Fruitarians

vegan diet = just about possible with careful balancing, access to modern technology and vitamin B12 supplements

fruitarian diet = dangerous

The bolded bit you can say that about modern diets full stop .Even modern omnivorous diets are only possible due to modern technology, factory farming and many other things. Implying this is just because it's a vegan diet is pretty misleading. As for careful balancing as with any diet a variety of foods is the way to go. You do not have to do some magical balancing act to eat a healthy Vegan diet just use some common sense. You could argue your careful balancing act for omnivorous diets also and considering the amount of people that eat animal products and don't get sufficient or proper nutrition maybe they should do some 'careful balancing'.

I never claim that nutritionally vegan diets are 'better' than others as you can have bad vegan diets the same way you can have good ones containing animal products. I am a vegan due to the ethical implications. However I do think people sometimes try to over complicate and scaremonger about how hard it is to get your nutrition on a Vegan diet. I've been a Vegan for 15 years and a Vegetarian before that I have never struggled with my nutrition (other than getting fat due to eating too much) I have never had to spend time doing this 'balancing act'.

Although there are no ancient cultures recorded that were Vegan there are many recorded that were successful Vegetarian cultures with minimal animal products. Sorry to de rail the thread but I wanted to address this continual Myth that Vegan diets are some modern complicated balancing act

And Yes I agree eating only fruit is silly

From Wikipedia:

Actor Ashton Kutcher went on a fruitarian diet to prepare for his role as Apple CEO and onetime fruitarian Steve Jobs in the film Jobs; the actor subsequently suffered from pancreatic problems which he attributed to the diet and was taken to a hospital. Jobs died of pancreatic cancer.[33]


I think you'll find this is a bad idea if you do your due diligence (and don't listen to the silly girls on Pinterest) (I have a Pinterest, I am not a silly girl). If you're really serious about this, see a nutritionist and keep an open mind for what he/she says. Your health comes first.

I mean no really...do you think that is what being a fruitarian is?

vegan diet = just about possible with careful balancing, access to modern technology and vitamin B12 supplements

fruitarian diet = dangerous

The bolded bit you can say that about modern diets full stop .Even modern omnivorous diets are only possible due to modern technology, factory farming and many other things. Implying this is just because it's a vegan diet is pretty misleading. As for careful balancing as with any diet a variety of foods is the way to go. You do not have to do some magical balancing act to eat a healthy Vegan diet just use some common sense. You could argue your careful balancing act for omnivorous diets also and considering the amount of people that eat animal products and don't get sufficient or proper nutrition maybe they should do some 'careful balancing'.

Point is that a hunter-gatherer diet is an omnivorous diet, and all humans and were omnivorous until some cultures had developed a high enough level of agricultural knowledge and technology to get enough protein without animal products.

i.e. the natural diet of humans is an omnivorous diet and a herbivorous/vegan diet for humans has only been possible recently because of very recent advances. Without those advances in technology, an ominvorous diet was necessary.

You don't need modern technology to be an omnivore, you can be an omnivore with stone age technology. Just because people choose to use advanced technology nowadays doesn't mean that an omnivorous diet needs technology and careful balancing (which the vegan diet does require, because you can't be a vegan with only palaeolithic technology)

Also, chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans are omnivorous too, so you don't even need stone age technology to be an omnivore. It's not just the natural diet of humans, it's the natural diet of all of the family hominidae. And of large brained primates in general. And they, nor our palaeolithic ancestors, need(ed) to know what a balanced diet was. So clearly you don't need to know how to carefully balance diets to be an omnivore as our palaeolithic ancestors and our hominidae cousins in the wild ate/eat an omnivorous diet without any knowledge of what a "balanced diet" means. Modern people have just got too good at obtaining and maintaining a steady food supply to the point that we;ve got fat. But one of the plus sides of that for people who don't want to eat animal products is that we now have the technology that with careful balancing, you can get enough protein from plants, which our hunter-gatherer ancestors and wild great apes can't/couldn't do.

I never claim that nutritionally vegan diets are 'better' than others as you can have bad vegan diets the same way you can have good ones containing animal products. I am a vegan due to the ethical implications. However I do think people sometimes try to over complicate and scaremonger about how hard it is to get your nutrition on a Vegan diet. I've been a Vegan for 15 years and a Vegetarian before that I have never struggled with my nutrition (other than getting fat due to eating too much) I have never had to spend time doing this 'balancing act'.

I was vegan for a long time, and yes it does take work and balancing and supplementation of nutrients you can't get from plants. Also, some deficiencies, like vitamin B12 may take months or years to develop, so someone could be eating a nutritionally unbalanced diet and feel fine on it for a long time. From personal experience, it is a lot easier to get adequate nutrition on an omnivorous diet and I feel a lot healthier on an omnivorous diet than I ever did on a vegan diet. And as I said, hunter-gatherers manage to get a balanced diet without even knowing what it is... because their diet is the natural diet of humans that our ancestors ate for millions of years.

Most of the issues with lack of balance that affect modern, western omnivores is due to the easy availability of foods that have excessive fat, carbohydrate (especially simple sugars) and salt - this is not a problem inherent to the omnivorous diet as hunter-gatherers don't have these problems.

Also, I wasn't saying what I said to scare people away from vegan diets - I have respect for people who are vegan for ethical reasons. I was making the point that it is possible for humans to be vegan with access to high protein plant foods and supplements, but it's not possible to be fruitarian at all. And yes I do think it's an important message that you have to put effort into getting a balanced diet if you're going to give up animal products, because if you don't, then there is a risk of nutritional deficiency. I used to be vegan, I know. Maybe it comes easy to you and that's great, but it doesn't come easy to everyone.

Although there are no ancient cultures recorded that were Vegan there are many recorded that were successful Vegetarian cultures with minimal animal products. Sorry to de rail the thread but I wanted to address this continual Myth that Vegan diets are some modern complicated balancing act

The earliest vegetarian societies had agriculture and lived in areas of the world where plants high in protein could grow easily. This was not possible in most parts of the world and in evolutionary terms, they are advanced cultures with advanced technologies, i.e. a long way from stone age. Additionally, my comment was about the vegan diet, not the vegetarian diet. With eggs and dairy products it's not hard to get enough protein as a vegetarian. I never mentioned vegetarians. Due to the lack of dairy products and the scarcity of eggs it's not possible to be a vegetarian hunter-gatherer, but once you have domesticated animals and can get a plentiful supply of milk and eggs it's pretty straight forward... the vegan diet requires the ability to cultivate certain plants that are high in protein, such as pulses, which means the right climate or the ability to build things like greenhouses that can be used to imitate the right climate for those kinds of plants, plus labs to make non-animal forms of vitamins like B12. So it's clear that veganism requires a significantly higher level of technology than vegetarianism does, and that even vegetarianism was impossible prior to the domestication of animals, and prior to that, only an omnivorous diet was possible, i.e. the hunter-gatherer diet.