The Top 5 Vegan Nutrition Mistakes

Veganism is a lifestyle, not a diet.

But, whether you went vegan for your health, the animals, the planet, or a combination of all three, what you eat plays a major role in how you look and feel.

If you’re new to the plant-based lifestyle (or even if you’ve been vegan for a while), it can be challenging to navigate a new set of nutritional principles and easy to develop habits that are detrimental to your long-term health and fitness goals.

I want to help you avoid that.

In this article, you’ll learn how to avoid five of the most common nutrition mistakes that prevent vegans from accomplishing their health and fitness goals.

Here’s a quick breakdown of those mistakes:

1. Assuming all vegan products are automatically healthy

2. Consuming too few (or too many) calories

3. Believing that "clean eating" will build your dream body

4. Not eating enough protein

5. Overlooking supplementation

MISTAKE 1: ASSUMING THAT VEGAN PRODUCTS ARE AUTOMATICALLY HEALTHY

There is plenty of scientific evidence that proves vegan diets are healthier than non-vegan diets on average.

For example, the EPIC-Oxford study, which has studied 65,000 men and women over the last 30 years to determine the long-term effects of diet on human health, has shown that a vegan diet is associated with around a 50% reduction in risk of high blood pressure, significantly lower levels of blood cholesterol, a 25–30% reduction in ischaemic heart disease, 19% reduction in cancer risk, and a 30–40% reduction in risk of type 2 diabetes.

But just because vegan diets are healthier on average doesn’t mean that all vegan foods are automatically health-promoting.

After all, Oreos are vegan!

Generally speaking, however, the more calories you consume from whole plant foods instead of heavily processed vegan products, the more nutrients you will consume and the healthier your diet will be.

My general recommendation is that you consume at least 80% of your daily calorie intake from whole plant foods. This can include everything from raw fruit and leafy greens to cooked rice, legume-based soups, curries, oatmeal, sushi, and way more!

It’s important to remember that the term “whole plant foods” does not mean that the food must be raw or cooked without added flavor. It simply means that you are consuming plants as close to their natural state as possible.

However, there is nothing inherently wrong with consuming processed vegan foods in moderation.

After you have biased at least 80% of your daily calories toward whole plant foods, you are welcome to spend the remaining 20% of your daily calories on more heavily processed foods like vegan mock meats, dairy imitations, snacks, and sweet treats as you can see in the diagram below.

While processed vegan foods are less healthy than whole plant foods, they typically don’t contain most of the unhealthy compounds found in animal foods like cholesterol, trans fatty acids, heme iron, hormones, antibiotics, and more.

And while your body does need cholesterol to make certain hormones and build cells, you don’t need to consume dietary cholesterol from food because your body inherently produces all the cholesterol you need.

In fact, many would argue that you’d be best not to consume dietary cholesterol, which is only found in animal products, given that dietary cholesterol has been linked to a wide range of cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

Beyond cholesterol, trans fats are another category considered to be a serious risk factor to cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Trans fats have also been associated with symptoms of depression, lower testosterone in men, and dementia.

Artificial trans fats produced from vegetable oils were banned in the United States in 2015, which means the only major dietary source of trans fats today are those that occur naturally in animal products.

It is commonly thought that people who eat plant-based diets may be more prone to iron deficiency. But it turns out that they are no more likely to suffer from iron deficiency than people who eat animal products. In fact, there is even research to suggest that people who eat plant-based diets actually get more iron than those who eat animal products.

However, there is a difference when it comes to the type of iron. The iron found in plants is non-heme iron, whereas the iron contained within the blood and muscle from animal flesh is known as heme iron.

Heme iron consumption has been associated with a 27% increase in the risk of coronary heart disease, a 16% increase in the risk of type 2 diabetes, and a 12% increase risk in cancer for every milligram of heme iron consumed per day. In fact, researchers can tell how much meat a cancer patient eats by analyzing a biopsy of their tumor. Heme iron consumption has also been associated with an increased risk of stroke.

Not only do processed vegan meat and dairy alternatives not contain cholesterol, trans fat, or heme iron, they also don’t contain any hormones or antibiotics.

While you should be mindful of how much saturated fat and sodium you are consuming through heavily processed vegan foods, the point here is that processed vegan foods, while considerably less healthy than a vegan diet centered around whole plant foods, are certainly an improvement over an equivalent diet of heavily processed non-vegan foods.

Lastly, it's important to note that vegan products are 100% better for the animals and the environment.

That’s a win-win-win for your health, the animals, and our planet!

MISTAKE 2: CONSUMING TOO FEW (OR TOO MANY) CALORIES

Many people who try veganism and then revert back to eating animal products claim that they felt tired or had low energy.

But is this a fair critique of an exclusively plant-based diet, or is it possible that other factors may have played a role in these complaints?

At first glance, one might be tempted to divert this unwanted attention toward any potential flaws in the vegan diet and make the claim that sleep and stress play a pivotal role in your energy levels. And while it’s always a good idea to optimize your sleep habits and manage your stress levels, it’s unlikely that this select group of vegan drop-outs all experienced a coincidental decrease in sleep quality upon their adoption of a vegan diet.

Assuming sleep quality and stress levels are unchanged, then the most likely reason some people have reported feeling lethargic or low-energy following the transition to a plant-based diet is because they simply weren’t consuming enough calories.

Calories are your body’s main source of energy, which means, if you don’t consume enough calories on a daily basis, then you’re simply not going to have enough energy to live vibrantly and train with intensity.

But, to be fair, this is an easy mistake to make.

Generally speaking, the caloric density of plant foods is significantly lower than that of animal products, so you need to eat more volume to get the same number of calories.

Or maybe you’ve made the mistakes of simply removing all of the animal products from your diet without replacing them with new foods like tofu, tempeh, beans, whole grains, a beautiful array of new vegetables, and a modest amount of nuts and seeds.

And if you are having trouble eating enough calories to meet your needs, don’t limit your intake of fruits and vegetables. Instead, focus on increasing your intake of wholesome higher-calorie foods like nuts and seeds, avocado, and dried fruits.

At the same time, there is a general misconception that going vegan is a good way to lose weight. Eating more plants generally does help people lose weight, but depending on what you eat, it is just as easy to gain weight eating plant foods as it is to gain weight eating animal products.

If you are consuming more calories than you burn every day, even if you are eating lots of fruits and vegetables, then you will gain weight regardless of which foods you are consuming.

In other words, if a daily intake of 2,200 calories is what it takes to gain weight for a smaller female, it doesn’t matter if you reach that caloric target by eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches or eating steak and eggs.

For that reason, I would recommend tracking what you eat for a few weeks to anyone making the transition to a vegan diet simply to make sure you are eating about as many calories as you burn every day.

This is called eating at caloric maintenance, and it’s a good place to be as you give your body time to adjust to a new eating pattern.

Then, if you’re feeling great and have plenty of energy a few weeks into your new vegan diet, you’ll know you can continue around caloric maintenance for sustained results. Or, you can either lower your calories to burn fat or raise your calories to start building lean muscle more optimally.

MISTAKE 3: BELIEVING THAT “CLEAN EATING” WILL BUILD YOUR DREAM BODY

Many vegans have fallen prey to this idea that you can simply “eat clean” to build your dream body by consuming all of your calories from healthy, nutritious foods.

And, there is some degree of truth to this since healthy, nutritious foods support the development of a healthy, lean physique, but it’s not quite as simple as relying exclusively on the “purity” of your foods.

More specifically, there are two primary nutritional drivers that dictate every physique endeavor: calorie intake and protein intake.

If you burn 2,000 calories per day, but somehow manage to eat 3,000 calories of raw fruits and vegetables, you might have perfect blood work (which is wonderful) but you’re not going to be losing any fat.

Conversely, if you burn 2,000 calories per day and eat 1,600 calories of junk food, you will lose weight. And if you keep your protein intake high enough while consuming fewer calories than you need from vegan junk foods, you can lose almost exclusively body fat.

Weird, right?

As counterintuitive as it may seem to many, it’s true. You can gain fat by eating “clean” and you can lose fat while eating mostly junk food. It all comes down to your overall caloric consumption.

Also, don’t forget the importance of resistance training! Paired with proper protein intakes, resistance training is the primary driver of new muscle growth.

But to put a nice bow on the topic of “clean eating,” I want to reiterate that I recommend people get at least 80% of their daily calories from nutritious, whole plant foods that they enjoy.

The remaining 20% of your calories can come from more processed foods. For instance, if you love chocolate and vegan pizza, then include a bit of both of those foods in your diet. It will likely serve you well in terms of sustainability and enjoyability.

Personally, I get about 90% of my daily calories from relatively unprocessed, nutritious plant foods, but I’m not afraid to eat a bit of my favorite processed foods from time to time.

For those who may be new to this idea, this way of eating is known as flexible dieting.

MISTAKE 4: NOT EATING ENOUGH PROTEIN-RICH FOODS

According to U.S. and Canadian dietary reference intakes, the recommended daily allowance for protein is 0.36 grams per pound of body weight (0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight) for healthy adults.

This amount is defined as “the average daily intake level that is sufficient to meet the nutrient requirement of nearly all [~98%] of healthy adults.” This means that as a bare minimum, a 180-pound person only needs 65 grams of plant protein per day. As long as you are eating a calorically sufficient diet, this recommendation is extremely easy to meet.

However, many decades of research and anecdotal evidence have proven that active people, particularly those who lift heavy weights regularly, need more protein than the average person.

Studies from the University of Western Ontario, the Exercise Metabolism Research Group, and McMaster University all agree that the ideal range to aim for is 0.7 to 0.9 grams of high-quality protein per pound of body weight (1.5 to 2.0 grams per kilogram of body weight) to maximize muscle growth.

That means that a 180-pound person who performs somewhere between three and six hours of formal exercise per week would benefit from a protein intake of approximately 144 grams per day.

More practically speaking, this person could easily split that protein target into three whole meals of 36 grams of protein per serving and a post-workout protein shake to meet their needs.

But what happens when you don’t consume enough protein on a daily basis?

Simply put, you won’t be building muscle as effectively as you could.

So if you’re serious about your vegan muscle-building endeavor, you would be wise to consume protein within the recommendations featured in the graphic below.

The most common sources of vegan protein for people looking to add size to their frame are tofu, tempeh, seitan, TVP, legume-based pasta, protein powders, and certain whole grains like Ezekiel bread.

MISTAKE 5: OVERLOOKING SUPPLEMENTATION

Although a wholesome plant-based diet has been proven to be the healthiest diet in the world, most vegans would benefit from taking certain supplements.

This, however, does not in any way make the vegan diet inferior to other dietary patterns, and it is well known that most omnivores would also benefit from supplementing with these nutrients of focus.

Vitamin B12

Vitamin B12 is not made by plants or animals but rather by microbes that blanket the earth.

All vegans should supplement with vitamin B12.

Dr. Michael Greger, one of the world’s leading experts in nutrition, recommends consuming at least 2,000 mcg (µg) of cyanocobalamin once each week, ideally as a chewable, sublingual, or liquid supplement taken on an empty stomach.

You can also consume B12-fortified foods like nutritional yeast, but there is no defined upper intake level of B12, so many experts advise that you err on the higher side of consumption.

But B12 supplementation recommendations vary depending on the demographic. Those over 65 years of age should take at least 1,000 mcg (µg) of cyanocobalamin every day.

Children also have different needs.

Bonus Tip: If you’re experiencing deficiency symptoms, the best test is a urine MMA (methylmalonic acid) test, not a serum B12 level test.

Omega-3 Fatty Acids

Another thing to pay attention to is your intake of omega-3 fatty acids.

The three omega-3 fatty acids are ALA (alpha-linolenic acid), EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid), and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid). All three are critical to human health.

DHA, in particular, is a primary structural fat in the human brain and eyes, representing about 97% of all omega-3 fats in the brain and 93% of all omega-3 fats in the retina.

Vegans cannot easily obtain any direct sources of EPA or DHA without supplementation, but we can convert ALA from plant foods like flax seeds, chia seeds, and walnuts into EPA and DHA. However, these conversion rates are quite low and likely not enough for optimal health.

In healthy young men, approximately 8% of ALA can be converted to EPA and 0-4% of ALA can be converted to DHA. In healthy young women, the conversion rates are slightly higher, which is thought to be the result of higher estrogen levels. Women can convert approximately 21% of ALA to EPA and 9% of ALA to DHA.

While this might be enough for survival, nutrition authorities recommend an additional 250 milligrams a day of pre-formed EPA and DHA. The word “pre-formed” simply means that it comes in the actual form of EPA and DHA, not the converted form from ALA. So, in addition to consuming ALA from whole plant foods, we should consume 250 milligrams of pre-formed EPA and DHA every day, which can be obtained from algae oil in supplement form. Thankfully, algae-based supplements don’t contain all of the toxic contaminants that fish oil supplements do, so there’s no need to worry about supplementing with omega-3 fatty acids when you get them in plant form.

Vitamin D

If you don’t get adequate sun exposure, you should aim to consume 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily, ideally alongside your largest meal of the day.

But, it is worth nothing that you can also get adequate amounts of vitamin D with sensible amounts of sun exposure. The only catch is that you should have your arms and legs exposed in a tee shirt and shorts.

As a general guideline, aim for 15 to 30 minutes of midday sun (15 for those with lighter skin and 30 for those with darker skin). During the winter months, if it is too cold in your area of the world to wear a tee shirt and shorts, then it’s best to supplement with 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily.

Calcium

It’s advised to consume at least 600 mg of calcium daily via calcium-rich plant foods (preferably low-oxalate dark leafy green vegetables), which include all greens except spinach, chard, and beet greens.

Make no mistake, all of those aforementioned foods are very healthy, but my point here is that they are not good calcium sources due to their oxalate content.

Other Micronutrient Considerations

Iodine, iron, and selenium are three additional micronutrients that warrant particular focus in any well-designed diet.

To make sure that you are getting enough iodine, I recommend incorporating seaweed as a snack or into Asian dishes like miso soup or vegan sushi. Or, if you don’t like seaweed and don’t use iodized salt, then you can take a 150 mcg daily iodine supplement.

To make sure that you are getting enough iron, you should aim to combine foods rich in iron (such as tofu, edamame, soy nuts, and dark green vegetables) and vitamin C to increase absorption. Additionally, all menstruating women should get checked for iron deficiency anemia every few years since iron is lost through their monthly menstruation cycles.

To make sure that you are getting enough selenium, I would recommend eating a daily Brazil nut. Or, as always, you can consider taking a supplement if you don’t consume enough dietary sources of selenium.

Summary

If you’re new to the vegan diet, don’t make the mistake of assuming that all vegan foods are healthy simply because they’re vegan. After all, Oreos, Fritos, and Sour Patch Kids are all vegan, but I doubt too many people are convinced those foods are the long-lost secret to health and longevity.
Another common mistake of vegan dieting is consuming too few calories. By nature, many whole plant foods are much less calorically dense than animal products like beef, pork, salmon, eggs, butter, and milk. So before you go shaking your fist at a plant-based diet due to unexpected lethargy and irritability, be sure to track your calories for a few days to make sure you’re consuming enough food to support your daily activity.
Don’t fall for the “clean eating” rumors. Although it will always be a wonderful idea to consume a large percentage of your daily calories from whole plant foods, “clean eating” in and of itself will not hand you fat loss or muscle-gain results. To be successful in any effort to lose fat or build muscle, you must strategically manipulate your overall caloric intake and your daily protein consumption.
And to that point, be sure you are eating enough protein. Although people who don’t resistance train need much less protein than those who do, there are a host of positive health benefits associated with a diet high in plant protein. And for those to pack on as much muscle as possible, be sure to keep your protein intake around 0.8 grams of protein per day per pound of body weight.
Lastly, don’t make the mistake of skipping supplementation where necessary. The most common nutrients of focus in the context of a plant-based diet tend to be vitamin B12, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, iodine, iron, and selenium.