My main concerns regarding vegan diets is the lack of creatine (and its potential effect on IQ) as well as children being raised as vegans (based on my minimal research, it seems that vegan kids tend to be shorter).
As someone who doesn’t eat meat at the moment, I’ve been debating eating meat again because 1) I don’t want it to negatively impact my intelligence/memory and then I make less progress on ai alignment 2) I’d be concerned it negatively impacts the growth (in all aspects) of my future children.
In general, I’ve been quite underwhelmed by the level of research (and written–up analysis) on the above concerns. It seems that lack of creatine does lower IQ, and I’d like more understanding as to whether the supplements actually work to resolve that issue (or is absorption a problem?). That said, I’ve read that meat eaters typically only get about 1g/day of creatine and I supplement 5g/day (my guess is that beyond 3g you probably don’t get more IQ boost).
For children, I’m having a hard time imagining the quality of research will be sufficient by the time I have kids, so I will likely default to having them eat a mediterranean diet.
Interesting that some people disagree. Would love to hear what you disagree with and if you can change my mind with research that goes against the above. Otherwise I have to consider that you either disagree with the above being important for you specifically or you think the claims I made are wrong.
I mostly agree with the spirit of this post because my experience with vegans is that they’ve been overconfident in positive health impacts from veganism (essentially hearing what they want to hear from the research) because of motivated reasoning and the underlying belief that animal suffering trumps any potential negative health impacts. That very well may be true, but it has always been difficult for me to trust vegans claiming good health impact (meat eaters are potentially worse, to be fair) because I’ve always had the impression that they aren’t being as rigurous and intellectually honest as possible.
If you want more people to become vegan, easing these fears is necessary. Otherwise you either get people like me who waited years to stop eating meat or people who leave veganism as soon as they form a long-term relationship or get kids.
The quality of research is already there: See my comment here.
I’m not aware of any newer studies on creatine after the original one that spawned this belief; I will point out the original studies were likely aggressively p-hacked, showed impossible effect sizes, and make very little sense because brain creatine levels are not substantially different between vegetarians and vegans.
Still, it’s not completely out of the question there’s a real effect. We still want to avoid the fallacy of the one-sided bet. It’s definitely possible that vegetarianism causes a drop in . But given vegetarianism seems to lower blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and obesity rates, I’d be willing to put money on the exact opposite. A healthier kid is a smarter kid, and vegetarianism seems to have positive effects on health in general.
If you’re still skeptical, over-the-counter creatine is extremely cheap (and has benefits for physical performance anyways). Trying to get rid of LDL cholesterol, on the other hand, is pretty hard.
As I said in my comment, I already supplement 5g/day (I’ve been doing this for 15 years). My concern about supplementation is that it’s not clear to me that supplementation works wholly. Even in supplementation, different forms of creatine seem to have different levels of effect. With respect to creatine’s impact on cognitive performance:
Three papers suggest that creatine may improve cognition: Ling 2009 found that creatine supplementation may improve performance on some cognitive tasks, McMorris 2007 found that creatine supplementation aids cognition in the elderly, and Benton 2010 found that in vegetarians, creatine supplementation resulted in better memory. However, Avgerinos 2018 found that while creatine supplementation may improve short-term memory and intelligence/reasoning of healthy individuals, its effect on other cognitive domains remains unclear.
Anyways, I’m going through papers on Elicit using the prompt, “Does the vegan diet lead to shorter children?” I’m finding mixed results, some say no, some say yes. For example,
Vegan diets were associated with a healthier cardiovascular risk profile but also with increased risk of nutritional deficiencies and lower BMC and height. Vegetarians showed less pronounced nutritional deficiencies but, unexpectedly, a less favorable cardiometabolic risk profile.
With regard to differing forms of , the article you linked notes:
Despite these minor differences in processing, each of these forms is probably equally effective when equal doses are given.
Which is understating things a bit: All the minor variants will be identical after dissolving in the body—anyhydrous creatine will become hydrated, and particle size is 0 after the creatine has dissolved. The only (minor) difference is that micronized creatine will dissolve slightly faster if you mix it with a drink, because of the smaller particle size. This can be mildly convenient, but I’ve never been bothered by the monohydrate being too slow to dissolve (it’s almost instant for both forms).
With respect to the impacts on cognitive performance, Gwern completed an in-depth look here. Most important is the section on publication bias; the authors of these papers failed to replicate their results several times, but these failures were never published. Gwern concludes (and I agree) that creatine almost certainly doesn’t affect intelligence in nonvegetarians, and has at best
The study you quote at the end about vegetarianism has a sample size in the low dozens, and I wouldn’t put much stock in it. The large meta-analyses of this all find better life expectancy and health markers in vegetarians/vegans. The one important exception is B12 (for which the study you cite finds a deficiency in vegans). Luckily, th
My main concerns regarding vegan diets is the lack of creatine (and its potential effect on IQ) as well as children being raised as vegans (based on my minimal research, it seems that vegan kids tend to be shorter).
As someone who doesn’t eat meat at the moment, I’ve been debating eating meat again because 1) I don’t want it to negatively impact my intelligence/memory and then I make less progress on ai alignment 2) I’d be concerned it negatively impacts the growth (in all aspects) of my future children.
In general, I’ve been quite underwhelmed by the level of research (and written–up analysis) on the above concerns. It seems that lack of creatine does lower IQ, and I’d like more understanding as to whether the supplements actually work to resolve that issue (or is absorption a problem?). That said, I’ve read that meat eaters typically only get about 1g/day of creatine and I supplement 5g/day (my guess is that beyond 3g you probably don’t get more IQ boost).
For children, I’m having a hard time imagining the quality of research will be sufficient by the time I have kids, so I will likely default to having them eat a mediterranean diet.
Can creatine be found in vegan supplements?
Yes.
Interesting that some people disagree. Would love to hear what you disagree with and if you can change my mind with research that goes against the above. Otherwise I have to consider that you either disagree with the above being important for you specifically or you think the claims I made are wrong.
I mostly agree with the spirit of this post because my experience with vegans is that they’ve been overconfident in positive health impacts from veganism (essentially hearing what they want to hear from the research) because of motivated reasoning and the underlying belief that animal suffering trumps any potential negative health impacts. That very well may be true, but it has always been difficult for me to trust vegans claiming good health impact (meat eaters are potentially worse, to be fair) because I’ve always had the impression that they aren’t being as rigurous and intellectually honest as possible.
If you want more people to become vegan, easing these fears is necessary. Otherwise you either get people like me who waited years to stop eating meat or people who leave veganism as soon as they form a long-term relationship or get kids.
The quality of research is already there: See my comment here.
I’m not aware of any newer studies on creatine after the original one that spawned this belief; I will point out the original studies were likely aggressively p-hacked, showed impossible effect sizes, and make very little sense because brain creatine levels are not substantially different between vegetarians and vegans.
Still, it’s not completely out of the question there’s a real effect. We still want to avoid the fallacy of the one-sided bet. It’s definitely possible that vegetarianism causes a drop in . But given vegetarianism seems to lower blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and obesity rates, I’d be willing to put money on the exact opposite. A healthier kid is a smarter kid, and vegetarianism seems to have positive effects on health in general.
If you’re still skeptical, over-the-counter creatine is extremely cheap (and has benefits for physical performance anyways). Trying to get rid of LDL cholesterol, on the other hand, is pretty hard.
As I said in my comment, I already supplement 5g/day (I’ve been doing this for 15 years). My concern about supplementation is that it’s not clear to me that supplementation works wholly. Even in supplementation, different forms of creatine seem to have different levels of effect. With respect to creatine’s impact on cognitive performance:
Anyways, I’m going through papers on Elicit using the prompt, “Does the vegan diet lead to shorter children?” I’m finding mixed results, some say no, some say yes. For example,
With regard to differing forms of , the article you linked notes:
Which is understating things a bit: All the minor variants will be identical after dissolving in the body—anyhydrous creatine will become hydrated, and particle size is 0 after the creatine has dissolved. The only (minor) difference is that micronized creatine will dissolve slightly faster if you mix it with a drink, because of the smaller particle size. This can be mildly convenient, but I’ve never been bothered by the monohydrate being too slow to dissolve (it’s almost instant for both forms).
With respect to the impacts on cognitive performance, Gwern completed an in-depth look here. Most important is the section on publication bias; the authors of these papers failed to replicate their results several times, but these failures were never published. Gwern concludes (and I agree) that creatine almost certainly doesn’t affect intelligence in nonvegetarians, and has at best
The study you quote at the end about vegetarianism has a sample size in the low dozens, and I wouldn’t put much stock in it. The large meta-analyses of this all find better life expectancy and health markers in vegetarians/vegans. The one important exception is B12 (for which the study you cite finds a deficiency in vegans). Luckily, th
is can easily be fixed by supplements.