Besides, even if we accept your premise that nutritional data are unhelpful in understanding the effectiveness of any diet, this can said of both plant-based and carnist diets, meaning we can’t say one or the other is better, or worse, or more or less nutritious.
In that case, I think we should then choose the diet which we definitively know causes the least suffering.
I have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone feeling good on a carnist diet but bad on a plant based diet is anything other than not knowing how to have a balanced plant based diet, which is easy to do when armed with the knowledge.
That's where we disagree. I think they are because I think we underestimate the differences between people.
> Besides, even if we accept your premise that nutritional data are unhelpful in understanding the effectiveness of any diet, this can said of both plant-based and carnist diets, meaning we can’t say one or the other is better, or worse, or more or less nutritious.
Again I disagree. My conclusion is that everyone should experiment with different kinds of diet and see what works. We may not know at the humanity level, but we can learn more at the individual level.
> In that case, I think we should then choose the diet which we definitively know causes the least suffering.
I don't agree with your premise (or maybe put individual suffering of humans at a higher level than animals), but I do agree with your conclusions. I don't know if you count climate impact in "suffering" in general but that's a good argument for veganism too.
> I have no reason whatsoever to believe that someone feeling good on a carnist diet but bad on a plant based diet is anything other than not knowing how to have a balanced plant based diet, which is easy to do when armed with the knowledge.
I think that's shortsighted of you for two reasons. First, as I said, I think you underestimate the individual variations between people. Second, considering how many people suffer from obesity in America, I don't agree that having a balanced diet, be it plant based or anything else, is easy.
People on carnivore diet do not have that overarching ethical stance which guides their decisions.
So saying "people don't have to go full blast vegan" is not the same as "people don't have to go full blast carnivore" because people rarely go vegan because of the diet, they do it because of the animals.
Doing it only because of the diet would probably be called "plant based" eating now a days.
From what I've heard from carnivore people, it's usually the opposite. It's not that eating meat prevent health issues, it's that eating some vegetables causes them. Carnivore is a form of elimination diet, which can help some people. For example, if you are gluten intolerant, being carnivore will make you feel better. If you are sensitive to nightshades (some people claim to be and I don't want to dismiss their experience), carnivore will work too. Veganism can work the same way for some people (lactose intolerant people for example, people that get allergic to mammal meat due to Lyme's).
I personally think that we tend to underestimate the variations from individual to individual, and that studies don't help with that as nutritional studies are usually self reported and not really solid, and don't take into account confounding factors. For example, vegans and carnivore both have a huge healthy user bias compared to the standard american diet. I think everyone should try different diets and use what's best for them.
One big difference between carnivore (or even keto) and veganism however is that veganism is also a diet based on moral and values. As such, it's hard to see vegans as less biased than keto followers or carnivore followers.