Health Problems from Being a Vegan?

Well, you have to remember that as omnivores, we only absorb at most 50% of anything we eat. I've tried to be a vegetarian several times and since I'm anemic, it's landed me in the hospital more than once. It can be done but it's extremely difficult and you have to eat a LOT. There are also types of protein and iron you get from meat that you could never get from veggies, which your body needs. Meat has lots of zinc which helps the immune system and helps get other nutrients like iron to where they need to be. (It's especially important for men because zinc increases testosterone)

Believe me when I say, I can understand wanting to be vegetarian. I was a huge grassroots animal rights activist back in the day. But I've never agreed with veganism. That diet leaves your hair flat and sickly, skin pale, eyes sunken, you just don't look healthy at all. Plus, a lot of vegan food is straight up nasty, I'm just saying. And the morality behind it is kind of flimsy. You take an apple... now the apple by itself is vegan. You dip that apple in honey and it's no longer vegan. You dip that same apple in pesticide and it's still vegan. WTF? Seriously. At the very least, have fish and even some chicken sometimes. You don't need red meat or pork. Good luck with this.

Addendum: Almost forgot to tell you-- if you go for the whole vegetarian thing, stay away from spinach. It has a compound called oxalate that binds to both iron and calcium, and you end up peeing 90% of it out. When your iron intake is limited, you have to be careful or you'll end up anemic too.

I have been a vegetarian for six years, along with my two eldest children. We have never suffered any ill side-effects from our diet. There is a lot of vegetarian products out now that it doesn't have to be a struggle. I was vegan for about a year, but I was rather hopeless at taking the supplements I needed and ended up with a vitamin deficiency problem (made me feel run down and I got some purple blotches on my arms). I went back to a vegetarian diet and the problem resolved itself. If I could afford the vitamins and had time to devote to planning my diet I would be eating vegan, but for now, vegetarian is fine

If you want to be a vegan, thats fine, but if you want to be a healthy vegan, youre going to have to pay a LOT more attention to your diet than an omnivore, as your sources of good protein, B vitamins and iron etc are much limited.
It can be done, but you may find you need to supplement too.

Vegetarianism is more healthy, but it depends on your reasons for becoming vegan.

The couple who lost their baby were vegan, but it wasnt about the diet in so much as them being neglectful idiots who pretty much starved their baby to death

You can certainly be a healthy vegetarian or vegan but as other posters have said, you do need to pay attention to your diet.
I was vegetarian for about 5 years but ended up getting very deficient in Vitamin B12 and have to have shots every week for a few months. If you feel strongly about it, go for it, but make sure you see your doctor and check out the levels of essential vitamins and minerals and make sure you eat well.

bumping for later

As a personal stance on the issue I believe the it goes against how we were designed as a species, we are omnivores and we need to eat from all sources, but to each their own.