4 ms·

I’ll pass on the phytoestrogens, though. This doesn’t really address the fact that there are ways to still eat meat but minimize the greenhouse effects. For exa

I’ll pass on the phytoestrogens, though. This doesn’t really address the fact that there are ways to still eat meat but minimize the greenhouse effects. For example, chicken and pork is dramatically less directly impactful than beef. There is still the feed efficiency problem, but America’s love of red meat is a better place to start than no meat at all. https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-meat-methane-CO2 https://timeforchange.org/are-cows-cause-of-global-warming-m...

rewq4321 7y ago
The soy/phytoestrogen scare is not scientific/fact-based. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ > Results of recent population studies suggest that soy has either a beneficial or neutral effect on various health conditions. Soy is a nutrient-dense source of protein that can safely be consumed several times a week, and is likely to provide health benefits—especially when eaten as an alternative to red and processed meat. By the way, the reason @jaxr is talking about eating lots of soy is not because we'd need to be heavily reliant on soy for protein if we gave up meat - there are lots of other protein sources, of course. They mentioned eating lots of soy because we currently feed something like 70+% of soy to livestock, so there'd be a lot of it "laying around" if livestock suddenly didn't exist. Of course, it wouldn't actually play out like that.
- bitexploder 7y ago
  There are too many studies that indicate either way with Soy. Maybe it is just over studied and other common sources of nutrition are under studied. Nutritional discussions devolve into a drain circling effect of studies with no one really convincing anyone else. I monitor my blood and know what keeps me healthy. Why risk it with potentially questionable nutrition?
  - SECProto 7y ago
    Soy is consumed in great quantities by Japan, the country with the longest life expectancy in the world. The evidence against soy would have to be pretty dramatic and clear-cut to base decisions on it.
  - NumberWangMan 7y ago
    I would recommend Nutritionfacts.org as a source of high-quality information about nutrition. Dr. Greger (the creator) and a team of researchers read everything they can about nutrition research, examine the studies with a very critical eye, and summarize everything into videos on different topics. The thing about research is that if you look for studies to support a particular conclusion, you can always find them, usually more than one. You could probably find a study or two to support eating nothing but beef and pork, if you tried hard enough. But if you want the truth, you have to read ALL the related studies, and you have to critique and interpret them and understand their scope/limitations and relate them all together to build up as complete a picture as you can. Dr. Greger isn't perfect, but he and his team seem to be doing a hell of a job trying to find the truth. He advocates a whole-food plant-based diet because overall, that's what the evidence seems to say is healthiest. But he's not a hard-line vegan or anything, just trying to ensure that people have can make informed choices by giving us all the information. Not just in terms of broad strokes like "eat more vegetables, don't eat so much meat", but all sorts of weird and interesting details like which sorts of lentils are healthiest, or why broccoli sprouts are amazing at fighting cancer. And it's not an alarmist site -- here's a nuanced take on glyphsate, used on GMO soy https://nutritionfacts.org/video/gmo-soy-and-breast-cancer/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/gmo-soy-and-breast-cancer/ Back to the topic at hand, here's an example about Soy and prostate cancer. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-role-of-soy-foods-in-prostate-cancer-prevention-and-treatment/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-role-of-soy-foods-in-pr... And to find a way out of the forest of conflicting info -- if you find a study and want to get a second opinion on it, search for it on nutrition facts (you probably have to use google, with a query like "site:nutritionfacts.org <study keywords>"). I'm not encouraging you to blindly believe what Dr. Greger says! You should evaluate it for yourself. But I strongly believe that after watching a few videos on random topics, you'll start to see how most people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to nutrition science, and intentionally or unintentionally spread falsehoods.
    - bitexploder 7y ago
      I will take a look. Thank you for sharing. I do agree most health sites are terrible sources. Many studies are bad too. The burden is high and mostly on individuals to make good choices.
cageface 7y ago
I find it odd people are so concerned about phytoestrogens, which have shown to actually have a lot of real benefits in the amounts people actually eat, while chugging down mammalian estrogens by the gallon in milk, which have been repeatedly shown to increase risk of cancer, premature puberty etc. Cows milk is optimized for cows.
- NumberWangMan 7y ago
  Even more -- cows' milk is optimized for baby cows. We think it's weird to even drink human breast milk as adults, but think nothing of drinking bovine milk.

rewq4321 7y ago

The soy/phytoestrogen scare is not scientific/fact-based. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/ > Results of recent population studies suggest that soy has either a beneficial or neutral effect on various health conditions. Soy is a nutrient-dense source of protein that can safely be consumed several times a week, and is likely to provide health benefits—especially when eaten as an alternative to red and processed meat. By the way, the reason @jaxr is talking about eating lots of soy is not because we'd need to be heavily reliant on soy for protein if we gave up meat - there are lots of other protein sources, of course. They mentioned eating lots of soy because we currently feed something like 70+% of soy to livestock, so there'd be a lot of it "laying around" if livestock suddenly didn't exist. Of course, it wouldn't actually play out like that.

bitexploder 7y ago
There are too many studies that indicate either way with Soy. Maybe it is just over studied and other common sources of nutrition are under studied. Nutritional discussions devolve into a drain circling effect of studies with no one really convincing anyone else. I monitor my blood and know what keeps me healthy. Why risk it with potentially questionable nutrition?
- SECProto 7y ago
  Soy is consumed in great quantities by Japan, the country with the longest life expectancy in the world. The evidence against soy would have to be pretty dramatic and clear-cut to base decisions on it.
- NumberWangMan 7y ago
  I would recommend Nutritionfacts.org as a source of high-quality information about nutrition. Dr. Greger (the creator) and a team of researchers read everything they can about nutrition research, examine the studies with a very critical eye, and summarize everything into videos on different topics. The thing about research is that if you look for studies to support a particular conclusion, you can always find them, usually more than one. You could probably find a study or two to support eating nothing but beef and pork, if you tried hard enough. But if you want the truth, you have to read ALL the related studies, and you have to critique and interpret them and understand their scope/limitations and relate them all together to build up as complete a picture as you can. Dr. Greger isn't perfect, but he and his team seem to be doing a hell of a job trying to find the truth. He advocates a whole-food plant-based diet because overall, that's what the evidence seems to say is healthiest. But he's not a hard-line vegan or anything, just trying to ensure that people have can make informed choices by giving us all the information. Not just in terms of broad strokes like "eat more vegetables, don't eat so much meat", but all sorts of weird and interesting details like which sorts of lentils are healthiest, or why broccoli sprouts are amazing at fighting cancer. And it's not an alarmist site -- here's a nuanced take on glyphsate, used on GMO soy https://nutritionfacts.org/video/gmo-soy-and-breast-cancer/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/gmo-soy-and-breast-cancer/ Back to the topic at hand, here's an example about Soy and prostate cancer. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-role-of-soy-foods-in-prostate-cancer-prevention-and-treatment/ https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-role-of-soy-foods-in-pr... And to find a way out of the forest of conflicting info -- if you find a study and want to get a second opinion on it, search for it on nutrition facts (you probably have to use google, with a query like "site:nutritionfacts.org <study keywords>"). I'm not encouraging you to blindly believe what Dr. Greger says! You should evaluate it for yourself. But I strongly believe that after watching a few videos on random topics, you'll start to see how most people have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to nutrition science, and intentionally or unintentionally spread falsehoods.
  - bitexploder 7y ago
    I will take a look. Thank you for sharing. I do agree most health sites are terrible sources. Many studies are bad too. The burden is high and mostly on individuals to make good choices.

cageface 7y ago

I find it odd people are so concerned about phytoestrogens, which have shown to actually have a lot of real benefits in the amounts people actually eat, while chugging down mammalian estrogens by the gallon in milk, which have been repeatedly shown to increase risk of cancer, premature puberty etc. Cows milk is optimized for cows.

NumberWangMan 7y ago
Even more -- cows' milk is optimized for baby cows. We think it's weird to even drink human breast milk as adults, but think nothing of drinking bovine milk.