Ask A Vegan Anything.

[TaraJo]

Animal protein is healthy, some if it is "healthier" or "less healthy" but to use words like "need" we have to put a bunch of qualifiers. You can survive for quite some time on cardboard, sugar packets, and water, for example, but no one would say that all you "need" is cardboard, sugar and water. The "need" bit comes from whatever a researcher or proponent has defined as the "optimal level" of this or that....which is why the numbers can vary so greatly from source to source without anyone actually looking to out-and-ought misinform anyone.

This is very true. You can go without quite a few things and still survive for a while, but eventually a shortage in protein or other nutrients will catch up with you. And, yes, just like in every other science, the stats can be fudged by biases of the researcher doing the research. This is why I rely on information published specifically on the governments' webside; they don't seem to have much of an agenda past our own health and well being and most of these studies have been through the peer review process. That doesn't mean that the information is going to be unquestionably right, but that it's less likely to be way out in left field wrong.

But, hey, if ol' Chuckie here can find any published studies from the last 5 years that support his claim that there's protein in everything or that you can get by with trace amounts of protein, I'll go with that. As it is, his body probably isn't going to last too long before he starts to suffer from the effects of protein deficiency. There are a lot of amino acids that your body can't produce without protein and when your body has to do without them, it isn't pretty.