AsapSCIENCE Is Lying About Veganism | Video Debunked @AsapSCIENCE
Watch on YouTube · 2023-05-24 · 19 min
0:00 Hey guys, I'm going to review a video by the channel ASAP Science. It's called The Biggest Lie About Veganism.
[video] 0:07 Veganism has exploded in popularity across the world. For some, it's out of sympathy for animals, but increasingly, many are swapping diets due to the environmental and health claims. But are these claims even accurate? Like, does going vegan actually make a noticeable difference on the planet, or are those impacts over-exaggerated? And is it even healthy at all? Or is the lack of animal proteins and nutrients actually detrimental to your body? While a lot of claims have been made over the years, our access to good quality studies has only really just started to become accessible. So let's dive in. First up is going vegan.
0:35 Yeah, as if you need studies to understand that humans naturally crave meat.
[video] 0:40 Better for the environment. This is the easy part of the video because the answer is super simple. Yes, point blank, yes. Avoiding meat and dairy products has a major impact on the environment. Study after study after study has found that a vegan diet as compared to a full-on meat eating or omnivorous diet or even a vegetarian diet uses less land.
0:58 It's pretty funny that he says this because a lot of times they use the US as an example of a country which has too many animals right now, even though back when Columbus discovered North America, there were supposedly more animals than there are there right now. which really makes you wonder how they even come up with all of these numbers.
[video] 1:17 And conserves more water and produces less greenhouse gases by about 70 to 80% compared to omnivorous diets. And that's a huge difference.
1:26 Obviously there's been a lot of studies, scientists have written articles which completely debunk this whole idea of vegan diets being better for the environment or greenhouse gases in and of themselves being somehow bad for the environment.
[video] 1:41 Now that's not to say every vegan food is created equal. We have an entire video breaking down which alternative milk is the best for the environment and even there you can see that something like almond milk takes a lot more water to create than other alternatives. But on the whole, transitioning to a vegan or even vegetarian diet will significantly decrease your personal impact on the planet. Of course, simply reducing your meat and dairy consumption can also make a difference, so it doesn't have to be so black and white. But full stop, a vegan diet is better for the environment and the future of our planet.
2:05 Alright, on to- The reason that also doesn't make any sense is simply because these animals release CO2, which is then converted by the plants into oxygen again. It's just a natural cycle. It has always been like that because that's how nature works. So really you're just messing around with nature and actually there's been scientists who have come out now who have said that we do have a problem with CO2 except that it's not that we have too much CO2 but too little which is completely going to destroy nature.
[video] 2:35 Some of the first athletes on a strict plant-based diet were the gladiators. All fighters diets contained large amounts of legumes, pulses and grains and contained little to no animal protein.
2:44 But it's only recently that research has delved into the question of whether or not a vegan diet can not only enhance athletic ability, but both- Very basic history research is going to tell you, and this is common sense anyway, that these were slaves. Gladiators were forced to fight against each other to death, and the rich people watched them fight each other to death. That's kind of what you have nowadays with boxers and UFC. The rich people who live comfortable lives, they are healthier and live a longer life. Watch these idiot slaves beat each other into a coma. That's exactly the same thing. And of course, they were fed a slave diet, which is why they ate grains. None of the rich people ever ate grains in the history of humanity. It was only the slaves. The rich people, the ones who were well off, only ate meat.
[video] 3:35 ...overall health in the long term. One of the big questions that comes up a lot is did we evolve as vegetarians or meat eaters? I mean, we've got these sharp canine teeth that look just perfect for digging into flesh, though large canines are not exclusive to carnivorous animals. It's thought they likely evolved more for intimidation and competition among mates as well as defense rather than...
3:53 I don't think that you're going to intimidate anybody with our so-called canines, but the reason animals have them is because they use them as weapons. They bite into an animal, they try to bite into the throat to make them bleed out. But there's also other animals such as camels, which have them, and they use them also as defense. They could technically bite into an animal if they needed to, whereas humans obviously use their brains and create tools and weapons for eating meat.
[video] 4:23 And if we look at the diets of modern primates, the ones we're closely related to, like chimps, orangutans, show some kind of proof that we are related to them, any at all, and gorillas, you'll see that most of them have totally plant-based diets.
4:36 I love thinking about- I like that he said plant-based, because yes, a lot of these animals eat a lot of plants which humans would never eat, such as leaves. Show me one human being on Earth that likes to eat leaves. Of course they do that because they can actually ferment the fiber and create saturated fat out of it, which human beings can't do, which is why leaves are not appetizing to us. So stop talking nonsense about us being somehow similar to them, when in reality we don't eat any natural plants at all, we find them disgusting. And chimps, for example, are considered to be carnivores, seeing as biologically the definition of a carnivore is an animal that eats at least 20% raw meat, and they do.
[video] 5:15 Chimps being hipster vegans, like...
5:18 oh you don't have any soy milk awkward but seriously if gorillas can get this jacked without the need yeah gorillas eat almost only plants and then they also eat thermites and some other bugs again show me a human being that eats leaves and all of this garbage yes the gorillas find leaves appetizing because of how they are naturally programmed They have a completely different digestive tract than us, and they convert all of the leaves into saturated animal fat, which is why they look the way they look. Essentially, they are on a ketogenic diet.
[video] 5:51 For animal proteins, surely we're not meant to be eating meat. I mean, look at those muscles. Me throwing to our video on bestiality. Anyway, many suggest that because we branch off the same evolutionary tree as our primate contemporaries, surely we're also primarily...
6:06 It's funny because he's showing a female eating a man-made watermelon. He's not showing this female eating grass or leaves, actual natural plants. Humans don't eat any natural plants. We find all plants disgusting. I challenge you to even name one plant that a human being eats in nature. Just one. Fruits don't count because fruits are the fruits of the plants. I'm talking about actual plants.
[video] 6:34 You won't be able to. This is not true. For one thing, what's more important when it comes to this is the intestinal length. And the human intestinal length is...
6:51 shorter than that of a wolf, but a little bit longer than that of a cat. It's in between there. I'm also sure that he would never be able to show any actual proof of what he's saying here, because the way he defines a carnivore is probably an animal that only eats meat, supposedly anyway, such as a lion, but that's not the biological definition of a carnivore, and A human colon is going to be bumpy in some parts, also from damage, for example. So what kind of a colon is he talking about? He has probably never seen any proof of this. He just read it somewhere. He just Googled it. We don't have a large intestine or four chambers of a stomach, such as a cow, to ferment plants. Our large intestine is very small compared to animals that eat plants. But despite all these facts, the truth is there is no... It's not at all facts by any definition. You just stated your beliefs.
[video] 7:45 We weren't in a tropical forest anymore and didn't have access to as many plants that we could stomach. So we turned to meat to supplement that loss.
7:52 And of course, what kind of plants could your stomach in a tropical climate? Again, name just one.
[video] 7:57 There are many theories about how meat shaped the human brain. But for now, all we need to know is that while we do come from plant eaters, we have been eating meat for millions of years. As long as we've been human, we've been eating meat. So then, can we survive without meat at all? Some people might tell you that you simply can't get enough protein without meat. But that's really not true. You can get tons of protein from whole grains, nuts, and beans. And for most people, this is more than enough.
8:18 No, it's not enough at all. And as we can see nowadays, elderly people have a huge problem with protein, which is why they have brittle bones and lots of problems. All of these plants that he mentioned have anti-nutrients, which bind to the amino acids. And they also have fiber, which doesn't let you actually digest and absorb any of the nutrients. There's so many problems with these plants, obviously because they are man-made. and they don't even exist in nature. They're not edible as such.
[video] 8:47 In fact, most research finds protein deficiency extremely rare, except in people who are simply not eating.
8:53 You gotta check the actual biological value of these plants to see how much protein you can get out of them, and then you will see that it's a lot less than what they say. Enough calories.
[video] 9:02 But what research has found is missing from a vegan diet is B12. Vitamin B12 is...
9:07 There's over 15 micronutrients that are not found in plants at all. B12 is only one of them.
[video] 9:14 ...required by animals for a whole host of biological pathways and for normal functioning. And the thing is, you cannot get B12 from any vegetables. There's zero B12 in a salad. You can find it in beef, pork, poultry, fish, eggs, etc. And studies find that B12 deficiencies are a big problem for a lot of vegans and vegetarians. When your levels are low, it can impact brain functioning, energy, and mood. And at worst, it can cause full-on hallucinations. I mean, if that's what you're going for, maybe just try some psilocybin instead. Me throwing to our video on shrooms. So if you're only consuming fruits and vegetables, it'll likely become a problem. Luckily, supplements are a thing. You can literally just take B12 pills, and then you never have to worry about this.
9:47 A lot of the B12 supplements have been found to be toxic. They are essentially a form of cyanide, which is why you get this energy rush as a vegan, but it's actually just slowly killing you. There's absolutely no proof that this synthetic B12 actually works in the body, and there's a lot of ex-vegans who said that they took supplements, did a blood test, the B12 levels were fine. yet they had all of these b12 deficiency symptoms and once they started eating meat the symptoms disappeared even though the blood test was saying that they're all fine so you can't rely on supplements the same can be said for other nutrient deficiencies that tend to pop up for vegans like iron or omega-3s there's even a ton of foods that are fortified with these to make vegan diets less of a risk but another area that brings up some concern it's not a solution to add synthetic so-called nutrients to artificial food
[video] 10:37 you just gotta eat natural food is bone strength if you grew up in the 90s and early 2000s then you're more than aware of the many campaigns touting the health benefits of milk calcium is an essential part of the human diet because it helps your muscles and nerves function properly and keeps your bones good and strong and when you don't have enough in your diet your body
10:53 You also need a lot of vitamin A and D for good bone health, which again is missing in a vegan diet. There's no vitamin A or D in any plants.
[video] 11:03 ...actually ends up pulling it from your bones, which can potentially make your bones more likely to break. Hence cow's milk, which naturally contains calcium and is absorbed easily into the body, is often promoted for good, strong...
11:16 Bones are actually made out of protein for the most part, which most people don't know. Yes, calcium is important, but it's a rather small part of it.
[video] 11:24 Bones. And a research study from 2020 backed this up when it found that vegans have a much higher risk of breaking their bones than meat eaters. This was a study that followed around 2000 vegans.
11:35 That's funny because it's actually more so because of the vitamin D and protein deficiencies, which he said is no problem.
[video] 11:43 And compared them to non-vegans over the course of a few decades, and their risk of bone breaks was basically twice as likely. But here's the weird part. When we look at countries that simply don't drink as much milk as a whole, this pattern doesn't hold. For example, in West Africa, consumption of dairy isn't that common, and yet they have extremely low rates of osteoporosis.
11:59 Yeah, because it has nothing to do with consuming dairy. Dairy is just milk from other animals which humans didn't use to consume in the past. It's not as if you necessarily need to consume dairy.
12:15 It's not surprising they eat a lot of meat there and they are in the sun. That's all that you essentially need.
[video] 12:21 40 countries consumption of dairy also found that those who had little milk were not any more likely to break their hips even studies within the same country have found confusing results when comparing heavy milk drinkers to light milk drinkers there's really not a clear link between bone strength and breakage the truth is dairy isn't the only way to consume calcium it's in lots of veggies like kale bok choy and broccoli and there's even again you have the problem that you can't actually digest these vegetables they are poisonous so they are generally bad for your health anyway fortified foods like orange juice and cereal that contain it. But for vegans, even when studies account for calcium intake, those who were eating lots of calcium were still more likely to break bones. So perhaps there is another environmental or situational factor outside of diet that's playing a role.
13:01 Those kind of sources of calcium don't count because you can't get calcium out of them.
[video] 13:06 Jesus. Herein is yet unknown. It's worth bringing up that most of this data is on adults, and studies that do look at kids are much more clear-cut. Kids that drink milk break fewer bones than those who don't. Finally, on the bad side, researchers found that both vegans and vegetarians...
13:21 It would work a lot better if you would consume raw milk, seeing as it has actual vitamin D and calcium is much easier to absorb.
[video] 13:29 ...are at a higher risk for stroke. However, the overall risk is small, around 3 extra cases per 1,000 people over 10 years, and this particular study had many limitations, including quite a small sample, so it's difficult to draw major conclusions from it. So are there any specific health benefits to going vegan? Definitely. A study on over 90,000 people found that vegans are less likely to develop high blood pressure, obesity, type 2 diabetes, some types of cancer, and are more likely to live longer. A vegan diet lowers cholesterol, and many of these foods contain a lot of antioxidant phytonutrients and nitrates versus some-
13:58 There's just so much misinformation here. Cholesterol is obviously not bad for you, seeing as all of your cells are made out of cholesterol. You can't even live without cholesterol. The more you have, the longer you're going to live, according to all studies. All of the people who live to over 100 years have high cholesterol, which is what's considered to be high in modern medicine. Obviously, it's actually normal. The antioxidants are only there for the plants, actually are harmful to humans. Phytonutrients, same thing. What kind of pro-inflammatory fats are there in meat? Just name one. Again, the pro-inflammatory fats, if anything, are the vegetable oils. Pretty much everybody understands this. Or seed oils. The most inflammatory oils are seed oils. It's such common sense. He also said that vegans live longer, but based on what? Vegans have been around for around 13 years now.
14:53 Most vegans started veganism at around 2010, and over 90% of the YouTubers already quit veganism. So how can you talk about life expectancy when we don't have such a thing as a vegan from birth, seeing as all of them drink milk? or a vegan who's been vegan for even over 15 years that doesn't even exist. There is no such data. You can't based on anything. A lot of them are very skinny, and I don't know if the guy from this video is vegan, but he looks very weak and skinny.
[video] 15:22 Venus Williams, who suffers from Sjogren's syndrome, credits her vegan diet with minimizing the extreme fatigue associated with her condition. Some studies have even found a vegan diet...
15:31 It's funny that he uses some kind of celebrity or whatever as an example. I don't know her. Seeing as over 90% of the celebrities who were vegan have also quit by now.
[video] 15:39 ...to be one of the healthiest, outperforming even pescatarian and vegetarian diets, likely because of its higher fruit, vegetable, and legume intake. There was up to a 32% lower risk among those with the highest intake of plant-based foods for cardiovascular disease, even after adjusting for age, sex, race, education, health behaviors, alcohol intake, and exercise. So yes, on average, the health of vegans does tend to be better. Of course, it's also possible that vegans are just generally more health conscious to begin with. Vegans do tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, and exercise more, and whether it's something bad in meat and dairy or helpful in all the extra veggies is yet to be determined.
16:10 Of course, it's worth- Yes, vegans are people who are dumb and ignorant, but they want to be healthy, which is why they fall for veganism. They don't realize that humans in nature drink blood, eat raw animal organs, and that's how you become optimally healthy.
[video] 16:25 pointing out that it's just as easy to be an unhealthy vegan, with all the options for junk and processed food nowadays, so in no way does going vegan necessitate- Veganism is generally unhealthy, seeing as it's malnutrition.
16:39 Plants don't have over 15 micronutrients. That's it. You don't need any more arguments. You can't call a diet which lacks over 50 nutrients, healthy.
[video] 16:49 The biggest question remaining is, can it make you a better athlete? A NERMI study following 8,000 runners from across Europe comparing meat eaters, vegans, and vegetarians is currently testing this idea of improved endurance. Because veganism may boost... Why does that even matter?
17:04 Athletes have the shortest lifespans on Earth. Literally, even people who eat a terrible diet, but live a sedentary lifestyle, live a lot longer than athletes, their life expectancy is just around 63, which is incredibly low, whereas a human naturally supposed to live to around 140 to 160 at least.
17:28 They don't even live to half as long as we are naturally supposed to. Why even talk about athletes at all?
[video] 17:35 Immunity and aid in recovery and rehabilitation from injury, a lot of athletes are keen to take advantage of these perks. Veggies like beetroot contain nitrates that aid in blood flow and oxygen transport through the body. But the problem right now is simply the lack of good data. There is very little data to support these claims right now, so studies are ongoing. At the very least, it's been shown that a well-planned vegan diet does meet the nutritional requirements for endurance athletes.
17:53 In other words, it's just as... That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Even if you're stupid enough to become an athlete, all of them are gonna tell you that they feel a lot better if they eat a lot of meat.
[video] 18:04 Good at the very least as an omnivorous diet, whether it's optimal is yet to be determined. At worst, there could be some setbacks to your health, but those can typically be mitigated through careful planning and supplementation, And at best, it may actually be better for your overall health and well-being if you put in the effort to do it with intention and health in mind. I hope this video has been eye-opening for those of you who are curious.
18:22 This video was eye-opening in the sense that I'm surprised that people still fall for these lies in 2023. And the name of the channel has the word science in it, but what was scientific in this video? He just simply stated his beliefs, which were wrong.
18:41 If you looked up the actual science behind the vegan diet, then you would realize that plants don't have over 15 nutrients. How can you then in any way call it healthy if it causes malnutrition? That's why over 90% of the vegans on YouTube have quit veganism in the recent years. They could not continue simply because the malnourishment kicked in, of course it's going to happen, seeing as the synthetic vitamins are not going to help. And yes, protein is also a problem. There's no creatine, carnitine, taurine, carnosine. No, it's not so easy to simply synthesize it yourself, as proven in studies also. There's way too many nutrients lacking. It's impossible to be healthy on a vegan diet. Thanks for watching.