I have a friend who is vegan and he has been doing this for awhile now. He looks like he’s gonna die. He’s into all sorts of fads like the wim hof breathing method so he’s hard to break through to. He is a smart guy but he has to read information for himself to really implement it. Are there any current research papers showing how his diet is sub optimal for muscle growth or how eating meat would help him?
I think that instead of arguing about his diet you should support him and let it go. I mainly say this because it’s hard to imagine this sort of discussion would go well between you two and for what, his muscle gainzZz? I’m not sure anyone into Wim Hof is really worried about how strong they are.
In any event, a few fun studies I would recommend reading for personal edification:
- Relationship between animal protein intake and muscle mass index in healthy women - PubMed
- Effects of an omnivorous diet compared with a lactoovovegetarian diet on resistance-training-induced changes in body composition and skeletal muscle in older men - PubMed
- Protein requirements and supplementation in strength sports - PubMed
4)International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: protein and exercise - PMC - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2005.00467.x
- Vegan diets: practical advice for athletes and exercisers - PMC
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I specifically don’t hound him about it because I know how these discussions go. He’s just realizing now his diet is impacting his gainz and he wants to be stronger and bigger so I figured I’d send him some stuff cause he’s about ready to quit and I’m tired of hearing about how vegan he is lol. Thanks for the info!
This is veering a bit off the OP’s topic, and also a bit off nutritional topic (although one might argue that it actually broadens nutrition from an individual to global scale). You are someone whose opinion I respect a lot, which is why I am asking here.
Is a diet that trends towards vegetarianism more environmentally sustainable? Let’s further fine tune things and compare an omnivorous and vegetarian which are both sourced locally, and where the animal products of the former come from non-factory farmed meats and distinguishing a training vs a non-training demographic.
In a previous post, you made the claim that this might not be the case. I recently received an unsolicited lecture from someone for my meat eating habits (daily) and when I sympathised with him but told him it was also a bit more complicated he accused me of claiming to have “alternate facts.” I think the basic thrust of his argument would be that plants are more sustainable than animals, thus we should use them as our primary food source.
Sorry for the long post. I can see getting confronted with this social situation a lot where I live and I am sure you can offer some intelligent perspective.
There are no diet options available to the human race that are sustainable with our current global economy, farming practices, and populations.
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To reduce this to very simplistic comparisons: you can produce more calories per unit of energy (kWh) consumed when farming plants vs meat, and produce less greenhouse gas emissions per calorie produced with plants vs meat. In this sense, it’s “more” sustainable. And it seems like a reasonable argument at first, until you dig into the actual numbers.
As Jordan said, even pure vegetarian diets are not currently sustainable from an environmental standpoint. Both meat and vegan diets consume a considerable amount of land, water, and fossil fuels, and produce literal thousands of tons of GHG emissions.
Some interesting tidbits can be found: one study (linked below) states that if meat was completely removed from the American diet, national GHG emissions would only be reduced by 2.6%. Significant, sure, but not as much as you might expect. It also found that although you can produce 23% more food/calories for the same amount of kWh energy consumed when purely plant based vs omnivore, to meet the same nutritional profile as an omnivore diet with a vegan diet, you need to consume more daily calories, offsetting this increase in food production.
Additionally, organic vs non-organic farming practises have been found to be roughly equivalent in their environmental impact.
If you want to look at some of these quantitative comparisons yourself, here’s some peer-reviewed stuff that may be of interest to you:
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010
Thank you for the sobering fact. Now I will pour a little whiskey into my cornflakes. 