The sheer amount of changes that occur on a plant-based diet are too numerous for me to be able to pinpoint any specific thing. It wouldn’t surprise me if I do get more vitamin a these days, as well as quite a few other important micronutrients that I may or may not have been low on.

And that’s not even getting into the vast topic of phytonutrients.

I don’t blame you for not knowing any better, there’s a lot of persistent myths and outright lies about veganism, plant-based lifestyles, and nutrition. But you are spreading misinformation again, about protein. Our society’s obsession with protein has little to do with science, and a lot to do with marketing. In the first place the vast majority of people do not need nearly as much protein as they think they do. It’s so easy to get adequate protein even on a plant-based diet, that as long as you’re at least mostly eating real food and getting enough calories, you are getting enough protein without even having to worry about it.

Even the whole “plants don’t have complete proteins” is a myth. Just about all plants have all essential amino acids. What the protein combining myth points to is that the amino acid ratios in plants are a little bit different than the ratios in our muscle tissues, with some plants being low in a key amino, and other plants being high in that amino but also low in another. Getting what we need is as easy as being sure to eat a variety of plants. A person does not even need to make sure they’re eating rice and beans in the same meal - they could do just as well by either eating a larger helping of one or the other, and/or eating one and then the other at another time or day.

The big takeaway here is to consider that maybe your perspective on plant-based lifestyles is being informed in the same way as if someone who only ever ran Windows started trying to tell you what it’s like to use Linux. Maybe it’s worth checking out the perspectives of people who actually have experience with the thing and know what they’re talking about.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMwf_9wqWY0&pp=ygUqZXZlcnl0aGluZyB5b3Uga25vdyBhYm91dCBwcm90ZWluIGlzIHdyb25n

I understand that everyone has different circumstances that make a plant-based transition easier or harder, or maybe even entirely unfeasible, and that’s okay. We’re okay as long as we’re doing what we can with what we have.

On the other hand consider trying to shift your perspective on it. I commented in another thread about the remarkable benefits of going plant-based for my depression, and the thing to understand here is that going plant-based can have near-miraculous benefits for a wide range of things like that. So consider the possibility that a lot of what might be making it hard to switch is that the consumption of animal products is keeping everyone in suppressed, unmotivated, lethargic, or even outright depressed states of mind.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but instead of seeing a plant-based transition as a burden, consider that working through the challenges might be just the medicine that a person needs to reach a state of mind where, say, things like home cooking begin to feel possible again.

Again I want to be clear - I know there are circumstances where it’s not realistically possible for a person to go fully vegan, and not realistically possible for a person to do their own cooking. We should be seeking ways to fix that on a societal level. However what I’m telling you is that what everyone thinks is possible is being perceived through the lens of lifestyles that are making everything that much harder - working through that tough transition to being fully plant-based expands the range of what we think is possible. Life becomes significantly more doable on plants.

Oh, and for both health and ethics there is no meaningful difference between which particular animals you choose to eat. For example you’re still progressing heart disease regardless of whether you’re consuming 29 grams of saturated fat, or “only” 23 grams. And a chicken is every bit as capable of contemplating their own suffering as a cow is.

One of the things that’s too often overlooked is that subtractions might do more to help than additions. If you’re taking a host of vitamins, herbal remedies, and strange supplements and still feeling like shit, it’s likely because all the medicine in the world won’t heal if you’re still taking poison.

Not to be that person, but I am fully convinced that eating animal products plays a decisive role in depression and other mood disorders. Not only is there science pointing in that direction, but it matches my own personal experience as well as what every other plant-based person I’ve known has experienced as well. Before the switch I was so far in a constant background noise of depression that I was ambivalent about whether I wanted to live or not.

I’ve tried a lot of things, with only ever small or temporary results at best. Going plant-based, within weeks of staying consistent with it, marked the first time in my life when I actually began to actively want to live (even in spite of our capitalist hellscape). That desire to live has endured since then to the point that it’s tempting to say I might be cured of depression.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/anti-inflammatory-diet-for-depression/

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-boost-brain-bdnf-levels-for-depression-treatment/

In the end, vegans are always going to win, because a vegan way of life is one (but not the only) precondition for ways of life that are actually sustainable.

The idea that it’s dangerous to raise children on a vegan diet is unequivocally false, and misinformation. Every major health authority has made statements affirming that a properly implemented plant-based diet is entirely nutritionally adequate for all stages of life. Literally the only supplement that’s strictly necessary in the majority of cases is b12 - which is something that everyone should be supplementing with anyway. Aside from that it’s easier to get adequate nutrition from plant-based diets than it is on the Standard American Diet.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/

https://bitesizevegan.org/the-crime-of-raising-vegan-kids-when-diet-is-deadly/

Even if we ignore the brutal abuse and murder that is done to animals raised for food, or the pandemic inevitability that comes from animal agriculture; or their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, destruction of natural habitats for expansions of ranches, or illnesses like asthma that cafos cause to local communities; or the physical and psychological harm that occurs to animal ag and slaughterhouse workers, many of whom are either immigrants or minors - any one of which should be reason alone to seek an end to animal-consumption ways of life - diets that are high in animal products and low in plants are directly harmful to human health.

That’s essentially what keto, paleo, and carnivore are - high fat, high animal consumption, and low or no carb (and since most plants are high carb, that usually means low-plants as well). In the first case, low-carb diets don’t even meet all nutritional needs without supplementation. In addition these diets are all about increasing the very foods that cause our top causes of death like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc, while reducing or eliminating all the foods that are known to be most protective against these lifestyle diseases.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/should-you-try-the-keto-diet

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.702802/full

“We reserve the right to remove information that could cause imminent physical harm to any living being. This includes topics like conversion therapy, unhealthy diets, and dangerous medical procedures. Information that could result in imminent physical harm to property or other living beings may also be removed.”

Does this mean it’s against the rules to promote keto, paleo, and carnivore diets? All of these cause a great deal of harm.

The mods at the lemmy world vegan community don’t see things the same way. From this post:

“Today the lemmy.world admins made a follow up post about the incident where the admin Rooki interfered with moderation of this community in a way which was determined to be against lemmy.world TOS and factually incorrect. Throughout this incident there has been no communication with me, nor to my knowledge any of of the other moderators of this community. Rooki quitely undid his actions and edited his post to admit fault however there was no public acknowledgement of this from him. In fact I wasn’t even told I was reinstated as a mod which is quite funny.”

“The lemmy.world admins’ response appears more focused on managing their own reputations and justifying similar actions in the future than providing a good environment for vegans, and other similarly maligned groups. Their statements about wanting to handle misinformation and overreach better in the future ring a bit hollow when they won’t take actions to address the anti-vegan circlejerks under their update posts which abound with misinformation and disinformation.”

“The legalese written basically allows for the same thing to happen, and that if it does the admin decision is to stand while moderators have to quietly resolve the conflict at the admins’ leisure. Presumably with a similarly weak public apology and barely visible record correction after the fact.”

Codified anti-vegan bias based on reactionary views? That’s unfortunate. Glad I’m not on that instance.

In my work customers will randomly hand me Bible tracts maybe 1-3 times a month. I graciously accept them despite knowing I very much disagree with their religion, give a warm thank you, pocket it, later on read it one time as a rule, throw it away, and then move on with my life.

The majority of them are pretty standard stuff, blah blah blah, don’t go to hell, get saved yeah yeah yeah. Sometimes though, someone will give the most amazing tracts - they’re in the form of whole tiny comic books, and they have these wild stories about the Catholics and the pope being the Antichrist. Fascinating stuff.

Anyway, people who have other beliefs exist. Sure it’s annoying, and that person was in the wrong for persisting when you clearly indicated you weren’t interested, but also it sounds like you brought a lot of negativity to that interaction in the first place as well.