I agree strongly with the point made about bias of vegetarian researchers working on studies showing the benefits of vegan/vegetarian diets. Still, as someone who eats smaller amounts of meat than the average Westerner, I found large parts of the article frustrating and disingenuous.
> We’ve been eating meat since before we became humans. Meat contributed, it’s thought, by anthropologists, to our becoming humans from these little subhumans who had smaller brains, but when they found the ability to hunt other critters, and eat the meat, that provided the nutrients that allowed us to evolve into human beings
As far as I understand, this is only partly true? Newest evidence suggests that cooking foods made at least as large of a difference than meat. [1]
In general, the article makes it sounds like the WHO recommends the consumption of 0% meat, which isn't true. The WHO recommends a drastic reduction of processed meat consumption and modest reduction of unprocessed meat consumption in the western hemisphere, essentially. The different inflammatory Omega-6 content in wild vs farmed animals surely play a role in this recommendation.
This argument essentially is "It's from mother nature, so it must be good" - really?
> Discusses various problems with getting enough complete protein and micronutrients from plant foods
Vegans and vegetarians get adequate amounts of protein [2] and micronutrients [3], which each population group (omni, vegetarian, vegan) needing to keep different micronutrients on their checklist. If you don't believe in these studies, there are multiple vegetarian and almost vegan historical and current societies on this planet.
1 comment
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 14.5 ms ] thread> We’ve been eating meat since before we became humans. Meat contributed, it’s thought, by anthropologists, to our becoming humans from these little subhumans who had smaller brains, but when they found the ability to hunt other critters, and eat the meat, that provided the nutrients that allowed us to evolve into human beings
As far as I understand, this is only partly true? Newest evidence suggests that cooking foods made at least as large of a difference than meat. [1]
In general, the article makes it sounds like the WHO recommends the consumption of 0% meat, which isn't true. The WHO recommends a drastic reduction of processed meat consumption and modest reduction of unprocessed meat consumption in the western hemisphere, essentially. The different inflammatory Omega-6 content in wild vs farmed animals surely play a role in this recommendation.
This argument essentially is "It's from mother nature, so it must be good" - really?
> Discusses various problems with getting enough complete protein and micronutrients from plant foods
Vegans and vegetarians get adequate amounts of protein [2] and micronutrients [3], which each population group (omni, vegetarian, vegan) needing to keep different micronutrients on their checklist. If you don't believe in these studies, there are multiple vegetarian and almost vegan historical and current societies on this planet.
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115540119
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6893534/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26502280/