Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

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Signalstar said:
I try not to restrict my diet in any way in case I am in a situation where I have to eat something for survival. I knew a guy who ate meat for the first time after 5 years because he was in a different country and ended up in hospital for a week.

Going vegetarian or vegan to me seems like you live in an ideal world where you will always have access to the food you are used to.

What you describe is anecdotal.  There's a TV show called "Alone" where people are dumped in the wilderness alone and use cameras to document their struggles to survive, and multiple vegetarians have participated in the show and not ended up in a hospital for a week.  Your friend's experience could as easily have been because there was something wrong with the meat he ate.  There are countless examples of people who are vegetarian and/or vegan for years, and then switch back to an omnivorous diet without gastrointestinal distress.

Besides, it's far more likely that you'll die of heart disease, diabetes, or suffer poor quality of life due to a neurological disease that's highly correlated to eating animal products (Parkinson's, Alzheimers, Multiple Sclerosis, etc.) than you will find yourself in an unexpected survival scenario.  Heart disease is the #1 killer of omnivores, not unexpected survival scenarios.

ArchangelMadzz said:
If you're going to do either do Vegetarianism.

Unless you know 100% what you're doing, Veganism is very unhealthy, make sure you take the right supplements.

(If you need supplements to healthily survive your diet, you're doing a wrong diet)

Unless you know what you're doing, being an omnivore is very unhealthy.  Most supplements are taken by omnivores, do you think the gigantic piles of supplements Wal-Mart sells are going to vegans?  Omnivores are statistically the most nutrient deficient people.  Even the vaunted B12, as a greater proportion of omnivores are now B12 deficient than vegans.  None of the statistics I've read back up your argument.  And it makes sense, as plants contain a wider spectrum of nutrients than animal products do, so a diet that's higher in plants will be more nutritious.  You also absorb nutrients from plants than you do from animal products.  Yes, any diet can be bad, but the highest rates of food-related disease are in omnivorous populations.

Shadow1980 said:

Going vegetarian/vegan does not have any proven health benefits in and of itself, plus the micromanaging you need (esp. with veganism) in order to stay healthy with such diets can be a huge pain and a time sink. It's not really worth it, and the only legit reasons for going vegan is if your body literally cannot process meat, or if you have a strong moral compunction against killing and/or eating animals.

If you're looking to stay healthy and have a normal digestive system, you just need to eat a good, balanced diet, don't eat a lot in general, keep junk food consumption to a minimum, and get plenty of exercise. At risk of being too reductionist, your weight at its core is typically going to be a function of calories taken in versus calories burned (though as mentioned a balanced diet is important, not simply net calories). The increase in obesity rates matches up perfectly with the increase in average calories consumed per capita. It's also worth pointing out that people eat out a lot more than they used to, and take-out is generally a lot less healthy than good quality home cooking, with high-calorie, high-fat foods in ever-increasing portions. This all while red meat consumption is down (though chicken consumption is up). So, I'd also recommend cooking as many of your own meals as possible (TV dinners and other instant stuff doesn't count as quality home cooking, BTW).

I eat plenty of meat, yet I do not struggle with being overweight or any other health issue (aside from muscular dystrophy, which is genetic and has nothing to do with diet), and I'm 36. In fact, I actually could stand to gain a few pounds, but I've always had a small frame for my height. But I cook most of my own food, and rarely eat out.

The research doesn't back you up.  Even if there weren't proven health benefits to a whole food plant-based diet, there are health detriments that are all but solely associated with omnivorous diets.  It's possible to get all the nutrients you need on either a vegan diet, or an omnivorous diet, but cholesterol is only found in animal products, and plaque has been demonstrated to build up in the brain from the consumption of animal products and is being correlated to a raft of neurological disorders.

There's growing evidence that while MS may be caused by genetics, the rate at which symptoms progress (or not) is affected by diet for many people.  People diagnosed with the early stages of multiple sclerosis have symptoms stay the same or lesson in 95% of cases if they switch to a whole food plant-based diet, whereas MS patients who stay on an omnivorous diet see symptoms continue to worsen in almost 100% of cases.  That's stronger correlative evidence than we have for smoking causing cancer (as we have yet to "prove" that cigarettes cause cancer, as that would involve clinical trials where people were given cancer, so we've accepted the correlative evidence is strong enough and stopped there).  I don't want to be "that guy" who suggests a miracle cure to someone with a condition, yet the scientific evidence on this is strong and growing.