Jeff, I've been following this thread with some interest
Pete - thank you for a well reasoned discussion. Imagine if every posting were as well thought out and debated.
I've been very interested in nutrition for the last 10 years. I've probably read a thousand studies (the actual studies, not what Time magazine reports) and a few books. I'm on websites like nutritionfacts every day - Greger makes a video or posting every day. I also have many friends in the medical profession including one who's the head of a cardiac department of a very large hospital. My previous businesses were all producing medical products - we had 9 FDA approved products that I designed over the years giving me a front row seat into the mechanisms by which governments give those types of approvals and recommendations. (Alternate subject - your government does not protect you like you think it does)
Given that, I stand behind the statement that the medical profession has little understanding about nutrition. When multiple MD friends look at me like I'm crazy for going Vegan, all asking the identical question, "Where do you get your protein?" it is obvious that they don't have the slightest understanding about nutrition. I've had the luxury of showing some the real science and when faced with it, a couple have gone vegetarian with definite reductions in dairy (cheese is hard to give up).
As an aside, for other readers, nearly every food product has protein. Step back and ask, where do the cows you eat get their protein (they're Vegan). How about hippos, gorillas, horses, and actually most of the animal world? They're all Vegan.
The trick question of all time - which has the most protein:
A) 100 calories of iceberg lettuce
B) 100 calories of tomatoes
C) 100 calories of sirloin steak
I'll give one hint - the steak has the least. This isn't made up - it can be easily verified by any of the nutrition databases online. If you don't believe it prior to looking it up, it shows what advertising from the meat industry has done to you.
So no, just like smoking, our doctors don't know about nutrition. In the US, medical school includes 4 hours of nutrition class. Not 4 semester hours; 4 clock hours - one afternoon.
Match that against the advertising we're subjected to and the many paid and faked "scientific" studies, and the goal is to confuse everyone. Science is pretty good though - it's fairly consistent. But throw in a paid study showing how butter is great, and yeah, everyone is confused. That small, meaningless, and poor science study in particular was paid for by the dairy industry. Then they present it to magazines who, let's face it, are eager for advertising dollars themselves, and the result is more "Got Milk?" advertisements and a front cover of Time showing a pad of melting butter. These companies take advantage of press laziness and the desire to receive industry money. The result is that we're all confused.
That's where Greger is different. He's not paid by any industry. He's an experienced MD in these studies and can get at the underlying science and statistics to determine if they are real. Then he puts it into context and bases his findings on multiple, well produced, and verified studies. The outcomes are remarkably consistent, unlike the media's view.
> So, I do have to agree with you regarding the apparent hypocrisy
> with the smoking thing...
And surely you see the exact same play book at work with meat and dairy? It is the exact same thing. One difference. Meat and dairy are many times larger and richer than tobacco.
> When faced with the confusion of extreme ideas, one tends to
> suspect the truth probably lies somewhere in between
That is exactly the goal of the fake studies - to move you to the center. The same thing happened with tobacco. So the next move is "moderation" - let's not eat huge amounts of food, just cut down and use less salt. It's a simple argument that makes sense. And yet, no one suggests today that smoking in moderation is good for you. It's not. Meat and dairy - ditto.
> ...and that is we evolved eating meat and fruit, roots, fish and
> other seafood. We were never strictly vegetarian or vegan.
That's another misconception that our own anatomy proves. There actually is no evidence to support the idea that cavemen ate meat. They probably didn't. Here are a couple of examples:
- If you have a dog or cat, they are carnivores; there's no question. Look at their jaw - it only moves up and down. Human jaws move up and down to open but also move side to side, just like a horse, cow, etc. Teeth too. We have teeth called canines. Compare them to your dog's canine teeth. They are significantly different. Our mouths and teeth were made for eating vegetables and especially fruits. Early man probably ate mostly fruit.
- Staying with the dog - if you have one, you know that they eat and poop pretty quickly as opposed to humans who need 24+ hours. That's because our intestines are 5 times the length of dog intestines (cat too, and all other carnivores). That incredible extra length gives too much time for things like fat and cholesterol to be absorbed into the blood stream. This is why dogs don't have atherosclerosis as opposed to humans who, as they get richer and eat more meat, experience it as their #1 killer.
- Real carnivores have stomach acid that is significantly more acidic than human - this allows them to eat bones and helps the mechanism in them to pass waste quickly because it is broken down earlier in their system.
- Milk, especially cow's milk, is designed for one specific thing: turn a newborn calf into a 400 lb cow. The combination of a huge amount of protein combined with hormones designed by evolution to quickly fatten a calf do their job perfectly on humans. We have no business eating the milk of another animal, especially when we then complain that our jeans are too tight. Step back and look at milk under that light - it's sort of obvious that we shouldn't eat it. Added to the hormones, of course, are a fairly large amount of allowed pus because, it's coming directly from the glands of a female cow and you can't remove it. And yet, nearly everyone is taught to believe that milk builds bones and is essential for healthy living. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe it is actually worse than meat. It's cheese though - it seems so hard to give up.
> What we did not have much of was refined carbohydrate...largely
> the cause of the obesity and diabetes.
Another media myth. It just isn't true. Atkins has a part in this too - watch your carbs! No breads. No pasta. And things like potatoes? Never.
I wonder how many know that Atkins died at 69 with heart disease and was by BMI definition, obese (258 lbs at 6'0" tall). Why is he the god of wisdom to follow?
It's all wrong. Even you have the nutrition all mixed up about it. It isn't your fault - you're repeating the current mantra given by the media - sugar is killing us - sodas - breads - etc.
The cause of type 2 diabetes is fat. As a medic, you surely understand the insulin response and how it all works. As fat builds, insulin cannot make the connection through the fat molecules to bind glucose into the cells. That is what type 2 diabetes is. Keep building fat and the fat will eventually effect the pancreas. That then effects insulin production and changes to type 1 which, as you know, is the dangerous one. Type 2 is no joy ride because the lack of glucose connection at important places starts to make them fail too.
So sure, sugar doesn't help because the added caloric load gives no mechanism for fat breakdown since the body is seeing so many calories already. In fact, add some extra free insulin to that system and the fat binds internally causing you to look fat (insulin has a secondary role - it stores fat in your system). Extra insulin is available when it cannot be used because of the fat causing more fat to be packed on - it's a bad spiral. And you're right, our bodies are designed to pack fat for lean times so we're very efficient at it.
The solution is easy - cut the fat. Then the sugar gets processed normally because you have a healthy insulin system. Although ad hoc examples aren't valid, in my own case and the case of all Vegans I know, we all eat mostly carbs - we have a friggin bread machine on our boat and goes daily. We eat a ridiculous amount of pasta, potatoes, and even refined sugar. I don't measure sugar sprinkled on oatmeal. We spoon it on. And the result? I lost about 40 lbs getting down to the weight I was in high school when I was playing sports. No cutting back. No "watching carbs". Just eating all I wanted.
A lot of people extol the virtues of exercise too. And trust me, I'm into it although for the last year I've been doing boat maintenance instead of working out. Exercise contributes very little to weight control - although it does motivate people to eat better which is great. Exercise does other important things too especially once your weight is under control. And those things are important for living life to its fullest.
Magically, even with high carb intake, my cholesterol reduced to 150 (which is the baseline that our own bodies produce - no human needs to consume cholesterol - we make it). My wife and I, both nearly 60, are on no medications. When we see doctors for physicals, they don't believe us. We do take $5 / year worth of vitamin B12 which is lacking from a Vegan diet. B12 is a bacteria found in the feces of animals - humans used to get it from fruits and vegetables but today, everything is washed too well with antibiotics. Meat still has it because the slaughtering process washes the meat in enough, umm, B12, to give you the micrograms that you need.
> I have found the 5:2 fasting plan one that helps get around that
> issue quite well.
I think fasting is way too hard. Why do it? A lot of people think it does a "cleanse" but really, most people do it for weight loss. It's a painful way and there's only proof that it's bad because you can't control the breakdown of material being done to create the glucose needed to maintain metabolic systems - your body takes the glucose from somewhere. The fact is, you don't need to do it - just cut the fat and protein and you'll never diet again and have no need for a scale. Go back to that question at the top about 100 calories of iceberg lettuce and think about what that really means.
For what it's worth, we never eat salads - there are too many better things to eat and lettuce (most types) is hard to keep on a cruising boat. The idea that you have to eat large amount of salad or tofu if you go vegetarian is completely false. Except in restaurants, I don't think I've had a salad on the boat in 6 months. We both hate tofu and never eat it as well.
> However, even he admits it is not always feasible or practical to go
> vegan, and probably not necessary to be so, but getting as close as
> one can is certainly worthwhile.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. It's impossible to be Vegan in social situations or at most restaurants. On the boat, we are pretty clean because we know what we're bringing on the boat. But we have pizza out and know that many vegetables in restaurants are cooked with butter. Interestingly, my own body lets me know that I had dairy the next day once you've been mostly Vegan for about 6 months. I think that "cheating" once a week or so, is fine. I'd rather enjoy pot lucks or cocktails on other boats than keep 100% strict.
Considering that though, we never eat meat - that's easy to avoid. I have to say that occasionally, it wouldn't be a bad thing. We just don't want it. Things like conch are pretty much on-the-line too - they're not sentient - and it would be a shame to miss that in the islands so we have that occasionally too.
> so while following the best possible organic & virtually vegan diet
> might buy one a few more years, what if you got run over by a bus..?
I don't think it's about getting a few more years. It's about having every year as healthy as possible. As a medic, again, you surely pulled too many unhealthy people out of homes because they were fat and sick, and too young to be in such a difficult health situation. You know it wasn't heredity. It was diet.
Maybe I'll live a few more years, who knows. It's not why I do it.
OK, so this has all solely been about the health reasons of being vegetarian or Vegan. I honestly think that they are good enough to go into it in a pretty big way. Or at least start things like "Meatless Mondays". And to be honest, the health reason is the reason my wife and I got into it. It was purely selfish, looking out for our own bodies. It was easier than we imagined it would be, and the food is incredible.
Now add the two other reasons to this argument - animal cruelty and the environment. Prior to the publication of The China Study, most vegetarians and Vegans did it for animal cruelty reasons. Each of those subjects would take another posting as long to talk about. The question has to be, taking these three major reasons (health, animal cruelty, and the environment), are the reasons not overwhelming to cut back or stop eating meat and dairy?
