As if this planet will even be worth living on if climate change continues to go unchecked. Or if humanity will even exist after the inevitable mass extinction event
Reminds me that I need to study the impacts of a vegan diet in the science literature to understand how aggressively I should be pursuing it. The times I’ve lived on a near vegan diet, I feel quietly better in lots of little unexpected ways. Happy to chase books or links if people have them lying around.
That book is highly-biased in favor of veganism. Greger is very controversial. Any mention of him ought to also acknowledge this.
Also, he wears a lab coat but doesn't see patients, which is weird AF.
Both pure vegan and pure meat camps claim to have scientific evidence that it works, which make me question if change is what the body responds to. From personal experience, eating less often and fasting does seem to improve things like brain fog, indigestion etc.
People going vegan or going pure aktins or whatever have the most important thing in common, they are actually thinking about what they eat, reading labels and generally making conscious decisions about food.
That’s a false equivalence, not all evidence has the same quality. I don’t think there’s any doubt across serious scientists that meat intake should be limited for positive health outcomes.
We need to collectively evolve as a species past intensive industrial animal confinement. To think, we can be more compassionat and don't need to sacrifice our health, and may in fact be able to live healthier!
In such a world, if we still kept cats as pets, how would we feed them? Would non-industrial, more small-scale farming of animals be able to sustain that, or would exceptions need to be made? I use cats in this example since they, unlike dogs, are carnivores, and they must eat meat to live healthily (unlike us, where a bit of supplementation is enough for entirely vegan diets to be viable).
I'm curious how problems like this would be dealt with in a vegan world. Just let the cats loose on the local rodent and bird population, maybe?
Highly misleading title. They make you really dig up linked paywalled papers before you see any methods.
The methods say people were allocated to vegan versus "high meat consumption" foods, with participants free to choose their diets. The only restriction was you had to "try" to increase intake if losing weight, and "try" to decrease intake if gaining weight. (i.e. only isocaloric per basal rate, not across the board). Then the linked studies hint heavily that the vegan group tended towards less protein but more fibre, and roughly equal carbs (fat is not mentioned!!). Which at the very least shows the diets were nit "equivalent" bar for meat, let alone for "moderate" (i.e. potentially healthy) amounts of meat.
So they're not comparing "healthy wholefood vegan vs healthy wholefood meat diets". They're comparing dietary choices when aiming for a vegan diet versus whrn aiming for a diet characterised by excessive amounts if meat.
I honestly don't get why they do studies like this. It's a waste if time for everyone involved. It's almost like they're only after a headline, rather than actually useful comparisons. Really, if anything, the conclusion here could be that meat diets are likely healthier given sufficient supplementation of fibre.
I can’t access the previous paper by the authors that contains details about the diets.
That being said, people don’t eat macronutrients, they eat foods. With equal caloric intake, a vegan diet is going to be higher in fiber and lower in fat and protein than a diet that includes meat. That’s probably part of why it’s healthy, but the reason for doing this study is to understand the mechanisms in more detail, rather than just claiming that one is better than the other.
When you say they should have supplemented fiber, you’re also implying they should have had less meat. According to the linked paper from this year, the meat-rich diet included at least 150g of meat per day, which is just a bit more than a chicken breast or a single burger patty. Probably in line with what many expect from a balanced meal.
> When you say they should have supplemented fiber, you’re also implying they should have had less meat
Why? This is a non-sequitur. As are the other assertions in my opinion. You can have meat based diets rich in fibre (e.g. the mediterranean diet), and you can have vegan diets completely devoid of them (e.g. living off McDonalds plantburgers for the rest of your life).
The problem is this conflating of veganism, which at its heart is an ethical movement, as a nutritional one. So designing studies that intentionally blur this line isn't doing anyone no favours.
If I see a study comparing vegan junkfood against the mediterranean diet where the vegan diet still comes on top, I'd change my tune. But the reverse scenario, i.e. comparing meat-based diets of a nature that most people would intuitively consider unhealthy anyway (i.e. not necessarily because of the meat) against vegan diets which most people would intuitively consider healthy anyway (i.e. not necessarily because of the veganism) provides zero useful evidence.
And if I were to make a dietary choice for ethical reasons, I would much more appreciate insights coming from impartial science over an echo chamber, academic or otherwise.
Most studies on diets are usually skewed because part of the results do not directly come to the specific diet (no matter if it's the vegan, carnivore, atkins, dukan, paleo or whatever) but from study participants "suddenly" following a well-defined eating regime (with a well defined upper bound on caloric intake).
Essentially, if you go from eating shit at whatever time of the day to following a well-specified eating regime... of course you'll get benefits.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 56.6 ms ] threadI'm curious how problems like this would be dealt with in a vegan world. Just let the cats loose on the local rodent and bird population, maybe?
https://meatly.pet/
^ that's an example of one I found.
This may be correct technique for a small-n, short-duration study.
But don't expect the results to be applicable to typical non-vegans.
The methods say people were allocated to vegan versus "high meat consumption" foods, with participants free to choose their diets. The only restriction was you had to "try" to increase intake if losing weight, and "try" to decrease intake if gaining weight. (i.e. only isocaloric per basal rate, not across the board). Then the linked studies hint heavily that the vegan group tended towards less protein but more fibre, and roughly equal carbs (fat is not mentioned!!). Which at the very least shows the diets were nit "equivalent" bar for meat, let alone for "moderate" (i.e. potentially healthy) amounts of meat.
So they're not comparing "healthy wholefood vegan vs healthy wholefood meat diets". They're comparing dietary choices when aiming for a vegan diet versus whrn aiming for a diet characterised by excessive amounts if meat.
I honestly don't get why they do studies like this. It's a waste if time for everyone involved. It's almost like they're only after a headline, rather than actually useful comparisons. Really, if anything, the conclusion here could be that meat diets are likely healthier given sufficient supplementation of fibre.
That being said, people don’t eat macronutrients, they eat foods. With equal caloric intake, a vegan diet is going to be higher in fiber and lower in fat and protein than a diet that includes meat. That’s probably part of why it’s healthy, but the reason for doing this study is to understand the mechanisms in more detail, rather than just claiming that one is better than the other.
When you say they should have supplemented fiber, you’re also implying they should have had less meat. According to the linked paper from this year, the meat-rich diet included at least 150g of meat per day, which is just a bit more than a chicken breast or a single burger patty. Probably in line with what many expect from a balanced meal.
Why? This is a non-sequitur. As are the other assertions in my opinion. You can have meat based diets rich in fibre (e.g. the mediterranean diet), and you can have vegan diets completely devoid of them (e.g. living off McDonalds plantburgers for the rest of your life).
The problem is this conflating of veganism, which at its heart is an ethical movement, as a nutritional one. So designing studies that intentionally blur this line isn't doing anyone no favours.
If I see a study comparing vegan junkfood against the mediterranean diet where the vegan diet still comes on top, I'd change my tune. But the reverse scenario, i.e. comparing meat-based diets of a nature that most people would intuitively consider unhealthy anyway (i.e. not necessarily because of the meat) against vegan diets which most people would intuitively consider healthy anyway (i.e. not necessarily because of the veganism) provides zero useful evidence.
And if I were to make a dietary choice for ethical reasons, I would much more appreciate insights coming from impartial science over an echo chamber, academic or otherwise.
Essentially, if you go from eating shit at whatever time of the day to following a well-specified eating regime... of course you'll get benefits.
Dumb example: this professor lost 27 pounds and got improvements across various markers by eating Twinkies - link: https://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profe...