[irtigor]

My charitable interpretation is that when someone says "eat plants", they don't really mean "only eat plants" but "don't eat animal products, eat plants + enriched foods + injections/pills/tablet", because we are omnivores and we need some nutrients that are incredibly hard to get naturally from plants, like vitamin b12, so in order to stay healthy, without eating animal products, there's only the enriched foods and/or pills/injections/tablets route.

[cheese_goddess]

So, "don't eat meat, eat supplements"? How does that make any sense?

[irtigor]

You don't need to necessarily eat meat (a glass of milk has half the recommended daily intake of vitamin b12), but if you are not willing to eat any animal product, the only viable alternative is something like fortified plant based beverages or over-the-counter supplements, so that's my take, otherwise they would be suggesting a really poor diet for humans.

[cheese_goddess]

Yes, that's what I understand from your previous comment. You say:

> "don't eat animal products, eat plants + enriched foods + injections/pills/tablet"

So that would be replacing meat with supplements. I don't think we disagree.

What I disagree with is that it makes any sense to replace real food, meat from animals, with supplements. First because this kind of replacement makes us even more reliant on the food industry, which is the entity that is responsible for the atrocities committed against farm animals in factory farms, and also the damage to the environment caused by such farms. We cannot and should not trust that same industry to provide us with essential nutrients in the form of supplements, because if we do, who knows what new ways they will find to harm us, animals and the environment - the industry is only driven by profit and it will maximise its profit come hell or high water, whether it's selling us sides of beef or B12 pills.

There's a much better alternative: eliminating factory farming, dismantling the meat and dairy megacorps and going back to producing the meat we really need in a way that doesn't cause unnecessary suffering to our domesticated animals and does not destroy the mutualism relation that we've had with them for a few thousand years.

And btw, by "the meat we really need" I mean that most of the world consumes way too much meat, much more than anyone needs. This is the result of the over-supply created by the food industry, for the purpose of maximising its profits as I've said before.

We cannot trust the food industry to feed us, because it will only feed us shit that makes us sick, destroy the environment and harm animals, and it will continue to do so whether we eat meat, plants, or little pills from a bottle.

[indymike]

Milk is high in carbohydrate. So are most plant based beverages. Back to diabetics... Can't or should not eat it (or should have tiny, tiny portions which reduce the amount of nutrition anyway). Problem is for people who should not consume carbohydrate, especially sugars, a plant-based diet is not sustainable. Yes supplements can supply nutrition, but they are the epitome of highly processed products.