Sounds like this guy is in the category of people for whom keto diets can work wonders. It's definitely not worth it for me, I've tried, and I suspect it's the same for most people.
Have you tried low carb? I tried keto for a while, and noticed a few benefits, but it was hell not having the occasional bowl of rice or slice of bread. So I switched to a mostly low carb diet, but allow myself to have things like rice and bread 1-3 times per week. I’ve found almost no difference for me between this and keto in terms of physical benefits.
Yes, it has no direct connection. I think it was a chance to throw shade at Peterson, which is understandable.
Edit: I understand Peterson's appeal but I am not a fan because I think he's full of bs and himself. In the case of the drug addiction issue he blamed everybody but himself.
> I think it was a chance to throw shade at Peterson, which is understandable.
I disagree, it was not understandable, it was just a plainly false statement.
According to Jordan's own statements, he went on those medications due to a severe reaction he had to something he ate (not due to his regular diet, but rather something he ate once): https://youtu.be/3ktjZhih3LQ?t=173
And I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment of him. I don't agree with everything he says (in fact there are a fair number of things we do not see eye-to-eye on). However, he is obviously very intelligent, and unlike a large number of the media he has interacted with he has been decidedly civil in his discourse (even in the face of media figures who were purposefully being unfair and uncivil, trying to score points on him and make him appear to be something that he is not).
There may be short term benefits to a keto diet, but longer term is not so clear. And health is only one element. Red meat is absolutely devastating to the environment and water supply, with immense greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and polluted water tables, on top of the incredible cruelty of factory farming and slaughter.
No it's not. Monocropping is far worse for the environment and entails mowing entire states down, repeatedly tilling and saturating soil with herbicide and pesticide, destroying millions of acres of former prairie land, and genetically engineering crops for glyphosate.
Ruminants like cattle, sheep, etc have existed naturally for over 50 million years. They are an essential component of prairie land ecosystems. And much of the land that they occupy is non-arable for crops.
Red meat is the closest thing to a natural human diet there is.
For 2 million years, your ancestors basically ate the diet from this article. Our biology is highly evolved for it, with agriculture being < 500 generations old.
However your physiology doesn't change in two generations.
We can easily adapt our microbiome to get access to new sources of calories. But our erect posture, tool crafting and use abilities, and our guts structure are all evolutions we gained from our hunting/scavenging times. We are what we are because of meat and fat, not green leafy vegetables.
Almost all cows are fed with monocultured crops, and the amount of crops used to feed the animals is an order of magnitude more calories than if you just ate the crops directly.
Grassfed livestock uses 15-20 times more land than CAFOs at an estimate of 91.9 million heads (us stock as of jan 2022 according to USDA census) you’ll quickly realize that meat consumption at current rates its impossible.
Total land usage isn’t the only consideration, in fact it’s probably the most immaterial.
Cattle grazing on open grass lands is generally healthy for the land, the cattle and the end consumer. It’s actually a great trade off to destroying land with monocrop agriculture used to fatten up cattle which makes them sick and contributes to chronic conditions/metabolic diseases of the end consumers.
> Total land usage isn’t the only consideration, in fact it’s probably the most immaterial.
I don’t want to sound insulting but I don’t think you thought very well what it means to grow 91 million heads of cattle on grass alone, remember grass takes time to grow and it doesn’t do it during winter.
The "monocrops" in the United States are largely corn and soy, which are used as food additives, instead of being eaten as food, and as food for (you-guessed-it) animals we use as meat.
If you want to avoid monocropping, eat vegetables.
But if the demand for meat drops, and demand for veggies goes up, do you think farms will all of a sudden abandon monocrop practice? Of course not, because that’s how farming-at-scale system is designed. They want to use fewer tools, ultra specialize in one crop, offload it in bulk at the end of the season.
In the end you’ll get a huge selection of bland and tasteless vegetables, engineered to grow fast and large with a thick skin to prevent pests from eating it.
Not following the logic here - because monocropping is bad, it's ok to adopt a practice (growing cattle) that uses 10 times the monocropping per unit of food? Isn't that the opposite of what you want to do?
The logic is what I said. If you start growing more plants it will not fix monocropping issue. It will only make it worse.
If you don’t want to eat beef that has been fed monocropped feed then vote with your wallet and buy sustainable meat that was pasture raised (on non-arable land).
You can't just claim that switching from corn and soy to a wide range of other vegetables would make things worse with no argument. If nothing else this goes against basic common sense because (1) we eat more than two vegetables, and (2) people eating vegetables directly instead of feeding those vegetables to animals is a vastly more efficient way to feed a population.
The absolute best case scenario for your argument is that monocropping turns out to be just as bad under a shift-to-vegetables model, but in that case we still end up reaping enormous environmental wins. Just because vegetables might not (?) solve the monocropping problem doesn't mean that we don't have good reasons to switch to them, as was originally argued. I'm not really sure how you avoid that, and frankly, the number of large scale climate change studies urging a shift to our diets seems to bode poorly for attempts to push this line.
It's not remotely scalable to convert the entire beef supply to pasture raised. With that out of the way, and with an understanding that monocrop fed beef uses a lot more land that monocrop plants per calorie, assuming that people won't eat more calories on plant based diets vs meat based diets, it's simple math that plants will reduce monocropping. I don't get how you can't see this.
More than a third of the grains produced by monocropping is used for animal feed. Beef is probably the worst kind of meat in terms of environmental impact.
Suggesting red meat is a more sustainable alternative is disingenous.
Naw, my family and I, including two young children, have not eaten any animal products for a year. We've had a variety of really tasty food, and no nutritional deficiencies. Cost is no more than meat, in fact less. Other than "mmm, but bacon tho", there is no material difference from before we quite meat. To compare with cars, which have undeniable utility, especially in a place like LA where we live, is disingenuous.
I was a vegan for 2 years in the past. First year I also didn’t have any deficiencies. But then it all caught up and ruined my health after two years. Low iron, low B12, constant fatigue, low libido (in 20s), muscle mass loss (people who haven’t seen me for a while thought I was either sick or on heavy drugs), no drive, bloating, constant gas (has to take anti gas pills), constant canker sores (turned out b12 related), etc.
> I was a vegan for 2 years in the past. First year I also didn’t have any deficiencies. But then it all caught up and ruined my health after two years.
I was a vegan for more that 2 years, but also ruined my health including my teeth.
When hearing from other ex-vegans, it's mind-blowing how many things we have in common regarding our health. When active in the movement, no one would talk about the problems.
Did you bother to do any research on nutrition when you went vegan? Or did you just stop eating meat without any thought to your diet? The scientific and medical consensus is that a vegan diet is perfectly healthy and perhaps even healthier than a meat diet as long as you don't have nutritional deficiencies. And it's pretty easy to avoid deficiencies if you spend a couple hours educating yourself. I'm not being sarcastic, it literally only takes 2 hours at most.
> Naw, my family and I, including two young children...
One of your arguments against red meat is that it's devastating to the environment. You know what is also devastating to the environment? having children. It's not a necessity to have children, I have none.
Why is your need for breeding more acceptable than my need for eating red meat?
Giving up cars has a real cost in terms of time and productivity. If one lives in a place without usable alternatives, it might even be impossible. Giving up beef has no such cost and is something that any individual can do.
You believe beef has no cost. But you can’t be sure.
I believe beef provides superior, and evolutionary-compatible nutrition for my body. And lack of that nutrition will have a negative effect on my health, and thus associated costs with it. Maybe not tomorrow, but in 10 or 20 years.
I’ve been both a vegan for 2 years and pure carnivore for 8 weeks. I’m eating everything at the moment. But I have my own conclusions what works for me.
Keto is responsible for me losing 170lbs, putting my diabetes into remission (eliminating daily insulin). If it kills me at 75, so be it. That is better than dying in my 50s from diabetes.
As for all the other stuff, all farming has environmental impact. You can argue degrees of impact, but at the end of the day I am just not willing to only eat items that have a lower environmental impact, but require me to stick a needle in my stomach every day and still be at a high risk of dropping dead 20 years earlier.
Being in an already extremely unhealthy position is not the standard with which we should judge a particular diet.
Analogously, getting your stomach stapled would be bad for you if you had a health BMI but might be a good idea if you are 170lbs overweight.
Also, your basic premise that red meat is the only way to lose weight is false. There's no reason that an appropriate weight loss diet that excludes red meat could not be crafted.
> Being in an already extremely unhealthy position is not the standard with which we should judge a particular diet.
Ok. You judge it how you want, I said keto was successful for me. I made no universal declarations.
> Also, your basic premise that red meat is the only way to lose weight is false. There's no reason that an appropriate weight loss diet that excludes red meat could not be crafted.
Well I never said this. I said keto was successful for me.
BTW: Equating keto to “red meat” is like saying “vegan = lentils”. You should probably learn more about keto.
Edit: added some hard returns to clarify my responses to the quoted items.
If you aren't implying a universal declaration, isn't your anecdote kind of a non-sequitur response to a comment about the general nature of red meat agriculture?
No, I think your bias towards crop farming is reading more importance into the part of my comment that is actually the least important part to me. The most important part to me is the health benefits my diet provides me. The least important part to me is the environmental impact of producing those components of the diet that I eat.
If I was a vegan, and the vegan diet resulted in health benefits for me, but vegan agriculture processes had more environmental impact, I would still eat vegan…because what is most important to me is the health benefit I am receiving.
In this case I eat keto and receive health benefits from that diet that I am unwilling to give up just to satisfy the dogmatism of environmentalists who have a problem with pastoral farming.
Fair, makes sense, I understand your thinking now.
My response is that one person's dogmatism is another person's recognition of genocide. But I do understand that when you perceive that your life is at stake, the fate of rest of the world may not matter so much to you anymore.
> you perceive that your life is at stake, the fate of rest of the world may not matter so much to you anymore.
This little underhanded slap is hilarious. I love it how you folks always try to frame things in “a single person is responsible for the entire apocalypse” terms. Frankly, it’s why your argument struggles. You devolve into ridiculous moral absolutism.
Considering that conservatively almost 90% of the people on this earth eat meat, I’m pretty sure that any global catastrophe that may or may not arise from meat consumption will not fall solely at my feet.
From my vantage point a catastrophe has not yet occurred and may not occur. What we have are a bunch of apocalyptic predictions from a tiny group of zealous people trying to force a behavior on a very large group of people.
Congratulations! The latest studies suggest that a plant based whole food diet is equally if not more effective at weight loss than a keto diet. The most important thing is paying attention to what you eat! In a head to head study between keto and plant based, participants in both categories lost weight. It seems that a controlled reasonably healthy diet is the key.
That said there are many anti-cancer fighting properties of a plant based diet. Consumption of meat and animal products seem to lead to higher cancer risks.
I’m currently losing weight on a whole food plant based diet combined with modest daily fasting (10 hours eating, 14 hours fasting per day).
That said I’m just a vegan who has been listening to these folks talk about this stuff, but I’m not an expert. I’m glad you found something that works!
At this point for me it’s less about the weight loss benefit and more about my body’s inability to effectively use the insulin. I’m not opposed to a plant based diet, but for me, the additional carbs would create extraneous insulin dependency. Most grains for me are just not doable at all…and every vegan/vegetarian I know seem to rely on grains as a main staple of their diet.
Interesting. Yeah the reason I felt some concern was that I listen to the YouTube channel linked in the last two videos a lot and I get the impression that animal products create lots of long term health risks.
But I’m thinking about my vegan diet. When I started I relied on a LOT of carbs and grains. It just made it easy but it wasn’t very healthy (I made a hard switch before I really knew what to eat). Now four years in I don’t buy any bread or bagels. I don’t have bread in the house.
I eat some brown rice. I don’t know if that disagrees with you.
Here’s my daily diet:
2 liters (I usually eat less/day) blended in a vitamix blender: water, carrots, oat milk, blueberries, mango, strawberries, peaches, flax seed meal, chia seeds, protein powder, powdered peanut butter (PB2),
For lunch I have a big salad,
I snack on apples and some very healthy crackers (Mary’s crackers)
Dinner is usually either a lentil vegetable curry mixed with brown rice, or I will have brown rice and sautéed vegetables with something like peanut sauce or teriyaki sauce.
And that’s it! That’s what I eat pretty much every day. Oh I make some bomb vegan tacos now and then. No fake meat just lots of amazing plants.
Anyway! I just wanted to share because I like this stuff and also I don’t eat a lot of grains. The brown rice could be replaced with lentils or something for pretty much no grains.
I really like the Nutrition Facts YouTube channel so poke around there if you’d like.
I appreciate the sensitive feedback, its nice to have a dietary conversation on here that doesn’t degenerate into a binary equation.
Grains are a big issue, but other things like the apples, carrots, peaches, crackers bounce up my blood sugar as well and would cause me challenges and likely have to go back on extraneous insulin to prevent the small blood vessel issues that hyperglycemia causes diabetics.
For someone to restrict carbs on a vegan diet you are limited to basically cruciferous vegetables and certain berries. While I eat those things now, its the addition of the meat and dairy products that I eat that make enough variety for me to stick with it. Eating the same things every day is not something that I am able to do with success. That is the real test of any diet you take on…it has to be a real sustainable lifestyle change. For me that is the real benefit of keto, I have been able to make it that lifestyle change. It has definitely benefited me for my diabetes management and weight loss.
I am realistic to acknowledge that there may be some long term issue, but the fact that I can get to the point of having a long term issue is the magic here.
Yeah absolutely. The first video linked above talks about what type of vegan diet counteracts the post meal blood sugar rise. I linked two videos but I saw more videos when searching for “nutrition facts diabetes” or “nutrition facts insulin”. Just something to take a look at if you are curious. But again I’m happy you’ve got something that works!
Thanks for the links, I will give them a look. I’m generally a “don’t mess with success” kind of a guy, but there may come a time where I need to tweak and it’s always nice to have a different perspective. I would describe myself as a keto evangelist (But only describe my experience with it), I’m certainly not a keto zealot.
Keto folks and vegans tend to have those zealot reputations, but I definitely appreciate great dialog. Wish you well.
Yeah I get that! Having recently found something that works for my health (I can finally lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way even when I don't have time for exercise!) I wouldn't want to mess with this either. I am just so worried for people who eat a lot of meat, based on the studies I keep hearing about from the Nutrition Facts youtube channel. Wishing you well and thank you too!
Aside from "personal anecdote does not override broad scientific evidence": Keto was not responsible for you losing weight or putting your diabetes into remission. Portion control / caloric restriction was. (And increased activity level you likely undertook at the same time.)
You had diabetes because you were likely obese and inactive. Not because you were eating bread, FFS.
I don't understand why it is so hard for people to understand the concept is literally just "calories in minus calories used / out = weight gain or loss." It is simple thermodynamics.
Keto/Paleo diets are among the least nutritious and most difficult to adhere to (most people who claim to follow keto/paleo don't, because it's extremely restrictive), consistently ranking among the worst diets health-wise by nutritional scientists. One of the best is the Mediterranean diet, one which involves no red meat.
> As for all the other stuff, all farming has environmental impact. You can argue degrees of impact,
That's literally what we're saying, and there's plenty of proof.
You want to help the environment? Minimize your red meat consumption. That alone makes a huge difference. The second biggest difference you can make is minimizing energy use for personal transportation, and the third biggest difference is reducing energy consumption in your home (mostly heating/cooling.)
Where is your first sentence coming from though? Afaik keto works well by stabilizing and lowering insulin release with the effect of minimizing the storage of fat and carb cravings caused by sugar crashes.
If you want to you can literally skip a meal without becoming grumpy, lightheaded or ravenous.
Also: how can a diet composed of meat, fish, cruciferous and green leafy vegetables, cheese, nuts, berries, fatty fruits like avocado and olives, and healthy oils be one of the least nutritious diets around? A vegan diet is clearly scoring much worse on this topic I'm afraid.
To give you an example in this study where different foods are evaluated based on their micronutrient density (in an attempt to combat malnutrition) you'll see that the top foods are all of animal origin: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2022.80656...
Results: We find that the top sources of priority micronutrients are organs, small fish, dark green leafy vegetables, bivalves, crustaceans, goat, beef, eggs, milk, canned fish with bones, mutton, and lamb. Cheese, goat milk, and pork are also good sources, and to a lesser extent, yogurt, fresh fish, pulses, teff, and canned fish without bones.
The problem is that most folks don’t know what keto is…they assume we are all eating a pound of bacon a day and nothing else. Its a ridiculous notion.
Starting keto for me eliminated literally all processed foods. Every food I eat is is pretty much its whole form, excepting cheeses, butter, and olive oil. There are quite a few processed foods on the market called “keto”, but most folks I know on the diet tend to avoid or only use those very sparingly.
On a weekly basis I eat eggs, cheese, pork, beef, fish, chicken, berries, nuts, and cruciferous vegetables. Some olive oil, and some butter. If that is unhealthy…I am not sure what healthy is.
It really depends. People living on the coast usually eats more fish, while inland people is more into pork. Olive oil is always used everywhere, just in the north there is a greater use of butter. Vegetables do get eaten but mostly as condiment of some other meat/fish or pasta. We indeed don't eat huge bowls of veggies as they make it sound. But we do eat a lot of seasonal fruit.
And to add to the paradox, my region Umbria (which has the best longevity in Italy) is probably the Italian capital of cured meats.
Lebanese food is probably the closest to an ideal Mediterranean diet. It really is mostly vegetables with olive oil with a sprinkle of some meat and grains.
> Keto was not responsible for you losing weight or putting your diabetes into remission
Incorrect. Restricting carbohydrates absolutely was the reason my A1Hc went down and I came off insulin within 3 months of starting keto while I was still morbidly obese
> I don't understand why it is so hard for people to understand the concept is literally just "calories in minus calories used / out = weight gain or loss." It is simple thermodynamics.
When did I state the contrary? I didnt. What Keto did for me was allow my body to reach satiety without excess caloric intake and stabilize my blood sugar levels which help control hunger.
> Keto/Paleo diets are among the least nutritious and most difficult to adhere to (most people who claim to follow keto/paleo don't, because it's extremely restrictive), consistently ranking among the worst diets health-wise by nutritional scientists. One of the best is the Mediterranean diet, one which involves no red meat.
I lived in the Mediterranean area for a number of years, I can assure you…plenty of red meat was consumed where I lived. By the way…I have been on a keto diet for more than 5 years. My heath is good, my doctor has zero complaints and has suggested keto as an option to other T2 diabetics and overweight folks in his practice because of the success it has had for me and some of his other patients.
> You want to help the environment?
I think my point was and is that I am not willing to do it at the expense of my own health. In terms of other things you mentioned, not sure why that is even part of the discussion.
Being in a caloric deficit of 3500kcals x [the amount of body fat pounds you lost] over a given period of time is responsible for losing [the amount of body fat pounts you lost] over that period, no matter what kind of food you eat. Keto might be responsible for you to adhere and stick to that caloric deficit though, and it's good that it worked for you, but that's not what drove your weight loss (anecdotally, I lost around 150lbs and never cut any food group out of my diet, I just track calories and proteins)
As I said in another comment above, I credit keto for the weight loss, but understand that CICO is mechanics behind the loss. Keto did two things for me that allowed calorie restriction. One, fat rich foods create satiety with smaller portions, which allowed me to eat less. Two, stabilizing blood glucose eliminated hunger for me which allowed me to eliminate snacking between meals.
Carb restrictions allowed my body to manage the blood glucose with just my own body’s production of insulin, which eliminated extraneous insulin. Stable low blood glucose prevents small vessel damage which prevents most of the issues that are caused by type 2 diabetes
It's extremely irritating that every single thread related to food is swarmed by people spouting anecdotes as if they were absolute truth, and worse, acting as if those personal stories were adequate responses to general claims like
> Red meat is absolutely devastating to the environment and water supply, with immense greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and polluted water tables
The above is an almost incontestable fact. Climate change and health experts both say we need to move western populations to a more plant based diet. But the moment someone brings that up, 25 people feel the need to jump in with their personal story about how eating nothing but red meat cleansed their vital bodily fluids. It's complete nonsense to respond to generalized scientific claims in this fashion and for some reason a lot of people don't realize this. Hacker News has a lot of people who think they can "hack" diet, aging, weight loss, what have you.
I have my own personal anecdote, of course. I lost close to 100 pounds on a vegetarian diet on which I tried to avoid low-nutrient sugary foods. Doing this changed the course of my life. But I'm not going to claim that this fact about me makes any difference whatsoever to scientific claims abut what it makes sense for individuals or populations to be eating. A vegetarian diet is not the only way to lose weight or live a healthy life.
Even if we take for granted that (contrary to all conventional medical wisdom) keto is the only way someone like you could live healthily, this simply has no impact whatsoever on the OP claim that red meat is bad for the environment and not necessary for the overwhelming majority of people to be eating.
> Even if we take for granted that (contrary to all conventional medical wisdom) keto is the only way someone like you could live healthily, this simply has no impact whatsoever on the OP claim that red meat is bad for the environment and not necessary for the overwhelming majority of people to be eating.
I agree. People are indeed mixing up 3 things that are only loosely related:
1. What is healthier.
2. What will cause you to lose weight (which is related to 1, but not exactly the same).
3. What is better for the planet.
The three are different goals, which might or might not be opposed to each other.
> It's complete nonsense to respond to generalized scientific claims in this fashion and for some reason a lot of people don't realize this.
Yet, you did. You are participating…you don’t realize this?
> Even if we take for granted that (contrary to all conventional medical wisdom) keto is the only way someone like you could live healthily, this simply has no impact whatsoever on the OP claim that red meat is bad for the environment and not necessary for the overwhelming majority of people to be eating.
No one to my knowledge talking about keto here made this absolutist claim. I know I didn’t. I simply provided my experience and commented on the fact that because of my success, environmental factors for agriculture do not factor into my dietary equation. I don’t understand the need y’all have to create a strawman here.
Also, “conventional medical wisdom” for many years encouraged type 2 diabetics to eat a diet based on grains, fruits, and pasta (I still have the pamphlets that were given to me when first diagnosed) supplemented by many lovely and expensive pharmaceutical therapies for people to manage their diabetes. Three years ago, the American Diabetes Association reversed its opinion of low carb and keto, declaring them effective and safe strategies to manage type 2 diabetes via diet. So…effectively keto and low carb has become “conventional medical wisdom”.
Finally…you eat how you want, and I’ll eat how I want. I’m happy you found a diet that is successful for you. Keep eating it and don’t let some random person on the internet try and shame you about it for any reason, because it’s none of their damned business.
Vegans are thinner and usually malnourished.
Meat eaters are usually fatter because they get their meat from mcDonalds. Even a vegan eating chips every day has the potential of becoming obese.
You are really just comparing health conscious people to the average person. But if you would instead compare health conscious meat eaters with health conscious vegans you would see that the first group usually does much better.
Do you have any evidence that vegans are malnourished or less healthy? You will find the opposite across studies. Sorry but the science doesn't support you here.
I'm aware of the hype and the optimistic studies around vegan diets (as an ex vegan I've been through a lot on the topic).
The problem with the vegan narrative is that it tends to focus on 2 main outcomes: weight management and the health of the circulatory system.
This is fine and nobody doubts that compared to a typical diet composed of processed foods this is a great improvement.
What the discourse is severely lacking is what are the shortcomings of this diet.
You always get generic messages that you must be careful and keep an eye on b12, iodine, iron, zinc, vit d, calcium and b3 but we never had large studies about how well this warnings are being followed.
Are you in an optimal weight? How about your lean mass? Any deficiencies? I couldn't find any large scale reliable study on these values. But by experience of myself and people I know (and by many people who had to stop this way of eating) it seems like it is a real problem, much more difficult to get around than the news outlets will make you believe.
Im over 3 years now with brief breaks away from keto. Long term checkmark.
>And health is only one element.
Deliciousness is another yes.
>Red meat is absolutely devastating to the environment and water supply,
How does a cow in a giant field eating grass and pooping tons of carbon down into carbon sinks damage the environment? In fact, Cow farming is great for the environment.
> deforestation, and polluted water tables,
I think you've confused all the problems with the unethical and immoral agriculture. Fertilizers and pesticides are so tremendously destructive to the environment.
>on top of the incredible cruelty of factory farming and slaughter.
Totally agreed here. We need to ban factory farming.
The carnivore diet is a thing, it’s probably closer to historical diets of Hunter gatherers.
Having done a couple of stints of meat + veggies only for 8-12 months I can definitely say you feel wired. I highly recommend, though it takes a couple weeks to break any carbs. I prefer it personally, but alas with multiple children and constant gatherings it’s hard to keep it up perfectly.
Real trick is snacks. I would make burgers and / or bacon and store it for a week or eat jerky. Worked well enough if I got hungry. After the first week or two your body adjusts to the protein & fat based meals and you no longer snack as much. At least not for me.
The middle paragraph should be required reading in bright bold letters in any keto/paleo website.
- Do not attempt if you have children
- Do not attempt if you dont control what goes in the fridge.
- Do not attempt if you cant deflect peer pressure.
> it’s probably closer to historical diets of Hunter gatherers.
My understanding is that this is not true, or at least extremely unlikely. The majority of hunter-gatherer societies seemed to have subsisted mostly on plants, with meat being a minority of their calories, possibly more of a special-occasion food.
Here's a sample source:
> The real Paleolithic diet, though, wasn’t all meat and marrow. It’s true that hunter-gatherers around the world crave meat more than any other food and usually get around 30 percent of their annual calories from animals.
> My understanding is that this is not true, or at least extremely unlikely. The majority of hunter-gatherer societies seemed to have subsisted mostly on plants, with meat being a minority of their calories, possibly more of a special-occasion food.
As with every statement about hunter gatherers or hunter gardeners it varies. If you’re living in the far north like the Inuit, Eskimos or similar your diet is going to be almost all meat, maybe some berries for two months of the year. Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans living in the far North of Eurasia would have had more plants but not a lot more. Humans can live on diets of 80% plus gruel, on potatoes with some milk, rice and beans, on noting not meat (as long as you eat organs and fat).
Humans are really varied. We can’t eat pure vegan without deficiency diseases but there’s a lot of variety in human diet.
Inuit and Eskimos are the standard counter-example, and they are mentioned in the article, but they are a very small percentage of world-wide hunter-gatherer societies throughout history.
Your understanding would be wrong for at least temperate climate zones (North America, Europe, much of Asia, forest and steppes alike). Not much grows there for half a year. Meat is around all the time.
> The carnivore diet is a thing, it’s probably closer to historical diets of Hunter gatherers.
What?
> The real Paleolithic diet, though, wasn't all meat and marrow. It's true that hunter-gatherers around the world crave meat more than any other food and usually get around 30 percent of their annual calories from animals.
> So how do hunter-gatherers get energy when there’s no meat? It turns out that “man the hunter” is backed up by “woman the forager,” who, with some help from children, provides more calories during difficult times. When meat, fruit, or honey is scarce, foragers depend on “fallback foods,” says Brooks. The Hadza get almost 70 percent of their calories from plants. The Kung traditionally rely on tubers and mongongo nuts, the Aka and Baka Pygmies of the Congo River Basin on yams, the Tsimane and Yanomami Indians of the Amazon on plantains and manioc, the Australian Aboriginals on nut grass and water chestnuts.
> it’s probably closer to historical diets of Hunter gatherers.
One thing I’ve noticed about hunter gatherer societies today, at least from various films and documentaries, is that they tend to be smaller both in height and mass than say, the westerners documenting them. That being said they seem to have significantly more stamina and incredible physical skill (watching a guy stand on the edge of a cliff and hurl sticks to knock flying bats out of the air was mindbending)
I would guess they eat a higher percentage of meat, but probably less in total.
As I understand it most non-domesticated animals (including hunter-gatherers humans) live almost perpetually in a state of low- to mid-level hunger. The expectation that you’d spend any significant portion of your life not being hungry only really happened with agriculture.
tldr: Homo habilis ate some meat, and Homo erectus was more of an omnivore, eating tougher-to-chew/digest foods...and even later, started to cook foods...both meat and plant-based.
The "paleo" diet is what happens when a bunch of jocks get high, watch the Flintstones and decide to base a diet off what they saw.
Yeah, I’m sure that’s why the tribes all over the world followed the herds...
Do the math on trying to survive off vegetables or fruit. Heavy meat consumption is basically required (alternative energy sources could be milk, honey, and nuts - but still limited and often need cultivation).
The vast majority of energy necessary for life (and likely nutrients) come from meat (the protein & fat). So let’s say 70-80% of the nutrition required for life.
Honestly, 30% of a Hunter gatherers m diet might be meat if it’s analyzed by volume or amount on a plate. It’s not really clear how it’s measured
It is amazing how well we can adapt to the food source available. Unfortunately some people don't care about that amazement. They are preoccupied forcing their dietary and moral habits onto the others.
Our ancestors lived in extremely harsh environments, didn’t have modern medicine, and there was a very high infant mortality rate. The last one alone causes the average lifespan to drop, however many who survived past infancy lived to similar ages as today.
There are multiple replies there suggesting exercising or excessive exercising may be a cause. Is this a thing? This was definitely not on my radar except maybe some routine that's unimaginably intense.
I personally wouldn't take advice or put any klout in the suggestions from people who promote carnivore, and definitely not from the followers of those people. They are both blinded by their dogma and ironically think they are the most scientifically enlightened over others, unaware of their dogma.
Some people have sensitivities to certain foods, which in rare cases can cause skin symptoms. For those people it can be useful to try an elimination diet to see if the symptoms disappear after a few weeks.
Well there is a few people for whom this diet is having great effects. But there is indeed no science at all to back it up at the moment. But it is surely curious that such a diet which goes against every knowledge we have about diet can work even if just in the short time.
2 examples of dogmas which got debunked:
-you need to eat carbs to nourish your brain
-you need fruits and veggies to avoid scurvy
It is indeed kind of, in a very mild roundabout and self-involved way, “interesting.”
I know a guy that tried this diet and ended up on statins at 23 but I never thought to write about it on substack for (lol) consumption on HN, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected that ephemera of an anecdote to make it to the front page of a popular website about technology.
Edit: also it is downright hilarious that it’s assumed that this guy doesn’t season his food at all aside from salt.
Is there an HN/lobsters settle site for comedy articles?
High LDL is a known consequence of keto on lean people. There are ongoing studies to find out if this is a risk factor for plaque development in otherwise metabolically healthy people.
Anyway stopping the diet would normally lower his LDL to his previous levels without the need of going on statins at 23...
Carnivore and keto diets are pretty much how much of the world ate until the 40s or so. Carnivore works for me, I did that for a few years some time back. I've been keto with a carnivore slant for four years. My blood work is similar to yours.
I don't care what anyone else eats, have at it. But if you pay attention to those A1C commercials that are all over the place, cut down on the sugar a bit, would you?
Homo as a specie is way older. We started using tools and hunting way before homo sapiens. And even if you want to cherry pick homo sapiens, agriculture is just a minor fraction of his history.
Homo is not a species but a genus therefore considering older and extinct species as reference for our dietary requirements would be unwise. And even before agriculture most of the calories of hunter gathers was coming from plants.
Also https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-ha...
I quote:
Humans come from a fairly generalized line of higher primates, a lineage able to utilize a wide range of plant and animal foods. There is general agreement that the ancestral line (Hominoidea) giving rise to humans was strongly herbivorous (14, 15). Modern human nutritional requirements (eg, the need for a dietary source of vitamin C), features of the modern human gut (haustrated colon), and the modern human pattern of digestive kinetics (similar to that of great apes) suggest an ancestral past in which tropical plant foods formed the basis of the daily diet, with perhaps some opportunistic intake of animal matter.
Going on:
Consumption of animal matter to satisfy requirements for protein and many essential micronutrients would free up space in the gut for carbohydrate-rich plant foods and allow for their use as fuel for the increasingly large human brain (14). Because humans initially evolved in Africa, where wild animals generally lack appreciable fat stores (2), it seems clear that they consumed a mixed diet of animal and plant foods, given the apparent limitations of human digestive physiology to secure adequate daily energy from protein sources alone (4).
Whilst early human were not vegan they were hardly mostly carnivores either. Furthermore as stated in both articles basing the diet of modern humans on the one of our ancestors is a mistake!
P.S. I am far from being vegan! Suturday I ate 600g of a delicious cow.
The other article does seem to be in favor of promoting a vegetarian view. But to me it seems incredibly lackluster:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08999...
To shorten it up:
1) Today we suffer of diet related disease
2) Other great apes are mostly vegetarians
3) Our digestive system is very similar to that of apes
result:
The recommendation that Americans consume more fresh fruits and vegetables in greater variety appears well supported by data on the diets of free-ranging monkeys and apes.
Previously our differences from apes have been correlated to the fact that we cook food:
Thus, humans are relatively poor among autoenzyme-dependent omnivores in digesting uncooked plant fiber. The human large intestine lies somewhere between that of the pig, a similar omni-vore, and the dog, a carnivore capable of consuming an omnivore diet that has a reduced cecum and short colon.
> Carnivore and keto diets are pretty much how much of the world ate until the 40s or so.
This hasn’t been true since the dawn of agriculture. People mostly ate some kind of grain or tuber. Sometimes as gruel/meal, sometimes as bread, sometimes as mash but most people have been peasants since the dawn of farming and peasants eat carbs.
> Carnivore and keto diets are pretty much how much of the world ate until the 40s or so.
I guess it depends on "where".
The so-called Mediterranean diet, which is the "normal" way of eating in Italy, basically consists of bread/pasta/vegetables and (olive) oil (but is not in any way vegetarian or vegan as eggs/poultry/cheese/fish are also largely present).
Traditionally red meat was eaten once or maybe twice a week.
A clean metabolic panel is an important but insufficient signal of good health. Meat is jam packed with vitamins and nutrients, so it would be strange if he was severely lacking in any of the important categories.
The real question will be what will the results be when he gets a colonoscopy at 40. I have a family friend who has been a long term meat-only person, and he is 50 and has a very bad case of diverticulitis as well as gastric reflux. Maybe he would have gotten them regardless, or maybe if he tried eating a little fiber he could have avoided it. I personally would be taking something like psyllium husk if I was going on that kind of diet(which I did when I went keto, but I was just doing it for fun and not weight loss, so it was hard to stick with).
I suspect I’ve had some form of IBD for years, but unfortunately much of what I’ve read indicates that truly managing it means a strict diet and eschewing certain foods, I’d almost rather just live with the discomfort at this point.
Careful there... IBD isn't just discomfort, even if that is the immediate effect - long term gut lining inflammation can lead to cellular damage greatly increasing your risks of certain kinds of intestinal/colon cancers.
Have you considered the possibility that you're merely sensitive to certain types of food, which would be easier to cut out than doing large scale diet readjustments?
> Have you considered the possibility that you're merely sensitive to certain types of food
Possibly, I’d l just be nowhere near narrowing it down.
The only reason I suspect IBD is the occasional formation of painful mouth ulcers which I hear are common in Chron’s disease. It was the only thing I could find that left sores exactly like that in the area on the inside of my lip in front of the teeth.
Surely not the same scientists. Not even even scientists. Tobacco marketing people, yes. Can you find any examples to support the claim that “Those same scientists used to tell us cigarettes are not harmful?”
Scientists and doctors have linked cigarette smoking to multiple health problems since the late 19th century.
Now we have the tools to do our own reading, but probably not actual scientific research. That means we have the tools to confirm our biases.
>You are wrong and will probably die of a heart attack.
This keto fad has been going on for years. The actual science is in on this.
Dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with anything. In fact, high blood sugar tends to damage your serum cholesterol. You basically have to go into a long fast in order to let your body clear out the damaged cholesterol. But often people dont do that, so slowly but surely the damaged cholesterol builds up. That's when you start having heart attacks.
What keto does is effectively limit the amount of damage to ldl. Carnivore completely eliminates this.
If you're concerned about other people's diet and heart attacks. You pretty much have to recommend carnivore to them.
>Also, murdering and exploiting animals is not cool.
Murdering and exploiting animals that wouldn't exist otherwise. As humans have been 'murdering and exploiting' animal for 100,000 years... not going to win much argument in ending this.
I do believe synthmeat will be a thing in the future. I optimistically hope to see this day.
A useful way to interpret this blog post is “I had weird health issues that were resistant to treatment, but dramatically changing my diet helped”.
This blog post does not contain useful advice for most people, but is a) vaguely interesting to see how someone managed to control rare health issues, and b) may be helpful for folk who have been trying and failing to deal with major health issues similar to the author.
"The first time I ate vegetables again I soon developed some kind of lethargy, but it was familiar, and had once been common. I realized that since I had stopped eating plants, I had not felt this at all. I thought it was just normal to eat dinner and not want to do anything for 1-2 hours? But when I only eat meat, I don’t get this. Eating plants, even just a bit, makes my stomach feel bloated— But I can eat 2lbs of steak in one sitting and feel great."
I consider myself vegetarian although not 100% strict and in the past 4/5 years I ate red meat when I wanted to try specific foods, or dishes and every single time I felt in the exact same way that the author felt when eating vegetables. When I eat red meat, I am tired, I don't sleep well, I can't exercise well and I can't concentrate. And all my (mostly) vegetarian friends feel the same way when eating red meat.
This to say that his single data point doesn't mean anything: most likely my body is not used to red meat anymore, in the same way that his is not used to vegetables anymore.
To be fair I eat everything and never feel bloated or tired afterwards. Sometimes I eat vegan for a while if I go on vacation with some vegan friends or I eat more meat for random reasons and never felt any difference. I have the feeling that when people do try to actively do something to improve their wellbeing the bode has some kind of placebos effect. You believe that eating meat is better: you feel more energetic after eating meat. You believe vegan diet is better? Same things happen.
With this I am not saying that either option is equally healthy! On the contrary there is a very strong scientific evidence towards a plant based being healthier!
This diet works well for my Scandinavian makeup, but it is very unethical in the world of today. I try to get most of my protein from plants. They don't make me feel physically great, but I can live with myself better doing so.
I'm not on a vegan diet, or a carnivore diet, but I worry about my teeth all the time. What happened when you changed your diet? Are these teeth issues, or gum issues, or both?
Always had good teeth before. Flushing and brushing thoroughly multiple times a day. After some time on vegan diet, suddenly 4 cavities was found during a dental visit, later 7 cavities found and two teeth pulled because of excessive decay. I would then even more rigorously take care of my teeth, but the cavities and decay just continued.
I had the same problem a few years back when I tried a vegan diet for a few months. 2 teeth pulled, inflamed gums, plus as a bonus bad acid reflux (the 3 things could be related i guess).
Going back to a normal diet made them better but did not fix it completely. A few months back I tried keto which did fix all those problems.
I don't really understand people trying to reinvent the wheel, why not look for diets around the world which work, look at life expectancy in Japan, Spain, Italy, South Korea, Singapore, Cyprus etc. (though quite odd to see at top places odd landlocked Switzerland, dunno when that happened, never noticed)
The problem is that many people start to develop problems in digesting many types of food that would normally be easily assimilated.
The causes could be many but the most likely culprits are antibiotics and pesticides damaging the gut lining and flora.
The consequence is that people is losing the ability to safely eat foods that would be normally considered safe and healthy.
In all probability the reason that a meat only diet works for so many people it's that it is a subtype of low FODMAP diet.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22466-low-f...
Did you look at my source above? The studies show that many of these peoples would have lived on diets of about 70% roots/fruit/vegetables, and only 30% meat. So unsure how the math says that's not possible.
I did read it. However that wasn’t a study, it was a comment by a magazine (National Geographic) on the current groups today (not historical).
I didn’t even see the data to back it up, nor is it evenly distributed. Aka many groups will have higher or lower distributions.
Further, it didn’t say 70% were roots/fruit/vegetables it said 30% was meat. The article didn’t clarify if that was be weight, volume, count, etc. it’s possible 30% by volume is meat, but by that measure I could eat a watermelon and a steak and only 5% of my diet is meat.
It also mentions an African tribe that survives mostly on milk and honey. That tribe isn’t hunters and gatherers (they manage herds), but let’s assume they count that (no data listed), then that still isn’t meat nor vegetables/roots/fruits.
Obviously not helpful now but could be of interest to someone. This article has always stuck in my mind for when a well known vegan considers leaving. Turned out she needed more fat in her diet which I guess makes sense considering the naturally lean vegan diet especially when combined with raw.
There is plenty of fat to be found in a vegan diet, just not meat fat. Eating intentionally is something we could all do better, no matter the diet. One of the sillier things people say when talking about vegan diets is "but protein!" Know how much protein you need for a healthy diet? Most people don't and they wildly overestimate.
I do have many vegan friends (been vegan for more than a decade) and none have issues with their teeth! I wonder if the issue was more with what you were eating as a vegan rather then a plant based diet.
My wife is vegan and was top ranked body builder. She knows how to eat well. Interestingly, any medical issues she has had in the past five years have come with a recommendation to "eat less meat and exercise more" (medical staff reading instructions from a screen over the phone) I'm not vegan and I am less healthy than she is, by far. Our kid is vegetarian and is just as healthy and active as I was at her age. Everyone is different and diets impact people differently.
What's the mathematical breakdown of what you need to maintain a healthy weight on a mostly or entirely plant based diet? I know the source is biased but these people have done the math:
What's fun is the articles they've done on NFL players (like Brady, whose diet is 80% plants) who obviously have professionals working for them but have no negative performance issues.
166 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 272 ms ] threadEdit: I understand Peterson's appeal but I am not a fan because I think he's full of bs and himself. In the case of the drug addiction issue he blamed everybody but himself.
https://readpassage.com/jordan-petersons-handling-of-addicti...
I disagree, it was not understandable, it was just a plainly false statement.
According to Jordan's own statements, he went on those medications due to a severe reaction he had to something he ate (not due to his regular diet, but rather something he ate once): https://youtu.be/3ktjZhih3LQ?t=173
And I wholeheartedly disagree with your assessment of him. I don't agree with everything he says (in fact there are a fair number of things we do not see eye-to-eye on). However, he is obviously very intelligent, and unlike a large number of the media he has interacted with he has been decidedly civil in his discourse (even in the face of media figures who were purposefully being unfair and uncivil, trying to score points on him and make him appear to be something that he is not).
Ruminants like cattle, sheep, etc have existed naturally for over 50 million years. They are an essential component of prairie land ecosystems. And much of the land that they occupy is non-arable for crops.
Red meat is the closest thing to a natural human diet there is.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-humans-ate...
For 2 million years, your ancestors basically ate the diet from this article. Our biology is highly evolved for it, with agriculture being < 500 generations old.
Evolution works in as few as two generations. This is established.
> Stone Age humans were apex predators, only moved to more plant-based diet 85,000 years ago
We’ve evolved since then. We are the same species but claim we are genetically the same as humans 85,000 years ago is crazy.
Then there is grass fed cattle.
> and the amount of crops used to feed the animals is an order of magnitude more calories than if you just ate the crops directly.
Cows naturally eat grass, cows convert grass into protein and fat that humans can consume. Humans can’t consume grass directly.
Just switching to chicken from red meat drops that resource usage by a factor of TEN.
Growing cattle for food is incredibly wasteful.
Cattle grazing on open grass lands is generally healthy for the land, the cattle and the end consumer. It’s actually a great trade off to destroying land with monocrop agriculture used to fatten up cattle which makes them sick and contributes to chronic conditions/metabolic diseases of the end consumers.
I don’t want to sound insulting but I don’t think you thought very well what it means to grow 91 million heads of cattle on grass alone, remember grass takes time to grow and it doesn’t do it during winter.
The US once supported as many as 75M Buffalo, I don’t want to sound insulting but any guesses what they ate?
Sure. Which is significantly more expensive. If only grass fed beef was available, beef consumption would automatically decrease.
The "monocrops" in the United States are largely corn and soy, which are used as food additives, instead of being eaten as food, and as food for (you-guessed-it) animals we use as meat.
If you want to avoid monocropping, eat vegetables.
In the end you’ll get a huge selection of bland and tasteless vegetables, engineered to grow fast and large with a thick skin to prevent pests from eating it.
The logic is what I said. If you start growing more plants it will not fix monocropping issue. It will only make it worse.
If you don’t want to eat beef that has been fed monocropped feed then vote with your wallet and buy sustainable meat that was pasture raised (on non-arable land).
The absolute best case scenario for your argument is that monocropping turns out to be just as bad under a shift-to-vegetables model, but in that case we still end up reaping enormous environmental wins. Just because vegetables might not (?) solve the monocropping problem doesn't mean that we don't have good reasons to switch to them, as was originally argued. I'm not really sure how you avoid that, and frankly, the number of large scale climate change studies urging a shift to our diets seems to bode poorly for attempts to push this line.
Suggesting red meat is a more sustainable alternative is disingenous.
Can society live without cars? Probably. We did before.
Will it be an interesting and convenient future? Probably not.
But we have alternatives (electric cars)! And we keep looking for more ways to propel. We don’t stop looking for solutions, just because gas is bad.
Same for beef. We have sustainable alternatives. Just vote with your dollar. Don’t buy factory meat. And help subsidize further research.
Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water!
I was a vegan for more that 2 years, but also ruined my health including my teeth.
When hearing from other ex-vegans, it's mind-blowing how many things we have in common regarding our health. When active in the movement, no one would talk about the problems.
One of your arguments against red meat is that it's devastating to the environment. You know what is also devastating to the environment? having children. It's not a necessity to have children, I have none.
Why is your need for breeding more acceptable than my need for eating red meat?
I believe beef provides superior, and evolutionary-compatible nutrition for my body. And lack of that nutrition will have a negative effect on my health, and thus associated costs with it. Maybe not tomorrow, but in 10 or 20 years.
I’ve been both a vegan for 2 years and pure carnivore for 8 weeks. I’m eating everything at the moment. But I have my own conclusions what works for me.
You can believe and eat whatever you like. But if you make disingenous faith based arguments in a public forum, expect to be called out.
As for all the other stuff, all farming has environmental impact. You can argue degrees of impact, but at the end of the day I am just not willing to only eat items that have a lower environmental impact, but require me to stick a needle in my stomach every day and still be at a high risk of dropping dead 20 years earlier.
Analogously, getting your stomach stapled would be bad for you if you had a health BMI but might be a good idea if you are 170lbs overweight.
Also, your basic premise that red meat is the only way to lose weight is false. There's no reason that an appropriate weight loss diet that excludes red meat could not be crafted.
Ok. You judge it how you want, I said keto was successful for me. I made no universal declarations.
> Also, your basic premise that red meat is the only way to lose weight is false. There's no reason that an appropriate weight loss diet that excludes red meat could not be crafted.
Well I never said this. I said keto was successful for me.
BTW: Equating keto to “red meat” is like saying “vegan = lentils”. You should probably learn more about keto.
Edit: added some hard returns to clarify my responses to the quoted items.
If I was a vegan, and the vegan diet resulted in health benefits for me, but vegan agriculture processes had more environmental impact, I would still eat vegan…because what is most important to me is the health benefit I am receiving.
In this case I eat keto and receive health benefits from that diet that I am unwilling to give up just to satisfy the dogmatism of environmentalists who have a problem with pastoral farming.
My response is that one person's dogmatism is another person's recognition of genocide. But I do understand that when you perceive that your life is at stake, the fate of rest of the world may not matter so much to you anymore.
This little underhanded slap is hilarious. I love it how you folks always try to frame things in “a single person is responsible for the entire apocalypse” terms. Frankly, it’s why your argument struggles. You devolve into ridiculous moral absolutism.
Considering that conservatively almost 90% of the people on this earth eat meat, I’m pretty sure that any global catastrophe that may or may not arise from meat consumption will not fall solely at my feet.
Sounds too much like religion to me.
That said there are many anti-cancer fighting properties of a plant based diet. Consumption of meat and animal products seem to lead to higher cancer risks.
I’m currently losing weight on a whole food plant based diet combined with modest daily fasting (10 hours eating, 14 hours fasting per day).
Vegan vs keto study:
https://youtu.be/SsSHzTsG4wY
Great lecture on weight loss with a plant based diet:
https://youtu.be/EpRrD58Ah3Q
Health concerns with a keto diet:
https://youtu.be/nEjuZsP8o7g
That said I’m just a vegan who has been listening to these folks talk about this stuff, but I’m not an expert. I’m glad you found something that works!
But I’m thinking about my vegan diet. When I started I relied on a LOT of carbs and grains. It just made it easy but it wasn’t very healthy (I made a hard switch before I really knew what to eat). Now four years in I don’t buy any bread or bagels. I don’t have bread in the house.
I eat some brown rice. I don’t know if that disagrees with you.
Here’s my daily diet:
2 liters (I usually eat less/day) blended in a vitamix blender: water, carrots, oat milk, blueberries, mango, strawberries, peaches, flax seed meal, chia seeds, protein powder, powdered peanut butter (PB2),
For lunch I have a big salad,
I snack on apples and some very healthy crackers (Mary’s crackers)
Dinner is usually either a lentil vegetable curry mixed with brown rice, or I will have brown rice and sautéed vegetables with something like peanut sauce or teriyaki sauce.
And that’s it! That’s what I eat pretty much every day. Oh I make some bomb vegan tacos now and then. No fake meat just lots of amazing plants.
Anyway! I just wanted to share because I like this stuff and also I don’t eat a lot of grains. The brown rice could be replaced with lentils or something for pretty much no grains.
I really like the Nutrition Facts YouTube channel so poke around there if you’d like.
I see he has some videos on insulin:
https://youtu.be/AoHvkrcr6EM
https://youtu.be/UTxLHqeXZNQ
To your health!
Grains are a big issue, but other things like the apples, carrots, peaches, crackers bounce up my blood sugar as well and would cause me challenges and likely have to go back on extraneous insulin to prevent the small blood vessel issues that hyperglycemia causes diabetics.
For someone to restrict carbs on a vegan diet you are limited to basically cruciferous vegetables and certain berries. While I eat those things now, its the addition of the meat and dairy products that I eat that make enough variety for me to stick with it. Eating the same things every day is not something that I am able to do with success. That is the real test of any diet you take on…it has to be a real sustainable lifestyle change. For me that is the real benefit of keto, I have been able to make it that lifestyle change. It has definitely benefited me for my diabetes management and weight loss.
I am realistic to acknowledge that there may be some long term issue, but the fact that I can get to the point of having a long term issue is the magic here.
Keto folks and vegans tend to have those zealot reputations, but I definitely appreciate great dialog. Wish you well.
You had diabetes because you were likely obese and inactive. Not because you were eating bread, FFS.
I don't understand why it is so hard for people to understand the concept is literally just "calories in minus calories used / out = weight gain or loss." It is simple thermodynamics.
Keto/Paleo diets are among the least nutritious and most difficult to adhere to (most people who claim to follow keto/paleo don't, because it's extremely restrictive), consistently ranking among the worst diets health-wise by nutritional scientists. One of the best is the Mediterranean diet, one which involves no red meat.
> As for all the other stuff, all farming has environmental impact. You can argue degrees of impact,
That's literally what we're saying, and there's plenty of proof.
Beef uses ten times more resources than chicken: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/beef-uses-ten-...
You want to help the environment? Minimize your red meat consumption. That alone makes a huge difference. The second biggest difference you can make is minimizing energy use for personal transportation, and the third biggest difference is reducing energy consumption in your home (mostly heating/cooling.)
Results: We find that the top sources of priority micronutrients are organs, small fish, dark green leafy vegetables, bivalves, crustaceans, goat, beef, eggs, milk, canned fish with bones, mutton, and lamb. Cheese, goat milk, and pork are also good sources, and to a lesser extent, yogurt, fresh fish, pulses, teff, and canned fish without bones.
Starting keto for me eliminated literally all processed foods. Every food I eat is is pretty much its whole form, excepting cheeses, butter, and olive oil. There are quite a few processed foods on the market called “keto”, but most folks I know on the diet tend to avoid or only use those very sparingly.
On a weekly basis I eat eggs, cheese, pork, beef, fish, chicken, berries, nuts, and cruciferous vegetables. Some olive oil, and some butter. If that is unhealthy…I am not sure what healthy is.
There is no such thing, at least not for the people who live around the Mediterranean.
Incorrect. Restricting carbohydrates absolutely was the reason my A1Hc went down and I came off insulin within 3 months of starting keto while I was still morbidly obese
> I don't understand why it is so hard for people to understand the concept is literally just "calories in minus calories used / out = weight gain or loss." It is simple thermodynamics.
When did I state the contrary? I didnt. What Keto did for me was allow my body to reach satiety without excess caloric intake and stabilize my blood sugar levels which help control hunger.
> Keto/Paleo diets are among the least nutritious and most difficult to adhere to (most people who claim to follow keto/paleo don't, because it's extremely restrictive), consistently ranking among the worst diets health-wise by nutritional scientists. One of the best is the Mediterranean diet, one which involves no red meat.
I lived in the Mediterranean area for a number of years, I can assure you…plenty of red meat was consumed where I lived. By the way…I have been on a keto diet for more than 5 years. My heath is good, my doctor has zero complaints and has suggested keto as an option to other T2 diabetics and overweight folks in his practice because of the success it has had for me and some of his other patients.
> You want to help the environment? I think my point was and is that I am not willing to do it at the expense of my own health. In terms of other things you mentioned, not sure why that is even part of the discussion.
Carb restrictions allowed my body to manage the blood glucose with just my own body’s production of insulin, which eliminated extraneous insulin. Stable low blood glucose prevents small vessel damage which prevents most of the issues that are caused by type 2 diabetes
> Red meat is absolutely devastating to the environment and water supply, with immense greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and polluted water tables
The above is an almost incontestable fact. Climate change and health experts both say we need to move western populations to a more plant based diet. But the moment someone brings that up, 25 people feel the need to jump in with their personal story about how eating nothing but red meat cleansed their vital bodily fluids. It's complete nonsense to respond to generalized scientific claims in this fashion and for some reason a lot of people don't realize this. Hacker News has a lot of people who think they can "hack" diet, aging, weight loss, what have you.
I have my own personal anecdote, of course. I lost close to 100 pounds on a vegetarian diet on which I tried to avoid low-nutrient sugary foods. Doing this changed the course of my life. But I'm not going to claim that this fact about me makes any difference whatsoever to scientific claims abut what it makes sense for individuals or populations to be eating. A vegetarian diet is not the only way to lose weight or live a healthy life.
Even if we take for granted that (contrary to all conventional medical wisdom) keto is the only way someone like you could live healthily, this simply has no impact whatsoever on the OP claim that red meat is bad for the environment and not necessary for the overwhelming majority of people to be eating.
I agree. People are indeed mixing up 3 things that are only loosely related:
1. What is healthier.
2. What will cause you to lose weight (which is related to 1, but not exactly the same).
3. What is better for the planet.
The three are different goals, which might or might not be opposed to each other.
Yet, you did. You are participating…you don’t realize this?
> Even if we take for granted that (contrary to all conventional medical wisdom) keto is the only way someone like you could live healthily, this simply has no impact whatsoever on the OP claim that red meat is bad for the environment and not necessary for the overwhelming majority of people to be eating.
No one to my knowledge talking about keto here made this absolutist claim. I know I didn’t. I simply provided my experience and commented on the fact that because of my success, environmental factors for agriculture do not factor into my dietary equation. I don’t understand the need y’all have to create a strawman here.
Also, “conventional medical wisdom” for many years encouraged type 2 diabetics to eat a diet based on grains, fruits, and pasta (I still have the pamphlets that were given to me when first diagnosed) supplemented by many lovely and expensive pharmaceutical therapies for people to manage their diabetes. Three years ago, the American Diabetes Association reversed its opinion of low carb and keto, declaring them effective and safe strategies to manage type 2 diabetes via diet. So…effectively keto and low carb has become “conventional medical wisdom”.
Finally…you eat how you want, and I’ll eat how I want. I’m happy you found a diet that is successful for you. Keep eating it and don’t let some random person on the internet try and shame you about it for any reason, because it’s none of their damned business.
But so is obesity: https://www.webmd.com/diet/obesity/news/20191220/growing-obe...
Im over 3 years now with brief breaks away from keto. Long term checkmark.
>And health is only one element.
Deliciousness is another yes.
>Red meat is absolutely devastating to the environment and water supply,
How does a cow in a giant field eating grass and pooping tons of carbon down into carbon sinks damage the environment? In fact, Cow farming is great for the environment.
> deforestation, and polluted water tables,
I think you've confused all the problems with the unethical and immoral agriculture. Fertilizers and pesticides are so tremendously destructive to the environment.
>on top of the incredible cruelty of factory farming and slaughter.
Totally agreed here. We need to ban factory farming.
Having done a couple of stints of meat + veggies only for 8-12 months I can definitely say you feel wired. I highly recommend, though it takes a couple weeks to break any carbs. I prefer it personally, but alas with multiple children and constant gatherings it’s hard to keep it up perfectly.
Real trick is snacks. I would make burgers and / or bacon and store it for a week or eat jerky. Worked well enough if I got hungry. After the first week or two your body adjusts to the protein & fat based meals and you no longer snack as much. At least not for me.
- Do not attempt if you have children - Do not attempt if you dont control what goes in the fridge. - Do not attempt if you cant deflect peer pressure.
My understanding is that this is not true, or at least extremely unlikely. The majority of hunter-gatherer societies seemed to have subsisted mostly on plants, with meat being a minority of their calories, possibly more of a special-occasion food.
Here's a sample source:
> The real Paleolithic diet, though, wasn’t all meat and marrow. It’s true that hunter-gatherers around the world crave meat more than any other food and usually get around 30 percent of their annual calories from animals.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of...
As with every statement about hunter gatherers or hunter gardeners it varies. If you’re living in the far north like the Inuit, Eskimos or similar your diet is going to be almost all meat, maybe some berries for two months of the year. Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans living in the far North of Eurasia would have had more plants but not a lot more. Humans can live on diets of 80% plus gruel, on potatoes with some milk, rice and beans, on noting not meat (as long as you eat organs and fat).
Humans are really varied. We can’t eat pure vegan without deficiency diseases but there’s a lot of variety in human diet.
They also weren't around in the Paleolithic.
What?
> The real Paleolithic diet, though, wasn't all meat and marrow. It's true that hunter-gatherers around the world crave meat more than any other food and usually get around 30 percent of their annual calories from animals.
> So how do hunter-gatherers get energy when there’s no meat? It turns out that “man the hunter” is backed up by “woman the forager,” who, with some help from children, provides more calories during difficult times. When meat, fruit, or honey is scarce, foragers depend on “fallback foods,” says Brooks. The Hadza get almost 70 percent of their calories from plants. The Kung traditionally rely on tubers and mongongo nuts, the Aka and Baka Pygmies of the Congo River Basin on yams, the Tsimane and Yanomami Indians of the Amazon on plantains and manioc, the Australian Aboriginals on nut grass and water chestnuts.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of...
One thing I’ve noticed about hunter gatherer societies today, at least from various films and documentaries, is that they tend to be smaller both in height and mass than say, the westerners documenting them. That being said they seem to have significantly more stamina and incredible physical skill (watching a guy stand on the edge of a cliff and hurl sticks to knock flying bats out of the air was mindbending)
I would guess they eat a higher percentage of meat, but probably less in total.
No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_human_diet
tldr: Homo habilis ate some meat, and Homo erectus was more of an omnivore, eating tougher-to-chew/digest foods...and even later, started to cook foods...both meat and plant-based.
The "paleo" diet is what happens when a bunch of jocks get high, watch the Flintstones and decide to base a diet off what they saw.
Do the math on trying to survive off vegetables or fruit. Heavy meat consumption is basically required (alternative energy sources could be milk, honey, and nuts - but still limited and often need cultivation).
Edit: Will you define what "heavy meat consumption" means?
Honestly, 30% of a Hunter gatherers m diet might be meat if it’s analyzed by volume or amount on a plate. It’s not really clear how it’s measured
I'll still eat low/no carb vegetables like cucumbers, pickles, broccoli, etc, however. A diet of no soluble fiber isn't workable for me.
tl;dr if you eat enough fat with your all-protein diet, and get enough vitamin C (e.g. from liver) to ward off scurvy, you (might be) okay
I made fried rice today and it was great. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.
You forgot the closing about how because you made great fried rice today, we will all be able to solve world hunger in 2 years.
I know a guy that tried this diet and ended up on statins at 23 but I never thought to write about it on substack for (lol) consumption on HN, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected that ephemera of an anecdote to make it to the front page of a popular website about technology.
Edit: also it is downright hilarious that it’s assumed that this guy doesn’t season his food at all aside from salt. Is there an HN/lobsters settle site for comedy articles?
I don't care what anyone else eats, have at it. But if you pay attention to those A1C commercials that are all over the place, cut down on the sugar a bit, would you?
Umm, what? The history of humanity is one of agriculture.
Also https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-paleo-diet-ha... I quote: Humans come from a fairly generalized line of higher primates, a lineage able to utilize a wide range of plant and animal foods. There is general agreement that the ancestral line (Hominoidea) giving rise to humans was strongly herbivorous (14, 15). Modern human nutritional requirements (eg, the need for a dietary source of vitamin C), features of the modern human gut (haustrated colon), and the modern human pattern of digestive kinetics (similar to that of great apes) suggest an ancestral past in which tropical plant foods formed the basis of the daily diet, with perhaps some opportunistic intake of animal matter.
Going on: Consumption of animal matter to satisfy requirements for protein and many essential micronutrients would free up space in the gut for carbohydrate-rich plant foods and allow for their use as fuel for the increasingly large human brain (14). Because humans initially evolved in Africa, where wild animals generally lack appreciable fat stores (2), it seems clear that they consumed a mixed diet of animal and plant foods, given the apparent limitations of human digestive physiology to secure adequate daily energy from protein sources alone (4).
Whilst early human were not vegan they were hardly mostly carnivores either. Furthermore as stated in both articles basing the diet of modern humans on the one of our ancestors is a mistake!
P.S. I am far from being vegan! Suturday I ate 600g of a delicious cow.
The other article does seem to be in favor of promoting a vegetarian view. But to me it seems incredibly lackluster: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08999... To shorten it up: 1) Today we suffer of diet related disease 2) Other great apes are mostly vegetarians 3) Our digestive system is very similar to that of apes result: The recommendation that Americans consume more fresh fruits and vegetables in greater variety appears well supported by data on the diets of free-ranging monkeys and apes.
Previously our differences from apes have been correlated to the fact that we cook food:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272419339_Comparati...
Thus, humans are relatively poor among autoenzyme-dependent omnivores in digesting uncooked plant fiber. The human large intestine lies somewhere between that of the pig, a similar omni-vore, and the dog, a carnivore capable of consuming an omnivore diet that has a reduced cecum and short colon.
Also interesting: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701477
This hasn’t been true since the dawn of agriculture. People mostly ate some kind of grain or tuber. Sometimes as gruel/meal, sometimes as bread, sometimes as mash but most people have been peasants since the dawn of farming and peasants eat carbs.
I guess it depends on "where".
The so-called Mediterranean diet, which is the "normal" way of eating in Italy, basically consists of bread/pasta/vegetables and (olive) oil (but is not in any way vegetarian or vegan as eggs/poultry/cheese/fish are also largely present).
Traditionally red meat was eaten once or maybe twice a week.
So, not carnivore and not keto.
The real question will be what will the results be when he gets a colonoscopy at 40. I have a family friend who has been a long term meat-only person, and he is 50 and has a very bad case of diverticulitis as well as gastric reflux. Maybe he would have gotten them regardless, or maybe if he tried eating a little fiber he could have avoided it. I personally would be taking something like psyllium husk if I was going on that kind of diet(which I did when I went keto, but I was just doing it for fun and not weight loss, so it was hard to stick with).
Have you considered the possibility that you're merely sensitive to certain types of food, which would be easier to cut out than doing large scale diet readjustments?
Possibly, I’d l just be nowhere near narrowing it down.
The only reason I suspect IBD is the occasional formation of painful mouth ulcers which I hear are common in Chron’s disease. It was the only thing I could find that left sores exactly like that in the area on the inside of my lip in front of the teeth.
Scientists and doctors have linked cigarette smoking to multiple health problems since the late 19th century.
Now we have the tools to do our own reading, but probably not actual scientific research. That means we have the tools to confirm our biases.
Also, murdering and exploiting animals is not cool.
This keto fad has been going on for years. The actual science is in on this.
Dietary cholesterol has nothing to do with anything. In fact, high blood sugar tends to damage your serum cholesterol. You basically have to go into a long fast in order to let your body clear out the damaged cholesterol. But often people dont do that, so slowly but surely the damaged cholesterol builds up. That's when you start having heart attacks.
https://www.healthline.com/health/high-cholesterol/sugar-and...
What keto does is effectively limit the amount of damage to ldl. Carnivore completely eliminates this.
If you're concerned about other people's diet and heart attacks. You pretty much have to recommend carnivore to them.
>Also, murdering and exploiting animals is not cool.
Murdering and exploiting animals that wouldn't exist otherwise. As humans have been 'murdering and exploiting' animal for 100,000 years... not going to win much argument in ending this.
I do believe synthmeat will be a thing in the future. I optimistically hope to see this day.
This blog post does not contain useful advice for most people, but is a) vaguely interesting to see how someone managed to control rare health issues, and b) may be helpful for folk who have been trying and failing to deal with major health issues similar to the author.
I consider myself vegetarian although not 100% strict and in the past 4/5 years I ate red meat when I wanted to try specific foods, or dishes and every single time I felt in the exact same way that the author felt when eating vegetables. When I eat red meat, I am tired, I don't sleep well, I can't exercise well and I can't concentrate. And all my (mostly) vegetarian friends feel the same way when eating red meat.
This to say that his single data point doesn't mean anything: most likely my body is not used to red meat anymore, in the same way that his is not used to vegetables anymore.
I'm not on a vegan diet, or a carnivore diet, but I worry about my teeth all the time. What happened when you changed your diet? Are these teeth issues, or gum issues, or both?
I didn’t even see the data to back it up, nor is it evenly distributed. Aka many groups will have higher or lower distributions.
Further, it didn’t say 70% were roots/fruit/vegetables it said 30% was meat. The article didn’t clarify if that was be weight, volume, count, etc. it’s possible 30% by volume is meat, but by that measure I could eat a watermelon and a steak and only 5% of my diet is meat.
It also mentions an African tribe that survives mostly on milk and honey. That tribe isn’t hunters and gatherers (they manage herds), but let’s assume they count that (no data listed), then that still isn’t meat nor vegetables/roots/fruits.
Sure it did, and it did it in my quote. 30% of their calories.
That's extremely different than the watermelon and steak in your example. It's closer to about 7 kilograms of potatoes for every kilo of meat.
http://bonzaiaphrodite.com/2015/07/when-vegans-get-sick-exce...
https://www.nomeatathlete.com
What's fun is the articles they've done on NFL players (like Brady, whose diet is 80% plants) who obviously have professionals working for them but have no negative performance issues.