| psychicscubadiver said: There's a considerable difference in vegetarian and vegan diets. The latter greatly restricts your eating choices and requires very careful attention to nutrition. The former is not as bad, but can still be difficult for those just starting out. Both require attention to proteins, but Vegan is especially bad for many essential minerals and vitamins. For weight loss and health your overall calorie intake and exercise are more important then what specific foods you are eating.[...] |
I have a friend who is an omnivore and mostly eats refined carbohydrates and meats high in saturated fats. He eats almost no fruits or vegetables whatsoever, and he looks like hell most of the time. Does he somehow not need as careful attention to his nutrition and his growing "beer belly" (made entirely without eating beer) than a vegan? Nope. A vegan diet has *every* nutrient available to it. Omnivorous diets are not magically more varied than vegan diets. As I learned more about health and nutrition I went vegan, as I realized that there are no diseases associated with it, and yet there are many diseases associated with eating animal products. My diet is both more restricted than it's ever been, but also more varied than it's ever been.
New evidence is suggesting that your statement about vegetarians/vegans needing to pay special attention to their protein intake is incorrect. Proteins aren't one thing, they're combinations of amino acids. The old thinking was that you had to make sure all amino acids were present in every meal, and that vegetarians/vegans had to do food combining (such as beans and rice, which together have a complete protein profile). However, the new evidence is that the body is able to hang on to amino acids for a long time, probably for days at a time. There's also new evidence that eating a complete protein at every meal is actually detrimental to the body, that eating some meals that are heavy in a small number of amino acids can actually have a cleansing effect on the body.
It's terribly difficult to do successful weight management with exercise, as the more you exercise the hungrier you get. It can be done but requires tremendous discipline. And there's a lot more to weight management than calorie intake. When in the day you eat your calories is as important as what you eat, you can eat the right thing at the wrong time of day, as just one of many examples of what I mean.
| spurgeonryan said: If meat actually makes you sick, then yes. Same if you are gluten or dairy intolerant. Beyond that, if you like that food, do it in moderation and do not care about its impact, then screw being vegan! |
There's growing evidence that meat makes most people sick. It doesn't do it quickly, so the cause and effect is muddied for most people. But there is a lot of disease that's caused by, or strongly correlated with, eating animal products. Not the least of which is heart disease, but also diabetes and several neurological disorders. It's normal for people in the West to eat a lot of animal products, but it's also normal for people to be sick later in life. We associate this with old age, but other cultures don't traditionally have such a strong association with it. That's because in cultures where people ate less meat, people were typically more vibrant in their old age. In fact, the oldest living populations on the planet eat the least meat.
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psychicscubadiver said: It's perfectly normal, but not really 'natural'. We did evolve as omnivorous hunter-gatherers after all. Not until we developed agriculture could any human tribe have subsisted on vegetables only. |
When we were hunter-gatherers, our diets were almost entirely plant-based in most parts of the planet. The Inuit are an obvious exception, and examination of Inuit mummies show high amounts of diseases commonly associated with eating animal products. Before we developed agriculture we didn't subsist primarily on vegetables, but we also didn't subsist primarily on animal products. When we were hunter gatherers we subsisted (in most parts of the world) on nuts, and berries, and bark, and seeds, and that sort of thing. This stuff was incredibly nutritious. There is evidence that cultures that went from being primarily gatherers, to being agrarian, lost several inches of height in the following generations since the things that can be easily farmed (wheat, corn, animals, etc.) are drastically less nutritious than the diets we had as gatherers. We've adapted somewhat to subsisting on less nutrition, but it's taken us thousands of generations to do so.
| aLkaLiNE said: I wouldn't do it, there are certainly other just as effective ways to change your diet in a positive way. - try weaning yourself off fake sugars, anything that says sucrose or glucose is bad.
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I agree that there is evidence that microwave ovens may be a no-no. More research needs to be done, but your claim may ultimate prove to be correct. I also agree that drinking large amounts of water can be very good for health. I agree that a raw diet can be exceptionally good. I strongly agree that refined sugars are a blight on our health. I disagree with the rest.
Eating washed vegetables denies you lots of micronutrients. One example is vitamin B12 which is synthesized in your body from bacteria in the ground. If you're eating local, organic produce, you probably just need to brush it off to leave trace amounts of bacteria and micronutrients, rather than wash it.
There's not a lot of evidence yet, IMO, that everyone benefits from gluten being removed from their diets. There are suggestions that some people do, however. Just not everyone.
Studies suggest that there is no diet as effective at warding off disease as a whole food, plant-based diet. So suggesting that there's no benefit to that is incorrect, based on the science.
| Paatar said: Humans are meat and vegi eaters for a reason. You need both. If it isn't for health reasons and it's for society reasons it's not worth it. |
There's no need for meat in one's diet. There's no nutrient that's exclusive to meat. There's no health benefit exclusive to meat. There's strong and growing evidence that we're descended from herbivores, not the least of which is our intestines are too long to safely consume meat. They've attempted to give dogs coronary heart disease from eating nothing but large quantities of fatty meats in controlled conditions, and they've failed because (like other ominvores) dogs have short intestines. Humans, like other biological herbivores, have long intestines that mean we get too much of the fat and cholesterol when we eat meat. In one study, hundreds of participants were put on a whole food plant-based diet, and those that dropped out of the study went on to have high instances of heart attack and stroke. Of those who remained in the study, only 0.06% of them had a cardiac event.
