Iron, for one. Beans contain iron but so little of it that you’d have to consume 1.2kg to get your recommended daily intake. Similarly for a lot of other essential minerals.

This suggests that kidney beans have a higher iron to calorie ratio than beef does.

https://www.dietaryguidelines.gov/resources/2020-2025-dietar...

Iron is not protein. You can get protein from many sources but iron is very difficult to get from a vegan diet.

GP just posted a table showing there is more iron in non-meat sources than in meat sources. Iron is not an issue for any vegan I know. Spinach, beans, kale, etc are all super loaded with it.

See my other reply on the differences between heme and non-heme iron. You can’t just compare the mg figures listed on those tables. Many vegans and vegetarians test positive for iron deficiency [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6367879/

FWIW the exact same thing is true of protein. Most people just think protein = protein, but it's not. Protein digestibility and amino acid balance vary radically, but tends to be very poor in non-meat sources. There's a table of scores for various foods here. [1] You can find the DIAAS score for most any food with a quick search.

So for example, fava beans are called high protein. 200g of fava beans has 220 calories, 15g protein, and a digestibility of 0.55. 200g of chicken breast has 220 calories, 46g of protein, and a digestibility of 1.08. You're getting about 6x as much protein in the chicken breast there. If somebody wants to maintain a relatively high protein diet, they're simply not going to be able to do that on a vegan/vegetarian diet unless they just start downing endless protein powder shakes.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digestible_Indispensable_Amino...

Eh, the difference isn't that big imo.

Tofu e.g. has DIAAS of 0.97 and ~18g protein per 100g (checked the one in my fridge). If you really need a lot of protein, you can just cook stuff with tvp, that usually has dry 50% protein, but I've seen also seen 75%. You basically hydrate it with water, add a bunch of spices cook, and eat it with whatever else you'd like.

I don't think there is a big difference for the average consumer, consider some processed stuff:

Protein/100g from the products on the rewe online store:

Vegan Nuggets: 9, 11, 3x13, 15, 17

Chicken Nuggets: 2x12, 13, 2x15, 16

Beef Burger: 17, 2x18

Vegan Burger: 10, 13, 2x14, 3x17

Salami: 3x21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26

Vegan Salami: 2x8, 29, 32, 2x33

Reguarding DIAAS, soy and pea protein seem to be the most used and have 0.89 and 0.82 DIAAS respectively.

This depends on dietary preferences. I prefer not to touch processed stuff, vegan or not, because that also introduces a million other new health issues and variables. For instance even with something as simple as pea protein you're looking at countless viable issues depending on exactly how it was processed. There's an entire paper on it here. [1] That paper is painfully unreadable and I link to it only to emphasize the complexities involved in processing food.

My issue is pretty simple. A quick look around the world today, compared to how things were not that long ago, shows we're probably not only moving way too fast in terms of changing what we consume, but we also seem to be going very much in the wrong direction. So my main focus in diet is sticking with what worked in the past.

[1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97818...

The page that I linked is about iron, but when I wrote my message I accidentally said "protein". I corrected my post, thanks for the catch.

Vegetable sources of iron are called non-heme iron, in contrast to meat which is heme iron. Heme iron is readily absorbed and used by the body whereas non-heme iron is not [1]. Note that this applies to humans, not other animals. Cows are far better at absorbing these nutrients from plant sources than we are.

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/iron/

Iron is a nutrient, not a disease. The grandparent comment mentioned a disease that beef consumption cures that non-beef protein sources such as beans do not.

Beans have a very imbalanced amino acid profile. Protein is a category, not something specific. You need enough of every amino acid. Beef already has the correct ratio of for you. Beans do not, and also have worse absorption of what amino acids they do have. So you need to eat much, much more of them to get the same nutrition you get with some lean meat, which can also often lead to weight gain due to excess carbohydrate absorption.

The only way to get a balance on a vegetable only diet involves mixing different veggies and supplements in order to try to level the ratio of amino acids and vitamins you get. It's very complicated and honestly is difficult to get right consistently even if you know what you're doing, the average person will not be able to do this right and will get sick.

If everyone is pushed onto that kind of diet most people will do it wrong, and a lot of people will get sick as is already very common in people who try veganism. I would argue you need to have significantly above average intelligence to do it right. So at the moment a healthy large population requires a lot of meat.

I didn't say "disease" i said class of diseases, there are a lot. lysine deficiency, osteoporosis, some kinds of arthritis on the amino acid end. And then there's the vitamins that beef always has, which wipes out a huge class of vitamin deficiencies... it's hard to understate how important meat is... reducing meat consumption is a very, very bad idea for public health.

I am not a model of health but I really only eat meat 3-4 meals a week.

It doesn’t seem to make much of difference. I understand that a healthy diet requires a wide variety of nutrients and so on but it’s interesting that allegedly even just reducing meat consumption (and really specifically beef) is so detrimental.

I am skeptical that people who consume less meat are so much worse off and would really need some recommendations on some reading to begin to understand that. I know my health hasn’t changed much but my grocery bill being cut in half by just not buying meat is pretty nice.