It’s worth noting that in cultures with a strong tradition of vegetarian diets, those supplements often occurred naturally in the form of vermin (consumed whole unwittingly with grain or pulses) and their feces.
I’m not sure if it actually qualifies as a vegetarian diet once you know that’s happening, but one of the problems of trying to transfer traditional, ‘healthy’ vegetarian diets into the modern western world is that our cleaning and storage methods for foods are too good - vermin are reduced, and the accidental dietary supplement they provided, is reduced or missing.
Some years ago a medical journal, I think it was the Lancet, published an article about B12 deficiencies in Jains who had moved to the UK from India. I don’t remember all the details, and unfortunately I don’t have a specific issue, but that’s where I first heard the hypothesis that vermin/feces contamination prevent that deficiency in India, and lack of them causes it in the UK. But if someone wants to do the research I’d do a search for such articles in medical journals.
I’ve heard that theory, too. And it’s interesting. The fact remains that the most authoritative source on dietary issues, the American Dietetic Association, confirms that a vegan diet can be healthful, and indeed have advantages over a nonvegan diet. If your reason for avoiding veganism is that you think it’s unhealthy, that reason is gone.
A properly balanced vegetarian diet is healthy - the key is “properly balanced”. It’s not taking a typical western diet and just removing the meat, it’s not living on chips and white bread.
Same can be said of a “western” diet, or a diet that does contain meat.
Eating a balanced, healthy diet isn’t rocket science, but people can be really ignorant and/or lazy.
That makes no sense. Jains have no problem consuming milk, so unless milk in the UK is somehow processed to remove vitamin B12, the premise of that theory doesn’t hold up
A properly balanced diet is healthy, period. The word “vegetarian” adds no value to that sentence.
The only question is whether a vegan diet can ever be healthy, whether or not it’s balanced. Dr. Cube was pretty heavily implying it couldn’t be; I was showing he was wrong in his implications.