Vegetarianism and veganism

Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast on his meat-only diet and how it cured all his ills (and his daughter's):

Are you trolling???  

try this debunk


and his LDL cholesterol is sky high!



EDIT: sorry, the last video was about somebody different - my mistake!

[Laird]

Nice one, Brian.

Some analysis of my own (with borrowings from others, including points summarised from the videos you shared):

First: What does the Rogan/Peterson video prove, or at least what was it intended to prove in the context of being posted in a vegan advocacy thread?

Let's assume the most adversarial intent, and put it in context.

The context is that not only do many people live happy and healthy lives as vegans, but significant numbers of people claim to both feel better and have become objectively healthier after going vegan, and, too, significant numbers of high-performance athletes are vegans. At the least (for vegan advocacy), then, we can say that veganism can be not only healthy but beneficial and empowering, perhaps even optimal, for at least some people.

In that context, the worst I can see that this video might prove is that a vegan diet is not healthy for all people, that it causes those people extreme suffering and ill health, and that only the opposite of a vegan diet can cure those people as well as provide them with optimal health - physically, psychologically, and cognitively. It might then be asserted that it follows from this that those people ought to reject a vegan diet and adhere to its opposite.

A vegan advocate can challenge either the premise - the empirical health claim - or the (potentially asserted) conclusion.

Perhaps most people would find an effective challenge to the empirical health claim most convincing, so let's start with that.

In the video, "VEGAN RESPONSE: Did Jordan Peterson's Carnivore Diet Cure His Depression? (JOE ROGAN PODCAST)???", GojiMan, who claims to be studying nutrition academically, makes the case that Jordan's health problems were caused by issues with his gut flora - a condition that he himself claims to have experienced, including similar symptoms to Jordan, and been cured from - and that eliminating fruit and vegetables is not an ultimate solution to such a condition but only minimises the various associated problems such as inflammation:



Is he right? He could be, but at the least this video shows that there are other possibilities to consider than that only a carnivorous diet can effectively cure some people's ill health.

Ryan from Happy Healthy Vegan in the video shared by Brian [edit: and Mic the Vegan in the second video shared by Brian, which I've just seen now] make some other potentially persuasive points here, namely that:

1. A purely carnivorous diet is, on a mainstream view of nutrition, badly deficient in many nutrients. It is possible - likely even - that even if in the short term Jordan feels healthier, he is causing himself long-term health problems due to these deficiencies, at least without supplements.
   
2. A purely carnivorous diet is likely to cause other health problems such as high cholesterol, diabetes, and low testosterone, as evidenced by Shawn Baker's blood test.
   
3. A purely carnivorous diet is much more environmentally damaging than a vegan diet.
   
4. The claim that certain populations, such as the Inuit, lived healthily from near-total carnivorous diets is questionable given their apparently short lifespans and the frequency with which they experienced heart problems. I have not looked into this question closely enough to have formed a confident personal opinion on it - empirical stuff like this is, I think, murky - but from my perspective it's at least a plausible assessment.
   

The potentially claimed conclusion - that people who can only thrive on a carnivorous diet ought to do so - cannot follow without a hidden premise being true: the absence on the purely carnivorous diet of even worse harm than the personal ill-health which it supposedly cures. Vegan advocates such as myself argue that the death, suffering, and systemic exploitation and objectification involved in producing the meat for that diet, especially via factory farming, and not to mention the much greater environmental damage, are much more harmful than that personal ill-health even if that personal ill-health could only be cured by following a carnivorous diet.

So, however it was intended, I don't see this video as at all persuasive against veganism.

Are you trolling???  

I've been known to stir the pot
Didn't want you vegans thinking you could have a completely safe space! lol

Peterson's austere diet is just the final phase of his transformation into an Old Testament style prophet.

try this debunk

Watched it. The difference between the vegan guy and Jordan is that the vegan guy is completely smugly sure that vegan works for everyone and is best for everyone and the planet while Jordan repeatedly said that he is not an expert on this and this is just his personal anecdote and he is not telling anyone they should do this. In regards to his daughter's bloodwork, I don't think Peterson was being dishonest... I think he started to comment and then decided he didn't recall the details with enough certainty to go into them. If his own bloodwork comes back with issues I don't think he would hide that just to be an apologist for a carnivore diet. Also, it is possible that certain healthy limits of things like cholesterol might be different if there is no sugar or simple carbs in the diet.

I think people should just try different things and see what works for them. And I think sugar and simple highly processed carbs are probably bad for everyone. I think variety and lots of high fiber vegetables is probably good for almost everyone (and for their gut flora) - unless they have an allergy or disease that makes them highly sensitive to certain things.

One thing I wonder about with Jordan and his daughter... their symptoms sound like what I experienced with Lyme disease. I had my hips replaced at age 26 with arthritis all over my body. Before I got rid of Lyme disease with antibiotics I noticed that certain foods would cause a great deal of inflammation all over my body and this also affected my mood and mental processes. When I would have a Lyme flare up I would feel absolutely awful as Jordan describes.

Perhaps the bacteria that causes Lyme disease requires glucose to thrive and Jordan's total elimination of carbohydrates is keeping his blood glucose low enough that the bacteria cannot bloom? Seems plausible...

Even now that I don't have Lyme disease anymore I still feel healthiest if I don't eat a lot of simple carbs like breads and sugars. And I do feel really really good if I eat nothing but steak and broccoli or salad for dinner. When I eat nothing but meat and vegetables and occasionally some fruit my body fat percentage drops, I don't lose muscle, I feel highly energized and I sleep well. I'll make some steel-cut oats with blueberries once a week to load up on relatively healthy carbs and replenish glycogen - although I've noticed that when I eat a bunch of oatmeal my nose gets stuffy. Grains always give me sinus issues.

Maybe vegan works great for some people. I think it is a little presumptuous to think that it would work equally well for everyone. I don't think the carnivore diet would work equally well for everyone and might not work for anyone long term.

JM2C

Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast on his meat-only diet and how it cured all his ills (and his daughter's):

I thought there must be more to this...

https://medium.com/@ReasonedVegan/whats-...98bd7b2ae8


"At least initially, the choice to go vegan often represents a personal sacrifice made out of a commitment to conscience over convenience. Veganism is compatible with Christianity and its sense of compassion for the weak and downtrodden. However, Peterson is openly hostile to the notion animal rights, calling veganism (or “vay-guhn-ism,” as he would say) a “clueless religion.” The vegan or animal rights movement is by no means a focus of Peterson’s. His whole output on the subject is about fifteen minutes of video and few informal paragraphs dismissing animal rights online. Still, I think Peterson’s attitudes in this area are worth exploring because they connect to more significant areas of his thought. There are three major issues that get in the way of Peterson appraising veganism fairly: his sense that veganism is a secular replacement for religion, his insistence that our ethics should rely on social contract theory and the association of veganism with the left and intersectionalism."

I thought there must be more to this...

https://medium.com/@ReasonedVegan/whats-...98bd7b2ae8


"At least initially, the choice to go vegan often represents a personal sacrifice made out of a commitment to conscience over convenience. Veganism is compatible with Christianity and its sense of compassion for the weak and downtrodden. However, Peterson is openly hostile to the notion animal rights, calling veganism (or “vay-guhn-ism,” as he would say) a “clueless religion.” The vegan or animal rights movement is by no means a focus of Peterson’s. His whole output on the subject is about fifteen minutes of video and few informal paragraphs dismissing animal rights online. Still, I think Peterson’s attitudes in this area are worth exploring because they connect to more significant areas of his thought. There are three major issues that get in the way of Peterson appraising veganism fairly: his sense that veganism is a secular replacement for religion, his insistence that our ethics should rely on social contract theory and the association of veganism with the left and intersectionalism."

I feel I made a commitment to conscience over convenience but it wasn't the choice to go vegan.  It was the choice to remove myself from the industrial food complex and supply my own sustenance for myself and my family of 4 and if needed, purchase from hyper-local farmers that I get to know and love and support.  In this way, I am directly connected to everything I eat and honor the life I'm taking in every bite no matter what kind of life I'm ingesting.  It's a special feeling for me to eat in this way but I wouldn't expect that everyone would care so much about being intimately connected to their food and being intent on knowing the source of the life taken since this isn't valued/taught in our American culture in general.  It just so happen for me that once I learned the art/science of growing fruits, veggies, berries, raising chickens and hunting elk, I fell in love with the connection and sacredness of the process.  I also chose to live in CA in an area that has a vibrant local farm community to help out when I fail to reap my expected harvest (damn gophers!).

Veganism has some shocking side effects!

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Here are some of the side effects I have had:

• Much more energy
  
• Sleep a lot better
  
• After only a month, I had to put new holes in my belt.  I can see muscles I didn't know I had
  
• My eyes look brighter
  
• I am more relaxed
  
• My skin looks clearer and healthier
  
• A very noticable reduction in my tourettes tics, possibly due to being more relaxed
  
• I am more creative with food and more willing to try new things
  

Hey Brian - I love the fact that you are more creative and open with food since going vegan - since I teach gardening to kids as well, I have noticed that they are much more interested in fruits and veggies they've never seen before - they will ALL try a purple haze carrot when offered to them!!  I'm assuming your consumption of fruits and veggies have gone way up since going vegan, so do you get a chance to buy locally grown fruits and veggies in Sweden (maybe Farmers markets??)?  It's unbelievable how much diversity there is out there if one grows their own food or buys direct from small scale farmers that usually will grow fruits and veggies based on other factors than artificial ripening/shipping/storage potential.  What most people here in America are exposed to at the grocery store is like maybe 5% of the varieties of fruits and veggies that exist out there!

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