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Forums - General Discussion - Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

KungKras said:
If you just want to be healthy, you should eat meat once a week, kind of like our ancestors did. It's unhealthy to cut it out completely.

I eat meat more often than that, but I like to go for vegetarian dishes every so often, simply because many of them are delicious.                                     

What "our ancestors" did varies wildldy from one part of the world to the other.  There is evidence (including fossilized feces) that a lot of ancient humans ate essentially no meat at all.  It's perfectly healthy to cut it out completely, there's absolutely no nutrient, and absolutely no health benefit, that is exclusive to meat.  But there is a lot of disease that's closely associated with it.

SuaveSocialist said:

I tried going vegan but it's really hard to keep up over the long term, and for some people you become underweight and lose some strength.  Going vegetarian though was a really healthy choice for me.  Various spices and sauces can give variety to even the most rudimentary dishes and crushed chick peas can mimic the texture of meat if you prepare it right.  A good way to go vegetarian is to reduce your meat consumption to a quarter-size of your usual portions--this way you can get a feel if you're making the right decision for yourself and it helps prevent any digestive troubles one might get from radically changing their diet.

Word of caution: if you go without meat for a long time, your digestive system won't tolerate it well if you eat a lot of it in one sitting.  It isn't fun feeling cramps and farting all night.

I recommend talking to a Doctor about how to go about it so you can make the transition to vegetarian/vegan (and back again) in a way that's healthy for you.  A dietician can even make a meal plan based on those recommendations.  Once you're used to it and know the routine, it's awesome. 

Becoming underweight on a vegan diet suggests you're simply not eating enough.  My weight has hardly changed from when I was an omnivore, but I make sure I eat a varied diet that has enough of the right kind of calories, and I time those calories for what seems the most advantageous time(s) of day.  I have found it not hard at all to keep up, but I'm a meals-in-minutes kind of person.  Lunch today was leafy greens topped with broccoli, quinoia, nutritional yeast, soy sauce, salt, pepper, and a seed mix (buckwheat, hemp, sesame, flax, and chia).  Super nutritious, incredibly varied, very tasty, and super easy to make.  It's virtually identical to one of my favourite dishes as a vegetarian, except I swapped out the cheese for nutritional yeast and the seed mix.

iceland said:
I'm lowkey pesco pollo vegetarian, needing meat for protein is a lie we've all been indoctrinated into believing. Plenty of plant based options for you, not to mention a lot of meat substitutes out there, you don't even have to really change your lifestyle that much. Don't be a raw vegan though No enjoyment in that

I am not a raw food vegan, but I nonetheless eat a lot of raw.  As an example, pre-soaked chia (to make it more bio-available), raw coconut, rolled out, and chocolate vegan protein powder is my go-to breakfast, and to me it's the most delicious breakfast I've ever eaten in my life.  :)



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AlfredoTurkey said:

If that's true (that most overweight people are not vegan) it has nothing to do with the diet and more to do with the fact that vegans represent a very small amount of the population. They're also much more inclined, by nature of their living choice, to focus ON their diets.

If you look at the worlds greatest athletes, almost all of them are eating lean meat. These are people with 2% body fat and abs so ripped, you could shred cheese on them. Body builders, olympians... almost every one of them are eating lean meats. 

If a person wants to lose weight, eating 1,000 calories a day will do it. You could eat oeros, milk shakes, cheese burgers, drink Coke or Pepsi... but if you stay at 1,000 calories, you'll lose weight. Now, will you be healthy? No, not at all. But that's a different topic. I understand and know not all calories are the same but I wasn't talking about health. I was simply talking about losing weight and being trim. 

Some vegans walk around, shouting on the roof tops and street corners about how they're trim solely because they don't eat meat which is an absolute and utter LIE. It's not about meat or no meat. It's about hard work and proper diet. That's all I'm saying.

Vegans being a "very small amount of the population" doesn't come into it as we're talking averages within a population, not total numbers of people.  That said, I agree that there may be something to vegans being healthier in other ways as well.  Though I'm not 100% convinced as there is a siginficant chunk of the vegan population that made the choice for ethical reasons and is less likely to be diet-focused.  Additionally, the so-called "junk food" vegans skew the data further.

The number of vegan athletes is growing rapidly, and many of them report improvements in performance and/or recovery rates compared to when they were omnivorous.  But I actually didn't address the short-term benefit/detriment of different diets, I only addressed the long-term.  And the long-term heavily favours a whole food vegan diet as so many diseases are strongly correlated to eating animal products.  Similar to how using cocaine may be a short-term benefit for some, but a long-term detriment for most.

Read up on obesogens.  It's possible to eat fewer calories than ideal and yet not lose weight.

I agree that weight control is not a reason to go vegan, in and of itself.  I had successful weight control as an omnivore, I had successful weight control as a vegetarian, and now I have successful weight control as a vegan.



betacon said:
Humans evolved to eat meat, a true healthy diet requires meat, substitute proteins do not have the same effect despite what your vegan gossip groups try and tell you.

There is a lot of evidence that humans began eating large amounts of meat relatively recently in an evolutionary context, and that we are poorly adapted to it.  That's why there's so much disease that is strongly associated with eating animal products, both circulatory and neurological in nature.

SuaveSocialist said:

Any tips for long-term Vegan lifestyle?  When I tried it, I just slowly became malnourished.  I'd be willing to try it again if I had a plan for the long game.

Malnourishment, or lack thereof, is about getting all the nutrients your body needs.  It's as easy to be a malnourished omnivore as a malnourished vegan.  In fact, there's growing evidence that a larger proportion of omnivores are malnourished.  When in doubt speak to a nutrionist, but I typically eat a breakfast full of fibre and vegan protein, a lunch full of things with lots of iron, calcium, and B-complex vitamins, and a small supper with lots of leafy greens.  DM me if you want a personal dialogue, I'm very open to that!

slip123 said:
I'm thinking about going vegetarian for a while, but I love meat, any tips? I was thinking of getting rid of 1 animal per month untill I'm completely vegetarian, is that a thing? lol

I went cold turkey (pun intended).  If you wish, you can eat meat supplements (often made of soy or bean, spiced to taste like meat).  If you want a burger, you can get something that tastes indistinguishable from a beef burger.  Over time, wean yourself off of those things because they're processed foods.  That's my advice, but DM me if you want something more specific and/or more personalized to your tastes!  :)

barneystinson69 said:

Well I've always been skinny, so I'd never even consider it. Even so, you should at least avoid eating red meats, as those are the killers. 

When I went from being an omnivore to being vegetarian, and ultimately vegan, my weight didn't change much at all.  Gaining/losing weight is about a lot of factors, and a proper weight maintenance programme should give you the results you desire, whatever that is (gaining, maintaining, or losing) so long as it's the right programme for you, and you stick to it.

Ganoncrotch said:
No. Realistically becoming Vegan wont change the world and will be rather tough on yourself (because people will find you annoying!)

Many of my coworkers don't even know I'm vegan.  I feel no reason to advertise it.  Even in this thread, I have chosen to focus on correcting misinformation, not my personal opinions or ethical perspectives.  Besides, there are a *lot* of annoying vegetarians, pescetarians, and omnivores too.  :)



Kirin_gaming said:

Dropping meat from your diet completely is not a good decision,neither for health nor moral reasons.

If your reasons are because of health concerns you have to find the right balance to achieve whatever your goal is(losing weight, gaining muscle or just feeling healthy in general.)

If your reasons  for doing it are ethical, you still shouldn't stop eating meat here's why.

A year ago I contemplated eliminating meat from my diet.My deep love for animals made me get to the point where I would go into full brainstorming mode every time I saw a steak, and at that moment in my life the negatives far outweighed the positives; thus why I gave veganism serious thoughts.

I started looking for information on veganism, I looked at vegan restaurants, and then for some reason I came by this article.That article really got me thinking;  it made me realize that veganism is not the answer.But therein lied the real problem, if veganism was not the answer then what was?

I then looked at this video that someone in the comment section provided there.I personally loved the idea of a self-sustainable farm, I had never heard of the concept, and I hope that I have one some day.[...]

That article you linked to articulates one thing I strongly agree with, but then defeats its own argument.  I strongly agree that environmentalists should be hugely concerned with agriculture and how it leads to deforestation, elimination of wild places, and sanitation of the land.  It then defeats its own argument because gigantic (and growing) proportions of agriculture are to make animal feed for animal agriculture!  Estimates vary, but 60-80% of the deforestation of the amazon is due to animal agriculture.

The author then goes into full-on misinformation mode by saying a vegan diet is less healthy than an omnivorous diet, which is ridiculous as there is no nutrient, nor any health benefit, that's unique to eating animal products.  There's no recommended daily amount (RDA) of meat.  Hell, animals get their nutrients from eating plants (or eating animals who've eaten plants).  It appears that the author is either deeply misinformed, or choosing to attempt to misinform others.

I'm all for self-sustaining farms, backyard agriculture, etc.  But that done with a vegan diet is even better than doing it with an omnivorous diet.  Animals consume 38 to 500 times as much food, as we get from eating animal products.  How is that sustainable?



Only a vegan could undertake such foul thread necromancy.



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i have a friend who decided to go vegan. they were actually pretty overweight at the time and now, one or two years later, they have lost a ton of weight. i dont really think meat is the enemy though, i think its the sacrifice of all junk foods and and fats that are consumed on the side that a more major contributing factor



scrapking said:
                     

 

EDIT TO ADD:  You're seriously complaining about the time it takes to cook a vegetarian/vegan?  Pulled pork wants to say hi.  Hell, there is a device popular in omnivorous diets called a slow cooker!  :)  I'd add, raw vegans in particular obviously don't waste much of people's time in cooking and preparation of food.

Pulled pork takes 4 hours at best. Sprouted bread takes days. But I'll give you that, raw vegans have it really easy!



"I've Underestimated the Horse Power from Mario Kart 8, I'll Never Doubt the WiiU's Engine Again"

scrapking said:

That article you linked to articulates one thing I strongly agree with, but then defeats its own argument.  I strongly agree that environmentalists should be hugely concerned with agriculture and how it leads to deforestation, elimination of wild places, and sanitation of the land.  It then defeats its own argument because gigantic (and growing) proportions of agriculture are to make animal feed for animal agriculture!  Estimates vary, but 60-80% of the deforestation of the amazon is due to animal agriculture.

The author then goes into full-on misinformation mode by saying a vegan diet is less healthy than an omnivorous diet, which is ridiculous as there is no nutrient, nor any health benefit, that's unique to eating animal products.  There's no recommended daily amount (RDA) of meat.  Hell, animals get their nutrients from eating plants (or eating animals who've eaten plants).  It appears that the author is either deeply misinformed, or choosing to attempt to misinform others.

I'm all for self-sustaining farms, backyard agriculture, etc.  But that done with a vegan diet is even better than doing it with an omnivorous diet.  Animals consume 38 to 500 times as much food, as we get from eating animal products.  How is that sustainable?

Those are actually some really good points you've raised, and they kind of skipped my mind when I wrote that post.Like I said though I think the biggest enemy are the giant corporations, they have no respect for nature whatsoever, and their only objective is profit.In a perfect world, everyone would be aware of the big repercussions that animal agriculture has, and we would all get just a limited amount of meat from self-sustained environments, sadly we do not...



scrapking said:

 Humans don't have canines by any reasonable definition.  They're called that by the dental community, but that's meaningless from the perspective of evolutionary biology.  In dogs, the canine teeth are 2-3 times longer and drastically sharper.  Human "canines" are not substantially longer than the rest of our teeth, nor are they sharp enough to tear and rend meat well.  And the gorilla, which is broadly accepted as an herbivore, has "canines" that are much longer and much sharper.  Basically, some human teeth are nicknamed "canines", but that's not at all relevant to our evolutionary biology.

Omnivores and carnivores can taste protein, humans can't.  We don't have protein receptors on our tongue, so when we eat meat what we're tasting are the fats and salts.  Meat is sufficiently poorly tasting to us that we choose to "season" it, which in most cases means adding plants to it to make it taste better!  :)

Length of intestines matters a great deal.  Our intestines are the smoking gun: they're not designed to process meat safely.  They're too long, they absorb too much of the cholesterol and other negatives of meat.  Controlled experiments have failed to give coronary heart disease to dogs (which are an omnivore) (Citation:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3603726/), yet it's become the number one killer of people in the western world.  I'd say that that "matters".

It's not in question that we ate more meat starting from when we were able to kill it with weapons, cut it, and cook it.  The real question is whether we ate much meat at all prior to that, and the evidence predominantly suggests we didn't.  And that's part of why we're poorly suited to eating it to this day, as that was a blink of an eye ago from an evolutionary point of view.

Here are some sources.

As the Okinawans ate more meat, their health declined rapidly:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19533867

The longest-living population on record ate the most plants/least animal products:  http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=648593

It's possible to have exceptions without disproving the rule.  I haven't researched the Sardinian diet, but the "blue zones" are heavily skewed towards populations that eat very little in the way of animal products:  https://www.bluezones.com/2009/04/cnn-secrets-to-a-long-life-plant-based-diet/

One study showed vegans had 26% less heart disease and 68% less diabetes:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4073139/

Here is a comparison of human traits relative to herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores: http://www.ecologos.org/anatomy.htm

In summation, the preponderence of evidence supports the idea that an omnivorous diet is less healthful than a whole food, plant-based diet.

Your argument about canines is simply wrong, Dog caninens differenciate from the human ones because we are different species, them, revolving their diet mainly on meat need sharper teeth otherwise their main source of nutrition would be too hard to get for the species to survive, on the other hand our evolution making us omnivores that eat primarly vegetables and derivates had us not needing enormous canines. Gorillas are Omnivores, just like any other money-like animal they counsume insects in large quantities while alterning them to vegetables of course (since it's the easiest food for them to find in their habitat).

Cholesterol and other "bad things" contained in meat are easily avoided simply following a diet that contains the right ammount of meat needed, which most americans don't follow, hence why I find the data from ncbi to be meaningless: in one of the countries with the highest rates of obesity in the entire country aswell as an high amount of consumption of meat it's clear that people following a diet that eliminates meat consumption will result healthier, especially given the quality of the meat in the US.

Many of your sources' pages don't work hence I can't answer them but of those I could see there are no proves against eating meat: the Ikarians documentary for example never stated that they don't consume meat, but made a list of herbes extremely common in the diet of everyday (at least here in Italy) again pointing at the problem beeing that the only problem of meat consumption resides in the quantity and the quality, which are wrong in the US.

 

I feel like you are taking a bit too seriously the diet of everyone here, it almost feels like you want to force everyone to become vegan when you clearly can't. Even if meat was indeed remotely as bad as you make it seem to be the vegetable output of the farmers around the world is nowhere near to beeing capable of meeting the demand of over 7B people, if in one night every person on earth became vegan milions of people would die of starvation because of the lack of offer frrom the farmers...



SvennoJ said:
I don't doubt there is plenty animal cruelty in the world, yet locally all the farms around me look very well cared for. Nice open barns, no closed doors or anything, with plenty of farms letting the cows wander around outside. They seem pretty relaxed, lying around in the shade.
Chickens are a different story. Long factory sized buildings with huge fans on either end, no windows or anything. Better off eating steak and dairy products than chicken and eggs.

Just buy locally sourced and fresh foods whenever you can. You'll be helping the environment plenty already not having to process or freeze or haul the goods halfway over the world.

I'm all for locally sourced foods.  Where I live, almost all locally sourced foods are vegetables, which works well for me.  :)

hershel_layton said:

 While I do feel empathetic for the animals, I realize that the food chain exists for a reason.  

Only thing I'm against in the meat industry is animal cruelty. 

The food chain is killing us now, as metals and toxins accumulate up the food chain.  Pollution has made the food chain not our friend.  The best way to escape it is to eat way down the food chain, which for the most part means eating plants (and insects, for those who're into that).

hershel_layton said:

What vegetables do you eat for protein? I typically have Spinach or broccoli.

I don't primarily eat vegetables for protein.  I eat a seed blend (hemp hearts, sesame seeds, flax seeds, chia, and buckwheat) that's full of fibre and protein.  I don't doubt there's protein in the vegetables I eat too, and I do eat both spinach and broccoli.  But people don't need that much protein anyway, and my seed blend alone has me covered.

thranx said:
I think its beast to still eat some meat. just not necessarily at every meal, or in big portions. And more fish and chicken and less red meat. Balance is best.

Why is it best?  I agree that balance is best, but every nutrient that's in meat can be had in edible vegetation as well (that's where the animals get their nutrients from, after all).  But eating vegetation reduces our risk of a raft of diseases.  So why is it best to eat some meat?

Luke888 said:

Your argument about canines is simply wrong, Dog caninens differenciate from the human ones because we are different species, them, revolving their diet mainly on meat need sharper teeth otherwise their main source of nutrition would be too hard to get for the species to survive, on the other hand our evolution making us omnivores that eat primarly vegetables and derivates had us not needing enormous canines. Gorillas are Omnivores, just like any other money-like animal they counsume insects in large quantities while alterning them to vegetables of course (since it's the easiest food for them to find in their habitat). 

Cholesterol and other "bad things" contained in meat are easily avoided simply following a diet that contains the right ammount of meat needed, which most americans don't follow, hence why I find the data from ncbi to be meaningless: in one of the countries with the highest rates of obesity in the entire country aswell as an high amount of consumption of meat it's clear that people following a diet that eliminates meat consumption will result healthier, especially given the quality of the meat in the US.

Many of your sources' pages don't work hence I can't answer them but of those I could see there are no proves against eating meat: the Ikarians documentary for example never stated that they don't consume meat, but made a list of herbes extremely common in the diet of everyday (at least here in Italy) again pointing at the problem beeing that the only problem of meat consumption resides in the quantity and the quality, which are wrong in the US.

 

I feel like you are taking a bit too seriously the diet of everyone here, it almost feels like you want to force everyone to become vegan when you clearly can't. Even if meat was indeed remotely as bad as you make it seem to be the vegetable output of the farmers around the world is nowhere near to beeing capable of meeting the demand of over 7B people, if in one night every person on earth became vegan milions of people would die of starvation because of the lack of offer frrom the farmers...

You articulate some potentially valid arguments (though I don't know why some of the pages didn't resolve for you, they all resolved for me).  It's potentially legit for two people to look at the same data and come to two different conclusions.  I could easily quibble about how human canines are too short and nowhere near sharp enough for rending raw meat, or about how our jaws aren't off-set meaning we can't break bones, or how our throats are small like a herbivore, or how we can move our jaws back and forth like a herbivore.  But I'm hugely distracted by your final argument, which appears to skew off towards crazy town.

The main thing standing in the way of people starving is animal agriculture.  When we feed chickens to get eggs, we feed them 38x as much food as we get out of eating the eggs.  And chicken eggs are about the best case scenario as far as animal agriculture is concerned.  When we feed cows to get beef, we feed them as much as 500x as much food as we get out of eating the cow.  About one third of the world's grain goes to feeding animals.  About 45% of the world's ice-free land is dedicated to supporting animal agriculture.  I don't know what it's like in Italy, but in North and South America there are vast tracts of farms full of animals, and other vast tracts of farms making corn and soy and other crops for feeding animals.

If we gradually returned that 45% of the world's ice-free land over to feeding and housing humans, instead of feeding and housing food animals, you bet that would go a long way to ending homelessness and starvation.  I can't think of any argument to the contrary, and "vegetable output of the farmers" isn't one when so much land that could be making vegetables is instead making food for animals.

I also think you might be projecting when you talk about my motives.  I was only inspired to contribute to this thread, after lurking on VGchartz for years, when I saw some real misinformation in it.  And I've kept my focus on the misinformation component, except when someone asked a direct question.  Why is it so important for you to not only reply, but to question my motives for replying?  It seems thou doth protest too much.

But, yeah, there's no threat to feeding the world from veganism.  There is a severe threat to feeding the world from animal agriculture, though.