Just to put some nails in the coffin of the China Study:
There is so much wrong with the T. Colin Campbell’s work that it takes a large number of scientists toiling away to point out all the flaws.
It’s junk science, due to cherry picked data, poor methodology and more. And I dislike dismissing something as junk science as much as I dislike “fake news” but every now and again someone comes along with something completely nonsensical.
#KnivesOverForks
@Zoishe I don’t doubt that some people can do very well as vegetarian/vegan. Several years ago I did it for about 3 months and just felt weak and sickly. It sucked and I couldn’t continue. I went back to eating meat and have never felt better.
Food choice is not a moral judgment. When we find what makes us feel great and optimizes our health, that’s the body telling us what it needs. My wish is that everyone can find their optimal diet and enjoy the best health possible for them.
You absolutely cannot do well as a vegan without HEAVY, HEAVY supplementation. The majority of bioavailable micronutrients are simply not found in plant foods in significant, usable quantities.
I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
I replied to your question of whether I read a particular book with a word for word (including the sloppy gammatical errors) excerpt from that book which explicitly contradicts your previous post “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.com3 based on scentific studies and clinical tries proves beyond anything else this is the optimal diet for humans whole plant foods”.
I don’t think you have read the book yourself. If you had you ought to understand the China study was an epidemiological study which at best finds correlations. The ones found were both weak and mixed. Randomized control trials are needed to suggest causation. But no one has done such trials to justify your assertions. And even if there were such trials they still don’t amount to PROOF.
LOL, so exactly why have you registered to post on a keto forum?
With an open mind, I actually followed one of those ultra plant based diets a few years ago. I felt really good on it and some health markers did improve. But I wanted much more for myself, and in the end, it was not for me. Eating low carb/keto, I feel even better. Much better. And keto food is far more tasty to me.
To each his own.
China’s diabetes rates skyrocketing over the past few decades after becoming affluent enough to purchase sugar leads me to question whether they’re the best example to follow. Looks like they now have more diabetics than the rest of the world.
Unless the WHO’s report is not credible.
I was one of the foolish ones who got suckered into vegetarianism and veganism for a while. And then after a blood test my horrified neurologist put me on daily and then weekly vitamin B12 injections for 3 months which slowed some of the neurological damage I was suffering. Fortunately, after switching to a diet high in quality animal foods such as grass fed beef liver and now our own carefully produced eggs & chickens I don’t expect to ever again need those injections.
Wow! I am sorry to see this thread become so heated. That’s what happens when emotional issues get mixed in with science.
I want to address the environmental issues that surround the question of whether we SHOULD eat beef, because I think there is a lot of misinformation circulating.
First, a disclaimer–I was a vegetarian for seven years. I developed a distaste for meat after seeing a 60 Minutes expose on factory farming. And I am NOT here to defend cruel and inhumane practices (that are not a necessary part of eating animals) or reckless disregard for air and water pollution that can occur when feedlots and barns dispose of wastes. If you find meat repulsive, or if you have ethical objections to eating animals, that’s your choice, but it seems hypocritical to express compassion for animals while vilifying human beings who simply have a different point of view. I love animals, but I do not love animals more than I love people.
As for the environment, according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, rangeland makes up 40 to 50 percent of the planet’s land surface area. Rangeland is defined as areas unsuited for cultivation and includes forested areas. “Unsuited for cultivation” means food crops CANNOT be grown efficiently in such areas. In the Southwest U.S, for example, much of the land is too hilly or too stony or there is not sufficient water for irrigation. Cattle living on the tall grass prairie typical of western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and much of New Mexico, are able to efficiently digest grass and turn it into meat that provides nourishment for human beings. The manure from grazing cattle goes back to nourish the soil.
Typically, in what is knows as a cow-calf operation, a calf grazes alongside its mother cow for a year or so on rangeland before it is sent to a feedlot for “finishing” on feed, which includes grain, for about two months and then on to slaughter. And so beef cattle are NOT competing with human beings for food resources. I grew up in cattle country, and I have seen first hand that ranchers are not the demons that some vegetarians make them out to be.
Here is an eye-opening presentation from Keto Down Under. The guy is not the most dynamic presenter I’ve ever seen, but I found him to be pretty likable. He put to rest the environmental issues as far as I’m concerned.
I agree with you on that, they need sun hitting the retina and skin because it is bad for us nutritionally if they don’t live naturally before we eat them! Offal is the best part, even better than or equal to plants nutritionally! I can dig aged livestock too!
Eating animals can never be stopped and never will, so it is a pretty futile point to even contemplate pointing the inference of suffering to any one individual or group in such a ridiculous context.
Stay classy, Z.
I don’t think it is possible to go vegan keto, or even vegan non keto and not be essentially deficient … and while it could take a while for that to catch up with you, you will need to find a source of B12, Heme iron, DHA, and Choline from outside of your diet.
I think it is possible to be ketogenic and ovo-pesce-fungi vegetarian (fish for DHA and Heme Iron, eggs for Choline and Vegemite (yeast) for B12) and I plan to try that for a month this year just to walk a mile in the shoes of others. Mind you the following month I plan to go keto carnivore.
For most animals, the raw materials for building their own bodies comes from the bodies of smaller animals. Even animals with multiple stomachs who appear to be well suited to eating grasses from rangelands, they don’t actually primarily digest grasses they don’t even have the enzyme cellulase to break down cellulose. What they do is feed the cellulose to bacteria in their gut which does 2 things … the bacteria make short chained fatty acids and lots of other bacteria. Ruminants consume the bacteria and those short chained fatty acids. So even cows are eating smaller (single cell) animals and a high fat diet.
We don’t have the multiple stomachs to do that. It’s a romantic fiction to say that humans were designed or evolved to be herbivores. We can do it for a short time when meat isn’t available.
Richard, I listened to an audio recording of Ted Naiman talking about whether vegans can be keto and healthy. He sees a lot of them in his practice so I pay attention to what he has to say.
Two takeaways for me is that they typically are protein deficient, and that if they want to be healthy eating a keto diet, they have to supplement heavily.
Not an exact quote but, that was the message.
I heard that podcast also. He said something to the effect of “you better like coconut oil and plant based protein shakes”. It sounds like a lot of effort but props to the people who can set their mind to something that extreme and make it work.
You’re right. I was just listening to Shawn Baker talk about veganism. His theory is that vegans are often young and eating that way based on ideals. They get away with it for a few years at the cost of severely depleting their vitamin and mineral reserves. His theory makes sense.
The problem around this debate is that people are having a hard time separating the ethics from the science. ZC could possibly be the perfect diet. Maybe not. But that has nothing to do with how good or bad the lives of animals raised for food are.
Ted has unusual views on protein.
For example he has stated multiple times that 4.4g/kg is entirely reasonable. There is good evidence (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC333026/) that more than 3.31g/kg saturates our ability to deal with the ammonia pollution from metabolizing protein for energy - which is what we do when we have more than we need for nitrogen balance … which has been shown (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12499330) to be between 0.3 and 1.0 g/kg.
Personally I think that we all should find where we individually get our best results, somewhere on the continuum from 1.0 - 3.3 g/kg LBM. For me it’s at the lower end of that range. I think I could make it on tofu, and lower carb pulses … for a month, maybe, if I knew the following month I could eat as much meat as I wanted to.
Yes it’s very difficult to get adequate B12 on a vegan intake, although if you can stomach eating yeast … then Vegemite may be an option. There are some other theoretical nutrient deficiencies, but it may be that in a vegan context some of the conditionally essential nutrition requirements may be different - just like Vitamin C is less needed for those of us in reguilare ketosis.
I appreciate your thoughts, Richard. And I don’t disagree.
We tend to take on perspectives in relation to the things and people we see around us.
Ted doesn’t say what some of the individual levels of protein deficiency look like as individual persons but rather leaves his statement rather broad. I’m not questioning his judgement there. I can’t see what he’s seen. I am curious what some of those manifestations look like in actual practice, I might ask him if I ever get the chance.
I’ve seen a general attitude that’s clouded my own view of the vegan way of eating. I’ve witnessed people saying things like, “this piece of eggplant will be my meat”. They’ll eat it and fully expect that that piece of eggplant will give them the same nutrition as a piece of steak or chicken or fish of the same size, kinda like they’re fully expecting a small miracle right then and there. I’m sorry, but that’s just not the way it works. And this is coming from someone who makes and seriously enjoys eggplant parm from time to time. I’ve seen a lot of haphazard eating that has an attitude of, “well, it’s vegan so it doesn’t matter what I’m eating, it’s plant based so all is well with the world.” It is often a total disregard for nutrition, only a matter of satiation. An awful lot of people really will not take the time to look at the nutritional value of the foods that they eat. And having seen that very thing, personally, over many years in the vegan and vegetarian communities I’ve been a part of, I know full well I’m not making it up. No, everyone is not like that. But enough are that it influences my thinking.
Were I Ted and walking into a general population like that seeking medical care, I can see how I might leap a little farther in the opposite direction knowing full well that people aren’t going to likely ever reach 1.0g/kg, let alone 3g, at least not the people he’s seeing. I know I would physically have a difficult time eating that level of protein. I have a hard time getting to the minimums sometimes. But I have to remember where I came from. I didn’t grow up eating much protein, and I would venture to say, I grew up not eating enough.
