But they are - for whatever reason - noticeably common among young and inexperienced people who decide to avoid meat. And these people are paying attention to their diet - lots of attention.
I suspect the key word there is "diet", rather than "meat". Weight-loss diets are often deficient in nutrients of all kinds.
Not steak. Pork chops and - especially - roast/soup chicken.
Beef has iron. Poultry is good for protein, niacin, B vitamins and phosphorus. Pork, better than chicken for minerals, but also fatty. Only the B12 isn't provided in abundance by dark green vegetables, nuts, roots and fruit. Even if vegan, almond milk and pulses fill in quite a lot of the lacking nutrients.
[personal observation?]Of course not. I'm not a clinician, as noted, or any kind of formal researcher.
I thought, perhaps a parent, as you have such low opinion of teenagers' intellectual capacity. I know I did. The current model adolescents seem to be smarter than mine were - in some ways; I'm sure they're dumb in other ways.
Afaik, they can look stuff up on the internet as well as any adult. Of course, they might not
like green leafy vegetables, refuse to touch a peanut that's not coated in chocolate, and eat a potato only if it's sliced thin, fried in oil, smothered in salt and packed in foil. But if that's the case, they'll be malnourished even if they add a burger to their fries - they won't likely opt for the chicken soup.
If it's important to you, my long-standing explanation for the pattern had been that people with health problems were more likely to pay careful attention to their diets.
They
have to. The health problem comes first,
then the attention. I was barely aware of what I ate - don't like this, crave that, enjoy the other - when I was able to eat everything with impunity. It was only when food caused me pain that I began to choose carefully.
Only in recent years has the rise of food issues in teenagers of passing acquaintance refocused my eyes, beginning with the odd boom in nut allergies.
Don't lay that on vegetarians! Look to processed foods: the prevalence of peanut and coconut oil, corn syrup, emulsifiers, dyes, preservatives and immense quantities of surplus sugar and salt.
Plant sources of iron are largely inadequate for young women, in practice.
Where did you get this? The iron in bloody meat is more readily absorbed, but spinach, lentils, brown rice - all kinds of vegetarian foods - are just as rich.
B12 is of course readily available, and in combination with iron supplements (that combination being a very common need, for some reason), and there are industrial replacements for fish oil nutrients and the like, there's yeast powders for the Bs and gummies or capsules for the D and -
Or, not and. You'll overdose if you take both vitamins
and supplements - that's another health risk these days. Fortunately, most of the redundant vitamins we take just flush the money away harmlessly.
but this "diet" is looking a bit odd, don't you think? The word "hydroponic" floats into the mind - - - .
How so? Modern life is technological. Some country people are lucky enough to be able to forage (I have done) or grow fresh veg outdoors, but we will be increasing our intake of hydroponic, as well as synthetic foods, as the fields of California burn up and Kansas is blown away.
"Simple" - so only the stupid could be getting it wrong, at critical times of their growth.
Don't they have keepers? Cos, even if they don't starve, they'll walk under buses while texting.
At any rate, this is quite the digression from venison sausage.
That happens.
The main intersection might be economic - the expense of a good vegetarian diet, especially during the learning curve, would have been prohibitive to the average maker of deer sausage of my direct experience: venison was what replaced wiener-water soup, when T-bones were not in the budget.
They're not the same people. Most inner city youth may have guns, but no access to deer; the children of deer-stalkers wouldn't dare demand vegetables instead.
In the supermarket, beans, rice and cabbage are
considerably cheaper than the skinlessbonelesschickenbreast suburban housewives prefer.