All the questions are related. I am aware that some people can make it work, but if you remove cheap meat, who do you affect? Poor people. My question is, can poor people also eat a plant based diet with minimal malnutrition risk? All the questions are in reference to that.

All I see about plant based diets say the same shit without answering the though questions. They always say, "it's possible to be a health vegan if you watch your nutrition". Well that says precisely nothing. It is a carefully crafted message to not upset militant vegans.

The impression I get from that message is that it is far easier to be healthy if you don't avoid meat. You don't have to watch your nutrition much. You just have to use common sense.

It’s very easy to eat healthily and cheaply on a vegetarian or vegan diet. In the UK I used Quorn or lentils as a major protein in a lot of my cooking, now I’m in Berlin I’m alternating between soy chunks, seitan (both of which I have to flavour myself), lentils, tofu, four types of preprepared tinned beans, soy milk, and cheese.

Most of these options have cheap subtypes. The most expensive part of my cooking is the fancy stuff that isn’t strictly necessary, like fresh basil or pre-made pastry, and even those are not hugely expensive.

> The impression I get from that message is that it is far easier to be healthy if you don't avoid meat. You don't have to watch your nutrition much.

The obesity crisis in the developed world, combined with the low rate of no-meat diets, rather contradicts that.

> You just have to use common sense.

How do you define “common sense” such that this sentence differentiates between the effectiveness of meat and non-meat diets?

So, now meet causes obesity? That is really a new theory.

It doesn’t get much cheaper and healthier than beans and soy.

I’ve never felt this good before and the secret seems to be fiber in everything, even the protein.

The idea that meat needs to eaten in the quantity and frequency that it’s currently eaten in the west to maintain a healthy diet is a recent idea. For my grandparents growing up most meat, especially things like chicken was a luxury reserved for special occasions. It’s also always interesting to me that when this argument comes up people are suddenly very interested in standing up for “the poor”, there are a whole host of other, more important ways inequality can be addressed at it’s root.

Historical diets were nothing like modern vegetarianism. They also were not super heathy, oftentimes missing nutricients and causing diseases from the lack of them.

I didn't say anything about vegetarianism, I was responding to the idea that cheap, readily available meat is a given.