I’d want to spend more time with the numbers before committing to specifics, but tentatively I’m delighted my request got fulfilled a month ago without my knowledge. As a compromise diet I think it’s great, I’d be really happy if this became the new EAGlobal standard.
My guess is poultry is easy to give up, nutritionally speaking, unless someone has a serious issue like a red meat allergy. People are weird and variable but there’s nothing obvious poultry has that something else doesn’t.
Giving up eggs and farmed fish is harder. My guess is that for many omnivores that would take some thought to work around, eggs are so goddamn convenient, but by no means insurmountable except for actual medical issues. Fish have special nutritional benefits and wildcaught are more expensive, although that may be fixable by switching to a cheaper species.
If I could make a few additions: I would love to see organ meats get more airtime. They require different cooking skills and are less popular so no savings on that front, but relative to muscle meat they’re more nutritious, have less fat, and contribute less to the marginal profit on livestock. I’d also add mussels, which are neurologically plants, but I’ve never met anyone who could tolerate the taste.
My guess is lacto-vegetarian cultures are healthy, but an American dropping down to lacto-vegetarianism has a high risk of implementing it poorly. For some it won’t matter, and more people can do it with less effort than veganism, but many will require some thought. Probably most people can fix that with mussels, but then I also think most could fix veganism with mussels (and by fix I mean get back to the same level of health they had on an omnivorous diet, not necessarily optimal).
Normally I’ll admit to medical issues being a tail risk, lactose intolerance is incredibly common. The first sources on google say 68% of the population has lactose malabsorption. That’s too high- it includes people with some limited ability to digest dairy, not all forms of dairy have lactose, lactose free milk is pretty available in the US, lactaid works for some people- but there are enough people it can’t work for that there need to be other options.
I’d want to spend more time with the numbers before committing to specifics, but tentatively I’m delighted my request got fulfilled a month ago without my knowledge. As a compromise diet I think it’s great, I’d be really happy if this became the new EAGlobal standard.
My guess is poultry is easy to give up, nutritionally speaking, unless someone has a serious issue like a red meat allergy. People are weird and variable but there’s nothing obvious poultry has that something else doesn’t.
Giving up eggs and farmed fish is harder. My guess is that for many omnivores that would take some thought to work around, eggs are so goddamn convenient, but by no means insurmountable except for actual medical issues. Fish have special nutritional benefits and wildcaught are more expensive, although that may be fixable by switching to a cheaper species.
If I could make a few additions: I would love to see organ meats get more airtime. They require different cooking skills and are less popular so no savings on that front, but relative to muscle meat they’re more nutritious, have less fat, and contribute less to the marginal profit on livestock. I’d also add mussels, which are neurologically plants, but I’ve never met anyone who could tolerate the taste.
My guess is lacto-vegetarian cultures are healthy, but an American dropping down to lacto-vegetarianism has a high risk of implementing it poorly. For some it won’t matter, and more people can do it with less effort than veganism, but many will require some thought. Probably most people can fix that with mussels, but then I also think most could fix veganism with mussels (and by fix I mean get back to the same level of health they had on an omnivorous diet, not necessarily optimal).
Normally I’ll admit to medical issues being a tail risk, lactose intolerance is incredibly common. The first sources on google say 68% of the population has lactose malabsorption. That’s too high- it includes people with some limited ability to digest dairy, not all forms of dairy have lactose, lactose free milk is pretty available in the US, lactaid works for some people- but there are enough people it can’t work for that there need to be other options.
The Wikipedia page says 65% of the global population—bearing in mind that LI is normal in East Asia—and 42% in N.America.