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Do you have any specific vitamins/nutrients in mind that have relevant mental health impacts? Ones that meat diets get, but vegan/vegetarian diets don't? From

Do you have any specific vitamins/nutrients in mind that have relevant mental health impacts? Ones that meat diets get, but vegan/vegetarian diets don't? From what I can tell, meat eaters are even less likely than vegans to calculate their nutritional intake (naturally so, vegans are much more likely to read ingredient and nutrient lists because how else can you shop vegan?), and the claim that it's easy to not have enough nutrients on a vegan diet goes both ways. It's easy to miss having enough of specific nutrients on a meat diet too if you don't carefully calculate your intake. From what I can tell, in practice some amount of nutritional deficiency just isn't that big a deal for most people. College kids that live on a diet of 80% ramen still survive relatively well, as do people who spend time attempting to balance their nutritional intake. The level of impact varies by person I'm sure.

girvo 5y ago
B12 is the only one that is commonly talked about needing to be supplemented as a vegan; though in Australia if you consume Soy milk, you likely already get enough as it is fortified with it. B12 deficiency can have quite profound neurological effects, though thats in pretty severe cases, IIRC
- pvarangot 5y ago
  Vitamin D too. Also if you have methylation problems you may need to supplement B12 even if you are meat eater.
stephen_g 5y ago
K2 seems to stick out to me as one vitamin that would be hard to get, but I'm not sure if it does anything for mental health. It's mostly in animal products (though can be made by bacteria or something which I think is how they make the supplements). If I recall correctly, B12 is potentially problematic too.
Iv 5y ago
I am mostly thinking of B7, because I know 2 persons in my family who get seriously depressed when they lack it. Note that I did not say it is impossible to get these through a vegan diet, just that it takes some efforts and care to have the daily dose necessary to avoid a deficit. Yes, I agree that almost no one calculates their nutrients intake, but when you go full vegan, you remove more than half of your food diversity, it opens yourself more easily to deficits. > From what I can tell, in practice some amount of nutritional deficiency just isn't that big a deal for most people. College kids that live on a diet of 80% ramen still survive relatively well People with mild depression survive relatively well, and this is what is discussed here. I used to have very bad dietary habits when I was working like crazy at my first job, and managed to get a deficiency in vitamin C. As I was young and in good conditions, it did not trigger any medical problem, but I can tell you that my quality of life improved greatly after I started taking vitamins (and later just rebalancing my diet a bit). It was removing a constant fog from my brain. I think this is a reason why so many pseudo-scientific dietician advice abound: "surviving relatively well" is not a good enough criterion anymore, yet that's what the medical research focuses on. Well-being is also something that people seek to achieve. Being more alert, more focused, less depressed, less stressed are things that a diet can have an influence on, and the scientific data on that is pretty scarce.

girvo 5y ago

B12 is the only one that is commonly talked about needing to be supplemented as a vegan; though in Australia if you consume Soy milk, you likely already get enough as it is fortified with it. B12 deficiency can have quite profound neurological effects, though thats in pretty severe cases, IIRC

pvarangot 5y ago
Vitamin D too. Also if you have methylation problems you may need to supplement B12 even if you are meat eater.

stephen_g 5y ago

K2 seems to stick out to me as one vitamin that would be hard to get, but I'm not sure if it does anything for mental health. It's mostly in animal products (though can be made by bacteria or something which I think is how they make the supplements). If I recall correctly, B12 is potentially problematic too.

Iv 5y ago

I am mostly thinking of B7, because I know 2 persons in my family who get seriously depressed when they lack it. Note that I did not say it is impossible to get these through a vegan diet, just that it takes some efforts and care to have the daily dose necessary to avoid a deficit. Yes, I agree that almost no one calculates their nutrients intake, but when you go full vegan, you remove more than half of your food diversity, it opens yourself more easily to deficits. > From what I can tell, in practice some amount of nutritional deficiency just isn't that big a deal for most people. College kids that live on a diet of 80% ramen still survive relatively well People with mild depression survive relatively well, and this is what is discussed here. I used to have very bad dietary habits when I was working like crazy at my first job, and managed to get a deficiency in vitamin C. As I was young and in good conditions, it did not trigger any medical problem, but I can tell you that my quality of life improved greatly after I started taking vitamins (and later just rebalancing my diet a bit). It was removing a constant fog from my brain. I think this is a reason why so many pseudo-scientific dietician advice abound: "surviving relatively well" is not a good enough criterion anymore, yet that's what the medical research focuses on. Well-being is also something that people seek to achieve. Being more alert, more focused, less depressed, less stressed are things that a diet can have an influence on, and the scientific data on that is pretty scarce.