Vegetarian and vegan diets have been around for thousands of years in parts of Asia, well before B12 supplements. Cultures sorted out the nutritional requirements through ingredients, and the lack of B12 in western vegan diets has more to do with common western ingredients than some inherent problem with a plant based diet.
I’m not even vegetarian or vegan, just annoyed with misconceptions about their feasibility.
Ancient and prehistoric peoples didn’t care about dogma, being “vegan”, that’s a modern thing. To these peoples veganism would’ve been dumb, a population that denies important nutrition isn’t likely to compete well against other populations that don’t. They didn’t have factory farms and YouTube videos showing how cruel they are. They didn’t have social media showing them cute cows and saying they deserve life. Animals were food if we were hungry.
I’m sure there have been groups that were mostly vegan for periods but B12 is essential and not available in plants. To think that most of humanity somehow acquired B12 and decided to forgo meat is silly.
Oh, and those “vegan” cultures for thousands of years, they probably figured out how to supplement such as via brewer’s yeast or were not completely vegan. Remember, they didn’t have their “vegan” dogmatic friends around them to shame them if they ate a bug.
Vegetarian and vegan diets have been around for thousands of years in parts of Asia, well before B12 supplements.
Vegetarianism yes… veganism I don’t think that’s really plausible.
I think this may come down to different cultures classifying what they consider to be meat.
For example if you go to Korea, it’s really really simple to be a vegetarian and almost impossible to be a vegan. Most of your basic cooking spices are going to include things like dried krill powder. And if you asked the cook or waiter if there are meat or animal byproducts, they will tell you “no meat”.
Vegetarian and vegan diets have been around for thousands of years in parts of Asia, well before B12 supplements. Cultures sorted out the nutritional requirements through ingredients, and the lack of B12 in western vegan diets has more to do with common western ingredients than some inherent problem with a plant based diet.
I’m not even vegetarian or vegan, just annoyed with misconceptions about their feasibility.
Ancient and prehistoric peoples didn’t care about dogma, being “vegan”, that’s a modern thing. To these peoples veganism would’ve been dumb, a population that denies important nutrition isn’t likely to compete well against other populations that don’t. They didn’t have factory farms and YouTube videos showing how cruel they are. They didn’t have social media showing them cute cows and saying they deserve life. Animals were food if we were hungry.
I’m sure there have been groups that were mostly vegan for periods but B12 is essential and not available in plants. To think that most of humanity somehow acquired B12 and decided to forgo meat is silly.
Oh, and those “vegan” cultures for thousands of years, they probably figured out how to supplement such as via brewer’s yeast or were not completely vegan. Remember, they didn’t have their “vegan” dogmatic friends around them to shame them if they ate a bug.
That is why I was clear about the diets being around. Diets can exist without the dogma.
Vegetarianism yes… veganism I don’t think that’s really plausible.
I think this may come down to different cultures classifying what they consider to be meat.
For example if you go to Korea, it’s really really simple to be a vegetarian and almost impossible to be a vegan. Most of your basic cooking spices are going to include things like dried krill powder. And if you asked the cook or waiter if there are meat or animal byproducts, they will tell you “no meat”.