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Ask HN: Plant-Based Diet?
I just watched The Game Changers which praises the benefits of a plant based diet and claims a significant amount of scientific consensus around its health benefits. What’s the healthiest proportion of meat in a diet? Majority/minimal/0 calories?
- gus_massa 7y ago> significant amount of scientific consensus This is a very weird expression. Is there consensus or not? Always ask for evidence, not appeal to authority.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- stevespang 7y agoRead: The China Study. The book is based on the China–Cornell–Oxford Project, a 20-year study—described by The New York Times as "the Grand Prix of epidemiology"—conducted by the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, Cornell University, and the University of Oxford.
- hannob 7y agoI don't know that movie, but there is no such consensus. What I take from people who know this stuff better than I do: There's reasonably good evidence that a diet should have a large amount of vegetables and fruit. There's controversial evidence that red meat is particularly bad. However the big issue with meat in the diet is not health, it's climate. It's pretty clear that on average meat has a much higher carbon footprint than plant-based food, while some forms (particularly beef) stand out as particularly bad.
- aosaigh 7y agoYour last point is important. I feel like we need new terminology. “Sustainability inspired diet” or something catchier. I’ve been a vegetarian/flexitarian over the last three years, with the decision being entirely climate-related as opposed to welfare-related (although this is important in its own right). When people enquire it always feels like I have to explain the decision and that I don’t necessarily align with more extreme viewpoints, for example veganism
- jmnicolas 7y agoAfter looking at it for a while, I came to the conclusion that most (emphasis on 'most'. The problem is to know which one is) dietetic science is junk and that we're more in religious territory than anything else. So if I was you, I would do whatever feels reasonable (maybe meat 2 times a week, drastically reduced amount of processed foods, particularly sugar etc). IMHO in diets like in politics the danger is always in the extremes. I wouldn't go full vegan but I wouldn't eat meat 3 times a day either.
- deepaksurti 7y ago>> IMHO in diets like in politics the danger is always in the extremes Not just politics and diets, in almost every sphere of life extremes tend to be dangerous.
- helph67 7y agoThere's lots of research based evidence that the Mediterranean diet can result in a healthy, long life. https://neurosciencenews.com/aging-blood-cognition-nutrients-10385/ https://neurosciencenews.com/aging-blood-cognition-nutrients... https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/telomeres,-trauma,-and-mindfulness/11769140 https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/t...
- tuesday20 7y agoI am a vegetarian and I don’t have much idea about how much meat one should have, health wise. What is very clear is that eating meat has a massive bad influence on the environment. Majority of crops grown are for animals not humans. These animals then become hamburgers and such. The amount of energy it takes to kill, process, transport, refrigerate etc is mind boggling. Not to mention pollution. For this reason alone, it would make sense to eat less meat, if not quit.
- wdroz 7y agoI'm following a Keto diet where I eat meat 2 times a day. I'm dissatisfied with the state of the science behind the impact of meat on both health and climate. If you search papers/studies on this, you'll find diverging answers. Pros plant-based people have the movie "The game changers", Pros meat-based people have the movie "The magic pill". You can find a lot of articles that praise/criticize both movies.
- Japhy_Ryder 7y agoI highly doubt there's any credible article advocating for meat.
- seanwilson 7y agoIf there's no strong evidence of a large effect one way or the other and everyone has their own anecdotes pointing in different directions, is it really worth worrying about? If you can say anything, it's that humans are highly adaptable to many different diets like no meat, high meat, low carb, high carb etc. Reducing meat is one of the biggest ways to reduce your own personal carbon footprint and reduce animal suffering. Those two reasons are good enough.
- meiraleal 7y agoAbout the "carbon foot-print" of meat, that is far from conclusive. Most of the crops are NOT raised to feed cattle. What goes to cattle is the waste after these crops are processed, mainly to remove the vegetable oil, starch and some proteins from soy and corn for human consumption, mainly for: fast-foods, candies, fake food (milk, burgers, etc), tofu, soy sauce.
- kleer001 7y agoWhat is meant by meat? Eggs? Milk? Fish? Mostly it comes down to essential vitamins like B-12 that are all up in the meat biz. There are cultures that have been vegetarian for millennia. Ref parts of India.