Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

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scrapking said:

exclusive_console said:
Obviously eating fruits and proper veg food can give you enough nutrients.

It is absolute BS that you have to eat non-veg for your body to have a balance.

True.

Dark_Lord_2008 said:
Humans do not need to eat meat and consume junk food like KFC, McDonald's, Pizza Hut and all the garbage Americans consume on a daily basis. It is the meat products that are making people sick. Big food companies have lied to people for many years and as consequence we have high rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc as a result of eating too many meat products.

So very true.

Rogerioandrade said:
Be prepared to spend a lot of money with doctors/nutritionists, blood tests and vitamin supplements, if you´re willing to be a vegetarian - at least that´s what my vegetarians friends do.

I don´t think it´s healthy at all. Some nutrients are only find in good portions in animal sources, like complex B vitamins, creatin, calcium etc. and we all know that vegetal protein is not processed as well as animal protein in the body.

I do think it´s much better to be ovo-lacto vegetarian. Egg and milk protein are great sources of those nutrients, and you will not need to eat meat at all.

I believe every point in your post is incorrect.  Plant protein is every bit the equal of animal protein in the ways that you want it to be (building muscle, etc.), and plant protein is far superior to animal protein in the ways you would wish it to be different (such as how plant protein doesn't stress the kidneys like animal protein does).  It's a myth that people need a lot of protein, even vegans (on average) consume nearly twice as much protein as is recommended.  It's nearly impossible to get too little, even 20% of the calories in romaine lettuce come from protein!  :)  It's also a myth that animal protein is somehow superior due to its amino acid balance.

This myth dates back to an issue of Vogue magazine (yes, Vogue) from the 1970s.  If you'd like to take your nutrition advice from a fourty year old issue of fashion magazine, be my guest!  :D  I'll get mine from scientific research, and that research says that you don't need (or want) a "complete protein" every meal.  In the time since that issue created this misconception, we've learned that the body has the ability to break down and store the amino acids from proteins, later combining them into whatever ratio the body needs.  There's also evidence that occasionally eating meals that significantly favours one of the amino acids (doesn't matter which one) can actually have a cleansing effect on the body's systems, wiping it clean of residues from all the others.

You say your vegetarian friends spend a lot of time with doctors and nutritionists, as if omnivores don't have to.  Omnivores *do* have to, they just usually don't choose to, and as a result they suffer and die in the billions.  Heart disease, diabetes, diet-correlated cancers, diet-correlated neurological diseases, and so much more, these are diseases that predominantly and disproportionately hit omnivores.  The diet that's incredibly hard to be healthy on is an omnivorous diet, given all the sick omnivores out there.  The typical vegan is deficient in 3 essential nutrients, whereas the typical omnivore is deficient in 7 essential nutrients.  Since plant-based foods tend to have lower caloric density, you get to eat more of them for the same amount of total calories, and if you eat a wide variety of plant foods you'll come out ahead of any omnivorous diet for nutrient density and variety.

Milk is an absolutely terrible source of calcium.  The United States drinks more milk per capita than any other country on Earth, but has more osteoporosis than any other country on Earth.  That's not a coincidence, we've known for decades that animal protein appeared to actually leech calcium from the body.  For a long time we observed this, but didn't know why it happened.  We now think we know why, and here it is:  https://nutritionfacts.org/video/testing-your-diet-with-pee-purple-cabbage/  And your suggestion that calcium is hard to find in plant-based foods is highly incorrect, I eat a lot of plant based foods with significant amount of calcium (including spinach, and several kinds of seeds).

There are multiple good plant-based sources of B-vitamins, and I consume some of those foods (almost) every day.  Nutritional yeast (a yellow flaky substance that taste kind of cheesy) is my favourite.

As to your point that vegetable protein isn't processed well in the body, another myth.  If you eat a broad-based, whole food diet, you'll actually absorb nutrients better.  Many nutrients are unlocked by having vitamin C, or black pepper, in your diet.  You don't even need to eat them at the same time, or necessarily even the same meal, the body is amazing at recirculating nutrients until it needs it.  You've probably heard that vitamin C is water soluble, and the biggest amount of water in your body is your blood, and your body will keep circulating vitamin C until you need it.  So having plentiful vitamin C in your diet from eating fruit, broccoli, and leafy green vegetables will kick your body's ability to absorb iron, etc., into high gear.  I am on an entirely plant-based diet and I take no vitamin supplements at all.  (I do take vitamin D but, despite its name, it's not actually a vitamin; it's actually a hormone.)

BTW, by eating factory farmed meat you're eating a range of supplements, including vitamin B12, as factory farmed animals are kept in such unhealthy conditions that they feed them vitamins and antibiotics throughout their lives just to keep them alive.  So you're probably taking more nutrient supplements than I am, you're just choosing to filter them through the body's of farm animals first for whatever reason.  Unfortunately, those trace amounts of antibiotics people get from factory farmed animals are also producing antibiotic resistan bacteria, sadly.

Let's see here, you put up a link to a site whose articles are all anti-animal products and all lean pro-vegetarian and using it according to your context as proof that a vegetarian diet is better for you.  

This is akin to putting up a link to a Fox News article about what a great job Trump is doing as president and insinuating that it is coming from an unbiased source.

 

Not saying that there are not benefits and vegetarianism. Nor am I saying that eating processed meats are good for you either. I am merely commenting on your source of information as being incredibly biased and so should not be considered as 100 %credible.