Can you sustain yourself eating only vegetables? Modern vegan diets work because we have heavily processed oils and grains, and a variety of supplements. I don't think a human could live long just munching vegetables that aren't cooked with oil.
The only supplement you can't get from a vegan diet is B12, because farming is too clean (it is in dirt, and eating dirt is how you'd get the B12 needed). Everything else you can get from eating plant based products.
You do not need heavily processed oils and grains nor do you need a variety of supplements. Beans and Rice contain all of the necessary proteins a human body needs for example.
B12 deficiency is an issue even for people that eat meat due to the cleaner practices and feeding where animals no longer graze but instead get their food delivered in a way that doesn't allow the animals to ingest the B12 from the dirt.
You can absolutely survive eating food that is not cooked with oil.
Rice is not a vegetable, the question was if you can live off vegetables. Thats why I said you would struggle to hit your caloric needs without processed grains and oils.
You could maybe make it if you ate a couple pounds of beans a day with dirt on them. I really think your digestive tract would struggle though.
So you are saying that vegetable oil is not a vegetable? How come that rice, which comes from a plant, is not a vegetable? I'm struggling to understand where you are drawing the line. Reminds me of those debates on whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables (the answer to that question is "yes").
We just need some cows to eat the vegan diet for us to digest and unlock these difficult to obtain nutrients. Then we can eat them to get the nutrients.
HN never ceases to amaze with the variety of posters. From guys smart and entrepreneurial enough to make it big in software to people who think beef is magically healthy despite ample evidence that it's at best a nutritionally average, expensive, mostly tasteless industrial product.
Nutritional yeast is a great source of B12. Also, it's a delicious addition to a great many recipes. I learned about it from a vegan, but I'm an omnivore.
How do you define vegetable here? A whole lot of (dis)agreement below seems to hinge on that.
The dictionary definition of vegetable (according to dictionary.com) is:
> any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food
Which would include grains, however you may be excluding those depending on if "heavily processed" modifies only the oil, or the grains as well.
Of course culinarily in western traditions, grains and a lot of tubers are excluded from that, as are some fruits (others, culinarily speaking, are considered vegetables like squashes, tomatoes, and so on).
Also, in your question, would olive oil count? Its literally the result of squishing olives.... does that count as heavily processed?
Do you count potatoes? They are pretty calorie dense. Beans? Plenty of calories and lots of protein.
What about seed foods - nuts and such? They are also calorie dense and have a lot of fats too.
Point being - it's really unclear what limitations you're placing on it... peanuts, beans, (sweet) potatoes, squashes and fruits are commonly grown in home gardens, widely considered vegetables, and calorie dense enough to sustain a person fairly easily without non-stop eating.
There are cultures across the world that are vegetarian or almost-vegans. For instance, Jainism [1] is a thousands of years old religion in India, and they are dairy-only vegetarians. Obviously, for most of its history, adherents ate only food that was locally grown.
I’m a vegan Hindu person. I do take a multi vitamin, but I’m not a body builder and not an athlete. I get maybe 100g protein a day which I think is fine. I eat dal daily for lunch and dinner is usually something fun with veggies like chili or tofu or curries etc. I also drink a loaded smoothie that’s got fruits and herbs and nuts and oats. Got enough energy to go up any hill in SF and not feel exhausted lol.
Honestly feels great and my blood test comes back okay each time.
The only issue is when I’m away from home my options is basically Chipotle.
There are/were groups eating near-vegan diets for non-ideological reasons also. For example, the pre-modern Okinawan diet was mostly vegetables, some grains and soy products, and very little (~2%) meat (including seafood). No dairy or oils, AFAIK. And those eating that way are/were a notably healthy population.
> Can you sustain yourself eating only vegetables? Modern vegan diets work because we have heavily processed oils and grains, and a variety of supplements. I don't think a human could live long just munching vegetables that aren't cooked with oil.
I think the "heavily processed oils and grains, and a variety of supplements" part was also important to their point, and that's what I was disputing and qualifying.
And their assertion about "modern" vegan diets and my reference to "pre-modern" Okinawan diets is not really a contradiction either. You can easily eat the "pre-modern" Okinawan diet in Okinawa today (and in other places with grocery stores). I'm using pre-modern very loosely to indicate it is not the most common contemporary diet. Many dietary patterns across the world have Westernized/"modernized" (and as a result, many, though by no means all, have become less healthy).
Historically there have been similar diets for ages before there were modern supplements (as we think of them), and per-industrialized seed/olive oils etc. I don't know how effective or ineffective they were relative to other contemporary diets.
