Batman can go fuck himself. That guy… His… He’s nine years old, his parents are gunned down in front of him, and he travels the world becoming this superpowered ninja, fighting… What the… At best, at best, Bruce Wayne would have grown up to be Gotham City’s most annoying slam poet. That is the best he would have become. That’s the best… He would have been one of those trust fund… He would have been a fat vegan, I know that. He would have been a fat vegan. You ever see a fat vegan? – “I thought you said you were a vegan?” – “You know, Oreos don’t have any animal products” All right, fuck you right… He’d be on stage with his poems, “Bang, bang, in the alley.” Everyone, “Boo!” - Patton Oswalt
Humans evolved to eat anything that didn’t eat us first. Dentition is an obvious giveaway. Look at them choppers!
Grains entered human diet fairly recently, long after nuts, berries, roots, bark, foliage, fish, eggs, insect grubs, slow beasts, and each other. I see avoidance of animal-based foods as a religious stance, not nutritional. It’s okay for creatures to eat people but not vice-versa? 
A devout Jain sweeps their path to avoid crushing bugs. How many Western vegans are so strict?
And then there are those of us who cannot eat eggs. We cannot eat breakfast on the road, because everything at truck stops includes eggs.
I drove a truck for a few years, and the “Trucker’s Special Breakfast” at every truck stop and diner included eggs. “Two eggs any style, toast, OJ, coffee,” “Steak and Eggs,” “Ham and Eggs,” and so on. I cannot eat eggs like that*, which means I cannot get a decent breakfast on the road anywhere in the US or Canada. I’m stuck with coffee, juice, and toast; or I order a full breakfast, tell them to hold the eggs, and end up paying for eggs I neither want, nor can eat.
- I can eat eggs if they’re a small ingredient in other dishes. So, breads, cakes, hot and sour soup, they’re all OK. The guy across the table who has eggs sunny side up and keeps them away from me? He’s OK. Eggs on my plate, with my home fries, bacon, and toast–that’s not OK.
Thankfully, most places that can do toast, bacon, sliced tomatoes, and lettuce, can do a BLT. With mayo. Even if it’s not on the menu. Give me coffee, juice, and a BLT with fries, and I’m a happy guy. Why do truck stops not advertise BLTs for those of us who cannot eat eggs, but still want breakfast?
If this is a serious response, it’s ridiculous.
Humans are capable of doing a lot of cruel/stupid/immoral things. Proto-humans killed and ate other proto-humans. Early religious humans drilled holes in their heads and sacrificed virgins to invisible gods. That doesn’t make those things good ideas.
The question is whether a vegan diet is inherently more healthy than an omnivorous diet. It seems like it probably is, but the data isn’t conclusive at this point. And, as noted by others, a truly healthy vegan diet REQUIRES vitamin supplements, which an omnivorous diet does not.
What is healthier is a diet where you watch what you eat- and contains a minimum of fast food, junk food and processed food. A Vegan diet can do this, so can a vegetarian diet, a Keto diet, the Mediterranean diet, Atkin, and even Paleo.
But in any of those diets- you can still eat crap and be unhealthy.
This is pretty much my take on it. It doesn’t really matter much what label your diet takes (in my experience, even people who claim to be “steak & potatoes” people often eat a lot of salad with their meals, and things like oatmeal for breakfast; they also tend to be people without a sweet tooth, so they stick to three meals a day); what matters is how much attention you pay to your diet, which is to say, how much you prepare your own food, vs. how much you eat out, and how many empty calories you eat. Historically, “vegetarian” and “vegan” have been two categories for which a lot of home prep is required, but in the 21st century, that has changed.
Each new fad, such as “paleo,” “keto,” “Atkins,” whatever works for a while, until companies like Kraft catch on, and start making a lot of pre-fab food that supposedly works for the fad diet. Then people start eating out of a bag in front of the TV again.
Yeah, the best is the old “what your mom told you” diet, also what Micheal Pollan said. Eat a balanced diet with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, don’t eat too much, and avoid junk food. Nowadays you can add don’t eat too many processed carbs to that list. There are ethical and religious reasons one might eschew certain foods–I find factory farming appallingly inhumane and have tried to limit red meat–but from a nutritional standpoint, your mom was right.
Quite serious. Veganism is a religious movement, not a nutritional one. The vegan creed emphasizes non-exploitation of non-human animals for food or other uses, or so my daughter told me when she was vegan. That’s a moral stance.
Modern humans have eaten each other and still do (cite) and of course Holy Communion is ritual cannibalism. Modern humans practice trephination (cite) and ritual sacrifices of children and other virgins (cite). BTW no deities have shown themselves to me - they’re all invisible. (Except the carved ones.) Modern folks of many creeds and diets perform atrocities. I won’t mention a certain modern monstrous vegetarian for fear of invoking Godwin’s Law.
The answer is thus no, a vegan or other cult diet alone is not as nutritious as the omnivorous fare humans evolved to eat. CARE is the vital part of any dietary plan. Mindfulness. If you pay attention to your food, you’re probably careful elsewhere, too.
Then there’s the satisfaction factor. What makes us FEEL sufficient? I recall a joke:
Old guy: I don’t drink, smoke, eat meat, or chase women, and I just celebrated my 90th birthday!
Bystander: 
How???
For some, it* is* a ethical choice, others do it for dietary reasons. You are incorrect.
When you state something as a FACT, you need… facts. I don’t see any facts that a vegan diet alone is not as nutritious as an omnivorous diet. Again, if you read the article I posted, it points out many of the advantages of veganism over eating meat - lower cholesterol, higher fiber, greater intake of vitamins and minerals such as folate, vitamin C, vitamin E, potassium, and magnesium and less saturated fat. In particular, cholesterol and saturated fats seem to have compelling direct links to eating meat.
I will also take issue with you calling a vegan diet a ‘cult’ diet. There are something like 75 million vegans in the world today. That’s quite a ‘cult’.
I will agree, though, that the key factor in eating healthy is caring about what you put in your body and if you moderate your intake of meat and make healthier meat choices, you can absolutely eat a healthy omnivorous diet - my issue is your factually incorrect statement that you cannot eat a nutritious vegan diet.
This is like that two box/one box paradox where a vegan diet isn’t healthier, but for most people, switching to a vegan diet would be healthier. A vegan diet doesn’t seem healthier than an equally health conscious, regimented diet, but becoming vegan forces you into becoming a certain level of health conscious and regiments your diet to a certain degree. No one’s ever asked me if I’m getting enough protein/vitamins, but everyone checks in with the vegan about those (I do not wish to imply those people are doing vegans a favor). Similarly, vegans have to think a lot about what they eat, because a lot of foods that you would think are vegan aren’t because of additives and what not.
A vegan diet has the potential to be healthier than an omnivore diet, but it takes actual knowledge and work to make it a reality. That’s aside from potential medical conditions that might make a vegan diet even more of a potential problem than usual.
I’ve known a lot of unhealthy vegetarians as well as vegans, and I think the difficulty of maintaining an actually healthy vegan diet is one reason why people tend not to stay vegan for more than a handful of years at most.
That, and “cheating” occasionally on veganism actually goes a long way towards avoiding a B12 deficiency, which is arguably the most problematic nutrient for that diet. So having an egg or a bit of dairy every couple of months might be a healthier option than pure veganism.
That is not true. Eating a little meat is healthier than eating no meat at all.
However, yes, in general, Vegans watch what they eat, and are thus healthier than fast food omnivores who don’t.
You can get all those benefits and still include some meat in your diet. Just not a *lot *of mean, and certainly not eating doublebacon cheeseburgers every day.
A well balanced diet would be mostly fruits & veggies, then some starches, dairy and yes, some meat. Like no more than 4oz a day.
A Vegan diet has to be balanced carefully to include a balance of aminos and also needs B12.
Only if both are following ideal diets, and we all know that omnivores are no more likely (and may even be less likely) to eat like crap than vegans are.
Personally, I think we do best with occasional consumption of animal-origin foods but sticking mainly to a plant-based diet. Either have your occasional flesh feast or use those items as a condiment on the rest of your food. But, being omnivores, we can have good health with a range of dietary options. We don’t have to be vegan or omnivore, we actually do have a choice. I just wish people were more careful with their choices on the details and kept to healthier eating overall.
I have been a vegetarian since I was 19, which means, for 34 years. I ate some meat when I was in basic training, because when we had field chow, I would have had salad, a carton and a slice of bread, pretty much, otherwise; and there were no vegetarian MREs in my time. The army just didn’t consider vegetarianism a choice, anymore than it would have considered pacifism a choice.
But I became a vegetarian because I don’t like meat. It’s ethical a little bit for me, in that there were times when I was a kid that I ate meat, because when I lived under my mother’s roof, I didn’t have a choice, but I thought about it having once been a living thing, like a cow, or sheep, and I couldn’t finish.
There were also times when I was very young, and I hadn’t learned to choke down meat, and I sat at the dinner table until bedtime.
At least, my mother liked dairy enough herself, that we had a dairy meal a couple of times a week, with vegetarian cholent left from Shabbat, and bakery bread, and often a souffle that had eggs. There’d usually be something in a cheese sauce, plus cheese in the souffle, and the kids had to drink milk. The adults would have some kind of expensive, stinky cheese they’d “Oooh” and “Ahhh” over. Almost all meals on Sunday were like this. Since it was a day off, even though it wasn’t a religious day, we ate a big meal at noon frequently, and Sunday was my mother’s big TV night. 60 Minutes & Masterpiece Theater. We’d have sandwiches for dinner. I usually got PB & bananas. This is how I learned to love Sundays.
My point is, this is some people’s route to vegetarianism-- just not liking meat. To me, meat tastes like farts smell. Well, beef and chicken and goat do. Sheep/lamb tastes so vile, I can’t even describe it. And I had bacon once. It almost made me barf (which is sort of funny, because I like fake soy bacon). I also tried ham when there was nothing else. It just tasted like salt-- my main complaint about caviar, something else I hate.
But I love all vegetables, except eggplant and okra. I used to feel insulted as a kid at the jokes about kids hating vegetables, because I always wanted seconds on vegetables. In fact, other than meat, I wasn’t really a picky eater. At a restaurant, there’d always be something on the menu I’d eat. I shocked waitresses when I wanted to sub Brussels spouts for fries.
That’s not my point, though. Just establishing my bona fides.
In my experience the insufferableness of a vegan or vegetarian is in reverse proportion to how long the person has been a vegan or vegetarian. Two weeks? the person is pushier than a Jehovah’s Witness about their wonderful diet. A year? well, they are going to live longer than you, but adults have choices. 20 years? you usually don’t hear a word about it. You might notice they don’t take any meat at dinner, but they just say “No, thank you.” And they eat a little before they go somewhere, in case there isn’t anything for them.
Actually, I think omnivores eat more crap, but that’s because tons, and tons more crap are available.
This is the key difference between my position and RioRinto’s. I concede that a meat-eating diet can be as healthy as a vegan diet. But, IN MY OPINION, a vegan diet (with dietary supplements like B12) is more likely to be healthy than a meat-eating diet because fruits and veggies can get you (nearly) everything you get from a meat-eating diet, but with fewer of the drawbacks. And, as has been noted by others, the necessities of paying greater attention to your vegan diet means that you’re more likely to eat better - on average.
My theory is vegetarians and their poor cousins vegans were all abused as children, feel guilty about it and so eat this stuff as a form of self-punishment.
If one goes vegan after passing a technical Normal Nutrition class then yes, it’s an informed dietary decision. If one just doesn’t like flavors of red meat, poultry, fish, and eggs, fine. If veganism extends to avoiding leather and yeast, it’s religion, not nutrition.
Cite? Even if correct, that’s under 1% of humanity - more than Scientologists, less than Mormons. How many global vegans are involuntary, too poor to afford even the meanest animal protein? The Western vegans I’ve spoken to cite morals, not nutrition. That spells C-U-L-T to me.
What I said was, “…a vegan or other cult diet alone is not as nutritious as the omnivorous fare humans evolved to eat.” I stand by that. You’re welcome to your opinion but I rely more on nutritionists.