Is there really no "Cons" to a Vegetable only diet?

[Trunkage]

Of course there's downsides to a vegetable-only diet. Not only are there downsides to every diet, but if you restricted yourself to only vegitables, there's a LOT of nutrients you would be lacking, sugars, fats, proteins, and iron just off the top of my head. Don't let people fool you, a balanced diet is important to have. Our bodies need all kinds of nutrients, and restricting yourself to a small food group is going to take a LOT of work and effort to stay healthy.

You can get iron from many places. Also, the way milk is homogenised means that broccoli and dark green leafy veges are now the best source of calcium. Fruits and Veges are pretty much only sugars, but if you are comparing amounts, half a tomato equals about a third of a cup of rice which also equals 25 cups of lettuce (i.e. the more sweet something is, the more sugar it has). And fructose can be found in fruit, which is more easily used by the brain. Glucose is more likely to be found in veges and can be easily used by the muscles. So its not only needing sugars, but different types of sugars.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I was really just addressing the statement that I thought you were making - specifically that a vegetarian/vegan diet isn't difficult for anyone, rather than what I guess you meant 'anyone here'. Although even then I kind of find it iffy, because you can totally get dialup in small towns that can't support large or thoroughly stocked grocery stores.

I dunno, gaming is a pretty fucking swanky hobby, so even though people in rural places could technically come here, I sincerely doubt they do. The person I was responding to said that a vegetarian diet is harder to maintain, especially if you don't have access to much plant produce. I addressed the former point, that it's harder even if you do have access to plant produce, and basically ignored the latter, because I thought it was irrelevant. Obviously someone with limited access to food is going to eat what they have access to.

 

[Tayh]

Con: You're going to get lumped in with a group of people that also had Hitler and Steve Jobs in it.

 

[Rosiv]

I think the longest I lasted on a vegetarian diet was 3 days, and then I wimped out.

I just missed eating meat so much, so I guess that would be the con. Although watching that recent episode on VICE about the environmental hazards of irresponsible meat production made me consider the no meat lifestyle.

 

[Ironman126]

Very limited booze selection. Booze is a food group, right?

"Booze ain't food." - Nathan Explosion

Booze might not be food, but dammit if it doesn't do in a pinch.

 

[Silvanus]

Booze might not be food, but dammit if it doesn't do in a pinch.

Stout certainly does in a pinch. Some of them are so dense, they're like drinking bread.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Booze might not be food, but dammit if it doesn't do in a pinch.

Stout certainly does in a pinch. Some of them are so dense, they're like drinking bread.

I read somewhere once the original idea behind beer was as a portable source of food that kept preserved by the alcohol, and that they had much lower alcohol content. Then we realised how fun it was to smash 20 of them down and made higher alcohol content ones.

Might be bullshit though.

 

[Ironman126]

Booze might not be food, but dammit if it doesn't do in a pinch.

Stout certainly does in a pinch. Some of them are so dense, they're like drinking bread.

I had one called Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout. You can just about stand a spoon up in that brew. There's another one (by Oskar Blues), Ten Fidy, that's the consistency and color of motor oil, pours like it and everything.

 

[vallorn]

Booze might not be food, but dammit if it doesn't do in a pinch.

Stout certainly does in a pinch. Some of them are so dense, they're like drinking bread.

I read somewhere once the original idea behind Bread was as a portable source of food that kept preserved by the alcohol, and that they had much lower alcohol content. Then we realised how fun it was to smash 20 of them down and made higher alcohol content ones.

Might be bullshit though.

Basically there is an ongoing debate based on uncertain archaeological evidence, as to which came first: The Bread or The Beer. Part of the problem is that evidence has been found of germinating cereal grains at a time when it wasn't thought that we made beer, but we did make bread. Some people take that as evidence of brewing, while others assume it was spontaneous fermentation that wasn't a desirable outcome. It's a big deal, because as it stands there are two big narratives out there in academia:

Narrative A: Humans were hunter gatherers, but at some time in the past we engaged in some primitive agriculture. Mostly this involved gathering wild barley when it was in season, then storing it for lean times. When you store grain either for later eating, or planting, sometimes it gets wet and germinates. If it's hot and sunny later, it might dry out, and that process can give you a malted grain. It would have been a pretty nice snack, or it might have rained again, harder this time. Now the malted barley is swimming in water, and with wild yeast or bacteria it starts to ferment. Our ancestor comes back to retrieve his grain, and finds this bubbling sludge with a funky smell. He's hungry, so he tastes it, and it's good![footnote]It's also incredibly nutritious. People in ancient Egypt were given their rations in beer for example.[/footnote] People get much more interested in barley, even though it's somewhat difficult to gather. This drives people to gather in larger groups and engage in agriculture at the level of planting and harvesting crops. The surplus of grains need to be reliably turned into compact, portable nutrition (as you said) and so bread is invented.

Narrative B: Humans were hunter gatherers, but at some time they started to gather in larger and larger groups. They would have been harvesting wild cereal grains, and at some point they made the connection that it was possible to plant and harvest them. This allowed the formation of even larger groups, which drove social and technological development. The need for a compact and portable source of nutrition, and a way to handle the problem of surplus grains leads to the invention of bread. The process described in Narrative A, whereby stored grain spontaneously germinates and ferments happens in this context, now that it's likely to find clay containers full of grain anywhere you find humans. Beer is born.

It's hard to find evidence that conclusively supports one narrative over another at this point, and not necessarily likely that it will be found any time soon.

There's also that drinking beer was FAR safer than drinking water, almost every human society invented things to drink that were ways of making water safer, teas involve boiling water which kills bacteria while beers have alcohol that makes them safer for example. Hell, for a long time in Europe you had "small beer", really, really weak beer that nevertheless was safer than water to drink so kids could have it or it could be easily carried in a waterskin.

 

[RedRockRun]

The most obvious downside is that you're robbed of a lot of great food.

 

[pearcinator]

Con.

Missing out on the awesome taste of meats.

 

[Lacedaemonius]

There might be beyond the ones discussed already. Vegetarian diets that include animal products are well studied and understood, since hundreds of millions of people have lived that way traditionally. Vegetarian diets that avoid all animal products though are not as well studied, and not adopted by anything like as many people for as long. The assumption that there are no adverse effects to major dietary changes along those lines is therefore, unsupported.

 

[NPC009]

I think the longest I lasted on a vegetarian diet was 3 days, and then I wimped out.

I just missed eating meat so much, so I guess that would be the con. Although watching that recent episode on VICE about the environmental hazards of irresponsible meat production made me consider the no meat lifestyle.

You could go for meat that's produced responsibly. It'd probably require some research to figure out what your options are and you'll probably get less meat for the same amount of money, but you'll still be able to enjoy meat.

 

[FalloutJack]

People have done it, but as far as I know, it IS more difficult to find suitable replacements for the things Vegetarians and Vegans do not eat. Protein is most readily-available in meat. If you're not eating meat, your sources are either {A} small and very-often consumed to make up the difference or {B} specially-made but more expensive. Your life choice is your own and there's nothing wrong with that, but make sure it's all planned out in the budget.

 

[NPC009]

You could go for meat that's produced responsibly. It'd probably require some research to figure out what your options are and you'll probably get less meat for the same amount of money, but you'll still be able to enjoy meat.

The problem with that is that few people can afford to double what they spend on food, and you get into some pretty shady parts of the food industry where there are some pretty unprofessional farmers working. Last time I looked at that, I found the farm sells raw milk.

That is bad... But like I sad, doing some research before buying is the smart thing to do. Other than that, instead of eating the same amount of meat, you could eat less meat. As long as your diet is balanced, you generally don't need to have meat with every meal or even every day to get the nutrition you need.