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If you're optimizing for caloric intake and health advantages, I'd recommend looking into eating plants (and fungi). Plants are always more efficient than anima

If you're optimizing for caloric intake and health advantages, I'd recommend looking into eating plants (and fungi). Plants are always more efficient than animals for caloric and nutrient intake because animals burn the calories they eat before you eat the animals. You may be interested in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

porpoisely 8y ago
This is simply not true and one of the many lies vegan activists tell. If you are optimizing for calorie and health, you eat a mix of meat, vegetables, fruits, etc ( aka a balanced diet ). Plants require far more effort for the same amount of energy. http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ If plant diet was optimizing for caloric intake and health advantages, most human societies would have been vegan. But no human society throughout human existence and pre-human existence were vegan because plant diet isn't optimal. It's also why vegans tend to be lethargic, lose bone mass, teeth rot, joint pains, have trouble concentrating, etc. It's why vegans have to take tons of supplements to even stay alive and while doing so do long term damage to their bodies. Balanced diet folks. It's something humans have been designed to eat since human existence. Not only does your body need it, it also helps with your gut biodiversity which helps prevent anxiety, depression, etc. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/anxiety-head-gut/story?id=20229136 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/anxiety-head-gut/story?id=2022...
- drcoopster 8y ago
  > It's also why vegans tend to be lethargic, lose bone mass, teeth rot, joint pains, have trouble concentrating, etc. It's why vegans have to take tons of supplements to even stay alive and while doing so do long term damage to their bodies. This is simply not true and one of the many lies anti-vegan activists tell.
  - porpoisely 8y ago
    If it isn't true, why do vegans have to supplement their diets with tons of pills? Also, I was a vegan for while, so I know all the lies. Can you show me one vegan that doesn't take supplements?
    - outworlder 8y ago
      They do have to take supplements, of course. It's their prerogative. It's much harder to have a balanced diet eating only plants. You can't easily compete against organisms that only eat plants, and have been collecting all the nutrients, for their entire existence, for you. Humans are adapted to eat from both plants and animal sources. Take away one source, and you have to adapt.
      - gnome_chomsky 8y ago
        The only supplement vegans and vegetarians need to take is B-12. The rest comes from having a varied and balanced plant based diet. Something interesting to note is that many people, regardless of diet, are at least somewhat deficient in B-12 and should supplement. And the meat that contains B-12 usually comes from supplementing the feed given to livestock with B-12.
    - curiousfab 8y ago
      > If it isn't true, why do vegans have to supplement their diets with tons of pills? They don't. All you need to supplement is B12, and that's one small pill a day to take. If you're interested in the background, find some information e.g. here: https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vitamin-b12/ https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vitamin-b12/
    - the_gastropod 8y ago
      Where do you get this? What supplements do vegans need to take? B12... that’s literally it. And B12’s unavailability in a vegan diet is only because of modern cleanliness practices. B12 is produced by bacteria, and can be found in streams and rivers just fine, if you’re into that sort of thing.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  >If plant diet was optimizing for caloric intake and health advantages, most human societies would have been vegan. But no human society throughout human existence and pre-human existence were vegan because plant diet isn't optimal. Caveat: I'm a huge meat eater. Love the stuff. Can't stop won't stop. BUUUTTTT the natural fallacy has to die. Just because we did something for the last N millennia doesn't make it worthy of continuation.
  - porpoisely 8y ago
    You misread my comment. The natural fallacy is the one vegans claim. Not me. The vegan claim is that we are naturally vegans and have been duped into being meat eaters. And I'm debunking it. And my point wasn't that we should do something just because it's been done before. My point is that if veganism was "natural and optimal", then why hasn't any human society in history adopted it? Because humans cannot survive on a vegan diet without supplements. In other words, my point is that if the vegan assertion that "veganism is the optimal natural human diet" ( aka what humans were meant to eat ), why has no human society ever adopted it and why can't humans survive on a vegan diet in nature.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      > My point is that if veganism was "natural and optimal", then why hasn't any human society in history adopted it? Because humans cannot survive on a vegan diet without supplements. I don't know if that's true. We may not have been able to supply the amount of vegetation required to keep a human being upright and functional a millennia ago, but now that we live in the age of abundance, with food diversity that's unprecedented that may not be an issue at all. We can artificially create a complete diet of strictly plant matter with intelligent choices.
      - outworlder 8y ago
        > We can artificially create a complete diet of strictly plant matter with intelligent choices. That's very hard to distinguish from supplements. Some nutrients are hard to find in useful quantities in plants, so you need a ton of them. The most practical approach is to extract and put them in a pill. Supplements. Nothing wrong with it.
- apendleton 8y ago
  > Plants require far more effort for the same amount of energy. I'm confused as to what you mean here. Do you mean the energy required to produce plant foods is higher than the energy required to produce animal foods? If so, this seems self-evidently false: all edible calories start out as plant calories, and we can either eat the plants or have animals eat the plants (wasting a bunch of the input energy along the way) and then eat the animals. Or do you mean the effort to prepare the plant foods is higher? If so... maybe? But that'll inherently be subjective and depend on what people want to eat. Certainly, meat-free prepared foods are not difficult to find, at least in the US. > But no human society throughout human existence and pre-human existence were vegan because plant diet isn't optimal... Balanced diet folks. It's something humans have been designed to eat since human existence. I don't think many vegans argue that humans were designed to eat only plants (many would dispute that humans were designed at all), but looking at historical societies isn't that useful; advances in agricultural technology have made eating a healthy vegan diet more feasible than it used to be, so the fact that it wasn't practical to do 100 years ago or 1000 years ago or whatever isn't very interesting. In the here and now, it is possible, and there's plenty of peer-reviewed research suggesting that the optimal amount of red meat, in particular, to consume, is none (it's carcinogenic), that animal fat of any kind isn't great either, and that people who reduce or eliminate consumption of these foods while still maintaining adequate caloric and nutrient intake have reduced all-cause mortality. In any event, many vegans would also argue that even if it wasn't possible to eat vegan historically, the fact that it is now means that we should, for reasons of ethics/animal welfare, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. > It's also why vegans tend to be lethargic, lose bone mass, teeth rot, joint pains, have trouble concentrating, etc. Citation needed? > It's why vegans have to take tons of supplements to even stay alive and while doing so do long term damage to their bodies. The only nutrient that only occurs naturally in animal sources is B12. It's true that vegans generally need to get their B12 either from supplements or fortified foods, but the technology for that exists, so there's no real downside here. Other than that, many vegans choose to get other nutrients from supplements or fortified foods because it's easier than planning a diet that includes all of them naturally. Omnivores do this too, though; we just don't think about it, because that diet is standard enough that it makes sense from a public health perspective to incorporate nutrient supplementation directly into the regular food supply so people don't have to think about it. That's why there's iodine in table salt, or vitamin D in milk. If everyone were vegan, we would do the same for nutrients that require special attention in vegan diets, but that says nothing inherent about veganism. And I have no idea what that "long term damage" claim is about. There's nothing inherently dangerous about getting a nutrient in a capsule instead of in a steak. Your link also suggests that having healthy gut flora is important (true), but doesn't support the case that you need to eat animals to achieve it, at least as far as I can tell.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  > Plants require far more effort for the same amount of energy. I'm curious about this one - what about things like corn and soybean? Those would seem pretty readily accessible in terms of pure caloric content.
- sridca 8y ago
  > If you are optimizing for calorie and health, you eat a mix of meat, vegetables, fruits, etc ( aka a balanced diet ). If that is so, why are all these people healing and getting healthier on an all-meat diet? http://meatheals.com http://meatheals.com
thatcat 8y ago
Humans don't have the cellulase enzyme necessary to digest cellulose, the primary component of vegetables. Cows and other grazing animals do, which is why they can efficiently use plants to gain energy and mass. Humans eat meat because we can not use the majority a plant's mass for energy or mass production. Some day maybe there will be a cellulase supplement or probiotic supplement that allows efficient veganism, but we're not there yet.
pathseeker 8y ago
That's a terribly simplistic analysis. First, humans don't digest plants in the same way and won't get the same calories/nutrition out of the plants as a chicken/whatever. Second, feed for animals is significantly cheaper than the plants humans like to eat and what the stores sell them for. Sure, if you could live eating chicken feed then it would certainly be cheaper to eat that instead of chicken for caloric intake. But to optimize for dollar nutritional value in food humans actually eat, it's pretty hard to beat the $5 chicken.
- bootlooped 8y ago
  Animal agriculture has a lot of externalized costs, so that is one thing to think about when considering what type of diet would be optimal for society. As for the present time, I agree that the retail price of meat and the nutrients offered makes it a pretty good deal.

porpoisely 8y ago

This is simply not true and one of the many lies vegan activists tell. If you are optimizing for calorie and health, you eat a mix of meat, vegetables, fruits, etc ( aka a balanced diet ). Plants require far more effort for the same amount of energy. http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ http://time.com/4252373/meat-eating-veganism-evolution/ If plant diet was optimizing for caloric intake and health advantages, most human societies would have been vegan. But no human society throughout human existence and pre-human existence were vegan because plant diet isn't optimal. It's also why vegans tend to be lethargic, lose bone mass, teeth rot, joint pains, have trouble concentrating, etc. It's why vegans have to take tons of supplements to even stay alive and while doing so do long term damage to their bodies. Balanced diet folks. It's something humans have been designed to eat since human existence. Not only does your body need it, it also helps with your gut biodiversity which helps prevent anxiety, depression, etc. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/anxiety-head-gut/story?id=20229136 https://abcnews.go.com/Health/anxiety-head-gut/story?id=2022...

drcoopster 8y ago
> It's also why vegans tend to be lethargic, lose bone mass, teeth rot, joint pains, have trouble concentrating, etc. It's why vegans have to take tons of supplements to even stay alive and while doing so do long term damage to their bodies. This is simply not true and one of the many lies anti-vegan activists tell.
- porpoisely 8y ago
  If it isn't true, why do vegans have to supplement their diets with tons of pills? Also, I was a vegan for while, so I know all the lies. Can you show me one vegan that doesn't take supplements?
  - outworlder 8y ago
    They do have to take supplements, of course. It's their prerogative. It's much harder to have a balanced diet eating only plants. You can't easily compete against organisms that only eat plants, and have been collecting all the nutrients, for their entire existence, for you. Humans are adapted to eat from both plants and animal sources. Take away one source, and you have to adapt.
    - gnome_chomsky 8y ago
      The only supplement vegans and vegetarians need to take is B-12. The rest comes from having a varied and balanced plant based diet. Something interesting to note is that many people, regardless of diet, are at least somewhat deficient in B-12 and should supplement. And the meat that contains B-12 usually comes from supplementing the feed given to livestock with B-12.
  - curiousfab 8y ago
    > If it isn't true, why do vegans have to supplement their diets with tons of pills? They don't. All you need to supplement is B12, and that's one small pill a day to take. If you're interested in the background, find some information e.g. here: https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vitamin-b12/ https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/vitamin-b12/
  - the_gastropod 8y ago
    Where do you get this? What supplements do vegans need to take? B12... that’s literally it. And B12’s unavailability in a vegan diet is only because of modern cleanliness practices. B12 is produced by bacteria, and can be found in streams and rivers just fine, if you’re into that sort of thing.
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
>If plant diet was optimizing for caloric intake and health advantages, most human societies would have been vegan. But no human society throughout human existence and pre-human existence were vegan because plant diet isn't optimal. Caveat: I'm a huge meat eater. Love the stuff. Can't stop won't stop. BUUUTTTT the natural fallacy has to die. Just because we did something for the last N millennia doesn't make it worthy of continuation.
- porpoisely 8y ago
  You misread my comment. The natural fallacy is the one vegans claim. Not me. The vegan claim is that we are naturally vegans and have been duped into being meat eaters. And I'm debunking it. And my point wasn't that we should do something just because it's been done before. My point is that if veganism was "natural and optimal", then why hasn't any human society in history adopted it? Because humans cannot survive on a vegan diet without supplements. In other words, my point is that if the vegan assertion that "veganism is the optimal natural human diet" ( aka what humans were meant to eat ), why has no human society ever adopted it and why can't humans survive on a vegan diet in nature.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    > My point is that if veganism was "natural and optimal", then why hasn't any human society in history adopted it? Because humans cannot survive on a vegan diet without supplements. I don't know if that's true. We may not have been able to supply the amount of vegetation required to keep a human being upright and functional a millennia ago, but now that we live in the age of abundance, with food diversity that's unprecedented that may not be an issue at all. We can artificially create a complete diet of strictly plant matter with intelligent choices.
    - outworlder 8y ago
      > We can artificially create a complete diet of strictly plant matter with intelligent choices. That's very hard to distinguish from supplements. Some nutrients are hard to find in useful quantities in plants, so you need a ton of them. The most practical approach is to extract and put them in a pill. Supplements. Nothing wrong with it.
apendleton 8y ago
> Plants require far more effort for the same amount of energy. I'm confused as to what you mean here. Do you mean the energy required to produce plant foods is higher than the energy required to produce animal foods? If so, this seems self-evidently false: all edible calories start out as plant calories, and we can either eat the plants or have animals eat the plants (wasting a bunch of the input energy along the way) and then eat the animals. Or do you mean the effort to prepare the plant foods is higher? If so... maybe? But that'll inherently be subjective and depend on what people want to eat. Certainly, meat-free prepared foods are not difficult to find, at least in the US. > But no human society throughout human existence and pre-human existence were vegan because plant diet isn't optimal... Balanced diet folks. It's something humans have been designed to eat since human existence. I don't think many vegans argue that humans were designed to eat only plants (many would dispute that humans were designed at all), but looking at historical societies isn't that useful; advances in agricultural technology have made eating a healthy vegan diet more feasible than it used to be, so the fact that it wasn't practical to do 100 years ago or 1000 years ago or whatever isn't very interesting. In the here and now, it is possible, and there's plenty of peer-reviewed research suggesting that the optimal amount of red meat, in particular, to consume, is none (it's carcinogenic), that animal fat of any kind isn't great either, and that people who reduce or eliminate consumption of these foods while still maintaining adequate caloric and nutrient intake have reduced all-cause mortality. In any event, many vegans would also argue that even if it wasn't possible to eat vegan historically, the fact that it is now means that we should, for reasons of ethics/animal welfare, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. > It's also why vegans tend to be lethargic, lose bone mass, teeth rot, joint pains, have trouble concentrating, etc. Citation needed? > It's why vegans have to take tons of supplements to even stay alive and while doing so do long term damage to their bodies. The only nutrient that only occurs naturally in animal sources is B12. It's true that vegans generally need to get their B12 either from supplements or fortified foods, but the technology for that exists, so there's no real downside here. Other than that, many vegans choose to get other nutrients from supplements or fortified foods because it's easier than planning a diet that includes all of them naturally. Omnivores do this too, though; we just don't think about it, because that diet is standard enough that it makes sense from a public health perspective to incorporate nutrient supplementation directly into the regular food supply so people don't have to think about it. That's why there's iodine in table salt, or vitamin D in milk. If everyone were vegan, we would do the same for nutrients that require special attention in vegan diets, but that says nothing inherent about veganism. And I have no idea what that "long term damage" claim is about. There's nothing inherently dangerous about getting a nutrient in a capsule instead of in a steak. Your link also suggests that having healthy gut flora is important (true), but doesn't support the case that you need to eat animals to achieve it, at least as far as I can tell.
shittyadmin 8y ago
> Plants require far more effort for the same amount of energy. I'm curious about this one - what about things like corn and soybean? Those would seem pretty readily accessible in terms of pure caloric content.
sridca 8y ago
> If you are optimizing for calorie and health, you eat a mix of meat, vegetables, fruits, etc ( aka a balanced diet ). If that is so, why are all these people healing and getting healthier on an all-meat diet? http://meatheals.com http://meatheals.com

thatcat 8y ago

Humans don't have the cellulase enzyme necessary to digest cellulose, the primary component of vegetables. Cows and other grazing animals do, which is why they can efficiently use plants to gain energy and mass. Humans eat meat because we can not use the majority a plant's mass for energy or mass production. Some day maybe there will be a cellulase supplement or probiotic supplement that allows efficient veganism, but we're not there yet.

pathseeker 8y ago

That's a terribly simplistic analysis. First, humans don't digest plants in the same way and won't get the same calories/nutrition out of the plants as a chicken/whatever. Second, feed for animals is significantly cheaper than the plants humans like to eat and what the stores sell them for. Sure, if you could live eating chicken feed then it would certainly be cheaper to eat that instead of chicken for caloric intake. But to optimize for dollar nutritional value in food humans actually eat, it's pretty hard to beat the $5 chicken.

bootlooped 8y ago
Animal agriculture has a lot of externalized costs, so that is one thing to think about when considering what type of diet would be optimal for society. As for the present time, I agree that the retail price of meat and the nutrients offered makes it a pretty good deal.