What is the Veeky Forumsentific consensus on veganism?

/pol/ thinks smoking is bad for you too. Come up with a better fucking argument.

Ultimately though veganism isn't always a good idea, but it depends on the person and other factors in the person's life, like genes, exercise, and inherited disorders. Some vegans can get by pretty well. Others can't.

There are mixed reports. At least in my country, animal exports are a very big business and there are many campaigns and reports claiming the health benefits of certain types of meat.

Don't bother asking Veeky Forums It's one of the things that causes everybody to drop their critical thinking skills and act like dumb apes. Here is some science for you:

youtube.com/watch?v=30gEiweaAVQ

Note that the current state of nutritional science is absolutely dismal. You can go on something like examine.com and find contradictory science to most of this. Personally, when you have something like the plant-based diet, which is the only diet that has been shown to reverse heart disease in clinical trials, I find it hard to argue against.

It's good for you. Less resource intensive, too.

There are ways to do it without supplements, but given that a majority of americans are have at least one vitamin deficiency, there should be smarter supplement use across the population. I read a study that concluded that getting vitamins from fresh food results in higher absorption rates than from supplements; that should be the goal.

There can't be any consensus on something that would affect such large industries involving so much money.

want more science?
Try to find the papers yourself, or metastudies.

Red meat consumption has no effect on asian and european populations. It has negligible effect on american populations.

Processed meat is what hurts you. Can't be bothered to look it up, but you can find it easily.

Definitely detrimental to health but you can do whatevver man. If you force your children to be vegan you should definitely go to jail though

It's the future

Except for the fact that the WHO is almost certain that red meats are carcinogenic...

>smoking is bad for you
Tell me about how healthier is smoking for you user

There are hundreds of estudies showing the corelation between smokers and lung cancer.

>Veeky Forumsentific consensus
There never was, is, will be one.

>the only diet that has been shown to reverse heart disease in clinical trials
What's so impressive about this? The vegan propaganda may be seducing, but all it's doing is just dropping atherogenic lipoprotein concentrations to a level low enough to allow for regression. There's nothing really special about it and it's done with drugs all the time in clinical practice.

Also, chemotherapy can reverse cancer. Should everyone be on it by default? If your diet and lifestyle are healthy enough (i.e. just following guidelines by mainstream health authorities, which include animal products like fatty fish and skim milk), and your cholesterol is in range and you're without other major risk factors, you won't ever need to regress heart disease in the first place.

Why are you on a science board?

Humans have been eating meat for tens of thousands of years. It's a scientific fact that we're omnivorous. Without meat, you'll develop a number of health issues, including anemia, caused by vitamin B12 deficiency, which can only be obtained naturally via eating meat. If veganism was natural in humans, then vegans wouldn't need so many vitamin supplements. Simple as that.

Most of the time, these people aren't even doing it because it's supposedly healthier. They only do it because they have a moral superiority complex, hence all the "meat is murder" propaganda.

Thats the point, vegans don't say that is healthier or natural (some may say it and even more retarded things, but it's not the general idea)

Veganism is about life causing the less suffering to other life forms as you can.

So do the fucking study yourself.
Smoke relentlessly for the next few years. Have other idiots do it with you. Chances are that at least one of you develops lung cancer and dies from it. Everyone wins.

Just because something doesn't happen 100% of the time, doesn't mean there isn't a fucking correlation you twit.
>What is a carcinogen

>omnivorous
you're using that word incorrectly

bowdoin.edu/~dfrancis/askanerd/omni/

It's more energy efficient to use less animal products since muh energy pyramids was kangz n shiet

what supplements do vegans take?

B12 is the most common since it pretty much only comes from animal products. Some also take protein supplements because they're too retarded to sort out their diet.

I ask out of true curiosity, I live in sweden, where there's a lot of vegans, and most of them get by fine without supplements

Well there's these cool bacteria in your guts that actually synthesize b12 and your body stores a 3 years supply.

You people really don't know anything about the history of anti-smoking, do you? This will get you started. Almost every single study on smoking and secondhand smoke was quite obviously bullshit. If you were actually able to analyze the flaws in a scientific study you'd know this.

members.iinet.net.au/~ray/TSSOASb.html

It is an ancient Greek word that means "bad hunter".

These also explain more

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6220440.stm
wispofsmoke.net/goodreads.html

Retarded cuz meat is tasty

it's good in a lot of ways

but there's some opposition from anti-reason religious people (both theist and atheist version)

Well you have a handful of vegan celebrities that act as the vector and radiate this image of vegan supermen. But the reality is that most of vegans live a sick life. Hard to describe, but all, and I mean all vegans that I've met so far were like zombies. Weak in mind, weak in body. Useless.

interesting read.

>veganism
Markus, unblock me you whiny SJW cuntfag

That does happen but it could be other problems like being inherently weak or not balancing their diet enough.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371172/French-vegan-couple-face-jail-child-neglect-baby-died-vitamin-deficiency.html

You're talking statistics, generalisation being the refuge of a scoundrel. For those who are affected by smoking, and the cellular changes towards cancer start with one cigarette (research last year, google it), then smoking is devastating. Don't be a dick.

yes, thank you for thinking critically. this is what science is about, right?

Not following the diet of based god Ray Peat

Vegetarian ubermensch

college is the worst scam ever

>get by fine
I know a guy who's 120 lbs at 6'4 and he claims to "go by fine", in reality he's always wearing a jacket even in the summer because he gets cold really fast.

"Going by fine" is a non-argument when you can go better.
A vegan diet either needs to be fortified with B12 or get it from supplements.

Those bacteria don't produce enough.
Rabbits and elephants have the same problem but rabbits eat their own shit, and elephants dirt for their B12

>If you have to take supplements to make it work, it don't work.

Sattvic Jain Dharma called to say you a faggot and then danced a traditional mountain dance.

>power lines
lol wat

>what's so impressive about a diet that can reverse the effects of the leading cause of death in the entire world?

Do I really need to justify this? Are you just trolling? I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Statin drugs do treat atherosclerosis, but not anywhere nearly as well as the plant-based diet does. In fact, many of these drugs have an almost negligible effect on heart disease anyway, since the patients are more than likely participating in the behavior that got them there in the first place! Plant-based diets also have the amazing property of having no detrimental side effects! In fact, the only side-effects are positive, such as lowering your risk of various types of cancer, and reducing hypertension.

>Without meat, you'll develop a number of health issues, including anemia, caused by vitamin B12 deficiency

You bring up the naturalist argument (a fallacy) and manage to present a huge mistake in it right off the bat. Animals do not produce B12 on their own for the most part. The reason animals have B12 is because they are given fortified foods that contain it in the first place. B12 originally came from algae, which would provide humans all the B12 we needed when drinking unfiltered water from the river. Because most of the water we drink today if filtered, we do not get the B12.

You omnivores are actually eating animals that have a supplemented diet themselves! So much for being all natural.

Funny, you sound like someone who is weak in mind since you cannot handle the concept of statistics well.

That you need vitamin B12 supplements, and a scientifically-informed diet.

In the modern world, you need a scientifically-informed diet anyway, since we're surrounded by processed foods that don't offer the same nutrition as the things we evolved eating.

For instance, until very recently in our evolutionary history, sweet foods were scarce and rich in vitamins. Micronutrients in general were abundant and basically impossible to avoid with an adequate intake of macronutrients, with any reasonable amount of variety.

Consequently, our instincts drive us to seek variety and macronutrients. With modern technology, the market is very good at providing these things, but often in forms lacking the micronutrients needed for good health.

Veganism is an increasingly viable option, as we move from artificial selection of walking bioreactors to genetic design of cells which can produce food in factories with a minimum input of labor. It will likely become an irrelevant concept, as food from real, whole animals becomes a sentimental extravagance, with no advantages in flavor, texture, appearance, or nutrition over sophisticated simulants and novel creations.

In the real world, most vegans fuck it up, and give up after a couple of years (often secretly, occasionally sneaking off to binge on animal products without telling anyone). It is harder to survive as a vegan, but it's also hard to stay in good health while surrounded by Doritos and soda.

...

Pretty much any dietitian (who isn't some self educated vegan) will tell you that you need suppliments with a vegan diet.
A breastfed infant can actually die of vitamin A and vitamin B12 deficiency if the mother is a vegan who takes no suppliments.

The only valid argument I've heard for veganism is that you indirectly kill animals. and since I really don't care, I don't see any reason to become a vegan because it clearly isn't meant for humans

Veganism isn't about nutricion or what is best for you, it's about emotions.

>Statin drugs do treat atherosclerosis, but not anywhere nearly as well as the plant-based diet does.
>In fact, many of these drugs have an almost negligible effect on heart disease anyway, since the patients are more than likely participating in the behavior that got them there in the first place!
What the fuck are you talking about, retard? How hard did you fail cardiovascular biology? Regression happens with the lowering of atherogenic lipoproteins to a point where there is no longer net deposition in the subendothelial intima. How this is achieved, with intensive drug therapy or lifestyle changes or a combination thereof, doesn't matter.

>Plant-based diets also have the amazing property of having no detrimental side effects!
You're making shit up. Ingesting large quantities of plant secondary metabolites and plant proteins without any carninutrients doesn't cultivate much of an anabolic environment. While there's some data suggestive of this helping with longevity, it's not good for people who care about maximizing their physical and mental functioning.

youtube.com/watch?v=AjSl4n_KdOY

>such as lowering your risk of various types of cancer, and reducing hypertension.
So does weight loss or any other healthy omnivorous dietary pattern advocated by mainstream medical organizations and health bodies. If you actually read the literature instead of fringe vegan pseudoscience blogs, you'd see that fish and low fat dairy have anticancer and antihypertensive effects. In fact 50% of the antihypertensive effects of the DASH diet are attributable to the consumption of low fat dairy products.

aace.com/files/clinical-practice-guidelines.pdf

>You bring up the naturalist argument (a fallacy) and manage to present a huge mistake in it right off the bat. Animals do not produce B12 on their own for the most part. The reason animals have B12 is because they are given fortified foods that contain it in the first place. B12 originally came from algae, which would provide humans all the B12 we needed when drinking unfiltered water from the river. Because most of the water we drink today if filtered, we do not get the B12.
There's plenty of evidence against this. For example

journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0046414
animalsciencepublications.org/publications/jas/articles/93/2/485

Herbivores have gut flora (either in their rumen or caecum or homologous structure) that synthesize absorbable B12 from dietary cobalt for them. The caecum of humans has atrophied from our frugivorous ancestors and we are now reliant on a dietary source. Most microorganisms in "unfiltered water" produce inactive B12 analogues that exacerbate B12 deficiency and it has never been empirically demonstrated to cure or prevent it.

>Regression happens with the lowering of...

No shit? No one is arguing that. The point is that the drugs that try to fight heart disease are far less effective than the plant-based diet is, without the negative effects that come with medication.

>Ingesting large quantities...

So the downside to the plant-based diet is that you cannot produce a cancer-promoting protein as well as omnivores??? Because guess what, IGF-1 doesn't do shit in terms of inhibiting an anabolism environment in vegans.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20527692.1

press.endocrine.org/doi/pdf/10.1210/jcem.86.4.7377

jap.physiology.org/content/108/1/60.full.pdf html

>So does weight loss or any other healthy omnivorous dietary pattern...

I am not arguing that they don't. My argument was that it is impressive that Plant-Based diets are the only diets that have been clinically shown to reverse heart disease. All the other stuff is just an added bonus.

Yeah, animals can synthesize B12 from dietary cobalt (as well as other sources). So why is there a case against humans getting B12 from the source directly? Also do you have a source of the bacteria in water being an inefficient source of B12? Because this is the first I've heard.

Also keep in mind that this entire argument rests on the naturalist fallacy. It would be better for you just to start a new argument as this one is basically moot from the beginning.

Malnutrition: the ideology

Ok, I will give it a try

>The point is
I already dismantled that point. If they lower atherogenic lipoproteins to the same degree that means they are equally effective. It’s possible to get them down to basically zero with PSCK9is, so that makes them MORE effective than your meme diet ever will be by default.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26586732

>without the negative effects that come with medication.
Wanna know how I know that you’re a clown making shit up again? You don’t bother to link to a head-to-head trial monitoring these "negative effects" (many of which are just active placebo) of drugs vs. your meme diet, which I know you don’t have, to substantiate this. It’s just your feelings, and you’re wrong on Veeky Forums if you think they belong here.

>So the downside to the plant-based diet is that you cannot produce a cancer-promoting protein as well as omnivores???
Is it painful to be as dumb as you? Oxygen is also cancer-promoting, don't want too much of that either. So please do us a favor and breathe less. Maybe then you'll damage your brain enough that you won't be able to shit up this board with your wealth of ignorance any longer.

>Because guess what, IGF-1 doesn't do shit in terms of inhibiting an anabolism environment in vegans.
Don't make me laugh.

>ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20527692.1
This one is discussing the mechanisms behind EXERCISE-INDUCED hypertrophy in a BACKGROUND anabolic drive of IGF-1 and dietary protein. Not a deficit of these things. Here’s a review by the same author less distant from the latter

journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphys.2015.00245/full

>press.endocrine.org/doi/pdf/10.1210/jcem.86.4.7377
1. A single year is insufficient to see any impact on the outcome variables they’re looking at. Especially in 60+ year old women where the damage is already done. Better to look at Laron's syndrome, with lifelong congenital low IGF-1, and animal models of protein restriction like in the pic I posted earlier.

2. “Protein intake was set at 1.0–1.2 g/kg” - that’s not even enough to fully charge tRNA in humans - jn.nutrition.org/content/138/2/243.abstract - which will lead to IGF-1 resistance and not net IGF-1 action. What they’re doing here is analogous to going full throttle on a car with an empty tank of gas.

>jap.physiology.org/content/108/1/60.full.pdf html
These are transitory increases in IGF-1 from a counterregulatory response to the stress associated with exercise. They have nothing to do with chronic elevation of basal concentrations that would be expected from the consumption of high quality animal protein.

>Also do you have a source of the bacteria in water being an inefficient source of B12? Because this is the first I've heard.
lmgtfy.com

Not hard to look up common strains found in 'dirty' water that produce B12 antagonists.

>I already dismantled that point...

Not really. Most of these drugs will not do anything if the user is still eating the standard american diet. And now you want me to defend myself against a drug that is still undergoing phase 3 trails. We will see when the results come in.

>Wanna know how I know...

Most of the rest of your post is just pointless mudslinging. I will be ignoring it.

>This one is discussing...

Ok. Let's just ignore all of it, because it doesn't meet your exact conditions, and go from there. Even if IGF-1 was hot shit, and the differences in IGF-1 between vegans and omnivores were enough to make a significant difference in muscle growth, then who cares? I'll take all of the other benefits of a plant-based diet, the reduced hypertension, reduced risk of cancer, virtually no risk of heart disease, reduced risk of ED, over the ability to build muscle as optimally as I could have otherwise. And it's not like being a vegan means you are unable to build muscle, as many individuals have already proven.

>don't be a dick

I'm not the one taking corrupt agenda-driven and likely pharma funded science to prove that smoking is "bad". I'm not the one basing my opinion on "landmark" studies and statements from health organizations that are utterly biased as fuck written by people with other special interests motivating them or who simply have no understanding of how studies need to be conducted. Don't be an idiot and actually read the link I posted.

You are just going to take their word for it instead of looking up available science based on all studies up to a certain point? K m8, you don't want to know then.
WHO also said homosexuality was a condition one year, and they next they said it wasn't. It's just one big lobbied institution, not the speakers of absolute truth.

>Not really. Most of these drugs will not do anything if the user is still eating the standard american diet.
Don't know why you keep saying that when it's demonstrably false

jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=192226
nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199011083231901
nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1110874
content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2411160
content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1891594
cpr.sagepub.com/content/20/4/641.long

Anti-vaxxer style rhetoric like this kills people

eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/11/30/eurheartj.ehv641.long

>And now you want me to defend myself against a drug that is still undergoing phase 3 trails. We will see when the results come in.
evolocumab with the same MOA is already approved

>And it's not like being a vegan means you are unable to build muscle, as many individuals have already proven.
many individuals prove you can do fine smoking and drinking your entire life, doesn't mean it's optimal

you mean like this science?

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691511005448
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304383511002539
cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/66/3/1859.long

youtu.be/z-8k1gAog40?t=9m51s

>They reintroduced the question about inhaling. Their results continued to show the inhaling/noninhaling paradox.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2589239/pdf/yjbm00061-0033.pdf
>These data played an important part in leading Fisher to doubt that tobacco was a carcinogen. It has subsequently appeared that light smokers deposit little particulate matter on the susceptible part of the bronchi unless they inhale. Heavy smokers, on the other hand, who tend to inhale deeply, deposit less when they inhale than when they do not, since in the former case the smoke moves rapidly to the deeper portions of the lungs [93].

>So what were the results of the Whitehall study? They were contrary to all expectation. The quit group showed no improvement in life expectancy. Nor was there any change in the death rates due to heart disease, lung cancer, or any other cause with one exception: certain other cancers were more than twice as common in the quit group. Later, after twenty years there was still no benefit in life expectancy for the quit group.

bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3513
>Despite the fact that during follow-up many men stopped smoking, and there was also substantial variation in other risk factors

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1615479/pdf/amjph00459-0037.pdf
>The Whitehall Study previously reported no difference in risk of death from coronary heart disease between never smokers and ex-smokers after 5 years of follow-up. We re-examined data from the Whitehall study after 18 years of follow-up.
>Former cigarette smokers had mortality risks between those of current cigarette smokers and those of never smokers, a finding similar to those of other cohort studies.
>Mortality increased with duration of smoking and maximum amount consumed and decreased with years since quitting.

1.) that proves nothing, taking something from a tobacco industry internal documents and attempting to discredit it by virtue of being a tobacco memo or the words of the tobacco industry doesn't actually discredit the argument itself. That's a fallacy. Some of their documents have words from scientists that make very good points. Don't give me that conflict of interest crap.

2.) the studies carried out but the surgeon general and multiple others tried so badly to find a risk for smoking, but there are various analyses picking apart these studies and probing they were misinterpreted. Reposting from the other thread because the studies bear repeating.

freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2523227/posts

Ctrl+f "albie" and go to the second result. The guy points out numerous flaws in all the major tobacco studies. When are you people going to realize that smoking being bad for you is a global warming tier belief system?

If you're trying to somehow take down these studies i should mention the theory that smoking can potentially serve as a form of protection, and smokers only seem to get sick with the commonly presumed illnesses after quitting.

This is why Veeky Forums blows sometimes; they take an organizations word over the actual results.

How about you look at the actual fucking results then? There is no one questioning that red meats and processed meats are carcinogenic.

Nah. Nutritional yeast has loads of B12.

Did they control for the fact that because meats are typically cooked / roasted? Blackening of foods is a significant source of carcinogens.

it's shit.

indisputably better for the environment than meat eating, possibly more ethical than meat eating, but really fucking hard to do because meat is fucking delicious

i look forward to when we can grow meat in vats because then the moral and environmental questions go out the window and all that's left is the health issues

that being said, i have a few recipes that are vegan and insanely delicious and these recipes make it easy to eat a lot less meat than I used to, I'm healthier, my blood pressure is under control, and my athletic performance is much better

but like i said, meat is fucking delicious

I am questioning it. In fact, a whole field of science is. Meta study I was talking about:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26143683
I quote
>The association between unprocessed red meat consumption and mortality risk was found in the US populations, but not in European or Asian populations.

Use at your discretion. But don't try to convince me that eating slow cooked red meat kills me.

>NO ONES QUESTIONING THE RESULTS FROM A SHITTY STUDY SO IT IS ABSOLUTE

That can be said about a ton of shit, doesn't mean it's bad for you.

Taking studies at face value and not analyzing them leads to ignorance. It's the reason global warming and anti-smoking are so prevalent in the west. These studies are usually inherently deceptive, do not control for certain factors, modify things when they don't get the results they want, etc.

Don't buy into sciencism.

fyi they're either taking a b12 supplement, eating b12-fortified plants (you can get beans like this), suffering from some serious shit like anemia, or they have been vegan for such a short time (a couple years) that they haven't exhausted their b12 stores (it takes a normal human like three years to exhaust b12 stores)

Heres the thing
We've been eating meat for 2 million years(going back as fat as homo erectus)
Life adapts to what it does right?
So to think we've spent two million years adapting to eating meat and then what like 50 years ago hippies started going all vegan and shit and people think its better than meat?
Just doesnt make sense. Forget the studies, use your fucking brain.
Hey i know while we're at it lets stop drinking water and only drink orange juice for the rest of our lives because some art major told me its better

(guy who DEFINITELY has never taken anything for a headache, a cold, and no immunizations for sure)

this is a dumb fallacy
we also evolved to eat until we ran out of food to eat or until we were in pain from eating so much (the latter stretches your gut so over time your ability to consume calories in greater quantities increases)

that being said, it's obvious that engaging in this behavior is hazardous to your health

It's not a fallacy. He's saying that its like saying we evolved to walk on land but using your feet to get around is bad for you.
In fact stuffing yourself is such a stupid analogy because the nerves in your stomach react when your stomach stretches and send pain signals therefore we have evolved to not eat too much. Nice try though.

>Obvious
Citation Needed

It's a meme.

>1.)
"?t=9m51s"

Go to 9:51 and watch from there

>freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2523227/posts
Seriously, would you do this in an actual debate? That's an interesting link and I'll try to reserve some time for reading it, but Gish Galloping to a 490+ post closed thread is not a counterargument

who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/
>High-temperature cooking methods generate compounds that may contribute to carcinogenic risk, but their role is not yet fully understood.

There are cooking independent ways for it to generate carcinogenicity. Through Neu5Gc, heme, or heme-induced nitrosation for example.

pnas.org/content/112/2/542.short
pnas.org/content/112/32/10038.long
cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/63/10/2358.long

That's probably because they consume less red meat and the highest quintile of consumption is lower. WCRF/AICR sets a good guideline

aicr.org/reduce-your-cancer-risk/recommendations-for-cancer-prevention/recommendations_05_red_meat.html

>Studies show we can eat up to 18 ounces a week of red meat without raising cancer risk

this, pure cognitive dissonance. I'm disappointed Veeky Forums thinks this way

If it's just based on no meat>weight loss>better for you (as the thumbnail shows) that would imply it's not a problem to eat meat as long as you're not fat.

Ok, what is your claim then? Do you have one? Is smoking still bad? Is it neutral or not as bad as they say? Healthy? Or do you not make a claim?

>b12 meme
Take a multivitamin

>omnivore meme
10000 years ago we barely had agriculture and were organized into tribal bands. Should we stop farming and having governments?

>meat is murder meme
We are the apex predator so yeah we can do whatever we want but the question is should we? It's a massive waste of resources that hurts primarily other humans. If you care about animals that's great but personally I just don't want other humans to starve. Cattle also massively contributes to deforestation and methane emissions so if you want the global climate and ecosystem to stay pleasant for people it also isn't good.

Just because you don't eat animals doesn't mean you're some fucking hippy who feels bad for animals.

I would say, at the very least, it's neutral with some benefits. I would never call it bad. It would be like saying a diet coke is bad.

This is pretty evident when you look at anti-smoking related studies and ideas supporting that smoking is bad for you.

Potential benefits include staving off diseases and relieving asthma symptoms. Ther is an idea supported by some shaky yet promising evidence, concluding that smoking can possibly protect against lung cancer, as many smokers with lung cancer seem to get sick only after they've quit. Not sure if it's accurate yet though.

This is the best discussion I've seen so far on the subject. Ignoring the bait style title (smoking is good for you!) the main thread contributor strikes down many studies on smoking with some sound points.

longecity.org/forum/topic/38868-smoking-is-good-for-you/

Pretty much this. I'm dairy free as it doesn't suit me, eat lots of veggies, sometimes have veg-only meals, but meat is fucking delicious as user said.

And I believe my body wants meat. I was near-vegan for a couple of years and didn't do well on it. I was slim, exercising a lot, but had little real strength, and stamina. Eating some meat, I'm stronger and have better stamina.

This is one person's experience, so it ain't science, but what if it indicates something else is going on? There's a growing understanding of how people have different physiologies which respond differently to medications. Why not food also? It could be possible that some people get on better with a veggie diet and some with meat, because of their genetics and physiology. The important thing then, until there is a way of testing for these types, is to learn to listen to what your body wants.

>but the question is should we?
Yes.
Deep down any moral concerns we might have should be resolved trough nutrition, not capitalism.

wat

If they claim it's healthier, that's simply anti-scientific. Veganism can be done with supplementation to fulfill nutrient requirements. If you have people like freelee the banana girl, they get too much fucking potassium. But overall, veganism is just stupid.

I see Richard is in this thread

I was a healthy eating omnivore up until about 2-3 months ago, until I transitioned to a still healthy eating vegetarian (except for the occasional seafood) and I don't feel very different, desu. I ate great before. The only really great major difference is that pooping is SO much better. Seriously, w/o meat, I'm regular as fuck. I watch my dad who eats meat everyday either be constipated or have diarrhea on a weekly basis. It has been such a huge difference. I seriously used to take forever in the bathroom, but I'm in and fucking out now.

>life extension
lifeextension.com/magazine/2006/1/awsi/Page-01
>"Two studies of people who consumed very little meat showed an average life-span increase of 3.6 years."
Not fucking bad. I also weightlift and run a lot and I've not been affected in the slightest. Gains come easier if anything.