How? On a whole food, plant based, diet it's easy to get EVERYTHING with the exceptions of B12 and vitamin D which can easily be supplemented either as pill or by fortifying foods (fortified nutritional yeast, fortified grains).

Since going plant based I get far more vitamins/minerals/micronutrients than I EVER did eating a largely meat-based diet.

Go take everything you'd eat in a day and plug it into Cronometer (or a typical standard american diet) . Then take a whole food plant based diet that comes close to (or does) hit the daily dozen [1] with the kcals within 5% of your typical diet and look at the differences.

Purely subjectively I feel incredibly better eating plant based. Last year I was eating 1-1.5lbs of meat a day and a bunch of processed foods as a strength athlete with vit a in limited quantities from the occasional organ meat and some vitmain c from the occasional sweet pepper with minimal fiber. Now I'm eating a fraction of the protein I was (yet my strength keeps going up, my recovery is far better and DOMS severity is way down).

Yesterday in 2086 kcals I had:

- 182% of my daily fiber (pre-plant based I'd hit 20-30% and poop something the consistency of modelling clay)

- 71% calcium (which I further supplement with a pill)

- 0% b12 (which I supplement via pill once a week)

- 100% folate

- 349% vitamin A

- 48% B1, 76% B2, 49% B3, 55% B5, 268% B6

- 466% vitamin C

- 0% D (which I get daily in my calcium supplement)

- 36% Vitamin e

- 157% Vitamin k

- 68% copper

- 261% iron

- 62% magnesium (which I supplement 100% RDA at sleep anyway because it helps me fall asleep fast)

- 87% manganese

- 41% phosphorous

- 201% potassium (before plant based I'd rarely hit 100%)

- 13% selenium (was travelling last weekend so didn't get to the health food store to buy more brazil nuts)

- 69% sodium (pre-plant based I would hit several hundred % to over 1000% daily)

- 19% zinc

- 108% protein (77.7g with via cystine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine and valine)

I ate 65g mixed greens, 536g bananas, 11g of carrots, 28g of dates, 1g of turmeric, a great value 'keep it green fruit & vegetable smoothie' pack I found in the bottom of the chest freezer, 544g of yellow potatoes, a single serving bag of quest protein chips I had leftover from going pre-whole food, 1 g ground cinnamon, 432g of black beans, 285g of drained sweet corn, 174g of sweet peppers.

On a typical weekday pre-plant based I'd have had 1lb of ground chicken, a #2 from McDonalds for breakfast (sausage egg cheese mcmuffin with a hash brown and a diet coke), about a half pound of chicken breast, 40-60g of protein powder and a pouch of Uncle Ben's microwave rice or some microwavable macaroni and cheese.

Using the rice pouch in the former meat-heavy diet instead of mac, and 40g of protein powder, I was getting:

2141 kcals

- 18% fiber (6.9g)

- 21% calcium

- 138% b12

- 12% folate

- 21% vitamin A

- 72% B1, 106% B2, 393% B3, 147% B5, 291% B6

- 6% vitamin C

- 2% D

- 20% Vitamin e

- 4% Vitamin k

- 51% copper

- 180% iron

- 40% magnesium (which I supplement 100% RDA at sleep anyway because it helps me fall asleep fast)

- 8% manganese

- 193% phosphorous

- 96% potassium (before plant based I'd rarely hit 50%)

- 185% selenium

- 140% sodium before hot sauce on the rice and ground chicken

- 88% zinc

Now, in which scenario do you think I'm getting better nutrition...

[1] https://nutritionfacts.org/daily-dozen-challenge/