The most bioavailable foods are animal foods. Plant form iron is not even remotely comparable to heme iron.
Heme iron is found only in meat, poultry, seafood, and fish.
Take a iron deficient person and give them plant iron and it will be weeks to never before their iron returns. Feed them a liver and see it spike up in a day.
The same can be said of vitamin A and many other vitamins. A No indigenous society on earth has ever been vegan. Even horses who eat grass sometimes eat birds.
Hong Kong has one of the highest life expectancies on earth and one of the highest meat consumption rates on earth.
Every “Vegan” body builder got their start on whey protein. And are in their 20’s usually. There is no good 50+ year old long term vegan body builders who aren’t on massive amount of steroids and who didn’t get their start on animal protein.
Vegan farming is unsustainable. Animals naturally help the soil become more nutritious.
Vegan foods are terrible for the environment. Mass produced mono crops destroy the soil.
Being a vegan is OK if you want to destroy your body. Pushing it on children is evil because it will limit their growth.
At this point in time, I agree that raising children on a poorly-planned vegan diet is unethical, in the same way that raising them on any other unbalanced diet is (there is a similar problem, at least in parts of the US but easily possibly elsewhere, of children raised on highly-processed foods with high-fat high-sugar and high-sodium (you get the point) and with little-to-no fruit or vegetables beyond potato chips and tomato sauces).
I honestly don’t know if a well-planned vegan diet is adequate for children. My very quick review of recent academic literature had conflicting claims on whether a well-planned vegan diet could be effective. Ultimately, I would base my answer of ‘unhealthy/destructive to young children’ on a food science consensus and I’m not confident there is one.
Regardless, there’s some pretty broken arguments in the original post, including the descriptor ‘evil’ (what does that even mean in this context? malicious?) and the appeal to ‘natural’ as a positive argument in itself. Pasteurizing milk isn’t natural.
Vegan doesn’t mean animals don’t exist, and theoretically they should be a part of the environment. If it were run by pro-animal vegans rather than merely for vegans, I would expect some kind of permaculture including animals. Also, I’m guessing there are industrial work-around like packaged fertilizer if that’s the implication.
Are you implying that mono animal farming is any better for the soil?
Is this meant to be an argument? The point is to plan a diet to not be iron deficient in the first place! Prevention > Cure
Is this meant to be an argument? Most people aren’t aiming to be body builders, which is in fact an unhealthy, unnatural and destructive lifestyle itself. Also, [dubious claim, citation needed]
Correlation ≠ Causation. One country doesn’t form a trend. USA has a life expectancy of around 50th in the world. Brazil are around 55th. Argentina are around 65th. Samoa is around 115th. These are all nations that top the charts of estimated meat consumption per capita, USA by far.
Hong Kong has other social reasons for a high life expectancy. I really don’t think you can chalk it up to ‘more meat’. Take, for instance, their universal health care, safe streets, public transport & walk-ability, good weather, varied diet. Diet plays a role but evidently increased meat consumption doesn’t make a nations suddenly live the longest. It’s a very dumb argument and you should reconsider any source that you read that implied it was a good argument.
Furthermore, meat consumption is often associated with wealth, as it’s generally more expensive, and people with wealth have more opportunity to be healthy.