A vegan diet could affect your intelligence (2020)
Long time vegan and successful knowledge worker here.  I think this study does not closely reflect a modern western vegan diet.<p>1. There was no supplementation.  A modern vegan should be supplementing or eating foods fortified in B6, B12, D, and DHA&#x2F;DPA.  This type of advice is really common among vegan resources and many vegan foods will be fortified with these types of vitamins (DHA&#x2F;DPA is a bit more rare).  There are non-animal sources for all of these vitamins.  There is some debate on if DHA&#x2F;DPA is as effective as consuming Omega 3 directly.  Omega 3s can be found in adequate amounts inside many types of seeds, and seeds will have other valuable nutrients as well.<p>2. The study put people on a diet of soup with meat, soup with milk, or soup with oil.  Oil clearly has the least amount of protein and nutrients compared to the other three.  In real life humans have better diet choices.<p>3. The BBC article has a lot of evolutionary arguments for eating meat.  In my mind historical dietary practices is as irrelevant as historical medical practices.  Modern humans live under such different circumstances.  We have a massive food surplus, our life span is 2x, our lifestyle is highly sedentary, we have access to a much greater variety of food and we have a much better understanding of nutrition and human biology.  “This is the way things have always been done” is not a good enough reason for me to base my health choices on, and diet is one of the biggest health choices you can make.<p>Plant based foods are healthy for the human body, significantly better for the environment, and more compassionate to all life.