Opinions on vegetarianism and vegans. Are they right? Dangerous?

Question

Want to become vegan in reality, but i think it is too difficult with modern day processed food everywhere so can settle with vegetarian.

My opinion - i always thought animals were slaughtered humanely, but i a finding different and i am very passionate about animal rights (RSPCA volunteer) and have found ALL necessary substances can be found in vegetarian foods. Meat industry also produces the MOST carbon emissions and that food used to feed animals is enough to end world hunger (i am not joking, check books and internet if you don't believe me). Healthwise, also a bonus, only poorly planned vegetarians get various difficiencies (iron, b-12) from not reading how certain foods reduce absorption. Anyway being a teenager unsure of how my mum will react to this concept.

However i want to know other people's opinions, omnivores, vegans and vegetarians.

Answer 1

you seem to have a better grasp on it than i had when i started. i was a good month in before i knew all that. good luck convincing your mother.

Answer 2

Getting a balanced diet, which is almost automatic with a varied omnivorous diet, becomes a matter requiring constant close attention for vegetarians. It can be especially risky for young people who are still growing, pregnant and nursing women.

If you feel you don't want to eat animals that have been slaughtered, vegetarianism is a reasonable choice. Unfortunately, for many vegetarians it becomes an ideology - almost a religion. Such people will embrace - and preach - false beliefs; for example, that meat is unhealthy, that humans are not evolved to eat meat and that it becomes a toxic mass inside the GI tract, that meat is nauseating, and that a vegetarian diet is uniquely healthy. Such people can be a pain in the ****. But many vegetarians avoid that trap.

The last problem is a social one. A vegetarian will always be in a minority, and when he or she goes to a dinner party at someone's home, it can be a tacit insult not to share the food that is offered.

But, as always, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

Answer 3

It's well documented that a balanced mixed, vegetarian or vegan diet is sufficient and healthy. (Key word- balance).

Remember that *any* poorly planned diet can lead to nutritional deficiencies. My uncle is an avid meat eater and he has iron deficiency anaemia.

[edit] @ Scott L, I grew up as a vegetarian and I'm fine. Like I said, a varied diet for optimal health. It's NOT dangerous to raise kids as vegetarians providing you do a little research on nutrition. (Beans supply most of the nutrients in meat, like iron, protein and zinc). I have read a lot about vegetarian and vegan nutrition- and spoke to lecturers, nutritionists and professors at University about it. A good nutritionist never says a vegetarian or vegan diet is unhealthy. All of the professionals I have spoken to say veg*nism is nutritionally adequate for all ages.

Answer 4

Being a vegetarian and staying healthy is very easy, and requires very little effort. It is more difficult to be a vegan and get all the nutrients you need, so a person must take care of their diet if they're a vegan.

Answer 5

Eventually, yes, I plan to attempt to go vegan. But for now, I am fine with being a struggling lacto-ovo vegetarian. Even I am having troubles with that thanks. I rarely eat eggs and I prefer soy products anyways.

I read that a crop can feed more people than a ranch the same size. I also saw pictures (and they were good, compared to some out there) of how animals are torchered for their meat. It disgusts me.

Answer 6

Being vegan is not dangerous unless you eat a totally screwed up diet or you have some sort of biological defect that hinders absorption of nutrients. Even if you did, all nutrients are available from vegan sources so it wouldn't matter if you are vegan or not.

B12 is the ONLY nutrient that MAY need to be supplemented just to stay on the safe side. All others are easily found in the right places.

A vegan person doesn't need much other that bread, pasta, cereal, rice, beans, peas, lentil, nuts, seed, fruits and veggies.

http://www.veganhealth.org/sh

http://www.pcrm.org/health/veginfo/index...

Answer 7

The evidence are very clear:

You an be healthy with a vegetarian or vegan diet.

You can find here the position paper of the biggest society of the nutritionist of the USA and Canada:

http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada...

About the ecological arguments, here you can find a collection of them:

http://www.vegetarismus.ch/info/eoeko.ht...

and here the connection between climate change and meat eating:

http://www.vegetarismus.ch/klimaschutz/i...

Answer 8

Just like to pose this question to an animal lover- what happens to all those animals if the world went vegan? no-one would want to look after them and they certainly wouldnt be breed from. e

Answer 9

Can I just pick up on Scott L statement please....

"Getting a balanced diet, which is almost automatic with a varied omnivorous diet, becomes a matter requiring constant close attention for vegetarians"

I'm curious on what experience you base this "fact".

I have personal experience of being a vegetarian  for 28 years and have not considered my diet, constant or otherwise, in all that time.

and, judging by the large supermarket space given over to diet vitamins and supplements ( the majority of which much be for meat-eaters because veggies make up a mere 4% of the population ) it hardly seems that a omnivorous  diet provides anything like an automatic balance.

Also, how can all the western health problems that are currently attributed to diet be explained if your omnivorous diet produces such "automatic" results ?

Its seems to me that your statement is extremely biased.

Can you also explain this one for me:

"It can be especially risky for young people who are still growing, pregnant and nursing women"

I doubt you can in any factual way. It seems just like the many throw-away comments we get from people who actually have no expereince on the topic.

Answer 10

I think it that your choice is quite reasonable i mean if you gonna throw up over meat you might as well not eat it....but seriously dont become a vegetarian just because you want to be fit

Answer 11

tens of thousands of vegans are sent to the emergency room due to malnutrition each year. this fact alone should be a wake up call to all you silly goofballs

Answer 12

SERIOUSLY, type in the search toolbar in Yahoo! answers for "Why won't you become vegan" and that should give you all the opinions and perspectives you'd ever want,...from vegans, meat eaters, vegetarians, and all the in betweens.  I wrote a lot of details, but that's because everything got so heated on the topic.  Oh yeah, I asked that question by the way... lol!  :)  Good luck, hope this helps!

Answer 13

I'm not sure what it is you want opinions on.

A vegan diet can be very healthy, so can a vegetarian diet and a  diet which includes meat. All three can be very unhealthy too.

I went vegetarian at 16; I did no research or planning, just ate what I knew to be healthy food most of the time, and my health didn't suffer either then or later. I'm now 55 and vegan, have never paid 'constant, close attention' to  getting a balanced diet,  and have been pretty healthy all my life. The one health problem I have had has been one that is not related to my diet and randomly affects veg*ns and meat-eaters alike.

Vegetarians are neither right nor wrong; they have made a choice most people don't make, that's all.

@Scott L, I think the boot is actually on the other foot as far as dinner parties go; it is insulting - and not tacitly so - knowingly to invite a veg*n to eat at your home and provide them with non-veg*n food. If I'm invited to dinner, I tell the host, if s/he doesn't know already, that I'm vegan. They then have the option to withdraw the invitation if they don't feel they can cater for me.

@uURhn ghhh - are you able to supply a link or any reference to back up that claim? Something to convince us that you didn't invent that 'statistic'?

Answer 14

I'm vegan because it's what I believe in ethically, environmentally and health-wise.  That's for me.  Most of the people in my life, of course, are meat eaters and I don't judge them poorly for not making the same choice I've made.

If you're unsure about planning your diet well, I recommend picking up a good book on nutrition.  "The New Becoming Vegetarian" (or even the vegan version, "Becoming Vegan") by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina is great.  Very thorough and includes information specifically addressing the need of teen veg*ns.

Incidentally, being vegan is easier than ever.  Yes, you have to avoid a lot of processed food, but that's not the best way to nourish yourself anyway.  There are a lot more products on the shelves that are marketed to vegans and if you're willing to cook for yourself, it's easy to eat very well without all the processed junk.

Answer 15

I'm a vegetarian because I dont believe anything should die because of me, humanely or inhumanely.

But the other side is the negative impact that "meat" production (Eg feedlots) have on our environment.