How are we all still alive? Whats the physiological effects of not having veggies in the diet?
Asking as a new parent who’s toddler used to eat everything, but now understands what “greens” are and actively denies any attempt to feed him veggies, even disguised. I swear his tongue has an alarm the instant any hidden veggie enters his mouth.
I also have a coworker who goes out of their way to not eat veggies. Not the heathiest, but he functions as well as I can see.
In: Biology
Just because something contains necessary nutrients, doesn’t mean it’s an *exclusive* source.
For example, many kinds of meats contain essential amino acids we can’t make ourselves, so we need to eat other animals to get them… If you ignore beans (who knows why they have it) and many kinds of edible mushroom (which are weirdly enough a lot closer to animals than plants, so that makes a certain kind of sense).
Another way is just through supplements; you know gummie vitamins? Things like that but usually a bit more specialized. Doesn’t apply to a toddler probably, but potentially to your coworker.
Being omnivores, humans are adapted to eating lots of different kinds of food, and relying on a mixed diet that often happens to have multiple, overlapping sources of nutrients.
I don’t know *exactly* which nutrients are almost-exclusive to plants, and hence I can’t give you a more specific answer, but this hopefully gives a general idea of how broadly distributed our nutrition sources are. Just imagine if they weren’t; all our cuisine would look eerily similar, and there would be swathes of otherwise habitable planet we just don’t live on without imported foods (or bringing seeds and planting them to farm there, similar ideas)
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