The nutrient you're thinking of is b12. Vegans need to supplement b12 (for now, discoveries are still being made on that front). But at the same time, in a sense, so does everyone else.
Yes, because we evolved to eat body parts from animals who were raised in laboratory conditions? Get real, the majority of infectious outbreaks have a zoonotic origin. Covid was caused by carnists, and so is h5n1. You can't have any animal domestication without an increase of pathogens.
Veganism isn't a religion. It's a simple moral framework, a practical moral baseline, and a social movement like any other. Would you call a social justice, anti-genocide, or lgbtq+ rights advocate a religious zealot?
And going back to your main point, it's really just dubious to draw conclusions about what we are "meant" to eat based on the shape of our teeth. If all we're considering is health and history, it's not entirely accurate to say we're just omnivores. It's more like we are predominantly herbivores with some capacity for opportunistic omnivory in emergencies, but our ability to live on animal foods is rudimentary at best and comes at a high health cost. Also consider that from a Paleolithic standpoint, early humans would have been eating much more bugs as their protein, as that would have been far more abundant and easily gathered. Hunting is unreliable, and in most circumstances would have been a luxury at best (the book "Edible" goes into this).
Of course we also are becoming more intelligent, and have emerged the capacity for moral evolution. The paleo concept as a whole is ultimately just the argument from tradition fallacy. We can do better.
Just because we evolved a relatively recent ability to do something, doesn't mean that thing is necessarily in our best interest. As I said elsewhere in this post, we have some capacity for omnivory at a high health cost, but that doesn't change that our deeper roots have structured us for more plant-dominant lifestyles.
Don't compare veganism to anti-genocide? My anointed sibling (gnostic gender-neutral idioms >> orthodox gendered ones), every animal product eater/user is complicit in the largest perpetual genocide in human history.
In the first place remember that veganism isn't only about diet. And it's about doing the best that you can, with what you have. Not everyone can go fully vegan, and that's understandable and okay as long as they're doing their best.
Also, I've never owned property. I've never worked a job that paid enough to afford it (or rent) on my own. When I started transitioning my diet, it was when I had switched jobs to a factory setting with 40-48 hour work weeks (post-covid it was almost always 48 hours), 10 hour shifts on my feet all day. Prior to that I was dependent on eating fast food every day (with predictable rapidly declining health). I also lived in a food desert where going vegan meant that I had zero options for takeout.
I had no one in my life willing to help, in fact all the people around me made it even harder to change. I also have adhd, and can't stand the concept of meal prep. So what I did was save up for an Instant Pot, and started making the largest batches of grains and legumes that I could, along with frozen veggies (mainly broccoli). I generally cooked only once a week, and then would combine the helpings of leftovers in different ways each day (to keep it from getting too boring) for both my work lunches and dinners.
And I also sought community. Having vegan friends helps immensely.
Don't assume that I'm as privileged as you think just because I'm vegan. On the other hand I know there are too many people who are far worse off than I am, and everyone who is struggling too much to go fully vegan should never be condemned, on the contrary we should seek to help - because our current food system is killing everyone who is most disadvantaged and impoverished.
Our capitalist wasteland, particularly when you factor in health outcomes, means it's even more important to at least go plant-based (not the same thing as veganism), and to help others do the same.
And as others have already said here, all other sources of animal foods are also unclean, because animals are unclean. Your idea of clean meat could only come from a laboratory - lab-grown animal-free meat, for example.
(Ignoring that our industrial animal-food system is probably a significant contributor to the vast extinctions we're causing, since animal ag is the leading cause of wild habitat destruction).
Would you feel better about the human genocides that occur, if the mass murderers were deliberately and forcibly breeding the victims into existence so they could continue the cycles of killing perpetually? Or is playing word games more important than recognizing the reality of what we are doing collectively?
Why are the animal's choices never considered in this equation? Freedom is something the west places a high value on, but it's generally agreed that freedom should never go so far as to harm others, yet your "freedom" to choose what to eat is resulting in a horrifying sort of perpetual holocaust.
Why is your fleeting sensory pleasure (something that can be had just as easily from plants) more important than the entire lives and wellbeing of all the animals you paid to have killed?
Humans don't intrinsically know what to eat to for nutrient deficiencies, that's a learned behavior based on finding out what the symptoms of a given deficiency are, and learning which foods have the necessary nutrients.
That only informs about your bias, which comes from the sum of knowledge and experience you do have. Historically we know there have been planty of cases of people getting scurvy simply because they did not know better to eat the right foods, and did not appear to crave them either.
Cravings appear to have more to do with pleasure, and alleviating stress.
Literally the only strictly necessary supplement for vegans is b12, and if you understand the science of b12, then you know that you either should be supplementing it anyway, or you're just rolling the dice.
By contrast there are entire whole-food plant-based communities who routinely report the near-miraculous benefits they gain after adopting the diet, such as cholesterol levels that aren't deadly.
Most farm animals have been selectively bred for traits that fit human needs, at the expense of the animal's own quality of life. For example, chickens being bred to produce so many eggs that they become calcium deficient and their bones break under the weight of their own bodies. Sanctuaries provide safe spaces for these animals to live out the rest of their lives in the most comfort possible, while going vegan is important for a future where we're no longer breeding these poor beings into an inherently hellish existence.
Except we're talking about a situation where enough people doing one of these things has the possibility of actually ending atrocities like factory farms, as well as possibly vivisection and other animal abuses in science. You're acting as if vegans only think about diet, when in fact I've expressed that everything you've brought up is something that vegans do make efforts to improve.
Wild animal suffering is a hot debate in the vegan communities these days. There is no cut and dry answer for that. However, whatever we do or don't do to alleviate or eliminate wild animal suffering says nothing about whether we also create and maintain our own system of animal suffering. We can end the human exploitation of animals, and doing so can teach us a lot about ending our exploitation of each other as well.
PGP/GPG. I would like to see the web of trust take off. Also I love the aesthetic for anything that's been signed, and would like to see blog posts everywhere be nested by long blocks of random symbols.
Mine probably isn't that secret these days, but almost every sauce I add nutritional yeast to. Curry, chilli, bolognese, it just makes them all better.
Beans (usually black beans, but I've been looking more into other varieties lately), lentils, peas, soy curls, tofu, tempeh, tvp, rice, oat groats, barley, quinoa, bulgur, amaranth, other grains I can't remember at the moment, and seitan: wherever most people would use mutilated body parts.
Lemons(?) of Lemmy, what is something that feels so obvious to you that you just get lowkey pissed at the world for not knowing?
Neverminding the evidence to the contrary. ( lemmy.world )
Parental standards. ( lemmy.world )
The signs are aligned. ( lemmy.world )
A wild orangutan used a medicinal plant to treat a wound, scientists say ( apnews.com )
When I die, turn me into soup ( lemmy.world )
Which communication protocol or open standard in software do you wish was more common or used more?
Whether you're really passionate about RPC, MQTT, Matrix or wayland, tell us more about the protocols or open standards you have strong opinions on!
More Realistic Meat Substitute Made From Soy Raised In Brutally Cruel Conditions ( www.theonion.com )
What's your secret ingredient that makes your version of a common dish better than anyone else's?
Mine probably isn't that secret these days, but almost every sauce I add nutritional yeast to. Curry, chilli, bolognese, it just makes them all better.