Quite the connoisseur.
My experience is very much the opposite of yours. I can’t think of single vegan that does it for nutritional reasons. I know a few flexitarians or ovo-lacto vegetarians who do it for health, but, even there, it’s mostly for ethical reasons. I’m not saying there aren’t those who do it for health, but the overwhelming majority in my peer group (and I do know a good number of vegans and various types of vegetarians) are of the ethical kind.
This is what I’ve seen also. However, the long term ethical vegetarians I know are very healthy people.
+1.
Add another to the list of people who know lots of vegans and all are for ethical reasons, though because of their veganism they are very aware of their health and take care to get proper nutrition and take good health as the first best benefit/side effect of being vegan. But the top reason is to have a cruelty-free diet, and swallowing semen is far from cruel, so that doesn’t count!
I consider myself to be very healthy and rarely get sick, yet I frequently eat meat, especially anything with beef in it, and even more milk (5 cups a day!; of course, that’s 1% milk, but still about 25% of my daily calories and half my protein).
Of course, I avoid most processed meats (although I will eat it if somebody gives me the food, but won’t for something I get myself; not necessarily all for health either; for example, I never really liked hot dogs or bacon), which have been linked to major health problems (based on the numbers here, a 42% increase in risk, and the annual number of CVD deaths, it contributes to over 100,000 deaths a year from heart disease; conversely, people who drink lots of milk have reduced rates of CVD).
In other words, the only significant health benefit from not eating animal products (aside from the aforementioned; of course, the same logic applies to other processed foods, many of which are (mostly) vegan/vegetarian) is possible weight loss if the calories aren’t replaced by other sources - which will happen with any food group, and if you are going to cut out any food groups, cut out the “made with refined grain, fat, and sugar” food group (you know, stuff like cookies and donuts):
(note the last as well; that doesn’t necessarily conflict with other sources saying we are eating more meat; the meat just has less fat and calories, same for milk; skim has about half the calories of whole, although in this case it doesn’t necessarily translate to weight loss)
However, many semen producers are known to be jerks.
She had a vegan catering and food service business.
I agree with your observations, but note that ethics was not a significant part of my being an ovo-lacto vegetarian for seven years, during which time I was a strict vegan for half a year. Ethics was not a significant part of my decision, health was. Reverting back to being omnivorous was also based on health.