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Hmmm. They say that "in order to distinguish it from a vegan diet", they included a minimum amount of meat consumption of 6-8 ounces per day, plus eggs and dair

Hmmm. They say that "in order to distinguish it from a vegan diet", they included a minimum amount of meat consumption of 6-8 ounces per day, plus eggs and dairy. 6-8 ounces per day is less than the average American consumes (average daily American consumes ~12 ounces/day), but I also don't think that you'd call the average American diet a "healthy" omnivore diet. The study diet would come out to 180ish lbs per year, which is more than 3x the global average. It's certainly more meat than I eat per day. It seems weird to, when comparing "healthy" diets, to make sure that the two are "different enough" instead of starting from a "this is what we thing a healthy version of this diet is, on it's own". They aren't quite guaranteeing there will be a difference, but you are pretty close. This seems a pretty large methodological issue, and at a bare minimum is going to make me disagree with the characterization of "healthy" omnivorous diet that the authors use. This study has a lot going for it, primarily the fact that it's actually a randomized control study (which is almost unheard of in nutrition). The fact that it's a twin study on top of that is even better. But it's low sample size and short duration (8 weeks), are two pretty big marks against it. But given their choices in diet, I think that the strongest result that can possible come out of this is "Don't eat more meat than the average European" (5 ounces per day), which is very far from saying that "a Vegan diet is better than a healthy omnivore diet". If I had a sum up: this is a very good study but the authors take a much stronger position than the design justifies. -edit- I missed that these diets were not caloricly equivalent. The Vegan diet was lower calorie. That....almost entirely trashes the results and interpretation. It definitely explains the weight loss and likely the cholesterol as well. It is incredibly disappointing to see what was probably a very expensive and rare example of a random controlled trial in nutrition marred by some pretty major problems in the design of the diets.

lelanthran 3y ago
> 6-8 ounces per day is less than the average American consumes (average daily American consumes ~12 ounces/day), but I also don't think that you'd call the average American diet a "healthy" omnivore diet. The study diet would come out to 180ish lbs per year, which is more than 3x the global average. I think "less than the average American consumes" is a more accurate indication of an omnivorous diet than "3x the global average", because the global average is filled with malnourished populations. Even when looking at the 5 ounce average for European diets, that's still including a lot of impoverished countries. A healthy diet, on definition alone, is not going to be found in impoverished countries.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  I don't feel like I have to try and restrict my meat consumption consciously at all, and I eat about 80 lbs a year, which is less than half of what was in this diet. I very much doubt that someone who was trying to come up with a "healthy" omnivorous diet in a vacuum would include 6-8 ounces of meat per day. Neither the American nor global averages were meant to be examples of what "should" be eaten, they were merely reference points. Even the USDA recommends less than 6 ounces per day, and if I had to guess, their recommendations are, if anything, on the high side. And of course, all of this is ignoring that this study is hopelessly confounded with caloric differences between the two diets.
jandrewrogers 3y ago
> 6-8 ounces per day is less than the average American consumes (average daily American consumes ~12 ounces/day) I believe the median is going to be more like 6-8oz. In other studies I've come across it has been observed that a relatively small percentage of the US population (15%?) has meat consumption that greatly outsizes the typical American, which skews the results. Apparently there is a significant sub-population of Americans that get most of their calories from meat.

lelanthran 3y ago

> 6-8 ounces per day is less than the average American consumes (average daily American consumes ~12 ounces/day), but I also don't think that you'd call the average American diet a "healthy" omnivore diet. The study diet would come out to 180ish lbs per year, which is more than 3x the global average. I think "less than the average American consumes" is a more accurate indication of an omnivorous diet than "3x the global average", because the global average is filled with malnourished populations. Even when looking at the 5 ounce average for European diets, that's still including a lot of impoverished countries. A healthy diet, on definition alone, is not going to be found in impoverished countries.

MostlyStable 3y ago
I don't feel like I have to try and restrict my meat consumption consciously at all, and I eat about 80 lbs a year, which is less than half of what was in this diet. I very much doubt that someone who was trying to come up with a "healthy" omnivorous diet in a vacuum would include 6-8 ounces of meat per day. Neither the American nor global averages were meant to be examples of what "should" be eaten, they were merely reference points. Even the USDA recommends less than 6 ounces per day, and if I had to guess, their recommendations are, if anything, on the high side. And of course, all of this is ignoring that this study is hopelessly confounded with caloric differences between the two diets.

jandrewrogers 3y ago

> 6-8 ounces per day is less than the average American consumes (average daily American consumes ~12 ounces/day) I believe the median is going to be more like 6-8oz. In other studies I've come across it has been observed that a relatively small percentage of the US population (15%?) has meat consumption that greatly outsizes the typical American, which skews the results. Apparently there is a significant sub-population of Americans that get most of their calories from meat.