Someone has brought up Dr. Esselstyn as a rebuttal to keto. Any knowledge of him? I’m trying to read his studies and info to find out more but I don’t know what’s real and what’s propaganda.
Dr. Esselstyn?
MarkGossage
(bulkbiker)
#2
He’s another of the Whole Food Plant Based diet guru’s bit like Dr Greger.
Rian
#3
Check out the documentary Forks Over Knives and you’ll see where the person you were debating likely got their info. Esselstyn is famous heart surgeon who advocates a plant based diet. I used to eat that way and while I think you can thrive on mostly plant foods it’s nearly impossible to reverse metabolic damage doing so (I felt great but I never lost a pound after eating nearly raw vegan for a long long time). If you want to know how to debate someone who thinks this way you should listen to Livin La Vida Low Carb episode 686 where Jimmy debates Dr. John McDougall. If that interview doesn’t make you want to scream I don’t know what will.
nck
#4
I just listened to that episode because of your recommendation. Mcdougall was just so condescending! He wouldn’t allow for processed carbs to be brought into the conversation because he wants it to be all about animal products!
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#5
Email Chris Krueger ck@effortless8.com and ask for his BFF#20 email newsletter. He takes apart Esselstyn’s so-called evidence pretty thoroughly. I could just post it, but that’s not cricket.
Rian
#6
Most doctors would make their case based on science. He makes his based on half-assed historical theories and personal attacks. He’s a tool, props to Jimmy for keeping his cool. I love keto but I will say this: you can thrive on a mostly plant based diet. Humans are amazing that way. What you can’t do with a plant based diet from my experience is reverse metabolic damage. If you eat nothing but organic plants maybe you can but most vegans are lazy and/or don’t understand exactly what they are trying to accomplish aside from avoiding animal products. As a result they often eat a lot of processed foods. And I found being vegan a royal pain in the ass. No faster way to be the guy your friends hate going to restaurants with than being a vegan. Keto is easy in comparison.
Chris_W
(Crow T. Robot)
#7
Not the famous vegan doctors. He, Barnard, Greger, McDougal, Katz, and Kahn all basically use the same playbook.
Edit: And Ornish; can’t forget him 
nck
#8
I found this post by searching for ‘Greger’. I try to read what he and his followers talk about for possible ‘balance’. I am trying to reconcile how they insist that everything they say is backed by science and then quickly attack anyone for ingesting salmon once a month!
Very righteous!
Zoishe
(Christy)
#9
i suggest you take a look at over 80 years of proof that whole plant based foods are the way to go, not animal proteins. www.ecornell.com based on scentific studies and clinical tries proves beyond anything else this is the optimal diet for humans whole plant foods
brownfat
(Todd Allen)
#10
No. There is no proof. Science doesn’t prove. It can show what is wrong and tries to make sense of what remains. And nutritional studies are weak science at best. If a plant based diet is optimal for human health why does a woman’s breasts produce milk for her baby? Why not just feed babies grass? It would be so much easier.
There is no such thing as an optimal diet for humans. We can’t determine an optimal diet for an individual at any given point in their life (other than nothing seems better for babies than their mother’s milk) let alone suggest an optimal diet for all of humanity.
Zoishe
(Christy)
#11
Breastmilk is optimal for babies and a whole food plant based diet as they grow. Do you not read peer reviewed journals on clinical trials referring to this? 80 years of evidence…
brownfat
(Todd Allen)
#12
Yes I’ve read many studies. But I’ve never seen a single one that isolated the question of plant versus animal foods in a fashion that could suggest in any way that one is healthier than the other for humans. And even if a study could convincingly show a benefit to a plant based diet it would only be a generalization, perhaps better in a statistically significant percentage of cases but undoubtedly not ideal in every case. It would still be incredibly ignorant to suggest that everyone adopt a plant based diet. If one cares about the health of individual people the only responsible advice to give is for each person to carefully test and see what works best for themselves.
Zoishe
(Christy)
#15
Biology has proven beyond a reasonable doubt whoe food PLANT based lifestyle is optimal. Eating animals is unnecessary, wasteful, harms humans with disease, excess animal protein causes obesity, CAD, ED, ALZHEIMERS, CANCER, IBD, lactose intolerance well because youre not a calf, look up the top ten killers of humans. The American diet is SAD and disgusting eating the dead tortured, exhausted, mutilated, raped bodies of ANIMALS whom deserve to be free and enjoy life like all sentient beings. Most chickens never breathe fresh air or feel/ see the sun or grass. Same for pigs and turkeys. Eating dead animals is unnecessary. Instead of bulldozing forests for feeding livestock… we could stop deforestation and start using crops to feed Humans!
Bellyman
(Brian)
#16
So why is it that vegans and vegetarians (plant based eaters) do not have longer lifespans than non-vegan and non-vegetarians that also look after their health? Why is it that they suffer from the same diseases as the rest of the population, things like cancer, or Alzheimer’s Disease? I recently heard a lecture that suggested that the rate of Alzheimer’s is actually HIGHER in vegans.
I would agree that what a person eats has a big impact upon their health as do another half dozen or so factors. People who are careful about all of those factors don’t seem to be sorted out with the vegan and vegetarians among them living the longest. Yes, they live longer than the general population that takes little care of their health. But so do the meat eaters in the group that takes good care of their health.
I would think it would be obvious by now, with large groups of vegans and vegetarians living well into their 100’s, way beyond that of meat eaters. The statistics, if they exist, have never been shown to me. The data points that I’ve seen in actual real life have not pointed in that direction. Sorry. It’s something I wanted to believe for a long time, myself. Empirical evidence really should be presenting itself in recognizable ways if it were so.
brownfat
(Todd Allen)
#17
Here’s an excerpt from page 38 of The China Study:
Proof in science is elusive. Even more than in the “core” sciences of biology, chemistry and physics, establishing absolute proof in medicine and health is nearly impossible. The primary objective of research investigation is to determine only what is likely to be true. This is because research into health is inherently statistical. When you throw a ball in the air, will it come down? Yes, every time. That’s physics. If you smoke four packs a day, will you get lung cancer? The answer is maybe. We know that your odds of getting lung cancer are much higher than if you didn’t smoke, and we can tell you what those odds (statistics) are, but we can’t know with certainty whether you as an individual will get lung cancer. In nutrition research, untangling the relationship between diet and health is not so straightforward. Humans live all sorts of different ways, have different genetic backgrounds and eat all sorts of different foods. Experimental limitations such as cost restraints, time constraints and measurement error are significant obstacles. Perhaps most importantly, food, lifestyle and health interact through such complex, multifaceted systems that establishing proof for anyone factor and anyone disease is nearly impossible, even if you had the perfect set of subjects, unlimited time and unlimited financial resources
EZB
(Ethan)
#19
These people always confuse ethics and health. They think they are one and the same or choose to equate the two to fit their needs.
