Very good response and you hit many of the key issues associated with vegan diets.

Over time there are malabsorption issues that can, and often do, take their toll. As a clinician for over 25 years I can honestly say that my vegan patients presented with some specific health challenges that manifested at a much younger age than their meat eating cohort equivalents. This was especially true for raw vegans that engaged in high level athletic activities. The younger they were when they started on their path towards veganism, the younger these problems seem to manifest. Many of them hit the wall between 40 and 50. Some of them appeared no different than a cancer or geriatric patient due to wasting syndrome. I had a 40 year old raw vegan runner that was malnourished and frail. She had the muscle mass and fragile skeletal structure of an 80 year old woman and looked many years older than her chronological age. She refused to believe that she was suffering from her raw vegan diet compounded by intense running because she thought it was healthy. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Her running abruptly stopped when she suffered a bad shatter type of leg fracture that required surgery. This was not uncommon with my vegan patients that were runners.

Wonder why strictly vegan men, especially when consuming raw plants, are often underweight and simpy? Alongside the malnutrition of essential proteins, fats, and minerals, there is the problem of enterolignans - specifically phytoestrogens. Besides all the environmental pseudo estrogen exposure from chemicals, vegan diets drive estrogen receptor activation thereby contributing to hormonal imbalances for not only men, but women as well.

As you already stated, plant based polyphenols lack bioavailability. It is essentially a crap shoot as to how the body utilizes these polyphenolic compounds due to the interplay between gut microbiome and gut metabolites. The gut-brain connections here also cannot be understated - a huge topic in itself. Humans lack the enzymes necessary to break down cellulose and hemicellulose. Cooking plants helps to break down the cellulose to some extent but this process also removes nutrients. So even though some lab has identified a possible beneficial nutrient of a particular plant, in practice how much of that nutrient contained in a plant is actually taken up by the human body? In order to even come close to meet human nutritional needs, a person would have to consume massive amounts of plant material. This may bring onboard some nutrition, but as you already stated, besides the nutrients there is also an increased amount of other lignans or other compounds contained in that plant that may not be beneficial when consumed in larger amounts.

Now, this is not to say that in order to combat certain health challenges like obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc., that a vegan diet cannot be helpful. But, a vegan diet is not healthy over the long term. Humans are not strict herbivores. We eat animals that have already broken down and absorbed vital nutrients that humans then consume in a form that is more nutritionally dense than from the original source plants - providing that the animal sources themselves are clean. Give me a grass fed organic steak any day of the week.

Thank you for your informative comments.

Very good response and you hit many of the key issues associated with vegan diets.

Over time there are malabsorption issues that can, and often do, take their toll. As a clinician for over 25 years I can honestly say that my vegan patients presented with some specific health challenges that manifested at a much younger age than their meat eating cohort equivalents. This was especially true for raw vegans that engaged in high level athletic activities. The younger they were when they started on their path towards veganism, the younger these problems seem to manifest. Many of them hit the wall between 40 and 50. Some of them appeared no different than a cancer or geriatric patient due to wasting syndrome. I had a 40 year old raw vegan runner that was malnourished and frail. She had the muscle mass and fragile skeletal structure of an 80 year old woman and looked many years older than her chronological age. She refused to believe that she was suffering from her raw vegan diet compounded by intense running because she thought it was healthy. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Her running abruptly stopped when she suffered a bad shatter type of leg fracture that required surgery. This was not uncommon with my vegan patients that were runners.

Wonder why strictly vegan men, especially when consuming raw plants, are often underweight and simpy? Alongside the malnutrition of essential proteins, fats, and minerals, there is the problem of enterolignans - specifically phytoestrogens. Besides all the environmental pseudo estrogen exposure from chemicals, vegan diets drive estrogen receptor activation thereby contributing to hormonal imbalances for not only men, but women as well.

As you already stated, plant based polyphenols lack bioavailability. It is essentially a crap shoot as to how the body utilizes these polyphenolic compounds due to the interplay between gut microbiome and gut metabolites. The gut-brain connections here also cannot be understated - a huge topic in itself. Humans lack the enzymes necessary to break down cellulose and hemicellulose. Cooking plants helps to break down the cellulose to some extent but this process also removes nutrients. So even though some lab has identified a possible beneficial nutrient of a particular plant, in practice how much of that nutrient contained in a plant is actually taken up by the human body? In order to even come close to meet human nutritional needs, a person would have to consume massive amounts of plant material. This may bring onboard some nutrition, but as you already stated, besides the nutrients there is also an increased amount of other lignans or other compounds contained in that plant that may not be beneficial.

Now, this is not to say that in order to combat certain health challenges like obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc., that a vegan diet cannot be helpful. But, a vegan diet is not healthy over the long term. Humans are not strict herbivores. We eat animals that have already broken down and absorbed vital nutrients that humans then consume in a form that is more nutritionally dense than from the original source plants - providing that the animal sources themselves are clean. Give me a grass fed organic steak any day of the week.

Thank you for your informative comments.

Very good response and you hit many of the key issues associated with vegan diets.

Over time there are malabsorption issues that can, and often do, take their toll. As a clinician for over 25 years I can honestly say that my vegan patients presented with some specific health challenges that manifested at a much younger age than their meat eating cohort equivalents. This was especially true for raw vegans that engaged in high level athletic activities. The younger they were when they started on their path towards veganism, the younger these problems seem to manifest. Many of them hit the wall between 40 and 50. Some of them appeared no different than a cancer or geriatric patient due to the wasting syndrome. I had a 40 year old raw vegan runner that was malnourished and frail. She had the muscle mass and fragile skeletal structure of an 80 year old woman and looked many years older than her chronological age. She refused to believe that she was suffering from her raw vegan diet compounded by intense running because she thought it was healthy. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Her running abruptly stopped when she suffered a bad shatter type of leg fracture that required surgery. This was not uncommon with my vegan patients that were runners.

Wonder why strictly vegan men, especially when consuming raw plants, are often underweight and simpy? Alongside the malnutrition of essential proteins, fats, and minerals, there is the problem of enterolignans - specifically phytoestrogens. Besides all the environmental pseudo estrogen exposure from chemicals, vegan diets drive estrogen receptor activation thereby contributing to hormonal imbalances for not only men, but women as well.

As you already stated, plant based polyphenols lack bioavailability. It is essentially a crap shoot as to how the body utilizes these polyphenolic compounds due to the interplay between gut microbiome and gut metabolites. The gut-brain connections here also cannot be understated - a huge topic in itself. Humans lack the enzymes necessary to break down cellulose and hemicellulose. Cooking plants helps to break down the cellulose to some extent but this process also removes nutrients. So even though some lab has identified a possible beneficial nutrient of a particular plant, in practice how much of that nutrient contained in a plant is actually taken up by the human body? In order to even come close to meet human nutritional needs, a person would have to consume massive amounts of plant material. This may bring onboard some nutrition, but as you already stated, besides the nutrients there is also an increased amount of other lignans or other compounds contained in that plant that may not be beneficial.

Now, this is not to say that in order to combat certain health challenges like obesity, cancer, diabetes, etc., that a vegan diet cannot be helpful. But, a vegan diet is not healthy over the long term. Humans are not strict herbivores. We eat animals that have already broken down and absorbed vital nutrients that humans then consume in a form that is more nutritionally dense than from the original source plants - providing that the animal sources themselves are clean. Give me a grass fed organic steak any day of the week.

Thank you for your informative comments.