2 ms·

A couple of reasons, it's the only thing that does seem to consistently match across all the studies. Though, there are plenty of counter examples of cultures

A couple of reasons, it's the only thing that does seem to consistently match across all the studies. Though, there are plenty of counter examples of cultures that have an almost all meat diet and are perfectly healthy, there are other factors involved in those cultures that don't apply to your average first world eater -- the meat is mostly wild caught for instance. The other one is environmental efficiency. While I don't buy that a vegan diet is the most sustainable diet -- there are sustainable agro-ecology systems that include meat by necessity to make them work, and the vegan diet relies heavily on certain monocrops that massively damage the planet in their own right -- it does seem pretty clear that we cannot continue to consume meat at the rate it is consumed in the western diet and stay sustainable. The other thing is that it's a really broad guideline, not a specific prescription. As a broad guideline for health and sustainability for those living in western culture, it seems pretty reasonable.

nonbel 8y ago
>"Two reasons, it's the only thing that does seem to consistently match across all the studies." Not saying I agree (I haven't looked, but surely "all" is an exaggeration...), but if you don't trust the researchers to know what they are doing this could easily be due to bias or including mcdonalds/etc as "meat". Ie, eating less fast food is correlated with not eating meat. >"The other one is environmental efficiency. While I don't buy that a vegan diet is the most sustainable" This has nothing to do with health.
- zzzeek 8y ago
  > This has nothing to do with health Are you an agricultural scientist? How do you know that? How do you know the quality and purity of the soil from which the food grows and the aquifiers which hydrate it didn't affect the nutritional quality of the food itself? I think such impacts have already been observed.
  - nonbel 8y ago
    >"Are you an agricultural scientist? How do you know that?" Ok, I should have spoken more carefully. First, I believe that literally every single thing we can observe is correlated with every other thing (although this correlation may be weak/negligible). So there is nothing that has nothing to do with any other thing. >"How do you know the quality and purity of the soil from which the food grows and the aquifiers which hydrate it didn't affect the nutritional quality of the food itself? I think such impacts have already been observed." Definitely, there seems to have been a great amount of vitamin/mineral depletion. Usually this is chalked up to intensively farming (high-carb) grains (rice, wheat, corn) that really no animal should be eating much of: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221451411500121X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221451411... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
ianai 8y ago
My take away from reading about diets and health has included: 1. We really have a lot to learn about food and biology. 2. Not all carbs are created equally. We may even need whole, new classifications of carbs beyond fiber/starch/etc (just my suspicion though). this is where Keto/meat and fat diets get results. Replacing processed carbs with nearly anything may be an improvement. Doesn’t make nearly anything healthy. 3. Different people digest different foods differently for varied reasons.
- admax88q 8y ago
  Not all meats are created equal and most studies about diet do not control for that. There's a difference between McDonald's beef patty's and grass fed beef.
pakitan 8y ago
> Though, there are plenty of counter examples of cultures that have an almost all meat diet and are perfectly healthy, there are other factors involved in those cultures that don't apply to your average first world eater -- the meat is mostly wild caught for instance. The more obvious and probably more important factor, that doesn't apply to the average first world eater is there are very few of those that have a diet consisting predominantly of meat. Most meat eaters today still have significant portion of their calories coming from refined carbs and they usually avoid fatty meat, which is a staple for those cultures you mentioned.
fpoling 8y ago
In Mongolia people eat only meat from horses, sheep and camels. Mongolia is at the top charts regarding the dearth from heart deceases and cancers especially the liver cancer. And this is in a population that was exposed to this diet for thousands of years and where the meat comes from the most humanely treated animals. One may argue that the statistics is biased towards people from cities where doctors have a better chance of diagnosing the causes of dearth and where people eat much more processed meat than in rural areas, but then the average lifespan in Mongolia has been increasing despite people moving to the cities. In addition there is a small population of ethnic Russian who moved to Mongolia 100 years ago after the revolution. They show the same patterns of deceases. Disclaimer - I am vegan for ethical reasons.
- nonbel 8y ago
  Sounds like people with health issues over there are also living "harder" lives: >"Cerebrovascular diseases, ischemic heart diseases, perinatal deaths, influenza/pneumonia/asthma and tuberculosis were the leading causes of AM in the past eight years in Mongolia. The AMR [amenable mortality rate] was higher in remote western provinces with harsh weather conditions, high poverty rates, lack of human resources for health, and poor infrastructure." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767514/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767514/
- pakitan 8y ago
  Yet, somehow, Mongolians seem to have a slightly higher life expectancy than Indians, who generally subsist on plant-based diets.
sbuttgereit 8y ago
In principal, I disagree conflating two different types of advice/goals like you are in your original comment (1. a statement about what is/is not healthy to eat, 2. what or what not is ecologically sound, made clear in your second comment to which I'm now replying) without making it clear that you are making that leap. The two goals may prescribe some contradictory action. For example, lets pretend for a moment that the worst sort of ecologically disastrous forms of industrial farming happened to produce the most healthy and nutritious food; it's conceivable GMO could well spark that debate not unlike that. Do you make a single statement saying to eat good organic food to stay healthy without also making the statement you're compromising the health portion in balance with ecological concerns? I think making a simple health statement without also being fully clear about also making an environment statement also erodes trust if found out.
- dbingham 8y ago
  You can remove the second reason and it's still just as valid. But that said, this kind of thinking is exactly the sort of problem we have when looking at complex systems. You can't examine any piece of it in isolation. Health is not isolated from environment.

nonbel 8y ago

>"Two reasons, it's the only thing that does seem to consistently match across all the studies." Not saying I agree (I haven't looked, but surely "all" is an exaggeration...), but if you don't trust the researchers to know what they are doing this could easily be due to bias or including mcdonalds/etc as "meat". Ie, eating less fast food is correlated with not eating meat. >"The other one is environmental efficiency. While I don't buy that a vegan diet is the most sustainable" This has nothing to do with health.

zzzeek 8y ago
> This has nothing to do with health Are you an agricultural scientist? How do you know that? How do you know the quality and purity of the soil from which the food grows and the aquifiers which hydrate it didn't affect the nutritional quality of the food itself? I think such impacts have already been observed.
- nonbel 8y ago
  >"Are you an agricultural scientist? How do you know that?" Ok, I should have spoken more carefully. First, I believe that literally every single thing we can observe is correlated with every other thing (although this correlation may be weak/negligible). So there is nothing that has nothing to do with any other thing. >"How do you know the quality and purity of the soil from which the food grows and the aquifiers which hydrate it didn't affect the nutritional quality of the food itself? I think such impacts have already been observed." Definitely, there seems to have been a great amount of vitamin/mineral depletion. Usually this is chalked up to intensively farming (high-carb) grains (rice, wheat, corn) that really no animal should be eating much of: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221451411500121X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221451411... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

ianai 8y ago

My take away from reading about diets and health has included: 1. We really have a lot to learn about food and biology. 2. Not all carbs are created equally. We may even need whole, new classifications of carbs beyond fiber/starch/etc (just my suspicion though). this is where Keto/meat and fat diets get results. Replacing processed carbs with nearly anything may be an improvement. Doesn’t make nearly anything healthy. 3. Different people digest different foods differently for varied reasons.

admax88q 8y ago
Not all meats are created equal and most studies about diet do not control for that. There's a difference between McDonald's beef patty's and grass fed beef.

pakitan 8y ago

> Though, there are plenty of counter examples of cultures that have an almost all meat diet and are perfectly healthy, there are other factors involved in those cultures that don't apply to your average first world eater -- the meat is mostly wild caught for instance. The more obvious and probably more important factor, that doesn't apply to the average first world eater is there are very few of those that have a diet consisting predominantly of meat. Most meat eaters today still have significant portion of their calories coming from refined carbs and they usually avoid fatty meat, which is a staple for those cultures you mentioned.

fpoling 8y ago

In Mongolia people eat only meat from horses, sheep and camels. Mongolia is at the top charts regarding the dearth from heart deceases and cancers especially the liver cancer. And this is in a population that was exposed to this diet for thousands of years and where the meat comes from the most humanely treated animals. One may argue that the statistics is biased towards people from cities where doctors have a better chance of diagnosing the causes of dearth and where people eat much more processed meat than in rural areas, but then the average lifespan in Mongolia has been increasing despite people moving to the cities. In addition there is a small population of ethnic Russian who moved to Mongolia 100 years ago after the revolution. They show the same patterns of deceases. Disclaimer - I am vegan for ethical reasons.

nonbel 8y ago
Sounds like people with health issues over there are also living "harder" lives: >"Cerebrovascular diseases, ischemic heart diseases, perinatal deaths, influenza/pneumonia/asthma and tuberculosis were the leading causes of AM in the past eight years in Mongolia. The AMR [amenable mortality rate] was higher in remote western provinces with harsh weather conditions, high poverty rates, lack of human resources for health, and poor infrastructure." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767514/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4767514/
pakitan 8y ago
Yet, somehow, Mongolians seem to have a slightly higher life expectancy than Indians, who generally subsist on plant-based diets.

sbuttgereit 8y ago

In principal, I disagree conflating two different types of advice/goals like you are in your original comment (1. a statement about what is/is not healthy to eat, 2. what or what not is ecologically sound, made clear in your second comment to which I'm now replying) without making it clear that you are making that leap. The two goals may prescribe some contradictory action. For example, lets pretend for a moment that the worst sort of ecologically disastrous forms of industrial farming happened to produce the most healthy and nutritious food; it's conceivable GMO could well spark that debate not unlike that. Do you make a single statement saying to eat good organic food to stay healthy without also making the statement you're compromising the health portion in balance with ecological concerns? I think making a simple health statement without also being fully clear about also making an environment statement also erodes trust if found out.

dbingham 8y ago
You can remove the second reason and it's still just as valid. But that said, this kind of thinking is exactly the sort of problem we have when looking at complex systems. You can't examine any piece of it in isolation. Health is not isolated from environment.