Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

[palou]

scrapking said:

palou said

 The argument was about if eating meat is natural (which I personally think isirrelevant to the question of vegetarianism). In contrary to fats and sugars, a very large variety of amino acids is needed by human beings, not something humans can synthesize, unlike some purely vegetarian species. This diversity can be found, without much trouble, in a midern vegan diet, by eating nuts, beans, certain greenery... Together, they have all we need. However, in any given pre-bronze-age environnement, it was far from guaranteed that the edible plants available had everything. Eating animal substance assures this, since just as yourself the animal is constructed from the diverse amino acids. That is why humans at least occasionaly consumed meat (or other animal products) in pretty much all prehistoric societies. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, also primarily consume plant matter, but do go out of the way to hunt smaller animals (insects, if nothing else) from time to time, even if much harder to obtain, and a vegetarian diet readily available.

I didn't respond to this one immediately because I wanted to check whether you knew someting on this subject that I didn't.  However, my research didn't turn up anything new.

There's no such thing as protein, per se.  Proteins are collections of amino acids.  The claim that when you eat plants you need to combine your proteins originates from 1971, and was retracted by the author in 1981, but has been believed by billions of people ever since.  Almost all proteins are complete proteins.  With the exception of gelatin, all proteins in all commonly consumed foods contain all essential amino acids.  They contain them in different ratios, but since the body has the ability to break down proteins and store amino acids for later combining, the idea that you need to engage in meal-by-meal protein combining is an oft-believed but completely false thing.  Here's a good summary of where the myth came from:  https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-myth-of-complementary-protein/

In fact, there's some evidence that varying your amino acid ratios from one meal to the next actually has a cleansing effect on the body (which means that always eating so-called "complete" proteins, like animal products and soy, may actually be disadvantageous for health).

So I don't see what problem you're identifying for pre-Bronze age diets, etc.  Every commonly eaten plant has every essential amino acid.  They have them in different ratios but, that's not only acceptable, that's possibly ideal.  If I'm understanding you correctly, what you've articulated here is something that's been believed by laypeople for a long time but that doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Upon verification, the proportions of our main vegetable protein sources are unbalanced http://universalium.academic.ru/294763/Essential_amino_acids_in_some_common_foods in certain amino acids, but not as much as I assumed. (Greenery does tend to have an even larger Lysine deficit, though.) Eating perhaps twice as much plant protein should likely cover the deficit. Learned something new. 

 

However, that does not change the fact that a good source of vegetable protein remains extremely difficult to obtain in a pre-agriculture society. Remember, this is in a time where almonds were mostly poisonous, corn cobs were mostly composed of fibres and smaller than your pinky, and anything we can classify as a vegetable but not a fruit was mostly unedible (think root vegetables, cabage family and salads). Fruits were always a large part of our diet - fruits however contain next to no protein (you can look up a couple examples.) All other parts of the plant are things that the said plants does NOT want you to eat, and generally have some form of protection. Pure herbivores (which we are not part of) have evolved along with these plants to be able to bypass these defenses.