Veganism & vegetarianism

[Aractus]

I haven't studied it formally. Yet I still know that carnivores have an intestine length to body length ratio of 5-1 while we have a ratio of 12-1. This means when we eat meat, we absorb many more toxins than a carnivore would.

And I know that our closest animal relatives, Chimps, are omnivorous like us, and that their digestive system is tailored to digesting more fruits than the human one is, and that the "fact" you've just cited is purely uninformed bullshit.

I know that a carnivore's renal system can handle the toxins associated with eating meat far better than our's can. Even so, carnivores must sleep many more hours each day and have much shorter lifespans. I also know that while our intestines don't have the 20-1 length ratio true herbivores do, we are capable of getting nearly everything we need from complex vegetables. Protein is not an issue because our body builds it from amino acids - all easily available from vegetable sources. Nearly all nutrients are available too - the exceptions being B12 and D3. Both are available as supplements. You know this so why are you neglecting to mention it?

Yes you "know this" and you "know that". Supplementation is not the preferred method for people to get their nutrients. The bioavailability of oral B12 appears to be absolutely terrible, thus people actually need injections and not a supplement. Iron, Zinc and Calcium all pose serious problems to vegans, as well as cholesterol and vitamin d.

To my knowledge there is no vegan derived D3 supplement, there is only D2 which has shown to be the less bioefficient form in humans.

Vegans do indeed need to carefully monitor their intake to make sure they are not deficient in certain areas and I'm sure most of them know that. Dairy-consuming vegetarians would have a hard time avoiding getting what they need if they wanted to - I suspect you damn-well know that. Contrast that with the carcinogenic-rich diet of a meat eater and it's ridiculous to say they have an unhealthy diet.

Again, that's not true. A dark skinned person living in my region can almost certainly not attain enough vitamin d through biosynthesis alone in the winter months (they would need 3-4 hours sun exposure in the middle of the day with as much skin exposed as possible). The only non-fortified foods that contain vitamin d in significant amounts are fatty fish and eggs; but it would take 5 eggs a day to reach the AI for vitamin d. I will however make a correction to my previous post, I said that 3-4 hours plus the AI is required for a dark skinned person - that's incorrect. It's 3-4 hours for an average dark skinned person (30-40 minutes for a light skinned person), OR achieving the AI with more minimal sun exposure.

I sometimes see people claiming you can vitamin d from mushrooms - as I said before, mushrooms do not contain vitamin d. It's an animal steroid that isn't produced in funguses. If you see a vitamin d level claimed for mushrooms it means there is faeces on the mushrooms (as many are grown in manure). Once you clean and cook your mushrooms there will be no faeces, and consequently no vitamin d.