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I'd say the first big thing to highlight is that correlation is not causation - you wouldn't want someone to take this study as proof that eating meat makes you

I'd say the first big thing to highlight is that correlation is not causation - you wouldn't want someone to take this study as proof that eating meat makes you less depressed. I would imagine that vegans (in particular vegans who chose their diet on ethical grounds) are overall more concerned about the state of the world around them - or are at least subjected to more of an echo-chamber effect from their peers - which would contribute to anxiety and depression?

User23 5y ago
On the other hand, correlation is a consequence of causation. Pragmatically one can reach a plausible conclusion, despite a lack of positive verification. In my own experience, I can conclusively report that a high quality steak definitely improves my mood. Causation of emotional states is bafflingly complex, so it could be some hidden cause, but to my senses it's just that eating delicious meat feels good.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Yes, a good steak is wonderful, and I like the idea of meat as self-care. It resonates with the therapeutic society[1] and might be a good ad campaign for a beef board. I'd even buy a scented candle if it smelled like ribeye. [1] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-therapeutic-society https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-t...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  > delicious You got your cause right there in the open.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  > eating delicious meat feels good Not if you keep in mind that the animal you're eating likely got in effect tortured in an animal farm And that eating meat speeds up climate change -- creates more violent storms and wildfires, and droughts and famines, and land conflicts and migration and wars.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    Hmm @User23, I didn't mean to sound grumpy. Most of my friends eat meat and my parents too. Just in case you happen to be a sensitive person, I didn't mean to be negative against you, sorry if what I wrote came across in that way I like meat too btw (although I no longer eat it, unless it's about to be thrown away anyway)
pvarangot 5y ago
That or people become vegan because they have depression and anxiety and are just trying to find a lifestyle that will help manage the symptoms. Then the vegan diet works, and they keep on not eating meat because their depression and anxiety actually got better. Not as good as someone that doesn't struggle with those from the get go, but better. That's another correlation, and if true it would actually mean that not eating meat is good for depression and anxiety in some people.
- sparrish 5y ago
  I may be misunderstanding you but I don't think so. While eating meat = depressed While eating vegan = depression and anxiety got better I would expect the results to show vegans had less depression if that were true. That's not what the study found.
  - TheDong 5y ago
    The point of the parent comment is that it is possible that having a correlation like this is actually an inverse of the causation. You're indeed misundestanding their point. An example of a case with inverse causation vs correlation is "A study found out that there is a strong correlation between the number of firemen at a house on fire and how large the fire is. As such, we should send fewer firemen to fires to ensure they are smaller". The parent poster isn't claiming the same sort of reverse-causation is true here, but merely pointing out that it's possible. To explain more clearly the parent poster's hypothetical: let's say there's the normal population, which is say 20% depressed and 5% vegan. Let's say there's a second population which suffers an 80% depression rate while eating meat, and a 50% depression rate while vegan. If that second population entirely goes vegan, they now have a 50% depression rate, which is 30% higher than the normal population, so a study would show "this group of vegans are more depressed than a typical group of meat eaters", but at the same time it would be true that being vegan improved their rates of depression.
Ansil849 5y ago
I don't at all see how you managed to jump to the conclusion that vegans are "or are at least subjected to more of an echo-chamber effect from their peers". This seems entirely unfounded.
- King-Aaron 5y ago
  Totally anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of vegans that I know have a strong leaning to socialise with other vegans, who often discuss veganism and end up with a lot of pro-vegan/anti-omnivore content on their social media feeds. So from my observations a social echo chamber exists that makes my acquaintances feel that the world urgently needs to progress towards veganism to avert social injustice/climate change/other existential issues/etc.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    As opposed to omnivores who consume normalized pro-animal death content in their regular feeds?
    - King-Aaron 5y ago
      Not quite the same, as generally speaking people who eat meat don't make it a personality trait.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
Iv 5y ago
It is easy to lack some vitamins or nutrients while going on a vegan diet. Some of them have an impact on mental health. Unless you are very comited into calculating your intake in every mineral and vitamin, I would recommend to take some supplements if you are going vegan (which is something I support but did not totally go through yet)
- mfer 5y ago
  Many (most?) meat eaters are deficient in nutrients their body needs. The USDA found that only about 3% of people get their daily recommended amount of fiber. Eating meat doesn’t mean you get what your body needs
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jiggunjer 5y ago
    what diseases are linked to lack of fiber? you have a generous definition of "need". edit: I'm not disputing the benefits of fiber for the average person, but the implied necessity of fiber is just false. Fact: A zero fiber diet is not guaranteed cause disease, whereas essential nutrient deficiencies will cause disease.
    - chillingeffect 5y ago
      effects are listed among others here: https://selfhacked.com/blog/carnivore-diet/ https://selfhacked.com/blog/carnivore-diet/
      - jiggunjer 5y ago
        spare me the blogs please. Its not even relevant: don't compare a meat-only diet to a low-fiber diet. All A are B but not all B are A.
        chillingeffect 5y ago
toomim 5y ago
Heh, without reading the article, I thought "correlation isn't causation" and clicked into the comments to see if anyone else who read the article thought so, too. And I see you at the top of the comments. It's nice to know I'm not alone.
- LeonB 5y ago
  I did exactly the same and went to leave a comment saying as much and saw this. I hoped that the article itself would make at least some attempt to deal with the issue, but it does not. It’s a meta study (meta meat?) that includes a set of studies. Those studies do not randomly assign people to eat/abstain from meat. It’s as bad as it sounds. Further, they use their poor study to criticise other, poorer, studies.
- kbelder 5y ago
  Correlation tends to correlate with causation, though.
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    Inverse causation correlates with correlation just as well.
zebraflask 5y ago
I wonder if more bioavailable B vitamins from a meat-heavy diet has anything to do with it. Vegetarian diets, as I understand the common saying, need to actively contain or be supplemented with B vitamin sources. If you're veg but live on nutrient-poor junk food, I could see nutritional deficiencies entering the mix. I think it's relatively uncontroversial that malnutrition has mental health side effects.
- cyounkins 5y ago
  Of the B vitamins, vegans (and to a lesser extent, vegetarians) only need to supplement B12. B12 is produced by bacteria but can be obtained in meat and animal products. Historically we got plenty from unsterilized water.
  - chmod600 5y ago
    Do you have a citation about the unsterilized water? I would guess that lots of things had bacteria, but not in large enough quantities to supply enough B12. It would need to be accumulated somehow. Cows have special hardware in their digestive tract to cultivate bacteria that can supply the B12. Why would that exist if cows could just get it from unsterilized water?
    - cyounkins 5y ago
      I got this from Dr. Greger at NutritionFacts.org, "We presumably used to get B12 drinking out of a mountain stream or well water, based on studies showing vegetarians in developing countries who drink purified water appear to be at higher risk." [1]. He references a paper [2] which states "Logistic regression analysis showed independent association between use of RO water and Vitamin B12 deficiency" in Western India. That evidence isn't as iron-clad as I would like, and I haven't been able to find any study directly measuring B12 in city/well/stream water. I don't know much about cow digestive systems, but I know evolution has created many weird solutions across different animals. The cow GI system is very different from humans (4 large stomach parts, sometimes referred to as separate stomachs) which is different from cats (obligate carnivores). [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-symptoms-of-vitamin-B12-deficiency/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-symptoms-of-vitamin-B12... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437269 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437269
TedShiller 5y ago
Good point. I wish people would apply your insight to housing. Denser housing leads to HIGHER prices, not lower prices. Look at NYC or Hong Kong.
- godelski 5y ago
  Does it? Or does high population density lead to both high density housing and higher prices? I can make a very good casual link. Higher population density means more competition for housing. Meaning they need to build more houses and we can follow traditional supply and demand curves to obtain high prices. I don't know if this is true or not, but it is definitely plausible. I'm getting at you because you're congratulating the parent for not linking correlation and causation and then you yourself are linking correlation and causation in the same breath.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  Quite, like how wet pavements cause rain.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dahfizz 5y ago
I would reverse the causation. People become vegans because they are highly empathetic and emotionally driven - this personality type also is more susceptible to anxiety and depression
- loceng 5y ago
  Highly empathetic could be due to a hypersensitivity.
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Not necessarily. I was a localvore before I went vegetarian, and the place where I got my chickens, pork, lamb and beef was ~10 miles from my house. (I live in a hipster city.) I did this because I liked meeting my animals and watching them be butchered. (Industrial meat production is wildly, horrifically cruel by comparison.) Now I'm vegetarian because meat is just too effing expensive when purchased ethically. I can't justify $40 steaks and $20/lb chicken, and to be honest, steak just really isn't that tasty... and bacon is awful for you. I'm also tired of chicken for the most part. Now that I've found soy curls I make way more fake-meat dishes than ever before. I'm not vegan because trying to get protein from vegan sources is too difficult. I still eat fish and eggs (but not milk, cuz cow milk is nasty) and I'll never give up cheese even though milk is taken from baby cows/sheep waaay to soon (they are switched to milk substitutes). But I get it, I like to cook, and if you don't like to cook, nothing is easier than throwing a steak on a grill.
  - igetspam 5y ago
    Soy curls! I'm not even vegetarian and I love those things. (caveat: my wife is vegan and I don't cook so I'm mostly vegetarian by association.) They are so freaking versatile. We've used them replace almost everything meat like that I want to eat that can't be don't by using a beefless ground.
  - girvo 5y ago
    > soy curls TVP, yeah? That stuff is magic, easily my favourite protein source. I can make dishes that blow people away with it
hhs 5y ago
> I'd say the first big thing to highlight is A second big thing to highlight is the study disclosure at the bottom of this article. Four of the six authors "have previously received funding from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association."
- top_post 5y ago
  And there you go.
- pstuart 5y ago
  Obligatory: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think. Oops. About that. 2005 was a long time ago, eh?
  - computerdork 5y ago
    That is absolutely fascinating (and horrifying!). Didn't know PR firms gave reporters that many stories.
- BikiniPrince 5y ago
  I feel this is the first thing to look for in any study is who is funding it. Next buts are the qualitative aspects. I am patiently waiting for a study brought to you by Carl’s Jr. any day now.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  That is important to take note of. But also not disqualifying by itself. I would expect any researcher or scientist that has experience researching meat eating to be likely to get grants from meat related organizations.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
runarberg 5y ago
I would also not be so fast in concluding that there is a correlation at all from this study. Others have pointed out that it was funded by interested parties in the meat industry. This meta-analysis only included 20 studies, and of these 20 only one was randomized trial. 18 of 20 used self reporting of mental health. While this meta-analysis suggests that there may be correlation here, I would wait for more proper studies to be conducted and maybe an eventual meta-analysis with better studies included preferably funded by a disinterested party before concluding that a correlation exists.
jhanschoo 5y ago
My two cents being a vegetarian 6/7 days a week is that day-to-day figuring out where / what you can eat, how to meet nutritional needs, what to cook, etc. gives me more stress than any philosophical concerns.
- chmod600 5y ago
  People forget that veganism and vegetarianism are not diets. They are the opposite: telling you what not to eat. Developing a good diet from scratch is no easy thing. It's a lot easier to follow your family and culture around you with some minor adaptations.
  - jhanschoo 5y ago
    > They are the opposite: telling you what not to eat. There doesn't seem to be a difference to this to me. When I go to the supermarket or eat out I simply have a lot of choices excluded from me. > It's a lot easier to follow your family and culture around you with some minor adaptations. While I wrote what to cook, I guess figuring out what dishes I want to cook isn't really tough. I'm more stressed by logistical issues: it's more necessary to be able to cook, and also, when you're lazy or don't have time, pre-mix and intermediate ingredients that allow you to skip steps usually don't cater to the vegetarian or vegan.
pg_1234 5y ago
Lack of a conscience leaves you suffering less depression and anxiety ... it also lets you feel more comfortable eating the flesh of another being. Perhaps this is less a case of causality, and more a case of correlation ... specifically with where you are on the sliding scale towards full sociopathy. p.s. I say this as someone who eats meat and knows it is objectively immoral.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Being on an eternal guilt-trip, surrounded by killers and asphyxiating cow farts! Surely that decreases your smarts? But have to be hip! (SCNR) OTOH: I think this has no merit if not taken into account the larger populations where meat is taboo for some longer time, instead of the current hype. Like Jains and some Hindus(or all?(don't know exactly)), for instance?

User23 5y ago

On the other hand, correlation is a consequence of causation. Pragmatically one can reach a plausible conclusion, despite a lack of positive verification. In my own experience, I can conclusively report that a high quality steak definitely improves my mood. Causation of emotional states is bafflingly complex, so it could be some hidden cause, but to my senses it's just that eating delicious meat feels good.

rsj_hn 5y ago
Yes, a good steak is wonderful, and I like the idea of meat as self-care. It resonates with the therapeutic society[1] and might be a good ad campaign for a beef board. I'd even buy a scented candle if it smelled like ribeye. [1] https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-therapeutic-society https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-t...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
seba_dos1 5y ago
> delicious You got your cause right there in the open.
cutemonster 5y ago
> eating delicious meat feels good Not if you keep in mind that the animal you're eating likely got in effect tortured in an animal farm And that eating meat speeds up climate change -- creates more violent storms and wildfires, and droughts and famines, and land conflicts and migration and wars.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  Hmm @User23, I didn't mean to sound grumpy. Most of my friends eat meat and my parents too. Just in case you happen to be a sensitive person, I didn't mean to be negative against you, sorry if what I wrote came across in that way I like meat too btw (although I no longer eat it, unless it's about to be thrown away anyway)

pvarangot 5y ago

That or people become vegan because they have depression and anxiety and are just trying to find a lifestyle that will help manage the symptoms. Then the vegan diet works, and they keep on not eating meat because their depression and anxiety actually got better. Not as good as someone that doesn't struggle with those from the get go, but better. That's another correlation, and if true it would actually mean that not eating meat is good for depression and anxiety in some people.

sparrish 5y ago
I may be misunderstanding you but I don't think so. While eating meat = depressed While eating vegan = depression and anxiety got better I would expect the results to show vegans had less depression if that were true. That's not what the study found.
- TheDong 5y ago
  The point of the parent comment is that it is possible that having a correlation like this is actually an inverse of the causation. You're indeed misundestanding their point. An example of a case with inverse causation vs correlation is "A study found out that there is a strong correlation between the number of firemen at a house on fire and how large the fire is. As such, we should send fewer firemen to fires to ensure they are smaller". The parent poster isn't claiming the same sort of reverse-causation is true here, but merely pointing out that it's possible. To explain more clearly the parent poster's hypothetical: let's say there's the normal population, which is say 20% depressed and 5% vegan. Let's say there's a second population which suffers an 80% depression rate while eating meat, and a 50% depression rate while vegan. If that second population entirely goes vegan, they now have a 50% depression rate, which is 30% higher than the normal population, so a study would show "this group of vegans are more depressed than a typical group of meat eaters", but at the same time it would be true that being vegan improved their rates of depression.

Ansil849 5y ago

I don't at all see how you managed to jump to the conclusion that vegans are "or are at least subjected to more of an echo-chamber effect from their peers". This seems entirely unfounded.

King-Aaron 5y ago
Totally anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of vegans that I know have a strong leaning to socialise with other vegans, who often discuss veganism and end up with a lot of pro-vegan/anti-omnivore content on their social media feeds. So from my observations a social echo chamber exists that makes my acquaintances feel that the world urgently needs to progress towards veganism to avert social injustice/climate change/other existential issues/etc.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  As opposed to omnivores who consume normalized pro-animal death content in their regular feeds?
  - King-Aaron 5y ago
    Not quite the same, as generally speaking people who eat meat don't make it a personality trait.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

Iv 5y ago

It is easy to lack some vitamins or nutrients while going on a vegan diet. Some of them have an impact on mental health. Unless you are very comited into calculating your intake in every mineral and vitamin, I would recommend to take some supplements if you are going vegan (which is something I support but did not totally go through yet)

mfer 5y ago
Many (most?) meat eaters are deficient in nutrients their body needs. The USDA found that only about 3% of people get their daily recommended amount of fiber. Eating meat doesn’t mean you get what your body needs
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jiggunjer 5y ago
  what diseases are linked to lack of fiber? you have a generous definition of "need". edit: I'm not disputing the benefits of fiber for the average person, but the implied necessity of fiber is just false. Fact: A zero fiber diet is not guaranteed cause disease, whereas essential nutrient deficiencies will cause disease.
  - chillingeffect 5y ago
    effects are listed among others here: https://selfhacked.com/blog/carnivore-diet/ https://selfhacked.com/blog/carnivore-diet/
    - jiggunjer 5y ago
      spare me the blogs please. Its not even relevant: don't compare a meat-only diet to a low-fiber diet. All A are B but not all B are A.
      - chillingeffect 5y ago

toomim 5y ago

Heh, without reading the article, I thought "correlation isn't causation" and clicked into the comments to see if anyone else who read the article thought so, too. And I see you at the top of the comments. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

LeonB 5y ago
I did exactly the same and went to leave a comment saying as much and saw this. I hoped that the article itself would make at least some attempt to deal with the issue, but it does not. It’s a meta study (meta meat?) that includes a set of studies. Those studies do not randomly assign people to eat/abstain from meat. It’s as bad as it sounds. Further, they use their poor study to criticise other, poorer, studies.
kbelder 5y ago
Correlation tends to correlate with causation, though.
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  Inverse causation correlates with correlation just as well.

zebraflask 5y ago

I wonder if more bioavailable B vitamins from a meat-heavy diet has anything to do with it. Vegetarian diets, as I understand the common saying, need to actively contain or be supplemented with B vitamin sources. If you're veg but live on nutrient-poor junk food, I could see nutritional deficiencies entering the mix. I think it's relatively uncontroversial that malnutrition has mental health side effects.

cyounkins 5y ago
Of the B vitamins, vegans (and to a lesser extent, vegetarians) only need to supplement B12. B12 is produced by bacteria but can be obtained in meat and animal products. Historically we got plenty from unsterilized water.
- chmod600 5y ago
  Do you have a citation about the unsterilized water? I would guess that lots of things had bacteria, but not in large enough quantities to supply enough B12. It would need to be accumulated somehow. Cows have special hardware in their digestive tract to cultivate bacteria that can supply the B12. Why would that exist if cows could just get it from unsterilized water?
  - cyounkins 5y ago
    I got this from Dr. Greger at NutritionFacts.org, "We presumably used to get B12 drinking out of a mountain stream or well water, based on studies showing vegetarians in developing countries who drink purified water appear to be at higher risk." [1]. He references a paper [2] which states "Logistic regression analysis showed independent association between use of RO water and Vitamin B12 deficiency" in Western India. That evidence isn't as iron-clad as I would like, and I haven't been able to find any study directly measuring B12 in city/well/stream water. I don't know much about cow digestive systems, but I know evolution has created many weird solutions across different animals. The cow GI system is very different from humans (4 large stomach parts, sometimes referred to as separate stomachs) which is different from cats (obligate carnivores). [1] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-symptoms-of-vitamin-B12-deficiency/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-symptoms-of-vitamin-B12... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437269 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27437269

TedShiller 5y ago

Good point. I wish people would apply your insight to housing. Denser housing leads to HIGHER prices, not lower prices. Look at NYC or Hong Kong.

godelski 5y ago
Does it? Or does high population density lead to both high density housing and higher prices? I can make a very good casual link. Higher population density means more competition for housing. Meaning they need to build more houses and we can follow traditional supply and demand curves to obtain high prices. I don't know if this is true or not, but it is definitely plausible. I'm getting at you because you're congratulating the parent for not linking correlation and causation and then you yourself are linking correlation and causation in the same breath.
barry-cotter 5y ago
Quite, like how wet pavements cause rain.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

dahfizz 5y ago

I would reverse the causation. People become vegans because they are highly empathetic and emotionally driven - this personality type also is more susceptible to anxiety and depression

loceng 5y ago
Highly empathetic could be due to a hypersensitivity.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Not necessarily. I was a localvore before I went vegetarian, and the place where I got my chickens, pork, lamb and beef was ~10 miles from my house. (I live in a hipster city.) I did this because I liked meeting my animals and watching them be butchered. (Industrial meat production is wildly, horrifically cruel by comparison.) Now I'm vegetarian because meat is just too effing expensive when purchased ethically. I can't justify $40 steaks and $20/lb chicken, and to be honest, steak just really isn't that tasty... and bacon is awful for you. I'm also tired of chicken for the most part. Now that I've found soy curls I make way more fake-meat dishes than ever before. I'm not vegan because trying to get protein from vegan sources is too difficult. I still eat fish and eggs (but not milk, cuz cow milk is nasty) and I'll never give up cheese even though milk is taken from baby cows/sheep waaay to soon (they are switched to milk substitutes). But I get it, I like to cook, and if you don't like to cook, nothing is easier than throwing a steak on a grill.
- igetspam 5y ago
  Soy curls! I'm not even vegetarian and I love those things. (caveat: my wife is vegan and I don't cook so I'm mostly vegetarian by association.) They are so freaking versatile. We've used them replace almost everything meat like that I want to eat that can't be don't by using a beefless ground.
- girvo 5y ago
  > soy curls TVP, yeah? That stuff is magic, easily my favourite protein source. I can make dishes that blow people away with it

hhs 5y ago

> I'd say the first big thing to highlight is A second big thing to highlight is the study disclosure at the bottom of this article. Four of the six authors "have previously received funding from the Beef Checkoff, through the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association."

top_post 5y ago
And there you go.
pstuart 5y ago
Obligatory: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- nerdponx 5y ago
  > Whatever its flaws, the writing you find online is authentic. It's not mystery meat cooked up out of scraps of pitch letters and press releases, and pressed into molds of zippy journalese. It's people writing what they think. Oops. About that. 2005 was a long time ago, eh?
- computerdork 5y ago
  That is absolutely fascinating (and horrifying!). Didn't know PR firms gave reporters that many stories.
BikiniPrince 5y ago
I feel this is the first thing to look for in any study is who is funding it. Next buts are the qualitative aspects. I am patiently waiting for a study brought to you by Carl’s Jr. any day now.
jjeaff 5y ago
That is important to take note of. But also not disqualifying by itself. I would expect any researcher or scientist that has experience researching meat eating to be likely to get grants from meat related organizations.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

runarberg 5y ago

I would also not be so fast in concluding that there is a correlation at all from this study. Others have pointed out that it was funded by interested parties in the meat industry. This meta-analysis only included 20 studies, and of these 20 only one was randomized trial. 18 of 20 used self reporting of mental health. While this meta-analysis suggests that there may be correlation here, I would wait for more proper studies to be conducted and maybe an eventual meta-analysis with better studies included preferably funded by a disinterested party before concluding that a correlation exists.

jhanschoo 5y ago

My two cents being a vegetarian 6/7 days a week is that day-to-day figuring out where / what you can eat, how to meet nutritional needs, what to cook, etc. gives me more stress than any philosophical concerns.

chmod600 5y ago
People forget that veganism and vegetarianism are not diets. They are the opposite: telling you what not to eat. Developing a good diet from scratch is no easy thing. It's a lot easier to follow your family and culture around you with some minor adaptations.
- jhanschoo 5y ago
  > They are the opposite: telling you what not to eat. There doesn't seem to be a difference to this to me. When I go to the supermarket or eat out I simply have a lot of choices excluded from me. > It's a lot easier to follow your family and culture around you with some minor adaptations. While I wrote what to cook, I guess figuring out what dishes I want to cook isn't really tough. I'm more stressed by logistical issues: it's more necessary to be able to cook, and also, when you're lazy or don't have time, pre-mix and intermediate ingredients that allow you to skip steps usually don't cater to the vegetarian or vegan.

pg_1234 5y ago

Lack of a conscience leaves you suffering less depression and anxiety ... it also lets you feel more comfortable eating the flesh of another being. Perhaps this is less a case of causality, and more a case of correlation ... specifically with where you are on the sliding scale towards full sociopathy. p.s. I say this as someone who eats meat and knows it is objectively immoral.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

Being on an eternal guilt-trip, surrounded by killers and asphyxiating cow farts! Surely that decreases your smarts? But have to be hip! (SCNR) OTOH: I think this has no merit if not taken into account the larger populations where meat is taboo for some longer time, instead of the current hype. Like Jains and some Hindus(or all?(don't know exactly)), for instance?