nutritional questions that I was able to ignore before because I just ate a lot of eggs and cheese.
You can make veganism a lot cheaper (and plenty of people do), but I'm lazy and bad at cooking, so I buy more specialty vegan products, which are expensive. I put up with it, it's fine, it's doable, but being vegan is annoying sometimes, and it requires more work.
Again, it's doable. It's fine, lots of people make it work, I make it work. You can be vegan and healthy. But in terms of effort/work to be healthy and to keep costs down, I think that veganism and vegetarianism are in separate categories.
But importantly, you don't need to go vegan to see improvements here. If you're talking about "meat-avoiding" in general, just getting rid of red meat from your diet will have a positive environmental impact, and will probably be both healthier and cheaper as long as you put at least a tiny bit of effort into not just eating only Impossible burgers and mac&cheese. You can already in many places get raw tofu significantly cheaper than red meat, and after that it's really just learning how to make stir fries and figuring out 'new' foods like mushrooms and beans.
Part of the benefits here are that in general, most people who aren't following a specific diet probably shouldn't eat as much meat as they do anyway. So if the end result is that you eat one serving of plant-based meat alongside some eggs/veggies/beans, instead of three servings of steak, that's very likely to be both healthier and cheaper.
>> Malnutrition from people eating fake meat? So far, not a problem.
Because there aren't that many. For people eating a vegetarian or vegan diet, keeping well-fed is a real concern and not everyone is pulling it off. For example, the following article is about infant nutrition but some of its comments apply to adults:
Vegetarian diets in childhood and adolescence : Position paper of the nutrition committee, German Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Medicine (DGKJ)
In Western countries, vegetarian diets are associated with lower intakes of energy, saturated fatty acids and animal protein and higher intakes of fibre and phytochemicals, compared to omnivorous diets. Whether the corresponding health benefits in vegetarians outweigh the risks of nutrient deficiencies has not been fully clarified. It should be noted that vegetarians often have a higher socioeconomic status, follow a more health-conscious lifestyle with higher physical activity, and refrain from smoking more often than non-vegetarians. The nutritional needs of growing children and adolescents can generally be met through a balanced, vegetable-based diet; however, due to their higher nutrient requirements per kilogramme of body weight, vegetarian children have a higher risk for developing nutrient deficiencies than adults. With a vegetarian diet, the mean intakes of some nutrients, such as the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), are lower than in omnivores or those eating fish. For other nutrients, such as iron and zinc, the bioavailability from vegetable foodstuffs is reduced when the intake of phytates and fibre is high; thus, the prevalence of iron deficiency can be increased despite high vitamin C intake. In addition, vitamin B12 is only found in animal-source foods. Vitamin B12 should be supplemented in people of all age groups who follow a strict vegan diet without consuming animal products. A vegetarian diet in childhood and adolescence requires good information and supervision by a paediatrician, if necessary, in cooperation with an appropriately trained dietary specialist.
Vegetarian diets during pregnancy: effects on the mother's health. A systematic review
Note well: Data are scarce, often inconsistent and not homogeneous for many of the topics we considered, mainly because only a few studies have been performed in developed countries, _whereas other studies have derived from developing countries, where vegetarianism can be a proxy indicator of malnutrition._ (my underlining)
Vitamin B12 Deficiency Is Prevalent Among Czech Vegans Who Do Not Use Vitamin B12 Supplements
B12 and vegan supply of omega 3 fat is still a concern, especially for children and infants.
For example, if you use plant sources for your fat supply of DHA, you'd have to ingest enough ALA to make most people sick. So supplements are necessary for health, especially in children (vegan algae based supplements do exist).
Another question is soy reliance. Last I checked, we can reasonably assume that a "normal" amount of soy in a diet is a non issue. However, results during pregnancy and childhood are apparently lacking, and studies in rats show potential problems [1].
"Further investigation is needed before a firm conclusion can be drawn. In the meantime, caution would suggest that perinatal phyto-oestrogen exposure, such as that found in infants feeding on soy-based formula, should be avoided." [2]
Just to be clear here: I am a vegetarian. However, I never went full vegan because I think it does require a very mindful and conscious handling of nutrition - and a lot more research [3]
By extension, I do not think it is appropriate as a recommendation for the general public at this stage.
So we need research and educational efforts into plant based nutrition instead of pumping all tax money into marketing and subsidies for the meat and dairy industry. Big surprise.
I’m raising two perfectly healthy vegan kids. They are above average on most factors that matter and continue to amaze people around us when we tell them they are vegan.
There is so much misinformation out there, and extrapolating from cases where parents fuck up isn’t helpful. All kinds of people fuck up, vegans or not, be it due to ignorance, incompetence or negligence.
Indeed, my understanding of the scientific consensus is that a healthy vegan or vegetarian diet is perfectly possible. However the question is what happens when such a diet is forced on a large fraction of some population, either because meat becomes too expensive, or because plant-based alterantives become much cheaper. Are most people who can scarecely afford good nutritious food right now going to be able to maintain a healthy diet when they have even fewer alternatives than currently?
Edit: just to clarify in case I'm misunderstood, I'm talking about poor people because I don't worry that I won't be able to afford to eat as much meat as I like (which isn't that much anyway- I'm Greek, so Mediterrannean diet and all that. Like, ~60% of our cuisine is vegan or vegetarian only we call it "food").
There absolutely isn't a scientific consensus. If anything, several cases have come up recently to counter the wild acceptance that anyone can live vegan just fine, and further investigation is still necessary. Just recently, the carnivore diet has taken off for multiple people, and even just significantly reducing plant-based foods in favor of animal-based foods is showing to help many people. There's also the theory of anti-nutrients and the importance of genetics which we still don't understand.
If there is one field that's an absolute mess, its nutritional sciences. The only thing one can trust is their own experience with any particular diet, their overall well-being and regular health check-ups. What works for one person can be absolutely disastrous for another.
Our livestock is given chemically manufactured b12 supplements because the soil is being depleted of the microbiology that produces and leaves it on plant material which is the natural way to get it. So everyone, including meat eaters are consumers of b12 supplements, unless they live in regions where modern agriculture does not have a strong foothold.
Similarly, modern western foods is full of supplements via “fortification” so to say that vegan diet is unnatural because of the need for supplements is a mute argument, so long as those supplements are part of everyone’s diet, and meat is just a carrier.
My point is still that the debate over plant based diets are too simplistic and based on anecdotes (on both sides). If we spent all the tax money we now spend on meat and dairy subsidies instead on unbiased research and education on general nutrition, I am convinced a lot of people would be surprised at the outcome.
The only supplements in our household are b12 and vitamin D. B12 is a supplement in everyone’s diet in the western world already, as I have argued, and vitamin D is universally recommended supplement in the northern region anyway due to lack of sun exposure in winter. Instead of getting it through fortified milk or fish oil, we take a pill, and we feel a lot better about it.
>> There absolutely isn't a scientific consensus. If anything, several cases have come up recently to counter the wild acceptance that anyone can live vegan just fine, and further investigation is still necessary.
Please note I didn't comment that "anyone can live vegan just fine".
Well to address the point you are making about poor people. Looking at the current poor population of North America, the cheap meat based diet is nothing short of a disaster to general public health ridden with all sorts of dietary caused diseases such as obesity, diabetes, coronary diseases and so on. Surely, a shift towards plant based diets for this demographic couldn’t make things any worse than it already is.
My understanding about the problem with the diet of "the current poor population of North America" is not so much that they don't eat enough plant food, but that they eat all kinds of over-processed food, full of saturated fats, sugars and salt, and that any kind of food they get, meat or plant-based is of poor quality. Removing meat from that diet, even the poor quality meats they can afford right now, sounds like it would hurt their diet even more, not improve it.
Yeah I was raised (American) vegetarian from birth, and my parents did not consider the nutrition I needed when they cooked and I had anemia, underweight, etc. I was healthier after starting to eat meat at age 14
It shouldn't have been, because many plant-based dishes do not include the same amount of nutrients if they are cooked as opposed to consuming the raw vegetable ingredients, and people are either unaware of this entirely or completely neglect taking it into account in regards to actual nutritional value. That's before we even address nutrient bio-availability of ingredients pre-and-post preparation. You will always see tons of people crow about how many vitamins and other nutrients certain foods have, but they rarely if ever mention that with many of them you'd have to eat a dump truck full of it to even approach your daily recommended value because your body simply refuses to process much of it and passes it on as waste.
