| Western omnivorous diets have far more meat than what's needed to fulfill required long-term nutritional needs. The consequences are pretty obvious. However, we are omnivores, and we really do need some meat in our diet. Lots of people switch to vegetarian/vegan diets report short term (less than 5 years) health benefits. And I have no doubt these are true. Anecdotally, my couple goes at low meat/no meat diets were the same. But most long term studies of people on primarily plant based diets show long term detriments that are double doctorate in nutrition and food science hard to eliminate. It's a very hard pill to swallow for people who've spent considerable mental effort at designing a lifestyle around these kinds of diets, and have deeply held philosophical beliefs driving this choice. Unfortunately, biology is an important driver here, and humans need some meat over the long term. Just not anywhere near what's common in the diets of citizens of most wealthy countries. The good news is that we have an amazingly adaptable digestive system, capable of sustaining us on all sorts of crazy things. There's very few animals on the planet capable of sustenance from such an incredible diversity of food sources. It's no doubt one of the reasons humans have been able to spread so far and wide. Within a remarkably short period of time, we've also been able to specialize. Humans in some corners of the world exist almost purely off of animal products while others live off of almost purely plant products, some of these populations have adapted so well they can consume dangerous levels of some nutrients or adapt to relatively low amounts of others. A bit more on the biological specialization of humans and our evolved digestive systems. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7763330 |