Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

[Rab]

scrapking said:

Rab said:

Vegan/vegetarian can work well if you're an adult and very carefull, But Paleo for a more balanced/natural diet that covers all ages comfortably and is easier to maintain

Paleo is not naturally more balanced.  Because paleo focuses in on meat and other high caloric foods, you need to exercise portion control to accomplish weight management.  Studies have shown that when people are put on a whole food, plant-based diet and allowed to eat as much as they want, they actually lose a bit of weight at first (about a 3% drop in their weight).  If you put someone on a paleo diet and encouraged them to eat as much as they want, they'd almost certainly gain weight.

Paleo is also a whole food diet, so that's good.  And the number one thing paleo people eat more of is salads, according to studies on the subject I've read, so that's also good.  But it's important to understand that the paleo diet is pseudo-science.  It bears almost no reflection of what people actually ate in paleo times.  We've rehydrated fossilized stool from around the world from paleo times, so this is a matter of fact, not a matter of debate.  In most paleo cultures, people ate 98 to 99% plant-based diets.  The exceptions were the ancient cultures with the most disease.  They've studied mummified inuit and found that they had atherosclerosis, for example, as you'd expect for a diet with so much meat in it.

There's a myth that you have to be careful to construct a good vegan diet.  Why do I call that a myth?  Because the average vegan diet is far less deficient than the average omnivorous diet (see citation in my previous post).  The average omnivorous diet gives millions of people heart disease, diabetes, cancers, and neurological disorders.  That's further evidence that omnivorous diets are the ones that are deficient, and that constructing a safe and healthy omnivorous diet is really the tough thing to pull off.

Is it just because vegans are so health conscious and eat better than omnivores?  Not so.  The majority of vegans switch to a plant-based diet for ethical reasons (treatment of animals, environmental concerns, and more).  A tiny amount of vegans are on whole food, plant-based diets.  The majority are eating a lot of plant-based processed foods.  Becel is vegan.  Oreo cookies are vegan.  Tofurky is vegan.  Guess what the majority of vegans are eating?  And yet, the average vegan is still healthier than the average omnivore.  Only vegans average in the ideal BMI range, all others are overweight or obese (including vegetarians and pescetarians).  Source:  http://nutritionfacts.org/video/thousands-of-vegans-studied/

Nice well thought out reply, just a few things to look at

What Paleo use meat for http://www.marksdailyapple.com/how-much-meat-is-too-much/ 

Paleo is not a pseudo-science it uses science, check this guy (Mark Sission) all he ever does is look at the science  http://www.marksdailyapple.com/ , as new research comes in he changes, he is not fixed

Importantly Paleo doesnt focus on meat, it actually focuses on mostly vegetables and some fruits, then modest amounts of fatty meats (grass feed) and plant proteins, but does avoid high Carb foods like Grains, it also includes different types of excersises, as Paleo isn't narrowly a diet but a type of lifestyle