[scottLobster]

I think it's just a backlash towards the more militant vegans who make all the noise. Veganism predicates itself on moral grounds (no animal products period, because hurting animals/climate change/etc), not nutritional ones like vegetarianism, and as with any moral cause some people decide to get all Deus Vult! about it.

So as a response the opposition points out that veganism "morally" excludes certain nutrients as a way to call it an unhealthy/stupid lifestyle.

And there's technically a legitimate point to it IMO, maybe being pure vegan is nutritionally sub-optimal compared to some other options. Maybe kids shouldn't be vegan for ideal health. At the very least you have to seriously worry about various nutrients that you don't have to worry about with a less restrictive diet. But IMO that's like saying people into restoring/driving antique cars are driving sub-optimal vehicles. Yeah it's technically true, but that's their lifestyle/hobby so who cares?

And "malnourished" depends on your definition. It's no coincidence that we started growing taller and having more babies with the advent of agriculture. It's like putting a plant under a grow-lamp. Is the plant fueled by natural if imperfect sunlight "malnourished" relative to the plant under the grow-lamp?

[Tucanix]

I see more anti-vegan militant people than I see actually militant vegans, then again I might be biased. I think the "backlash" is more an effect of cognitive dissonance than anything else, people "have" to push back as they have an inherent desire to justify their actions and beliefs to themselves.

If I have a problem I don't want to admit to myself I just blame it on you, that way I don't have to deal with the problem. This is exactly how cognitive dissonance works and how our minds "solve" it.

Also why would anyone care about "militant vegans" at all if they didn't feel some kind of inner discomfort about it.

The choice for a vegan diet isn't necessarily just a moral one.

Half of people say that animals/morals is their main reason, health takes the other half. Today there are even more reasons as we learn more, like climate (one of the biggest things any individual can do) and fitness.

Also a vegan diet isn't sub-optimal to a normal diet or vegetarian diet, quite the opposite, there's literally years difference in life expectancy.

I don't care what anybody eats, that's their own business, but I like to be factual.

[esotericn]

I think it's really difficult to quantify sub-optimal in this context because it requires the identification of like, actual serious benefits or bad effects, as you say re defining 'malnourishment'.

If you could show that, for example, on average a meat eater had a higher IQ than a vegan (or vice versa), or is stronger or something, and you somehow exclude the confounding effects (e.g. vegans in the West are generally wealthier and more educated than the average) that'd be a solid example.

A lot of the time it seems to come down to things like short-term digestive effects or specific deficiencies.

The car example is interesting. I wrote a reply about this earlier actually. I recently went from a 1998 banger to a 2019 shiny fancy thing. They pretty much do exactly the same thing. The 1998 car was theoretically less reliable but in practice it never skipped a beat.

I mean, it's less shiny, makes more noise, pollutes more. But 'sub-optimal' - I mean it really depends on your metric. In terms of going places it was the same.