Thanks for the compliment Chris!

Saying that a higher protein intake may be beneficial for certain groups of people doesn't deviate from the scientific consensus. But the recommendation in your article that all vegans should aim for 1.2–1.6 g/kg/day does.

Regarding the information on our website, some of the pages haven't been updated for a few years due to a shortage of volunteers, including the one about pregnancy (which I don't feel qualified to comment on here any further, as I'm not a dietician). As for zinc, our national health authority doesn't mention phytates and only says that zinc deficiency is rare in the Netherlands. While our article does mention phytates, I agree with you that we should also mention the EFSA's recommendation more explicitly. I'll discuss that with the team.

I agree that informal verbal advice isn't the only problem. It's just that I've noticed that many vegan advocates tend to casually say that science has proven that you can be perfectly healthy on a vegan diet, without mentioning that those studies don't refer to just any vegan diet, but specifically to a well-planned vegan diet. And most people's diets aren't well planned.

I'm a volunteer on the nutrition team of the Dutch vegan association (NVV), and while I don't know much about the nutrition recommendations of vegan organizations in other countries, I can tell you how we do it. (Though keep in mind that I'm not an official representative of the NVV, so this should be seen as a statement from me personally, not on behalf of the NVV).

One of our principles at the NVV is that we aim to keep our nutrition recommendations as close as possible to the scientific consensus, as reflected in the recommendations of our national health authority. An important reason for that is credibility: deviating from the scientific consensus would make us less credible to both the policymakers we try to influence, as well as the regular people we want to convince to go vegan.

So for protein intake, for instance, the NVV takes the standard advice of 0.8g per kg of bodyweight, multiplied by 1.3 to compensate for the lower digestibility, while acknowledging that athletes and people recovering from illness may benefit from higher intakes. Both the 0.8g and the 1.3x multiplier for vegans are taken directly from the recommendations of the Dutch health authority (Gezondheidsraad), for the reasons stated above.

My issue with some of the things proposed in your narratives is that they deviate from the scientific consensus. While I acknowledge that the scientific consensus can be a bit slow to respond to new insights at times, that same slowness also prevents it from jumping the gun based on limited evidence. It is understandable that you as an individual read a new study and immediately want to make changes to your diet and/or supplements (I've done that multiple times myself), but it is not prudent to do that as a movement.

So overall I think that, at least for our organization, the nutrition recommendations are good. I think the main problem is that a lot of vegans either don't read all of our recommendations, or only read them briefly when they first decide to go vegan and later forget about some of them. Therefore, I think it is important for all vegan organizations to not just educate people about nutrition when they're starting out, but also to remind them periodically about possible gaps in their diets (in a non-condescending way). One way to do that, for example, could be by occasionally posting articles along the lines of ''New study show that over 30% of all vegans are deficient in nutrient X, are you one them?''

A problem that the NVV has though, which probably also applies to some other vegan organizations, is that we have limited resources and our nutrition team relies entirely on volunteers. Therefore, we cannot do as much to educate people on nutrition as we would like. So if anyone reading this happens to speak Dutch and likes to write about nutrition, you're more than welcome to join our team :)

Good article. I agree with pretty much everything you write in the first part. Many vegans do not take the risk of nutrient deficiencies seriously enough, and that is a big risk to the long-term growth of our movement. I do think it is mostly an issue with verbal advice (''just take some B12 and you'll be fine''), as any well-designed vegan challenge or beginners guide will cover nutrition more in-depth.

A few comments on the nutrition review:

1. You state: ''vegans often fall short of the intakes recommended by nutrition authorities for several nutrients''. This is true, and definitely a problem, but the same thing also applies to omnivores (the data below is from the Netherlands, but it will likely be similar in many other European countries):

''Representative dietary intake data from the Netherlands revealed that a large part of the population has inadequate intakes of calcium, iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E and folate. Population sub-groups especially at risk of inadequate intakes were adolescents and women.'' (Ref: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-023-03219-4).

2. An important nutrient you didn't mention is iron. Iron deficiency is very common in young women due to blood loss from their menstruation, and the risk is even higher in vegans. A lot of women who quit veganism citing health reasons say they had very little energy on a vegan diet, and it improved when they started eating meat again. That is very likely due to iron deficiency, which they could have easily fixed through a supplement.

3. Iodine deficiency is also a risk worth paying attention to. Unless vegans regularly eat seaweed, or use salt with a lot of added iodine, they are likely to be deficient and should consider supplementing. (Note: despite what many people believe, using standard iodized kitchen salt is usually not sufficient to prevent deficiency, as it often contains just 20 - 25mcg of iodine per gram. This means you would need 6 - 7.5g daily to reach the RDA for iodine, which would put you above the tolerable upper limit for sodium intake).

4. You mention EPA/DHA supplements as something every vegan should take. However, there isn't really a scientific consensus on that. According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (2025 position statement):

''EPA and DHA can be obtained through vegan algal supplements if desired or recommended by a nutrition and dietetics practitioner, although this may not be a requirement for health or disease prevention.95,96,99,101,102,108,110 New methodology involving isotope studies suggest that the rate of ALA conversion may be sufficient to maintain adequate DHA levels through plant-sourced ALA consumption alone,90,111-114 although more research is warranted.

Until consistent evidence from intervention trials can establish daily dosages for EPA/DHA in vegetarians and vegans, advice for healthy adults should focus on sufficient and regular intakes of ALA-rich foods, which also provide an array of health-promoting phytonutrients and fiber.110'' (Ref: https://www.jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(25)00830-5/fulltext)