Think You Have a Health Argument Against Veganism? Read This.
Three facts you're missing
Whether you’re vegan, anti-vegan, or something in between — this article is for you. We live in times of rampant diet misinformation and nobody benefits from an uninformed debate. In the interest of public health, let’s be civil and listen to each other. Your feedback is always welcome.
If you believe that adopting a plant-based lifestyle will negatively impact your health, I completely understand — I’ve been there myself. But after carefully examining the evidence, I know that this belief directly contradicts scientific consensus and recommendations of the world’s leading health organizations.
It’s time to cut through the noise and debunk the anti-vegan health misinformation spread by the meat and dairy industries — misinformation designed to protect profits, not your well-being.
Investigations have shown that the livestock industry advertises “like Big Oil”, uses “tobacco tactics” to market products, and spends millions on smearing plant-based diets.
Their goal is to sow confusion and doubt. Therefore, I’ll keep it clear and simple. In this article, I’ll highlight three points that are often overlooked, yet powerful enough to settle the debate on the healthfulness of vegan diets once and for all.
Three facts to settle the debate
1) Nutritional adequacy of a vegan diet
Expert organizations, including the world's largest body of nutrition and dietetics practitioners, have officially confirmed that a well-balanced vegan diet is healthful and nutritionally adequate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.
2) Confirmed health benefits
Research shows that a balanced vegan diet offers a vast array of health benefits, including reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and chronic disease — even when studies control for factors such as age, smoking, education, and physical activity. Abstaining from animal products has been found to have a preventive effect against 14 of the 15 deadliest diseases of our time.
3) Science-backed endorsements
The evidence on their benefits and nutritional adequacy is so conclusive that plant-based diets have been recommended by leading authoritative bodies, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, the Mayo Clinic (ranked as “best hospital in the world”), the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, and the American Institute for Cancer Research.
And that’s far from all
A shift towards plant-based diets helps mitigate pathogen mutations, climate change, and environmental destruction, all of which pose significant threats to our health. In fact, the United Nations has identified climate change as the “single biggest health threat facing humanity.”
In addition to contributing to climate change, the production of animal products heavily contributes to rainforest destruction, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, food scarcity, water and air pollution, pandemic risk, and antibiotic resistance — imposing severe costs on human health and well-being.
Critical nutrients
Any diet has critical nutrients. Over the last decades, the vegan diet has been thoroughly examined. This scrutiny benefits vegans by providing clear guidelines. In particular, it’s important to ensure a reliable source of Vitamin B12.
→ For more information on critical nutrients, see here.
Contrary to widespread belief, an aversion against “unnatural” droplets or pills is not an argument against, but an argument for a plant-based diet. Why? Renowned population studies have shown that compared to vegans, people with a meat-based diet are significantly more likely to have to take medications, such as aspirin, sleeping pills, tranquillizers, and high blood pressure drugs — which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the health benefits of plant-based living discussed above.
Bottom line
No matter where you stand on veganism, it’s essential to base the conversation on facts, not misinformation. The overwhelming scientific consensus supports the health benefits of a well-balanced vegan diet at all stages of life.
Contrary to the diet misinformation circulating on social media, research shows that plant-based living not only reduces the risk of many diseases but also helps mitigate some of the biggest global threats to human health, including climate change and antibiotic resistance.
Yes, critical nutrients should be considered — but that’s not unique to a vegan diet. Any diet has critical nutrients. Overall, the health benefits of veganism are so remarkable that experts predict a global shift to a plant-based food system could save millions of lives and cut healthcare costs by hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Save this article and share it wherever you encounter anti-vegan health misinformation.
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This is probably a consequence of me being terminally online, but the biggest things I’ve seen the anti-vegan and ex-vegan crowds (especially on their respective subreddits) say against veganism are that it’s less healthy. I’ve seen some attempts to argue crop deaths and monoculture as well, but really nothing on animal suffering since it’s basically impossible to win there. While we have studies citing these benefits of veganism, they push back with their own studies showing the opposite. I’m not really sure how to address these, since frankly I don’t have the time to go through all their literature and see if there are flaws there or if there actually might be merit
I came to plant-based eating after reading a bunch of fairly mainstream nutrition sources. I noticed a few things:
1. Whole plant foods tended to have consistent evidence of benefits.
2. Animal products (with a few exceptions) were treated as "there is no evidence of harm below X level, but moderation is key!" The only animal foods I could find that weren't known to be associated with health risks were fat-free yogurt and fatty fish.
3. There are a few things that confound a lot of research on meat. One is that fat loss generally improves several markers of health (blood lipids, insulin resistance, etc.), and high-protein/low carb diets lead to short term weight loss. This can mask negative effects of eating meat. The other is that many older studies on saturated fat effectively replaced saturated fat with something just as bad or worse (trans fat or highly refined carbs), which made saturated fat look less bad than it is. More modern studies tend to be precise about what saturated fat is replaced with, yielding more consistent results.
4. I think a lot of diet advice from mainstream organizations tries to "meet people halfway" on meat/dairy/eggs. So guidelines included stuff like 1-2 servings per day, which makes it sound like you *should* eat meat/dairy/eggs. Even the AHA's guideline summary (which is better than most) devotes 7 words to plant protein sources and 22 words to animal products. "Healthy sources of protein (Mostly plants such as legumes, and nuts; fish and seafood; low-fat or fat-free dairy; and, if you eat meat and poultry, ensure it is lean and unprocessed.)"
The last straw for me was in a book about the MIND diet. The idea is that it takes known diets like DASH and Mediterranean, and tweaks them based on foods that are associated with brain health in old age from dietary studies. The author recommended 3 servings of legumes per *week*, since they met the criteria of the diet, then proceeded to also recommend lean chicken meat as an everyday food despite not meeting the rubric described earlier. (The explanation was that you need protein to avoid muscle loss in old age and chicken has protein in it. So even though lean chicken didn't affect dementia risk it was still useful.)
I think if mainstream diet recommendations were more intellectually honest, people would get a more accurate understanding of the health risks of eating animal foods. Something like "Eat a plant-based diet. Animal food is bad for you; minimize or eliminate consumption." as opposed to "Plants are good for you; maximize consumption and reduce meat/dairy/eggs." It's the same underlying idea, but the emphasis matters. In the latter framing, I think a lot of people (eg my parents) end up with the misapprehension that only small changes to SAD are required to make a healthy diet.