I am a vegan for moral reasons, and I have no objection to people eating animals. What I do object to is the horrifying daily torture that animals must suffer in the meat, dairy and eggs industry. I am guessing this is where some of your food comes from.
In my experience, people who have no qualms about using animal-based products are ignorant of the realities of how these products are made. I encourage you to watch Earthlings [1] -- free to watch on their site -- and see if you feel the same way once you've seen some evidence.
As a fellow vegan, I have to ask -- why be vegan if you have no objection to people eating animals, if they are raised/slaughtered "humanely"? Why not just buy local meat/dairy/eggs? At least where I live, it's pretty easy to meet farmers at a farmer's market and talk to them about how their animals are treated.
First, I doubt we would be able to agree on a viable definition of "humane"
commercial farming. But even if we did, I would not take the farmer's word for
how the animals are treated. What I have heard from a former farmhand, who
worked on several small farms, is that abuse of animals is simply the norm.
It sounds reasonable to me that this is the situation, except perhaps in very
small farms. History has taught me this: whenever humans have physical control
over other humans, they tend to abuse their subjects in terrible ways.
Slavery. The Holocaust. Gulags. North Korean concentration camps. It seems to
me that the way we are treating animals is simply a manifestation of this
tendency toward sadism. It is not difficult to find recorded evidence of pure sadism playing out both in small and large farms. Since I have no way to verify a given farmer's claims, I will not take the risk.
Second, a well-balanced, strictly vegetarian diet is far more healthy than a
diet that is based on animal products [1,2]. I know that many people do not
believe this, and they base their views on the vast amount of disinformation
that is out there. To get to the truth you have to listen to the experts. The
book [1] I am citing was written by Dr. Walter Willett, one of the leading
researchers on the relation between nutrition and disease. His recommendation
is basically to eat as I suggested above. More precisely, he recommends (based
on decades of research) to reduce animal-based foods as much as possible, and to
reduce processed foods in favor of whole foods. There are of course additional
recommendations that I will not go into.
Vegetarian diet more healthy? In what criterion? Lean body mass? Sprint speed? Hint: vegetarians are known to be slow [1]. I think whether vegetarian diet is more healthy depends on personal traits: gut flora, genetics, even climate one lives. Basically there is no such one-fits-all scenario for a diet.
You're less likely to have numerous health problems by following a vegetarian diet. As a vegetarian you are, for example, less likely to have heart disease, the number one killer in the United States. [1] Interestingly, some of the oldest people in the world eat a primarily plant-based diet (though not exclusively). [2]
The issue is that you need a well planned veg diet. You can't just eat french fries and white bread and expect to maintain your health, obviously. For me, after a couple months of tracking my food and learning the calories/fat/protein of a lot of plant foods, I don't really have to think hard about creating well-balanced meals. It's a learning process.
I'm sure it's possible to have a healthy diet that includes a very small amount of non-red meat. That small amount is probably not going to hurt you that much. [3] However, you can get every vital nutrient you would get from meat from a plant source without the tacked-on fat and cholesterol.
Not from plants, but from micro-organisms and bacteria! Yum! Many of my foods are fortified with B12.
50% DV in my soy/almond milk, 40% in a single tbsp of nutritional yeast. I have a cup with cereal in the morning and a cup with dinner at night and I'm set. It's quite easy.
Are you kidding? Nutritional yeast is delicious! You can put it on popcorn, include it in any recipe that calls for Parmesan (like risotto or cheesy pastas), use it for breading tofu, use it to make vegan mac n cheese. I love nutritional yeast...in case you can't tell. :) It just has an awful name.
I fail to see how sprint speed, or indeed any other sports-based metric, is related to health. A strictly vegetarian diet is more healthy in the sense that it dramatically reduces the chances of getting various diseases. These include some of the top killers in developed countries, like heart disease and stroke. Vegans are also far less likely to be obese, and obesity is an important risk factor of many diseases.
The three main factors that influence health (in the sense above) are smoking habits, diet, and exercise. The factors you mention are secondary. I refer you to the sources I cited above for more details and evidence.
> Basically there is no such one-fits-all scenario for a diet.
That's a bit like saying that not everyone should avoid arsenic... There are of course personal variations, but the fact that meat, dairy and eggs are bad for you is not one of them. The basic mechanisms that cause animal-based food to be harmful, like the fact that saturated fats increase bad cholesterol, are well-studied and do not vary greatly from person to person.
On the other hand, a vegan diet is not one-size; it's not like we just eat lettuce all day. In fact, when you go vegan you discover that you do not lose any diversity, because there are many plant foods that non-vegans usully don't consider eating (for no good reason).
Sprinter speed is mostly determined by genetics and training (and often, PEDs). Diet is largely irrelevant - Usain Bolt's "power food" is mcnuggets, Yohan Blake's is a 16 banana smoothie.
Exactly. If you reason for avoiding meat is only because of shitty meat producers, then why not vote with your dollar instead and support the non-shitty meat producers?
In my experience, people who have no qualms about using animal-based products are ignorant of the realities of how these products are made. I encourage you to watch Earthlings [1] -- free to watch on their site -- and see if you feel the same way once you've seen some evidence.
[1] http://earthlings.com/