Re:Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double-Edged Sword (1999) [pdf]
by SwellJoe on Monday August 17, 2015 @12:58PM
(#10074407)
You're conflating a "vegetarian diet in a developed nation" with a "diet that has severely limited food options", and making it seem as though a vegetarian in a developed nation would have a hard time remaining healthy. This is misleading.
It is at least as easy to be a healthy vegetarian in a developed location as it is to be a healthy omnivore in the same location.
You are also conflating "vegetarian diet" with "cereal-grain heavy diet" which is also misleading when applied to the developed world. Vegetarians in much of the developed world have effectively unlimited access to non-cereal grain foods, and there are many excellent vegetarian zinc sources (nuts, seeds, and beans among them).
In short: This paper cannot usefully be applied to the eating habits of people in developed nations in the way that you are applying it, because it is based primarily on the premise of a diet that is heavily cereal grain based, by necessity, which is not a description that matches the population you're attempting to apply these results to.
> It's so much easier to have a vaguely balanced nutrition when you eat meat. It's also perfectly possible to have it as a vegetarian, but it really requires that you know what you're doing and that you make sure you get necessary nutrients.
And, this one is just inaccurate. A balanced vegetarian diet in the developed world is no more difficult than a balanced omnivorous diet in the developed world. A fully vegan diet does introduce the necessity to think about B12, as it is not readily available in a vegan diet.
There's vast swaths of solid science indicating that reducing meat consumption has positive health impacts. Only when you read it through the lens of a "paleo" diet fanatic does one interpret the data to mean the opposite.
It is at least as easy to be a healthy vegetarian in a developed location as it is to be a healthy omnivore in the same location.
You are also conflating "vegetarian diet" with "cereal-grain heavy diet" which is also misleading when applied to the developed world. Vegetarians in much of the developed world have effectively unlimited access to non-cereal grain foods, and there are many excellent vegetarian zinc sources (nuts, seeds, and beans among them).
In short: This paper cannot usefully be applied to the eating habits of people in developed nations in the way that you are applying it, because it is based primarily on the premise of a diet that is heavily cereal grain based, by necessity, which is not a description that matches the population you're attempting to apply these results to.
> It's so much easier to have a vaguely balanced nutrition when you eat meat. It's also perfectly possible to have it as a vegetarian, but it really requires that you know what you're doing and that you make sure you get necessary nutrients.
And, this one is just inaccurate. A balanced vegetarian diet in the developed world is no more difficult than a balanced omnivorous diet in the developed world. A fully vegan diet does introduce the necessity to think about B12, as it is not readily available in a vegan diet.
There's vast swaths of solid science indicating that reducing meat consumption has positive health impacts. Only when you read it through the lens of a "paleo" diet fanatic does one interpret the data to mean the opposite.