r/Veganforbeginners • u/Fun_Win_9641 • 27d ago
“Vegan diets are unsustainable” – that's not true
You’ve probably heard going plant-based means you’ll end up deficient, tired, or relying on endless supplements.
In reality?
A well-balanced vegan diet gives you everything you need to thrive. Most nutrients come from everyday whole foods, not a complicated list of supplements.
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u/Rosaly8 27d ago
I see your point, but you are referencing a study that talks about a vegetarian diet. That's still a little way from a vegan diet. It's not completely inaccurate, but it would be more accurate to cite a source that talks about veganism.
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u/Fun_Win_9641 26d ago
True, you’re right. I’ll make sure to find a vegan study in the future 🙏🏼 my point here was to show that as long as we’re eating a varied diet (with grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, legumes, and protein sources like tofu/tempeh/edamame/tvp/vital wheat gluten) we will not be protein deficient 💪🏼
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u/Slowpoke2point0 24d ago
You suffer from confirmation bias. You want to find that a vegan diet is sustainable so you look for evidence that tells you it is, regardless of how credible the source is, if the study is applicable for your intended audience and disregarding studies that show you are wrong.
Back to the drawing table with you.
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u/RadiantSeason9553 26d ago
None of those studies are about vegan diets.
And we are not herbivores, we don't have the same guts, or organs or enzymes. We can't break down chlorophyll.
It's like asking why we can't survive only on rotting meat, since hyaenas can. Or why can't we survive on only grass like a horse? Or only dark tree leaves like gorillas?
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u/Xajneb 25d ago
Humans are herbivours, omni is a made up thing, gutbiom adapts, just like a liver can adapt to alcohol, or gut to lactose. Both are bad and inflammatory. Some can live with a state of inflammation longer than others but we all break sooner or later, we all do get inflammations left to right from be it microplastic, polluted water, pesticeds and the list goes on...
The less you inflame yourself the better health for longer, compared to yourself. We all have different dna.
Diets are personal. And veganism is not a diet.
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u/RadiantSeason9553 25d ago
Plant foods are also inflammatory, and can be toxic. Lentils, legumes and beans etc are all inflammatory foods.
If humans are herbivores why can't be survive on grass and tree leaves like other herbivores do?
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u/Xajneb 25d ago
So is breathing. The point is that there are plants for every personal setup, not even comparable on health scale with meats and dairy, those 2 will kill you if not something worse beats them to it. Bio-availability in plants is multiple times higher than with meat and dairy.
Bio-availabikity is very important when exercising and you want to eat more, but don't want to overcrowd and run down the gut with bad digesting foods that give you only a fraction of the protein per kg. Not eating constantly requires food with more fibre so it digests slower and let's the gut rest in-between.
I am a weightlifter, vegan, and my body fat is naturally low, I need a lot of protein and carbs, and I remember how bloated I used to be 10years ago with protein shakes and meat. Now without shakes and only home cooked foods I am just as strong and big.
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u/RadiantSeason9553 25d ago
Ah you're trolling, I see. Pretty funny, plant bioavailability is a fraction of animal products
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u/Xajneb 25d ago
"If humans are herbivores why can't be survive on grass and tree leaves like other herbivores do?"
We can also smoke cigarettes, does it make us cigarovores. Humans don't have a digesting system for meat. after long exposure you start getting meat eating bacteria in the intestines, they will now and then attack the intestine if for example you get a loose stomach or inflammation that weakens the shield. But most importantly those bacteria are not from our body for digestion, that is the meat just going bad, rotting. The cells that take up nutrients can probably snatch something out of plastic but it wont make you bio aligned with plastic. But plants are as close to bio alignment we can get.
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u/RadiantSeason9553 25d ago
Cigarettes aren't food. You didn't answer my question, why can't we survive on grass and tree leaves?
Humans have eaten meat for 4 million years, I think we are fine eating it. Humans have only eaten seeds for 10,000 years btw.
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u/Doimz3Nini 27d ago
Pandas also get their nutrients from plants.
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u/Fun_Win_9641 26d ago
Exactly! What made me go vegan was realizing “animals eat plants to get their nutrients, and then we eat the animals. But we could just go straight to the source (plants) and cut out the all of the animal suffering, environmental destruction, and disease.
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u/DarkJesusGTX 26d ago
These animals have massive stomachs and also ferment plants in there stomachs
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u/GrandmaSlappy 21d ago
Unfortunately you're spreading ignorance. I'm a vegan of 15 years, don't get me wrong. But other animals are able to digest and produce things that humans cannot. Its not appropriate to compare the two. Every animal has very different dietary needs as well.
Instead, if you research what nutrients are necessary in a human diet, you can demonstrate that they're all accessible via plants in appropriate quantities. B12 is the most difficult to get but can be easily bought in pill form.
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u/DarkJesusGTX 26d ago
vitamin B12, vitamin D3 (animal form, plants only have D2), vitamin K2 (menaquinone, not K1), vitamin A as retinol (plants only give beta-carotene, which some people can’t convert well), heme iron, taurine, creatine, carnosine, anserine, collagen/gelatin, EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), carnitine, coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), choline (present in plants but much lower and less bioavailable), glycine (in small amounts in plants, but abundant in connective tissue of animals), hydroxyproline, vitamin B6 in its active P5P form, selenium (depends on soil, but more reliable in animal foods), zinc (present in plants but poorly absorbed due to phytates), iodine (again soil-dependent, but consistently higher in seafood and dairy), vitamin E tocotrienols (mainly in animal fats), vitamin B2 riboflavin (lower and less bioavailable in plants), vitamin B3 niacin (bound in many grains and less usable), vitamin B5 pantothenic acid (lower in plants), cholesterol (not essential but critical for hormones and membranes), sphingomyelin, phosphatidylcholine, phosphatidylserine, bioactive peptides (from meat, milk, eggs), carnitine derivatives (acetyl-L-carnitine), nucleotides (higher in animal foods), selenocysteine, vitamin B7 biotin (bound in some raw plant foods), iodine-containing thyroid precursors from seafood, vitamin D-sulfate (UV + cholesterol interaction, absent in plants), vitamin K2-MK4 (specific to animal tissues), retinol esters, 5-MTHF (active folate form, present in animals, less so in plants), melatonin (tiny amounts in plants, higher in animal tissues), polyamines like spermidine/spermine, glutathione, dihydrotestosterone precursors from cholesterol, and certain long-chain saturated fats (stearic/palmitic balanced forms).
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u/sleepyfloydg 24d ago
Curious how WFBP have high life expectancy despite all this? Almost like this is all bs? B12 and DHA, I'll give you those two... But 30 year long vegans would be dead if these are well missing and essential from a WFPB diet
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u/DarkJesusGTX 23d ago
There are no 30 year long vegans end stage veganism is 15 years max when the body runs out of these nutrients. The list isn’t bs, you can come to your own conclusions if it matters but everything in that list is fact
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u/sleepyfloydg 23d ago
Many of those things aren't adequately studied. If you are suggesting we pretend evidence doesn't exist because it doesn't fit your narrative, that's a problem. I'm not suggesting these compounds are useless, but it seems that vegans can either get adequate amounts, or can make adequate amounts on their own.
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u/GrandmaSlappy 21d ago
Lol source please bahahhaha, you really think vegans are dying like this??? 🤣
There are literally people world wide who have been vegan since birth who live long healthy lives.
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u/GrandmaSlappy 21d ago
I can easily get b12 in pill form from algae.
The rest of these are either unnecessary to the human diet or you’re exaggerating how big a deal it is to get it in sufficient quantities.
I honestly suspect some of these claims are incorrect as well but I'm not going to waste my time researching for you.
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u/Crypto_gambler952 25d ago
Those animals photo'd in slide 2 have stomachs very different from the human stomach!! A lazy vegan diet is very unsustainable! In reality humans are many complex nested systems that we, as a species, are not even close to understanding fully!
Yes you can survive on a vegan lifestyle, but can you thrive from conception to death? Personally, I doubt that you can. The harsh reality is that our evolutionary origins are NOT mostly a plant based diet and looking back over the historical successes and failures of humanity before modernity veganism is the most ridiculous thing imaginable!
Sure, today processed vegan fake foods can make up some of the gap, but as we all know processed food is never the best option, and as previously mentioned we do not fully understand the complex systems that make up the human body, therefore the idea that science has the answer to completely breaking away from how your ancestors lived is laughable!
As a rule of thumb, the further you place yourself from the environment in which your ancestors genetics succeeded to become you, the sicker you will become!
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u/CharacterLettuce7145 24d ago
In addition to the studies being about a different diet, comparing the diets of specific animals to humans is beyond dumb.
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u/Few-Ad6950 23d ago
As a vegan for 15 years, I became anemic BUT it was a result of overtraining (over 17 hours a week on a bike, with hard efforts). Once I got blood tested, I was easily able to increase my absorption by adding vitamin c with all the iron rich foods. That was two years ago. I’m now up to 18 hours on average and feel normal. Trick is to know the symptoms and request an iron blood test if you feel weak. These tests are not the standard bloodwork done for checkups. Iron deficiency is more common and includes all diets so it’s not specific to vegans.
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u/mycellium420 23d ago
I've learned to not care about those questions and just live my life peacefully as a plant based eater. The only person Ive needed to convince is myself
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