Can a Vegan Diet Be Healthy? A Literature Review

https://www.erichgrunewald.com/posts/can-a-vegan-diet-be-healthy-a-literature-review/

by erwald • 5 years ago

54 143 5 years ago

Any diet can be healthy as long as you hit your micronutrient targets for your age and sex and keep calories at your tdee if you want to maintain or slightly lower if you want to lose weight.

aaron695• 5 years ago

This is exactly it.

For the ultra poor we need to get them the wealth for animal products for the micro-nutrients. It's too difficult to get them on supplements (exactly like vegans and B12)

Then it's about satiation, satiety and palatability.

317070• 5 years ago

My rule of thumb: when there are whole civilizations that exist on a diet, you will be okay.

In this case the Jain are a prime example.

nsomaru• 5 years ago

Jainas are not necessarily vegans.

Although the nation of India checks out for vegetarianism. One wonders what that collective moment of culture was that a whole group of people decided that meat eating was not going to be a part of their lifestyle.

lazyninja9874• 5 years ago

The usual reason behind being vegeterianism in india is mostly spiritual or family tradition.

Giving up Tamas food (meat, garlic, onion etc.,) is the first set of rules to follow on a spiritual journey.

once a family starts on this path, the behavior permeates to next generation automatically.

even though my family allowed me to eat meat, i started & stopped within a year because of ethical reasons (and not spiritual reasons).

beforeolives• 5 years ago

when there are whole civilizations that exist on a diet, you will be okay.

If okay = "survive long enough to leave offspring", then yes. However, health and quality of life are a lot more complicated than survival, that's why we look deeper into the science instead of using these rules of thumb.

bawolff• 5 years ago

Okay = survive long enough to leave offsprung, and be strong enough not to be murdered by your neighbours.

Of course there is more to healthiness thsn that and science is important, but as far the rule of thumb goes, the second part is important.

incrudible7• 5 years ago

A truly vegan society would eventually go extinct if they didn't supplement with B12. To my knowledge, this isn't possible without modern technology.

It can take many years for freshly minted vegans to have their stores of essential nutrients depleted, so they may in fact reproduce successfully for one generation, but in the long run severe malnutrition is inevitable.

denhaus• 5 years ago

quite the opposite diet can be claimed by the inuit. more, the most powerful civilization in the world, the US, has objectively one of the worst diets in history.

hillsideduck• 5 years ago

"more, the most powerful civilization in the world, the US, has objectively one of the worst diets in history."

The diets in the US have gotten worse in recent decades (way more processed foods especially) and the US is objectively facing the ramifications of those diets. That doesn't make them any less powerful but this discussion was actually about health and I think in this regard it paints a clear picture that this is not the way to go.

isitdopamine3• 5 years ago

Jain can drink milk and eat dairies, which are a good source of B12.

One of the major criticisms of a vegan diet is the a almost complete lack of B12.

Hitton3• 5 years ago

Using such rule of thumb would let one believe that cannibalism is ok as part of diet because Fore people practised it for generations. We of course know now that it caused spread of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease among them with incubation period on average longer than 10 years. There even appeared mutation among them which granted immunity to it.

samatman3• 5 years ago

What a bizarre and irrelevant thing to say.

Cannibalism, nutritionally speaking, is perfectly healthy, if you stick to muscle meats. Eating the brain of prion-infested sheep can kill you just as thoroughly as the brain of prion-infested humans.

We don't practice cannibalism for other reasons...

belgian_guy• 5 years ago

Counterpoint: there's a whole civilization on the western/USA diet, which has been shown to not be that great for your health (see e.g. obesity rates).

arcturus173• 5 years ago

Counterpoint to your counterpoint, there are also whole civilizations in the Western world, for ex, the peoples of Southern Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Greece) who are total omnivores and boast some of the highest life expectancy rates in the whole world. They don't eat a magical "Mediterranean" diet or other such nonsense: most people will eat a wide variety of things, from vegetables, to fatty processed foods like cheese and sausage.

My point is I don't think there is a single "Western" diet with distinct health outcomes (just like the "Mediterranean" diet is also a myth).

leadingthenet4• 5 years ago

Jainism is completely different to veganism, so unsure what point you’re trying to make here.

incrudible7• 5 years ago

To my knowledge, there is not a single tribe known to survive on a truly vegan diet for any extended period of time (several generations).

Jains are generally vegetarians, not vegans. There may be some anecdotes that some Jains did live off truly vegan diets, but then again there are anecdotes of people living off sunshine. Neither are plausible.

indy• 5 years ago

Fingers crossed that Betteridge's law doesn't apply in this case.

adam_klein• 5 years ago

Probably the most comprehensive review of medical research papers and literature related to vegan/plant-based diet: https://nutritionfacts.org

sleavey4• 5 years ago

Ctrl+F "B12". Here's a quoted reference from the article:

[V]egans exhibited a higher estimated prevalence of inadequacies for some nutrients, in particular vitamin B12 (69.9% in men and 83.4% in women <55 years of age), compared to meat-eaters. […] Our study highlighted that, overall, self-reported vegetarians and vegans may meet nutritional recommendations.

Those numbers are crazy high. I am not an expert in any of this, so take this with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I wonder if a vegan diet can be considered healthy without supplements given the current range of available non-animal B12 sources. I think there are some algae sources but I'm not sure you can get enough B12 without getting too much of something else. There's also the question of how efficiently you absorb the nutrients in the food; I heard it's harder to absorb B12 from algae than from cheese for example. Happy to be shown evidence for or against...

Bancakes• 5 years ago

It's not just veganism. I have incredibly low vitamin D because I've been sitting at home in closed curtains for the past year. My doctor warned me I'd get impaired vision like this since sunlight releases valuable hormones in the eyes (or something).

What I'm trying to say is that I believe it be important to calculate your diet and not count on accidental vitamin intake from meats.

j0ej0ej0e• 5 years ago

I believe it be important to calculate your diet and not count on accidental vitamin intake from meats.

Absolutely, I only actually bothered trying to figure that out when I stopped meat myself, as I knew I wouldn't be getting everything I was meant to (even though I knew I probably wasn't healthy in the first place).

That shit is difficult to figure out, trying to cover everything recommended nutritional intake for a day feels near impossible.

leadingthenet4• 5 years ago

Vitamin B12 =/= Vitamin D

One is dependent on dietary choices, the other is not.

doomrobo• 5 years ago

There's B12 in nutritional yeast. One serving of Bragg's is something like 600% DV of B12

sleavey4• 5 years ago

I hadn't heard that before so I looked on Wikipedia [1] where it states the B12 in nutritional yeast is actually added by the manufacturer.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritional_yeast

jfengel3• 5 years ago

Heck, there's B12 in beer. Not a whole lot (you'd need a case to get an entire day's supply), but just one beer can be part of a diet that gets you all the nutrients.

meowface• 5 years ago

As a life-long vegetarian, I noticed significant and permanent health, mood, and cognition benefits once I started supplementing vitamin B, vitamin D3, and omega-3 fatty acids (from algae) daily.

pts_• 5 years ago

I have noticed cheese lifts my mood often.

zeristor2• 5 years ago

Interesting question, set me to wondering how other primates get vitamin B12, turns out Gorillas voraciously eat Termites:

http://gorillaprotein.com/2010/01/07/where-do-gorillas-get-t...

sleavey4• 5 years ago

Wow, interesting! That reminds me of something I vaguely remember reading, that cows get some essential nutrients from accidentally eating insects and soil on grass. Yet another important aspect insects play in ecosystems.

11235813213455• 5 years ago

Interesting, since many years I eat like a monkey (mostly fruits and some plants) + rice complement sometimes. And I turned to very local food (either foraged or a local producer), I eat small bugs, insects, slugs, ants, ... not really intentionally (I try to filter as much as possible), but it's just hard to avoid, and it doesn't really affect taste and as you say, they're marvelous nutrients in the end. Similarly, I tend to eat the most of fruits, their skin, etc.. and I can really feel a difference with standard shiny supermarket fruits/legumes, they are so less "nutritive"

It also reminds me of bears, they're often portrayed as honey-hunters, but in the end they are likely most interested by eating bees and larvae as well

chmod600• 5 years ago

As far as I can tell (non-expert), B12 supplements are basically required for healthy veganism. Humans don't have the hardware that, e.g. cows have.

Does anyone say differently?

sleavey4• 5 years ago

If supplements are basically required, then perhaps when vegan diets are "marketed" on blogs, TV shows and whatnot they should show a bottle of pills alongside the fresh fruit and veg! That part seems to often get hidden away, and I wonder if it would make people stop and assess the diet a little more and decide if they're happy to supplement. And this "mismarketing" doesn't apply just to vegan diets of course, but to any diet that lacks the right balance of nutrients.

ellimilial• 5 years ago

Hardware in this case being able to host relevant bacteria / archea earlier in their digestive tract.

sdoering2• 5 years ago

You are right. A lot of plant based sources are not going to provide enough B12.

I am not a vegan nor vegetarian, though in the summer I mostly love plant based.

From personal interest some time ago I was looking for plant based alternative sources and stumbled (next to others) onto [1].

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10794633/

zeristor2• 5 years ago

Interesting bit about the possibility of B12 probiotics, I am not a medical Doctor, but the article is fairly tentative.

https://www.b12-vitamin.com/gut-bacteria/

kristopolous• 5 years ago

That number doesn't have a comparison with non vegans so I went to the source. Open access

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/9/9/1023/htm

Page 11.

The B12 delta is the most dramatic but some nutrients fall in the vegans favor (eg Vitamin E and Magnesium). It's kind of a mixed bag.

So the takeaway is quite boring: monitor your consumption regardless of dietary identity

yesenadam2• 5 years ago

Vegan for 30 years here. I've never really worried about diet at all, except I guess reading about it a bit in the very beginning. Last medical checkup I got, levels of everything were fine.

B12 is added as a supplement to soy milk and some other vegetarian stuff (here in Australia, at least, and I assume elsewhere), so I've never needed to worry about that.

Daho0n3• 5 years ago

Most don't worry and it isn't A Good Thing. Most vegans need more B12 than they get. It really does require bloodwork at a doctor more often to eat, let's call it, outside the norm. Otherwise it could cause problems.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32769530/

girvo2• 5 years ago

Huh that explains why my B12 levels are fine then, I guess (as of two months ago anyway). I live for soy milk (vegan, Aussie)

dignick• 5 years ago

I think it’s important to note that due to soil deficiencies (because of intensive farming) and factory farming, 90% [1] of B12 supplements are given to livestock. Regardless of your diet it’s good to make sure you are getting everything you need and are not deficient in anything. I think veganism raises awareness of that fact. [1] https://baltimorepostexaminer.com/carnivores-need-vitamin-b1...

samblr3• 5 years ago

> B12.. So take this with a healthy dose of skepticism

Absolutely this.

Meat is so highly nutritionally dense - vegans you have no clue.

I was a vegan for 20 years of my life. I thought it was env friendly, ethical, bla-bla-bla and had my mum as a company at home while growing up in this seriously flawed cult.

And then I figured that I was not only b12 border line deficient but also in other b-vitamins. And the list continued to Iron, zinc etc. As a vegan you can still get most vitamins other than the most important b12. Even if you can get other vitamins from vegan, you will have to eat a lot to get the same nutrients as in a simple steak!

Since turning into meat, my life has gotten 10 times better probably. Although I prefer to prepare it at home only and have it just once/twice a month.

rewq43214• 5 years ago

I thought it was env friendly

It is.[0][1]

And then I figured that I was not only b12 border line deficient

You "figured" that you were deficient? Were you supplementing B12, or eating fortified foods (e.g. most soy milk brands)?

Even if you can get other vitamins from vegan, you will have to eat a lot to get the same nutrients as in a simple steak!

No, you just need to eat a normal amount, calorically speaking, and make sure you supplement B12 (and vitamin D if you don't get enough sun).

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local

moby_click3• 5 years ago

https://veganhealth.org/vitamin-b12/ has pretty much everything one needs to know about B12. It's worth a read in general, but especially important for vegans. Teasing the crucial part: Relying on 100% RDA of B12 from a daily multivatimin will get you in trouble because that likely exceeds the capacity of your transport proteins in a single dose. For the less efficient "unassisted" absorption, you need to dose a lot higher.

rewq43214• 5 years ago

Basically all B12 supplement brands know this (it's their job) and so they have something like 2000% RDI (or whatever) to account for it.

henearkr2• 5 years ago

As I said in another comment, shiitake mushrooms are an excellent source of B12.

Moreover it's the same form of B12 as found in beef, liver, fish, etc, so you have no worries of bioavailability.

sdoering2• 5 years ago

From the first glance at the title I expected a worse article.

But actually it was unexpectedly non partisan. It read like a good and readable literary review. My SO studied nutritional science (actually Ecotrophology) and I gained quite some insights by reading lots of the studies directly. A lot of them I recognized in this article.

throw8932894• 5 years ago

Fasting (AKA not eating anything for 40 days) can be healthy. The real question is: Is it sustainable, even in edge cases like childhood or pregnancy?

Even rural chinese sustained on rice and salt, need a chicken once a week.

leadingthenet4• 5 years ago

Fasting is healthy.

Eating only carbs like rice, isn’t.

lazyninja9874• 5 years ago

usually intermittent fasting is best, and the edge cases are not required to do fasting for obvious reasons.

i used to follow 2 day per month fasting, and it serves me well.

helsinkiandrew• 5 years ago

I’ve been a vegan for 35 years and although I think it’s more healthy. It’s likely the biggest health benefit that someone would get going vegan in the past would be that most processed ‘crap’ food is not vegan and you are forced to make healthier choices.

I find it annoying that the rise in veganism means there are far more bad choices I can make: big chain burgers, ready meals, cakes, cheesy pizzas are all now available to me.

shlant10• 5 years ago

the double edged sword of having exciting new food options but missing the willpower to enjoy in moderation! haha

lazyninja9874• 5 years ago

absolutely right. i am in india and my entire extended family is vegeterian.

But people still consume deep-fried unhealthy foods, and with the dawn of global food chains offering veg options, the problem amplifies.

Being veg alone does not guarantee health, consuming healthy food in moderation should be priority.

On the other hand, situation for meat eaters is worse. zero standards for meat quality, rat meat served in place of chicken. its a nightmare.

signal11• 5 years ago

Vegetarian Indian food is very tasty and also potentially very carb-rich if you don’t watch out — especially the parathas / pooris. Or the large amounts of rice many consume vs their exercise levels.

The sugary tea many consume, often multiple times a day, is also a problem — to be clear the sugar is the problem, not the tea. And then there’s Indian sweets and a national love of biscuits (en-GB not en-US) and fried snacks.

dgellow2• 5 years ago

rat meat served in place of chicken.

Wait, what?!

freddie_mercury• 5 years ago

Unfortunately we've seen the same trend with low-fat, Atkins, keto, etc.

All of them are probably fine in that they, at first, forced you to avoid all the processed crap. But eventually it became too profitable a segment to ignore for the food industry and suddenly it is easy to eat 5,000 calories a day of keto desserts.

incrudible7• 5 years ago

It's not as easy to consume excess calories with fats/protein as it is with simple carbs. These are quickly processed, spike your blood sugar, cause insulin overload, which in turns lowers your blood sugar to the point where you're hungry again.

Fats/protein take longer to process and are more satiating. That's not to say you couldn't consume 5,000 calories of them in one sitting, but you wouldn't be hungry again any time soon.

wdb2• 5 years ago

I have been receiving vegan recipes from Riverford Organic Farmers but they start to get boring. That's my main pet peeve of it. Not sure it's just the Riverford Recipe boxes or in general. Maybe the problem I am not a huge fan of Quinoa or lentils that keep having in the recipes.

AussieWog932• 5 years ago

I'm not vegan, but there are heaps of great vegetarian/vegan recipes from the Indian cuisine.

This is a great site full of Indian recipes: https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/

jfengel3• 5 years ago

If you're interested in Indian cooking from an American nerdy point of view, you might like this book:

https://www.priyakrishna.me/indianish

It's her mother's recipes, living in the US. It breaks down Indian cooking into a literal flowchart, giving you a lot of options for creativity. It's not a "vegan cookbook"; it's just that the don't happen to use animal products. (There's even a couple of meat recipes, in fact. Oddly, no paneer, either, though adding pressed tofu to a lot of the recipes is a good way to stretch them and complement the flavors.)

It's also pretty heavy on the lentils, but you might find the Indian way of looking at lentils to be a lot more tasty (and a lot more variety) than "just a pot full of cooked beans". The keys are (a) pickles and chutneys, mixed and matched, and (b) the "chhonk", basically cooking spices in oil and adding it at the last minute. Between the two there's a ton of room for improvisation and different flavor profiles.

nabla9• 5 years ago

"chips-beer vegan" is a brand new category of eating unhealthy.

shlant10• 5 years ago

I had a friend once who tried going "vegan" for a few weeks and eventually gave up because he said he felt like shit. His "vegan" diet? mostly coffee and cigarettes..

zhengiszen• 5 years ago

Don't forget your health capital (meat and milk) at early age... I don't think we can recommend a vegan diet for toddlers and babies...

ggm• 5 years ago

Osteopenea and osteoporosis are huge concerns for young women. Bone demineralisation post menopause comes off the strong bones laid down in youth. If you come off a low base it's higher risk.

Twenty or more years hence problem

o04• 5 years ago

I have been vegan for 6 months now and have seen remarkable health improvements, all verified by lab testing.

It has been very amusing having long discussions with my cardiologist trying to explain to him the changes I did as he could not believe the data he was getting.

david-gpu• 5 years ago

Are you consuming largely unprocessed foods with adequate fiber now? Were you in the past?

isitdopamine3• 5 years ago

That’s very good, I am glad your health improved.

However 1) correlation does not mean causation, less so with one data point 2) people who radically change their diet often do some other lifestyle change out of the same concerns.

For instance is not uncommon to switch diet and start exercising at the same time, or switching to a more regalar sleep schedule. Did you?

o04• 5 years ago

Yes, of course the correlation/causation issue is true as always. I am sorry if I gave the impression of presenting a study or meta analysis. Not sure I understand what I did wrong (English is my second language), it was meant to be perceived as an anecdote.

I think any change you make will feed into changing other things about you.

In my case I changed only diet. This in turn changed me so that I could move more. Both of those things changed how I sleep. Which again feeds back into new changes about my mood and goals. I do not think I could have started with one of the other changes and end up here. Especially in my own circumstance.

hirundo3• 5 years ago

Yesterday marked six months that I have been > 99% carnivore. My labs also are greatly improved including putting my diabetes into remission, with blood glucose beneath prediabetic levels.

Perhaps our common benefits are as much from the foods that we no longer eat as from those we do eat.

I was raw vegan for six months a decade ago. I bounced off of that with health problems including brain fog at that point. At the moment carnivory feels more sustainable to me. Possibly the "raw" part is a difference between our experiences.

o04• 5 years ago

Great to hear you are healthier.

Yes I would bet just being deliberate and having a philosophy will have an impact.

Doing labwork regularly is a good tool. There are so many things that can be monitored that gives you data to supplement your self-reported feelings.

(being raw vegan can not have been fun)

im3w1l3• 5 years ago

Can it be healthy? Yes. Is it healthy by default, is it typically healthy? Not really.

shlant10• 5 years ago

what does "by default" and "typically" mean?

im3w1l3• 5 years ago

That if you just start eating vegan stuff without doing a lot of research you will do it wrong.

jackbrookes• 5 years ago

Same as a typical western diet then?

yakkomajuri• 5 years ago

A few noticeable (and non-scientific!) points from someone who's dabbled with both sides over the last year (spent ~1/3 of the year as a vegetarian/vegan):

- I eat a lot more fruits, salad, and vegetables as a vegan (duh!)

- The diversity of the food I eat _increases_ as a vegan (even though there are less options to eat)

- I do feel the need to supplement protein (which I hate to do and stay away from when non-vegan)

- I also supplement B12 as a vegan

rewq43214• 5 years ago

+1 to the food diversity point. I've never felt the need to supplement protein, but I've always been a big peanut butter eater, that probably helps. I've also really started enjoying tofu and tempeh recently.

qudchewer• 5 years ago

I've seen my mother and father dwindle in health while following a 'Whole Food Plant Based Diet' over the last five years. They followed it to a T, going to see Campbell more than once. They have both suffered G.I. issues, connective tissue problems. My mother's osteoporosis is now bordering life threatening. Once fish and dairy were re-introduced, they got better. The level of zealotry made it difficult to talk to them about their condition.

AussieWog932• 5 years ago

Pleasantly surprised to see a health-related article written by a vegan where a genuine, honest effort is made to explain scientifically what the actual benefits and risks are, and what the actual flaws are in various vegan/non-vegan diets.

franciscop• 5 years ago

The author notes it well:

In Western studies, vegans had lower body mass index, lesser waist circumference, reduced blood sugar levels, lower low-density lipoprotein (protein that transfer lipids around the body; fats are a kind of lipid) cholesterol (a type of lipid), less body fat & lower blood pressure than omnivores.

My question is, do the studies shown account for body weight? Sure if you are comparing your average USA citizen (40.0% of which are obese) to a group that happens to be fit, you are definitely going to have much better outcome of the later.

First part of the question would be, does veganism help with obesity? Or is it just correlated to it for other reasons? Conjecture: it seems no surprise that people who spend a significant amount of time worrying about their diet have on average much better BMI, but maybe the diet itself also helps.

Second part would be, when adjusting for BMI, does veganism also show these benefits? Or are they benefits related only to BMI? There seem to be no separation of the benefits of being vegan vs the benefits of being fit when the health outcome is being discussed.

arcturus173• 5 years ago

My question to add to yours is: do those metrics really signal you are healthier beyond a certain threshold?

I have no trouble believing that vegans have on average fairly lower BMI and bodyfat than omnivores. I eat a fairly well-balanced omnivore diet, I lift heavy, and I hover anywhere between 13-18% BF. My BMI is quite high because of lifting, and sometimes I'll allow my BF to rise to a certain point if I want to meet particular strength goals. But I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't feel any healthier at 13% than at 15% BF, and I am not aware of any science that supports that. So what if a vegan is two points of BF leaner?

An outcome-based perspective is much more useful. Do they live longer, and by how much?

Also, I'm always wary about definitions and confounding factors in these analyses. One could eat very poorly as a vegan (lots of processed vegetable oils, etc.) but on average they probably eat in a much more health-conscious manner. "Omnivores" as a category will tend to lump in people on bologna sandwich and pepsi diets with people who eat mostly unprocessed foods, watch their energy balance and macros, etc.

Are there any studies that compare vegans with health-focused omnivores?

BlargMcLarg2• 5 years ago

These studies almost always compare typical western diet omnivores to health-conscious vegans, which in itself is fallacious. Health-conscious omnivores will eat drastically different compared to typical omnivores. Exactly as you put it, people who care for their diet are likely to be of better shape. BMI is a bad stat here though: it is likely one will get bigger from eating proper meat than they would on a vegan diet, without any training involved. BMI doesn't account for leanness or muscle mass.

The biggest link between obesity and food is sugar intake. The thing that's making most omnivores fat is the needless sugar flavoring and breading surrounding a bad piece of food (be it vegetable, meat, fish, fruit, whatever) as something delicious. Nutritional sciences contradicts itself at any corner, finding healthy vegans, healthy vegetarians, healthy carnivores and healthy omnivores, except for the part where sugar is undoubtedly spiking insulin. Insulin in turn sets people up to be more easily overeat, as well as storing all those sugars as fat more easily.

Considering health-conscious people will avoid these foods, they will eat less isolated sugar, fructose and foods high on the glycemic index, even if vegans end up getting most of their daily energy from fruit. Fruit offsets this somewhat thanks to the fiber you're eating with it (also why people say not to drink juice, or at least drink the pulp with it), but fiber can only do so much and fiber being a "mostly good" thing is also being put under scrutiny.

dgellow2• 5 years ago

Maybe a good place to ask vegetarians and vegans: how do you know if your diet is healthy?

I'm myself eating vegetarian since 2016 with no issues. But I never check if my food is balanced and wouldn't know if I would be missing some proteins or nutriments.

Do you check your blood regularly, or do you have other approaches to ensure that you have an adequate diet?

noth1• 5 years ago

Can someone disapprove me, as i think we have some bacteria in our bowels that consume carbs and produce majority of amino acids, so in the end our basic requirement for proteins are satisfied.

As someone who grow up in rural russia in 90s, meet was a rare usually on holidays/birthday, and i believe i grow up perfectly healthy, ofc it's a fallacy to look at personal experience, but even tho.

moby_click3• 5 years ago

As their name implies, carbohydrates consist of carbon and water (hydrogen and oxygen), hydrated carbon. Amino acids need at least nitrogen in addition, which in our digestive tract is probably already most abundantly found in amino acids. The microbiome does consume carbohydrates though, mostly those that are inaccessible to our digestive system.

I'm not an expert on this, but my guess is that by mass their most important products for us are short chain fatty acids. They might assist in breaking down some proteins that we lack enzymes for or modifying amino acids, but the absorption of amino acids happens mostly in earlier sections of our intestines, whereas the microbial biomass and activity increases towards the later stages of the gut.

henearkr2• 5 years ago

Many many comments here overlook that there are very good natural and vegan sources of B12:

Shiitake mushrooms are an excellent source of B12 (and it's in the same form as the B12 from beef, liver, or fish, so it has a very good bioavailability). It's not widely known even by vegans.

For both vegans and omnivores, the easiest way to keep an adequate level of B12 is with supplements. Omnivores have them fed to their steaks/cheese/milk during intensive farming.

The best of best B12 supplement is hydroxycobalamin, if you can find it in sublingual tablets (it's not readily available in every countries, but you can import it).

sleepysysadmin• 5 years ago

Im not a vegan, but it absolutely can be healthy. They say 84% of vegans return to meat. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/20141...

But this is because they aren't following a healthy approach. Moreover, unfortunately there we found out that there are basically no non-meat sources of B12. Except for the original bacteria. There were some almost-b12 options people were trying but failed. So even if you supplement b12, it's likely to be sourced via a meat source.

Worse yet, B12 isnt the only problem. There are 3 others that vegans often dont get in their diet because to get enough would require ungodly amounts of rather unusual foods like flaxseed or seaweed. Like how much can you really eat of those?

That said, there is a valid path of veganism. You can find the proper nutrition. You have to thoroughly investigate how to do it but you can.

Can a Vegan Diet Be Healthy? A Literature Review

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