How Long Can You Go Without Eating Vegetables?

The Short Answer is: It May Shorten Your Life, But Not Massively

Eating vegetables is not a pre-requisite to living, human beings are omnivore by nature, our digestive system has evolved through hundreds of thousands of years to make us flexible about what we can eat in times of scarcity.

Cases of People Who Died Solely as a Cause of Not Eating Vegetables Are Tough to Find

Between 10 and 15 percent of cardiovascular deaths in the USA are attributed to a suboptimal vegetable intake, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only cause, cardiovascular diseases are linked to hundreds of reasons, not eating vegetables are only one of them.

That Doesn’t Mean You Can Eat Only Foods That Are Devoid of Nutrients

Odds are that if you hate eating your veggies, there is a good change you are okay with eating fast food, soda, food that dense in saturated fat and trans fat. All of those things can and WILL shorten your life if you eat too much of it. The tradeoff for eating those kinds of foods are very bad, and that is not the case with vegetables, you could eat a really big amount every day, and it would be very unlikely to cause you any harm.

Was Your Mommy Lying to You?

Yes, and no, I bet your mother didn’t tell you were going to die if didn’t eat your share of veggies, but she certainly said it would make you feel bad.

She Didn’t Know Any Better

A mom’s job is to protect her children at any cost from the harms of the world, and when you are eating vegetables, they are taking a spot on your plate that could be filled with all sorts of bad food, it’s a well agreed upon opinion that eating vegetables is good for us as they have plenty of vitamins and nutrients, so your mom tried her best to make sure you were into the good stuff.

Information Changes As Time Passes

Butter was evil, saturated fat was the cause of a lot of vascular diseases, and so on. A bunch of nonsense was disseminated around the world, but it’s only nonsense today, because society evolved as a whole, back then that was cutting edge science, so it’s hard to know any better, nutrition is a very shaky ground of knowledge, and it’s changing every single year.

Nutrients will Make You Feel Better

I couldn’t continue this article without telling some of the amazing benefits of eating vegetables, and my hope is that you feel guilty about not eating them.

Sometimes It is Just Easier to Get Nutrients from Vegetables

Vegetables are a very important source of vitamins, between those will find potassium, an amazing nutrient that helps regulate fluid balance, muscle contractions and nerve signals. Folate, which will help you with a lot of cell functions responsible for producing DNA and RNA, also, we cannot ignore the multitude of vitamins and their own benefits for our body.

They Carry Loads of Nutrients While Carrying Minimal Calories

You could argue that the calories in your cabbage, spinach or broccoli are negligible, of course, as long as it is food, there are calories, but in the case of vegetables, you are making a tremendously good deal, because they will occupy volume, satisfying a good part of your hunger, giving you nutrients and keeping you lean. Not to mention that they help with hydration as they are very high in water content.

Antioxidants Can Fight Cancer

The best things that are given to us after we’re born are time and health, we cannot strive to do anything great in life if any of those two are deficient.

Vegetables Tend to Have Lots of Antioxidants

Antioxidants can slow aging and prevent some forms of cancer, so this is enough of an argument to answer the question.

Because They Are Low Calorie and Have Lots of Antioxidants, in Fact They COULD Extend Your Life

The math is simple here, if you eat plenty of vegetables, you will have antioxidants, and those can prevent cancer and make you live more.

Also, there are numerous studies that says that societies that eat less calories in general, tend to live a longer life, in fact, eating less calories and living longer is a common factor between all animal kingdom.

There Are Some Caveats to Eating Only Animal Products Though

Eating only animal products is not very good if you don’t know what you are doing, as you can be severely undernourished.

It’s Harder to Get the Nutrients in

It is much easier to get all the nutrients that your body cannot produce naturally when you are combining as many food sources as possible.

It is not impossible though, but you have to be more selective about the animal products you consume.

Meat Takes a Very Long While to Digest

Did you know that meat can take as long as 2 FULL DAYS to digest?

That should have a significant impact on how you view meat, because your body is not exactly like a machine, you cannot replace your digestive system, at least not with the technology that is available today.

The more you use your digestive system, the less time it actually has to flush out the toxins and residual waste that is left in it, so in a way, by shortening your digestive system life, you are shortening your own.

Fiber is Actually a Non-Essential Nutrient

Fiber is not a requirement for living, but it can absolutely help with numerous types of issues in your digestive system.

Fiber May Be Doing More Harm than Good

There are very reputed doctors that would say that fibers ain’t that good for you, but opinions vary a lot on this matter, but I’ll explain the former.

A very logical theory exists that, as fiber make increases the volume of your stool, it actually hinders the passage of the stool on its way out.

There Are 2 Types of Fiber

The 2 types of fiber are:

Soluble: the name says it all, it blends with water in the gut and forms a gel like substance, usually associated with regular bowel movemtnts

Insoluble: it doesn’t blend will with the water in the gut and it’s more related with flushing waste of your intestines

Carbohydrates Are Non-Essential Nutrients

Yeah, you don’t need to eat carbohydrates to survive, because your body can make them for you.

Our Body Can Produce Carbohydrates

Your wonderful body can produce glucose(carbs) when it’s very low, it makes it through a process caled gluconeogenesis, but it only initiates this body function when glycogen supplies are tanked. In this process, the glucose is made with amino acids and glycerol. Amino acids are constituents of the protein in your body, glycerol is a molecule that binds fatty acids to create fat.

So, in a nutshell, your body can create glucose from protein and fat.

Some People Even Live with Very Few Carbs, it is Called the Ketogenic Diet

Your brain prefered source of energy is glucose, so being low on carbs will make you feel bad for a while, but you don’t need to fear, after a period of adaption, your body will actually run very smoothly on fat, and when it does, fat loss will come more easily, because it is already using fat for fuel, your body won’t lag by having to switch from carbs to fat everytime you stop eating for a significant period of time.

You Can Find Every Nutrient You Need in Animal Products

As long you are focusing on quality instead of quantity, you are good to go.

Eggs, Fish, Lean Meats Are Best

These are high quality sources of animal products, and they will be packed with a lot of nutrients, omega 3 from fish, a multitude of vitamins from eggs (when you stop to think about it, eggs have all that a new life needs to be born), lean meats will give you plenty of aminoacids without loads of saturated fat.

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