Zzzz. When were you vegan, and what was your blood work like? Source something for this madness.
There are literally millions of thriving vegans around the world. They've won Mr Universe, done five triathlons in a single week, and won Strongest Man in the World. They've also lived well into their 100s. Vegans stay alive and thrive. Witness them before saying silly shit like this. What nutrients are they missing?
Or just read Proteinaholic by Dr Garth Davis.
I mean, you can point at the healthiest examples all you want to, but that doesn't erase the existence of stories of individuals going through absolutely terrible experiences when trying to go for a vegan diet, like
this one (with a particularly heart-wrenching example of a seriously toxic fan base) or
this one, or
this one or, y'know, there's literally hundreds of these stories, so take your pick.
Vitamin b12 deficiency is a
particularly recurring refrain in the research as well, something you're not going to rectify without the use of supplements, and of
course the primary source of b12 vitamins is from animal products (which, yes, is a consequence of the bacteria that generates b12 vitamins living on animals and not plants). Granted, with modern technology this is less of a concern, but the mere fact that we've sourced at least one nutrient
primarily from animal products makes me wonder what else we could be missing when talking about nutrition with omnivorous diets vs vegan diets.
But really, the most damning thing about veganism is simply the fact that
the vast majority of the population does not participate in it and, even when participating it in it, eventually returns to an omnivorous diet. It's an ideal that, unfortunately, the significant majority of the population cannot sustain. It's ultimately a fruitless effort when less than 2% of the population can even put priority to vegetables over animal products, much less exclude animal products from their lives entirely.
I think it would be a
far more productive track for everyone involved to push for lab-grown meat over trying to espouse the health benefits of a vegan diet. Most people simply are not interested. Period. They're not going to go vegan for moral reasons, nor for health reasons, nor for personal reasons. They just won't bother at all. The mere fact that we're even having to have this discussion says enough. If it were feasible we'd already be doing it, frankly.
Even just getting people to control their sugar intake (and again, the sugar
is a significant portion of the problem) would be a significant challenge
without cutting meat out of their diets. I say we start with that, and then if you really, really must push this lifestyle on others, maybe do it after we've controlled excessive added sugars to an appreciable degree so that we're not so distracted by the fact that
40% of the population is obese.
