[noondip]

> the one absolute metric we do have in terms of nutritional quality (athletic performance) shows that intelligent inclusion of animal products provides better results than a vegan diet

Please cite any references which support this claim.

[CuriouslyC]

Well controlled studies on elite athletes are pretty hard to come by, because nobody wants to go off a routine that is working for them and potentially be set back several months for the sake of science. The people near the top are hyper-competitive and will do whatever it takes to win.

That being said, in addition to the anecdotal evidence that vegans are VASTLY under-represented in the upper echelons of strength and power sports compared with their relative abundance in the general population, there are some good studies comparing muscle protein synthesis following ingestion of whey vs soy protein:

http://jap.physiology.org/content/107/3/987.short http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/2/373.short http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1743-7075-9-57.pdf

There is also some data suggesting vegans have slightly lower free testosterone and free IGF-1 than omnivores too, though at the highest levels rampant steroid use probably makes this a moot point.

[noondip]

The first two studies were done by the same author from the same "McMaster University" and were directly funded by dairy lobbying boards, whereas the third study was funded by the US Dairy Research Institute - not exactly fair and unbiased. Still, none of these data support your earlier claim, "intelligent inclusion of animal products provides better results than a vegan diet". And your anecdotal evidence is not relevant to this discussion anymore than one's anecdotal evidence of a 100-year old, allegedly healthy grandmother eating bacon every morning should lead one to conclude it's okay to eat in that way.

> There is also some data suggesting vegans have slightly lower free testosterone and free IGF-1 than omnivores too, though at the highest levels rampant steroid use probably makes this a moot point.

Again, you are using conjecture over peer reviewed research. Take a look at http://nutritionfacts.org/2013/02/12/less-cancer-in-vegan-me... if you're interested in actually learning the facts.

Finally, the down votes just serve my point. People rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend animal products have some magical effect on human health, especially in athletes, which is a true ode to powerful industry lobbying.