Meat diets vs. vegetarianism

Read up on nutrition science, not anecdotes. This is all BS!!!  For many many decades, doctors have been telling us we need more fiber and less saturated fat and animal protein in our diets.  What you are plugging is F**KING DANGEROUS!

HEART DISEASE
CANCER
STROKES
DIABETES
BOWEL DISORDERS 
ETC. ETC. ETC.



If you really believe in this BS, by all means try it  but you have no right to expect the medical profession to bail you out when things go wrong!!!

Which is one reason I included an (yes, anecdotal) example of diabetes being cured on the carnivore diet.

So, I’ll get back with a better, perhaps more detailed answer tomorrow probably. But for now, and I don’t mean this in any way rudely, Brian, but you’re seriously behind if you still think saturated fat is bad and that meat causes diabetes. I believe - know - the same to be true of heart disease and cancer, as well, but I can understand someone still believing what remains of the old establishment thought on those. 

For now, without including new studies - which I’ll supply later - I’ll just suggest mainly that you look into Weston Price. When you google him, add the word “teeth” in there and peruse the images that come up. What you’ll see, incredibly, are a bunch of people whose dental arches have not shrunk like ours; in other words, their teeth fit perfectly within their mouths and aren’t all jumbled up like modern man’s are. We’re no more meant to have absurd looking teething than dogs or sharks are. He found that chronic disease perfectly correlated with dental problems. So with all of those indigenous people from all over the world with the straight teeth, he found that they had no chronic disease whatsoever. None. He meticulously examined what each of these groups ate. Every group at eight much meat. One ate only meat! Another ate only meat for half the year, and that included tons of seal blubber - FAT! All groups not only ate animals, they ate every part: all organs and made broth from the bones. Some groups were known to throw the muscle meat out to their dogs. Muscle meat is all we eat now days, and they knew it was the least nutritious. Also, every group ate some animal parts raw!

So, the question is, how come all these groups, including the carnivorous, 100% meat group, the Maasai, were completely chronic disease free? All groups should’ve been riddled with cancer of every sort and boatloads of heart problems. Oh, and diabetes, too, right? None. There was none at all. 

So, the shrinking of the dental arch and all else that goes with that, Price called degeneration. He found a group of indigenous vegetarians in india, I believe, but they displayed degeneration like we do. And it’s worth bearing in mind that all of the healthy groups - which were many - that he looked at almost certainly ate much more meat than we do . . . yet they’re the ones disease free. 

I’ll supply some studies, modern day, tonight probably, but there’s basically no getting around the Weston Price stuff. By my standards, it’s unarguable. 

Another detailed example of this that includes more recent medical confirmation is in the book I linked to for Ninshub, titled, “The Fat Of The Land.” He ate only meat and eggs for years and years . . . And for one year under medical supervision. 

The things that cause disease are things we added into the diet over the last 12,000 years: mainly empty grains (seeds), but veggies are not optimal. Fruit is certainly more edible, because the plant wants you to eat it; it doesn’t have acid or lectins or any of that scary stuff.  That’s why almost all plants need to be cooked (except fruit): to get the oxylates and lectins and such out. Pretty much all meat can and be eaten raw, though I suppose that’s a much bigger subject for another post.

One more comment, probably the wildest part of your assumption about meat is that it’s not good for digestion. It’s without doubt the absolute best thing for your digestion. If you’re passing gas, that’s how you know your body is digesting something optimally, or well at all  . . . Or in the case of things like corn and a few other things, they’re often shat out in identical form to what they were going in. Meat causes absolutely no hasn’t whatsoever, (nor constipation or diarrhea). Everyone on carnivore, including myself, knows and will attest to this. 

Again, I’ll try to add some more info to this tonight or tomorrow.

Read up on nutrition science, not anecdotes. This is all BS!!!  For many many decades, doctors have been telling us we need more fiber and less saturated fat and animal protein in our diets.  What you are plugging is F**KING DANGEROUS!

HEART DISEASE
CANCER
STROKES
DIABETES
BOWEL DISORDERS 
ETC. ETC. ETC.



If you really believe in this BS, by all means try it  but you have no right to expect the medical profession to bail you out when things go wrong!!!

One more quick item: as outrageous as it is, almost all of the “studies” that are referenced to malign meat were done by something along the lines of asking if a person ate meat on x days. So, as I understand it, they’re practically never controlling for other (obvious) variables. A person can eat fast food so that there’s also also a big ol’ bun and a pile of fries cooked in vegetable oil! Yet the damage is ascribed to meat!

The studies are by and large pathetic . . . 

Which helps explain why so many new studies show the exact opposite of what we were told.

Read up on nutrition science, not anecdotes. This is all BS!!!  For many many decades, doctors have been telling us we need more fiber and less saturated fat and animal protein in our diets.  What you are plugging is F**KING DANGEROUS!

HEART DISEASE
CANCER
STROKES
DIABETES
BOWEL DISORDERS 
ETC. ETC. ETC.



If you really believe in this BS, by all means try it  but you have no right to expect the medical profession to bail you out when things go wrong!!!

Have a read of the following, Brian. You may be surprised at how incorrect you are. This is from the famous Weston A. Price Foundation:

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topi...tarianism/

• Myth #1: Meat consumption contributes to famine and depletes the Earth’s natural resources.
  
• Myth #2: Vitamin B12 can be obtained from plant sources.
  
• Myth #3: Our needs for vitamin D can be met by sunlight.
  
• Myth #4: The body’s needs for vitamin A can be entirely obtained from plant foods.
  
• Myth #5: Meat-eating causes osteoporosis, kidney disease, heart disease, and cancer.
  
• Myth #6: Saturated fats and dietary cholesterol cause heart disease, atherosclerosis, and/or cancer, and low-fat, low-cholesterol diets are healthier for people.
  
• Myth #7: Vegetarians live longer and have more energy and endurance than meat-eaters.
  
• Myth #8: The “cave man” diet was low-fat and/or vegetarian. Humans evolved as vegetarians.
  
• Myth #9: Meat and saturated fat consumption have increased in the 20th century, with a corresponding increase in heart disease and cancer.
  
• Myth #10: Soy products are adequate substitutes for meat and dairy products.
  
• Myth #11: The human body is not designed for meat consumption.
  
• Myth #12: Eating animal flesh causes violent, aggressive behavior in humans.
  
• Myth #13: Animal products contain numerous, harmful toxins.
  
• Myth #14: Eating meat or animal products is less “spiritual” than eating only plant foods.
  
• Myth #15: Eating animal foods is inhumane.
  

Diabetes is caused by too much sugar, namely sucrose and fructose. Glucose, however, has not been implicated in diabetes.
Wheat has been a known major contributor to many gut disorders.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

A brilliant talk by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology. He explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin.

This guy is extremely knowledgeable and knows his stuff about fat and sugar. During the first phase of the lecture, he explains how fat is not the bad guy, but rather, sugar, and how politics and the sugar and soft drink industries have conspired to blame fat instead of sugar. Fat became the scapegoat for all of sugar's evils.

If you want to skip past the political and corporate skullduggery part of the lecture, to the biochemistry portion of the lecture:

https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=2540

Have a read of the following, Brian. You may be surprised at how incorrect you are. This is from the famous Weston A. Price Foundation:

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topi...tarianism/

Diabetes is caused by too much sugar, namely sucrose and fructose. Glucose, however, has not been implicated in diabetes.
Wheat has been a known major contributor to many gut disorders.

Did you spend any time searching the veracity of this foundations claims?

I should hope not glucose as a cause for diabetes. Humans died if that don't have a certain amount of that simplest of carbohydrate. It is a necessary carbohydrate and it's the only carbohydrate that the brain can use.

Read up on nutrition science, not anecdotes. This is all BS!!!  For many many decades, doctors have been telling us we need more fiber and less saturated fat and animal protein in our diets.  What you are plugging is F**KING DANGEROUS!

HEART DISEASE
CANCER
STROKES
DIABETES
BOWEL DISORDERS 
ETC. ETC. ETC.



If you really believe in this BS, by all means try it  but you have no right to expect the medical profession to bail you out when things go wrong!!!

Here’s a nice summary of the saturated fat (and cholesterol) garbage. I’m curious what you have to say about this.

[Laird]

I write the above because it seems relevant to this study I heard about, "Field Deaths In Agriculture," written this May, which says that based on conservative estimates, 7.3 billion animals are killed yearly due to growing plants . . . agriculture. And no, that doesn't include insects.

You don't seem to have read the study all that carefully. The authors state (emphasis mine) that they've "offered the 7.3 billion number as though it’s a hedge. Averaging Davis and Archer seems like a way to be conservative". They go on to say, though, that, as they'll argue, they "haven’t hedged nearly enough" and that "[t]here are several reasons to question the accuracy of these calculations". Most importantly, they go on to conclude that "the estimate should be reduced: 7.3 billion is clearly too high".

So, no, Reece, 7.3 billion is not a "conservative" estimate. It's an upper limit - a very upper limit.

The authors go on to say that "we should have a fairly low level of confidence in whatever number we propose. There are too many reasons to be skeptical about generalizing from the available data, which is obviously quite limited in its own right". But more importantly, they make it clear that "we need to recognize that the 7.3 billion estimate rests on a number of philosophical assumptions, which are quite controversial".

The most relevant philosophical assumption to my mind is "the moral significance of predation. It turns out that many of the deaths associated with plant agriculture are not directly caused by machinery, poisons, or other direct human interventions. In the majority of cases, rather, what happens is that human activity exposes animals to predators, and those predators are the ones directly responsible for the deaths".

Why do I find this most relevant? Because those predators are going to find their meals wherever they can anyway, and the fact that they find them (more) easily due to exposure of prey via agricultural machinery does not make humans particularly culpable for the deaths of those prey. We can control what we eat; we can't control what obligate carnivores eat - they're going to eat something anyway.

Naive question but: aren't you going to be missing out on vitamins, other important nutrients, etc., if you only eat meat?

Ridiculous, Ian. It's only vegans who miss out on vitamins and other important nutrients.

More seriously: yes, of course - and, not that you need to confirm so obvious a fact, it is elementary to confirm it via any of the various web apps that allow you to check the nutrient profiles of different foods; web apps such as https://nutritiondata.self.com/ and https://cronometer.com/ to name but two.

Denise Minger addressed pretty much everything Campbell said, and in my opinion, ripped him a new one . . . in a well-meaning, humorous way.

He responded to her, and she responded back. But then he never responded again.

For those who are interested, here are both of T. Colin Campbell's responses to Denise Minger:

1. http://tynan.com/chinastudyresponse
   
2. http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/07/ch...inger.html
   

Are these responses totally convincing? It's hard to judge, and they might not totally seem to be, but for me, the most important point is that despite it being the (publisher-mandated) title of his book, the China Study is only a small part of the overall evidence upon which he bases his conclusion that a plant-based diet is optimal for health. And no, I didn't like the paternalism of his reference to Denise as a "young girl", but then, I didn't like her imputations of his purported academic misconduct either.

But the main thing that I find so disingenuous about the article is that it only tries to brush away what's going on with the Maasai and Inuit

Well, no, it doesn't. It reports of the Masai that (emphasis mine): "Dr. Mann, who published some of the early research, did an autopsy study of 50 Masai men and found that they had extensive atherosclerosis. They had disease (coronary intimal thickening) on par with older American men". Disease on par with older American men sounds to me like finding something "going on" with the Masai pretty much in line with expectations, rather than something being "brushed away".

It also reports of the Inuit that (footnotes elided; emphasis mine): "in 1940 the “father of epidemiology” in Greenland, Bertelsen, noted heart disease to be quite common, perhaps even more interesting given the young age of the population. He based this on clinical experience and medical officer reports going back for many decades. All told, the 2003 paper found “the hypothesis that mortality from ischemic heart disease is low among the Inuit compared with western populations insufficiently founded.” Further, “…a general statement that mortality from cardiovascular disease is high among the Inuit seems more warranted than the opposite.”" Not much "brushing away" there either.

Every group that Weston Price looked at basically shows something that completely and totally flies in the face of Campbell's shoddy plant-based argument.

So, did he look at the Okinawans? "Residents of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan, are known for their long average life expectancy, high numbers of centenarians, and accompanying low risk of age-associated diseases".. and guess what? Their traditional diet is high in vegetables, high in legumes (mostly soy), moderate in fish, and low in meat/dairy consumption: in particular, it is 85% carbohydrate-based (mostly sweet potato). OK, so, it's not completely vegan, but then show me an even near-completely meat-eating society studied by Weston Price with a longevity and lack of age-associated disease comparable with the Okinawans...

there are no essential carbs.

There are no essential taxi-cabs either, so have fun walking twenty kilometres home on your next night out because you refuse non-essential yet readily-available sources of energy.

And though it may be anecdotal, the number of people reporting healing from an insane amount of ailments on the carnivore diet defies belief.

Maybe you can keep track of them and give us an update on their health a few years down the track - let us know how many of them have avoided cardiovascular incidents.

Basically, no one knows for sure, but more people appear to be much healthier on only meat than on almost anything else

The key word there being "appear", and the missing words being "to me" and "for now".

An excellent FAQ by the Weston A. Price Foundation titled Myths & Truths About Vegetarianism:

Ah, yes. The author who condemns as "myths" that "meat-eating causes osteoporosis, kidney disease, heart disease, and cancer" and that "saturated fats and dietary cholesterol cause heart disease, atherosclerosis, and/or cancer, and low-fat, low-cholesterol diets are healthier for people", and then... dies of a stroke before the age of forty.

Funny also to note about Dr Robert Atkins of the "Atkins Diet" that "a medical report issued by the New York medical examiner's office a year after his death showed that Atkins had a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension" (from Wikipedia; emphasis mine).

But no fair - those are just anecdotes.

True... so, peruse the last few pages of this thread and tell me what you find...

And those two are leaders of the "meat and dairy are good and healthy" brigade.

In response to the rest of the article, I quote “Brandolini’s Law”: “The amount of energy needed to refute [misinformation] is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

I am not devoting that energy to the misinformation in that article - misinformation which, by the way, includes in many (but not all) cases the idea that any given "myth" is either (1) used by informed vegans to justify veganism and/or (2) taken seriously by informed vegans.

Have a read of the following, Brian. You may be surprised at how incorrect you are. This is from the famous Weston A. Price Foundation:

https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topi...tarianism/

Because the more you spam it, the truer it becomes?

Here’s a nice summary of the saturated fat (and cholesterol) garbage. I’m curious what you have to say about this.

Although your question was directed to Brian, I'll answer it:

Really? At about a minute in it became obvious that the guy was obliviously repeating common misconceptions (deliberate lies?) about Ancel Keys. No need to watch further. He obviously has no idea what he's talking about. Please, inform yourself.

Stan Woolley, you actually "liked" that? For shame, man, for shame.

Stan Woolley, you actually "liked" that? For shame, man, for shame.

Sorry Uncle Laird. 



I have been liking David’s posts on Skeptiko too. Eithne is of the same opinion as David and I am probably just liking for survivals sake! It’s not personal. 

[Laird]

It's OK, nothing personal taken; I know how easy it is to get caught up in disinfo... just - even if Eithne can't help it - don't yourself drink the cruel-aid!

You don't seem to have read the study all that carefully. The authors state (emphasis mine) that they've "offered the 7.3 billion number as though it’s a hedge. Averaging Davis and Archer seems like a way to be conservative". They go on to say, though, that, as they'll argue, they "haven’t hedged nearly enough" and that "[t]here are several reasons to question the accuracy of these calculations". Most importantly, they go on to conclude that "the estimate should be reduced: 7.3 billion is clearly too high".

So, no, Reece, 7.3 billion is not a "conservative" estimate. It's an upper limit - a very upper limit.

The authors go on to say that "we should have a fairly low level of confidence in whatever number we propose. There are too many reasons to be skeptical about generalizing from the available data, which is obviously quite limited in its own right". But more importantly, they make it clear that "we need to recognize that the 7.3 billion estimate rests on a number of philosophical assumptions, which are quite controversial".

The most relevant philosophical assumption to my mind is "the moral significance of predation. It turns out that many of the deaths associated with plant agriculture are not directly caused by machinery, poisons, or other direct human interventions. In the majority of cases, rather, what happens is that human activity exposes animals to predators, and those predators are the ones directly responsible for the deaths".

Why do I find this most relevant? Because those predators are going to find their meals wherever they can anyway, and the fact that they find them (more) easily due to exposure of prey via agricultural machinery does not make humans particularly culpable for the deaths of those prey. We can control what we eat; we can't control what obligate carnivores eat - they're going to eat something anyway.


Ridiculous, Ian. It's only vegans who miss out on vitamins and other important nutrients.

More seriously: yes, of course - and, not that you need to confirm so obvious a fact, but it is elementary to confirm it via any of the various web apps that allow you to check the nutrient profiles of different foods; web apps such as https://nutritiondata.self.com/ and https://cronometer.com/ to name but two.


For those who are interested, here are both of T. Colin Campbell's responses to Denise Minger:

1. http://tynan.com/chinastudyresponse
   
2. http://www.vegsource.com/news/2010/07/ch...inger.html
   

Are these responses totally convincing? It's hard to judge, and they might not totally seem to be, but for me, the most important point is that despite it being the (publisher-mandated) title of his book, the China Study is only a small part of the overall evidence upon which he bases his conclusion that a plant-based diet is optimal for health. And no, I didn't like the paternalism of his reference to Denise as a "young girl", but then, I didn't like either her imputations of his purported academic misconduct either.


Well, no, it doesn't. It reports of the Masai that (emphasis mine): "Dr. Mann, who published some of the early research, did an autopsy study of 50 Masai men and found that they had extensive atherosclerosis. They had disease (coronary intimal thickening) on par with older American men". Disease on par with older American men sounds to me like finding something "going on" with the Masai pretty much in line with expectations, rather than something being "brushed away".

It also reports of the Inuit that (footnotes elided; emphasis mine): "in 1940 the “father of epidemiology” in Greenland, Bertelsen, noted heart disease to be quite common, perhaps even more interesting given the young age of the population. He based this on clinical experience and medical officer reports going back for many decades. All told, the 2003 paper found “the hypothesis that mortality from ischemic heart disease is low among the Inuit compared with western populations insufficiently founded.” Further, “…a general statement that mortality from cardiovascular disease is high among the Inuit seems more warranted than the opposite.”" Not much "brushing away" there either.


So, did he look at the Okinawans? "Residents of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan, are known for their long average life expectancy, high numbers of centenarians, and accompanying low risk of age-associated diseases".. and guess what? Their traditional diet is high in vegetables, high in legumes (mostly soy), moderate in fish, and low in meat/dairy consumption: in particular, it is 85% carbohydrate-based (mostly sweet potato). OK, so, it's not completely vegan, but then show me a completely meat-eating society studied by Weston Price with a longevity and lack of age-associated disease comparable with the Okinawans...


There are no essential taxi-cabs either, so have fun walking twenty kilometres home on your next night out because you refuse non-essential yet readily-available sources of energy.


Maybe you can keep track of them and give us an update on their health a few years down the track - let us know how many of them have avoided cardiovascular incidents.


The key word there being "appear", and the missing words being "to me" and "for now".


Ah, yes. The author who condemns as "myths" that "meat-eating causes osteoporosis, kidney disease, heart disease, and cancer" and that "saturated fats and dietary cholesterol cause heart disease, atherosclerosis, and/or cancer, and low-fat, low-cholesterol diets are healthier for people", and then... dies of a stroke before the age of forty.

Funny also to note about Dr Robert Atkins of the "Atkins Diet" that "a medical report issued by the New York medical examiner's office a year after his death showed that Atkins had a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension" (emphasis mine).

But no fair - those are just anecdotes.

True... so, peruse the last few pages of this thread and tell me what you find...

And those two are leaders of the "meat and dairy are good and healthy" brigade by the way.

In response to the rest of the article, I quote “Brandolini’s Law”: “The amount of energy needed to refute [misinformation] is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”

I am not devoting that energy to the misinformation in that article - misinformation which, by the way, includes in many (but not all) cases the idea that any given "myth" is either (1) used by informed vegans to justify veganism and/or (2) taken seriously by informed vegans.


Because the more you spam it, the truer it becomes?


Although your question was directed to Brian, I'll answer it:

Really? At about a minute in it became obvious that the guy was obliviously repeating common misconceptions (deliberate lies?) about Ancel Keys. No need to watch further. He obviously has no idea what he's talking about. Please, inform yourself.

Stan Woolley, you actually "liked" that? For shame, man, for shame.

Although I'm much further onto the meat side of this debate... good post! I'm enjoying the debate.

Based on what I know of biology, a typical healthy human has the ability to adapt to a wide range of diets and that is what helped us rise to the top of the food pyramid on spaceship Earth. It could be that it doesn't take millions of years to biologically adapt to different diets, but that all that is need is a microbiome switch, but even that I'm not sure is totally solid science yet.

My personal best guess is that people who adopt an extremely strict elimination diet - either carnivore or raw vegan - and find that chronic diseases disappear have something more going on with their bodies that hasn't been identified (e.g. Lyme disease, or genetic mutation, or perhaps allergies derived from vaccinations, or reactions to and long-term damage from harmful chemicals used in factory farming that cause leaky-gut, etc.) I believe a normal average person not exposed to pathogens or harmful chemicals or injected with allergens, should be able to tolerate and thrive on a very wide variety of foods if they keep sugar/alcohol intake to a minimum, eat local organic foods, and don't artificially mess with macro-nutrients (e.g. don't eat "low-fat" things, eat whole things).

It is frustrating to me that this is such a divisive and contentious issue... I think it is so because so many things are wrapped up in it:

• Some vegans are ideologically opposed to meat based on empathy for animals which is completely understandable
  
• Many omnivores and carnivores are opposed to factory farming for the same reason - empathy for animals
  
• If you don't factory farm but raise crops and animals ethically the costs go way up so all the poorer people will still buy the cheap unhealthy stuff further steepening the hierarchy and wealth/health gap
  
• Some vegans are ideologically opposed to meat because of the theory (which they consider indisputable fact) that ranching contributes to global warming and harms the environment
  
• Some vegans are ideologically opposed to meat because raising plants requires less energy and space and so would seem to be the way to go for more sustainable provision for an expanding human population
  
• Some non-vegans react to these ideologies based on their own opposing right-leaning ideologies
  
• Agriculture (both farming and ranching) is big business and wields extreme power in politics and puts out propaganda supporting its interests (The food pyramid for example is clearly not based on scientific studies, but is business oriented propaganda)
  
• Food and Restaurant industries are also big business putting out propaganda and marketing
  
• There is a globalist conspiratorial element to consider (e.g. Holdren's Ecoscience, or the UN's Agenda 21) that has designs to reduce world population
  
• Big industries like Monsanto and big Pharma have interests and put out self-supporting propaganda
  
• People involved in agriculture and ranching have self-interest, get emotionally invested in their occupation, and sor are personally invested in promoting what they produce
  
• Governments subsidize certain types of agriculture for various reasons - a strategic food reserve, ethanol from corn, etc
  
• Some vegans experience great health benefits (at least initially)
  
• Some Carnivores experience great health benefits (at least initially)
  
• Getting relief from long-term health issues by adopting a diet is sort of like getting saved - it creates a devotee of an almost religious nature
  
• Veganism is trendy right now... or has been for the last decade or so, and this might be partly due to leftists being trendy and leftists ostensibly care more about the environment. So there is peer pressure to go closer to vegan.
  
• The Carnivore diet is recently receiving a huge boost from the alternative landscape of the internet - the intellectual dark web (Jordan Peterson and his daughter) - the alt-right - and those who don't believe ranching is causing global warming, etc...
  
• Cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease, but sugar has not been implicated (by the mainstream) when sugar is perhaps the biggest culprit in that and many other diseases
  I'm sure there's more issues wrapped up in this that I'm not thinking of at the moment.