FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

Matt wrote:The data presented in the book is beyond eye-opening. It is essentially the details of what is presented in the "Forks over Knives" documentary. The hard science presented in the book is astonishing, backed with tons of citations of published papers from multiple independent research projects. The book essentially demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that animal-based protein (all forms -- even dairy and the lean, wild-caught meats) causes cancer when consumed in sufficient quantities.

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the ... revisited/
http://chriskresser.com/rest-in-peace-china-study


I don't really want to get involved in this but if the data could stand up to scrutiny (like the data concerning the effects of alcohol and smoking), vegans would be a majority.

Lord Death wrote:http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the ... revisited/
http://chriskresser.com/rest-in-peace-china-study

I've read all of those discussion and quite a few more, there are lots of them out there, and I read them before I went vegan. Some of their arguments are very valid, but, from what I remember, they are only picking apart minute details in most of those discussions and disregard the bigger picture. If you read the research, it's overwhelmingly convincing that eating a non-vegan diet leads to the vast majority of diseases in the western world. I'm not sure how or why anyone would choose to argue against it unless the have ulterior motives (i.e. they are funded by and/or make money from the meat and dairy industry -- and I believe all of the people who wrote those commentaries do).

Lord Death wrote:I don't really want to get involved in this but if the data could stand up to scrutiny (like the data concerning the effects of alcohol and smoking), vegans would be a majority.

The evidence supporting the diseases caused by eating a non-vegan diet (where more than 10% of the calories come from animal products) is as clear and as highly correlated as the data supporting the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Problem is that the line where the problem occurs isn't clear -- similarly when smoking cigarettes, it isn't clear of one cigarette a day is enough to cause any problems, but we know that having a pack a day dramatically increases the likelihood of disease (lung cancer). The same exact is true with regards to eating meat and dairy. Eating a bit here and there isn't likely to cause disease. But start going over the 10% threshold (where more than 10% of one's calories are coming from animal products) and the correlation in the data is clear that it causes disease.

And people eating a whole-foods, plant-based diet were the majority for most of of the time humans have walked the earth. It's only in the last 100,000 years or so that we've been able to create weapons to kill animals effectively and ultimately create mass commercial farms for slaughtering enough animals that people can eat all the meat they want.

I honestly and truly believe that one day it will be common knowledge that eating meat and dairy increases one's risk of cancer (and many other diseases), just like smoking increases the risk of lung cancer. The information is already out there and published in peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals and DOES hold up to scientific scrutiny.

The research has been done and the message is clear. Eating a lot of meat and dairy (more than 10% of your daily caloric intake) will increase your risk for many diseases. Most people just either:

1) Never hear about this fact because mainstream media is controlled by money and the pockets of the meat and dairy industry are deep and can afford to pay media to tell a different store. They also, by way of their deep pockets, control many of the large government agencies (by funding lots and lots of lobbyists), like the USDA, which is responsible for directing the food choices of Americans.

2) If people do ever hear about it, they immediately dismiss it or are extremely skeptical of even considering such a diet because it goes against their culture (even though they may not recognize it's their culture that's causing this skepticism). Many cultures have traditional ways of eating that involve meat and dairy. And it's been that way for thousands of years. And people hear all the time that they need protein and calcium and whatever else people say you get from eating animals, forgetting the fact that we are the only primates in the world who have any significant portion of their diet coming from meat and dairy products instead of a mostly plant-based diet.

1) Never hear about this fact because mainstream media is controlled by money and the pockets of the meat and dairy industry are deep and can afford to pay media to tell a different store.

I'm sorry, but I disagree. This is the 21st century, and the West has the internet and a free press (not to mention institutions such as the BBC which are regularly audited). If even the US and British governments are unable to prevent the press from obtaining and publishing top-secret information to the detriment of their interests, I see little chance of the meat industries managing the same. The tobacco industry has been forced to print large SMOKING KILLS warnings and pictures of cancerous lungs on cigarette packaging in the UK and Europe, and probably elsewhere in the world too. Its political influence notwithstanding, the rest of the world sees the American gun lobby for what it really is – it has been unable to conceal the facts from the world. But in spite of all this, the vegan argument is still struggling to escape the realm of highly disputed, skewed, biased statistics and those awful, awful people at PETA because of some all-powerful meat industry? Sorry, but it's too easy an excuse to just say 'the meat industry did it'. Even in the UK, our domestic dairy market is being unfairly crushed by supermarkets and their dodgy pricing methods.

The evidence supporting the diseases caused by eating a non-vegan diet (where more than 10% of the calories come from animal products) is as clear and as highly correlated as the data supporting the correlation between smoking and lung cancer.

It's quite a claim to make that this data is as clear as the data supporting the link between smoking and lung cancer – where is it (presented indisputably in credible sources)? I've searched the internet and the best source I can find that doesn't use the convenient phrase 'has been linked to' is the World Cancer Research Fund, which advises against the excessive consumption of red meat and processed meat. It says nothing about animal-based food in general.

Humans have existed for millions of years on an omnivorous diet and our life expectancy has yet to stop increasing. If we were initially unsuited to an omnivorous diet all those millions of years ago, evolution has surely seen to that. I concede that, largely thanks to McDonalds and the like, certain meat industries have become notorious for all the awful chemicals and steroids they pump into livestock and that any quantity of that meat cannot be healthy, but that is the fault of the production practices and not of meat itself. If McDonalds were a vegetarian fast food chain, they'd be serving up chemical-filled lettuce just as happily.

Anyway, I've managed to get sucked into this thread when I told myself not to. Nine months of living with vegan hippies in Germany (who, amongst other things, believed that water was conscious) have made me none too tolerant of the whole ideology. If you're happy with your current diet, for whatever the reason, that's the main thing.

Lord Death wrote:I'm sorry, but I disagree. This is the 21st century, and the West has the internet and a free press (not to mention institutions such as the BBC which are regularly audited).

This is true, but you're completely disregarding the fact that this is an extremely complex socio-economic problem! Most people either write about things that other people want to read or find interesting or that they get paid for. No one wants to hear about giving up their current diets almost entirely (most people in westernized countries get well over half of their calories from meat and dairy products) and no one will pay for anyone to write such stuff. Money is given to the people researching and writing stuff that benefits the meat and dairy industry, not the other way around. There's no money on the "plant-based side" of this argument. No one is going to get money for writing anything about how eating too much meat and dairy will give you cancer, so where's the motivation to do so? Until the government starts allocating money to do that sort of research (not likely to happen anytime soon), you won't be reading about it in any of the mainstream places.

Lord Death wrote:The tobacco industry has been forced to print large SMOKING KILLS warnings and pictures of cancerous lungs on cigarette packaging in the UK and Europe, and probably elsewhere in the world too.

Do you know how long that took to happen? And how many lawsuits it required? And how many people still smoke and don't believe it will give them cancer or even increase their risk of getting cancer?

Lord Death wrote:It's quite a claim to make that this data is as clear as the data supporting the link between smoking and lung cancer – where is it (presented indisputably in credible sources)?

Have you read the book "The China Study"? Colin Campbell cites numerous scientific articles, all in peer-reviewed journals, that publish data supporting this fact. There are other books published on the subject citing numerous credible sources as well.

And simply taking a step back and looking at the evidence, whether it's been rigorously scientifically proven or not, it overwhelmingly points to increased meat and dairy consumption causing an increased risk of heart disease and cancer and other diseases. Just look at the statistics of causes of mortality for countries who don't consume much meat and dairy compared to those that do. The answer is blatantly obvious. If I can see the sky is blue, I don't need to have scientific evidence proving to me that it is blue! (even though, in this case, there is enough evidence to support the argument for eating primarily a plant-based diet).

Lord Death wrote:Humans have existed for millions of years on an omnivorous diet and our life expectancy has yet to stop increasing.

1) This is true, but our species (homo sapiens) begins showing up in the fossil records only about 100,000 years ago. Most of our evolution (primates) came long before that and while we did have an omnivorous diet, we only started eating meat in any kind of quantity after the invention of weapons and tools. Further, we are still the only primate in the world that has any significant portion of their diet come from eating meat, not to mention dairy! Name one other animal that has dairy after infancy?! Most primates on the earth other than humans don't eat meat at all, and the few that do, only get it rarely. I believe this is how humans evolved as well.
2) For the first time in the history of humankind, the current generation is predicted to have a shorter lifespan than their parents. Whether this will happen or not remains to be seen, but science is predicting it.

Lord Death wrote:Anyway, I've managed to get sucked into this thread when I told myself not to. Nine months of living with vegan hippies in Germany (who, amongst other things, believed that water was conscious) have made me none too tolerant of the whole ideology.

That's a whole different issue also at play: people tend to think of "vegan hippies" and conjure up an image in their mind about what exactly "being vegan" means. There's a lot of prejudice and judgement around simply saying the word "vegan" to someone. I've never known anyone who was vegan. I grew up eating large quantities of meat, very few vegetables and always thought that meat should be the main part of a meal. After doing research on the subject, I'm convinced that this is deathly incorrect. It's not an "ideology" for me, but just a way of statistically lowering my chance of acquiring most diseases that kill the majority of the people in the US, the UK and all westernized countries.

I only share my point of view because I hope that it will help people get healthier. My aunt just died yesterday of cancer at the age of 65. I wonder how long she would have lived if she had eaten a more "human" (plant-based) diet? The worst part is that she suffered greatly in the last few years of her life and didn't have any kind of a life I would want to live.

I don't have any ulterior motives for sharing this information and I don't really care about "saving the world" (though being vegan does dramatically reduce one's carbon footprint on the earth) nor do I care how many animals are killed at the hands of humans. I only want to live a long, healthy, disease-free life and share what I believe (and has been backed with science) is the way to do so with anyone who is interested.

Lord Death wrote:If you're happy with your current diet, for whatever the reason, that's the main thing.

And this is the truth!

EDIT: And I wanted to thank you for sharing your point of view "Lord Death" and for engaging in this conversation with me. It seems as though your beliefs are pretty firm at this point, so I don't know if you'll pursue any further reading or viewing material on the subject, but if you do, I'd be interested in hearing what you think about what you read or watch.

I have loosely been reading through this thread reading point for and against each argument and this is my take on it.

My background:I have a Bachelors in Exercise Science from a reputable university while being able to play Division 1 baseball and professional as well.

So this is my take on diets in general and some of the way some numbers are skewed for various industries to sort of twist what they want it to say. Most beneficial things can come from a double blind study, that way neither the person participating or the person advising can achieve the "placebo" effect and have benefits just by what the other person says. Neither one of them knows so that way in a sense it is a "pure" study.

My overall take on a diet, too extreme to one side or the other is going to be bad. As mentioned before, just by the sheer genetic and physiological make up of the human body, we are omnivores. There are certain vitamins and minerals that the human body needs from meat, as well as your vegitables. If your body isn't getting red meat, it will lack a lot of important minerals such as iron. And if you're into competing (not just in sports, but running or exercising) your body needs to replenish its creatine systems. Yes, the almighty creatine you hear bodybuilders supplement with, originally derived from red meats and fish, than was isolated when they saw how beneficial it was for skeletal muscle.

However you simply cannot only eat meat, as you are well aware of. Any type of meat, whether red meat or fish, has fat in it. Without fat, muscle cannot hold itself together. However, too much will significantly increase your LDL cholesterol levels, and without exercise, this can put you at a much greater risk for heart disease. Cholesterol has a lot to do with genetics, studies have shown, but your diet also contributes in control what you can.

You need plenty of vegitables to help provide your body with some fiber and many other nutrients to help keep your system in track. Not only does this help your digestive system, but your immune system and many other physiological functions. Uncooked and unhampered vegetables are some of the most pure natural forms of vitamins and minerals. However you simply cannot eat all vegetables without getting some meat, your body will not get the nutrients it needs. Yes, you can supplement protein, or iron, or anything else. But the best source of anything, is in it's natural state. No supplement can equal the bioavialiablility that mother nature gives you. Same concept with VFT's and artificial lighting

A lot of vegans, and even some I know, have told me that after being vegan for a while, when they ate chicken or steak or whatever, they had diarrhea or other problems. This is because their body in a sense has rejected some of it because their digestive track isn't sure how to handle it because it hasn't had meat in a while. Your body needs a balance of both.

And in no way am I knocking one or the other because I am not. Too much meat will definitely cause health problems, however not having any can cause a lot of problems as well. There is such thing as too much of a good thing. I tell this to patients I work with in the hospital all the time. They ask me, "I don't understand why my blood pressure or cholesterol is so high, all I eat are nuts/spinich/etc." Then I ask them how much and their serving size and they show me. So I tell them the same thing.

Everyone needs meat, however the way the American diet is setup, that seems to be all anyone eats. If you take your plate, divide it in half. One half should be your vegitables. Take the other half, and divide it in half again. One of those should be your lean meat (chicken, fish, a lean steak) and the other should be your carbohydrate. I read someone said this before and they were right. A complex carb is what you want (brown rice, wheat bread, whole grains, etc). Simple sugars, although filling, are the reason why your hungry 30 min after you eat. It would be like throwing a stack of newspapers on a fire vs a nice oak piece of wood. The papers go up in flames and burn quick, same concept with simple and complex carbs.

Anyway, that was my 2 cents. And once again I want to reiterate that I am not knocking either or. Love this site and how helpful it is. Meat is good, however the way modern society views it with how much we eat it, is not good.

Glad that someone else is replying to this thread! It's been dead so long I thought that it might never get a new post

bvalente wrote:Most beneficial things can come from a double blind study, that way neither the person participating or the person advising can achieve the "placebo" effect and have benefits just by what the other person says. Neither one of them knows so that way in a sense it is a "pure" study.

Yes, that is ideal. Unfortunately studying diet over the course of a lifetime probably isn't something that is feasible in such a setting. That's why the research in China (presented in "The China Study") is so valuable.

bvalente wrote:My overall take on a diet, too extreme to one side or the other is going to be bad.

I completely agree with this. But I think that the vast majority of people have a very skewed idea of what a "healthy portion" of meat might be. And completely omitting it from the diet will do no harm as long as the diet is sufficiently balanced and healthy.

bvalente wrote:There are certain vitamins and minerals that the human body needs from meat, as well as your vegitables.

But any and all "vitamins and minerals" that are found in meat, can also be obtained from plants.

bvalente wrote:If your body isn't getting red meat, it will lack a lot of important minerals such as iron.

There is a long list of plants that are high in iron, including spinach, pumpkin seeds, almost all beans and many more! Where do people think the iron in the meat of animals comes from? Anything found in the body of an animal originally came from a plant, which got its chemical makeup from the sun and soil.

bvalente wrote:As mentioned before, just by the sheer genetic and physiological make up of the human body, we are omnivores.

So are many primates, but none have more than a small portion of their diet made up of meat. And none of them consume dairy other than in infancy.

bvalente wrote:Cholesterol has a lot to do with genetics, studies have shown, but your diet also contributes in control what you can.

Yes! And people who move to a plant-based diet will significantly lower their overall cholesterol levels. This has been shown over and over again.

bvalente wrote:However you simply cannot eat all vegetables without getting some meat, your body will not get the nutrients it needs.

This is a huge and common misconception! There are no nutrients in meat that cannot be obtained by eating plants!!!

bvalente wrote:A lot of vegans, and even some I know, have told me that after being vegan for a while, when they ate chicken or steak or whatever, they had diarrhea or other problems. This is because their body in a sense has rejected some of it because their digestive track isn't sure how to handle it because it hasn't had meat in a while. Your body needs a balance of both.

I think that this is a sign that perhaps the body's digestive system was not meant to have this sort of "food" put through it. Most omnivores eat eggs, insects and other very small "animals", not flesh from large animals. It's usually carnivores that consume that type of meat. I too have become sensitive to certain types of meat, particularly low-quality meat and very greasy meat (like sausages, pork, etc.) and have an upset stomach after eating it. I think this is much more indicative of something that humans shouldn't be eating rather than something that they should be eating more often in order to be able to digest it well. In fact, and this is quite gross, but I've noticed that my bowel movements have little to no smell now compared to when I was eating more meat and dairy. When I do eat meat now (and when I did before) my bowel movements were much more foul smelling. In nature, anything that smells foul is typically indicative of something that we should avoid, right? So why then should we eat things that make our feces stink more?

bvalente wrote:Too much meat will definitely cause health problems, however not having any can cause a lot of problems as well.

Such as? I've never seen nor heard anything about diseases from not eating enough meat. I've heard of malnutrition before, but so long as one eats a well balanced diet, ensures that they get plenty of variety of foods that provide all of the essential amino acids and important macro and micro nutrients, there is no way that they will develop malnutrition. And all of those things can easily be obtained from eating plants.

bvalente wrote:Everyone needs meat

This is false, but I do think the majority of Americans believe this is true.

bvalente wrote:however the way the American diet is setup, that seems to be all anyone eats.

To some degree, this is true. I wouldn't say it's "literally" all anyone eats, but it is far, far more than is healthy.

bvalente wrote:Simple sugars, although filling, are the reason why your hungry 30 min after you eat.

These are a whole other subject and another vice of Americans and other westernized cultures that are causing serious diseases!

bvalente wrote:Anyway, that was my 2 cents. And once again I want to reiterate that I am not knocking either or.

Thank you for posting and sharing your thoughts. I hope I wasn't too rough in my responses to your points! I do appreciate the discussion and I don't want to scare people away from posting. I have done quite a lot of reading on the subject, and my ideas were once very close to what you're writing now, bvalente, but I am now convinced that science is showing differently than what I used to believe.

Thank you Matt for displaying your side so reasonably and coherently. After being a vegetarian with vegan leanings for most of the week for nine years. Anyways, I'm 19 now, so soon enough I will be vegetarian longer than I wasn't. Woohoo!

I started on a dare when someone said I couldn't do it and now it is the only thing that feels "right". I also really enjoy having to learn and think about what foods I put into my body. I've learned that the key to diet in all respects is balance and attention. You have to know what you are eating. Anyways, reading your post has inspired me to try and eat fewer processed foods. Which I have been successful for the past few weeks

Thank you for the kind post keitarofox

That's pretty amazing that you've been a vegetarian for almost half of your life! Wow! My wife, Leah, has been vegetarian her entire life. I think she has tasted all meat at one point or another but has never made it part of her meals. I always used to worry about her health, believing that it was impossible to get sufficient nutrition from eating only plants and dairy. I would always try to convince her to eat meat. Now she gives me grief about those days!

I just didn't know any better. I believed what I read in anecdotal articles about how important protein is, especially for athletes, and how the best sources for lean protein are certain types of animal flesh. Now that I've spent many, many hours reading about nutrition and educating myself, I feel bad for ever trying to make her incorporate meat into her diet

Good luck at removing some or all of the processed foods from your diet keitarofox. That can be a challenging thing to do because that type of food is so quick and easy to access and so flavorful (normally) because of added chemicals. But I believe that removing processed foods from your diet will have a larger positive impact on your overall health than removing meat and dairy (assuming you're already eating organic, free-range meat and dairy products).

In any case, I wish you luck with your continued diet adventure!

Well, I have a few things to do in my head that will help me achieve my whole foods "goal". If you have any more ideas, please share them!

Start baking my own bread. (I hear it is more delicious as well)

Whenever I am putting an ingredient in my cooking (except for things that have to be cooked before eating) I am going to eat a little bit to gain a better sense of what the natural flavors are.

I am going to start shopping at a farmer's market/ anywhere where I can physically see the person who grew it. I'm also only going to use eggs from people I know.

Fruit for snacks!

Sounds like you have some great ideas already! Definitely fruit, nuts, dates, and other delicious whole food for snacks is a great idea!

And yeah, lots and lots of good, whole foods from local sources are available at farmer's markets!

http://www.ted.com/themes/food_matters.html

This is a very interesting set of Ted Talks dealing with food. I highly recommend all of the ones with Dan Barber He talks about a better connection with how our food is produced from both an ecological perspective as well as a culinary perspective (and he is rather funny).

I'll have to watch that when I'm back on a fast connection!

On a similar note, I saw an interesting quote that made me think about this subject again... essentially:

"We pay the doctor to make us better, when we should really be paying the farmer to keep us healthy. -Rethink"

In the past I've tried to buy all my produce from reputable sources, however, you can't really know where it comes from. Since about fall last year, if I don't have it and need it... I visit my local farmer's market or co-op and let my cash do the talking. With all this Monsanto nonsense going on... how can you know unless you buy from the source. I've been lucky enough to find a source of pastured eggs too, they cost about double for me... but the benefits far outweigh the difference in cost.

Love to talk about this stuff. I've been educating my family on the subject, and trying to drag them with me... kicking and screaming. Someone told me recently: don't buy it unless your grandparents would recognize it as food. Personally, I've taken that one to heart, and very rarely do I buy something that isn't an ingredient. Trying to step up my game a little...

While I cannot go fully vegetarian or vegan, I have cut down my meat intake quite a bit and just steam up heaping bowls of vegetables for dinner many times instead. I still eat meat sometimes but in smaller portions than I used to and healthier selections when I do eat it (fish or baked chicken vs. huge steak, buffalo wings, etc). Granted, I still splurge with bacon or a steak but it is rarer than before and smaller portions.

Anyways, some excess weight I've been toting over the winter has fallen off of me largely due to diet change. I have also been stepping up my physical activity and starting tomorrow I'm riding my bike to work as long as weather permits. I am trying to get back into running but my ankles feel much different from when I played lacrosse in high school.

Congrats on the healthy changes to your lifestyle Nick!