Vegan Diets are the healthiest, according to new study

#21

Correct. Nuh-uh is not an argument. I don’t see where you are getting that from anything I said. That’s also not indicating false equivalence.

I never said “deficient in magnesium” either. I actually was thinking of sodium, which you may be aware people are recommended to up their sodium intake by 1g when going keto (and which I mentioned specifically a gram, you don’t need to up magnesium by a gram).

Keto dieters aren’t deficient in sodium or other salts as long as they get them as part of the diet, whether from food and salting food or from supplements. Vegans aren’t deficient in B12 as long as they get them as part of the diet, whether from food or from supplements.

I’ve been saying the entire time, when supplements are considered part of the diet, it’s all self contained and doesn’t refute whether a thing is healthy or not in terms of physical health based on results.

If a particular person would rather achieve a healthy diet without supplements, that’s all well and good, that’s accomplishing a different goal though other than strictly physical health. Similarly, if a ketoer wants to include salt on their food or even supplements of sodium, potassium or magnesium, or anything else for that matter, that shouldn’t change whether or not their diet is considered healthy in that same sense. It may not achieve an additional goal of “not supplementing” but that doesn’t impact whether or not a thing is healthy by definition.

EDIT: I see I didn’t mention the extra gram in this thread, I was confusing that with a different recent discussion where I mentioned the gram of sodium. So, to clarify, I was thinking of sodium, but hence salting food (I don’t know if anyone is salting their food with magnesium, but if you are, sorry for the confusion).

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #22

Au contraire, salt is more necessary on a ketogenic diet, not less, because high carbohydrate intake slows down the kidneys’ excretion of sodium, and lowering that intake to ketogenic levels allows the kidneys to return to their normal, faster rate of sodium excretion. Not only that, but the U.S. guideline for sodium consumption is woefully inadequate, as evidenced by several recent studies showing that the healthiest intake is between 4 and 6 grams of sodium a day, which translates to 10-15 g/day of table salt (sodium chloride).

The importance of salt in the human diet has been known since long before classical antiquity. It’s one of the reasons that the Roman government gave its soldiers a salt allowance as part of their pay (hence the word “salary,” and the phrase, “not worth his/her salt.”

#23

“Thinking” is not the same as typing out an argument. I can’t read your mind and went with a common issue of why keto dieters up their salt intake.

Your argument otherwise doesn’t address the fact that the vegan diet itself is the CAUSE of the deficiency that would need (man-made) supplementation meaning the diet itself isn’t naturally sustaining. Unlike the keto diet where sodium or magnesium deficiency is easily remedied within the confines of its own diet rules. I can get an uptick in salt from foods that are allowed on the keto diet such bacon or olives. The same can’t be said for a vegan diet making the two comparisons a false equivalency.

#24

Au contraire, table salt (sodium chloride) is a modern man-made invention from the 19th century and has deficiencies in minerals. The type of salt your referring to from the Roman example would’ve been a naturally occurring salt likely to have been variety of sea salt or pink salt.

But, as per your argument, table salt is better than no salt.

#25

I still don’t see how thinking I was talking about magnesium results in my comments involving a false equivalence argument. I also kinda assumed that “salting your food” didn’t involve magnesium, as I haven’t even seen anything I could salt my food with that was high in magnesium personally. That may have been a bad assumption, and I apologize for the confusion there if you do that, and I already clarified the matter above.

I don’t see this as substantially changing the argument though, either way, and certainly not resulting in a false equivalence.

It didn’t, sure. But what does that matter? Does it even cause the deficiency (the foods take B12 out of the system), or does it simply not provide the nutrient? Regardless, again, if the supplement is considered part of the diet (and I believe it should be, but disagreement may exist here, which is why it’s good to define terms and standards for measuring these things, as I mentioned above), then B12 is part of the diet and it’s all self contained. Any issue the diet ‘creates’ is fine as long as the diet also ‘resolves’ it and the end result is a physically healthier human being, when what is being considered is a physical health.

I suppose it comes down to, again, what is health, and what is the purpose of the diet. If the purpose of the diet is health in terms I indicated above, that’s what needs to be considered. If the purpose is to ‘get back to nature’ then that’s a fine enough goal, but it’s a different goal.

B12 deficiency is remedied within the confines of the vegan diet rules though, as far as I’m aware, though supplements.

I can get an uptick in salt by putting salt on my food or taking supplements as well, and no one can reasonably say that I’m not doing a ketogenic diet when I do. Even if you get it from bacon, that’s not particularly different from getting it from a supplement in terms of the purpose of this consideration (physical health).

#26

Veganism doesn’t exist without a man-made supplement. The keto diet does exist without a man-made supplement. It’s a false equivalency.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #27

The point of my post was the need for sodium chloride in the diet, quite apart from the ancillary minerals that may or may not have accompanied it in some regional diet at some time in history. Since you seem a reasonably intelligent person, I can only assume that you willfully chose to misunderstand me. I feel rather burned by that, I have to say. If it was humor you intended, my apologies for being obtuse.

#28

How is that a false equivalency?

#29

It was humor intended with a factoid because I find that kinda stuff interesting.

#30

Saying the Vegan diet is healthy because supplementing is healthy, why not just say “high carb diets are healthy because you’re taking a statin to deal with the inflammation”

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #31

My deepest apologies. I seem to be unusually ready to take offense, these days, and need to do a better job of keeping my big mouth shut, since I am not picking up on people’s humour. Please ignore my burst of ill temper, I beg you. You did not deserve it, and I regret inflicting it on you.

#32

Not because supplementing is healthy, but because the overall effect is healthy.

Indeed, if taking a statin really resulted in a healthy body, I would say ‘high carb diets with statins’ are healthy (there’s more problems with high carb diets than just inflammation and additional problems with statins, which is why I don’t say that myself).

As long as all the factors are accounted for as part of the diet, it’s whether the end result on the physical health of the person using it is equivalent to what we would call a healthy body that matters as to whether we call the diet healthy (again, at least in the physically healthy sense), and the degree to which this is achieved compared to others using the same standard is how we determine if something is “healthiest”.

#33

So, vegans are healthier because they have lower saturated fats and higher omega 3 and antioxidants. But how are these markers of good health? Do we know this to be true for all diets, or is it a fruit eater thing?

(mole person) #34

I’m starting to think that you are a lost twin.

I did increase my salt during adaptation and I do think it helped with energy and ability to workout then, but that’s long over. I do absolutely fine with no salt supplementing.

Do you supplement anything?

(mole person) #35

I’m curious, what do you think, then, of Steffansson’s reporting that the Inuit wouldn’t touch salt and actually abhorred it?

(Ethan) #36

I know a vegan who doesn’t look sick—of course he just started…

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #37

That’s news to me. I’ve never before heard of a culture that “abhorred” salt. I’d like to read that in context, to be sure I understand what he said.

I seem to remember reading, however, that the Maasai warriors drank the blood of their cattle as a source of salt, so I suppose it might be possible to get enough salt from the flesh and blood of the animals the Inuit ate.

(mole person) #38

The hunters will drink some blood after a fresh kill but this isn’t a daily affair and the women and children do not.

The section is long but here is a chunk where he says that a distaste for salt was actually common in pre Columbian America.

***Roxy is an Inuit who was arguing that the white man’s liking of salt was cultural rather than necessary for health. He compared it to their own incorrect belief that tobbaco is healthful.

Roxy did not know, but I did as an anthropologist, that in pre-Columbian times salt was unknown or the taste of it disliked and the use of it avoided through much of North and South America. It may possibly be true that the carnivorous Eskimos in whose language the word salty, mamaitok, is synonymous with with evil-tasting, disliked salt more intensely than those Indians who were partly herbivorous. Nevertheless, it is clear that the salt habit spread more slowly through the New World from the Europeans than the tobacco habit through Europe from the Indians. Even today there are considerable areas, for instance in the Amazon basin, where the natives still abhor salt.

http://www.comby.org/documents/documents_in_english/stefansson-diet-adventures.htm

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #39

Huh! Fascinating. You learn something every day. Many thanks for taking the trouble to post that. :+1:

(mole person) #40

Your welcome! I find it all super interesting but don’t really know what to make of it.