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Banned from c/vegan for this one. My bad.
Captions: Anakin Padme 4-panel:
- “I’m going to make everyone go vegan and eat soybeans.”
- “So we won’t destroy any more ecosystems, right?”
- …
- “We won’t destroy any more ecosystems, right?”
Banned from c/vegan for this one. My bad.
Captions: Anakin Padme 4-panel:
It is a very common mistake to think that veganism is a healthy and sustainable diet, so would the vegetarian diet. Whether we want to or not, the human being is biologically an omnivore, that is, in order to take advantage of the nutrients of a purely vegetable diet, he should have a much longer intestine than he has. It therefore needs the ingestion of a certain amount of animal proteins for these provide the necessary vitamins and trace elements that are not available in vegetables, or replace them with food supplements (yeasts or others), but more natural with animal products such as dairy and eggs. Even our closest relatives like chimpanzees and bonobos supplement their diet with insects and other animals. What is not sustainable or healthy is our current diet, which includes meat and animal products, not 2-3 times a week, but 3 times a day / 7 days a week. This is the real problem, caused by massive livestock and overfishing, with all its negative effects on the environment, apart from the consequences on our health (obesity, coronary diseases, diabetes, rheumatic diseases, allergies, etc.)
Being omnivore means you’re not specialized in one source of food, but that you can feed from basically anything. It does not mean that you need to take in everything you can digest on a regular basis.
Humans can run, climb and swim. We’re not great at any of these ways of movement, but not many animals match our versatility. I can’t outrun a wolf, but I can get out of its reach on a tree. I can’t swim away from a crocodile, but it will have a hard time catching me on dry land. On the other hand, a lot of predators wouldn’t follow me into the water.
We’re generalists. Being able to do a lot of things usually means that you don’t excel at specifics. I wouldn’t argue that regularly swimming, climbing and running is unhealthy, on the contrary. But the inverse argument, that you can’t have a healthy way of life without all of those, is obviously incorrect.
Omnivoro don’t mean that we can live with only vegetables in our food and stay healthy in the long run. Because there are food components that our body needs and that are not contained in vegetable foods or only in insufficient quantities. But these components are found in foods of animal origin in highly concentrated quantities and for this reason they must be part of the diet in reduced quantities. For this reason, a healthy diet for us is not vegan, but a so-called vegetarian one, which includes animal products such as milkproducts (cheese, yogurt), eggs, especially in childhood and youth. We can also eat meat and fish, but this should be occasional foods. In nature, all herbivorous animals necessarily have a much longer intestine than we do, in order to extract enough nutrients from vegetables, or like ruminants, several stomachs where the necessary proteins are provided by bacteria formed in the fermentation of vegetables (that is, a cow in the background also feeds on animal proteins, that of bacteria)
https://empoweredsustenance.com/is-vegan-healthy/
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/german-nutritionists-say-veganism-isnt-healthy
https://www.laurelofleaves.com/2012/04/a-vegan-diet-is-not-healthy/ etc…
Sorry, but false dichotomy/strawman here: I never said you should only eat vegetables, nor would any vegan I can think of. What I say is that maybe you don’t have to eat meat/eggs/diary products to have enough iron, B12 and what not. Do people substitute those when living vegan? Most surely they do, yes. Does that make an unhealthy diet? I don’t think so, no.
Also, what would distinguish a “so called” vegetarian diet from a real one?
First the vegetarian diet include animal products, the vegan don’t, that is the significant difference. Yes, we can eat as omnivoros also a diet based in vegetables, but not only, we can’t sufficiently metabolize the necessary nutrients of a strictly vegetable diet. Just like other omnivores. A dog, a bear, a pig, and even our closest relatives, the chimpanzee, can eat vegetables, but they have to supplement this diet from time to time with animal protein to stay healthy. Of course, a strict vegan can make up for these deficiencies with the intake of supplements, vitamins, proteins and trace elements, but I don’t know, a diet that must be accompanied with pills, at least for me, is far from being healthy, sustainable and balanced.
I’m well aware of the difference between vegetarian and vegan diets, thank you. 😉 I only wonder what you’d call a “so called” vegetarian diet, like I said.
Other than that, I think that you’re a) falling for the appeal to nature fallacy, assessing things as good because they appear in nature (despite that, for instance, without artificial care your teeth will be likely rotten away by the age of 30), and b) taking stuff as natural only because it has been there for a long time: yet unless you’re eating raw eggs and meat, nothing about such a diet is natural in the true sense of the word. Consuming another species’ milk is even quite unique in the animal kingdom and by no means natural - it’s an artificial, a cultural thing.
And culture can change. Not only are dairy products a rather European theme, I don’t see why it should be better to get proteins from highly processed and seasoned burger patties and sausages etc. (which, let’s be honest for a minute, are the dominant forms of meat consumption) than from e.g. pulses, or what makes iron from red meat healthier than iron from algea. If the presentation in the form of pills doesn’t appeal to you, I’m sure there is B12 powder as well.
There are millions of living healthy vegans proving my point, as well as vegan athletes, performing no worse than their omnivore competition. In the light of all this evidence, I’m convinced that the health argument has mostly become a distraction from moral questions: Is it OK to consume feeling and at least somewhat sentient beings for culinary or traditional reasons while at the same time having a disastrous impact on the ecosystem?
There are millions of healthy young vegans, depending on their lifestyle and activity. Vegan diet is possible, but only well planned and with the needed complements. Because of this it’s better a vegetarian diet, wich aports these complements with some animal products, instead of artificial products. It’s correct that the human is the only species which have milk of other species in the diet, but this is irrelevant, because its a similar resource of calcium, and vit A, D and complex of B as in the own milk. Try to keep your young child healthy with soy milk, as I have seen in some cases of fanatical vegans, with dire consequences.
But in general I mentioned dairy products, such as cheeses and yogurts, instead of milk, since milk as it is is not well digestible for an adult as it lacks the necessary enzymes to digest it well, only present in children, but this is valid regardless of whether the milk is their own or from a cow, goat or sheep, also a adult cow can’t digest well the own milk. These enzymes are not needed in cheese or other curdled milkproducts. Perhaps humans will evolve in the future with a 5m longer intestine, to allow us to take advantage of all the nutrients from vegetables, but until then there is no option to stay healthy in the long term.
If it is for reasons of sustainability, it is better to use animal products in their proper measure and not abuse them as in our current society. It is better to have 1 top quality steak a week, than a steak from the supermarket every day. Or, switch to insect protein, as is done in many countries, which is certainly the most sustainable source of premium quality protein and nutrients, business as usual. Well basically there is not much difference between a shrimp or a grasshopper.
Why would I give soy milk to young children?? Children have mothers milk or specially crafted formula and then start eating other foods.
Yes, without a doubt, but i’ve seen vegans who do this, because milk isn’t vegan and which don’t even use honey in their diet nor using yeast as complement. Works in young people some years, but all they finished with 40-50 years with several serious health diseases. As I say, fanatism is bad and it is idiotic to pretend that it from falling from one extreme to the other due to alleged unnatural excesses in the past in meat feeding to the other just as unnatural only with vegetals. https://www.newsweek.com/parents-convicted-feeding-baby-vegetable-milk-625626
@Zerush @Aarkon Where do pills come from? Are they certified vegan?
As I said before, the most used complement is yeast, by definition not vegan, because are bacterias, others are complements of vitamines and trace elements, made by the industry, obtained in artificial manner.
How is yeast not vegan? Also, yeast is not bacteria, but rather fungi. Vegans do not eat animals and animal derived products. Fungi, bacteria, plants, protozoa and all that stuff is not animals, although they are living things.
And what is wrong with artificially produced complements?
Yeast, also used in the elaboration af bread, beer and other alcoholic drinks, is a bacteria, not fungi. Artificial products are not generally bad, but for example sintetic vitaminic and mineralic complex are not so good metabolized as these in natural products, because they lacks of other substances which helps the own metabolism. More simple, you can’t substitude a lemon by a citric acid or ascorbic acid (vit.C). pill. Fungi also isn’t a plant, it’s a own specie between flora and fauna, because of this also not accepted by strict vegans.
All of the living in this planet have the same bioquimic base, the human isn’t a exception, he also is a colective of billons of specialized living cells, apart ~3kg of bacterias in our intestine, without we can’t live. We have in 70% the same DNA as a Onion.
@Faresh @Zerush Don’t artificially created products generally harm the environment a bit more than regular food products? I mean not all the time and not that much harmful but a least one degree more hafumul. Like more heat oand CO2 emissions.