The Health Food Faddists of the US are un-questionably the most arrogant lot regarding what is "healthy" and this changes with every new supplement on the market. The statement above is pure arrogance and is meaningless.
The healthiest diets on earth on the ones that the healthiest people consume (if sticking to their native diets) where the absence of all modern ills is standard.
To say becoming a virtual stick figure w/almost no energy is healthy is absurd. The single biggest reason people keep babbling about vegans and vegetarians being so "healthy" is because it makes them skinny, that's it.
To say a natural body builder who weighs 200+ pounds and eats very healthy, grass-fed meats, etc. is not healthy because he eats aniaml proteins is again absurd.
The longest lived societies and people excluding the hard to prove theories about 130 year-old bee-keepers ALL ATE ANIMAL FOODS and IN QUANTITY!
So before you go on babbling about vegans and vegetarians they are by and far the most un-healthiest people I know. Either pale and skinny as rails or flabby, un-kempt with no muscle tone whatsoever.
Even that hypocrite Gary Null capitulated and decided eating animal foods was okay. This from a so-called "expert".
There is nothing to debate, it's just today's fad. All prattling vegans today will either be falling apart in 10 years time or eating animal foods, guaranteed. All the "in" vegans are twenty somethings who need to be politically correct. It just doesn't work, it's always a fad issue. If I quit smoking then everyone should.
Name one vegan or vegetarian society more than 100 years old. That's right they do not exist or were myths. And worse in order to fit this absurd definition you can eat almost anything except red-meat and claim to be a vegetarian.
I get tired of hearing this stale lame claim by people who all of a sudden find religion because they lose a bunch of weight, eat all the time (mostly carbs) and just never gain an ounce. There's not a vegan or vegetarian that doesn't eat,eat,eat 24 X 7 and it's not healthy. Our bodies were not designed to eat this much food.
Even this runner/guy on raw foods on TV proclaiming how healthy he was, was beaten badly on the mountain run he did by all the animal eaters. He only ate raw, but you know what he either was eating or preparing food, one or the other it's all the time! That's just not healthy!
The only health guru who actually ate animal foods as part of his lifestyle and never hid it (although maybe how much he ate of it he did) was Paul Bragg. He even tried an experiment on a South Sea island where the natives ate animal and he ate only vegetarian/vegan. He failed because he had no energy to do his athletics.
Just because you think you know it all about food doesn't mean it's right to shove it down peoples throats. And I guarantee your assumption is dead wrong.
Another guy who found religion was part of that David Wolfe clan (yet another self-proclaimed expert) and he tried to body-build on vegan. Guess what, he consumed huge quantites of anything that would give him energy and power to workout/failed miserably.
Reminds of vegan body-builders and even vegetarian body-builders who consume vast quantities of creatine and other powders to keep their energy and power up. It's a bit ironic, to have to shove large quantities of these processed foods to keep the religion and then pointing a hypocritcal finger at the "evil" animal eaters. So who's healthier?