If someone ate a large enough variety of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds couldn’t they possibly meet all of these needs? Or are there some nutrients we simply can’t get outside of meat/animal products?
Here’s a reminder to people posting. Dietary crusading is strictly forbidden and will result in an immdiate ban. You CANNOT tell someone else how to eat. That includes any kind of ethics or guilt tripping. DON’T do it. This is about nutrition, not ethics.
I just wanted to chime in about B12 deficiency because I was deficient and didn’t know it. But in hindsight, I was having extremely obvious and persistent symptoms of tingling in my toes and fingers that I had chalked up to being a side effect of a medication I take. Just FYI that it’s unlikely you’d be deficient and not have some symptom (and of course tingling in the fingers and toes can be indicative of a lot of other things, too).
I’ve eaten vegetarian most of my life, a wide variety of different vegetables, legumes, nuts, and cheese, and I had serious B12 and D deficiencies last time I went to the doctor, so I’d recommend to get those two checked.
Iodine! I haven’t seen anyone mention it here yet. Yes, a lot of countries fortify table salt with iodine, but not all do.
And unless you eat seaweed/kelp, there simply aren’t any good vegan sources of iodine. Iodine is found in white fish and dairy products like milk and yoghurt (because iodine is added to the cow feed). Many studies have shown that even in western countries iodine deficiency is very common. And it is a very important nutrient for development of the fetus. Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of irreversible mental disorders.
All women of child bearing age should take an iodine supplement, especially if you live in a country that does not fortify.
Useful side note: If you don’t already use it, I’d recommend giving Cronometer a shot as a food tracker. It will show a detailed breakdown of vitamins, minerals and nutrients in each day’s food intake, and will show you what vitamins you’re probably short on.
I was strictly vegan for almost 10 years. I was only ever deficient in b12 and vit d, so I added those supplements. Never had an issue since the addition of those supplements. However the choline and dha deficiency risk scares me (I’m not saying it’s valid or invalid) and I recently started eating eggs and taking fish oil. I still eat primarily vegan tho.
several, but a surprising one is vitamin A
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27101764/
here’s a dietitian on twitter highlighting the matter using the pubmed article above
B12 is one vitamin that you can only get from animal products, and even then many people are deficient. It’s especially important for vegans to take a B12 supplement, and for vegetarians it is also recommended. I would also advise taking calcium, omega3s, iron, and a prenatal vitamin, since prenatals are the highest quality multivitamins on the market. Vegetarians and vegans often get more micronutrients than other people outside of these few things and are for the most part healthier in general. Veganism or vegetarianism is also a great step towards helping our current situation with the environment.
I just want to point out that being vegan vs vegetarian is VERY DIFFERENT when it comes to vitamins/micronutrients.
B12 is getting thrown around a lot here, I agree that vegans should supplement if needed (and it usually is) however, most vegetarians should be able to get it from dairy and eggs. In contrast I have a vegan family member who has been getting B12 treatments as the deficiency has been causing her a lot of severe anxiety and depression - it’s not something to be ignored.
I have been vegetarian since I was 14 (I’m now 30, female if it matters) and have never once had to supplement anything. I’m healthy, strong, indulge in a lot of fairly extreme sports with no issues, and have never had any severe illnesses or health complications 🤷🏼♀️
In addition to B12, I’d keep an eye on calcium due to lower bioavailability / needing to eat a lot of spinach etc if not consuming dairy, Vitamin D, and make sure proteins cover all the essential amino acids over the course of the day/ week. Very achievable.
B12, Creatine, K2, D3 (which they can’t even make due to the lack of cholesterol), copper can be one, Omega 3 EPA and DHA (which is basically impossible to get), B5, Choline, Vitamin A (as vitamin A from plants has to be converted, with much of it being wasted and some people do this conversion very poorly), NAC, Collagen (although that’s just a no brainer), Iron (however iron supplementing is generally not good for you imo).
Kind of an inexhaustible list if we’re honest, if a diet requires supplementation to be viable… probably a shit diet. I’m not saying supplementation is bad, period. I’m just pointing out that without supplementation you legit cannot go vegan (fortified foods count as supplementation).
Vitamin B13 is produced only by animals, foods enriched with vitamin B12 come from the production of genetically modified microorganisms to overproduce and secrete this vitamin. Research still exists for transgenic foods from vegetables that produce vitamin B12 but the acceptance of GM crops is complicated and the agroeconomic benefits are not optimistic.
If you eat a lot of legumes, seeds, nuts, grains, and certain raw vegetables. Particularly when they haven’t been properly soaked, sprouted, cooked, mixed with other ingredients, and/or fermented, then the anti-nutrients can prevent absorption And therefore cause deficiency of iron, phosphorus, magnesium, and calcium even if you consume enough. They chelate to the nutrients and we don’t produce enough endogenous phytase
A vegan underpreparing their food can lead to consumption and chelation of these antinutrients . But so can drinking tea and coffee with meals, eating underripe fruit, and other things
Edit: anyone vegan or not can of course overeat these underprepared foods and therefore disrupt their nutrient absorption
B12, Ω3, K2 and Zinc according to some vegan doctors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwZsoxu_CnM&t=577s
A 23-year-old boy personal experience: in 2020, I was on a whole year “clean diet” or vegan diet to make my face slim down as well as having a perfect skin: all my meals were 80% of steamed/boiled green vegetables, oatmeal for breakfast every day, low sugar fruits, legumes, a lot of nuts (I stress ate them a lot), and seeds. Plus my added sugar-free diet for 3 years, and no any diary products since I am lactose intolerance, also I quited masturbating. I was energetic, happy, feeling happy all year long with this diet as a 5’10 and 110 lbs boy.
But the result came back at the end of December after my yearly blood work: my blood sugar was below average, my cholesterol was also below average, my Vitamin D level was also slightly lower than the healthy level. My skin did clear up a lot and my face did look good, but I know all these results showed me I wasn’t healthy at all.
So ever since, I still kept my “clean diet” with 80% of steamed/boiled green vegetables, oatmeal for breakfast, low sugar fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds almost every day. But with one change: I added clean protein! Started by boiling eggs, then to steamed fish, beef, pork, chicken. Now everything came back normally and I am really happy about it. Also, I stopped being too strict with the whole sugar-free thing, I occasionally eat shit that has some percent of added sugar in it, as well as dry red wine, and have sex, they all helped me.