"Woman trying to prove ‘vegans can do anything’ among four dead on Mount Everest"
(www.washingtonpost.com)
Comments (131)
sorted by:
DEFAULT COMMUNITIES
•
All
General
AskWin
Funny
Technology
Animals
Sports
Gaming
DIY
Health
Positive
Privacy
No, not in the long run you can't. Vegetarianism is a bit different because you can get a lot of the nutritional value of meat from butter, eggs, milk and cheese. There are essential nutrients like B12 and K2-MK4 that are ONLY found in meat. Depending on your genetics, you may not be able to process beta carotene AT ALL, which is the only vegan version of Vitamin A. It's also well documented that vegan foods are low in iron and calcium, which are absolutely essential for bone density and healthy blood. Finally, the DHA Omega-3 fatty acids are only found in meat and are essential for brain health. As an adult you can live on a vegan diet but you will suffer deficiencies in the long run as your fat stores run out of vitamins to supplement your terrible diet with. This can come in the form of anxiety, anemia, brain fog, bone density loss, etc. There is nothing healthy about veganism. It is a starvation diet and like fasting, if done for too long it just becomes anorexia. Your genetic mileage may vary, but the healthiest diet for humans is a more ketogenic one with plenty of fats and low carbs.
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.