Comment by ovx99 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ovx99 | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

"Other [nutrients] are found in vegan foods, but only in meagre amounts; to get the minimum amount of vitamin B6 required each day (1.3 mg) from one of the richest plant sources, potatoes, you’d have to eat about five cups’ worth (equivalent to roughly 750g or 1.6lb). Delicious, but not particularly practical."

And yet when you investigate plant sources of b6,

Banana:

Vitamin B6 per 200 Calories 0.8mg (49% DV)

Beef: Vitamin B6 per 200 Calories 0.4mg (21% DV)

Interesting! Very interesting! I wonder what percentage of readers of this article are going to investigate what this authoritative science writer says for themselves? After all, why not trust the expert with a graduate degree working for the BBC?

So which is it, is the author unable to investigate in the most basic manner the actual B6 content in foods, when she apparently has a doctorate, or is this some sort of propagandist trash article with an agenda? Because I'm not sure what other options there are based on the way the quoted paragraph is written.

Moreover, what are the implications for the BBC's editorial standards that something like this was greenlit?

You're changing units though, which in turn changes the outcome. The authors point was made about nutrients per volume, which is a rough approximation of how people actually eat food. While there are people who think "today I want 500kcal from beans and 75kcal from bananas..." they are relatively scarce.

When cast in units people actually do consider when eating (mass and volume) the authors point stands. Beef is more nutrient dense as a function of mass ~50kcal/, therefore you need a higher mass of plant matter to get equivalent nutrients.

Whether omnivores eat an equivalent mass of meat as vegetarians eat of plant matter is an interesting side question; I bet not.

Even better: Chickpeas, canned, 1 cup 1.1mg of vitamin B6 55% DV Source: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminB6-HealthProfession...

And let's not talk about their claim that omega3 cannot be found in plants or that vitamin D can only come from supplements...

> is this some sort of propagandist trash article with an agenda?

I'm seriously thinking this is paid journalism.

The BBC published this article a mere 5 days earlier:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200122-are-there-health...

A much more balanced article if you ask me. Both journalists are freelancers.

>A much more balanced article if you ask me.

The word you were looking for wasn't balanced, but "pro-vegan". The article you linked is indeed different; where TFA cited many academic papers, your preferred article seems to have traded most of that sort for unbacked pseudo-scientific assertions such as (paraphrasing) that there's often no such thing as a nutrient deficiency, because your body will simply adapt to make better use of the stuff it's lacking in, like iron.

Seriously? She names a study on 555 Kenyan school kids and draws really farfetched conclusions.

Here's a study on 8000 UKers that shows the opposite, controlling for lots of factors:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1790799/

She only shows the small study and self-derives a conclusion, while ignoring the big study... Hmmm.

Also see "the adventist studies" which were the first or a long string of studies showing the general health benefits of a plant based diet over an omni diet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventist_Health_Studies

Bonus, the China Studies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study

The BBC really needs to be listed as an unreliable source.

I get these same arguments from non-vegans all too often. I then have to have the same discussion that takes a nontrivial amount of time and effort. I’m also usually told I’m wrong or should still rethink my dietary choices. We don’t need to go down this road again.

See the rest of the discussion for what they’re point out. It’s bunk.

I was just pointing out that the vast majority of BBC articles posted on HN are junk ... did you mean to reply to me?

It used to be the case that BBC was a byword for reliability and impartial reporting but in my opinion it has really taken a nosedive in the last 15 years (my personal theory is the establishment gutted it after the 2003 invasion of Iraq because they were a little bit too impartial).

People see a BBC article claiming something controversial and they’re like oh my god this changes everything because they’re still under the impression it still has any kind of journalistic heft but really it is little better than buzzfeed these days.

I’m agreeing with you but adding my experiences for the discussion.

I’m sorry I misunderstood. I hope you don’t mind that I took the opportunity to clarify my position just because I felt it had to be said, not because I’m arguing with you :-)

No worries. Maybe I’d be better understood in a room instead of in text. This article is a good example of the bbc doing exactly what you describe. Presenting something controversial and not true to clickbait.

While this article seems to have a lot of factual errors, their core contention -- the root of the justification for the article's existence -- is that vegans have a lot of deficiencies. That is the point that needs to be questioned, and often seems like scaremongering more than reality.

And as always, it's pretty simple to take a multivitamin and call it a day, presuming one isn't so militant that an ingredient in that is objectionable.

There is little evidence multivitamins are helpful and some that they are harmful.

We're talking specifically about people with deficiencies. Yes, vitamins are very helpful for people with deficiencies.

I'm going to go with the latter

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