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Almost every time I get into a discussion about veganism, nutrition is brought up. People claim that it’s hard to be healthy, get enough protein, or not be deficient in key minerals on a vegan diet. As an accomplished runner, and 4- year vegan, this always baffles me. In my time as a vegan, I’ve set PRs in the 10k (30:49), 5k (14:56), Marathon (2:36), mile swim (19:00), bench, and squat (they’re embarrassing, I’m a runner). I spend about $50 less on groceries a week than I used to (non-processed meat is expensive yo),my acne has cleared up, and I generally feel better. An my success is one story among the millions of vegans and hundreds of millions of vegetarians that lead healthy lives. But that’s all anecdotal. What I want to show in this post is that it's not actually that hard to get all the nutrients one needs on a vegan diet.
Protein
Let’s start with protein. I’m 150 pounds, and with the recommended RDA of 0.8 g/kg body weight for protein intake a day, I only need 55g of protein. If I ate nothing but white flour (3g protein per 100 calories), I would exceed this amount (60g). There is the issue of grains (i.e. bread) having low protein bioavailability (closer to 40-50%), but this can be partially remedied by eating something like sourdough, or just not something absurdly stupid like getting all your calories from bread. Protein deficiency is so absurdly rare that it’s almost impossible to have it without calorie restricting, even on a shitty Western diet. However, the average American is either some kind of athlete or has aspirations to be one. RDA for athletes is up to double this amount: 1.6 g/ kg body weight, or 110 G protein for me. I can hit this if I try, but my daily consumption is usually around 100g protein, at least during the times I’ve tracked intake. While protein intake has not been demonized like the other two macronutrient groups, research suggests that high-protein intake is actually negatively associated with longevity. People also bring up complete proteins, but I also think this is a non-issue on a balanced diet. Soy beans contain all nine essential amino acids, and rice and beans together also make up a complete protein. There's also the issue of Methionine/BCAA consumption: they seem to be associated with decreased lifespan, but they also are necessary for muscular anabolism so it's sort of a win some you lose some situation. Animal proteins are richer in BCAAs, but I'm not sure if this a good or bad thing.
Vitamin D
Ideally you should be getting this from UV exposure. However that isn’t possible for 3–6 months during the year in locales above 30 N or below 30 S. I supplement during the winter. Animal products like milk and meat have appreciable amounts of vitamin D, but these are either added later (milk) or supplemented in the animal feed. If you insist on a vegan dietary source, mushrooms with UV exposure or sunlight exposure before cooking have enough vitamin D to meet the RDA.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids
There are three types of Omega-3 fatty acids: ALA, DHA and EPA. DHA and EPA can pretty much only be found in marine sources (algae or fish). ALA is common in plant foods such as flax and chia. I personally take an algae DHA supplement daily, but this may not be necessary because I consume about 7g of ALA from plant sources, including Chia and Flax. The RDA for DHA+EPA combined is between 250–500 mg. Assuming middle of the range 5% conversion between ALA and DHA (source), I still get enough omega-3s without the supplement. Flax and chia are super cheap and super easy to add as a garnish to salads, overnight oats, baked goods (although this destroys the omega-3s), and the famous chia pudding.
B12
This is fortified in soy milk and nutritional yeast. This is supplemented in most animal products as well, either in animal feed or post production. If you really want a natural source of b12, duckweed has 750% of the RDA per 100g. I've also started homebrewing Kombucha, which by my own TLC (thin-layer chromatography) analysis has plenty of b12. I'm sure this is true for other fermented foods as well.
Iron
Anecdotally my serum ferritin and hemoglobin levels increased when I became vegan, probably because of dropping dairy. My tracking app says I get plenty more than the RDA of 18 mg of iron (which is already 2x what is needed for males). Main sources are dark chocolate, sea-weed and dark, leafy vegetables. Yes, plant iron is less bioavailable, but heme iron (animal iron) is a carcinogen, and you can increase iron availability by eating iron rich foods together with vitamin C. Oftentimes these two nutrients are in the same food.
Calcium
Again this is supplemented in soy milk, but even without that I get more than enough calcium to exceed the RDA of 1g from a variety of sources including and not limited to nuts, leafy greens, flax, chia, oranges, kiwi fruit, and sea weed. There is a range of bioavailability from these foods, but the main non-vegan source of calcium (milk) is around 30% of bioavailability, which is the upper middle range of plant foods. Dairy is not a health food for a variety of other reasons, so I don’t think this is an entirely fair comparison.
Iodine
I cook with iodized salt, but also eat seaweed. Iodine is also available from plant sources, but the yield varies wildly depending on the iodine content of the soil.
Other Nutrients
Some people also claim vegans suffer from vitamin A, vitamin K and zinc deficiencies. Vitamin A can easily be found in spinach and carrots. Vitamin K in kale, kiwi and chia, and zinc in beans, flax and small amounts in pretty much every other food. Zinc is in nuts and seeds, but I also eat oysters (not sentient and are sustainable), which are almost too rich in Zinc and other essential metals. Plant K2 can only be found in natto, but again the conversion rate isn't that low, and is probably upregulated if you don't intake enough vitamin K2 from your diet.
I’m not claiming that a vegan diet is optimal, but it seems pretty clear from both research and my anecdotal experience that is possible to be successful athletically on a vegan diet. Considering that American levels of meat consumption are unsustainable environmentally (we would need 8 earths if everyone ate as much meat as Americans), and generally seem to result in poor health outcomes, it seems that moving closer to a vegan diet would be better for all of us. While regenerative grazing can generate meat in a sustainable manner, it cannot do so on the scale of factory farming, and thus cannot satisfy the insane American demand for meat. There’s also the issue of ethics to consider: cognitive research has shown that many farm animals (cows, sheep, chickens come to mind) show many signs of intelligence similar to young children and pet animals. I've become much more open to the idea of small-scale animal farming, where animals are treated humanely, but still ultimately killed and eaten, but this still entails eating far less meat. Nutrition isn’t a serious barrier, so what’s your excuse?
You don't get to set the default; I don't need an excuse.
I’m also quite baffled at the assumption that the burden of proof is on omnivores to defend their diet.
It’s honestly incredibly arrogant. there’s so much stacked against it I think it takes a very fanatical type of person to have that level of hubris.
I mean, just off the top of my head:
1.) Humans are omnivores. That’s how our bodies and brains evolved, and that’s the type of diet that interfaces most completely with us.
2.) Not everyone is a utilitarian, in fact I’d be amazed if even 10% of the population subscribe to beliefs that can be considered fully utilitarian. Outside of that belief system, suffering is often complicated to define and also is often considered morally neutral without greater context.
3.) Even if you are a utilitarian, the state of Nature most animals, including ancestral humans, existed in is incredibly rough and brutal and full of pain and suffering. It’s not a given that domesticated animals, even ones with very sad & short lives, would be better off without human intervention. Or that ending animal domestication will lower total suffering in the world. It’s not even close to a given. There’s a sanitized “Disney channel” version of animals’ lives that I feel that animal lovers sort of unconsciously project on a low level, but the truth is staggeringly cruel.
I could go on and on for hours about this. This is one of the few subjects I’ll likely never budge an inch on, I fully understand the other side of this issue and particularly the instinct not cause unneeded pain and suffering.
But whenever I hear hardcore vegans, which is to say any vegan at all, talk about this all I can think is “This ain’t it, chief”.
But how is this relevant to the question of whether humans should raise animals in inhumane conditions?
Well, they wouldn't exist if not for human intervention, which is better for the ones with very sad and short lives.
You would have to think that e.g. pigs in CAFOs are not suffering at all to believe this.
How is it reverent? It’s literally the baseline for consideration of wether or not animal welfare is important or not in the first place.
Because the question isn’t “will animals suffer?”, that’s a total given. Animals rip each other to shreds, stalk each other in the middle of night, devour the sick and helpless, gorge on each others entrails while they are still alive, and on and on and on forever and ever.
Inhumane conditions? The whole goddamn universe is an unending inhumane condition for them.
So the question isn’t “how much will animals suffer” it’s “what type of suffering will animals be subjected to” and “to what end?”.
That’s where you all lose the plot. Even if you were totally right on animals being worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans, you would additionally have to prove that domesticated animals would be better off not existing at all, and that by ending animal domestication you have managed to somehow lower the amount of animal suffering occurring in the world, while simultaneously outweighing the positive utility animal consumption has for humanity.
Which is from where I’m sitting is an utterly ludicrous claim.
Wild animal suffering is completely irrelevant to this question.
Imagine there's a planet in the Andromeda galaxy where ten trillion humans are being flayed alive.
Does that affect whether or not you should mug the next person you see? Clearly not - it's wrong to do that even if there's a lot of bad stuff going on elsewhere. You're not responsible for the torture planet. You are responsible for the mugging.
If you insist on taking for granted the claim that animals are worthy of moral consideration on the level of humans (you brought this up, not me), then the rest of the argument is a cakewalk. What kind of monster would breed humans in the conditions of factory farming just to eat their flesh? Even if humans tasted really good?
You yourself said that many domesticated animals lead short and sad lives. Do you really think that existence is a benefit for them?
I mean even if you think that ... wouldn't it be highly relevant to other questions, like environmentalism? If Wild animals in general suffer and their live lives not worth living, then a good utilitarian would want to pave over all of nature, yes?
I'd certainly not feel bad about this planet being blown up by a stray asteroid. Do you feel the same way about life on Earth in general? Is the main problem with the last 4 or 5 mass extinction events that they didn't go far enough?
I guess you'd have to ask a good utilitarian.
Fair enough, I suppose I just usually associate veganism with utilitarianism on some level.
I guess I'll just phrase it as a full argument:
A. Animals suffer greatly in their natural environment. Nature and evolution have optimized for survival, not happiness.
B. Artificial environments can make concessions to animal happiness that Nature cannot make.
C. If you care about animal welfare, artificial environments that make some attempt at keeping animals happy are to be preferred over natural environments.
D. If you think artificial environments are not a net positive for animals, then natural environments are definitely not a net positive.
E. Thus if you think we should get rid of artificial environments for animals in order to alleviate their suffering, then we should also get rid of natural environments for animals to alleviate their suffering.
I believe that is the encapsulated argument that @MaximumCuddles has been getting at. Vegan's don't seem to reach point E in the argument. The logic is sound, so one of the points must not be valid from the perspective of a vegan. The question is: which points do they think aren't valid? That would narrow down a large moral argument to a specific point of contention.
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