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Which animal studies prove that eating meat will decrease longevity in humans? Sure, if you feed meat to rabbits, or other vegetarian animals, but there are ju

by zngtk4 17y ago

Which animal studies prove that eating meat will decrease longevity in humans? Sure, if you feed meat to rabbits, or other vegetarian animals, but there are just as many animals that are essentially incapable of eating not only grains but even vegetables.

Devilboy 17y ago
They used omnivorous animals. Yes it's not concrete proof that it will translate to humans but if you take all the evidence together - the animal trials, the cellular-level experiments and the observations in humans - it's enough to convince the author of The China Study. And more importantly it convinced me.
- anamax 17y ago
  > And more importantly it convinced me. Huh?
- zngtk4 17y ago
  And which type of omnivorous animals? And which type of fat? Saturated fat has little effect on rats, but polyunsaturated fat induces tumors in rats according to to many studies. Low-fat, high calorie diets lead to more tumors than high-fat, low calorie diets in rats (in fact the high-fat, low calorie diets essentially stopped tumor production entirely). This latter was a major study in the journal Cancer Research. Only in high calorie diets was high-fat worse than low-fat, and in low calorie diets, high-fat was better than low-fat. Atherosclerosis is often observed in pigs, cats, dogs, sheep, cows, horses, reptiles, rats, and baboons when fed exclusively vegetarian diets. Monkeys in captivity often become fat and diabetic on high-fiber, low-fat, no-cholesterol diets. It's entirely possible that a no-meat diet is best for humans, but I don't think we're anywhere near the understanding needed to say this -- and his recommendation to avoid fish as well would be viewed as dangerous by much of the medical and scientific community. What we really need are controlled studies, which are entirely possible to do.
  - jshen 17y ago
    You continue to conflate fat and meat and then make points implying that meat consumption is fine. I don't see how controlled studies are possible for various reasons. For starters there are far to many variables and we have no idea how they interrelate. Second, we can't control humans to the degree that would be needed to truly isolate a single variable (which I don't think would be too useful anyway) and animal studies are always imperfect. I'm convinced that diet studies are most effective when performed at a higher level of abstraction.
  - Devilboy 17y ago
    | And which type of omnivorous animals? And which type of fat? Er... Maybe you should read the book first before you go on a tirade against it.

by zngtk4 17y ago

Devilboy 17y ago

They used omnivorous animals. Yes it's not concrete proof that it will translate to humans but if you take all the evidence together - the animal trials, the cellular-level experiments and the observations in humans - it's enough to convince the author of The China Study. And more importantly it convinced me.

anamax 17y ago
> And more importantly it convinced me. Huh?
zngtk4 17y ago
And which type of omnivorous animals? And which type of fat? Saturated fat has little effect on rats, but polyunsaturated fat induces tumors in rats according to to many studies. Low-fat, high calorie diets lead to more tumors than high-fat, low calorie diets in rats (in fact the high-fat, low calorie diets essentially stopped tumor production entirely). This latter was a major study in the journal Cancer Research. Only in high calorie diets was high-fat worse than low-fat, and in low calorie diets, high-fat was better than low-fat. Atherosclerosis is often observed in pigs, cats, dogs, sheep, cows, horses, reptiles, rats, and baboons when fed exclusively vegetarian diets. Monkeys in captivity often become fat and diabetic on high-fiber, low-fat, no-cholesterol diets. It's entirely possible that a no-meat diet is best for humans, but I don't think we're anywhere near the understanding needed to say this -- and his recommendation to avoid fish as well would be viewed as dangerous by much of the medical and scientific community. What we really need are controlled studies, which are entirely possible to do.
- jshen 17y ago
  You continue to conflate fat and meat and then make points implying that meat consumption is fine. I don't see how controlled studies are possible for various reasons. For starters there are far to many variables and we have no idea how they interrelate. Second, we can't control humans to the degree that would be needed to truly isolate a single variable (which I don't think would be too useful anyway) and animal studies are always imperfect. I'm convinced that diet studies are most effective when performed at a higher level of abstraction.
- Devilboy 17y ago
  | And which type of omnivorous animals? And which type of fat? Er... Maybe you should read the book first before you go on a tirade against it.