So in my personal experience, I wasn’t able to figure out veganism or vegetarianism more until recently, but it still doesn’t feel sustainable for me.

I tried a few times and didn’t have adequate nutrients, and would feel like I needed meat so would eat it. Lately I realized that mainly in my view vegans and vegetarians replace meat and dairy with beans, rice, legumes, nuts, seeds, etc. - that is basically their “meat”. So once I figured this out, at least I feel more able to sustain the diet. I think before I was simply not getting enough protein or complete proteins, because “just don’t eat meat or dairy” is vague and doesn’t suggest what to eat instead. I have also known vegetarians who had deficiencies.

So lately I’ve been able to go a few days at a time without meat and it feels ok. I feel my current limit may be like a week while four days feels comfortable.

I also crashed doing this recently when I did some like “lifting” exercise and no matter how much veggie protein I tried to get in, it was feeling inadequate.

It feels like reproduction, physical work (and maybe mental at times), or strenuous exercise require meat.

Otherwise there is a strong tradition of celibates of being vegan or vegetarian; in many lives of saints I keep reading that they vowed to abstain (which means no meat, but might allow dairy or fish) or ate only “vegetables” (which I assume must mean some of the specific proteins I mentioned, likely beans and something, unless they miraculously feasted on something insufficient which is alleged in some cases of saints).

So there is a Western spiritual consideration of avoiding meat for spiritual gains, even if the meat would otherwise nourish the body and give more health and longevity.

Even those who are married or engaged in physical work can tolerate days of abstinence which are obligatory (in Catholic tradition anyway. Orthodox too I think). Other religions like Hindus I think also are vegetarian but they have milk, which definitely can make the diet more sustainable because milk has a lot of nutrients in it that other plants don’t give the same amount of.

Yeah so for kids too veganism is unhealthy I think (religiously fasting isn’t recommended to a certain age, although maybe abstinence has been spoken of as being ok, I forget).

As far as environmental impact goes, in general I was thinking about this, food seems to be rough on the environment. Because how “green” is growing a bunch of beans? They’re probably going to be grown by tractors, requiring all kinds of fuel and factories to produce it. idk how many farms are using animals to plow with - but then that’s kind of an “animal” product and not vegan. It almost feels inescapable that animals will be used for food. Or will die when veggies are being harvested. I know a farmer who just ran a deer over the other day while cutting hay (idk if the animal died). But yeah the standard vegan diet is probably pretty harsh on the environment. If they aren’t using tractors, then I would be curious what vegans think of using horses and if they use them? What does the ideal vegan diet look like that isn’t having a negative environmental impact?

However on the other hand, it does seem to take less resources to make meat at times so they may have a point there. But then this argument goes back and forth because we have enough resources to feed people with meat. So it may use more of the environment but we have more environment that can be made use of.

So anyway I’m comfortably “flexitarian” currently, limiting meat intake. Mostly because it’s easier to not cook meat some days or have to clean up as much. That’s as far as I feel comfortable going with veganism. I think that’s a reasonable compromise.