Let’s be real here, being a vegan is pretty much a job if you want to be actually healthy. It’s hard to get the necessary nutrition, mainly protein and the other stuff meat gives you. There’s a reason soy-based foods are so common around vegans, it actually has a decent amount of protein for a plant.
But, let’s look at bodybuilding for a second. The reason I bring this up is because there is always an undercurrent of the Vegan Bodybuilder idea. This is a pretty common argument for veganism. After all, if this absolute unit can be vegan, why not an average guy?
Before I get into that, I’ll start with the basics. Bodybuilding requires a lot of protein, and they are obsessive with their diets. Bodybuilding also isn’t exactly healthy either, especially when steroids are involved. Many of them get injured, due early, or even need a CPAP machine because they’re so messed up. But, they have very specific goals and it is a full time commitment to those goals. Many of them will do almost anything to reach them. So, why don’t they all go vegan? Because it’s inefficient.
Putting aside the soy=estrogen idea, there’s a lot of conflicting info out there about it, soy just isn’t as effective for building muscle as fish or chicken or other meats. Even if the protein to calorie number is high, meats have many other things that help with muscle building. Because meat is muscle. If plants were truly a fantastic way to build up them gainz, bodybuilders would mostly be vegans. And, let’s be honest, steroid abuse is rampant no matter what diet a competition level muscle monster is on. Back to normal people though.
If you are a vegan who wants to get everything you need to have a healthy diet, you need to put the work in. Essentially, you have to work on your diet as much as an actual bodybuilder, but just to be normally healthy. That is too much work for most people. The counter argument to that is a moral one, and that’s really up to the person at that point. Because we are animals, we’re just highly advanced ones who are still meat eaters.
Basically, veganism is hard and it’s hard to be healthy as one.
