"Woman trying to prove ‘vegans can do anything’ among four dead on Mount Everest"
(www.washingtonpost.com)
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I think marijuana, as well as nuts, seeds and algae contain omega 3s. Look at a breakdown of what is in spirulina for example. The reason meat contains so many of the things we need though is because they eat the plants that contain them. Also vegetables when not cleaned of soil (cows dont wash their veggies) they consume the bacteria that you need which is one of the things whole foods (store not diet) vegans need supplements.
Anyway, I'm not a dietitian nor a vegan but I think humanity eventually goes this route to support the population due to the space it take to have cattle vs plants in say vertical gardens or on spaceships. That or lab meat, you can't have tons of food to feed the output of hundreds of lbs of meat in a confined space, the numbers dont really work.
I'd say to check out the things the world health organization says referencing the Marshall islands (dr brenda davis) and the long term study on the standard American diet vs plant based (dr esselstyn) or China study (dr campbell).
Theres probably something also to the 100+ yrs old on that board (world health org) that are vegans/vegetarians and are experts in this field and look like they are 60. Idk, I like burgers and tried vegan for a bit before quitting bc I can't carry pounds of veggies around and literally eat all day to get the calories I need, maybe if i like the act of eating more i could or cared about living as long as possible.
do you have multiple stomachs to digest the plant matter?
there are smokers that live to 100 but they're not the rule.
milk and eggs are space and resource efficient. though you said it yourself, you "can't carry pounds of veggies around.. to get the calories..." That doesn't sound space efficient to me.
Sorry, my point was food yield, for a cow you need about 1 acre (depends on state, but between 1.5 and 2 acres for 2 calves) you slaughter them at 3 years, if they are 1k lbs, you get around 430 lbs meat, so after 3 years 860 lbs meat.
1 acre can grow a good (not great) yield of 12k lbs kale in 1 year, so the same 2 acres over 3 years Is 72k lbs of kale which Is really nutrient dense and you would have to supplement, but you can't eat just meat either and would have to supplement.
You could compare calories and beef is about 4x calories, so just caloric intake you could get 840k calories in beef vs 16 million calories in kale.
Beef is harder to care for, requires more food and the end result would require more supplements to be healthy than kale for example.
This is my argument. And you can be completely healthy on a vegan diet but it is much harder and you have to do a lot of research, the meat and 3 kind of diet is generally easy and covers your bases but then you get things like type 2 diabetes (to much fat which goes from your liver to your pancreas we recently confirmed this in a study), and heart diseases (the studies I mentioned before).
Again I'm not a vegan, it is a hassle and I'm a big guy who would rather eat a cliff bar and a dinner instead of eating literally all day, but something unrelated Is I did this vegan diet while getting bloodwork every other day for about 35 days and all of my levels and organs were healthy and functioning properly. Did echocardiograms, pulmonary function scans, ekgs, full bloodwork labs, the entire gamut. My fiance has been a vegan for more than 3 years and drs always comment on how healthy she is and tell her to keep doing what she is doing though she doesn't get as thorough of tests as I do.
Another side note is that oreos are vegan, if you eat only oreos you will die of malnutrition while being a vegan, it's about eating what your body needs and knowing making a diet that includes all the weird plants seeds nuts that are scattered through the world to include them in your diet, idk if you could be a healthy vegan 50 years ago but we can do it now, and eat dirt on your veggies for b12 or take a supplement.
i don't think your beef vs kale comparison makes sense. the caloric value of a lb of kale vs lb of beef is far greater than 1:4. for starters, you can't digest kale. just because you get x calories of heat from burning kale doesn't mean your stomach can ignite the kale and absorb the heat...
then you kind of acknowledge this in a way when you say it's much harder to live vegan. it's not just nutritional research, it's calories and quality of calories. fat is good, sugar is bad. your statement of t2 diabeetus and heart disease is way off, all the modern research points to carbs as the cause of t2 and heart disease, not fat.
i don't think the world can support a vegan lifestyle nor do i think it should. the majority of the world does not have the resources or luxury of subsisting on organic grass fed nuts and beans nor should they want to. the strongest and healthiest of humans had/have easy access to high quality meat. some research goes so far as to suggest that human evolution and development was a result of gaining access to abundant meat and not kale smoothies.
at a meta level, it's easier to eat the animals that do all the work of digestion and nutrient accumulation for you. herbivores spend the majority of their time and energy eating. and not solving differential equations. it's basically why cows don't rule the world.
Many of the countries with the highest life expectancy like Iceland and Hong Kong are big time meat eaters. The average Icelander eats more than 200 pounds of fish a year. And that's just fish, not counting beef, chicken, puffin, lamb, pork etc. The average person in Hong Kong lives to be 84 and they eat more than 50% more beef than Americans do per person.
The key difference between them and the U.S. is the American diet is more vegetable based. American diet is more wheat, corn, potatoes and soy than anything else.
Nuts and seeds and marijuana do not have DHA Omega-3 (not ALA Omega-3, which is usually plant based and not what your brain actually runs on). Only algae does from that list, which is not really a plant at all.
"Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is an omega-3 fatty acid that is a primary structural component of the human brain, cerebral cortex, skin, and retina."
Ok your body can take some ALA Omega-3 and try to synthesize DHA from it, but this process is inefficient and becomes less efficient as you get older. So as you age, DHA becomes critically important to prevent mental decline. Don't play dice with your health. Eat meat. Fatty fish like salmon is great. Fatty meats like steak are great. Eggs are super healthy, too.