Why should I go VEGAN??

We didn't evolve on a vegan diet and IMO it shows (not pushing primal nor paleo agendas, I am a lifestyle healthcare professional).

the majority of the responses on here are from misinformed a-hats. there's a herbivore group on here that you should join if you want more information or you can add some vegans to your friends list. the only thing you might need to supplement is b12, everything else is plentiful in a vegan diet.

DHA, EPA, calcium, bioavailable vitamin D, haem iron are not all freely available in natural plant foods, many rely on vegan frankenfoods, supplements or go short. I'm not in any way suggesting a vegan diet is any more deficient than the standard US/ UK diet which we all know is appalling.

The conversion rate of short chain to long chain omega-3s can be as low as 10% and is affected by the levels of omega-6s in the diet which are plentiful in many nuts, seeds, soya, vegetable oils and grains. The amounts of things like flax oil, ground flaxseeds or chia you need to consume each day can be prohibitive to get an optimal intake. I always recommend vegetarian and vegan nutrition clients take a marine algae extract for DHA and EPA.

Calcium I calculated you'd need ~400g of flaxseeds or almonds or ~750g of spinach a day to hit the US target for an adult female (1g), again it's prohibitive. And that's ignoring the mineral binding factors in spinach and other plant foods. For both calcium and vitamin D many vegans and some veggies rely on fortified soya or almond 'dairy', let's be honest fortifying is just supplementing by another name.

Additional problems occur when you do the maths for different nutrients and try to combine - eating too many leafy greens doesn't leave you much room for the blue/ purple, red, and yellow/ orange produce, eating piles of almonds is incredibly high in calories and fat, and contains very little omega-3s. The reality is few want to eat solely for nutrition, they'd quite reasonably rather have peanut butter than gritty ground flax. But you'd need over a kilo of peanuts to get enough calcium, by contrast I can get the full amount in just 60g of grana padano cheese leaving me plenty of calories for a serving of oily fish for the DHA, EPA and B12.

We didn't evolve on a vegan diet and IMO it shows (not pushing primal nor paleo agendas, I am a lifestyle healthcare professional).

the majority of the responses on here are from misinformed a-hats. there's a herbivore group on here that you should join if you want more information or you can add some vegans to your friends list. the only thing you might need to supplement is b12, everything else is plentiful in a vegan diet.

DHA, EPA, calcium, bioavailable vitamin D, haem iron are not all freely available in natural plant foods, many rely on vegan frankenfoods, supplements or go short. I'm not in any way suggesting a vegan diet is any more deficient than the standard US/ UK diet which we all know is appalling.

The conversion rate of short chain to long chain omega-3s can be as low as 10% and is affected by the levels of omega-6s in the diet which are plentiful in many nuts, seeds, soya, vegetable oils and grains. The amounts of things like flax oil, ground flaxseeds or chia you need to consume each day can be prohibitive to get an optimal intake. I always recommend vegetarian and vegan nutrition clients take a marine algae extract for DHA and EPA.

Calcium I calculated you'd need ~400g of flaxseeds or almonds or ~750g of spinach a day to hit the US target for an adult female (1g), again it's prohibitive. And that's ignoring the mineral binding factors in spinach and other plant foods. For both calcium and vitamin D many vegans and some veggies rely on fortified soya or almond 'dairy', let's be honest fortifying is just supplementing by another name.

Additional problems occur when you do the maths for different nutrients and try to combine - eating too many leafy greens doesn't leave you much room for the blue/ purple, red, and yellow/ orange produce, eating piles of almonds is incredibly high in calories and fat, and contains very little omega-3s. The reality is few want to eat solely for nutrition, they'd quite reasonably rather have peanut butter than gritty ground flax. But you'd need over a kilo of peanuts to get enough calcium, by contrast I can get the full amount in just 60g of grana padano cheese leaving me plenty of calories for a serving of oily fish for the DHA, EPA and B12.

We didn't evolve on a vegan diet and IMO it shows (not pushing primal nor paleo agendas, I am a lifestyle healthcare professional).

I looked back on my diary to look and see what nutrients I was getting. Interestingly I've been logging off and on for a few years. I'm getting way more of the nutrients that are tracked on a whole foods plant based diet than I was on a conventional diet, or the Mediterranean diet that I also tried for 6 months. I'm getting 100% or better of all the tracked nutrients. I eat about 2,000 calories per day on average. I try to also burn 3,000 calories per week through exercise. The parts of the world that have populations that are missing out on nutrients suffer from malnutrition due to a lack of food. The Standard American Diet kills not by malnutrition but by cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and stroke), cancer, and diabetes.

I looked back on my diary to look and see what nutrients I was getting. Interestingly I've been logging off and on for a few years. I'm getting way more of the nutrients that are tracked on a whole foods plant based diet than I was on a conventional diet, or the Mediterranean diet that I also tried for 6 months. I'm getting 100% or better of all the tracked nutrients. I eat about 2,000 calories per day on average. I try to also burn 3,000 calories per week through exercise. The parts of the world that have populations that are missing out on nutrients suffer from malnutrition due to a lack of food. The Standard American Diet kills not by malnutrition but by cardiovascular disease (heart attacks and stroke), cancer, and diabetes.

I assume this thread is so long because a bunch of flamers jumped in about how the OP shouldn't go vegan right? about how the "research" is all meaningless?

amiright?

i usually read everything and still jump to my same conclusions.

veganism isn't a "restrictive" or "commercial" diet. Vegans don't view it as "I can't have meat". They simply don't WANT to have meat. There's a difference.

restrictive implies you don't want to be doing it. it's not restrictive to me if I enjoy living that way. haha

veganism isn't a "restrictive" or "commercial" diet. Vegans don't view it as "I can't have meat". They simply don't WANT to have meat. There's a difference.

Additionally, healthcare professionals don't typically advocate veganism because it often leads to fewer trips to the doctor's office, provided you're smart and make sure you're getting - like you said - the necessary vitamins that may not be as abundant in typical veggies. However - there are plenty of whole food ways to GET the necessary vitamins without eating meat. Seaweed is a great example, as it has an incredible amount of calcium and iron. You just have to work a little harder, but it's all there (sans the B12).