Another Veganism Post

This one's just going to be about how it's perfectly possible to be healthy as a vegan. So one question any vegan will probably be asked is how they get their protein. I'll be including links and commenting on parts of them. The first site I'm referring to is an article at veganhealth.org about, of course, protein. One thing I found notable was that "It's now been about 20 years since protein in vegan diets was determined to be a non-issue by nutrition researchers." And yet people are still convinced- and clinging on to the idea- that vegans (or even vegetarians) couldn't possibly be getting enough protein. As a 16 year old female, I'm supposed to get about 50 grams of protein per day. Half a cup of tofu has 8-11 grams of protein.

It must be one of those doublethink kinds of things, but it always seems odd to me that people can simultaneously think that vegans can eat nothing but tofu and that they couldn't possibly eat enough tofu to get much of any protein out of it. Half a cup of soybeans has 14.3 grams of protein. I certainly eat plenty of soybeans, although frequently indirectly. Tofu, of course, is made of soybeans. As is my vegan ice cream. As is soymilk; etc. And then vegetables have protein. You can look at the list if you're curious.

It also points out that unless they don't eat enough food in general or eat total junk food, vegans don't have to worry about protein. There's a brief snippet of this article that deals with the same issue. I'm going to take a possibly too large quotation from this:

"a varied diet of nutritious plant foods provides all the protein that you need. Unlike animal protein, plant-based protein sources usually also contain healthy fiber and complex carbohydrates. Animal products are also full of artery-clogging cholesterol and saturated fat, and consumption of animal protein has been linked to some types of cancer. Plus, it's suspected that the high sulfur content of animal protein weakens people's bones. (For example, a study by researchers at the University of California found significantly less bone formation in meat-eating women than in vegan women.)"

I knew I had heard somewhere that animal protein weakened bones. And you thought I made that up. And then this article points out that "with protein, more (than the RDA) is not necessarily better [...and] Diets that are high in protein may even increase the risk of osteoporosis and kidney disease ."

This article is also illuminating. It points out that "The meat and dairy industries spend billions of dollars to project their message right into your shopping cart through television commercials, magazine ads, and grocery store ads." Which makes sense. I'd point out more, but much of this stuff is repeated. You know what I should do? I should print out a copy of each of these articles and, say, attach them to my skin somehow. Alright, so I'm exaggerating, but people really seem to hate the idea that vegans can get enough protein.

Alright. So I've got protein covered. I may write another thing on, say, calcium, but I think I've written enough for now.