Severe Health Dangers from Plants~

#121

There are lots of healthy lifetime vegans and omnivores though. Most of the healthy people aren’t carnivores - as there are too few carnivores but way more healthy people. Not like “healthy” is some exact thing but still, we can work with it.

I definitely feel about as healthy as after decades with almost no meat (okay, that’s almost now :D) so I don’t think meat is particularly important for me if I get my nutrients elsewhere. I mostly eat meat because it turned out I am even more okay with extreme low-carb so meat is a must.
My SO would suffer on a woe with much meat or low-carb, it seems (it’s not like he can try it for a long time but there are hints). I expect he will be quite healthy at 110 years old after his life long HCHF woe but we will see. He is very young still, not even 42, of course he had no health problem yet (except the lack of his spleen) though most people aren’t like him. Humans are horribly sickly! But genes play a huge role too. Good genes, good lifestyle, the right woe for us, all should be right for our planned very long, very healthy life. We can’t afford to make an important factor wrong.
Corals has right, there are many factors, it’s not just eating plants or not. But that may be an important factor as well. Much plants would be a problem for me (and not at all for my SO, apparently), it’s mostly an indirect effect though, adding plants make way more important changes to my woe.

But our case is just a very early N=2 so it’s insignificant (except for ourselves when we make our decisions for ourselves). We have much data, lots of people are strong and healthy as a vegan so it’s possible. Many are sick, sure, it’s easy to do it wrong, after all and it’s not good for everyone. I probably could survive without big health problems but I would be miserable on my super low-carb plant-based woe, yuck. And the mental problems would cause physical problems and I would still die early… But maybe not, I can’t possibly know. Fortunately I can choose and even with fails, I can keep my woe okay enough. I like to be an omnivore, be it no or much meat. Not like little meat has a significant chance at this point but I probably could live quite healthily as a vegetarian low-carber if some outer force would demand so. It wouldn’t be ideal, I hope it never happens but I wouldn’t suffer much or get sick… But it’s just a hypothesis again (based on my experiences in my younger times but with less knowledge and on a way worse woe. even my exercise wasn’t good enough).

I don’t need sub 20g but 20g from plants is awfully much for me, that easily messes with my mind. I prefer it being 0-2g, occasionally, with a good reason a bit more… But I still fail a lot (it’s still not so bad, I can handle much more if it’s an isolated happening). In average, I should get the (vast) majority of my carbs from animals, that’s the right way. It’s needed for me staying on keto, actually. It wasn’t always the case but it is now.

And I don’t believe that a plant matter that is designed to be eaten because the plant itself wanted that is toxic, it’s not very logical but I don’t care anyway. I can handle it in moderation. (Fruit. The number one enemy to my carnivore plans nowadays. Even my disdain towards sugar isn’t effective enough.)
Many other plant matter has problematic substances, it’s known. But as my body handles them quite fine, it’s really my choice and I don’t need to worry about it. When I consumed 100 times as much every day, I still felt no problem so this drastically reduces amount should work wonderfully. While worrying definitely would harm my health.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #122

While I am open to concerns about lectins, I am extremely leery of non-peer-reviewed random PDFs on the internet that claim all plants will kill you. I’m currently on carnivore temporarily (and I bet it’s stricter than most other people’s carnivore – no eggs, no oils, nothing but meat) and I’m doing fine with it, but I don’t for a minute think there’s enough evidence to even remotely consider never returning to plants, as I will in about a week.

I get it, if it’s working for you, all power to you. But there’s no need to make it a religion. 99.999% of people, including epileptic children on ultra-strict ketogenic diets, will be fine with some veggies.

(Vic) #123

How can Shinita, fangs or me be religious about carnivore, we clearly make our own rules and do our own thing as we please.
This is not how following a dogma works. You need a new discription for us :wink:

How is your reset diet going, besides fine do you get the results you want?

(bulkbiker) #124

Which nobody here has claimed at all…

Yet another pathetic attempt to start a row where none existed.

#125

no one is claiming that at all. it is plant toxins can harm your internal organs and more. Easily read up on every single veggie/plant eaten and ALL have science showing ‘what is bad’ in them. Real science, real facts. Just cause someone compiles real facts doesn’t make it wrong but I know I fact checked all of it :slight_smile:

not a religion. it is an eating plan that suits many people who require to be here and on plan as it is written and advised, no diff. than being keto or just lc.

also yes, many can get away with eating veg, doesn’t mean they don’t hold toxic properties. All plant matter does. Any veg, google it and find out the chem compounds and species etc and you can find the wrong with it…not saying it is gonna kill ya at all unless one is chowing down on foxglove, some nightshades and more :slight_smile:

So I get your post tho…those who can eat some veg and do well and want that lifestyle cool. Not a thing wrong with it.

I know I ain’t the global food police for everyone HAHA

@MarkGossage
thank you Mark. You see so much so clearly :slight_smile:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #126

There are other health problems that result from eating too much broccoli and spinach, and they are greater in some people than in others. The metabolic problems with the standard Western diet seem to be more closely related to the presence of industrial seed oils, cheap refined sugar, and highly refined grains, that is true, and any diet that causes us to eat less of those things will inevitably improve our health.

The types of problems caused by plants tend to be subtler and more varied. Amber O’Hearn is a carnivore because only eliminating plants from her diet resolved her depression from Type II bipolar disorder. Georgia Ede eliminated plants from her diet because that was the only way she could deal with certain physical and mental health problems. Michaela Peterson is probably the extreme example of someone damaged by plants in her diet. Many people develop kidney and gall stones from the oxalates in the plants they eat, including broccoli and spinach.

Yes, there are many people who do fine on the plants in their diet. But many people who think they’ve been doing fine start to find out otherwise, once they eliminate their gross metabolic symptoms by going keto. These are often the people who move on to strict carnivore.

But given that agriculture was only discovered about 12,000 years ago, it is far too soon to claim that we have adapted well to eating a diet that contains more plants than meat. Human evolutionary history to date consists of 1,988,000 years of eating almost exclusively meat, before the introduction of agricultural products into the food supply, so we’ve been eating plants in quantity for only 0.6% of our evolutionary history.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #127

This looks pretty close:

Not to pick on Vic specifically. Others here have said the same elsewhere many, many times.

True @Carnivoor didn’t say all plants and he also admits “humans can deal with the toxins to a degree” so, I presume he means that death might not result immediately. And… he also admits that ‘humans’ can survive as herbivores, although then claims they “seem to suffer catastrophic health failure within 4 years.” I’d like to see some scientific evidence to back up that claim. As @Corals points out above, there are many societies that eat mostly plant food and seem to be healthy enough to live a century or more. That’s something.

I don’t think @gabe is trying to start a ‘row’ but rather pointing out an obvious bias that borders on blind fanaticism. I’m no advocate for plant food, as I think is fairly obvious from many of my posts here. I’m really an advocate for eating intelligently based on what we know about human evolution and metabolism. Not based on ideology.

Humans evolved eating primarily carnivore. There is no serious doubt about it since there was no other viable option. Eating an occasional handful of berries or nuts didn’t make us human. Eating fat and meat did. But that doesn’t mean our ancestors didn’t eat the occasional handful of berries or nuts and metabolize them beneficially. So making a claim that any plant-based material that passes your lips is ‘toxic’ is just nonsense. Yes, I know that many plants, including some that are eaten in fairly large amounts on typical SAD, contain stuff like oxalic acid and various sundry phytochemicals many of which are deleterious to humans.

It is also beyond doubt that the transition from a fat/meat-centric diet of our hunter gatherer ancestors to the plant/carb-centric diet of our more immediate farmer ancestors resulted in a great deal of metabolic and health problems. Or that the excessive processing and addition of seed oils extracted by heat, pressure and solvents made a bad situation even worse.

We don’t know everything but we know a lot. You’ll get no argument from me that the current world-wide trifecta of metabolic disease is most likely the direct result of misinformed food guidelines issued by governments around the world, starting with the USofA in the 1970s. The demonization of meat and saturated fats and the promotion of grains, starches and seed oils was in my opinion a colossal health disaster. Maybe an even more colossal health disaster than the domestication and cultivation of grains 8-10 kya that Michael Eades documents so well.

If you have a personal issue with any particular food, whether plant-based, dairy or whatever, then it makes sense to avoid that food. I know that a lot of folks eat carnivore because they have health and/or nutrition issues with one or more plant foods and/or dairy. But don’t make blanket statements about ‘toxic’ plants unless you can back up the claims with verifiable evidence. Otherwise you just sound like a religious shill, as noted by Gabe.

And @PaulL makes a good point that many folks may in fact have issues with various plant foods that they don’t discover until they start eating keto. Some of these folks find that going full/strict carnivore is required for a full recovery. Others, however, will thrive simply by eating strict keto and keeping all carbs low enough to sustain ketosis. Since plant food is the primarily source of carbs, that automatially means you’re eating very little.

(bulkbiker) #128

He does it continually.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #130

Citation, please. Thanks.

(Vic) #131

Can’t find the study and the videoblog quickly. not a lot of free time on my hands. , you’ll come across it one day.
Deleted the post.

:wink:

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #132

I’m not sure about this. @PaulL suggests that the consumption of carbs is a consequence of agriculture, so maybe. But if you look at indigenous tribes, they seem to have eaten what was there. Australian Aborigines seem to have eaten some fruits and veg for the last several tens of thousands of years, but indigenous Polynesian cuisine seems to have been even more carb-filled. Loads of bananas and taro and yam and breadfruit. Was this only since the advent of agriculture? I have no idea, but I haven’t seen any evidence that Polynesians were particularly unhealthy.

Gary Taubes, when The Case Against Sugar went to press, explained that he’d written the book because he’d been writing about nutrition for years, and felt the case against carbs was compelling, but hadn’t been able to explain why some cuisines, for instance that of the Japanese, contained so many starches yet without the deleterious effects noted in the industrialised West. (I can’t find a written reference, but I saw and heard him say this several times in podcasts and lectures he gave.)

It’s clear that folks like Peter Attia and Robert Lustig broadly agree that sugar is the number 1 culprit. Nobody can really tell us at this stage what the “optimal” level of carbohydrate in the diet is, nor exactly which carbohydrates are ideal for human health. Perhaps the answer is none and zero, but we literally have no idea at all, despite the interesting initial research we’ve seen about lectins etc.

Again, I’m currently on a strict carnivore diet. Nothing but meat and fish, not even exogenous oils. I’ll experiment with reintroducing items to my diet starting next week.

But for 99.9% of humanity, I think the advice to avoid sugars and starches is enough, at least for now. I’ve seen no evidence that meat is deleterious to human health (angering the vegans), and I’ve seen no evidence that vegetables in and of themselves are deleterious to human health, apparently angering the strict carnivores on here.

I’d be quite happy to have my mind changed, and in fact the coming weeks are the big experiment. I’ll let you know if I begin experiencing problems when I reintroduce bok choy next week! (I doubt it.)

#133

You aren’t angering me LOL In fact I find your blanket statement very puzzling.

you never heard of anyone, not anyone getting getting bloating, gas, gut issues and more from eating veg? Ever see anyone having gas/bloat/issues from eating beans? Never saw anyone have any type of allergic type reactions to eating fruits or maybe being allergic to strawberries and more that can land them in the hospital? Ever chat with a diabetic and foods they avoid like a toxin plague for their health improvements? Never heard of issues like this? Never read an extreme reaction like this from any veg issues ever? extreme of course BUT they ARE happening out there: https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/death-bok-choy-not-eating-put-woman-coma-article-1.448093
Never heard people in your presence at any time saying, no thank you, I don’t want to eat XYZ veg cause it doesn’t set well on my tummy? One might not eat tomatoes or chili type plants cause I get severe heartburn. Heartburn is a sign of damaging health. Not a doubt about that. I run from coffee due to caffeine and how horrible it makes me feel?

I think you are thinking we are saying you are gonna die LOL, well yes some plants eaten ya will die very fast but not saying at all that all veg is gonna take down all people…but every veg you eat contains a toxin in it that your body most likely does not want, but bodies being adaptive can process low levels of toxins absolutely. It does it all the time in its day.

I am saying for ALL those body reactions from above and gut issues from veg, that it is a harmful and damaging issue to one’s health and body is happening for many out there. Eating of veg back to some are ok, no one is every denying that at all and one person can handle veg better than another but the simple fact is look up the toxicity level of the veg you want to eat and you will find thru simple science as much as ‘they claim to give these benefits’ to the body, at the same time they hold a toxicity level that many react to and can’t eat that veg and that plant is robbing your body of nutrition…

so…you aren’t angering this carnivore, I just find it very disturbing you think all plant matter are some perfect source for every human. Anyone allergic to nuts and might die? Want to tell them they aren’t toxic to their bodies and have a big old handful to enjoy? Hmm, probably not LOL

You aren’t getting why bloating/gas/diarrhea and heartburn and tingly/numbness, joint pain when eating certain foods some get, bitter tastes and peppers that burn the mouth and more which are signs your body is having reactions to your food intake definitely…and then big interactions with prescription medicines people take therefore eliminating veg foods because of interactions that are harmful and more just doesn’t seem to register to you as anything? I find this very odd actually.

I am sure you can add bok choy back LOL I am sure a small amt ain’t gonna be one of those things that will jump up and bite you in the butt but then I wonder will you probably limit your own personal experiences on a little veg as the only existing science and effect of eating it and that will then pertain to humans on the planet maybe??

but it is what it is if you think someone who has issues with veg toxin reactions to their body that it doesn’t exist. It is your opinion to discount the science of it all and the actual humans who react? Their experiences are mute?

Plants/grains/veg no matter how they are specified all carry a plant toxin level in them. Science shows this is fact!

Key then is read the info and see if anything pertains to you and if you eliminate some certain plant matter does your health improve? Can you handle a small amt of some plants and do fine? Yes many can but that will never discount that the plant does carry a toxin level to it ya know.

ok I am over and out on this. Every person on the planet will think their own thing and hey in the end, learn, be stale, never change, be cement in stone or be open minded to what is out there a bit thru your own fact checking and research. All one can do I guess :slight_smile:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #134

Except that now Lustig is starting to get on board with the idea that seed oils may also be implicated in our dietary disaster, not just fructose. Chris Knobbe and Tucker Goodrich make a compelling case.

As far as optimal carb intake is concerned, I notice that I can eat a certain amount of carbohydrate, still remain in ketosis, and nevertheless wake up achey and sore the next day, my knees will creak, I’m flatulent, and my teeth hurt. If I stay below that level of intake, I wake up fresh and energetic, and none of those problems bother me. I can see why people go completely plant-free, even though I probably won’t, myself.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #135

The problem is that prior to the beginning of the Holocene and end of the last Pleistocene glacial max, the available plants were not what they are now. Comparing what modern hunter gathers eat now is not useful. Our Pleistocene ancestors did not have what we have now or anything close. Even in the tropics during the Pleistocene the flora was not what it is now. With very few exceptions such as some berries and nuts - possibly honey - plant ‘food’ was mostly indigestible cellulose. Those who claim that plants were more than an incidental part of the Pleistocene hominid diet have the burden of proof to show what our ancestors ate. What we now think of as ‘veggies’ and ‘fruit’ did not exist. In fact, most of it didn’t exist 150 years ago. Few realize just how thoroughly we have transformed the earth’s flora in the past several thousand years.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #136

And it’s not that hard to show what a group ate, actually, given that a plant diet yields a different carbon isotope profile in the bones from a meat diet.

#137

thank you for acknowledging with some of your personal experience that ‘leeway of open thought’ that does apply to alot of us carnivores :slight_smile: Open minded is a good thing (with real science facts on issues like toxins in plants and what they can do and have been proven to do for some) and of course some science and personal experience from us and others as they express is always an added plus for sure :slight_smile: Makes for a well rounded individual I think! :+1:

sound truth in that. plus ‘planes, trains and automobiles’ send fruit and veg to where it would never be. A pineapple in Michigan didn’t exist. A mango in New York was unheard of :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

Our current life will never be our past in food but thru science we know one thing, without big meat/seafood protein and fat intake our brains grew to us now…is that a good thing HAHA heck I don’t know LOL

(Vic) #138

LOL, why on earth would we be angry :joy:
You do realize you’rr the strictest carnivore here.

I like the fact that you’re sceptical, but humans did evolve primarily carnivore, there is lots of evidence for that.

If it looks like a duck and it kwaks like a duck it probably is a duck, not a blue whale.

Absolutely not, to many are dying from metabolic syndrome related diseases. We should teach our children everything we know, including the required scepticism to keep the knowledge evolving during their life.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #139

To answer @Carnivoor and @Fangs, who asked how my carnivore experiment has been going: I’m only a week into carnivore. Had a great pasture raised T-bone steak :cut_of_meat: at my old favourite steakhouse with a bunch of friends last night, was extremely overpriced but possibly the most delicious thing I’ve had all year. It’s been a challenging process, partly confounded by the fact that I got my flu shot the day I started. Had a migraine the next day, a headache the day after, and fatigue both days, which I realised only at the end of both days were likely caused by the flu shot! I’ve also had some GI issues, likely from the diet. My sleep has been all over the place, too, but that may be a result of the flu-shot fatigue.

Plenty of salt intake, and I’m supplementing C, D and Zinc, though I’m wondering if I should be supplementing Mg and K.

Subjectively, t feels like when I first started low carb and felt myself getting thinner – and remember, when I started 5 years ago, the lesson I took from Gary Taubes’s “Why We Get Fat” was that the less sugar and starch I ate, the better. It was a radical change for me but I didn’t find it onerous at all; I was even eating mangoes regularly at the time. I still lost 10kg in that first 10 weeks. Whoosh. Not that I’m advocating the regular consumption of mangoes. Anyway it feels like back then; the scales are down a couple of kilos in just a week and I do feel a little leaner, but I’ll need another week or 3 to confirm that I’m really losing fat. Having said that, I suspect if I were eating leafy greens :leafy_green: and cauliflower and eggplant :eggplant: that I would probably be seeing much the same result now.

I’d say that, if there’s any fat loss going on, there might be a couple of reasons:

  • Carbohydrate/insulin hypothesis: My insulin was chronically high, and removing all carbs has just cratered my insulin levels (unconfirmed). It’s a shame that we can’t track insulin as easily as glucose.
  • Meal timing/snacking: I’m restricted to 2 meals/daily. So I don’t snack, even if I’m peckish or bored, and I don’t eat late at night. I think this one is huge, because I am a big late night eater.

This is early days yet, and I still need a while to run this experiment fully. To respond to another thing Fangs said:

Well but this is the reason why I remain on this LCHF lifestyle, because I think we ought to be basing our thoughts and behaviours on scientific evidence, not on beliefs. It may well be that in 50 or 100 years the scientific community will have proven that humans are better off on a meat-only diet. But I rather enjoy my vegetables and the occasional fruit and I don’t see much evidence that these foods are deleterious to human health. I think the glucose effects of carbohydrate are the most compelling evidence we have, and indeed I will report back whether bok choy or spinach causes me trouble in that department. The lectin claims are interesting but nothing more than that so far; I will see as the weeks go by how different lectin-rich foods affect me, but the scientific evidence remains relatively sparse. Unlike, say, the case against sugar.

Look forward to reporting back in a few weeks. Appreciate your feedback, do let me know if you have any suggestions I can implement.

(Vic) #140

You may like “the carnivore code” by Paul Saladino.

It has chapters that deal with plant toxins and dozens of references to the research.

I found the chapters on plant toxicity the best of the book.

(Gabe “No Dogma, Only Science Please!” ) #141

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