As for animal protein being necessary for human health, that's not even true in the ideal natural case, never mind the reality of the horror show that today's factory farmed meats have become.
If you think you can meet global demand for meat with free-ranging grazing cows then you haven't even looked at the numbers and claiming that feeding cows seaweed eliminates the methane issues means you also haven't actually looked at the numbers there.
I disagree. He or she is one of the few intelligent commenters on this thread that is not mindlessly grasping on to this alarming vegan/vegetarian trend. And lo and behold, they are getting downvoted to oblivion.
Yet intelligent and educated people do hold beliefs not based on facts, and are unwilling to be questioned.
> Perhaps it should give you pause that so many such people not only consider veganism not alarming but actually positive.
It gives me no pause whatsoever as I'm not someone that so easily follows the crowd. I simply take it to be the case that veganism is the flat-earth-theory of 2019.
> And dismissing it as mindless doesn't really signal debating in good faith on your part or his.
Good faith on my, and others, part and already have come by and been downvoted into oblivion. Have you been watching this thread?
And you wonder why nobody takes your comments seriously. The American Dietetics Association, the largest association of professional dieticians in the world, says vegan diets are healthy and appropriate for all ages:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704
Science is on our side. Who's the flat earther here?
> And you wonder why nobody takes your comments seriously.
My cheeky comment, in regards to veganism being the flat-earth-theory of 2019, was in response to your ludicrous suggestion to me that I should blindly accept something silly just because "so many people [...] consider veganism [...] actually positive". And it is nothing to do with my next response (to your follow-up comment of equally no substance re: good faith) that good faith on my, and others, part have already come by and been downvoted into oblivion (furthermore you are totally unaware of this happening).
> The American Dietetics Association, the largest association of professional dieticians in the world, says vegan diets are healthy and appropriate for all ages:
So what? Is the American Dietetics Association your religion, and whatever they espouse is to be taken as gospel?
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27886704
Just because something is posted on pubmed does not make it a fact.
> Science is on our side.
Hah, nope. Science is _not_ on your side. And posting links to pubmed does not automatically make you scientifically-minded. The American Dietetics Association, and the like, that you so fondly identify with are wont to rely on epidemiological studies (which are not exactly science).
The vast majority of human nutrition research — including the lion share of the research cited in the EAT-Lancet report — is conducted using the tragically flawed methodology of nutrition epidemiology. Nutrition epidemiology studies are not scientific experiments; they are wildly inaccurate, questionnaire-based guesses (hypotheses) about the possible connections between foods and diseases. This approach has been widely criticized as scientifically invalid [see here <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2018.00105... and here <https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698337>], yet continues to be used by influential researchers at prestigious institutions, most notably Dr. Walter Willett. An epidemiologist himself, he wrote an authoritative textbook on the subject and has conducted countless such studies, including a recent, widely-publicized paper tying low-carbohydrate diets to early death. In my reaction to that study <https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/diagnosis-diet/20180..., I explain in plain English why epidemiological techniques are so untrustworthy and include a sample from an actual food questionnaire for your amusement.
Even if you think epidemiological methods are sound, at best they can only generate hypotheses that then need to be tested in clinical trials. Instead, these hypotheses are often prematurely trumpeted to the public as implicit fact in the form of media headlines, dietary guidelines, and well-placed commission reports like this one. Tragically, more than 80% <https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-... of these guesses are later proved wrong in clinical trials. With a failure rate this high, nutrition epidemiologists would be better off flipping a coin to decide which foods cause human disease. The Commission relies heavily on this methodology, which helps to explain why its recommendations often fly in the face of biological reality.
(Straight from https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190... )
> Who's the flat earther here?
Given that science was never on "your side" in the first place, all you need to do in order to answer this question is to look in the mirror.
Also, the diet you choose has consequences for the environment and the animals you eat so it’s not simply a matter of individual choices. Red meat in particular has a huge carbon footprint.
A plant sits in one spot thinking how to poison anything that eats too much of it. An animal moves about consuming as little poison as possible.
Once you're assured of enough calories (which used to limit population growth) the primary solution is to eat some calories from animals that evolved systems for processing plant toxins to minimise your toxic load.
I used pea goo in the comment because I went to the beyond meat website and looked at the ingredients in the impossible burger. The impossible burger consists of about 15 chemical compounds, combined by people highly financially motivated to optimise flavour, texture and colour and the primary component is pea protein. If you can think of a more concise name I'm all ears but it's definitely not a iphone or macbook air.
Vegan's choose pea goo over lamb. That's their choice and some vegan's will have the genetic biochemistry to live healthily on a plant based diet. The general population doesn't share that biochemistry. Veganism is the most environmentally sound option if one's health optimises from the diet. Unfortunately this is not the case for the majority of the population. The average vegan should be admired for their sacrifice, not their logic.
Plant based diets are highly anti inflammatory which helps a lot with depression. And the mammalian proteins in meat & dairy seem to be powerful triggers for the immune system to start attacking itself.
I don't have one for immune disorders. I apologise but people with multiple sclerosis don't gravitate towards vegan diets.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181302/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6412750/
Can you please share a few of the best studies you've seen on veganism reducing depression and autoimmune disorders, I'm genuinely interested and hope I'm missing something.
It does not work particularly well for dietary reasons. The calorie reduction will reduce inflammation if it is not offset by additional excess calories but the omega 3 fatty acid profile will not compete financially with fatty acid profile of algae or grass-fed protein. The beyond meat diet will therefore lead to more inflammation in the general population and increased rates of chronic illness including diabetes and brain disorders.
A moderate amount of protein and fat from Grassfed animals and oily cold water fish combined with moderate low inflammatory carbohydrate starches and loads of vegetables is the optimum human diet.
Every other diet has a negative externality of increased chronic illness. Health outcomes as measured by life expectancy are not better for the average middle income human who survived to the age of 5 in 2019 than they were for the equivalent dataset living 150 years ago in England.
And then you have the vegans. What is more precious? a virus, a amoeba, a bacteria, a prokaryote, a eukaryote, a fungus, a plant, a insect, a arachnid, a cephalopod, an invertebrate, a reptile, a bird, a mammal, a political ally, a community, a friend, a sibling, a parent, a child or a vegan's theory?
Rhetorical question. Human Parents minimise the suffering of their children and expect the favour to be returned in kind.
The choice between animal suffering and decreased probability of the onset of your child's future chronic illness is easy if enlightened. Beyond meat therefore doesn't work for economic reasons and is a fad of unknown duration.
The negative externalities of a vegetarian diet are currently obscured by the corn lobby and any other political factions currently profiting from the sale of inflammatory foods. They love the vegans chipping in. I often wonder if roadkill slowly dying keeps vegans up at night or If they are sleeping through it? And if if they are, how?
As for grassfed animals. Pastured land is marginal for growing starches or vegetables. Solutions are in development for the reduction in nitrate leaching and methane emission. The positive externalities of a low inflammation moderate carbohydrate, moderate protein grass/algae fed diet and the reduction in chronic illness outweigh the negative externalities of the methane. Put nuclear engines in cargo vessels to trade the meat around, methane problem neutralised, global health enhanced.
Food should be judged on it's toxicity to the general population and nothing else. It is the only objective measure and miraculously the economics results in humane farming practice and better human health.
Pretty hard to judge the toxicity of beyond meat and that's why I choose to eat whole ingredients that I process myself. I think they will make some money dependent on flavour, texture, marketing and distribution capability. Although kraft spent 1 billion relabeling their cheese about 10 years back so good luck competing against that. Eventually the human dietary truth will come out and misplaced idealism won't save the business from public knowledge. That could take 20 years but I think the inflammation and dietary literature is going to converge before then.
Bill Gates isn't a vegan.