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I’m always skeptical when I see counter studies to businesses that have a strong financial foothold on certain industries. Case in point, did the meat industry

I’m always skeptical when I see counter studies to businesses that have a strong financial foothold on certain industries. Case in point, did the meat industry have any weight in this study? Generally I feel through certain lobbying efforts theses types of industries will produce a counter study that gets enough backing to be read on the nightly news and now people go back to the way things were or are confused. Having read the China Study, I have all the convincing I need about the role of meat in our diets and I’m fine with that.

pkghost 7y ago
As if there are not other industries that benefit from meat being deemed unhealthy by science? Non-expert perspective on this: I find it very difficult to believe that there is such a thing as too much meat (and easy to believe that too much bad quality meat is the root of the problem as commonly discussed), given that most preagricultural environments lacked sufficient carbohydrate density to support anything other than a ketogenic diet for most people most of the time.
- theferalrobot 7y ago
  > given that most preagricultural environments lacked sufficient carbohydrate density to support anything other than a ketogenic diet Evolution takes a long time and most of the ancestors in human history were near vegetarian with a very low percentage of calories coming from non-vegetarian sources. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancest...
  - nzzzz 7y ago
    > most of the ancestors in human history were near vegetarian An extremely disingenuous statement not backed in any manner in the article outside of paragraphs like these >But the truth is, for most of the last twenty million years of the evolution of our bodies, through most of the big changes, we were eating fruit, nuts, leaves and the occasional bit of insect, frog, bird or mouse. That goes beyond "human history" because monkeys/apes relatives are not humans. Last twenty million years? there was nothing recognizably human then. The australopithecus genus appeared 4 million years ago and even that isn't quite human in shape. Then mentions a diet of "fruit, nuts, leaves". Leaves? Humans can't process leaves efficiently enough to get more nutrition than energy expanded. Unless by leaves they mean leafy vegetables like lettuce which will fill up your stomach while not providing enough calories to get by. An average fit, physically active human needs 2500 calories intake a day. 100 grams of lettuce is 15 calories. 100 grams of fruits like Apples is 52 calories. Of the three mentioned food sources, the only reasonable way of providing enough energy to a human body is nuts. Most nuts can get you where you need to be without having to eat yourself to an enlarged stomach. When you account for seasons, primitive lifestyle that has no way of preserving food and lack of mobility because men relied on their own two legs for their own transportations (reducing the variety of foods available) you really have to brainwash yourself to believe that such a diet could be possible at all. It's easy to be a vegetarian in a world with agriculture. Not so much before. We have human cultures that lived in harsh environments like Alaska for millenias and they didn't live on a diet of good vegan sentiments.
    - theferalrobot 7y ago
      You provided only conjecture - I provided a source and here are more sources including a study explaining why the trendy paleo diatribes are not backed by scientific evidence: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0159 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0159 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/51/14674 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/51/14674
- harimau777 7y ago
  According to Wikipedia, agriculture started roughly 12 thousand years ago. I'm definitely not an expert, but it seems likely to me that our bodies have adapted in that time. I wonder what the macro-nutrient ratios would be in societies relying on traditional agriculture.
- pkghost 7y ago
  @harimau777 and theferalrobot regarding evolutionary timelines: It appears we've been eating meat for about 2.5 million years. 12,000 years seems like the blink of an eye, relatively. Epigenetic research has definitely changed my notion of how rapidly we can adapt, but idk enough to have an opinion on how much we've changed in 12,000 years, or how much vegetarian momentum we managed to conserve over the 2.5 million years of carnivory. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/when-humans-became-meateaters/463305/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/when-hum...
bitexploder 7y ago
I am stepping in it a bit here, but I feel you should not be basing your diet on the China Study. It is pretty thoroughly discredit IMO. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/ Eat lots of vegetables and emulate blue zone diets and life style. It’s the best we got for a blue print of healthy living.
- gbear605 7y ago
  Unfortunately, the blue zones diet has also been discredited, since those places where people seemed to live longer turned out to mostly just be where records were inaccurate decades ago.
dczot 7y ago
> Dr. Allison has received research funding from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a lobbying group for meat producers. Yep.
- travisp 7y ago
  That’s hugely misleading. Allison was not part of the research team and didn’t have anything to do with this work, he was just quoted in the article. The article says: “ The investigators reported no conflicts of interest and did the studies without outside funding.”

pkghost 7y ago

As if there are not other industries that benefit from meat being deemed unhealthy by science? Non-expert perspective on this: I find it very difficult to believe that there is such a thing as too much meat (and easy to believe that too much bad quality meat is the root of the problem as commonly discussed), given that most preagricultural environments lacked sufficient carbohydrate density to support anything other than a ketogenic diet for most people most of the time.

theferalrobot 7y ago
> given that most preagricultural environments lacked sufficient carbohydrate density to support anything other than a ketogenic diet Evolution takes a long time and most of the ancestors in human history were near vegetarian with a very low percentage of calories coming from non-vegetarian sources. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancest...
- nzzzz 7y ago
  > most of the ancestors in human history were near vegetarian An extremely disingenuous statement not backed in any manner in the article outside of paragraphs like these >But the truth is, for most of the last twenty million years of the evolution of our bodies, through most of the big changes, we were eating fruit, nuts, leaves and the occasional bit of insect, frog, bird or mouse. That goes beyond "human history" because monkeys/apes relatives are not humans. Last twenty million years? there was nothing recognizably human then. The australopithecus genus appeared 4 million years ago and even that isn't quite human in shape. Then mentions a diet of "fruit, nuts, leaves". Leaves? Humans can't process leaves efficiently enough to get more nutrition than energy expanded. Unless by leaves they mean leafy vegetables like lettuce which will fill up your stomach while not providing enough calories to get by. An average fit, physically active human needs 2500 calories intake a day. 100 grams of lettuce is 15 calories. 100 grams of fruits like Apples is 52 calories. Of the three mentioned food sources, the only reasonable way of providing enough energy to a human body is nuts. Most nuts can get you where you need to be without having to eat yourself to an enlarged stomach. When you account for seasons, primitive lifestyle that has no way of preserving food and lack of mobility because men relied on their own two legs for their own transportations (reducing the variety of foods available) you really have to brainwash yourself to believe that such a diet could be possible at all. It's easy to be a vegetarian in a world with agriculture. Not so much before. We have human cultures that lived in harsh environments like Alaska for millenias and they didn't live on a diet of good vegan sentiments.
  - theferalrobot 7y ago
    You provided only conjecture - I provided a source and here are more sources including a study explaining why the trendy paleo diatribes are not backed by scientific evidence: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0159 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-017-0159 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/51/14674 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/51/14674
harimau777 7y ago
According to Wikipedia, agriculture started roughly 12 thousand years ago. I'm definitely not an expert, but it seems likely to me that our bodies have adapted in that time. I wonder what the macro-nutrient ratios would be in societies relying on traditional agriculture.
pkghost 7y ago
@harimau777 and theferalrobot regarding evolutionary timelines: It appears we've been eating meat for about 2.5 million years. 12,000 years seems like the blink of an eye, relatively. Epigenetic research has definitely changed my notion of how rapidly we can adapt, but idk enough to have an opinion on how much we've changed in 12,000 years, or how much vegetarian momentum we managed to conserve over the 2.5 million years of carnivory. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/when-humans-became-meateaters/463305/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/when-hum...

bitexploder 7y ago

I am stepping in it a bit here, but I feel you should not be basing your diet on the China Study. It is pretty thoroughly discredit IMO. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/385/ Eat lots of vegetables and emulate blue zone diets and life style. It’s the best we got for a blue print of healthy living.

gbear605 7y ago
Unfortunately, the blue zones diet has also been discredited, since those places where people seemed to live longer turned out to mostly just be where records were inaccurate decades ago.

dczot 7y ago

> Dr. Allison has received research funding from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a lobbying group for meat producers. Yep.

travisp 7y ago
That’s hugely misleading. Allison was not part of the research team and didn’t have anything to do with this work, he was just quoted in the article. The article says: “ The investigators reported no conflicts of interest and did the studies without outside funding.”