If your litmus test for "viable" is what currently makes you the happiest you'll be blocked off from not only helping the world but likely helping yourself too.
I find that terribly narrow minded. It's not about "happiest". I've tried almost all of those before, several of them in multiple ways. I don't like the taste nor texture. So since I don't like the taste of what you like I am thusly being selfish and blocked from helping myself and the world?
This isn't how you win people over to your side. This is the type of thing that actually reinforces someone's opinion and makes it worse getting through to them.
Instead of trying to make yourself sound better than the person you want to convince of your position, you would be better off trying to find common ground and working from there.
"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar"
Best of luck.
Eventually one either gets used and enjoys the new foods or makes tasty meals in combination.
For me, getting drunk and then eating the disgusting thing in the morning made me love it. It's undescribable how delicious things are when one is dehydrated and when the disgusting taste of beer was the only thing in the mouth the night before.
The quality of life is subjective and taste can easily be acquired in a way that one can continue feeling satisfied with the foods they eat.
What you might need is a tastebud reset, which can easily be accomplished and after that you'll find anything extremely delicious.
You mentioned that you've just tried an ingredient and didn't like it which isn't even comparable to your dietary regime which was filled with meat during an extremely long period of time. To acquire taste takes effort or some out of the ordinary measures (a week or two of one ingredient diet to reset the taste buds, or that alchohol trick repetatively etc.).
Honestly though, this comes up a lot "catching more flies with honey" but I don't think these things should be spoken about obliquely, truth should be spoken plainly. I spoke true to my experience and knowledge as best I could and tried to be as polite as I could. Best of luck to you as well.
What about this vegan NFL player? https://redditblog.com/2016/06/24/300-pound-vegan-david-cart...
Bit more about myself since I think it's applicable: I'm no world class athlete, but I went vegetarian and started weight lifting a while back. Benched like 120 starting out. Now I'm vegan and can bench 200+ lbs, gained that muscle without eating animals.
Sure, there's some random ingredient that studies show only meat has and may help a little, but plenty of vegan athletes are starting to pop up and show there isn't some special thing in dead animals.
The common theme among vegan athletes is that recovery times improve substantially.
True but highly misleading. Even a vegan will have some amount of creatine because this molecule is produced by the liver and kidney.
Also the effects of creatine aren't that well studied: http://www.webmd.com/men/creatine
I don't know why I joined this discussion. I am neither vegan nor an athlete.
Depends on what you mean by "viable". Food is a huge part of culture and while those items you listed do provide protein it's, in my opinion, no where near as enjoyable as various types of meat. In fact many of that, to me, is really gross and I've tried multiple versions of all of it.
Naturally to others meat may be gross. There isn't a one size fits all solution here. We've evolved taste for a reason and it's hard to ignore if you don't like the "other solutions".
So I would say I disagree with your statement when you call the other items "viable other solutions" :)