FWIW my personal experience doesn’t square with this. It was initially hard for me but after a transition period where I got accustomed to new foods, it got much easier. For most people—those who are medically able to do it—I think this would be the case.
Hmm, based on what you’ve said here—and I acknowledge that what you’ve said is a highly compressed version of your experience, thus I may well be failing to understand you (and I apologize in advance if I mischaracterize your experience)—I think I’m not quite seeing how this refutes my framing? I accept that my type-A/B framing rounds off a bunch of nuance, but to me, within that framing, it sounds like you’re type-A?
Like, I’m not sure how long the transition period was for you, and I expect different people’s transition periods will vary considerably, but my model, viewed through this lens, is that a type-A person will make it out of their transition period and be able to maintain a vegan diet thereafter at little to no cost. Whereas a type-B can spend weeks, months—even a year or more, like myself[1]—planning out and iterating on their vegan diet; making sure, through doing research, taking blood tests, and so on, that they’re avoiding the known pitfalls, and still never make it out of the transition period.[2][3]
I like this comment from Jason: “Nutritional research is hard, and we’d need a significantly stronger body of research (e.g., random assignment, very large samples) to say that a vegan diet is maximally healthful for everyone at an individual level (as opposed to healthier on the a [sic] population average).” (link)
Moreover, for me, the vegan experience actually got increasingly unpleasant with time, if anything, so I don’t think it’s the case that type-B’s will eventually asymptote onto becoming costlessly vegan if only they stick with it for long enough.
(Additionally, if asymptoting really does occur, but “long enough” means months or years, then I have sympathy for those who give up in the meantime.)
Sorry, I originally commented with a much more detailed account but decided I didn’t want so much personal info on the forum.
On my first attempt at vegetarianism I failed after about a week, and after that I decided to start with avoiding meat at home and at uni. The transition to being fully vegan took about 2.5 years. I was a picky eater so I had a lot of foods and ingredients to get used to. I also improved my cooking abilities a lot during this time.
Edit: it’s true that I’m now in a phase where it is almost costless for me to be vegan, and I’ve been in that state for years. My point is rather that I didn’t start off like that.
Figures on vegetarian/vegan recidivism indicate that a lot of people stop even after years of following that diet. ACE estimates that vegetarians stay vegetarian for about 5 years on average.
The Fauanalytics survey indicates quicker dropout: about a third drop out within 3 months, about half drop out within a year, and 84% drop out in total.
Thanks for the data! For other readers I’ll note the Faunalytics page you linked to contains more interesting information (e.g. a majority of lapsed vegns try it only for health reasons, while a majority of those who remain vegn do not).
The remainder of that distribution after the 1 year mark would also be interesting, as it might take over that to get accustomed to it.
This does suggest that a gradual transition might have higher success rates?
FWIW my personal experience doesn’t square with this. It was initially hard for me but after a transition period where I got accustomed to new foods, it got much easier. For most people—those who are medically able to do it—I think this would be the case.
Hmm, based on what you’ve said here—and I acknowledge that what you’ve said is a highly compressed version of your experience, thus I may well be failing to understand you (and I apologize in advance if I mischaracterize your experience)—I think I’m not quite seeing how this refutes my framing? I accept that my type-A/B framing rounds off a bunch of nuance, but to me, within that framing, it sounds like you’re type-A?
Like, I’m not sure how long the transition period was for you, and I expect different people’s transition periods will vary considerably, but my model, viewed through this lens, is that a type-A person will make it out of their transition period and be able to maintain a vegan diet thereafter at little to no cost. Whereas a type-B can spend weeks, months—even a year or more, like myself[1]—planning out and iterating on their vegan diet; making sure, through doing research, taking blood tests, and so on, that they’re avoiding the known pitfalls, and still never make it out of the transition period.[2][3]
I’ve written about my experience here.
I like this comment from Jason: “Nutritional research is hard, and we’d need a significantly stronger body of research (e.g., random assignment, very large samples) to say that a vegan diet is maximally healthful for everyone at an individual level (as opposed to healthier on the a [sic] population average).” (link)
Moreover, for me, the vegan experience actually got increasingly unpleasant with time, if anything, so I don’t think it’s the case that type-B’s will eventually asymptote onto becoming costlessly vegan if only they stick with it for long enough.
(Additionally, if asymptoting really does occur, but “long enough” means months or years, then I have sympathy for those who give up in the meantime.)
Sorry, I originally commented with a much more detailed account but decided I didn’t want so much personal info on the forum.
On my first attempt at vegetarianism I failed after about a week, and after that I decided to start with avoiding meat at home and at uni. The transition to being fully vegan took about 2.5 years. I was a picky eater so I had a lot of foods and ingredients to get used to. I also improved my cooking abilities a lot during this time.
Edit: it’s true that I’m now in a phase where it is almost costless for me to be vegan, and I’ve been in that state for years. My point is rather that I didn’t start off like that.
Figures on vegetarian/vegan recidivism indicate that a lot of people stop even after years of following that diet. ACE estimates that vegetarians stay vegetarian for about 5 years on average.
The Fauanalytics survey indicates quicker dropout: about a third drop out within 3 months, about half drop out within a year, and 84% drop out in total.
Thanks for the data! For other readers I’ll note the Faunalytics page you linked to contains more interesting information (e.g. a majority of lapsed vegns try it only for health reasons, while a majority of those who remain vegn do not).
The remainder of that distribution after the 1 year mark would also be interesting, as it might take over that to get accustomed to it.
This does suggest that a gradual transition might have higher success rates?