Point proven
@Afro_Vacancy .
I'm reluctant to get further involved in a scientific discussion, as in the past this can lead to a lot off butthurt, as well as internet links to anecdotal reports of particular movie stars and athletes claiming to be vegan at a particular point in time, which I consider irrelevant.
@INT doesn't seem completely irrational though, so it may not lead there. I will simply list a few legitimate concerns with veganism, and I think I'm being very conservative in listing this.
Some concerns with veganism.
1)
A lot of people have significant allergies and auto-immune responses to the plant sector. These are not fully mapped out nor are they fully understood. I gave the example of Jordan Peterson and his daughter, they seem to get a bad response to a lot of plants. There might not be a doctor out there who can tell you exactly which plants are doing this to them, so meat and greens works for him. This applies to a lot of people. A friend of mine form Australia was doing veganism for a while, she had to stop due to auto-immune reactions.
This is admittedly an unnatural criticism. We're not supposed to be allergic to everything, it's something else in the environment doing this to us. In the state of nature everybody would be fine eating more plants.
This further applies to feeding children. Tree nuts and peanuts are undoubtedly good sources of protein to feed your children. They're not perfect, but they're good. However, if a single child in your kid's school is allergic to tree nuts or peanuts, then you cannot include it in your kid's lunch box. This is a problem, as it is common sense that kids have higher relative protein needs than adults.
2)
Work-related meals when travelling for business or social reasons. When you travel for your company or your university, you will go out to breakfast/lunch/dinner with others. The food is not the purpose of these meals, the networking is. Right now most American restaurants will cater to veganism, it's more widely accepted there, but if you're traveling in Europe or Southeast Asia you will have a harder time. You should eat what's available and not lecture everybody else on their food choices. You should not rule out the restaurant options favored by the most important in the group to suit your own needs. Networking and socializing has to the priority here.
It is also the case that when you are visiting family, or going to a wedding, etc, that you should not impose your dietary requirements on people. I regularly cook for people and I don't mind. But other people will mind as it can be annoying. Recently I organized a dinner party where one vegan was going to attend, and one person who can't handle spicy foods. The combination of those two factors actually made it very difficult for me to prepare me a meal plan. Other people would have had a harder time.
3)
Related to point #1, the cluster of gluten intolerance (similar to point #1). Theoretically this should not be a problem as potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, quinoa, etc are excellent sources of starch that can replace gluten. In practice, particularly for restaurant eating, a lot of vegan options are gluten-heavy. This is obviously hard for people with coeliac's disease. A study from 2017 shows that a lot of non-coeliac's claiming to be allergic to gluten are actually allergic to fructans. The result is the same however, they need to avoid a lot grain sources that dominate the vegan food supply.
4)
Vitamin B12 / Cyanobalamin issues. In our modern economy, fruits and vegetables are heavily sterilized (due to other reasons) and thus vegans cannot get vitamin B12 unless they consume small amounts of animal products or take supplements. The issue with the supplements is first and foremost that the dosages of B-vitamins are not worked out. For example if you look at this supplement here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bronson-Vitamin-Sustained-Release-Non-GMO/dp/B0006ZNFKQ/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1523021966&sr=1-2-spons&keywords=vitamin+B12&th=1
Which is the first link for vitamin B12 on Amazon, it gives you 42,000 % of your recommended intake of B12. A vegan might take this to replace what he's not getting from meat, but that's retarded. It's an excess amount and likely to lead to poisoning. Recent studies have shown that megadosing B-vitamins actually increases cancer rates.
Separately, for whatever reason the vitamin B12 given in supplements is often a synthetic B12 called Cyanobalamin. It's a different molecule that behaves slightly differently than the real B12 found in meat, that the human body prefers. A friend of mine actually thought that she was gluten-intolerant, she lectured a lot of people on the evils of bread. It turned out that she was actually allergic to cyanobalamin, which is added to wheat products in the United States as a fortifier.
Vegans can get around this problem by consuming modest amounts of animal products. They'll still be ethical.
5)
The low quality of nut milks. A lot of vegans replace dairy in their diet (which is a major part of western cooking) with nut milks like soy milk, cashew milk, almond milk, etc. In the long-term this is great for civilization I think, but in the short term there are a lot of problems.
First of all, nearly all of them have added sugar, tons and tons of added sugar. You can get around that by finding the 1% of nut milks that don't have added sugar, which in supermarkets is usually the variety most likely to be sold out. But secondly, these nut milks have fortifiers to allow them to nutritionally compete with cow's milk.
For example, nearly all nut milks have added vitamin D, they can then claim that they have as much vitamin D in them as cow's milk. But they don't. The vitamin D in cow's milk is vitamin D3, which is healthy for humans. The vitamin D in nut milks which is added as a fortifier is vitamin D2, which is lower cost than vitamin D3, but toxic for humans. Studies have shown that vitamin D2 supplementation actually increases mortality rates relative to no supplementation. Similarly nut milks contain lesser added micronutrients such as vitamin A acetate. The vitamin A in cow's milk is not vitamin A acetate, it's retinol, one of the best forms of vitamin A. And so on for the other added micronutrients.
6)
The low quality of soy in the United States (and elsewhere?). Soy is in principle a good source of protein and other nutrients for vegans and pretty much everybody actually. However, the quality is lowered in the USA due to the demands of mass industrial agriculture. Furthermore, a lot of the health benefits associated with soy are from studies of East Asian populations, but they eat a different kind of soy. The soy eaten in Southeast Asia is usually fermented soy, whereas soy sold in North America is not usually fermented. That changes the quality of the foods, and thus the insights learned from healthy soy-eating populations in south east Asia don't apply.
As with some of the other problems, this one is cultural and not intrinsic. If a westerner made the effort to eat more fermented rather than unfermented soy than he should get a lot more mileage.
7)
Vegetarianism and veganism are linked to depression:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliceg...ed-to-depression-study-suggests/#4edc3ad71e89
This is a relatively new finding from the past few years, which we should be weary of over interpreting as it's an association which does not prove causality.
It may be due to unrelated psychosocial stress factors that this demographic is prone to, a deficit of omega 3 fatty acids that can be alleviated by modest consumption of fish, or an excess of carbs which will happen automatically on a western vegan diet. The latter can be alleviated by emphasizing nuts and seeds such as flax, hemp, chia, etc.
8)
Too many carbohydrates may be bad for the brain and central nervous system (ties into point #7).
Our culture discusses fats and carbs purely in terms of what it does to body composition, but brain health is actually more important. There's more and more research linking excess carbohydrate consumption to brain problems, for example this article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769828/
Another recent study estimated that the ideal diet for the brain was one of around ~40% carbohydrates, compared to the western norm of 60% that is low. That will be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve with a vegan diet.
A vegan diet without careful planning will be a high-carb diet. It's possible for a vegan to consume more fats, but it will take careful planning.
9)
Veganism may be impossible for many people with epilepsy (ties into point #7, 8).
One of the most effective treatments for epilepsy is a ketogenic diet. This reduces or eliminates seizures and does so in a manner separate from that of pharmaceuticals, which sometimes work and sometimes don't. If you want to be healthy on a ketogenic diet, you almost definitely need animal products.
10)
All vegans go bald.
Just kidding lol. There is no research at this time that would allow one to ascertain which diet is best for hair.
