Let me preface this by saying I’m more than happy to jump on the anti-vegan bandwagon when the facts point in that direction. That said, Kresser destroyed any credibility he may have seemed to have by stating something as fact despite clearly not knowing what he was talking about. If he had said something along the lines of “well, I have never heard of B12 supplements being given to livestock” that would have been 100x better than saying “well, that is just wrong.”
The fact that he crapped all over PBJs as being too many calories for the protein despite his own recipes having the same or less protein per calories is highly relevant, despite his cries to the contrary (“not a central part to my argument!” Yes, it was!).
The point about gladiators still stands, I think, as do several others. But he clearly isn’t the guy to advocate for omnivorism over veganism.
Joe was clearly over his head when it came to moderating this debate.
I haven’t been consuming animal-sourced products for around 4 years now and the only supplement I’ve been taking, consists of Vitamin D. The only reason for that is because that was my only deficiency.
All the other numbers, including vitamin B are pretty much where they should be.
Where am I getting that Vitamin B12 from ? I certainly don’t supplement it, nor do I eat my own (or anyone else’s) poop.
Vitamin B12 is one of very few micro nutrients that naturally occurs only in animal products in appreciable bio available quantities. That it is universally recommended that vegans supplement B12. Some vegan foods are fortified with B12, so perhaps you could get some from that, but AFAIK supplementation is still recommended. If you google vegan vitamin B12, you will find plenty of information on that subject, e. g. here.
Why you would want to risk B12 deficiency? Supplements are easy.
"Vitamin B12 is produced by bacteria, not animals or plants. As such, animals, including humans, must obtain it directly or indirectly from bacteria. It can be found in bacteria-laden manure and unsanitized water, though we obviously should not be consuming either of those things. It can also be found in the human intestinal tract, but it’s not clear whether sufficient amounts are made and absorbed there to meet our nutritional needs.
Many animal foods contain high amounts of vitamin B12 because they accumulate this bacterial product during their lives, and livestock are often supplemented with vitamin B12 in their feed."
Thank you… I’m an actuary and just listened to that part of the debate podcast. It was extremely painful to listen to Wilks misunderstand and misuse statistics over and over again.
I was a little surprised when Chris said he didn’t know what a forest plot was. I expect as soon as he saw it, he recognized it. Wiikipedia says they’re aka blobbograms. I have no doubt Wilks would have immediately berated Chris for lying or changing his mind or something had he said, “oh wait, those, yeah”.
Thanks for that! The thing is that over the past couple of years, my B12 levels have improved. I am going to be keeping an eye on them and see if anything starts to change.
-Gorillas aren’t vegan (they eat insects and, supposedly, the occasional monkey)
-Gorillas spend most of their waking hours eating, like most wild animals do
-Humans were able to develop superior brains and civilization because we started eating more nutritious and digestible foods
-Humans aren’t gorillas
Gorillas have a very, very different (and larger) digestive system compared to humans. Teeth profile are but one indicator whether an animal is a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore.
I didn’t start talking about front facing eyes and eye teeth. I simply debunked the statement made by someone else. When it comes down to it we don’t have the equipment nor the dietary tract to be predominantly meat eaters. Gorillas may have a longer digestive tract but humans also have a longer digestive tract than any carnivore. Humans also process collesteral unlike meat eaters.
I think you are missing the claim: biologically speaking, humans are not carnivores, but omnivores. That’s why our physiology is a blend of that of carnivores and herbivores. Our digestive tract is shorter than that of a herbivore and works at a lower ph level. Our back teeth are good for plants, our front teeth for meet. We can add also other aspects of physiology. Herbivores have to spend much more energy on digestion, energy humans don’t have, because we have to feed a very energy hungry organ — our brains. In fact, in the grand scheme of evolution, we could only develop such a highly complex brain, because we were omnivores.
To pick just one such feature and claim “look, this herbivore has a similar tooth profile” is not debunking, it is missing the point and could be misleading.
What’s even more fascinating is that now we are able to make a conscious decision to go completely off animal-sourced foods and still perform at our highest level.
Yup, thanks to technology (e. g. supplementation, our understanding of human physiology and on a more fundamental level, cooking with fire, etc.) we can. So even when you want to be vegan, you need to be cognizant of the needs of our body (e. g. when it comes to micro nutrients) and the things that aren’t as bio available when you restrict yourself to a plant-based diet. Otherwise you’d either be unhealthy or, more likely, “fall off the vegan wagon”.
AFAIK there is no documented case of a culture to live voluntarily entirely off of plants. Even when animal protein was scarce, it was highly sought after.
That’s why I think it is important to make the connection to technology: various technologies allowed us to become stronger and likely smarter (on average) — better and more easily available nutrition. Inventions like using the fire to cook foods (that gives access to foods that is either hard to digest or even mildly poisonous if eaten raw) and agriculture come to mind. IMHO there is no fundamental difference between learning how to raise plants and animals on a large scale and, say, supplementation.
That’s why I think it is key to state the obvious, humans are omnivorous, and to use technology when necessary to make sure you are not deficient in anything.
I’ve seen the documentary and was taken aback by it, some interesting information!! As I’m in the off-season and only doing 1 zone 2 ride and 3 gym sessions a week I decided to try vegan for 2 months at least and here are my findings.
Coming off a predominantly low carb diet I found the appeal of 2 bean burrito’s with home made hummus for appealing and delicious, which they were. Evening meals were generally based around a mountain of vegetables and tofu. The ammount of online recipies made the whole process a lot easier and it was a joy to cook. A bean salad could last up to 5 days refrigerated. I snacked on nuts and fruit and comsumed 2 litres of water daily.
I seemed to recover better from gym sessions by only sourcing protein from tofu, lentils and plants. I consumed a vegan based protein shake after a gym session in order to guarantee muscle synthesis. At the end of the 2 months I realised that there certainly are downsides to a vegan diet… The amount gas produced by my metabolism had increased 10 fold. Some days I felt very bloated, probably from the starch in the beans and the soya in the tofu but the most alarming thing was my weight increase of 3 kg in 2 months.
The journey was interesting, I learned a lot about my body and have slowly returned to eating eggs and some lean meat though I intend on limiting my meat consumption to 3 days per week.
Evolution is NOT random. The genetic mutations that underly evolution are random, but a mutation only becomes fixed in a population if it provides some sort of selective advantage. Mutations that have a negative effect on fitness are quickly removed from a population, while neutral mutations may accumulate, providing a reservoir of diversity that may become selected for/against in the face of a change in environment or combination with other mutations.
I think the whole evolutionary argument is a pointless distraction when it comes to diet. I don’t understand why some people are obsessed with replicating the dietary practices of our ancestors. Day to day life for modern humans looks nothing like that of our ancestors, our needs are very different, and our life-expectancies are now considerably longer.
It is very clear that we evolved as omnivores. However, our bodies are much more suited to a vegan diet than to a carnivorous one. I would argue that it’s impossible to have a healthy diet that is purely carnivorous, while it is perfectly possible to have a healthy herbivorous diet. Certainly it would be very hard to do so (maybe impossible) without ‘technology’, or at least without knowledge and access to a diverse range of foods. I wouldn’t like to extrapolate from that whether or not it was possible that any ancestral cultures could have had a healthy vegan diet or not - it would depend upon what food was available in their environment. I concede that it is probably unlikely to have happened (because there was no motivation to exclude animal products), and animals or insects would have played a role in ancestral diets. However, as I said before, I don’t see that this has any bearing on the discussion of whether or not someone should follow a plant-based or vegan diet today. I think the reason this topic comes up so much in plant-based diet films and literature is to counteract the whole paleo argument and the misconception that our ancestors ate a largely meat-based diet.
