Deficient Vegans
The podcast for anyone who’s ever been told vegans can’t get strong, stay fit, or live fully. A mix of science-backed nutrition, exercise advice, vegan food and recipe tips, and just the right amount of chaos to help you thrive on plants and laugh along the way.
Deficient Vegans
REPLAY: Is Veganism Privileged?
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This week is a replay of one of our most popular episodes. Is veganism actually a privilege? We dig into the five most common versions of that argument (cost, access, time, culture, and nutrition) and check each one against the data. Spoiler: the cheapest thousand calories you can buy in almost every country on Earth are plant-based.
Chapters
00:00 Replay Introduction
01:09 Cost of Vegan Eating
04:17 Whole Foods Save Money
08:05 Budget Vegan Strategies
15:23 Food Access Barriers
19:59 Surviving Food Deserts
27:24 Time and Labor Costs
32:34 Fast Vegan Meal Prep
36:35 Meal Prep for Busy Days
40:14 Culture and Family Barriers
54:03 The Nutrition Debate
1:06:39 Veganism Is More Accessible
Sources
- Kahleova et al. JAMA Netw Open 2023
- Kahleova et al. JAMA New Open 2024
- Goldman & Nagra 2026 global cost review
- BLS CPI, meat/poultry/fish/eggs
- USDA Food Access Research Atlas
- SNAP supermarket study, Health Affairs 2020
- Notre Dame SNAP/DGA study 2023
- SNAP eligible items
- Double Up Food Bucks
- Pew Research, India vegetarianism
- Indigenous American crops
- USDA NAL Three Sisters
- Factory farming history
- Livestock production trends, Royal Society
How to Get In Touch
- ⭐️ Deficient Vegans Discord ⭐️
Deficient Vegans
Muscle Deficient Vegan - Fitness & Nutrition
Protein Deficient Vegan - Food & Recipes
Welcome to the Deficient Vegans Podcast, episode 62. I'm the muscle deficient vegan here with the protein deficient vegan. Do you want to say hi? Hi! Hi, everybody. So this week, we are still on our break, so we'll have another replay of one of our most popular episodes, which was episode 48, I believe, is Veganism Privileged. And then next week, we'll be back with new topics. So this week, we're going to talk about the veganism is privilege argument. There are a lot of good points to cover here. We want to make sure that we do it justice because there are some valid concerns, so we'll go through it in detail and talk about it. The bottom line is the cheapest thousand calories that you can buy in almost every country on earth are plant-based, so what's actually going on with this privileged argument? All right. So let's get into the main segment here talking about is veganism privileged. So there are five general arguments that coalesce around this topic.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. That we've seen. We're on social media a lot. We're in Reddit a lot. Yeah. These are the things that we've seen. There are probably others, too, but these seem to be the top hitters that I'm seeing a lot.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I've heard some of these in person, too. Like nobody was really like, I am making this argument. But like the things they say all tend to fall into these categories. what comes up. Right. So the five are cost. Just vegan food is more expensive, is the argument. Access, where it's like fresh produce isn't available in food deserts, rural areas, or low-income neighborhoods. There's also time or labor. So cooking from scratch requires a kitchen, equipment, energy, and knowledge about making the food. And culture is another big one. The argument is that veganism is like a Western, white, colonial framework imposed on cultures that traditionally have animal-based foodways. And then the last one we're going to talk about is just the nutritional concerns. So people say like you have to know a lot about nutrition. You have to basically be a dietitian to make it to a vegan diet healthily. So that's one of the arguments there. So there are definitely some valid points in these arguments, but most of them shouldn't prevent you from trying to adopt a more vegan diet.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, there are definitely some cases in which maybe your life would be at risk if you were trying to do a plant-based diet for various reasons. Yeah. But I think broadly, there are things everyone can do to lean more towards plant-based.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure. So let's kind of dive into each of these categories individually. So the first one we're going to talk about is cost. So the cost of a vegan diet. So some of the good points that have been made are like Beyond Burgers, oat milk, vegan cheese, specialty protein powders, a lot of specialty vegan products. Those things can be pretty expensive.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, especially if you're comparing like liquid just egg, if you directly compare that to like a dozen chicken eggs or if you compare like beyond ground beef with regular ground beef, like those things are going to be more expensive. Usually because they're smaller companies, but also because meat and dairy products get subsidies from the government that make the cost lower than they really should be.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. So if your mental image of veganism is a cart full of Trader Joe's specialty products and small company products, then yeah, it probably does seem pretty expensive and that probably would be pretty expensive. Yes.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If you are buying like six vegan cheeses from Rebel Cheese every week, yeah, that's a hundred bucks. That's going to be pricey. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And then, you know, not just the cost of the food, but also kitchen equipment is pretty expensive and you might need a little more for a vegan diet. And then, you know, depending on your housing situation, you might not have a kitchen at all if you're like maybe a college student or some other housing situations. Or if you do have a kitchen, maybe it's like really small, not very well equipped, your stove sucks, something like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. And like, so if you were on an omnivore diet, maybe you'd be eating out a lot more like fast food restaurants where the price point is a Maybe a lot of those restaurants don't offer a plant-based option. Or maybe a lot of the vegan recipes will use like blenders that can be kind of expensive to get a good one.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, blenders, especially if you're trying to blend things like the nuts and stuff.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, like the cashews.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Really the stronger blenders help and the stronger blenders are significantly more expensive. Yeah. So you might not be able to make, you might have, you're trying to make queso with your cheaper blender. And it's like, oh, this is kind of shitty.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So like think if you were making alfredo sauce on an omnivore diet, like you don't need a blender. But like if you're trying to make a good alfredo sauce on a vegan diet, you might need a good blender. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Things like that do factor into the cost. So they're valid arguments. But let's talk about some of the data around the cost of a vegan type diet. So there was a 2025 narrative review that looked at 25 years of global cost data. So this is not U.S. specific or anything. You know, we do tend to talk mostly about U.S. things because that's where we are. But, you know, a lot of this conversation is also going to extend beyond that. So this was looking at global cost data, and it found that whole food plant-based diets, which is basically, you know, a vegan diet that is mostly whole food, right? So not like packaged processed products. A lot of times whole food plant-based is also no oil, no salt, anything like that. But it found that whole food plant-based diets are generally associated with spending less on food than omnivorous diets, which is a non-vegan diet, across a wide geographic range. So all across the globe, basically. The spending on legumes, grains, and produce, which are kind of the staples of a real whole food vegan diet, was more than offset by removing expensive animal products, mostly meat.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I think this one is interesting because I think a lot of omnivores don't really understand what a vegan would eat. So I think they're always thinking like you're only eating fruits and vegetables.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Which when you look at the price tag of fruits and vegetables, like if I needed to eat 2000 calories of just fruits and vegetables, like that would be really expensive.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Especially if you're trying to get fruits out of season or you don't like really have a fresh market really close to you.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But most of our calories aren't coming from fruits and vegetables. They're coming from like beans and tofu and like lentils and other stuff like that. So that's often overlooked by like omnivores hypothesizing on what a vegan diet might look like.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. There was also another 2024 analysis that found that a low-fat vegan diet cut daily food costs by about 19% versus the standard American diet. And standard American diet is kind of the typical medical terminology for what most Americans eat.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That was mostly also driven by the savings on meat. Turns out meat's pretty expensive.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, especially when you compare it to like beans and lentils.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then there was another trial in 2024 specifically for type 2 diabetics that found that a whole food plant-based diet ran about $9.78 a day compared to $15.72 a day for a comparable omnivorous diet.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's a pretty significant difference. Yeah. That's like almost 30% drop.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And it's actually getting worse because inflation data is showing that meat, poultry, fish, and eggs are the food category that has the fastest growing inflation rate. It's up 36.4% since 2020. So every year, basically, a non-vegan diet gets more expensive compared to the whole foods vegan diet.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That kind of makes sense with population growth, too. Like, there's only so much land we have to grow or to, like, raise meat for consumption because it takes a lot of crops. And a lot of land for just the animals. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And we've seen a lot of this recently. There was an egg shortage that kind of caused a little bit of an artificial inflation earlier this year. Just egg kind of came in and they sold a lot of plant-based egg substitutes. Even with that, the price of eggs is still up over where it was a couple of years ago. So more people look towards those plant-based egg alternatives. With that said, once you start to factor in like a lot of processed vegan foods, the products from the small companies like we were talking about, some of those plant-based meat alternatives, that does make a vegan diet more expensive than an omnivorous diet.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, if you are like, Truly following, like, a whole food plant-based diet where you're buying, like, grains and legumes, nuts, seeds, like, fresh produce versus, like, pre-packaged stuff. Yeah. It's obviously going to be cheaper, but that's true with an omnivore diet, too, right? Like, less packaged foods, like, less processed foods, if you're doing that on an omnivore diet, it's obviously going to be cheaper than buying a bunch of pre-packaged frozen foods in an omnivore section, too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, the frozen convenience foods for any type of diet really are the most expensive typically. All right. So now what are some ways you can manage the cost of going more towards a vegan diet? Frozen vegetables are a big one. They're nutritionally equivalent or sometimes even superior to fresh vegetables. And they're dramatically cheaper per serving. And then you can also look at canned vegetables. That could be an option as well.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and I guess the good thing about that is with canned, you don't have to eat it right away either because it's shelf stable. Right. So, like, let's say you're in a cost situation where you're limited in fridge or maybe you don't even have a freezer, you know, like, maybe you're, like, in a small apartment and you have kind of one of those mini fridge situations without a freezer, you could go with canned.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And, you know, if you do have a freezer, that can be a good option if you only go to the grocery store every once in a while, something like that. You know, a lot of the time, an issue people have with vegetables and produce is you buy it, you kind of don't use it for a few days, and then it's, like, you know, rotten or molding or whatever.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, and then you can't really justify the cost of buying fresh because you don't really know how long you're going to have with it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right, so frozen is a great option. Um, another one is kind of the bulk grain staples, like oats, brown rice, bulgur, barley, and whole wheat flour.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And if, so you can buy them obviously like packaged. Yeah. But a lot of stores will have, um, like the containers that you can weigh out your own. Yeah. And those will be cheaper because they don't have like brand names on them and stuff. You know, they're just like a bulk item.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And they're shelf stable. They last a long time. So you can stock up on it really.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think that also helps if you have like limited fridge, freezer space.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. Also, I would definitely just like skip the alternative meat aisle if you're trying to constrain the budget for your vegan spending, because those are going to be very expensive.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Definitely. And the other thing is, you know, a lot of those meats are based on like kind of a seitan structure. So you could make your own seitan. And that's really cheap.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Get some vital wheat gluten, make your own. And then for protein, you know, we're talking about skipping the alternative meat aisle. So you might be like, okay, protein. So some of the cheapest protein staples globally are vegan sources, dried lentils, dried split peas, dried chickpeas, dried black beans, oats, peanut butter, tofu in the places where it's available, which is most places, but not all places. TVP and vital wheat gluten, like we just mentioned.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And then I think if one of your cost constraints is like having a functional kitchen and specific kitchen equipment, there are actually a lot of resources for like making, you know, cheap vegan meals without a lot of kitchen equipment. But you could rely on things like canned beans.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We can also do some stuff like sandwiches or maybe even overnight oats because you can get like a mini fridge. You have some milk. You have some oats that are on the shelf. Basically, just put those in a jar overnight in the fridge and even if you have the fridge, you could throw some berries and stuff in there. So that's a pretty good option.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. One of my favorite meals we've been making a lot in the last couple of months is like We call it a bean bowl, but it's literally just, like, black bean seasoned with taco seasoning and nutritional yeast. That's, like, very cheap. You know, you just stir it up and microwave it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, if you get access to a kitchen, like, one day a week or something, you could go make a big pot of chili, and that'll last you several days. Something like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, maybe meal prep. Some options. You know, like, if you're living in a college dorm or something.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, very cheap.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So, yeah, there's, like, lots of recipes that don't necessarily use, like, expensive kitchen equipment that you can find. And then I think for the piece about eating out, because eating out can be more expensive.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Just because a lot of restaurants don't really have plant-based options. But what I will say is Taco Bell kind of comes in clutch here. Yeah. Because, like, it's just as cheap as the omnivore version, and you can almost, like, veganize most things on the menu without really a lot of additional cost.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and it's mostly, you know, you get the, like, the Fresco style with beans. It's mostly whole food. I mean, the tortilla is obviously a little processed, but you could even just get like a bean bowl with a bunch of veggies on it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Basically. Yeah. Like, they're really good about refried beans. They've got black beans, seasoned, like, potatoes. Yeah. Rice you can add on. So, like, a lot of higher calorie ingredients that'll keep you full, too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All right. So, I think that pretty much covers kind of the cost category and hopefully showing some of the data there. This one in particular is kind of interesting because, like, the cost argument is mostly just really not true unless you're really focusing on specialty ingredients or alternative meats. I think it's good to see some data that, like, specifically has compared in these studies the vegan-type diet to an omnivorous diet. And it's, like, basically every time they look at it, a whole food plant-based diet is significantly cheaper than a non-vegan diet.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think a lot of the confusion just comes from like the only products that an omnivore is seeing pushed are like your Beyond and your Impossible or like fake cheeses and stuff. And it's like when they go to the grocery store, those are the only ingredients they're seeing, you know, because they don't know how to make cheese. like whole meals with tvp or vital wheat gluten they don't really understand those as an omnivore most most omnivores i'm not saying all omnivores yeah but like most omnivores when you're going to the grocery store and you're like what are vegans eating you know you're going to be in the dairy aisle and you're going to look at like the dairy shredded cheese and you're going to look at the vegan shredded cheese and you're going to see that the vegan shredded cheese is maybe two dollars more for the same amount yeah and you're gonna be like wow that's really expensive or you look at the vegan sour cream versus the omnivore sour cream and it's going to be more because they're smaller companies or like you're going to the frozen food section and you're looking at the vegan meats and they're obviously going to be more expensive than real meat because it's a smaller company and the subsidies we talked about but like i think what's usually being missed is like in the aisle with the gluten-free flour options is vital wheat gluten which is super freaking cheap and you can make your own seitan at home or tvp which is pretty cheap that you can use as a protein source as well so i think those are the things that are being overlooked and they're also not looking at like the beans and lentils like those things are so cheap yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Beans are beans and lentils are huge they're i mean some of the cheapest foods that exist basically and you know there's nothing really vegan specific about beans i don't care if you're a vegan or not you've eaten beans a lot in your life i'm sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So and they're cheap and i think the other piece is if you say like well don't buy the meat and dairy alternatives i think they immediately go to, okay, so my entire diet is just fruits and vegetables. Holy crap. If I eat 2000 calories of fruits and vegetables every day, that's going to be expensive. Right. And yeah, that would be expensive, but that's not what most vegans are doing. Yeah, exactly. So I think, I think the cost argument comes down more to like... the vast majority of omnivores really not understanding what vegans eat
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah no that's what it is like that and i didn't either like obviously before i was a vegan i had kind of these same ideas i was like i had to buy fresh fruit and vegetables all the time i had to do like the impossible was just starting to come out at some point but yeah i never really thought of a vegan diet, until i started watching like forks over knives and stuff and saw like the whole food plant-based diet and then that was when it really clicked for me i was like oh wait this stuff is like dirt cheap.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh yeah even as a vegetarian i wasn't really sure like what i would be eating as a vegan yeah i will say i think this is why social media is really helpful like i think social media is educating a lot of omnivores on what vegans eat because vegans are posting their food pictures like even if you have a smaller account and you think no one's seeing it like people are seeing it on their for you page and stuff yeah they're seeing what you're eating like that does help educate the public on what do vegans eat.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So let's move next into talking about the access argument. And this is mostly about like access to the optimal foods.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I actually think this, in my opinion, is one of the strongest arguments. Yeah. Against.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. So a lot of people live in what is kind of commonly referred to as a food desert. That terminology has technically been replaced, at least in America. Now they call it like low income and low access. Yeah. And this is, you know, a real situation, millions of Americans live in basically these food deserts. And that's defined by the USDA as an area where a significant number of people have limited access to a grocery store. And the limited access threshold is basically if you're in an urban area, it's more than sometimes half a mile away. And then they also track a mile away. And then for a rural area, like out in the country or whatever, they define it as a grocery store more than 10 miles away.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And you might be thinking like, In an urban area, it could be a food desert, even if it's just a little over a half of a mile away for a grocery store. Yeah. But you have to be thinking, like, a lot of people that live in urban areas maybe don't have cars.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. And, you know, they had to get on public transportation to go to the grocery store. You can't really carry a whole bunch of groceries back on the bus. So there's a lot of stuff like that that factors into what makes this low access. And they're all really valid.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And you might not really think about them if you have a car and you can just kind of drive to the grocery store and that's not a problem for you. But there are real concerns here. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There are millions of people who basically have to rely on public transportation to get where they're going. So, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or walk even, you know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Also, fresh produce in remote areas is like genuinely more expensive. You know, off-season produce, fresh produce in somewhere that's not near farms that grow it. That stuff just gets more expensive the further away you get from the source. Yeah. In these food deserts where you do typically get a lot of your food are convenience store type options or like corner stores. And those stores mostly stock like cheap, calorie-dense, animal product-heavy options.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Think even just like the convenience store that's attached to a gas station. Right. Like the kinds of things you might see inside of a gas station store.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you're not going into the gas station and buying your bulk beans and grains.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They might have like some of that stuff, but they don't usually have a very good variety. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And, you know, for the people who live in these areas, a large portion of their food comes from places like that.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Because maybe they only go to the grocery store like once every two weeks.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, or maybe fast food restaurants. Yeah. They might have access to those and be eating from those.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:They're putting those in locations specifically to cater to people that are in low access environments so they can basically sell them food. And then also people who are in a houseless situation, if they're getting food from like pantries, churches, things like that. I mean, a lot of the time you just you have to eat what's available to you to survive and you don't really get options. Oh, yeah. And, you know, there's a little bit of philosophy there, but you definitely can't eat strictly a vegan diet in a lot of those cases because a lot of your choices have been taken away.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And you don't know when your next meal is coming or what it's going to be. You're not really in a situation where you can choose. And I think that holds true even if you're not houseless, but you're like very low income where maybe you're on government programs. Yeah. Or you are shopping at like a food pantry. Yeah, you just might not have a lot of choices there that you can make. Right. Or if you're in a situation like you're elderly and you're on something like Meals on Wheels where they're bringing meals to you. Yeah. A lot of those programs don't really offer like a vegan vegetarian option. You're kind of stuck with whatever you get.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. There was an experiment basically that dropped a full service supermarket into an urban food desert. which has basically made it not a food desert anymore. This is not a vegan-specific experiment they ran. But just putting the supermarket into the food desert basically improved the food security and, more interestingly, added sugar intake dropped. So this shows that the constraint here is just strictly geographical and not about dietary philosophy or dietary preference. They didn't tell these people to eat healthier foods. It's just they had access to the supermarket and they started eating healthier options.
Protein Deficient Vegan:They're going to make different choices if they have choices available.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. So that shows that this is a real issue, but this is not an issue that is really specific to veganism at all. Like the access to healthy food. I mean, if we're talking about access to healthy omnivorous food or access to healthy vegan food, the problem is the same. It's just they don't have access to healthy options in general.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. But, I mean, aside from the healthy food, if the only place you can shop is a convenience store or a gas station store... you're kind of limited to whatever they offer. You know what I mean?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, exactly. So some of the things that you can do if you're in this kind of environment and you want to kind of strive towards a more vegan diet, a more plant-based diet, are, focus on some shelf-stable things when you are able to make it to the grocery store, or even shelf-stable things that your convenience stores might have. These are things like canned beans, canned lentils, canned tomatoes, peanut butter, rice, oats, dry pasta, nutritional yeast, and they have those soy milk cartons that are actually shelf-stable. You don't even have to keep those in the refrigerator. So, you know, as you go, you can kind of stock up on a lot of these shelf-stable things. Also, again, like the frozen vegetables, frozen fruits, just, you know, this is from the standpoint of can't get to the grocery store very often, so you can buy more of the frozen stuff, bring it home, and freeze it. You can also buy seeds. And in some cases, I mean, I know some people might not have, like, even a yard to grow things in. Right. But you could buy seeds and maybe even grow some stuff inside. Even if that's just herbs and spices, because those can be kind of expensive, but they're actually a lot of those are pretty easy to grow. So you could grow your own herbs and spices and stuff. And then in the U.S., if you're on our SNAP benefits or our EBT, benefits, which is basically a welfare system for food, if you're on those, they actually have specific allowances and provisions for seeds and food producing plants. Because the idea there is maybe you can use some of this extra allowance to help you grow your own food at home a little bit. That's really cool. I mean, you're probably not going to be able to self-sustain entirely off of your home garden, but it will definitely help supplement. Mm-hmm. Also related to SNAP, specifically in the U.S., there's something called Double Up Food Bucks that basically doubles your SNAP spend allowance on fresh fruits and produce in some markets. So if you kind of look around for where you live, Google Double Up Food Bucks, you can find some places that will allow you to basically spend double on those things.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's neat because it kind of offsets the fact that like very processed foods are cheaper on like a calorie basis. Like you're getting more calories for less money. So I think people tend to gravitate towards the highly processed foods because they need those calories. Yeah. But this kind of offsets that.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. Also, some places that are a food desert type situations, and this isn't really U.S. specific, but some places have community gardens. Yeah. So you can kind of participate in a community garden if that's available.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know when I was living in Memphis, they had something like that. And I always thought that was really neat. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You could start a community garden.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There you go.
Protein Deficient Vegan:If this is like something that's interesting to you and you want to give more options to people in situations where they don't have a lot of choices, instead of judging them for not having choices, we can make community gardens. Make it easier for them to get food and have choices.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:That can also help plant the seed, pun intended, about veganism, right?
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's true, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So if you're starting this community garden and suddenly you're growing a bunch of food, people are probably going to eat the food there. Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You can give them recipes to follow.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There you go. You can also get shelf-stable grocery shipments from, like, the Amazon Fresh Market or whatever they call it now, and Walmart Plus Delivery is pretty cheap. And you can get, you know, shelf-stable things from there. Yeah. So you won't have to go to the grocery store. You just, you can have it delivered to you.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. I think these are things, if you're trying to do a more plant-based diet, it could be, like, TVP, vital wheat gluten, shelf-stable silken tofu, some protein sources. Yeah. That if you're in a food desert or like, especially in a rural community where they're not really catering to like the plant based people. Right. Because like, I mean, I think, you know, where my parents live, they definitely can't go to their neighborhood grocery store and get like silken tofu. I don't think.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You know what I mean?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Both of us grew up in like very rural. The sticks. So I'm definitely familiar with this. The grocery store is not very close.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah. I mean, we had to drive like 30, 40 minutes to a grocery store when I was growing up. The one, there was one that was like 15 minutes away, but it just didn't have really anything, you know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. They eventually built a Walmart in my town, like when I was going to graduate high school.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, yeah. I mean, if you're in like not an urban area where there aren't that many plant-based eaters, they're probably not stocking the shelves with plant-based protein sources. But the good thing is a lot of plant-based protein sources are shelf-stable. So like, yeah, like I mentioned, like vital wheat gluten, TVP, edamame puffs, shelf-stable silken tofu, lentils, beans, like a lot of really great protein sources that you could buy on Amazon and just get shipped to your house. And then that's something you don't have to worry about when you're grocery shopping. I will say there are a lot of dollar stores, like whether it's Family Dollar or the Dollar Tree. Yeah. And a lot of those actually have pretty reasonably priced items and they have a lot of canned foods and stuff. Yeah. So that's also an option. There's a lot of like canned vegetables. Yeah, for sure. And I wanted to wrap back around to the scenario around houselessness. This is a real option. And I don't think we should be shaming houseless people for the choices that they make because a lot of people don't have choices on what they can eat. And they might want to be vegan, you know, and they might actually care about animals. Or maybe they once were vegan and then their situation changed and now they don't have access to food and they can't really choose where their next meal is coming from. Yeah. I think the best way that we can support them, if we want to give choices to people, if this is something that you're passionate about, I would recommend you donate shelf-stable items that are plant-based to your local food pantries and stuff so that there are options for people to choose that aren't, you know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I think you could definitely make an argument that somebody in that situation, could still be vegan even if they end up having to eat animal products just because they're out of options because, you know, the definition of veganism, at least the modern definition, is basically like as far as is possible and practicable. So if you're like, if you consider yourself a vegan and you're doing everything in your power to conform to that, you know, vegan philosophy, I think you're still a vegan. It's just, you know, your current circumstances don't allow you to do everything you might do otherwise.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You're doing everything you can. Yeah. But we can support people. Yeah. By donating, like, you know, canned beans, canned lentils, vegan soups, vegan stews, vegan chilies, like canned products that are plant-based.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or you could volunteer with a group of your fellow vegans and run a food kitchen in which you do a plant-based meal option.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And, you know, we went back to basically the cheapest thousand calories is going to be vegan. So if you're trying to run a food kitchen, it's probably economically a good idea to make it entirely vegan. Although, you know, some people do have preferences.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yes. Everyone's going to have different preferences. There are some things we used to do. we used to run one like a couple times a year at one of my previous jobs and we usually went with like spaghetti actually and i think that you could make a vegan version of that pretty easy yeah we did spaghetti garlic bread that kind of thing yeah so yeah substitute in some beyond or even like tvp crumbles and most people probably aren't gonna know but do let them know there yeah But yeah, there's stuff that you can do to support people that are struggling with having choices.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely. All right. So next up is the time or labor type argument against veganism. Some of the arguments here are that you have to have free time to be able to cook and prepare vegan meals. And lack of free time is a big constraint for a lot of people. So I can see where they're coming from here. Cooking from scratch and this whole food diet we're talking about is cheap in terms of dollars, but it can be expensive in terms of, you know, the hours it takes to make the food. And I don't think, you know, I think you probably know how long it takes to make food.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It can take a while.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So people, you know, in some circumstances, like single parents, shift workers, multi-job households, or even like there's only one vegan in the family. Yeah. Somebody else has like some other dietary thing. Suddenly you're making like three different meals for dinner. A lot of those things people just don't have time for.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Similarly, if you have a disability, you maybe aren't really mobile enough to cook your own food.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Or if you are, maybe because of your disability, it takes even more time than it would have a little. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, yeah, these are some valid constraints. So, let's talk about those in a little more detail. So, first of all, the time is real, right? So, when possible, if you're time constrained, default to some of those convenience options. It might be a little more expensive, but I wouldn't get overly hung up on if I can't cook from scratch, I can't be a vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like, in a perfect world, I think we'd all like to, like, make our own bread from scratch every day and, like, make our own homemade meats and make our own homemade pasta sauces and whatnot.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, from the tomatoes we grew in the garden.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, and I'd make our own homemade pasta and roll it out in a pasta maker. But, like, that shit takes time. Yeah. A lot of time. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And most people don't cook from scratch anyway. So using this as, like, the basis of comparison or the argument isn't really super fruitful. because you're saying, okay, if I switch to vegan and I start cooking on my meals from scratch, like that's going to take a lot of extra time. It's like, okay, well, you weren't really doing that anyway. So why are we comparing it this way?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I will say that I cooked as an, well, I never cooked as an omnivore because I went vegetarian at 12, but I did cook as a vegetarian and I have cooked as a vegan and I don't really think it takes any longer. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I think like the only part that's like maybe longer is like, oh, you got to press your tofu. Okay. Buy the super firm tofu.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And that actually leads into the next thing I saw. There have been some studies that show that the actual time issue with switching to a vegan diet is mostly in, like, the perceived time it's going to take. But when they actually look at, you know, cooking and comparing, there's not actually a difference in actual time used.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, I believe that. Yeah. The only part I could see that would be added time is, like, if you weren't eating many vegetables when you were an omnivore and now you're incorporating more vegetables, like, those can take time to clean. and then cut.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But you're going to have the same problem if you just start eating healthier. Oh, yeah. And it has nothing to do with veganism. Even if you're not a vegan and you want to start eating healthier, that's probably going to include more prepping vegetables.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah. I think, like, what I see a lot of people saying is, like, Okay, so if I'm a vegan and, like, for instance, like, I'm going to make a homemade pizza. Like, we're going to do pizza night Saturdays. If you were going to make a homemade pizza as an omnivore, you're still going to have to make the dough, just like I am as a vegan. Right. The only difference is I don't really like most cheeses for the pizza, so I'm going to make my own cheese. Yeah. But, like, the cheese we make takes literally five minutes. Yeah. And then it's done. Yeah. You know, but, like, I think it's, like, the idea that, like, oh, well, vegans have to make their own, like... vegan meats like seitan or like vegans are going to make their own vegan cheese sauces like with cashews or tofu or like whatever and that's a larger time commitment but you don't necessarily have to do those things yeah And they also don't take as long as it's perceived that they take. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And, you know, back in the 90s when somebody was trying to be a vegan, they basically did have to make everything from scratch. Oh, yeah. But, you know, now in modern times, there are a lot of convenience vegan options in the grocery store. Some of those are more processed. Some of those are more expensive. But there are also fairly minimally processed and comparatively priced convenience options basically in the store. You've got like your normal rice, your beans, you might have to cook from scratch. But also right next to it is like some slightly prepared version of rice. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or the slightly prepared bean mix situation. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like minute rice now. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So there are convenience options that will help you save a lot of time.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I will say, I think where the time and labor argument really holds weight is when it's like time and labor and also a cost constraint. Yeah. Because now it's like, I don't have time and I also don't have the money to pay for convenience options. Yeah. But I think there's ways around that too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And again, this would come into play in the same way. Even if you're not a vegan, but you're trying to eat healthier. So this is not really something I see as a vegan-specific problem. I feel like if you had, like, a meal and then a vegan version of that meal, and you were going to make them both in the kitchen from scratch, side by side, the time wouldn't really be different. It's like, what are the vegan ingredients that you can think of that are only used in vegan meals that take a lot of time?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I can't really think of any. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So some of the things you can do to help save time if you're trying to eat more vegan-focused, or even if you're just trying to eat healthier, no matter what your dietary preference is. are 30-minute one-pot meals. So you can do like an instant pot or a crockpot-type meal, something like the chili we talked about earlier.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, chili's a really good one, but the effort takes like 30 minutes, and then it just does its thing, right?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Or you could do, if you have an instant pot, you can do that faster. Or you can kind of just put a pot on the stove and just throw a bunch of stuff in there, like an old-fashioned stew, basically. There's a lot of ways to make that. You can make a lot of food all at once.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Curries. Yeah. Curries. Yeah. Like one pan meals. Yeah. One thing that we like to do is basically just cut up some bell peppers and onions, toss them in some seasoning along with some sliced tofu, throw all of that on one sheet, throw it in the oven for 30 minutes, and then you have like easy fajitas. Yeah. And that's cheap too.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah, for sure. You can also do like batch cooking in the slow cooker instant pot. Like you make something that will, you cook it once and it'll last like four to six days, kind of like a meal prep situation. Um, those are really good. Um, also we were talking about the prep time for vegetables. You can get frozen pre-cut vegetables. Um, and like we talked about earlier, just as good nutritional quality are usually a lot cheaper than fresh vegetables and they're already prepped. So.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And a lot of them are like in steamable bags. You just chuck them in the microwave and you're done. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Um, so I would definitely lean heavily on those if you're time constrained.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Same with like rice. They make rice in pouches that you can steam in the microwave. Yep. There's a lot of, like, convenience options that if you maybe you're disabled or maybe you're very long on time, like, you can cut off a lot of time by using some of those options and just chucking them in the microwave. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Beans are another big one. Dry beans are incredibly cheap, but you do have to kind of go through the whole soaking, cooking process or whatever. So, instead, you can start with canned beans, which are a little more expensive, but still fairly cheap.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But still pretty cheap. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And they're already pre-cooked. So, you basically open the can and you can eat them right out of the can cold if you want. but you you know use them in your dish immediately you don't have to do any prep work with them and then smoothies are a really fast option as well.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Smoothies i think are a very underrated option like if if you're someone who just does not have the time or ability to cook yeah i think smoothies are a good way to get a lot of your vitamins and nutrients in in one in one go and then i don't want to say eat whatever the hell else you want for the rest of the day but i am going to say that You know what I mean? Like throw in your spinach, throw in your frozen fruits, like maybe chuck in a block of silken tofu, you know, and you have like your protein, your fiber, a bunch of your vitamins.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think these are especially good for maybe you only have specific times of day that are time constrained. Like maybe you can spend two hours on dinner if you really wanted to, but for breakfast and lunch, you've got like 10 minutes. So you could go to a smoothie for those and then make something more, you know, if you You actually enjoy cooking. You make something more substantial for like dinner. Or whatever. So I think they're really good for like, oh, I need a lot of nutritious food and, you know, a pretty decent amount of calories pretty quickly here. I'd go for a smoothie.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I will say like when I've worked, turnarounds are usually the most time constraint I've ever been. And if you don't know what a turnaround is, it's basically like at a refinery and it's some like chemical plants. Basically, they'll take units or even the entire place down for like a month, maybe two months at a time. And basically anyone that works there is almost around the clock working. So you're working like 12 to 14 hours a day, every single day on site. And then like, maybe you get one day off every 14 days. Yeah. So you just don't have time to like cook. And I think this, this is the same if you're on like shift work and you're working like a 12 hour job, you know, 12 hour shifts or like you're switching between night and day. Like, yeah, obviously that can be really problematic if you're trying to make healthy meals. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:For sure.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I think one of the good strategies is like meal prep something easy on the weekend that's going to last you a long time. Or like if it's only a specific period of time where you're time constrained, maybe you meal prep stuff and then freeze it. Yeah. So that you have meals for like that week or that month where you really don't have time. Yeah. And then like another breakfast I really like. I know I talk about TVP muffins a lot. If you listen to our podcast, you've heard of TVP muffins. Yeah. But what I like about those is they literally take 15 minutes and then you can freeze them and then just like pull one or two out. And set it out to like defrost and you have like the perfect portable breakfast. Yeah. And then I think the other piece would be if you're time constrained, but maybe you're not cost constrained, there are vegan options that you can get at various like restaurants.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. I would focus on like Taco Bell, like we were talking about. You get a lot of really good, healthy, whole food, plant-based options at Taco Bell, but also like a noodle bowl or a rice bowl or poke bowls.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Asian places are great for this.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you can add a lot of tofu, so you're still getting your protein, like Thai. You can usually get like pad Thai with tofu and no egg. Smoothie places that pre-make you smoothies and smoothie bowls and any kind of, you know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And a lot of those will usually have vegan protein powders. They turn into them, so, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So, you know, there are good options if you're time constrained, but you have some money to spend there. And, you know, I think we covered some of the, like, maybe more cost-effective options if you're also time-constrained, being around, like, canned beans and, like... Yeah. Honestly, like, canned beans and tortillas are one of the cheapest things that You could eat. And you can eat that in, like, a variety of ways and, like, flavor them up in different ways and it doesn't take much time. So, yeah, there's definitely... ways you can eat even if you're time constrained and you're cost constrained yeah and um i haven't personally made any of her recipes but there's um an instagram person called uh cheap lazy vegan i think okay i haven't made any but she makes cheap and lazy vegan meals so you might check that out yeah um and then there's also uh going back to the cost one if you're on reddit at all there's actually a eat cheap and vegan subreddit and there's lots of ideas in that and a lot of those are like low effort as well right so go on reddit get ideas ask questions the the good thing about the vegan community and you know you've probably heard the vegan propaganda that vegans are horrible miserable evil people but but actually if you go on reddit and you ask a question like hey i'm trying to eat more plant-based foods like can you give me some ideas you are going to be flooded with helpful responses that are very like kind yeah because all we really want is for people to stop eating animals yeah you know and we're more than happy to help you do that at least that's been my personal like yeah for sure that's what i've personally seen especially
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah those communities on reddit that's basically what they're for is to help people like find the Recipes and find ways to eat plant-based. So very helpful.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, that's literally why we started our food blog. Yeah. Was like, I kept hearing stuff about like, you can't get enough protein on a vegan diet.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then I had all these things that we were making at home and we were just kind of like, we should publish this so that people know you can do that. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I just want people to stop eating animals. And I think most people do. So they will help you. You will get a support system is the main piece.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:All right. So let's move into the next kind of category of arguments here, which is basically around culture or family, maybe family traditions. So there's a lot of stuff in here. I'm going to do our best to unpack a lot of it and talk through some of it.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:The general idea is that going vegan may cause some issues. Like it might mean cooking separately inside your family or it might cause some social friction. It might conflict with some like religious obligations around food or cultural kind of traditions, obligations, things like that. There's also the problem that a lot of vegan influencer content on social media leans very white and upper middle class. A lot of the loudest voices here are like affluent, white, tone deaf to material constraints, talking about like their expensive cashew cheeses and oat milk lattes every day and things like that. So that's definitely a very real thing that happens on the Internet. This is kind of going to be a little historical, I guess, about plant-based eating. So let's dive into that a little. So most of the traditional cuisines worldwide are actually plant-forward by default, which is like very heavily plant-based. Animal products historically were like a luxury that were just added on to the meal and not the staple of the meal. The current state of like animal products and diets in industrialized countries like America is kind of unusual historically. and it's really only made possible by like industrial animal agriculture and government subsidies.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And capitalism. Yeah. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So traditional Indian, Ethiopian, Mexican, Thai, Mediterranean, Japanese, West Africa, much of it, and Latin American cuisines are predominantly plant-based with small amounts of animal protein like as extra flavoring.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So this is not like a Western invented style of eating.
Protein Deficient Vegan:As someone who's on the internet a lot, this is definitely true. I can see how people think veganism is a white thing because a lot of the influencers are white. A lot of the food content creators are white. I am white. But there's also a lot of non-white content creators that are vegan and that are reinventing traditional dishes from their heritage and stuff.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, definitely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I can see how this becomes a narrative. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I think one of the downsides of social media is that, like, extreme or luxurious things tend to look the best. so people like see expensive options or flashy options and that's what kind of gets promoted on social media so if you're just at home and you're like a normal person just making your beans and rice that doesn't really get surfaced but that's actually like the most common way for people to eat plant-based.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right i i feel like the ones that go viral or like somebody goes to like that what's that super expensive grocery store in la that people talk about
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I have no idea.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Anyways there's a super expensive grocery store in LA where they charge you like $20 for oatmeal or something. I don't know, but like, you know, but like people, but like they have a lot of vegan stuff. So you'll see a lot of videos where people are like, I went and shopped at this place and like, look at my haul. And you're just like, holy shit, you just spent so much money. But like, I feel like because they're so ridiculous, they do better than like just normal people living normal lives. So that, that is the problem of social media, but I don't necessarily think it's a vegan thing because like if you look at like omnivore recipe creators or just like omnivore content creators that are just or influencers that are just living their lives like they're doing the same kind of thing you know yeah and
Muscle Deficient Vegan:People tend to look to the lifestyle influencers or whatever as kind of an escapism so then their mind they're like oh what if i was in la eating at this super expensive store or whatever like even if you live there you wouldn't really want to do that but there's this thing in your mind that's like oh that that looks cool to me.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Or like i don't know anything about that like that could never be me let me go like see what people are doing right i think it's more like a curiosity thing like what are rich people doing yeah you know that's why like the kardashians is a popular show i personally never watched it but i know a lot of people that do yeah um but yeah but there are a lot of amazing content creators that aren't doing stuff like that that are like promoting like cheap meals or like here are ways to make like whole food plant-based recipes on a budget um or like traditional meals veganized right you know yeah so you can find those but i can i can see where this is coming from for sure
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah the moral of the story is social media kind of sucks and it doesn't really reflect how most.
Protein Deficient Vegan:People eat plants absolutely sucks
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So uh in india specifically vegetarianism goes back thousands of years and even today somewhere between 20 and 37 percent of people in india follow a vegetarian diet.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I think that's so cool yeah
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And then in America, pre-Christopher Columbus, indigenous Americans' diets were heavily plant-based. Corn, beans, squash, potatoes, quinoa, chia, peanuts, tomatoes, and cocoa all originated from indigenous American agriculture.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Damn you, Columbus, for ruining everything. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, traditional African cuisines across the whole continent are predominantly plant-based. They're built on grains, legumes, and vegetables. Some of those common staples we talked about. And actually, you touched on this a little bit, but modern vegan African food movements are specifically framed around recovering those traditions rather than like importing a Western tradition. Because, again, like plant based eating is not a Western created tradition.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah. I mean, I think at least my understanding is like America, specifically the United States, kind of started with the whole factory farming and like finding ways to make animal products super, super, super cheap.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that's exactly what happened. So it's actually kind of the reverse of the arguments I see a lot where people are saying like veganism is colonialism, I guess, is kind of the argument. But it's actually kind of backwards there because the plant-based food diversity has been eroded by colonialization and industrial agriculture not promoted by it. So actually the colonialization is introducing these industrial meat type things. Factory farms. Right. And, you know, the European colonization into the U.S. mostly displaced like the indigenous Americans plant agriculture in favor of their animal product systems.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, I mean, this is just like, if there's a Western influence, it is adding more meat to everything.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, making everything more meat-centric.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, so yeah, I think that portion of the argument really just has it backwards.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It falls apart pretty fast when you poke at it.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the actual... The actual like cultural lineage of plant-based eating is mainly like indigenous, ancient, goes back thousands of years, global, not really something that emerged from the Western world.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I do see a lot of things though of like, there are traditional dishes that use meat.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I think some of the arguments are coming from not necessarily like we want meat focus, but more like, It's unfair of you to expect me to like no longer eat my traditional dishes if you want me to go fully plant-based. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And another one that I see a lot is like, it's more around indigenous Americans. And it's talking about how they lived in harmony with nature and they did hunt, but they respected the animal and they used every part of the animal. That's something that I'm hearing a lot.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Yeah, but that's not how most people in America are getting their meat anymore, right? Right. Most people, almost all people, I would imagine, get it from grocery stores. Potentially, you get it from a local farmer. There are still obviously hunters, but as far as like amount of meat consumed, the hunted meat in the wild is like an extremely low percentage.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I do think there are probably indigenous American reservations where they are still like following cultural practices and eating that way. You know, I think veganism in general is we're trying to get away from eating all animals. But I think like, at least in my mind, the main thing we should be tackling at this point is factory farms.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. I mean, like the industrialized process that's cramming a bunch of these animals into one spot and treating them horribly and then killing them for meat, like a massive scale is really the issue.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So I guess the part I take issue with is like a lot of the comments I've seen because I I'm on threads a lot. But it's kind of like saying we can't stop eating animals because indigenous Americans have these traditions with animals and they kind of hide behind that. Like like a group of people to uphold factory farms when like how we currently do animal agriculture is incongruent to like traditional farms. indigenous american cultures if that makes
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Sense yeah definitely i think there's definitely a mismatch there yes some of the things you can do if you're maybe in one of these countries or geographical locations where it's um maybe harder to get some of these plant-based options or maybe you've got some cultural restraints or something like that, um one thing that comes up a lot is basically but in my country i can't find things like tofu oat milk or protein powder well Well, the good news is you don't need those things. You really just need like legumes, grains and vegetables to build your diet around. And those are available in every country. So I would definitely focus more towards those whole food, simple, you know, plant foods rather than like these products.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I think in terms of like traditional meals that have always had animal products, I think that I personally think there's something kind of cool about like trying to reinvent those with a plant based twist. I mean, like, I wouldn't say that I have deep cultural roots because my parents are just, like, Midwestern white people. But, like, there are dishes that I grew up with that, like, my dad taught me that his dad taught him. I'm not saying they go far back enough to consider myself, like, cultured, having much of a culture. But some of the first things I cooked when I went vegan were those dishes of, like, how can I veganize, like, my dad's scalloped potatoes? Because, like... I just remember that that was something that we always had, like, once a year. That was, like, a special dish that he made. Yeah. I know it's not, like, super special. But, like, that's something, like, my dad made. Or, like, sometimes he would make crepes on Sunday. Like, how can I veganize that? You know what I mean? Yeah. So I think it's kind of cool to, like, try to veganize, like, traditional dishes. And there are a lot of, like, accounts and food blogs that are veganizing their traditional dishes that are part of their heritage. Yeah. You know, which I think is really neat. Because I don't really, I guess, have much of a heritage, you know? Yeah. I feel like when you're, like, just a Midwestern white person, you just kind of feel like a mutt. Like, I don't really have, like, I don't know. Like, I think my dad's got, like, some German-Polish and my mom's got, I don't know, some other shit. But what I can tell you is my dad makes some pretty good scalloped potatoes. Yeah. So we veganize those. Yeah. But, like, people with actual heritages, They're veganizing traditional dishes and they're making really cool stuff. Yeah. So you can check those out. Yeah. Like if you're missing your favorite foods, if you're plant-based, I'm sure someone has veganized it and done a hell of a job.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So there are some places where it like really is pretty tricky. And a lot of those are like the very northern climates where they have short growing seasons, limited imports, things like that. Hard to get, you know, stuff moved around inside the area. So your biggest thing there, you're going to be leaning on like getting some of those dry staples shipped in in bulk whenever you can. but yeah I mean there's no there's no getting around like it's hard there you can't really grow stuff for the most part in your own yard very much you're not having a lot of options you might not even be able to get to the grocery store very easily just because of the weather so there's a lot of stuff like that there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Are certain climates where essentially all you can grow is like grass that a cow can eat right but like humans can't eat grass so like they're relying a lot on animal products because they can't grow any crops that are things humans can eat right right and i feel like if you're in one of those places and you're like hands are tied and you also don't get imports from other countries like i don't think any vegan would be expecting you to starve yourself right
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I mean at a certain point you just have to play the cards you're dealt so.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah do the best you can exactly which is i think the modern definition like you said earlier yeah like as much Which is practically reasonably possible.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And then I think another one that you touched on earlier was like family constraints. Like if maybe you're a kid in an omnivore family and they're really not going to let you go vegan. Yeah. I mean... Sometimes you're going to have to wait until you're 18.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. Sometimes that's just the way it is.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, there are some, you know, I don't think anyone, any, no, no reasonable vegan isn't expecting you to like push that if it's like an unsafe condition, you know, condition. Like, you know, there are households where like that becomes like maybe like a concern of safety. If you keep pushing something like that or like, you know, maybe a concern of an eating disorder comes up. If you're, like, refusing to eat animal products and nobody will give you food that's plant-based. Yeah. You know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I mean, you just, you have to do what you can when you can and maybe you'll be able to do more later and you'll, you know, that's just the way it is. Yeah. And then kind of the last category we wanted to talk about here is the nutrition argument. So, this one comes up a lot. It's probably the most common, like, off-the-cuff thing that people say about veganism.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like, it's hard to be a healthy vegan is what I hear.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And, like, if you can be a healthy vegan, that's a privilege.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So some of the arguments for this are like some people have limited access to nutrition education, which is fair. I mean, most most doctors don't have a ton of nutrition education. So most normal people have basically none unless they look into intentionally at some across the board.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Though.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not just vegan specific, but across the board. Yeah. Some there's also an argument that it's hard to get all your nutrients on a vegan diet. So it might take a little more thought. I don't know if I would necessarily say it's hard, but this is one of the arguments that comes up.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Depending on where you live, I guess. Yeah. Kind of like back to our last point.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, for sure. There's also an argument that vegans have to take too many supplements. So... So we'll talk about that a little bit.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Interesting. Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And then there's the argument that the vegan supplements you do have to take are expensive. And kind of getting all your nutrition on a vegan diet is also expensive because you have to have more fruits, things like that. So this is all the stuff around nutrition that kind of floats around for veganism. And then there's the whole protein thing. Not really going to get into here because that's basically our entire personality. Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:You can get protein. Go check out some of the other stuff we've talked about.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:But, yeah, so talking about some of these in specific, basically vitamin B12 is really the only supplement that all vegans require. Right. It's the only thing we cannot get from the whole foods. So we do have to have that as a supplement most of the time. We can get a lot through like fortified milks and nutritional yeast and some other fortified foods and stuff. But it's usually just to play it safe, you just take the supplement.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah, why not, right?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. So the pill form of a vitamin B12 supplement is like 5 to 15 cents a day. And there are also multivitamins that contain B12, and they're obviously more expensive than just B12, but they're still pretty cheap. You can get some multivitamins for, like, in the range of $10 to $15 a month.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But, like, okay, here's my thing, is, like, ever since I've been alive, I've seen endless commercials on multivitamins for children, for adults, for men, for women, like, whatever. Yeah. The supplement industry is huge. If vegans were the only ones spending money there, I don't think it'd be as big as it is since vegans are, like, what, 1% to 3% of the population?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I don't know if you've been in the pharmacy section of your local either pharmacy or supermarket, but there are like three rows dedicated to individual vitamins, and they're not selling most of those to vegans.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, yeah. I mean, I think most people that are concerned about their health are probably taking a multivitamin.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I would think.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, GNC has been around a long time. Oh, yeah. So they're not selling most of their stuff to vegans.
Protein Deficient Vegan:The vitamin shoppe.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So this whole like supplement, vitamin argument is like the B12 thing is kind of vegan specific sometimes, even though like I've said before, I actually had to take B12 before I was ever vegan.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, I did too, yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So I don't know. That's always been pretty common. But yeah, B12 is one we have to take. Everything else is like a lot of people are taking multivitamins and supplements anyway. So this is not like a vegan-specific concern.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I can tell you they don't all sell them to vegans because most of them have gelatin capsules, and we don't buy those.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And other than the B12, a varied, mostly whole food vegan diet provides sufficient nutrients in almost all cases. And, you know, you might think, oh, there's the catch there. You said the mostly whole food vegan diet. Well, yeah, but even non-vegans who are not eating mostly whole food are still going to run into nutrient deficiencies. So, I mean, whether we're a junk food vegan or a junk food processed food non-vegan, we're probably missing out on some nutrients there.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh, absolutely. I just think the thing that I find kind of interesting is like you'll see this from a lot of people that aren't worried about their nutrition currently as an omnivore. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know why you care so much about like my protein and stuff. Oh, I know. When you don't even know how much protein you're getting,
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bro. Or the vitamins. Or the vitamins. Like, oh, you can't get all your vitamins on a vegan diet. It's like, are you getting all your vitamins? Do you even know? Right.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And the thing that's always kind of driven me a little insane is like acting as if taking a supplement is somehow like horrible and artificial and very bad because like, I don't want to ruin your day. But if you're getting your B12 from animal products, your animals are being supplemented. You're just like enjoying their supplementation.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And, you know, to preempt a little bit, the animal argument and a lot of people are saying like most cows or whatever won't get B12. They get supplemented with a mineral mix that includes cobalt, which is how cows make B12. Yeah. B12. And they specifically get cobalt in those mineral mixes so that they can get B12 because they don't get enough from the soil almost anywhere.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Right. Because of the industrialized practices.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Well, one, because a lot of cows don't even graze. They're like, you know, fed feed or whatever. But even the cows that do graze, a lot of those farms, because they've been used so much over the years, the soil doesn't really have enough B12 to support the whole system anymore. Right. So, I mean, they just throw some cheap cobalt into the mineral mixes. Ruminants like cows use cobalt to make B12 in their stomachs, and that's how they get their B12. So even if they're not getting directly supplemented with B12, they are still getting supplemented with the cobalt, which is a supplement. So why does it matter?
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's essentially, yeah, it's essentially the same.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And in cases where they run into cows with deficiencies or other issues, they do just supplement them directly with B12, which is pretty common too.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And like the other thing is, I think a lot of people are on vitamin D just like because you have desk jobs that are inside. Yeah. Right? And, like, I think most people wouldn't have an issue with taking a vitamin D supplement in the winter or something, you know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:I don't know that I've ever met anybody that has never, ever taken a multivitamin.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. You've been taking them since you were kids with their little Flintstones vitamins. Sorry, guys.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, yeah, it boils down to, yeah, most vegans should probably take a 10 cent a day vitamin B12 supplement. If that's like the whole crux of your argument, I don't think it's a very good argument. Yeah. But some of the strategies you can maybe employ to make sure that you're hitting your nutritional goals as you try to move towards a vegan diet. One, you can track your nutrition with a free app like Cronometer. Basically, the Cronometer specifically is liked by vegans because it does a very good job of tracking micronutrients. So you can put your food in there for a couple of weeks, make sure there's nothing you're like totally missing out on. But the main reason for this is not because vegan foods don't have nutrients. It's because when you switch to a vegan diet, you're still figuring out like your swaps and your replacements for some of the non-vegan foods. So there may be like other categories of food you never really ate as a non-vegan that maybe you should eat now. Or also kind of like we were talking about, maybe you were just a little deficient on your non-vegan diet. And now you can keep track of it. You could also, even if you took a vitamin B12, a vitamin D, and an iron supplement, which are kind of the three most common you see talked about with vegans, you could do all that for like $15 to $20 a month, which is like one fast food meal, basically.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Honestly, I've always been taking an iron supplement for like the last over a decade, even when I was a vegetarian. I just have low iron.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, I don't think anybody.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It doesn't even matter how much I eat.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Nobody's surprised to hear that plenty of non-vegans have anemia issues.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Especially women. Yeah. Because, guys, we bleed a lot.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's extremely common.
Protein Deficient Vegan:I mean, my thing is like, I even tracked my iron as far as like, I would put it in like myfitnesspal or something to see that I was getting at least 100% a day. And it's just like, Yeah. My iron's low. I don't know. My iron is low and needs supplemented, whatever.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's always been that way, right?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. It's really not a big deal. My doctor told me to take an iron supplement, so.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There are also a lot of free resources available for learning about plant-based diets. Again, because vegans tend to really want people to stop eating animals. We tend to put out a whole lot of free advice and information and things like that. So basically, YouTube, great source of information. specifically nutritionfacts.org is run by dr greger who wrote the how not to die book we mentioned from time to time but he's basically been making short youtube videos on specific topics for, nutritious plant-based food for like 20 years now so if you go to his website he's got videos for like every topic under the sun really awesome source of information and it's all free, um and then your books at the local library um if you can't get to the local library because maybe you have like you have to use public transportation or whatever if you download an app called Libby yeah you can basically go to your, most local libraries have a website you can go on there like sign up for a library card you can actually do this right through Libby but you can also use the website but basically you get your library card assigned through the email, and then you put your library card into Libby and Libby will basically like rent you books on your device like your phone or whatever or in some and even audiobooks oh yeah using your library card and And that's all for you.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's how I found out about it because I like to listen to audiobooks. Yeah. And someone at work was telling me that you can do that. And I was like, oh, my God, I haven't had a library card since I was like a kid. Yeah. And so I just signed up online. I haven't even been in the local library. But I can rent stuff on Libby.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, we have a library card to our local county library and I get stuff through Libby. Yeah. I've only, I've been in there once for something unrelated. But basically I get all my library books through Libby.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's all free. It's all free. The only catch is if it's a really popular book, they still only like have so many slots for each book. Yeah. I guess of licensing or whatever. So a really popular book, you might have to be like, okay, put me on the wait list. And you might have to wait a week and then you'll be able to read the book.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But you don't have to worry about that because veganism isn't very popular.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Also, no late fees for returns.
Protein Deficient Vegan:That's true. That's nice. You have to just snatch it back out.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, do you know, this is totally off topic. I saw something recently that said, libraries, I guess, did some studies. I don't know which libraries, but they did some studies and found that people, were actually more likely to return books if they didn't have return fees at all. That's interesting. So there are a lot of libraries now that basically switch to no return fees because they're more likely to get their books back and people will use the library more because they're not afraid to like, if you have this book that's like late, you're like, I'm never stepping foot in that place again because I got to pay this fine. Yeah, oh. So they just say no fines, then they get their books back, people use the library a lot more. That's kind of interesting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Oh my God. Okay, this is a pretty embarrassing story, but the last time I applied for a job, right? It was like five years ago. I was applying for this job. I had pretty I'd gotten the offer. So they're doing the background check. Right.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:So all of a sudden I get a call from the company I'm like trying to get hired to. Yeah. And they're like, we actually can't get your college transcript. And I'm like, what do you mean you can't get my college transcript? And they're like, yeah, your background check flew up a flag that you couldn't get. We couldn't get your college transcript. So I had to call my college. And it turns out I had, in fact, taken out a book on PVC, polyvinyl chloride, for my senior project and I never returned it. So they had a hold on my account. And so I had to call the school library and be like, can you please give them my transcript so I can have my job? And I really need to send it back.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:You still have the book?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I still have the book. Oh, no. I know. We should do that. We should do that this week. Just like, I know I'm sorry. Honestly, the thing is like when you're exiting college, there's so much going on. You're like getting a new job and you're having to move. Like I was moving across state, like do different state and stuff. And he just happened to get wrapped up in all my other school shit. Yeah. And the thing is, is that it was always on my mind. It was in my trunk. It was in my trunk for like 10 years. And I just like knew it was in my trunk. And I was like, I should really like somehow give this back to the college. And I just never did it because I don't go to the UPS store much.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And the bright side is probably still useful. I can't imagine the science behind PVC has changed much.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's like a book from the 70s. This thing's old because that was one of my other things. I'm like, this is a really old book. I just like who's reading about this because I did a project on like my senior design project was like a plan out of fake PVC plant. Like how how much would it cost to like create one from scratch or whatever. So I had to learn all the ins and outs of like I don't remember any of it. But that book was really handy. And so I guess no one's been able to pick PVC since I left. I should really send it back anyways.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So, yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:A warning to return your college books because it might prevent you from getting a job.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It's really interesting.
Protein Deficient Vegan:But I did pass the drug test, so.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:There you go. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So just to kind of recap everything we've talked about here, while vegan marketing or like online content and influencer content can feel very Western influenced and kind of whitewashed, the actual vegan diet is one of the cheapest and most accessible diets in the world. So don't let anybody tell you different.
Protein Deficient Vegan:And I would go so far as to say, like, there are more plant based people in other parts of the world than in America.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Oh, absolutely.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Like.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:We are the minority of plant-based eaters.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We might be the most annoying online and talk about it the most, but like, yeah, we're in the minority for sure.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We're just trying to educate, man.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:So is veganism privileged? Well, sometimes the way people talk about it is, and sometimes the products marketed under it are, and sometimes the influencers that represent it are. But beans, lentils, rice, oats, potatoes, peanut butter, tofu, and vegetables are not like inherently elite foods. The real question is not whether every person in every circumstance can be perfectly vegan like today or tomorrow. The question is, where do we have the choices and how can we reduce harm with those choices? And how do we make healthy plant-based options easier for more people to get access to? And then, you know, I mentioned it earlier, but I also want to really lean into the definition of veganism, including kind of the term as far as possible and practicable. and you can still make a difference even if you have constraints and possible and practical leaves room for those real world constraints. Uh, someone in a food desert might have different options than somebody in like a major city with close access to a supermarket. Someone relying on food banks may have less control than somebody doing like weekly grocery visits. Uh, someone living with family may not be able to control every meal for whatever reason. Someone that's like traveling, um, hospitalized, deployed in the military, incarcerated, or living in poverty may face various constraints that they have to deal with. So the most useful version of veganism is not do everything perfectly or you're a hypocrite, it's like avoid animal exploitation where you reasonably can and work to expand what's reasonably possible for more people.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I guess I'll end this with, if you're one of the people talking about all of these circumstances in which people can't be vegan, but you're also not vegan and you're not in any of those circumstances... Stop hiding behind other people.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, you see that a lot. People like throw out, well, you can't be vegan because these people couldn't be vegan for whatever reason. It's like, what does that have to do with you?
Protein Deficient Vegan:I know. Like not everyone has to be vegan for all of us to make a difference and move towards plant-based and get rid of factory farming. Right. So like if you can do it and you agree with the ethics and morals, you should do your part. Yeah. I guess is my main takeaway, you know?
Muscle Deficient Vegan:And I will say, I think if society was able to move more towards plant-based food, I think it would help, you know.
Protein Deficient Vegan:All these other places.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Help a lot of these other places and a lot of these other issues kind of be less of a constraint.
Protein Deficient Vegan:Yeah. And I will say, like, the excuse that, like, oh, this group of people can't be vegan, so I'm not going to be vegan, sounds a lot like, well, my neighbor's allergic to lettuce, so I'm actually never going to eat lettuce again. Yeah. It sounds silly.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:It does. Yeah. Yeah. So we appreciate everybody listening. If you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, that helps us out a lot. You can also leave comments on Spotify and YouTube. Also, in the show notes, we have our Deficient Vegans Discord channel. We have a lot of people talking about cool things. And then in the show notes, you can also find our website, social media, if you want to reach out, ask us questions. Especially on this episode specifically, you know, I learned a lot when I was looking through kind of the details for this one and looking through some of the data. I still want to learn a lot more about a lot of these different things. So if you have anything that you feel like maybe missed the mark on or you have additional information about, please share that, whether it's in a comment or you can reach out in a DM if you just want to talk about it privately. I'd love to hear more about some of these issues that people talk about.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We're okay with being proven wrong.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, obviously. Yeah. I don't want to put out bad information, so.
Protein Deficient Vegan:No, and if you think of any other ways, like, where veganism is kind of a privilege take, like, let us know those. I think we tried to cover the majority of the, like, popular ones that we've been seeing, but, like, I'm sure there are others. So, if you have others, you can share those as well.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, whether you're a vegan who has heard some of these issues or you're a non-vegan who says, hey, I heard what you said. I don't really agree with it, or you didn't cover this whole other area of things that are totally problematic. I definitely want to hear those.
Protein Deficient Vegan:It's a huge issue. So, like, there's definitely going to be some gaps. Perhaps we had some bad takes. Let us know.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, cool.
Protein Deficient Vegan:We have thick skin. So if you join the Discord, you can tell us how dumb we are. I have learned a lot.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Yeah, that's actually the best way to do it because you can really get in long and in-depth about everything we get wrong. There you go. All right. Well, we appreciate you guys listening. I think that's all we have for today. Do you want to say bye?
Protein Deficient Vegan:Bye, guys.
Muscle Deficient Vegan:Bye, everybody.
