Woman trying to prove ‘vegans can do anything’ among four dead on Mount Everest

[hydrium]

Someone forgot veganism doesn't actually give you superpowers...or a moral high ground even if you are on top of the world.

[Reeve]

Well, when you put it like that, there's a silver lining I suppose :P

(Sorry for your loss, by the way)

Thanks. It's been 13 months now, so most of the time I'm OK these days.

[Xirrohon]

This thread is so weird to me. I dont get how so many people are just jumping on the vegan fact. Its not like any vegan has come in here and been like. Haha, if those 3 idiots ate more plants they would be alive right now! I mean, wtf?

[Deleted]

So, 2 out of 4.

Point is.

No one is saying ''meat eaters can do anything''

She said ''vegans can do anything''

That's the diffarance.

It's really weird that no one seems to get this.

[Nadiru]

Maybe if she'd had more iron in her blood she'd be alive today.

[Deleted]

Anybody who goes up Everest has a chance of dying, vegan or not. Get up high enough and you'll see frozen bodies. Kind of sad her death is being watered down by this headline acting she was being self-righteous just because she was vegan - it's not like she was trying to aggressively convert people.

[Xirrohon]

Point is.

No one is saying ''meat eaters can do anything''

She said ''vegans can do anything''

That's the diffarance.

It's really weird that no one seems to get this.

The thing is, Im sure even the people saying its diet related. Knows thats not the case or at least I hope so. Its hard to tell. Its more the of the hate thats bothering me. Just seems a bit extreme. Maybe Ive never actually met an extreme vegan. Almost all Ive met have been pretty calm, nice and very educated.

[Deleted]

Dumb headline, and people actually are using it as an argument against vegans. What about all the meat eaters that have died climbing mount Everest? Interesting how much cognitive dissonance is brought up when people argue against vegans.

They're not bragging saying

''vegans can't do this'' or ''meat eaters can do anything''

thats the difference.

[Noradin]

I've never gotten altitude sickness and I've never been vegan...... coincidence?

No of course not, you are living proof that altitude sickness causes vaganism... or something.

Why is this thread still open?
There is nothing to discuss here aside from the title being misleading.

[Deleted]

The thing is, Im sure even the people saying its diet related. Knows thats not the case or at least I hope so. Its hard to tell. Its more the of the hate thats bothering me. Just seems a bit extreme. Maybe Ive never actually met an extreme vegan. Almost all Ive met have been pretty calm, nice and very educated.

It partly has to do with diet, that is a fact. It is however not nearly as big of a deal as people make it out to be, because of the lack of red meat at the top of mount everest.

If this vegan wouldn't have proclaimed that ''vegans can do anything'' no one would have made big news about it.

Regarding extreme vegans,

Honestly, anyone who feels the need to tell you they are a vegan straight up, is an extreme vegan to me.
I don't tell everyone that I meet, that i enjoy. Should be the same both ways.

[Nadiru]

You say this like vegans don't get enough iron...

A vegan that eats everything that a vegan could eat won't have any dietary problems involving iron. Won't have any dietary problems whatsoever, in fact. But vegans that eat everything a vegan could eat are rarer than you'd think; people who pursue a picky diet like veganism tend to be picky about food based on flavor or texture in addition to being animal-sourced. Plus, eating all the things which a vegan needs to eat for a full vitamin compliment can be surprisingly expensive. Which is why the advice for starting vegans and vegetarians includes "take a multi-vitamin every day so you don't die." But that shit's hard to do when you're climbing Mount Everest.

[Deleted]

Self-righteousness would have been her using the climb to bash meat eaters. She didn't imply eating meat is inferior. She wanted to prove that vegans can be on par with meat eaters. She scaled several peaks beforehand in preparation and got pretty damn high up the tallest mountain in the world, pushed herself to the limit, and there are people criticising her simply because she was a vegan. Okay, armchair scientists.

[Ripster42]

I don’t think most of the posters here have been on a trip to one of the Himalayan’s country. I went with my wife on my last Nepal trekking trip. I was not confident about taking care of her, so I decided to go with an Australian tour organizer company. I did the previous two with friends and cousins, and we hired our own guides.

Acclimatization, supplements, proper diet and blood tests were all part of the package. That was just for a trekking trip. Imagine the steps that you have to take to climb Mt. Everest. So all the talk about lack of acclimatization, poor diet, etc. are pretty much wasted breath. Those organizers take all of those into accounts.

They almost would not let my wife and another hiker do the ascend to Gokyo Ri because their hemoglobin level was too low. Fortunately, bad weather forced us to postpone the ascend, and they were okay the next day and able to participate in the ascend.

Anecdotes don't mean much. Blood monitoring doesn't seem to have saved them, so I don't even know why you bother to bring it up. Just because you provide vegan food doesn't mean it's a diet that can sustain you at the limits of human tolerance. You're assuming that the organizers actually have any clue how a vegan diet affects people at high altitude. That's the rub, we don't, but the limited non-conclusive testing we have available doesn't seem to suggest that it's a good thing. The only thing we really have is a mechanism that exists that could lead to a logistics limited vegan diet not being high quality enough to sustain prolonged, intensive red blood cell production and some dead people. It's not really enough to draw a conclusion either way.

Edit: logistics limited vegan diet

[Fojos]

Humans are evolved to eat whatever the fk you want.

No, that's not how it works. Without supplements we need to eat a mix from both kingdoms.

[Nethlord]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...r-frostbitten/


Woman trying to prove ‘vegans can do anything’ among four dead on Mount Everest
By Travis M. Andrews
May 23 at 8:43 AM
For Maria Strydom and her husband, Robert Gropel, climbing Everest while adhering to a strict vegan diet was their “own personal Everest.”

The 34-year-old Strydom, a lecturer at Monash Business School in Melbourne, Australia, had a message she wanted to share with the world: Veganism is not a handicap...
“A very experienced guide in Alaska once told us that of all the things you can regret once you are on the mountain, you will never regret overtraining,” Strydom said before the climb. “It is also important to get experience spending long periods on a mountain.”

Everest, though, proved unscalable for them. The couple reached Camp 4, the final camp, at 3,000 feet below the summit, before both suffered from altitude sickness. It caused fluid to build up in Strydom’s brain, which killed her Saturday. Gropel, alive but fighting a fluid buildup in his lungs, had to be taken down the mountain by sled, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. He was taken to a hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal.




At least the first combat veteran amputee made it 10 years after the 1st amputee.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...mount-everest/

correlation does not mean causation.

Try harder....like a lot harder. This might be the stupidest thing I've read so far this month on MMOchamp.

[Hawthorne Wipes]

Likewise can be said of changing venison for tofu?

Sure. Inexperience and hard conditions are what kills you there. Not a diet.

[akris15]

Sure. Inexperience and hard conditions are what kills you there. Not a diet.

I also blame the mountaineer tourism industry that empowers people like this who want to prove something going to Everest when they have no business being there. While technically it's an "easier" climb compared to the other major peaks when you are comparing it to Annapurna, Matterhorn, Denali and the worst one of them all K2 anything looks tame. People don't realize there is a reason why it's called the Death Zone

[LilSaihah]

now we just need to send vegangains up there

No, that's not how it works. Without supplements we need to eat a mix from both kingdoms.

even w/ supplements there's no substitute for a balanced diet

[Kantalope]

correlation does not mean causation.

Try harder....like a lot harder. This might be the stupidest thing I've read so far this month on MMOchamp.

I'm pretty sure nobody actually believes that her being vegan is what killed her in this situation. It's called irony. Just like how you claim to have read the stupidest thing on MMOchamp this month, but then you post something even more stupid.

[Rasulis]

Acclimatization does matter. Thats the whole point of having 4 basecamps at differing altitudes. They stay there for a week or two to become acclimated.

Read the post. Acclimatization at that elevation is standard procedure, not only for climbing Mt. Everest, but even for something as simple a cross-country trekking.