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Comment by ced | Hacker News Reader

But the size of the vegan movement is totally out of proportion to its veracity.

That's a weird statement. When is "movement size" ever a good indicator of truth?

Anyway, veganism is not about "veracity", it's about a different set of moral beliefs, or a particular diet, or...

You speak of vegans as if it was a monolithic group, and you paint it with a negative brush because of a few crazy individuals. That's like dismissing entire religions and countries because of a handful of fanatics.

Meanwhile, as vegans focus on the elimination of meat from our diets, they practically ignore the industrialized food that wreaks direct reproducible havoc on our metabolisms causing epidemic obesity and diabetes.

Really? All of the vegans I know care a lot about eating a balanced and healthy diet (at least, more than the average non-vegan).

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  > Really? All of the vegans I know care a lot
  > about eating a balanced and healthy diet (at
  > least, more than the average non-vegan).

Not necessarily. I know a number of vegans that don't necessarily eat that healthy.

The thing that irks me is when vegans proclaim that the 'vegan diet' will make everyone healthier, cure obesity, etc. There are plenty of unhealthy foods that are perfectly vegan. I say this as a vegan myself. I see these people as 'hurting the movement' because they are spreading un-truths, even if they are well-intentioned (and the messengers believe the false message).

[Edit] Don't take this as a claim that the 'vegan diet' (I use quotes because it is such as broad term) is necessarily unhealthy. It's just that there are many foods that are completely vegan, yet unhealthy:

  - Skittles (since they removed gelatin as an ingredient)
  - Oreos
  - Sugar
  - Soda
  - A lot of potato chip varieties
  - Transfats (i.e. burned oils)

(note: That I can only confirm things like Skittles or Oreos in the US. I know that in different countries the formulas are different. Skittles may still have gelatin in Canada, for example) [/Edit]

"Plant based whole foods" is the way.

Not necessarily. I know a number of vegans that don't necessarily eat that healthy.

You know all of the parent's vegan people?

The marketing aspect of things related to animal rights and vegetarianism/veganism is done very poorly, and I wish we could undo all the bad stuff that's been spread throughout the last 20+ years. Is it true that veganism is more healthy if done properly? The differing research out there makes that inconclusive, in my opinion. To me it's a "it works for me, YMMV" sort of thing.

Well, statistically speaking, vegans live longer, right? That does not necessarily imply that all the benefits come from the diet, and it certainly does not say that going vegan is guaranteed to make you live longer, but it does mean that if you choose a random vegan they will be healthier than a random omnivore.

So I think if you have to choose between the statements "vegans are healthy" or "vegans are unhealthy," there's not a lot of evidence to argue for the latter.

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