[slabity]

> Are vegetarians typically 'inexperienced' long enough to lose lifespan, though?

No, because they find out really quickly what they're deficient in when symptoms show up (or they revert back to their previous diet). I admit I worded that paragraph poorly though, that wasn't my intention.

> Fwiw, I've been vegetarian for like twenty years, don't really track much of anything in terms of vitamin intake, and am doing just fine according to the last time I had blood work done. I eat eggs and beans and rice for protein, and cook on a cast iron for iron... And that's the sum of my thought on vitamin intake. My partner takes b12 supplements, though.

So you get blood work done regularly, ensure you have certain things in your diet, and you intentionally try to make up for a common nutrient deficiency?

You may not see that as a lot of effort, but for people that don't really care about their health, every one of those things can make a significant difference in terms of lifespan.

[sdenton4]

I got blood work done once last year because it's a reasonable thing to do when you turn 40. Not regular at all, and I was feeling fine at the time.

I'm not sure why you're so invested in the idea that eating protein is hard when one doesn't eat meat. It's really not harder to eat other protein sources - eggs, rice, and beans are common foods. It's not a thing I think about, more a consequence of... eating.

Mostly in jest, let's turn this around:

Eating meat, by contrast, seems to require significant mental gymnastics to justify. The impossible cruelty of the industrial meat production system and massive environmental impacts of eating meat create a lot of cognitive dissonance, so people need to fabricate justifications for their decision to eat meat. I'm honestly not sure how you keep up your meat-eating lifestyle when you have to work so hard to create an argument not to be vegetarian, and defend your psyche from all the evidence of the moral bankruptcy of your food choices. It seems like it would create a lot of anxiety, which could be a factor in the reduced lifespan of meat eaters.

[slabity]

> I'm not sure why you're so invested in the idea that eating protein is hard when one doesn't eat meat.

I'm not sure why you're so invested in misrepresenting my argument. You're conflating my use of the word "effort" with some specific amount of difficulty. Would it be more accurate to use the word "willpower" instead? I personally do not believe changing any part of your diet is "hard". I have done it myself multiple times, and even now the only meat I eat regularly is fish on occasion.

The point I am making though, is that health studies don't ever seem to take into account that most people who don't put any willpower at all to have a healthy diet also tend to also eat meat. And to demonstrate that point further, here's a study on some amazing health benefits of a meat-only diet[1]. Notice how the reported health benefits are oddly similar to those that are common with vegan or vegetarian diets? My argument is that this is because this study also fails to take into account the type of people who don't put any effort into having a healthy diet (granted, at least this study acknowledges those shortcomings in their methodology as part of their conclusion).

I am not making an argument to not be vegetarian. Just as I am not making an argument to not be a carnivore. And I am certainly not trying to "defend my psyche" from being "morally bankrupt" or whatever that last paragraph of yours was suppose to be about. I honestly don't even know where you pulled that from.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8684475/