The overall portion of athletes are vegetarian or vegan is low, but the ones who are can still perform very well. This suggests that the difference is based, at least in part, on preference.
There could be a lot of reasons for that. I doubt the reason is that meat is the healthiest option for them; meat contains a lot of saturated fat, which athletes try to avoid too much of. It's more likely that meat is healthy enough for athletes who enjoy eating meat. This wouldn't mean they need meat, and they most certainly don't as there are a lot of successful vegan bodybuilders.
This. In conversations about vegetarianism, it's pretty common for people to give their distaste of fake meat as their primary reason for not reducing their meat consumption. I really wish that wasn't the default counter-argument, but there seem to be a lot of people who truly believe vegetarians need soymeat to survive.
I've noticed the vegan foods I enjoy most are the ones that aren't trying to be something else. They just use tasty vegan ingredients like potatoes or avocados. I think more people would consider reductarian diets if they were aware of this.
I've experienced this first-hand. Joining an existing project and being put on test-writing duty very quickly turned me into our team's chief advocate of writing testable code.
I have too, but sometimes I have to read other people's code, and I don't have any control over how difficult that is.