Claim: You can't get nutrient X on a vegan diet

Details

The claim here is that carnism is necessary because a vegan diet can't deliver certain nutrients.

Problems With This Argument

1. You can take a vitamin or eat fortified foods

What's wrong with eating fortified foods? Carnists also probably eat them every day without thinking when they put iodized salt on food drink milk fortified with vitamins D and A. If you start to get really liberal with the interpretation, they feed cattle fortified foods to attempt to improve the nutrition of beef for what it's worth, so you're eating fortified foods with pretty much every forkful. So it's not really a coherent position to suddenly be against fortified food and then try to attack veganism for relying on it.

2. Carnists pay little attention to such deficiencies themselves

At best, carnists are ignoring the deficiencies they themselves can get. Is it fair to make a list of stuff that one gets more readily from plant foods like vitamin C, potassium, or magnesium as an argument against carnism? Or is it perhaps fair to point out scientific articles that show that vegans are less likely to be folate deficient, for instance?

I'd wager most carnists have no idea what their folate levels are. This sudden (feigned) concern for deficiencies is just a vague attempt to put yet another weak rationalization in the way.

3. These lists sometimes go fishing for micronutrients to claim

Cholesterol isn't some high-value micronutrient that vegans aren't getting in their diet. Get out of here with that, and other "conditionally essential" items like carnitine, cholesterol, or creatine listed on the page. These lists are created to be impressive and difficult to debunk due to the sheer volume of bad arguments.


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[Claim: You can't get nutrient X on a vegan diet](http://www.carnist.cc/nutrients)