Make no mistake about it — many strong indicators point to predominantly plant-based diets as the Holy Grail of Healthy Eating. No argument here.

Unfortunately, there’s a big gap between a top-of-the-pyramid IDEAL vs. the REALITY of how the masses typically pervert even healthy diets.

Here’s a video detailing an 18-year study of more than 8,000 people who called themselves vegan or vegetarian. https://youtu.be/tP_LIY8cjf4

Must admit, I’m not surprised at their findings. I have eyes to see, and most of the vegetarian/vegan foods I see sold at grocery stores are chemicalized, fake food junk. Way too much sugar and fructose, too.

We see this in the martial arts — All Black Belts Are Not Created Equal. Same is true here: All Vegans and Vegetarians (and their standards and practices) are not created equal.

If you are trying to make safer tractors — tractors that travel the same speed as before but have been improved and can now handle much steeper hills — well, you try to make the world a safer place and guess what happens when you “improved” the tractor? Tractor deaths go up! The number of deaths goes up (this phenomenon actually happened).

How is it they made a “safer” tractor that is less likely to tip over and kill or seriously injure the operator — yet tractor deaths and serious injuries actually increased?

Theory: Tractor operators think “Oh, this tractor is even safer” so they nonchalantly try to driver the tractor up much steeper hills than they ever would have attempted driving the older model tractors. And accident deaths go up.

So it goes (my theory at least) with vegans and vegetarians. A group that SHOULD be the healthy bunch on the planet …. yet the WHOLE doesn’t equal the sum of its parts. People THINK they’re eating so healthy, they derive a false sense of confidence because they fall under the “I’m a Vegan” and “I’m a vegetarian” umbrella. Consequently, they over-indulge in sugary foods packed with ingredients they can’t pronounce — foods a purist like me considers to be FAKE FOODS. I see this with my own two eyes … how many of my vegan and vegetarian friends don’t appear to be all that healthy … that they want to eat vegan donuts, pizza, ice cream, sausage, load up on tofu and soy, that sort of thing.

Peruse social media for vegan and vegetarian diet pics and see the same horrifying diet choices. Just a bunch of foods that no peak performance pursuer would advise eating.

Now, in fairness and as my good friend and plant-based aficionado Claude Abrams duly noted, all diets have masses of people perverting them and screwing them up. Agreed. I am really big on healthy high fat nutrition programs, but spend a few hours looking through pics of people’s KETO diet choices … definitely makes me cringe. 100 percent.

I think what distinguishes vegans and vegetarians from other dieters is that they tend to be very “Holier Than Thou” in their diet choices and really pride themselves on being smarter eaters than everyone else.

Turns out, if this study and My Eyes To See anecdotes and observations are correct, there are relatively few vegan and vegetarian food jedis out there.

Again, wonderful concepts and potentially life-saving diets — but usually perverted by overindulgence, over-confidence and lack of high quality standards.

WORTH NOTING: I’m probably 99 percent meat-free; seldom eat it and went two years or so of my life eating no meat at all. Personally not a big fan of meat — but not going to walk around shaming other people and telling them they should never eat it, either.

I strongly believe people should be predominantly eating plant-based … and the point of this post is to emphasize how FAR OFF THE MARK most people are even when they exercise GOOD INTENTIONS.

Show me your standards and I’ll show you your odds of success.