Welcome to my “Forks Over Knives” analysis, AKA the longest movie review you’ll ever attempt to read. Thanks for stopping by! In case you aren’t yet convinced that I’ve made it my life’s mission to critique everything related to T. Colin Campbell, this should seal the deal.
As most of you probably know, a documentary called “Forks Over Knives” recently hit the theaters after months of private screenings. Vegans everywhere are swooning, giddy that their message is now animated, narrated, and on sale for $14.99. Proud meat-eaters are less enthused, sometimes hilariously so. The film’s producers call it a movie that “examines the profound claim that most, if not all, of the degenerative diseases that afflict us can be controlled, or even reversed, by rejecting our present menu of animal-based and processed foods.” Roger Ebert calls it “a movie that could save your life.” I call it a movie that deftly blends fact and fiction, and has lots of pictures of vegetables.
Vilification of animal products aside, “Forks Over Knives” highlights something I strongly believe in—the power of diet and lifestyle to trump illness. When I first heard about this movie, I thought the title described a salad fork conquering a steak knife, but it turns out the imagery actually refers to diet (fork) and medicine (knife, or scalpel). Forks over knives. Food over medicine. Hey, I can get on board with that!
And along those lines, I have a weird confession. I kind of loved this movie. Not because of its scientific accuracy (which was sketchy) or because of its riveting narrative (it’s no Brave Little Toaster), but because I’m a sap when it comes to seeing sick people get healthy. “Forks Over Knives” had no shortage of personal stories from folks who, with a tearful glimmer in their eye, recounted how they evaded death by ditching their pill-popping, fast-food-noshing, insulin-injecting lifestyles. Toss in some animated graphs and gross surgery pictures, and I’m in 96 minutes of nerd heaven.
But there’s a reason I’m a health blogger and not a film critic, and I realize not everyone likes to see coronary arteries slashed open or a hear slew of personal stories intended to pluck at our heartstrings. So this won’t be your standard movie review. In fact, it isn’t a “review” so much as a chronological critique of the scientific claims made throughout the movie. My criticisms are limited to the stuff presented as evidence rather than those weepy personal stories, the filming quality, or other features I’ve got no talent in reviewing.
Why am I doing this? Am I evil?
For the record, I’m not dissecting this movie because I think everything in it is terrible. Quite the opposite, in fact. I believe the “plant-based diet doctors” got a lot of things right, and a diet of whole, unprocessed plant foods (i.e., Real Food) can bring tremendous health improvements for people who were formerly eating a low-nutrient, high-crap diet. Especially short term. But I also believe this type of diet achieves some of its success by accident, and that the perks of eliminating processed junk are inaccurately attributed to eliminating all animal foods. So the goal of this critique is to shed light on the areas where the “plant-based science” is a little, um, wilted.
Some other observations about the movie, both positive and negative, before we dive into the real critique:
- Word choice. This film was very careful about avoiding the term “vegan” and using “plant-based diet” instead—and frankly, it was a smart move. Even though the movie made it clear that no animal foods are good for you ever, the phrase “plant-based diet” sounds flexible, non-dogmatic, and limited to the realm of edible things. “Vegan,” on the other hand, is loaded with ethical and political connotations—evoking images of pamphlet-pushing PETA members, rubbery soy cheese, and Walter Bond.
- You’re good men, Charlie Browns. I’ve written (and spoken) about the “plant-based diet doctor squad” in the past—our enthusiastic Team Asparagus comprised of Dean Ornish, John McDougall, Neal Barnard, Caldwell Esselstyn, and Joel Fuhrman (although he’s a bit of a rebel, eschewing grains and allowing more fat than the rest). In this movie, Esselstyn and McDougall get plenty of camera time, and I’ve got to say, I really like these guys. No joke. They’re sincere, they’re well-intentioned, and they’re passionate about what they do. The world needs more doctors who want their patients to get off their medication, who prescribe food instead of drugs, and who have a sincere interest in changing lives. Way to go, dudes.
- Hey, fatty. A major component of Esselstyn’s heart-disease-reversal diet is the massive reduction in fat—not just from animal sources, but also the elimination of nuts, seeds, avocado, olives, olive oil, canola oil, coconut, and any other forms of concentrated plant fat. Unless I dozed off for something important, this movie barely mentioned this part of Esselstyn’s program, which I think is critical one. By keeping fat under 10% of total calories (which we also see in the disease-fighting programs of McDougall, Ornish, Pritikin, and Barnard), omega-6 intake—particularly the problematic linoleic acid—sinks like a gondola shot with a machine gun. Although these plant-based-diet doctors have a different view of fat than I do (Esselstyn, for instance, believes that any dietary fat damages the endothelial cells and promotes heart disease), it still would’ve been useful to hear about this in the movie, if only for the sake of full disclosure. I almost wonder if the movie’s creators dodged the “uber low fat” message to avoid freaking out the audience. What? We can’t even put olive oil on that ten-pound salad?!
- Go fish. As we’ll see later in this critique, some of the anecdotes used to support a plant-based diet (such as Norway’s war-time cuisine and the traditional Japanese diet) actually point to marine foods being a great addition to your menu. For some reason, no one in the movie says a gosh darn thing about fish. Are they lumping fish into the same “meat” category as Oscar Mayer Weiners? Have they forgotten that fish exists in the food supply? Are they ignoring the health benefits of marine foods that nearly everyone—even the folks who swear on their momma’s grave that red meat will kill you—agrees on? What’s going on here? I sure don’t know, but it seems awfully… fishy. (You totally saw that coming.)
- Welcome to False Dichotomyville—population: you. According to this movie, “plant-based diet” and “Standard American diet” are the only two ways you can possibly eat, and an egg is exactly the same as a bag of Cheetos. A recent pingback led me to this review at DoingSpeed.com (it’s not what you think), which nicely sums up the movie’s flip-flopping description of America’s cuisine: “the definition of the Western diet changes suddenly, one second referring to cake and donuts and the next [to] animal products.” Animal foods, it seems, are synonymous with the Western diet, and meat exists only in industrialized countries. Non-Westernized populations like the Masai, traditional Inuit, Australian aborigines, and countless hunter-gatherers have conveniently vanished for the duration of this movie. It must be awesome to selectively choose reality like that!
- Fast forward. For me, the most interesting part of this movie happened around the 30 minute mark. First, the film discusses a 1973 corn subsidy bill that encouraged a massive increase in corn production—which pretty much explains why so many foods these days are injected full of high-fructose corn syrup or other cheap, corn-based ingredients. It’s all about the money. Shortly after that, the movie gives some camera time to evolutionary psychologist Dr. Doug Lisle, who tells us about a concept called the Pleasure Trap—a motivational triad of “seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and conserving energy” that all our years of evolution have hardwired us for. Because our modern, processed foods are so rich in calories and easy to access, they provide a high degree of dietary reward with almost no effort. Our bodies freakin’ love this. So much, in fact, that our brains say “eat eat eat!” in the presence of such foods and our natural hunger signals get overridden. That worked well in the wild, when periods of food abundance were interrupted with periods of famine. But these days, it just makes it easy to get fat. And the Pleasure Trap applies to much more than just food. Indeed, we’re biologically driven to seek the easy way out, to avoid pain, and to pursue things that make us feel good.
Critique time!
After a collage of soundbites about how awful and unhealthy Americans are (ya think?), the fun begins around the 13-minute mark, when we get a brief biology lesson on the C-word: cholesterol. Props to the scriptwriter for at least noting that cholesterol is a “natural and essential substance” (per some descriptions, you’d think the stuff was toxic sludge), but the narration goes downhill from there. After outlining cholesterol’s important biological functions, the movie states:
13:06—But when we consume dietary cholesterol, which is only found in animal foods like meat, eggs, and dairy products, it tends to stay in the bloodstream. This so-called plaque is what collects on the inside of our blood vessels and is the major cause of coronary artery disease.
Yikes! Did we slip and fall back into the ’80s?
For starters, cholesterol from animal foods does not have some magical ability to set up permanent camp in your bloodstream and turn into plaque, just by sheer virtue of its animal-foodness. This was a common line of thought decades ago, but as research progressed, we figured out that the body is actually pretty awesome at regulating cholesterol production in response to what we ingest from food. As this paper from 2009 explains, the supposed link between dietary and serum cholesterol stems from studies that had fundamental design flaws, failed to separate the effects of cholesterol different types of fat intake, or were performed on animals that are obligate herbivores (hey there, rabbits!). The doctors in “Forks Over Knives,” it seems, are among the few stragglers who still believe dietary cholesterol is harmful.
Most people (about 70% of the population) are “hypo-responders” when it comes to cholesterol intake—meaning the cholesterol they eat from food has a negligible effect on the total cholesterol in their blood. A smaller slice of the population (“hyper-responders”) see a greater rise in blood cholesterol after eating high-cholesterol foods, but the change is because both LDL and HDL increase proportionally, preserving the cholesterol ratio and leaving heart disease risk the same as what it was before. (As more evidence, a similar study (PDF) found no change in LDL/HDL ratio in either they hypo-responders or hyper-responders, even when feeding folks an extra 640 mg of cholesterol per day.)
Not only that, but some cholesterol-rich foods like eggs have actually been shown to make LDL (the so-called “bad” cholesterol) less atherogenic by increasing its particle size. And in one study of diabetics, a high-protein, high-cholesterol diet improved HDL more than a similar high-protein diet with a low cholesterol content (though it was likely other components of the foods involved, rather than the dietary cholesterol itself, that caused this). It’s a weird, wobbly stretch to paint animal foods as a death knell because they contain cholesterol.
Enter: T. Colin Campbell
Minute 17:01—"We learned that animal protein was really good in turning on cancer." There's an inappropriate joke buried somewhere in there.
Now we’re talkin’! To anyone who’s read (or is moderately familiar with) the book “The China Study,” the next part of the movie is a trip down memory lane. We learn about Campbell’s work in the Philippines, where he was trying to improve the lives of malnourished children by filling their diets with more protein. It was here that the trajectory of his career made its first wild turn:
Minute 15:42—But then Dr. Campbell stumbled upon a piece of information that was extremely important. … The more affluent families in the Philippines … were eating relatively high amounts of animal-based foods. But at the same time, they were the ones who were most likely to have children susceptible to getting liver cancer.
(Gasp! Shock! Horror! Let me insert the requisite “correlation isn’t causation” warning before we continue.)
Minute 16:10—Shortly afterward, Dr. Campbell came across a scientific paper published in a little-known Indian medical journal. It detailed work that had been done on a population of experimental rats that were first exposed to a carcinogen called aflatoxin, then fed a diet of casein, the main protein found in milk. [Campbell:] “They were testing the effect of protein on the development of liver cancer. They used two different levels of protein: They used 20% of total calories, and then they used a much lower level, 5%. Twenty percent turned on cancer; 5% turned it off.”
Although the above is true, it’s only one (misleading) part of the story. We’ll explore exactly what’s wrong with this summary later on, when Campbell’s own research comes to the fore in the film. But for now, let’s just look at one spot where the film lets a figurative cat (err, rat?) out of the bag.
The paper from India that Campbell found is called The Effect of Dietary Protein on Carcinogenesis of Aflatoxin, which appeared in the Archives of Pathology in 1968. Indeed, the researchers discovered that rats fed 5% of their diet as casein were generally free from cancerous growths, whereas the rats fed 20% casein were riddled with ‘em. But at the 16:37-minute mark, we get to see a snippet of this paper that shows us something equally important:
Don’t get distracted by those red letters! What we’re interested in is the sentence near the bottom, which the film’s producers apparently didn’t notice: ”In all, 30 rats on the high-protein diet and 12 on the low-protein diet survived for more than a year.”
Let that sink in for a moment. Maybe it’ll hit a little harder if I told you that in the “high protein vs. low protein” experiments discussed in this paper, 10 low-protein rats died prematurely while all the high-protein rats stayed alive. In other words, the overall survival rate for the 20% casein group was much better than for the 5% casein group, despite the fact they had liver tumors. The low-protein rats were dying rapidly—just not from liver cancer. And as we’ll see later, the reason the non-dead, low-protein rats didn’t get tumors was partly because their liver cells were committing mass suicide.
In his article “The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats: Does Protein Deficiency Prevent Cancer?“, Chris Masterjohn explores this oddity further by plowing through the Indian research Campbell talked about. If you haven’t seen this article yet, you owe it yourself to read it now, because it’s kind of mind-blowing—both for Chris’s analysis of the Indian research and his takedown of Campbell’s own rat studies. (And for anyone who’s going to gripe about this article being posted on the Weston A. Price Foundation site (I know you gripers are out there), I encourage you to read it anyway, use your noggin, and check the references for yourself rather than dismissing it sight unseen.)
Regarding that paper from India that sparked Campbell’s “aha protein evil!” moment, Chris notes that “Campbell never tells us … that these Indian researchers actually published this paper as part of a two-paper set, one showing that low-casein diets make aflatoxin much more acutely toxic to rats.” This second paper is called The Effect of Dietary Protein on Liver Injury in Weanling Rats, and indeed, it shows that rats on low-protein diets experience much more actual liver damage than rats on high-protein diets when they’re exposed to aflatoxin. They don’t get cancer, but they’re sicker overall because they’re less capable of detoxifying aflatxoin—leading to fun stuff like fatty liver, liver necrosis (cell death), proliferation of bile duct tissue, and early death. As Chris puts it:
Somehow, I doubt many people would read this study and shout “sign me up!” for a low-protein, plant-based diet if it is going to save them from cancer at the expense of killing them in their youth.
Indeed! As we’ll see later in this critique, Campbell’s own low-protein rats weren’t a rosy picture of health, either. Even more exciting, we’ll look at some more studies conducted in India showing that low-casein diets—but not high-casein diets—promote cancer when aflatoxin dosage is at a lower, real-world-applicable level. Fun times ahead! (If you’re impatient, you can skip to that section right now by clicking here.)
Esselstyn: From operating table to kitchen table
Next up, we get a bigger peek into the life of one seriously cool cat: Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, physician at the Cleveland Clinic. Although Esselstyn noted—in an earlier segment of the movie—that he loved surgery for its ability to neatly remove a problem from the body, he faced some disillusionment as his career progressed. In 1978, when Esselstyn was chairman of Breast Cancer Task Force at Cleveland Clinic, he was unhappy that he was only treating people who were already ill and doing diddly squat for the “next unsuspecting victim.” He wanted to focus on prevention. So he put on his sleuth cap and set off to investigate—first by shoveling through global statistics for cancer.
Only YOU can prevent forest fires. And heart disease.
For the next few minutes, we get to hear about the alarming discoveries this investigation uncovered. Don’t want breast cancer? Then move to Kenya, where the rates are 82 times lower than in the US (well, at least they were in 1978). Got prostate cancer? Japan doesn’t: In 1958, there were only 18 autopsy-proven deaths from prostate cancer in the whole country. Compare that to the 14,000 in the US for the same year. Heart disease, too, was lower outside of America:
Minute 19:21—Dr. Esselstyn also discovered that in the 1970s, the risk for heart disease in rural China was 12 times lower than it was in the US. And in the highlands of Papau New Guinea, heart disease was rarely encountered. The link he noticed between all the areas he studied was simple. [Esselstyn:] “Virtually the Western diet was nonexistant. They had no animal products. No dairy, they had no meat.”
…And there it is. Again, we have the conflating of “Western diet” with “animal products,” as if meat and dairy are the major dietary difference between Westernized and non-Westernized populations. Oy! (By the way, here’s a friendly reminder that in rural China—at least based on the China Study data—heart disease mortality was actually inversely associated with meat intake, meaning the folks eating the least meat actually died more frequently of heart disease. It doesn’t mean too much as a lowly correlation, but it does fly against the assumption that animal foods are always linked with heart disease.)
Next is where it really gets interesting. About 20 minutes into the movie, we get a fascinating historical tidbit about diet and heart disease in war-time Norway:
Minute 19:50—In World War II, the Germans occupied Norway. Among the first things they did was confiscate all the livestock and farm animals to provide supplies for their own troops. So the Norwegians were forced to eat mainly plant-based foods.
In the movie, Esselstyn eagerly explains how cardiovascular disease went kerplunk when the Germans invaded in 1939, only to zip back up as soon as the war was over—perfectly coinciding with their supposed near-vegan period. How obvious it is! The Norwegians went veggie and healthied up; they returned to their lamb and gjetost and re-clogged their arteries. As Esselstyn puts it: ”With the cessation of hostilities in 1945, back comes the meat, back comes the dairy, back comes the strokes and heart attacks.”
Here’s the graph the movie walks us through. The Nazi flag marks the arrival of the Germans; 1945 is when they left. (Right below it is a similar graph from a 1951 issue of “The Lancet” that’s even more dramatic. After adjusting for an unequal age distribution (and unrealistically low mortality in the ’20s and ’30s), we can see that death from cardiovascular disease really did nosedive to a lower rate than Norway had seen in the past few decades.)
War! What is it good for? Reversing heart disease, apparently.
Oh, Norway; how close you were to cardiovascular salvation! Nice job screwing it up.
The intended point, of course, is that the dip in mortality was from giving up animal foods. When the Germans swiped all sentient creatures from the food supply, Norwegian hearts pumped with atherosclerosis-free ease—proving that going “plant based” will save your ticker. It sounds convincing enough, and the graph is compelling*… but is there more to the story than meets the eye?
*Note: If you look at the numbers on the right side of the graph, you’ll see mortality dropped from 30 to 24 deaths per 10,000—a difference of only six people per 10,000. That’s still nothing to sneeze at (especially if one of the saved was your great-grandpa Bjørn who helped you exist), but the graph gives an exaggerated view of the actual change in mortality.
Luckily, there are a few resources out there that track the war-time diet changes in more detail. One is a paper discussing how nutrition affected Norwegian youngsters during the war, which you can read as a PDF here (spoiler: the kids were shorties). But the part we’re interested in is the table estimating how food intake changed during the war. The numbers represent how much each food increased or decreased during the war (percentage wise) compared to the pre-war values.
Did meat and milk intake go down? Fo’ sho’ (although clearly not to zero). But look what else happened. Sugar consumption was chopped in half. Both butter and margarine intake decreased significantly. Veggie intake shot up. And perhaps most significantly, fish consumption increased by a whopping 200%, a bigger change than seen with any other single food item. Need I mention the eighty gazillion studies showing the benefits of fish, DHA, and an improved omega-3/omega-6 ratio for cardiovascular health?
The paper also notes that total calorie intake decreased by about 20% compared to pre-war levels and weight loss was common. Did calorie restriction and sinking body mass play a role in mortality changes? Definitely maybe.
Oh, but it gets better. There’s a section in a super old issue of “Proceedings of the Nutrition Society” called “Food Conditions in Norway During the War, 1939-45” with even juicier details. I couldn’t find any free copies to link to, so I’ll type out the relevant bits. But first, take another look at that “circulatory disease” graph from the movie and verify with your own eyes that the first (and biggest) drop in mortality happened in 1941.
Now read this:
During the first year [starting in spring of 1940] the rationing included all imported foods, bread, fats, sugar, coffee, cocoa, syrup, and coffee substitute. In the second year [starting in late 1941] all kinds of meat and pork, eggs, milk and dairy products were rationed…
See the problem?
Animal foods didn’t really dwindle from Norwegian kitchens until the end of 1941. Even if we ignore the fact that changes in mortality would naturally lag behind changes in diet, it’s hard to blame the 1941 drop in cardiovascular disease on something that mostly happened in 1942! D’oh. Time-wise, there’s a stronger link between the mortality tailspin and the previous year of food rationing: “imported foods, bread, fats, sugar, coffee, cocoa, syrup, and coffee substitute.” (Or maybe it was just the anticipation of ditching meat that made everyone healthier.)
Despite the dismal record keeping, a few studies were “secretly performed” in Oslo to track changes in food intake during the war. Between 30 and 50 families were surveyed three times annually from 1941 to 1945, giving us a nice little diet portrait encompassing not only rationed food, but also the “black market” items people were eating. Although it’s hard to say how accurately this represents the food intake of Norway’s whole population, it’s at least a place to start. And unlike the last table, it breaks down food consumption year by year, rather comparing only war-time and pre-war values. (Note that the top row is for the years 1936-7 and the next is for 1941—it seems there isn’t any data for the gap between.)
I pity da fool who doesn’t enlarge this image.
From "Proceedings of the Nutrition Society," 1947. Volume 5, issue 4, page 264.
Numbers, numbers, everywhere! Let’s distill the major stuff from that chart so you don’t have to squint at it forever:
- Cod liver oil became a standard addition to war-time diets. (Interestingly, the paper later notes a huge improvement in Norwegian dental health between 1940 and 1945: By the end of the war, the average number of cavities was less than half of what it was before the war. Vitamin A and D, anyone?)
- As we saw earlier, fish intake increased massively. So did ‘taters, roots, and vegetables, particularly in 1942 and 1943.
- Intake of whole milk was actually higher in 1941 compared to before the war, but then gradually diminished.
- Intake of skim milk was higher throughout the war than before it.
- Cheese, cream, and condensed milk started dropping off the radar at the end of 1941.
- Meat hit a major low in 1943 and 1944.
- Added fats like margarine and butter declined, particularly in 1942 and 1943.
- Flour, meal, groats, and bread intake went up slightly, mainly from black-market sources.
- Intake of sugar, coffee, and chocolate declined significantly.
- Fruit also declined significantly, and as we’ll see later, mainly came in the form of locally picked berries.
There’s no doubt about it: In 1941, when cardiovascular disease started plummeting, Norwegians were eating more total dairy (light blue line) than they were before the war, when the death rate was higher.
How about flesh foods? Again, this is in grams per day for your average Norwegian man:
For the families surveyed in Oslo, fish and meat consumption were almost exactly inverse: Fish intake rose in perfect step with the decline of meat. And at its peak, the average man was consuming almost three-quarters of a pound of fish a day! That’s a decent chunk o’ seafood. Because meat and fish intake were so tightly correlated, it’s hard—maybe impossible, given the sparse data available—to separate any mortality effects of meat reduction from the huge spike in marine foods.
One more gem from this paper. In another table, we get yearly data for Norway’s daily intake of total animal protein (in grams) for 1936-7 and then from 1942 to 1945. This should be fun, right? Here’s a graphed version of that data, paired up with the cardiovascular disease mortality rates from those same years. (To make it easier to see the interplay between the lines, I doubled the mortality figures to make them “per 20,000 people” instead of “per 10,000.”)
Well, golly. In both 1942 and 1943, when mortality made its steepest descent, animal protein intake was actually higher than it was before the war! The major decline in total animal protein intake didn’t happen until 1944 and 1945, well after Norway had already seen cardiovascular disease plummet. Again, this data isn’t rock-solid because of poor record keeping, and correlation isn’t causation anyway, but it sure doesn’t support the argument that Norway got healthier due to a plant-based diet.
For comparison’s sake, this is what a graph would look like if these variables were tightly linked:
One more thing before we emigrate from Norway. After poking around the interwebs, I found a gem of a paper called Food rationing during World War two: a special case of sustainable consumption? The whole thing’s pretty interesting, but the best nuggets are the details about actual foods eaten in Norway during the war (and the reiteration that “sugar rations [were] restricted to 3 kilos per household per year,” which is less than 2% of what a four-person Norwegian family consumes today.)
In a similar attempt to reduce the waste of food resources in Norway, the home economics institutes focused on how to exploit the local resources from the sea and from wild plants in a more efficient manner. This involved exploring the boundaries for what was commonly perceived as food, by experimenting with uncommon ingredients such as wild sea birds (including sea gull) and wild plants including moss.
Who needs Lean Cuisines when you can have seagulls and moss for dinner?
This paper also remarks that ”herring and potatoes represented the mainstay of the Norwegian crisis diet,” which certainly agrees with the graphs and tables we looked at earlier. But those rascally Scandinavians took their herring consumption one step further. Fish eggs, or “roe,” also became a staple:
For instance, the food labs tried to find new uses for the nutritious and plentiful fish roe. … The institutes created a number of recipes using fish roe as a substitute for flour. … The most basic recipe simply recommended using equal amounts of roe and flour, then mix with water and some yeast to bake bread or rolls. But there was nothing wrong with using roe in finer foods either; for instance in waffles mixed with milk, sugar, some regular flour and essence of vanilla and cardamom.
We’ve got to give those Norwegians props for being resourceful. Substituting fish eggs for flour? Serving herring roe waffles? Who would’a thunk it? (This actually makes me wonder if, despite bread consumption going up during the war, actual flour intake could have gone down due to substitution with other ingredients. But maybe that’s just my suspicious-of-wheat bias creeping in.) Apparently, a popular dessert was also “herring roe bread pudding,” made mostly from fish eggs and potatoes*:
350 g. herring roe; 1 tbs potato flour; 1 tbs bread flour; 5 tbs breadcrumbs; 4 boiled potatoes; 4 dl. milk; 1 tsp currants (made of dried blueberries); 2-3 tbs sugar; essence of almond; Served with sweet red sauce (saftsaus).
*Hey ancestral-eating folks, this is totally tweakable to be paleo. The first person to modify this recipe and actually eat it will earn my lifelong respect.
Lastly, some cool info on the fruits and vegetables Norwegians were eating. By the end of 1942, most fruits and veggies were done near gone from the markets and tremendously hard to get through rationing. So the government gave housewives throughout the country a list of “valuable wild plant supplements” to use for vegetables, which included “nettles, goutweed, and dandelions … as excellent sources of iron and vitamin C.” Foraging for wild edibles became common. And even before that, Norwegians earned their stripes as deft berry-pickers:
Already in August 1940, the public provisions office in Oslo [Forsyningsutvalget] launched a publicity campaign to get the city dwellers out in the forests surrounding the capital picking berries. The simple slogan “Pick berries! There is plenty in the forests!” printed on a poster of a girl carrying a big basket of berries was meant to tempt the city consumers to supplement their own supplies of food. As the war progressed, berries became an increasingly treasured resource. By 1943, the authorities had introduced a limit for when one was allowed to start picking different sorts of berries, and there are accounts of masses of consumers spending the night in the forests waiting for the official start date for when the berries were ripe.
How cute! Like rabid fans camping outside the theater for Harry Potter, Norwegians would line up in the forest, waiting for berry season to commence.
But back to the point of this thing. In “Forks Over Knives,” Esselstyn cites Norway’s war experience as a remarkable example of a plant-based diet leading to rapid improvements in cardiovascular disease. But as we can see from the exhaustive (and probably excessive; sorry) information above, the real Norwegian war-time diet was:
- Based on marine foods, particularly omega-3-rich herring and its eggs (which are super high in cholesterol… just sayin’)
- Supplemented with a variety of foraged foods, including berries, moss, and wild greens—which tend to be much higher in antioxidants and nutrients than their commercial counterparts
- Based on potatoes as the main source of starch
- Remarkably low in sugar and added fats, including vegetable oils/margarine
Those are a lot of positive changes—and as we saw earlier, the increase in fish intake more than made up for the drop in meat and dairy, in terms of total animal product consumption. Plant based? Only if fish is a vegetable.
…And now that I’ve stolen a big chunk of your day yapping about war-time Norway, I’ll add a warning that everything above may be moot. The apparent decline in cardiovascular disease could easily be confounded by the major rise in infectious disease that happened during the war, including a full doubling of pneumonia deaths. Just because cardiovascular disease mortality drops doesn’t prove cardiovascular disease itself has truly declined. Sometimes, it just means faster-acting diseases are snatching lives before heart attacks or strokes have a chance to claim their victims.
Hat tip to Chris Masterjohn for passing along this snippet from Broda Barnes’ book, “Solved: The Riddle of Heart Attacks.” Barnes reviewed 70,000 Austrian autopsy protocols from the years 1930 to 1970, and found—just like in Norway—that cardiovascular disease mortality dropped significantly during World War II. But instead of ascribing the change to diet, Barnes had a different hypothesis. He writes (emphasis mine):
At Graz, heart attacks dropped 75 percent between 1939 and 1945, and it is true that people were not eating cholesterol foods during the war. … A look at the arteries of the entire series of 2000 autopsies in 1945 revealed that the number of the individuals with damage to their coronary arteries (arteries to the heart) was approximately doubled in 1945 compared to 1939, and the degree of damage to each one affected was about twice as great. … Adult patients, dying from tuberculosis during the war, had a very severe degree of damage to the arteries of their hearts. … Two years later the conditions were reversed. The antibiotics against tuberculosis had become available, and deaths from this disease fell like a lead pipe. Immediately deaths from heart attacks started to rise. The autopsies gave us the answer: the adult dying from a heart attack had healing tuberculosis in his lungs. (Pages 2 and 3)
In contrast to Esselstyn’s theory, Barnes found that actual arterial damage was about twice as great by the end of the war as it was before the war, at least in Austria. But because infectious diseases shot up during the war years, a person’s official cause of death was more likely to be tuberculosis, pneumonia, or another acute illness, even in folks who actually did have cardiovascular disease. For Austria, the decline in cardiovascular disease mortality didn’t reflect the true state of Austria’s heart health. (And it’s possible the infections themselves, with accompanying inflammation, actually helped worsen cardiovascular disease.)
This doesn’t mean that Norway’s war-time diet had no impact on mortality, of course—just that we ought to look at death statistics in the context of total mortality.
Whew! How was that for a long discussion of something that only took one minute and fifteen seconds in the film? Let’s move on.
MC Hammer Dougall time
Next up, Dr. John McDougall makes an appearance to remind us once more that animal foods are terrible. We hear exactly how the McDougall of yore evolved into his current pro-plant, anti-animal-foods position.
The story goes like this. In the 1970s, McDougall was working as a doctor on a sugar plantation in Hawaii. He noticed that the older generations of Japanese (and other Asian) immigrants were free from modern diseases—they were slim, active into old age, didn’t get heart disease or arthritis or breast cancer or diabetes, and generally evaded the maladies plaguing most Westerners. McDougall attributes this to the fact that the older generation “learned a diet of rice and vegetables in their native lands,” and carried this diet with them when they set sail for the US. Their kids and grandkids, on the other hand, were a different story: They started getting fat and suffering from the same diseases other Americans do—and according to McDougall, the reason was simple:
Minute 21:56—[McDougall:] Their kids, they started to give up the rice and replace it with the animal foods, the dairy products, the meats… and the results were obvious. They got fat and sick. I knew, at that point, what causes most diseases.
- “It had nothing to do with the sugar cane they snuck on their lunch breaks.”
Among other things, this paper records the differences in eating habits between native Japanese and Japanese who moved to Hawaii—and provides us with my favorite thing ever: graphs. I’m posting copies of the relevant ones below. The black bars represent Japanese who moved to Hawaii; the white bars represent Japanese who still lived in Japan when the data was recorded (a few years before McDougall was working on the sugar plantation). The three sets of bars for each graph show what percent of the population ate that particular food for the specified frequency (in most cases: less than two times a week, two to four times a week, and seven or more times per week). If that’s a little confusing, don’t worry—we’ll discuss what these graphs show in a moment.
(FYI: Each row of graphs is a separate image. I made them huge on account of the spotty, barely-readable text, which was even spottier and more barely-readable when the pictures were normal sized.)
What’s it all mean?!
For starters, look at the middle row with three graphs. See how the center and right-hand graph have black and white bars that follow a similar distribution? That means the intake of those foods wasn’t massively different between the native Japanese and the Hawaii-dwelling Japanese. Now look at the labels on those particular graphs: Meat and Ham, Bacon, Sausage. As you can see, the majority of both native and Hawaii-dwelling Japanese were eating regular meat two to four times per week, and ate processed meats less than twice per week. Out of all the foods documented, the ones with the smallest difference of intake between native and Hawaiian Japanese populations were flesh foods.
How ’bout that.
Now look at the bottom left graph that says Fish. The white bars, representing the native Japanese, show that about 40% of Japan’s population ate fish at least seven times per week—compared to only about 8% of Japanese living in Hawaii, who were apparently unaware of their islands’ marine bounty. In sharp contrast to their native diet, over half of the Hawaiian Japanese ate fish a maximum of once per week.
The tally so far: the native Japanese on their “traditional” diets ate a lot more fish (which, c’mon, is totally an animal product) than Hawaiian Japanese, and ate slightly less meat, ham, bacon, and sausage… but the difference wasn’t huge.
Now for the fun stuff. Check out that top row of graphs. The Hawaiian Japanese didn’t swap out rice for animal foods—they swapped out rice for bread! Whereas the native Japanese almost all ate rice two to three times per day (and most ate bread less than twice a week), the vast majority—almost 90%—of Hawaiian Japanese ate bread more than seven times per week. As we saw in an earlier blog post, wheat-based diets seem to have different effects than rice-based diets in at least one other Asian country.
The other major change, along with a drop in traditional soy intake, was “butter, cheese, and margarine.” I’ll definitely agree with McDougall that Hawaiian Japanese seem to be eating more dairy than their native counterparts, although throwing margarine into the mix makes it difficult to determine just how much.
At least based on this data, the “Americanization” of Japanese immigrants in Hawaii didn’t involve a newfound guzzling of flesh foods: it involved picking up America’s wheat habit and abandoning the native staples of fish and rice. If “sugar” had been included in the above graphs, I have no doubt we’d see major changes with that, too. The only animal food that did strongly increase among the immigrants was dairy, although in this paper, it was pooled together with margarine (which no one considered bad yet back in the groovy ’70s).
Does this invalidate McDougall’s observations? Not necessarily. Maybe the patients he treated on the sugar plantation were skewering wild pigs and snacking on bacon all day.
Do you smell a rat? I do… and it has hepatocyte necrosis
After the tale of sickly Hawaiians, “Forks Over Knives” segues back into the research Campbell embarks on after his experience in the Philippines. In ’75, Campbell was working at Cornell University, conducting a battery of experiments on dietary protein and aflatoxin-induced liver cancer in rats. I’ll let the movie sum it up:
Minute 25:03—Just like the Indian researchers, Campbell fed half the rats in his study a diet of 20% casein, the main protein in dairy products. The other half was fed only 5% casein. Over the 12 weeks of the study, the rats eating the higher protein diet had a greatly enhanced level of early liver cancer tumor growth. On the other hand, all of the rats eating only 5% animal protein* had no evidence of cancer whatsoever.
*Notice the sneaky interchange of “casein” with “animal protein”? Rest assured, folks, that casein is an animal protein, but not all animal proteins are casein. This movie falls into the same trap I mentioned in my “China Study” critique last year, and that many other people (Dr. Harriet Hall, Chris Masterjohn, and Anthony Colpo, to name a few) have taken issue with as well: extrapolating the effects of casein to all forms of animal protein. As I discussed in that critique, casein seems to be the strongest cancer-promoter among the isolated proteins (with whey, the other major protein in milk, being decidedly anti-cancer). Not only that, but the effect of specific protein sources on tumor growth can vary dramatically depending on the types of fat and carbohydrate also included in the lab diet. Both in the movie and in his book “The China Study,” Campbell makes an unjustified leap from “isolated casein in rat studies” to “any animal protein in a real-world human diet. Shazam!”
But those are small potatoes compared to what’s coming next. First, take a look at something Campbell himself noted in the movie (emphasis mine):
Minute 26:05—[Campbell:] “This was so provocative, this information. We could turn on and turn off cancer growth, just by adjusting the level of intake of that protein. Going from 5% to 20% protein is within the range of American experience. The typical studies on chemical carcinogens causing cancer are testing chemicals at levels maybe three or four orders of magnitude higher than we experience.”
Although Campbell is trying to explain why his rat studies have relevance for humans, this statement actually highlights why they usually don’t. In Campbell’s experiments—as well as the Indian study that inspired him all those years ago—the rats received very high doses of aflatoxin to initiate cancer in the first place. Protein only appeared to work as a cancer promoter in his studies, not an independent carcinogen. And even though the range of protein was reasonable for a real-life situation, the amount of aflatoxin exposure would be really hard to replicate unless you had a death wish and a bottomless stomach. Quoting Chris Masterjohn’s “Curious Case” article again, to get the sort of aflatoxin exposure that caused even a “barely detectable” response in Campbell’s rats, you’d have to eat about 1,125,000 contaminated peanut butter* sandwiches over the course of four days. I don’t know about you, but I doubt I could eat a lick over 900,000. More than that is just gluttony!
*Contaminated with aflatoxin at a level of 20 parts per billion—the maximum allowed by the FDA.
So what would happen if the animals were exposed to lower, more realistic levels of aflatoxin? Would different levels of protein still have the same effect?
Luckily, we have an answer to that question. In the late 1980s, more researchers from India were conducting experiments with casein and cancer—but this time used different doses of aflatoxin, and studied rhesus monkeys instead of rats. In one intriguing paper titled “Effect of Low Protein Diet on Chronic Aflatoxin B1-induced Liver Injury in Rhesus Monkeys,” the researchers describe something that undermines the conclusions Campbell drew from his own research.
I’ll let the paper speak for itself. Here are the first three paragraphs:
And a bit later:
Okay, I’ll speak too. Let’s decode the science jargon.
Basically, the researchers are talking about an experiment they conducted feeding monkeys diets that had either 5% or 20% casein. These monkeys were given a hefty dose of aflatoxin each day—1 part per million. Just like in the rat studies, the monkeys in the low-protein group suffered from massive cell death (but no cancer), while the monkeys in the high-protein group got pre-cancerous growths called “preneoplastic lesions.” So far, this is consistent with everything Campbell found.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
The researchers reference an earlier study they did with the same setup—rhesus monkeys, aflatoxin exposure, and either 5% or 20% casein in each diet. But in that study, they used a much more moderate dose of aflatoxin: 0.16 parts per million. And guess what happened? In this situation, it was the low-protein group that grew tumors, while the high-protein group was perfectly healthy and cancer-free! Oh, snap.
The results of this earlier experiment were published in a paper called “Effect of Low Protein Diet on Low Dose Chronic Aflatoxin B1 Induced Hepatic Injury in Rhesus Monkeys” in 1989. Indeed, the researchers weren’t pulling our legs: This study really did show that a low-protein diet was both more “cancer promoting” and more deadly than a high-protein diet when the dose of aflatoxin was lower. When the dose was 0.16 parts per million, the low-protein monkeys were stricken with liver lesions while the high-protein monkeys were fine. When the dose was raised to 0.5 parts per million, the low-protein rats didn’t get tumors—mainly because every single one of them died when they were less than one-and-a-half years old! And I quote:
Monkeys on low protein diet [with 0.16 ppm aflatoxin] surviving for 90 weeks or more show foci of preneoplastic lesions, whereas those on high protein diet reveal no such alterations at the corresponding time interval.
(Translation: The low-protein monkeys on a low dose of aflatoxin had pre-cancerous growths in their livers (at least, the ones that weren’t already dead did). The high-protein monkeys were A-OK.)
The hepatic injury again is more accentuated in the low protein group as compared with the high protein group [with 0.5 ppm aflatoxin]. No preneoplastic lesions are observed, possibly due to a poor survival (less than 70 weeks) in the low protein animals with this dose. The animals in the high protein group surviving even beyond 90 weeks do not show any preneoplastic/neoplastic lesions. It appears that in the simian model used by us, the liver injury caused by AFB1 is accentuated by simultaneous restriction of dietary protein and in animals on such combined regimen preneoplastic lesions appear around 90 weeks of experiment.
(Translation: When the aflatoxin dose was raised a bit, the low-protein monkeys still suffered from a lot more liver injury than the high-protein monkeys. They all died too soon to develop any precancerous tumors—in contrast to the high-protein monkeys, who had a better survival rate and still didn’t have any tumors growing at the 90-week mark.)
And here’s the researchers’ (perhaps more digestible) discussion of it all; emphasis mine:
In contrast to innumerable studies on aflatoxin induced hepatotoxicity in rats, very few studies have been done in monkeys and in most of these studies large doses of aflatoxin have been used. The important feature of the present study is the low level of intoxication ingested as contaminated meal, a situation more likely to be encountered in natural exposure to human and animals.
(In other words, this study—at least in theory—has more real-world relevance than Campbell’s rat experiments.)
The study shows that small doses of aflatoxin (0.16 and 0.5 ppm) on chronic administration induce injury in the liver. However at both the dose levels and at all time intervals the injury is more severe in animals on low intake of proteins.
(Whether the aflatoxin dose is low or moderate, the low-protein monkeys are worse off than the high-protein monkeys.)
- Rhesus pieces: A picture of a cute monkey to make us feel bad about vivisection.
And finally:
These observations suggest a synergism between protein calorie malnutrition and aflatoxin induced hepatocarcinogenesis and may explain the higher incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma in certain areas of the world where contamination of foods with aflatoxin and malnutrition are prevalent.
Remember when Campbell was talking about how, in the Philippines, it seemed to be the well-nourished affluent folks who were getting liver cancer? This paper presents the opposite perspective. Here, the researchers are noting that liver cancer tends to be higher where there’s aflatoxin contamination and malnutrition (most notably protein-calorie malnutrition), rather than affluence and high animal food consumption like Campbell observed. According to the researchers, their experiments suggest that malnutrition increases the liver damage and cancerous growths associated with aflatoxin exposure—explaining why liver cancer, for instance, is highest in areas where malnutrition runs rampant.
But enough of this monkey business. When we compare the above study to the ones using an extremely high aflatoxin dose, it’s clear we’ve got a paradox. In this study, it was the low-protein monkeys getting tumors. In the other studies, it was the high-protein monkeys (or rats) getting tumors. So what’s going on here? Why would a low-protein diet protect against cancer at high doses of aflatoxin, but promote cancer at low doses of aflatoxin?
The answer, it seems, lies in protein’s effects on both growth and detoxification.
Although this isn’t discussed in “Forks Over Knives,” Campbell spends a few pages of “The China Study” talking about an enzyme responsible for metabolizing aflatoxin—a lil’ somethin’ called “mixed function oxidase.” This enzyme is key for turning aflatoxin into metabolites that can mess up DNA and initiate cancer. And as Campbell discovered through his research, a diet of 5% casein can turn this enzyme down faster than you can say “hepatocellular carcinoma.” Here’s how he describes the process on page 52 of his book:
Decreasing protein intake like that done in the original research in India (20% to 5%) not only greatly decreased enzyme activity, but did so very quickly. What does this mean? Decreasing enzyme activity via low-protein diets implied that less aflatoxin was being transformed into the dangerous aflatoxin metabolite that had the potential to bind and to mutate the DNA. … We now had impressive evidence that low protein intake could markedly decrease enzyme activity and prevent dangerous carcinogen binding to DNA. These were very impressive findings, to be sure. It might even be enough information to “explain” how consuming less protein leads to less cancer.
This is a strangely happy portrait of something that’s actually deadly.
Why does your body want to detoxify aflatoxin in the first place? How ’bout because it’s… well… a toxin? Even though slashing enzyme activity does reduce cancer-causing metabolites, it also leaves more aflatoxin in its original, toxic form—which can damage organs and start to promote cancer in another way, which is exactly what happened with the low-protein monkeys. Here’s how.
In aflatoxin studies, we’ve seen that low-protein diets cause some unfortunate problems for lab animals—one being an increased toxicity of aflatoxin. That’s because the reduced enzyme activity from low-protein diets prevents the body from properly detoxifying stuff. (Campbell even acknowledges in some of his earlier papers that a low-protein diet makes rats more susceptible to liver injury from aflatoxin, even when they don’t get cancer from it.) So what happens when aflatoxin toxicity goes up? Apparently, it makes liver cells start dying like crazy in a process called necrosis. At low levels of aflatoxin, the necrosis only occurs in low-protein animals, because the high-protein animals still have their detoxifying enzymes in working order.
Here’s where the trouble starts for our low-protein friends. Because their liver cells are facing mass genocide, their bodies rush to make new cells to help the liver regenerate. According to the authors of the monkey studies, this rapid death/proliferation cycle is one of the very things that encourages pre-cancerous lesions to form—especially when cells are proliferating at the time of aflatoxin exposure (which is what would happen to a malnourished human eating aflatoxin-contaminated food). At mild aflatoxin doses, the low-protein monkeys still had enough dietary building blocks to regenerate their liver cells and feed early tumors—hence why they began developing lesions. (The authors also note that low-protein diets slow down the cell cycle, causing more cells to hang out in the “S phase” where their replicating DNA is vulnerable to attack—another potential pathway to cancer.)
Once the aflatoxin dose is raised, though, something new happens. Cell death increases even further for the low-protein animals, so much that their poor bodies can’t keep up with it all. The result is that the liver starts facing major injury—gettin’ fatty, exhibiting bile duct proliferation—but avoids developing tumors because there’s just not enough construction material (protein) to build a bunch of new cells. Healthy cells are dying left and right, and pre-cancerous ones don’t even stand a chance. It’s at this point that a lot of lab animals—both in Campbell’s studies and with the monkeys—keel over and die, despite having tumor-free corpses.
For the high-protein animals, not much happens until aflatoxin dosing is raised through the roof. At lower doses, their bodies do a fine job of detoxifying the aflatoxin, cell death isn’t increased, and there apparently aren’t enough cancer-causing metabolites yet to do much harm. It’s only when aflatoxin exposure gets cranked way up that the high-protein animals experience the same liver necrosis that plagued their low-protein counterparts. Although the extra protein improves the animals’ ability to detoxify aflatoxin and regenerate their livers, it also provides more tissue building-blocks—giving both healthy cells and pre-cancerous lesions the stuff they need to proliferate. The protein that prevents high-protein animals from dying from necrosis overload is the same thing that lets them develop tumors. Quite the catch-22, huh?
At least, that’s the explanation suggested by the authors of the monkey papers over two decades ago. I haven’t done an exhaustive search of the literature, so it’s possible there’s more current research explaining the paradox of low-protein diets increasing tumor growth at low doses of a carcinogen, but preventing tumor growth at higher doses.
As much as Campbell condemns “reductionism”—which refers to looking at a singular nutrient or pathway instead of how various components work in harmony—Campbell’s interpretation of his protein research falls into this very trap. By looking at only the positive effects low-protein diets seem to have on cancer, he misses out on the many detrimental effects they have on other aspects of health, including the fact that they seem to invite early death.
Important note: One important difference between Campbell’s rat studies and the monkey studies above is the use of continuous versus acute dosing. In the monkey studies, the animals got small, daily doses of aflatoxin throughout the experiment. That’s like what would happen if you lived in a humid climate where some of the food supply was growing aflatoxin-containing mold. By contrast, in Campbell’s studies, the rats got a giant dose of aflatoxin at the beginning of the experiments. That’s like what would happen if you accidentally ate 80,000 jars of aflatoxin-contaminated Jif in one sitting (oops!).
With all that said, let’s return to “Forks Over Knives” and see what else Campbell has to say.
Minute 26:29—Even more surprising, Dr. Campbell found that a diet of 20% plant proteins from soybeans and wheat did not promote cancer.
The movie goes on to explain that animal protein has some mystical, inexplicable, yet very real ability to promote disease—a property that plant protein lacks. Referencing Campbell’s rat studies, we’re told that “the results were consistent: Nutrients from animal foods promoted cancer growth, while nutrients from plant foods decreased cancer growth.” And yet…
Minute 29:20—Campbell hadn’t identified a specific biological mechanism that caused the effects he observed. “It finally occurred to me that there was no such thing as the mechanism. What we were looking at was a symphony of mechanisms,” he said.
Out of all the moments in the movie, this might have been the biggest face-palmer for me.
It just so happens that Campbell did identify exactly why casein behaved differently than plant proteins in his rat studies. Decades ago. In 1989. The discovery emerged from a study he conducted on “protein quality” and liver tumor growth, which you can find here. Although regular wheat protein didn’t spur tumor growth like casein did,* wheat protein behaved exactly like casein as soon as Campbell added lysine, the amino acid wheat is low in. Basically, any complete set of amino acids—whether from the animal kingdom or plant kingdom—is going to have the same cancer-promoting effects. (At least when aflatoxin dosing is very high. At lower aflatoxin dosing, that same complete protein will protect against oft-deadly liver damage. In fact, in the paper cited above, Campbell notes that the unsupplemented gluten groups and low-casein group—despite getting fewer “foci” that mark the start of cancer—had far worse liver injury than the high-casein group. He writes: ”All animals developed bile duct proliferation, which characterizes the acutely toxic response to aflatoxin B1 (data not presented). The most severe lesions occurred in the experimental groups with the lowest response of foci [5% casein and 20% unsupplemented gluten].”)
*Note: Campbell actually used casein diets that were supplemented with methionine (test diet PDF here), an amino acid that casein is low in. This made the casein a more “complete” protein and may have influenced the cancer-promoting abilities of the casein diets. If we’re going to compare apples and apples, we could look at the casein-supplemented-with-methionine diet right next to the gluten-supplemented-with-lysine diet. And when we do that, we find that both are equally powerful at promoting tumor growth.
The reason this finding is so important is that it shows, fairly convincingly, that Campbell’s findings only apply in a lab setting—where rats are fed a single source of protein for their entire lives. The rats that stayed cancer-free on an unsupplemented gluten diet were the equivalent of a human eating nothing but wheat, every single day, from the moment they’re weaned off Momma’s teat until the day they die. A vegan eating a mixture of plant foods will naturally end up consuming complementary amino acids, and their body will synthesize the “complete protein” that Campbell says is cancer-promoting. For instance, in the common combination of rice and beans, beans supply extra lysine that rice is low in—the same effect as supplementing gluten with this amino acid.
It’s not like Campbell forgot about his discovery, either. In his 2009 response to a critique by Joseph Mercola, Campbell wrote:
The adverse effects of animal protein, as illustrated in our laboratory by the effects of casein, are related to their amino acid composition. … There have been many different kinds of studies for well over a half century showing that the nutritional responses of different proteins are attributed to their differing amino acid compositions. … These differences in nutritional response disappear when any limiting amino acids are restored.
Wheat protein, unlike casein for example, did not stimulate cancer development but when its limiting amino acid, lysine, was restored, it acted just like casein. There have been literally thousands of studies going back many decades showing a similar effect on body growth and other events associated with body growth—all resulting from differences in amino acid composition of different proteins.
Enough said. Let’s look at one more snippet from this segment before we move on:
Minute 29:00—Over the next several years, Campbell initiated more extensive lab studies using various animal and plant nutrients. The results were consistent. Nutrients from animal foods promoted cancer growth, while nutrients from plant foods decreased cancer growth.
Beep! False. Campbell actually discovered that certain animal fats are superior to certain plant fats in terms of cancer protection. In a study published in 1985, he found that fish oil tends to inhibit cancer, and in a couple other studies, found that corn oil appears to promote it (such as here).
Esselstyn: The study cogs start turnin’
But enough about rats and vegetable protein. Next up, the movie returns to one of our movie’s shining (human) stars, Caldwell Esselstyn. In the 1980s, with “prevention!” flashing relentlessly in his mind’s eye, Esselstyn finally got the chance to do what his years of surgery never allowed: Fix heart disease with food instead of scalpels.
Minute 44:11—In the mid-1980s, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn was struggling to organize a study on coronary artery disease. His plan was to put a group of patients on a diet of low-fat, plant-based foods along with small quantities of low-fat dairy products and minimal amounts of cholesterol-reducing drugs.
Indeed, that’s the gist of it: a low-fat, plant-based diet with a scoop of statins for dessert. But since the film doesn’t dive into the finer details of the diet, let’s look at how Esselstyn describes his program in his book, “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease.” From pages 5, 6, and 72, we can see that the diet eliminates:
- Anything with a “mother or a face,” including meat, fish, and poultry
- All dairy*
- All nuts and avocados
- All oils, such as soybean oil, olive oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, and anything else with “oil” in the name
- All solid fats like margarine and butter
- All foods—whether pre-made or prepared at home—that contain even a drop of added fat
- Any grains that aren’t cross-your-heart, swear-on-your-grandmomma’s-grave, 100% whole. According to Esselstyn, this includes eliminating items that have healthy-sounding ingredients like “multigrain, cracked wheat, seven-grain, stone-ground, 100 percent wheat, enriched flour, or degerminated cornmeal”
On the flip side, the diet allows:
- All vegetables, including leafy greens, root veggies, and other veggies encompassing all the beautiful colors of the rainbow
- Legumes such as lentils, peas, and beans
- Whole grains ranging from the commonplace (whole wheat, corn, wild rice) to the exotic (quinoa, millet, amaranth, teff, kamut, spelt, rye)—but only if they contain no added fat, high-fructose corn syrup, or even a smidgen of refined grain
- All fruit
And if you think this diet is flexible and allows some cheat-meal wiggle room, you’re sadly mistaken. Esselstyn is a self-admitted stickler, and insists that a fundamental rule of his program is that “it contains not a single item of any food known to cause or promote the development of vascular disease.” Which, to him, means a life permanently devoid of pot roast, Nutty Buddies, or butter on your endless bowls of steamed kale.
Although his program doesn’t specifically forbid processed foods, adhering to his rules pretty much ensures everything you eat will be Real Food. For instance, his diet manages to eliminate even the “fat free” replacement products we’ve all seen at the store:
If you see any of the following words or phrases on a label—glycerin, hydrogenated, partially hydrogenated, mono or diglycerides—avoid the product. These are all sneaky forms of fat. Snackwell’s devil’s food “fat-free” cookies* list 0 grams of fat on the nutritional chart required on all packages. But if you read the ingredients, you notice that glycerin is listed fifth among them. Similarly, Kraft’s zesty Italian fat-free dressing and Wishbone’s fat-free ranch both list soybean oil and dairy products among their ingredients. But because the portion sizes are small, these products can still be called “fat-free,” under the government’s standard. Read the ingredients. (Page 124)
*Forget glycerin! How ’bout avoiding this junk because the first four ingredients are sugar, refined flour, high-fructose corn syrup, and corn syrup?
Indeed, Esselstyn’s diet categorically eliminates most “fat-free” Frankenfoods—many of which were wildly popular when he conducted his study in the ’80s and ’90s. Apparently, he nixes them not because they contain ingredients so awful they’d make a billygoat puke, but because their microscopic amount of fat is still too much. In a lipid-phobic era when dieters swapped fat for refined carbs, Esselstyn accidentally ‘rescued’ his patients from junk-filled replacement foods, which we now know are often worse than the originals. He got it right for the wrong reasons.
And lastly, despite what it may seem, Esselstyn’s diet is not a whole-grain free-for-all. His book describes the diet as decidedly vegetable-based, and notes that you may need to scale down on the starches to avoid unwanted pounds:
If you are eating a plant-based, no-oil, whole-grain diet filled with leafy greens and all the colorful vegetables, you don’t need to worry about weight. … However, if you let whole grains, starchy vegetables, and desserts dominate, weight can begin to creep back. If that happens, simply cut back on grains and starches, increase your consumption of leafy greens and colorful vegetables, and cut out desserts. (Page 126)
As we can see, Esselstyn’s program entails a lot more than a simple shift to plant foods. Here are the likely culprits behind his success:
- By completely eliminating oils, Esselstyn’s diet causes a massive reduction in the omega-6 fats—particularly linoleic acid—running wild in Western diets. (And more broadly, it slashes intake of polyunsaturated fats, which are the type of fat most likely to promote LDL oxidation because of their unstable chemical structure.) Boom! Down goes polyunsaturated fat intake, down goes omega-6 intake, down goes inflammation, down goes some major components of heart disease. Although Esselstyn achieves this by giving the boot to all fats, the same thing could be achieved by just eliminating foods and oils high in polyunsaturated fats, particularly industrial seed oils like soybean oil and corn oil. (If you’re thinking, “But those are the types of oils the government tells us are healthy,” please read this.)
- Due to its strict no-added-fat rule, Esselstyn’s program eliminates 99% of what you’d find in a gas-station convenience store, a vending machine, or a crinkly silver Frito-Lay bag. In other words, this is a no-junk diet. Sure, animal foods are out—but so are the even wider range of low-nutrient snacks, processed desserts, convenience foods, and other manufactured items that usually fill American kitchens.
- By allowing only 100% whole-grain foods with no added fat or sugars, Esselstyn makes it pretty tough to eat processed wheat products like bread, pasta, cereal, bagels, pastries, crackers, and other grainy goodies. In his book, Esselstyn acknowledges how hard it is to find bread that fits into his diet plan, and endorses sprouted grain products by companies like Ezekiel. As a result, the main starches in this diet are likely to be from roots, starchy vegetables, legumes, squash, and grains that still look like they did when they came off the plant—like corn or wild rice. The movie showed the following display as an example of an Esselstyn-approved feast.
Behold: plants.
Now that we have a better idea of what Esselstyn’s diet entails, let’s hop back into the movie.
Minute 44:32—[Esselstyn:] “Slowly, over the next 18 months, I got the patients that I’d asked for. But the ones they sent me were a little bit sicker than I’d thought! These were patients who had failed their first or second bypass operation, they had failed their first or second angioplasty, and there were five who were told by their expert cardiologist that they would not live out the year.”
We then get to meet one of those so-called lost causes: Evelyn Oswick, who’d been one of Esselstyn’s most “gravely ill” patients. Not only had she already suffered from two heart attacks by the age of 59, but her doctors thought her situation was so hopeless that they told her—quite literally—to go home, sit in a rocking chair, and wait to die. But as evidenced by the fact she appeared in “Forks Over Knives,” she’s not only alive, but quite the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed survivor. Woohoo, Evelyn! Woohoo, Dr. Esselstyn! Woohoo, plant-based diet!
Although we don’t have enough data to really analyze her success, I’ve got to wonder if ditching meat—or even the fat—was really the thing that helped. Here’s how she describes her previous diet:
Minute 45:00—[Oswick:] “I ate all the chocolate I could eat, I ate every doughnut I could get my hands on… oh, I just loved things like that. A lot of gravy.”
"It was that drop of glycerin in the candy that did me in."
Esselstyn then describes how his study was performed. For a full five years, he met with his patients once every two weeks to draw blood, take their blood pressure, measure their weight, and endure the nickname “Dr. Sprouts.” We know Mrs. Oswick is alive, but what happened to the other 23 study subjects? Did they end up back on the operating table, wads of carrots lodged in their veins? Did they miraculously heal? We’ll have to wait to find out, because now it’s time to learn about…
The China Study
I’ll admit it: I was pretty excited to see what “Forks Over Knives” had to say about the China Study—a massive epidemiological project and namesake for Campbell’s bestselling book. Would we get an elaborate, attempted indictment of animal foods by blaming all woes of the human body on high cholesterol? Would the producers sacrifice accuracy for simplicity and just say “animal foods made bad things happen?” Would Campbell warn the audience not to Google around for critiques of his study, because they’re all written by shills for the meat industry, or—worse—liberal arts majors?
Finally, we get to find out. After nearly 50 minutes of nail-biting anticipation for our China Study segment, we see T. Colin Campbell and his colleague, Junshi Chen, thumbing through a copy of “Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China“—the 900-page tome showcasing the data they spent so many years gathering. Oh, sweet reminiscence! This is the same book that sat on my desk for three months last year, collecting blood, sweat, and sticky-notes.
"Orange you glad I didn't say banana?"
Campbell briefly explains how this study generated a whopping 8,000 to 9,000 statistically significant correlations. “This means that if 19 out of 20 are pointing in the same direction, it’s highly significant, and likely to be true,” he says. (I’d add that “true” isn’t the same as “meaningful”—variables can be strongly and legitimately correlated, but not actually have a cause-and-effect relationship.) After learning a bit more about how the data was presented in that giant book, we get to the good stuff. The summary of it all. The fruit of international labor. The culmination of those 9,000 statistically significant correlations. Are you ready?
Minute 49:30—[Chen:] “I think the major message we got out of this correlation analysis is only one message: The plant-food based diet—mainly cereal grains, vegetables, and fruits, and very little animal food—is always associated with lower mortality of certain cancers, stroke, and coronary heart disease.”
That’s a pretty simple message to get from such a big, complicated study! Too bad it’s baloney.
What Campbell and Chen imply in this movie clip is that all those correlations are, serendipitously, singing the same tune: That plant foods offer protection against diseases, while animal foods tend to promote them. Alas, the trends in this study are anything but straightforward—and as Campbell himself has pointed out, the unadjusted correlations can be quite misleading:
“Use of these correlations … should only be done with caution, that is, being careful not to infer one-to-one causal associations. … First, a variable may reflect the effects of other factors that change along with the variable under study. Therefore, this requires adjustment for confounding factors.”
Agreed, good sir. But since we’ve just been told in “Forks Over Knives” that these correlations generally point in the same direction (and reinforce the idea that animal foods cause disease), let’s put relevance aside and see if that claim is up to snuff.
Note for anyone needing a math catch-up: A correlation is basically a relationship between two things—meaning they both go up at the same time (a positive correlation) or one goes up while the other goes down (a negative or “inverse” correlation). For example, your age is positively correlated with the number of wrinkles on your face, but your age is negatively correlated with the amount of time you spend Googling “Justin Bieber.” Correlations are usually expressed as numbers between 1 and -1, with zero indicating that there’s absolutely no relationship between the variables. The farther away the number is from zero, the stronger the relationship—so a value of 0.54, for instance, would be stronger than a value of 0.12. In the case of our China Study data, strong positive numbers indicate that a certain food is associated with more of a certain disease, while strong negative numbers indicate the food is associated with less of that disease.
Get it? Got it? Good!
In my China Study critique last year, I pulled a bunch of data directly from “Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China”—the same book Campbell and Chen are huddled around in that last picture—showing just how inconsistent the “plant-based diet is healthier” message really is. For instance, we’ve got peculiar things like this:
- Plant protein has a correlation of 0.21 with heart disease (positive)
- Non-fish animal protein has a correlation of 0.01 with heart disease (neutral)
- Fish protein has a correlation of -0.11 with heart disease (inverse)
- Meat intake has a correlation of -0.28 with heart disease (strongly inverse)
- Fish intake has a correlation of -0.15 with heart disease (inverse)
- Egg intake has a correlation of -0.13 with heart disease (inverse)
- Wheat has a correlation of 0.67 with heart disease (really flippin’ high!)—which is not only the strongest association between any food and heart disease, but remained sky-high even when I tried adjusting for anything that might be confounding it.*
*Our grain-happy “conventional wisdom” might scoff at the idea of wheat being atherogenic, but there’s at least one cardiologist out there who has great success treating his patients’ heart disease by eliminating wheat (and not going low-fat)—and he recently published a fantastic book showing why modern wheat is so problematic.
Why isn’t that nasty meat congealing in China’s collective aortas? Why does wheat seem like a less-than-heart-healthy grain? Why are we told that a plant-based diet “is always associated with lower mortality of … coronary heart disease” in the China Study data, when it’s the folks eating the most animal foods who get less heart disease? It’s quite a mystery. (And in case you’re wondering, it’s not because the animal-eaters were croaking from strokes instead: Non-fish animal protein correlates at only 0.05 with stroke mortality; fish protein correlates at -0.11, and plant protein correlates at 0.12.)
Of course, in the vast sea of potential ways to die, cardiovascular disease is only one tiny, plaque-bound droplet. We’ve still got cancer to think about! And indeed, a cursory glance at the China Study data makes the animal food-cancer relationship seem massively confusing: Meat and dairy have zero statistically significant positive correlations with any form of cancer, eggs are associated only with colorectal cancers, but fish—which we’re usually told is healthy for us—is strongly associated with a number of major cancers, including leukemia and liver cancer. What gives?
This, my friends, is why correlations can lead us astray.
A closer analysis of the fishy data shows us that the “cancer clusters” mostly occur in prosperous coastal areas, where more people are eating refined starch and sugar, drinking beer, eating refined vegetable oil, smoking manufactured cigarettes, working at indoor industry jobs instead of doing manual farm labor, and experiencing other aspects of urbanization. In fact, the variable “percentage of employed population who are in industry” is highly associated with nearly every common cancer, including male lung cancer (0.62), female lung cancer (0.47), leukemia (0.53), liver cancer (0.47), colon cancer (0.41), stomach cancer (0.25), breast cancer (0.24), brain cancer (0.21), and death from all cancers (0.31). It just so happens that the more industrialized counties are near bodies of water, where fish consumption is frequent. (Incidentally, humid coastal regions also have a higher prevalence of both aflatoxin and the hepatitis B virus, which are major risk factors for liver cancer.)
Unless there’s something uniquely cancer-promoting about fish protein in comparison to other meat protein, it seems likely that the fish/cancer links are confounded by other elements of industrial lifestyles. Indeed, when we look at the variable “non-fish animal protein intake,” the correlation with “death from all cancers” is a measly 0.03, which is even less than the correlation with plant protein (0.12).
Feel free to peruse my full China Study critique for more details about the lack of straightforward correlation between animal foods and disease (or plant foods and good health). You can also check out some earlier posts on individual animal foods and their correlations in the China Study:
That should cover it, right? Moving on…
Just kidding. How could I be done with this section when I haven’t posted a single graph, table, Bigfoot photo, or liberally-screen-shotted article excerpt? We’re far from finished here, folks.
Although Diet, Life-style, and Mortality in China is crazy-expensive and out of print (and I returned my library copy long ago, so I can’t scan pages), I still want to post some direct charts* to prove I’m not just making stuff up. Lucky for us, the results of China Study II are posted online as a series of PDFs. The China Study II is basically a follow-up to the first China Study, except the researchers plopped 20 more counties onto the list and recorded even more variables than they did for the first round. Because China Study II includes regions with a much greater degree of urbanization than the first China Study, some of the correlations are a little different. Meat, for instance, is now more popular in industrialized coastal counties instead of mainly pastoral areas, and as a result, has some of the same disease associations that fish did in the first China Study. Even though the data between the two studies aren’t identical, China Study II is still useful for a couple things I’m going to show you.
*I realize I can overdo it with the graphs and tables. It isn’t because I want to bore you or turn your eyes into blurry, computer-screen-induced globes of pixelation—but rather, because I suffer from Liberal Arts Complex.
lib•er•al arts com•plex: n. Subconscious desire to compensate for poor choice of collegiate studies by over-explaining, over-referencing, and over-graphing material in attempt to gain credibility; form of mild neurosis.
So let’s take a look at some pages straight out of the second China Study monograph—more specifically, the mortality section. (If you’re worried the meat industry bribed me to Photoshop the following images to make them look anti-vegan, by all means, download the full PDF straight from Oxford’s website by clicking here.)
First, let’s look at how various foods correlate with “death from all medical causes” for adults age 35 to 69. This variable is more interesting to me than “all-cause mortality” because it excludes things like drowning, car accidents, getting mauled by a pack of rabid wolves, and other modes of death that have nothing to do with diet (unless the wolves found you because they smelled your nitrate-free liverwurst).
Correlations with death from all medical causes, ages 35 to 69.
All aboard the Abbreviation Train! Choo-choo. For reference, PLNT = plant, ANIM = animal, PROT = protein, and CHOL = dietary cholesterol. The variables preceded by the letter “M” are mortality statistics; the ones preceded by “P” are plasma measurements; the ones preceded by “U” are urine measurements; the ones preceded by “D” are foods from the diet survey; and the ones preceded by “Q” are from a questionnaire.
I’ve highlighted the food variables specific to either the plant or animal kingdom, so let’s take a gander at how they correlate with “all medical deaths.” Total plant food, percent of diet as plant protein, and wheat? All strongly positively associated with death from all medical causes, meaning that as intake of these things goes up, so does the risk of keeling over from something body-related. Total animal protein intake, percent of total calories as animal protein, egg intake, meat intake, red meat intake, fish intake, and consumption of dietary cholesterol? All strongly negatively associated with death from all medical causes, meaning that as intake of these foods goes up, medical mortality rates decline. Again, many of these associations may be—and probably are—totally meaningless, but they describe an important trend: For whatever reason, in China, the animal-food-eaters are living longer than their more plant-based counterparts.
…Which brings us to another problem. As we saw with heart disease in Norway, high rates of infectious disease can sometimes obscure the true prevalence of chronic disease—because folks are getting wiped out by short-term illness before they have a chance to die from things like cancer, strokes, or heart attacks. Even if their arteries are plaqued up the wazoo or their bodies riddled with tumors, it’ll be the tuberculosis, or the pneumonia, or the other infectious disease that shows up on the death certificate (and, subsequently, in the data). In the China Study, low animal food intake tends to be associated more with poor counties where malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, less education, and acute “diseases of poverty” prevail. For instance, here are some charts for three mortality variables associated with lower quality of living: death from all respiratory disease, death from all digestive disease, and death from pregnancy and childbirth complications. In each case, you can see the strong inverse associations with animal foods (except milk), and strong positive associations with a greater portion of the diet as plant foods. (For a complete key to all the variable abbreviations, check here.)
Correlations with death from all respiratory diseases, ages 35 to 69.
Correlations with death from all digestive diseases, ages 35 to 69.
Correlations with death from pregnancy and childbirth, women aged 34 and under.
Based on the above, we’d actually expect to see areas with higher animal food consumption also experience higher mortality from long-term diseases. Not because they actually have more of those diseases, but because there are fewer “diseases of poverty” to kill them off prematurely. Again, it’s all about what the death certificate says. And to quote a paper Campbell himself co-authored: “it is the largely vegetarian, inland communities who have the greatest all-risk mortalities and morbidities and who have the lowest LDL cholesterols.”
While we’re at it, here are some other relevant pages from the China Study II monograph—some “diseases of affluence.” If you’re sick of these charts, just keep scrolling ’til it’s over. I won’t be offended! Once again, correlations really don’t mean diddly squat here, but they do paint an interesting picture of how diet and mortality patterns interact… and again, it’s far from damning of animal foods.
Correlations with “death from all cancers.” Strong inverse associations with animal fat (ANIMFAT) and saturated fat (%SATFA); strong positive associations with millet and eggs:
Correlations with death from all cancers, ages 35 to 69.
Correlations with “death from heart disease.” Strong inverse associations with animal fat, rice, legumes, and green vegetables; strong positive associations with wheat flour, light-colored vegetables, fruit, and eggs:
Correlations with death from heart disease, ages 35 to 69.
Correlations with “death from stroke.” Strong inverse associations with percent of diet as animal protein, rice, poultry, fish, dietary cholesterol, legumes, and green vegetables; strong positive associations with wheat, percent of diet as plant protein, and percent of total calories from plant food:
Correlations with death from stroke, ages 35 to 69.
Correlations with “death from diabetes.” Strong inverse associations with milk, meat, red meat, and animal fat; strong positive associations with fruit and eggs:
Correlations with death from diabetes, ages 35 to 69.
And lastly (no, seriously, this is the last thing): Since we already know collections of plain-jane correlations can be totally misleading, here are some of the findings from researchers who analyzed the China Study data beyond the raw correlations—including adjustments for confounders. I wrote about these studies in greater depth in my one-year China Study Anniversary post, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version.
From “Erythrocyte fatty acids, plasma lipids, and cardiovascular disease in rural China” (PDF):
- “Within China neither plasma total cholesterol nor LDL cholesterol was associated with cardiovascular disease”
- “There were no significant correlations between the various cholesterol fractions and the three mortality rates [coronary heart disease, hypertensive heart disease, and stroke]“
- “The consumption of wheat flour and salt … was positively correlated with all three diseases [cardiovascular disease, hypertensive heart disease, and stroke]“
- “Red blood cell total polyunsaturated fats, especially the n-6 fatty acids, were positively correlated with coronary heart disease and hypertensive heart disease”
- Meat, fish, and green vegetables are associated with higher levels of sex hormone-binding globulin, indicating greater insulin sensitivity/less insulin resistance
- Wheat has the strongest positive association with insulin resistance out of any food
- “The results strongly indicated that dietary calcium, especially from dairy sources, increased bone mass in middle-aged and elderly women by facilitating optimal peak bone mass earlier in life”
- “Comparison of results in Table 7 reveal that calcium from dairy sources was correlated with bone variables to a higher degree than was calcium from the nondairy sources, probably resulting from the higher bioavailability of dairy calcium”
- Even after adjusting for other factors, animal foods are negatively associated with death from cervical cancer
- “Our finding that the highest blood cholesterol levels in the Chinese were associated with … the lowest risk [of heart disease] is also a contradiction of what might be expected”
- “Consumption of green vegetables, rice, meat, and fish was associated with reduced mortality [from stomach cancer]“
- “A survey of 65 counties in rural China, however, did not find a clear association between animal product consumption and risk of heart disease or major cancers.”
Just because.
Esselstyn: It’s a plant-based miracle!
Now that we have The One Message from the China Study neatly tucked into our brains, we turn our attention back to Dr. Esselstyn and his revolutionary research.
Minute 52:00—While Dr. Campbell was publishing his China Study, Dr. Esselstyn was getting some powerful data from the research he’d started in 1985. He began with 24 patients. But six had dropped out in the first year, leaving him with a total of 18. [Esselstyn:] “At the end of five years, we had follow-up angiograms, and 11 of the group had halted their disease. There was no progression. And there were four where we had rather exciting evidence of regression of disease.”
As the movie notes, this is pretty darn exciting. Even the most experienced, uber-credentialed doctors often believe that heart disease progression can only be slowed down—not stopped, and certainly not reversed. I salute you, O mighty broccoli!
But there’s something majorly funky with the movie’s description of this study. We’re told that Esselstyn ultimately ended up with 18 patients, 11 of whom halted their disease. Four folks regressed their disease, but we don’t know if these people are included in the 11 who didn’t get worse. And at any rate, 11 plus 4 doesn’t equal 18, so some folks have mysteriously vanished from the head-count. What’s up with the weird math?
After poking around for more detailed results of Esselstyn’s study, I found that—quite fortuitously—he posted the full text his papers right on his website. The five-year results are discussed here: A Strategy to Arrest and Reverse Coronary Artery Disease: A 5-Year Longitudinal Study of a Single Physician’s Practice. (Note the line of links near the top of the article for the full description of methods, results, discussion, and conclusion.)
In contrast to what we’re told in “Forks Over Knives,” Esselstyn’s paper says that he started with 22 patients, five dropped out, and six stayed on the diet but never came back for data collection—leaving Esselstyn with only 11 people in the study. (We’ll talk about why this is a problem in a moment.) Of those 11 folks, all had an “overall” stabilization of their heart disease, although four people did have lesions that slightly progressed. Depending on the method of analysis used (“mean percent stenosis” or “minimal lumen diameter”), either eight people or five people had evidence of regression in some of their arterial lesions. Aye, numbers!
No disrespect to Dr. Esselstyn and his work, but right off the bat, we can see there are some big problems with this study:
- The drop-out rate was crazy high! Since the initial 22 patients got slashed down to 11, we have to consider why the other half of the group slipped off the radar. Was it because they were feeling bad on Esselstyn’s program? Did they experience repercussions from a plant-based diet that they perceived were even worse than heart disease? Were they sick of getting celery strings stuck between their teeth? When studies have a significant drop-out rate, the folks who stick around tend to be the ones having the most success, while the failures slink away—which ends up skewing the results to make the intervention look more effective than it may have truly been.
- It was an uncontrolled intervention trial. That means there was a no control group to compare against the folks who got dietary and statin intervention, so we can’t estimate how many of their health changes were due to Esselstyn’s program and how many were due to chance.
- It was a non-randomized study. The patients volunteered rather than being randomly assigned to treatment, creating a problem called “selection bias.” In this type of research, we know that folks who elect themselves for study may have different characteristics than the rest of the population, which is why many researchers use randomization to choose study subjects instead of letting people choose themselves.
- A whole bunch of variables changed. This wasn’t a study that examined the effects of one component of diet; it did a complete menu overhaul, changing total fat intake, animal food intake, processed food intake, sugar intake, vegetable oil intake, and about ninety gazillion other things. Combined with that lack of a control group, it’s impossible to determine exactly which diet components had an effect on heart disease, and which were neutral (or even negative).
In addition, some effects of Esselstyn’s diet are a little alarming. In the “results” section of his paper, he displays the following table, which shows how his study subjects’ blood values changed during the intervention.
Let’s ignore the fact that those super-low total cholesterol levels are associated with higher rates of cancer, mental illness, infection, and other fun stuff (yes, your cholesterol can be too low) and focus instead on the other values. Holy triglycerides, Batman! Although Esselstyn’s diet helped lower most of his patients’ triglycerides, a couple still have values in the major danger zone (362?). Some of those HDL numbers are looking pretty sorry as well.
All in all, Esselstyn’s study shows that a whole-foods, plant-based diet is probably infinitely better for cardiovascular health than the junky cuisine many folks eat. But it’s far from conclusive evidence that this diet is the best we can do for reversing heart disease, or that it would generally be effective in a population beyond his 11 self-selected subjects. A diet that reduces triglycerides and increases HDL more than his did, for instance, might have an even better outcome.
That’s all, folks
For sure, “Forks Over Knives” has some other areas I could nitpick, such as Campbell’s statement that “animal protein tends to create an acid-like condition in the body called metabolic acidosis” and leads to osteoporosis (minute 1:03:20)—an unfounded belief that I already debunked in the “dairy” section of this post. But I think this critique covers the meatiest points. (Pun definitely intended.) And if you made it this far, hats off to you!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tend to my feedlot cows and cash my Meat Industry checks. Oops, did I say that out loud?
First!!
Amazing read.
It WAS amazing and I enjoyed the documentary very much. EXCEPT… I am a scientist and can unequivocally state this was not information presented scientifically. The problem is the number of doctors associated with it lends it more credibility than it should. Doctors are NOT scientists. Drs can have gone to school to be scientists but they are not the same things. A scientist works from a hypothesis, develops theories and then runs experiments.during which there must be some sort of control and some sorts of challenge and a scientist must start at the most “pure” unassailable point, ideas in his premise.
That last point is the problem. We learn at the very beginning of the movie that 5% casein does not cause or promote cancer but 20% does. But we are what we eat. It applies to animals and people. In India we can safely assume the milk (casein is a milk protein) came from water buffaloe because cows are sacred and no part of them is consumed. BEFORE we ever decide of a causative factor from casein, we must look at the breakdown of the ingredients, minerals, trace elements, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, etc that might be in that milk. WHY? Because whatever that cow ate will be in its milk and therefore in the protein.
If a cow eats mercury, lead, malthion (pesticide) benzene, ddt, salt grass, wheat, derivatives, etc–it ALL effects the meat AND the milk. Same thing with chickens and ALL other animals.
This is why if you travel and come home and try to recreate a dish from abroad –even with a recipe–it will NEVER test the same as it did overseas. It can’t–your food was not grown in the same soil, with the same kind of fertilizers and macro nutrients…your beef did not eat the same food, breathe the same air or eat the same grasses or grains as it does stateside.
EVERYTHING matters. Things to know:
1. India (where the casein test was run) has a very high ratio of pesticide pollutants due to a noncontrolled mfg environment. What trace chemicals could be in the grass or water or in the air that could ultimately affect the buffalo and then the meat and milk? Were those particular factors eliminated?
2. India has also been the site of numerous and vast chemical disasters such as the Union Carbide disasters–what is the proximity of the site to the tests? To the grazing areas of cows?
3. Diet–the diet of both cows and domesticated herbivores in the US are very poor and rife with chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, food additives, genetically altered vegetable and meat products (yes cows in the US are often given derivatives of meat including other cow products in their diet) were these potential OUTLIERS eliminated before coming to conclusions?
4. Unless from organic cows, the repeated experiment later performed by Esselman also would be suspect due to the diet of the cows, the treatment of them with antibiotics, growth hormones and vaccines, and a diet high in genetically modified grains and animal by products not to mention residiual pesticides and herbicides and whatever is in our ground water….(in that particular region where the cows grazed and drank and where the grain grew) same type of OUTLIERS–therefore the same skewed data.
FYI–to be truly scientific, all potential outliers must be eliminated or nullified through identification, efficacy tests, etc–in other words we have to prove they have no bearing on the results BEFORE proceeding with the experiment on people. Scientists know this. Medical Doctors who usually are the beneficiaries of science not normally the practitioners of science may or may not know this.
I could write tons more, but here is the most interesting, diets high in animal protein (ketogenic diets) but LOW in carbohydrates also greatly reduce or eliminate the need for diabetes meds, cholesterol and High blood pressure, etc but yet those two diets are diametrically opposed and the numbers for successful treatment ranges into the thousands–how can that be? If both are right then something that is not being examined is the key.
There is a lot of passion in this movie but very little science. It is like an infomercial for vegans.
And why is it not called vegetarianism any more? Whole food plant based diet? Really? Plant based does not mean to the exclusion of animal products–but since this diet DOES intent to exclude all animal products, what is wrong with it being called a vegan’s argument for not eating meat? Not PC? Been done and not successful?
I enjoyed this movie for the same reason I enjoy most documentaries–because the passion of the director and producer finds a way to bring a rather dry and esoteric subject to the forefront and into the homes of a generation raised on video games and sound bites. I found some points intriguing but not revelatory or even necessarily true/correct.
The danger (and there IS a danger) in this idea and doc is that it seeks to take data and cherry pick what it wants to make its point ignoring too much else–that is not science it is propaganda. Consider this–an entire nation dying of some disease and a new antibiotic being discovered. The antibiotic is made into a blue pill and Esselstyn and Campbell see it being administered at their hospital and clinic….then they both rush out and tell the world that pills that are blue will cure the epidemic.
The clarion call goes out and soon, people are popping blue pills. But most pills are not the antibiotic. Some are diet pills, some are saccharin pills or placebos, some are benedryl or another drug some are just water pills or even pills for PMS. Now–how many people will get well? Under these circumstances, natural mortality for that disease will kick in–but the public will not know or understand this–they will think that the ones who lived took the right blue pill, they will try to ferret out which blue pill those who survived took, they will not look at natural survival rates nor will they look too deeply at the assay or what is in the actual pill–they won’t because they are laymen. They understand a blue pill can save them. What they do not understand is that it NEVER was a color that could save anything or anyone –it is the ingredients and they do not get that information.
Similarly, we all do not want to die from cancer, or heart disease or hbp or diabetes…this sounds like a healthy plan…some of us do not want animals eaten though they fail to realize the animals we domesticate would be killed anyway because they would be competing with humans for places to grow the agricultural crops needed to feed billions. Predators would take care of the rest. It never will be the panacea or utopia wished for by some and believed in by others. NEVER. LIfe is not set up to be a place of harmony–it is a place of competition, survival and lots and lots of maiming, killing, eating, and death. Then again, with the world going towards less viable water–what happens or would happen if all diets depended solely on veggies and we experienced the predicted 75% of the world in drought scenario?
Most ideas like this are idealistic but also very, very short sighted. The point is conversion and like any other kind of conversion–religious or otherwise, the point is not to iron out the details of look or think to deeply–sheer bodies on one side or the other is the goal–preferably as mindless and automatic as the disciples in charge can get them.
Wow! Two great ‘group’ posters in a raw, first (non-Smith) Lisa, now thqueenbee. Thanks people. These fantastic posts totally couterbalance the recent insane drift in the discussion.
Some people here have both the knowledge and the writing skills to run their own blog. I’d certainly visit them on a regular basis.
Welcome thqueenbee
Please please keep on posting!
@anna: I’m still investigating the matter. I’ll get back when I’m done. Unlike someone I know, in these matters I take the time to be sure that I’m not juding a book by its cover… and I NEVER go by hearsay.
@thqueenbee. You are wrong about your assumption that in India only buffalo milk is used. Both cow and buffalo is equally consumed. Go to any Indian/ethnic store and ask for ghee (clarified butter) or paneer (cottage cheese) and you’ll see cow written over it (mostly). I am from India btw and I eat all kinds of meat. (goat, pork, chicken, beef, fish, shrimp, lobster, etc).
I can’t believe I read the whole thing! >:D
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go use both a fork and a knife (and some fish) to better my health….
P.S. I don’t know what you’re on, but what would you consider bottling and selling it? I’m sure there is a market for “pure awesome.”
I know it’s not the Jif from the picture. Fun fact: it has hydrogenated fats in it. Little enough to slip past the FDA, but defs enough for a friend of mine to have a weird reaction to it. Took a few minutes reading the label, but yup, it’s in there. Probably for enhanced shelf stability… that stuff that’s ground at the supermarket separates. (My life is better without either one.)
I AM noting that a diet in fish appears to be almost mandatory for complete health BUT I am also noting that the decline in fish sources devoid of pollution, toxins, or diet manipulation (fish farms which use the similar genetic modified additives as we use in cattle, pigs, and chickens) may mean that this “healthy protein source will soon be just as unhealthy and prone to possibly contributing to cancer and other diseases as red meat.
We need to remember we are what we eat. This means cows are what they eat and so on. ergo–we eat meat that has eaten products contaminated with pollution, mercury, lead, toxins, growth hormones, vaccines,genetically altered grains, antibiotics, etc and we actually are eating pollution, mercury, lead toxins, growth hormones, etc too.
This is especially important when you consider what growth hormones do–they cause cells to increase growth exponentially and in a shorter time span. A chicken that may have weighed 2 lbs and taken 6 months to mature now takes 3 weeks and is twice the size.
It does not take a rocket science to ask the inconvenient question: what happens to the growth hormones when humans eat them? Do they have a treaty to stop working? Are they still contained residually in the cells of animals or plants? Well the last few generations have increased exponentially in height and girth following the adoption of these additives.
Now add to that mix fake smell, colors, flavors as well as the hormones–just how does that play out in the human body? consider that cancer is unmitigated growth of cells…that cocktail regularly supplied in our foods certainly can cheerlead unmitigated growth–and lest health nuts feel superior–the run off from farms and landscaping and yards that contributes to all this cocktail can eventually get into the ground water–which means it becomes nutrients that can even find their ways onto organic farms. Think about that. I Love fish–but everytime I eat any of it no matter where I caught it or bought it–I wonder…..
Your first point of this comment is the largest factor in why there is not any animal protein in my diet. I feel my options to achieve ideal health with a clear conscious are almost non-existent. I have been looking and looking for answers, but it is so frustrating to search and come up with little or no conclusions on how to construct a truly healthy diet, one that is healthy for my body and the planet. I keep coming to the idea that raising and growing my own food is the only way to achieve what I am trying to do and until then I am stuck wondering what I am actually eating and how it is affecting my body. Even then, as you mentioned, will simply the environment that I am raising my food in be contaminated as well.
I apologize for the venting, but I think I recognized a similar frustration in your remarks.
Thank you for being thorough and thoughtful with your comments.
I share these concerns, I’m very environmental conscious.
But personally after lots of research, I came to the conclusion that eating animal products from local, ‘natural’ farm practises (organic or otherwise), pastured animals, minimal grains use etc… had little negative impact, if any, on the environment. Eating eggs from free-range hens, for instance, is probably totally harmless.
Besides, plant products are not automatically environment-friendly or health-friendly, far from it. Lots of plant products can be unhealthy and/or can have a huge negative impact on the environment…. heavily processed, contaminated with pesticides etc… si it’s not a clear cut.
Eating mostly local products rather than imported ones, and organic rather than ‘standard’, IMO has probably a much more positive impact to the environment than simply avoiding some categories of food.
BTW eating almost no grains makes the ‘local food’ practise much easier for me, since organic grains are almost always produced very far from my home.
YMMV.
Good warning!
and this one:
http://tinyurl.com/6m2s5be
Not sure about the thread Dave, but the fact that you linked a gun forum won my heart
There’s a guy they make fun of in this video for claiming that when you eat dead meat, you’re eating an animals fear. He advocates eating raw stuff, which I think is funny because do you think an animal sitting on your dinner plate is gonna be less scared? hehe But actually, I think the guy is right in a way about one thing. There is a giant adrenal hormone release right before death if the animal sees it coming. Whether this is bad for you or not, who knows.
I believe the statistics from Norway further underestimate the consumption of meat. The statistics measured official consumption of rationed foods sold through stores. A lot of food was obtained from other sources. I remember my parents and grandparents talking about how they had pigs and chickens in their gardens. People didn’t just go berry picking in the woods. Animal hunting for personal consumtion was widespread as was fishing. The stuff not easily obtainable was sugar, imported fruit and grains. Also, remember the winter is long in Norway with a very short season for vegetables and fruit. During WW2 the Norwegians in reality went back to a hunter-gatherer diet.
Arild Eide,
What a remarkable similarity between your assumptions and conclusions…
There’s a quote from Denise’s article in regard to the data:
“Between 30 and 50 families were surveyed three times annually from 1941 to 1945, giving us a nice little diet portrait encompassing not only rationed food, but also the “black market” items people were eating.”
Given the country was occupied and failing to turn over meats and other products to the occupiers could be punishable by deportation or death–jsut WHO do you believe actually told the truth about what they had and or had eaten? People who would have been so stupid as to tell what they ate off the black market in 1941 probably never lived to tell what they would have eaten in 1942–if you knew anything about how the Nazis operated, then you’d know only a collaborator (and those would be known) could have bilked the German orders and gotten away with it. Read up.
Very nice Lil’ Miss Minger
Wow! What an enormous post, but it was a very pleasant read. I feel the same way about your posts that you do about coronary artery bypass footage and 400 pound dudes drinking carrot juice. They’re avoiding their doom and you are avoiding a fate worse than death: being known only for being an English major! Go, Denise! You’re also somewhat prettier.
Some of us just require a higher standard of evidence than others. There are going to be some people who have their hearts set on believing that a certain type of diet is best for everyone, and they are going to watch the movie and espouse all of its arguments without questioning them. But the way that you thoroughly evaluate the arguments and their weak points, and tie it all together with a firm understanding of epistemology and empirical data is admirable and the way it should be done. Many people simply don’t have the time to think for themselves, so they throw in with a paradigm, and it is blogs like yours that give them an alternative view in an comprehensible way.
A lot of your posts dispute the notion that various animal products are necessarily harmful, but I am wondering if you ever intend to do a pro-meat post. I know you’re not an evangelist, but so many people are under the impression that even if meat isn’t death it still isn’t nutritionally valuable. But there are so many semi-essential compounds in meat, especially grass-fed meat that improve health – carnosine and beta-alanine, creatine, carnitine, lots of alpha-lipoic acid, taurine, CLA, etc. Vegetarian studies aren’t all sunshine and rainbows, and there is a good deal of clinical and epidemiological data that suggests that some animal products do improve health. Anyway, just a thought for the future.
Cheers.
Stabby,
“semi-essential”? What’s that? A semi-scientific term to evade the unforgiving “non-essential”?
Hmm. Walter Bond has Maori tattoos. Pre European Maori were cannibals and huge meat-eaters. At least a dozen species of large birds became extinct in a few hundred years of Maori occupation in New Zealand. Somewhat ironic.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/archived-stuff-sections/archived-national-sections/korero/565552/Tales-of-Maori-cannibalism-told-in-new-book
walter bond and many other A.LF activists risk their lives and freedom to liberate animals from torture and murder. And to throw a major wrench in the murder industries machine.
your comment is not only retarded, and irrelevant, it is also racist.
you think white people havent caused animals to become extinct?
try getting off your arse and doing something rather than being an annoying hippy.
VEGAN ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND PROUD OF IT.
Walter is an idiot, welcome to the ranks of Hezbollah.
Torture and murder? Murder industries machine? Are you sure your comment is not retarded & irrelevant. Racist??
Oh my god, I have to stop laughing at this person calling someone else a hippy, but it is so hard.
xvx,
where’s the racism?
Do you really think a statement like “x did y” is racist when not immediately followed by a “but a, b, c, d, and e did too”?
The problem with using such unfounded accusations of racism is that real racists get the opportunity to get away with their acts saying “O, you know how these political correctness people are: they shout racism every time somebody speaks up.”
You’d be more effective promoting your cause if you’d be a bit more careful with your words.
You are suffering from Racism in your brain.
You could call it an “Unconscious bias” a phrase used by racists to get away.
Denise you should be canonized
I sure hope not! She have to be dead first before she could be canonized.
Cardinal Cacciatore have brought this to my attention; he shall be Holy Father after me–the Pope George Ringo I. Ah yes–to be canonized is long process, there are many steps, but death must precede them all, and before that, the miracle(s). Miss Minger, we pray, shall be not eligible (for consideration) for many many years.
Still, in interim, steps can be taken in acknowledgement and gratitude. While we continue to study the literatures of which she has authored, It has been commented on the beauty of Miss Minger, and yes, we, having reviewed the evidence, a determination has been made that Miss Minger is Ea pulchrior Iesu infante est; how you say in English: “Cuter than Baby Jesus”. Should she deign to visit the papal residence within Vatican City, and indeed this would be most highly encouraged, she shall be recognized as Puella formosa in urbe, or as you say the American states, [a] “Hot Child in the City.” Indeed, this title applies to Miss Minger when she resides in any setting of urbanity.
lol.The Pope is hilarious.
C’mon… all that and no mention of, uh, *clears throat*, “the flag still rises?”
Great work! Exactly why I started taking notes at the 30-second mark and stopped at the 30-minute mark – I just wasn’t up to this task.
Masterpiece.
I’m telling all my friends despite the fact that not one of them will read it.
hmm, i thought exactly the same thing, i sent it to all my friends WIVES, including my own… (ulterior motive there) but i doubt they will read it…
Another well-researched article, Denise. Truly wonderful. I know your major articles are so much work. Thank you. You’re prose is quite enjoyable, too, like bacon.
Props to you for making an effort on writing this novel, I meant blog. I had the time to read all of it but not the patience so hopefully someday you will have resources to turn this blog into a documentary so maybe more people will be interested. I guess that’s always the case about documentaries being biased which makes me think, what would be their agenda? Would these doctors make more money participating in this documentary? Are these doctors also farmers thinking that if they reveal their studies to the people, they would buy more vegetables and fruits from them? I don’t think so.
But maybe I’m the biased one. I’m a healthcare professional who see patients with the same diseases, morbidly obese patients who can’t even wipe their own butt.And I always ask them, what do you like to eat? They answer meat like burgers, hotdogs, chicken and lots of sweets. especially the processed one. And I’ve also been starting to notice that they’re getting younger and younger. I have a 39 yo patient with full blown tumor in his throat and guess what kind of diet he used to have? You know the answer to that.
I watched this documentary and guess what, it didn’t make me want to be vegan or vegetarian. It just made me want to eat less meat and eat more fruits and vegetables. And it made me feel really good. I have more energy, i feel lighter and just healthier. I really could care less about their studies. But between you and these doctors, I would listen to the doctors. They made the real effort to help in terms of being healthy. All you did was question their studies. But like I said, there is always an opposition to everything good or bad. Hats off to you still.
Burgers come with buns. Hot dogs come with buns. Chicken is often breaded and fried. Sweets don’t usually come from meat in the United States.
All you’re seeing is the meat? Really?
It is hard as heck to get a straight answer out of someone of what their typical diet is. We don’t remember after a day or so. We have to guesstimate. And that’s *before* measurement comes in. I do best with my weight loss when I track my food but I HATE tracking food. You would too, if you had to weigh everything before it went into your mouth. It’s supposed to be a temporary thing but it’s still a PITA. And most people filling out food-frequency questionnaires, or simply asking their doctor’s or dietician’s or nutritionist’s questions, won’t have measured.
You basically have no idea of what your obese patients are eating. You zeroed in on a few foods because you have an axe to grind and you have about gotten down to the handle now. Put the handle down and next time you see an obese patient, ask them have they ever used SparkPeople. I’m sure you can figure out where to take it from there. I will be VERY surprised if you don’t find that these people get a good 500 grams of digestible carbohydrate from starch and sugar per day. That’s from plants, by the way, just in case you forgot.
I would also add that when was the last time you ate a hamburger or hotdog without fries or chips? And most likely soda as well.
You say you’re going to McDonalds for a BURGER, when the macro breakdown for the actual meal would have the processed carbs grossly overshadow the ‘meat’.
The movie was about meat AND processed foods. It is widely known that the ‘western diet’ has gotten out of control- the average meat intake has increased, and it coincides with obesity and serious diseases. The average processed food intake has increased, and so has obesity and serious diseases. Isn’t it just common sense to see that the ‘western diet’s’ lack of an abundance of whole, unprocessed, plant based foods- and also the fact that meats and processed foods can be a source for synthetic ingredients, harmful chemicals, and hormones- is causing problems for a lot of people, and that eating healthier will help stop those diseases from occurring. Maybe the doctors were only commenting on the parts of their studies that related to the subject they were talking about (hmmmm- no surprise) with the hopes of getting ignorant people to pay attention. Maybe eating a diet with less meat and processed foods would cause the same, healthy result that they portrayed in the movie with the plant-based diet (they never said it wouldn’t, they just said they chose to promote a wholly plant-based diet), but it is indisputable that the current ‘western diet’ encourages consumption of way too much meat and processed foods than what the average American should be consuming. It’s been proven, whether meat is healthy or not. Anything in excess causes problems. You saw that part of the movie, right? about the evolution of the food pyramid? and how it recommends an overdose of animal proteins? I haven’t seen anyone say that they agree that eating excessive amounts of animal protein and processed foods are GOOD for you and PREVENT diseases. Is it really all just so that people don’t feel guilty eating their meaty and processed bun of a burger or processed breaded and just dunked in unhealthy processed oil fried chicken? Maybe that’s worth doing a study on.
@Lisa:
“the average meat intake has increased, and it coincides with obesity and serious diseases”
Interesting. Care to provide some evidence to backup this blanket statement?
@Jane:
Up to this point, your posts have been interesting. Even though I mostly disagree with your points of view, I actually enjoyed reading most of your posts. I think it would be a pity to enter a different territory.
@ Selena:
“it all boils down to BIO-INDIVIDUALITY.”
You could just as well say, it all boils down to chance. Or personal beliefs. You name it. When you start using relativism as the basis to approach nutrition, you can state anything you like, even the wildest claims (i.e. “SOME people can eat only carrots for years, and be healthy, you know..”). I personaly think it’s a receipe for baloney, and actually rather close to obscurantism.
obscurantism!
/me adds that to vocabulary.
You, another meat industry lackey or a pharma apologist? Care to respond?
Respond to what? Your petty opinions? Your petty accusations? I can’t see any point in doing so. Bring something remotely interesting to the debate first. But… I smell the Troll scent.
Scientific integrity and ethical business practices are a foreign concept to idiots. These are usually are the same people that think all corporations and businesses are evil.
Oh and by the way? I told my doctor last year that I was trying to follow a grain-free diet. She was a good sport about it, but she looked at me like I’d grown a third eye on my forehead, and said she hadn’t heard of anyone doing such a thing. A doctor. An MD. In 2010.
Just because someone’s a doctor doesn’t mean they know better. They get, what, one unit of nutritional training? Possibly not even a term in college? Maybe a couple weeks?
I told her I have trouble converting beta carotene (as far as I can tell; the signs certainly point that way). She’d never heard of that either. Almost half the population does now, at least out of the healthy folks. If you count the diabetics, the folks with metabolic syndrome and the folks with slow thyroids then the number’s probably much larger. I fit into at least one of those categories. My labs were only as good as they were last year because I’d already cut so much (carby) crap out of my diet. There was still room for improvement. Nope, no use for beta carotene here. It’s fish liver oil for me.
If you want to be cruel, next time ask her to look up your year over year triglyceride and HDL numbers and read them out to you. My Doctor put his head in his hands saying you always have a hole for me to fall into..
Or maybe go to a better, more open minded, doctor…
Meaning no disrespect Jeanne, but you’ve decided to alter your eating patterns based on a biased documentary, but you don’t have the patience for slogging through a (albeit long) post that debunks the science it’s basing itself on. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself ? This sounds like a case of “Don’t confuse me with the facts”.
Some of the doctors might be well meaning but they have a raging case of confirmation bias. Like, well you. You see what you want to see, and anything that doesn’t fit becomes invisible. A human trait, but one that needs to be guarded against, not embraced.
I missed that one!
“This sounds like a case of “Don’t confuse me with the facts”.
Some of the doctors might be well meaning but they have a raging case of confirmation bias. Like, well you. You see what you want to see, and anything that doesn’t fit becomes invisible. A human trait, but one that needs to be guarded against, not embraced.”
Beautiful, Angelyne, beautiful.
Wizzu
Angelyne,
“Meaning no disrespect Jeanne” but you’re uninformed, impatient, irresponsible, ignorant, biased, and lax?
Meaning no disrespect Angelyne, but merely putting that phrase in front of a row of insults doesn’t take the respectlessness out of them.
Hi Jeanne! I’m an NP with a practice specializing in women’s health. I work with obese women a lot. All of my clients keep a diet log for 2 weeks prior to their first appt and they are asked to eat normally, to not make any dietary changes before their 1st appt. I have not yet reviewed a diet log of an obese client that was not filled with sugars/grains. Processed food intake is high for most. I recommend you also have your clients maintain a preappt. diet log. I guarantee that when you see the consistent carbohydrate abuse or high carb intake on their food logs your conclusion will change!
This brings up a question I had…based on the remarks of both Esselstyn and Campbell, I’d expect that very few lifetime vegans have ever been diagnosed with Type II, diabetes, hbp, high cholesterol, heart disease or cancer. Even less would have died as a result of any of those illnesses. After all, they claimed that it appeared animal based protein was the impetus or appeared to be implicated in cancer . Anyone got the stats for the mortality rate of vegans for these diseases? It would be wonderful to have a followup documentary with the numbers then question these two doctors on what each vegan had done “wrong”. Or maybe it was genetic.
There cannot be life long vegans, veganism is an insane experiment on diet. If infants from birth ate a vegan diet, they would fail to thrive, contrary to there belief, animal fat and protein are essential to our health and well being, If someone ate a Vegan diet without supplements for 30+ years they would have severe nutritional deficiencies….contrast that to an Inuit eating a diet completely based on animal fat and protein that will require no supplements over that same 30 year period and be in good health….veganism is a dead end….if children fail to thrive on this diet, why should adults be eating it…
Hi Ryan,
I read your comment about Forks & Knives, but i disagree with you that we need a diet full of animal protein and fats for infants or adults for growth and to survive.
I have watched many health food videos and not just only forks & knives. Watch “food Matters” and read ” One Answer to Cancer” and you will realized that many healthy persons live on a very good nutritious plant based diet, and also and more importantly, where their overall health problems also mostly disappear or can stabilize to normal.
Babies or infants the best source of food comes from mother milk, which has only around 5% protein and I do not see any babies not growing unhealthy, so they do not need to drink abnormal, processed cows milk.
Yes! I do agree with you that on a plant based diet you do need to eat more vegetables and fruits, nuts and seeds, but thats the problem, as where people need to understand this.
The best way to do this is to Juice your vegetables, which is the best source of getting into your body all the essential vitamins, minerals and the small amounts of protein you need for your body to function accordantly.
I also take Super foods. Read “David Wolff” his book named “Super foods”
Chorella, Spirullina, Maca and Raw chocolate with honey and flex seed oil can do wonders to your body.
John from Malta
Did your momma not breastfeed you? Tsk-tsk.
Jeanne, you should never criticize someone for questioning someone’s study. I’m sure the doctor’s in these studies have very pure motives, but they are not necessarily unbiased. They are promoting an animal free diet because they believe it is healthier, and it would certainly be better for the planet and animal welfare if more people adopted the diet. It’s important to listen to what everyone has to say, though, and even better if you can get a counter argument from the doctors in response. You can’t take anything for granted, especially since the views in the documentary are not widely accepted in the scientific community. I guess if you don’t have any science background at all, it can be tough to discern fact from fiction. This should make you extra skeptical of everything. Always think, how might they be trying to trick me, and why would they? In this case, what motive would the doctors have? I don’t see any really harmful ones. Maybe they love animals and the planet. They seem like good people to me. After watching to FOK documentary, and reading this blog, I will replace more of my meat with fish, and cut down on wheat. I already eat my veggies. I’m cutting down on sugar, too, and added fats.
Here is a post I really like. I don’t come to the same conclusions as yours (and thus I don’t follow the same diet), but I share your overall points of view and attitude towards ‘information’.
“Minds are like parachutes… they only function when they’re open.”
Denise, great research with exceptional validity. I think I have fallen in love with your mind
It’s time academia got a good boot up the bum for poor thinking processes and making huge assumptions that are not supported by data.. PLEASE keep up the fantastic work.
Nice generalization.
I totally agree!! This was an awesome read. I want to be just like Denise when I grow up.
I was hoping you’d write a review of the movie. (Now I don’t have to watch it… Ha! I probably will anyway.) Excellent post.
[...] [...]
Thanks for this. I just made my husband watch the movie because I want to lower our meat intake and up our vegan meal intake. We rely too much on meat for our meals and it lowers the amount of vegetables, beans, and stuff that we eat.
A lot of alarm bells went off while I watched the movie (and read all the books – Fuhrman’s, etc.), but I am trying to get a feel for all the different conclusions researchers have come to.
For the movie, I figure they know most people won’t want in depth explanations, so I forgave their shallow explanations. I definitely had a real problem with both the Norway info and the casein diet extrapolations.
Right now, I think a heavily plant based diet, while limiting table sugar and anything else processed and sticking to whole grains like rice is probably the healthiest. Meat should come from free range animals and I should try to find some safe fish. My gut feeling, though, is that meat should be a few high quality ounces a day only and not be eaten all day long. Balance is key. I’m not sure what to do about oil, though. I need to stir fry my veggies and use a bit of oil in the oven and I am completely baffled as to which sort to use. I have some pig fat in my freezer from a free range pig and I was going to make lard. ha ha ha. I remember reading somewhere that it holds up better for frying. I don’t know how true that is.
And also, you don’t need to apologize for all the graphs, etc. I’ve had doctors tease me because I get so excited by all the “data, data, data” and always want to analyze my own blood tests and such. I definitely like to see what you used to come to your conclusions. Don’t apologize for the people who get annoyed by data… I doubt they’d be reading your blog if they didn’t <3 data.
One thing, though. Where do the Chinese get their meat from for these studies? And how much meat are they eating? Are they eating factory farm meat or meat from cows in fields? Are they eating very small portions of meat when they do eat it?
And the issues with wheat… Is it actually wheat, or is it the stuff we always combine with wheat before eating it? Everything we tend to eat with wheat in our house has sugar / milk / eggs / star trek ingredients in it. It is all pretty highly processed. I am going to go read your post on wheat next, though…
Anyway, great job and thanks for posting this.
Pastured lard is a great fat to use and very stable. So is coconut oil. Coconut oil is used by some for weight loss, you can google to find out more about it of course.
>>> I need to stir fry my veggies
No, you don’t.
@Bethany. I think you are spot on. Your diet sounds very close to a primal/paleo diet. You should investigate that. You’ll find a community of really smart people that blogs about the paleo/primal lifestyle.
The fact that you saw this documentary and heard alarm bells, puts you in that rare category of critical thinkers. We need more people like that
Talking about critical thinking skills, saturated fat has been unfairly vilified for decades for absolutely no reason. Despite decades of trying, scientists have never been able to show saturated fat to harmful.
So that’s what you can use to fry. Lard, suet, duck/goose fat, bacon grease, coconut oil, butter/ghee. Plenty of choice to suit any type of dish you want to make.
Forgot to add. It’s the wheat itself. Read “Wheat Belly” to see what I mean. And yeah, the sugar, and processed oil that more often than not accompanies wheat, just makes it all the worse. A perfect storm…
Check out whfoods.com: He recommends doing a “healthy saute” for veggies with veggie broth. It works for most of my needs. Lard & coconut oil are other options & stable at high temps.
For me, who has never had a major health issue or weight problem, I think everyone should FIRST aim for a REAL FOOD diet. From there you can tweak to your needs. From Paleo to Vegan I think we can all agree that preservatives, trans-fat, & HFC syrup are all bad, and eliminating Frankin-foods is the first step to health.
I was totally with you until that last bit. Sounds like you’re dismissing plant based nutrition on the basis of the blood lipid profiles of 11 advanced heart-disease patients (I’d be happy to share my own blood lipid profile for contrast). Otherwise, fantastic post. Popular documentaries bug the crap outta me. There’s no wisdom in dumbed-down for the masses sound bites.
She was dismissing the particular study, and for very good reasons as outlined, not plant based diets in general. She has already destroyed Campbell’s book in previous posts (she gives the super short version of that in this post), and the remaining evidence presented in the movie didn’t say what they said it did. Thus dismissal of the movie’s conclusions, but not necessarily plant based diets in general. In other words, she didn’t say all plant based diet research is flawed, just these bits of research presented in the movie. Basic logic dictates that you can’t automatically jump to the conclusion that all plant based diets are wrong just because the studies presented in this movie were highly flawed.
It would be pretty ironic if Denise argued that a plant based was bad, considering that according to her “About Me” page she eats an almost entirely plant based diet herself. Notice the title of the blog? It’s there because she’s a raw foodist, which necessarily cuts out almost all animal products except milk (according to some definitions) and raw fish. In an older post or a comment somewhere here I believe she described her diet as something like 90-95% raw plant based, and the remainder raw fish.
Somebody who gets it
I wouldn’t say that a raw diet by definition precludes most animal products. If you work with pastured-fed, organically raised animals, there’s little reason to avoid eating the meat raw. Same goes for eggs. Raw foods, meats and eggs included, have vastly improved enzyme make-ups. Enzymes are destroyed and proteins denatured through heating.
And tapeworm for weight loss (for the wimmins) and better Fe control (for the menz).
Enzymes are proteins. Besides by heat (cooking), enzymes are also denatured/destroyed by acidic environments–like the one in your stomach (pH anywhere from 1-5 depending on when and what you last ate). Whether consumed raw or cooked, the enzymes in the foods you consume are denatured and hydrolyzed before you absorb them into your blood stream.
Very thorough! Love it. There’s a supposed doctor in the movie named Pam Popper…she happens to live in the same city as I do and owns a hot yoga studio (was called Bikram yoga, but she got in trouble for using the name Bikram). I attended her class once and she was a supreme B**** to her clients. She yelled about how dairy is a carcinogen and she should know because she’s a doctor. After about an hour of her miserable 108 degree yoga class with all the talking down to us, I left the studio, but I made sure to check her credentials on my way out. She had degrees from online universities that I had never heard of. If you look her up online, you will find no listing of the universities that she attended. And this is one of the very radical heroes of modern vegans. I know one vegan who chooses to be vegan because of her love for animals. The rest are radical, agenda-pushing wanna-be’s. They are no better than the radical tea party movement.
Ya…..those crazy tea party people that actually want our government to follow the constitution that the country was founded on……what a bunch of radicals!!
Yeah..wanting the government to stop giving subsidy payments to industrial corn and soy producers (or at least the ones I know). Darn them radicals.
Ya, those Tea Partiers who are backed by their corporate sponsors like the Koch brothers. They are not a grassroots movement but an attempt by radical libertarians-not traditional conservatives-to dismantle the New Deal, safety regulations, corporate regulations, and any financial regulations, and we know how that turned out in 2008. Where were they when the Constitution was being crapped on for 8 years? They only decided to get vocal when a black guy was elected.
BTW I am paleo, don’t eat wheat or any processed food, and I hunt. The lobbies for the wheat and soy growers are two examples of powerful influences on government to the point where their lobbyists are part of the agencies that are supposed to ‘regulate’ these industries, and are often the ones deciding what is ‘healthy’ for Americans. The problem isn’t ‘big government’, but the collusion of government and big business. This is known as corporatism.
1) I am, by your definition, a “radical” (is there some other kind?) libertarian. Who is more supportive than not of the TP.
2) The TP “originated” via Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign, which was as “grassroots” as any movement in modern political history.
3) Suggesting contributions from the Koch Bros created this movement, or that this movement was lead by the Kochs is as disingenuous, or naive, as claiming McDonalds made Americans like meat and cheese.
4) The demographics of the TP are interesting, and inherently unstable http://reason.com/poll/2011/09/26/is-half-the-tea-part-libertart with @2/5 being good, noble libertarians (or fellow travelers) like myself who want to “dismantle the New Deal, safety regulations, corporate regulations” (and bring back slavery, witch trials and thatched huts) and the remaining 3/5 being those “traditional conservatives” you mention, such as your hero Rick Perry, seen here: http://youtu.be/BhDhDRvHaGs
So, do you get a medal for being the first tea partier? Oh yeah, I was there during the embryonic stage, too, when a dozen people picked Wall Street unsuccessfully during the winter of ’08/’09.
Let’s face it, Dick Armey and Glenn Beck coopted the movement within three months of Santelli’s cri de coeur on live TV. I haven’t forgotten the day the scale tipped away. It was early in the spring of 2008 at a Florida Tea Party rally where a young speaker started talking about George Bush’s role in the 2008 bailout and the geriatric, anti-Obama crowd booed.
Run the numbers: fiscally conservative libertarians with brains are handily outnumbered by the neo-Bircher crowd.
Tea Party “Radicals” are not racist and could care less what color Obama is. Look at how many of them support Cain! Last I checked, he was black too! I am sick of people throwing in their hatred for our country’s past and the right side whenever they get the chance. Notice no one is talking about the organizers who are being arrested left and right? Whatever. And the big difference between the years of Bush vs Obama is that Bush was supportive of our country, our military and at least tried to stand up to other countries. Obama is bending over to them and look at China, Iran and Russia. They are developing nuclear weapons. Who holds all our debt? China. Who doesn’t like us? Iran. Wake up people.
Actually, quite a few tea party people are extraordinarily racist. I’m an independent and often get courted by people from the tea party movement. They do not seem to be able to reference Obama except in racist or ethnographic terms (he’s Kenyan or he does not take care of blacks, or he is not a citizen, or he is not really black or…) that is part and parcel to the dialog. Cain was only acceptable because he was a counterbalance to Obama and therefore a “good ni…..” because he belonged to the GOP. It was about race, and it will always have a racial component. That may not be the only component, but I have been talked to and feted by tea partiers in Indiana , MO and KS–and they ALL bring up race–over and over again. That is one of the focus and like many said, their concerns about the budget (which I share) and government (which I share) fall flat when they speak of it in terms of basically getting their own way yet using the same government to control everyone not on board with their agenda. racist, sexist, genderist, myopic and selfish party if ever there was one.
There is more to the tea party movement than that—we know this because of who is in the movement and what they proclaim. The movement is simply a holding cell for some conservatives, some radical right and some radical left, a lot of racists and then some people who cannot find a job and blame their local/state employment crisis on the federal government instead of their state/local government–but we digress. This is about vegans and a vegan dvd that was presented as “pseudo science” in much the same spirit as those commercials for the latest diet gimmick are on tv after 12 am . Dangerous only because so many in America don’t think and what ever is in the “spoon” they gratefully swill.
Why the concern over those who disparage the Weston A. Price stand on traditional diets?
The science presented by Weston A. Price Foundation proponents makes sense from the same standpoint. People, meat eaters or otherwise, were healthier before ANY of our main dietary staples were so unrecognizably processed by modern preparation and packaging. Where’s the dispute? I cannot understand why it isn’t obvious that no matter what we choose to eat, the processing is only doing us harm. I truly believe that heat processed oils, feedlot meats, and vegetables, grains, and beans sprayed with pesticides and genetically modified, are foods that are unrecognizable to our bodies as nutritional sustenance. Hence the development of disease, and the increasing proliferation of obesity and malnutrition. The body reacts to these foods by treating them as poisons, or storing them as fat.
Where the Weston A. Price approach makes sense is in consideration of traditional foods being healthier, no matter where we come from on the globe. Comparing diets from one culture to another is fine, but somewhat moot, in my opinion. A negligible few of us are ever going to find it attractive or even practical to adopt the traditional diets of another culture. We would all be healthier, current diets or not, if the foods we ate were from meats fed the diets they evolved to eat, fats cold pressed or rendered in their whole state, and vegetables and grains grown organically and eaten in season. Period.
With regard to over-eating and gluttony, we have found in our home that a traditional diet is more satisfying and we eat less overall. I believe this is because traditional meats and fats, and organically grown veggies, grains, and legumes are more nutritious and satisfying. They are foods our bodies recognize, and can process and utilize as the fuel they are meant to be.
When considering a “plant-based diet” in comparison to a balanced diet inclusive of healthy proteins, Nina Planck, in her astounding book “Real Food, What to Eat and Why” makes a fascinating and obvious point when she says-
“The simple truth is this: there are no traditional vegan societies. People everywhere search high and low for animal fat and protein because they are nutritionally indispensable.”
and
“Cooks know that gelatin-rich broth extends the poor or scant protein in plants. Even vegetarian societies prize either dairy or eggs.”
and
“The vegan diet is unnatural and rare because it’s risky, especially for babies, children, and pregnant and nursing women.”
And, lastly,
“Protein needs are unforgiving: when the diet lacks amino acids, the body ransacks it’s own tissue to find them.”
I believe the Weston A. Price group has one thing right, and that is to stop eating processed foods, and we will all be healthier.
Ann Griffin
Not a professional, just an eater that does my homework!
We could further explore and perhaps should explore the satiation factor. People simply have no idea now when to stop eating or when they are “full” . There is a diet out that I thought was amazingly irresponsible and ridiculous (fatloss4 idots) and has more negative reviews than positives online. I tried it on a lark. (why oh why?) and lost 16 lbs the first 2 weeks then 16 more the other. I got off because I did not need to lose any more weight AND I could not fathom the nutrient quality of the diet. working or not–it did not seem nutritionally sound to me. There was plenty of fresh fruit and meat but a meal consisting of merely scrambled eggs and boiled eggs?
The lynchpin was to eat until you felt full–no minimums or maximums just eat less than full satiation. A lot of people can’t do that and so the diet failed them. I loved the graphics in the movie which showed what calorie dense food did and how it was perceived in the stomach. It made a lot of sense and was in a form people could understand. All in all, my takeaway from the movie was no to processed foods (totally agree with your post on that point) no to refined foods or minimize it and KNOW your body. I eat out a lot due to one of my jobs and so find I usually have a doggie bag with 2/3 of my dinner in it. I can eat on it for usually 2 meals. On the other hand, my dining companions usually are finished with plates pretty clean by the time I am ready to call for the check.
A great post as usual!
Nicely done. I really enjoy reading your stuff and look forward to meeting you in person some day.
Jay Wortman MD
You have an amazing brain. Someday, I might want to borrow it.
I love your post. All I could think the entire time I was watching the movie was “this is such BAD science” or in some cases “this is such bad INTERPRETATION” of science. I followed watching this with a viewing of “FatHead” which was a “comedy” but had much better scientific interpretation!
Awesome timing on this post Denise. I happened to watch Forks Over Knives on Netflix today after my husband came across it in the new movies section and said it looked like something I would like from its description:
“Focusing on the research of two food scientists, this earnest documentary reveals that despite broad advances in medical technology, the popularity of modern processed foods has led to epidemic rates of obesity, diabetes and other diseases.”
I spent the movie taking mental notes of things that I disagreed with, and it was awesome to see them all written out here. Thanks!
Cod liver oil and fish roe in Norway? No wonder their teeth got better and their heart disease decreased. CLO = vitamins A and D, as you accurately pointed out, and fish roe = vitamin K2. What you’ve got here is the holy trifecta of fat-soluble vitamin supplementation. The fact that so much of their milk was skim would have increased their mineral intake, too–and while under ordinary circumstances they couldn’t have absorbed much of it due to a decreased fat intake, perhaps the CLO and the fish eggs helped?
The more I learn about what’s in meat, the less impressed I am with the culture’s (ours) insistence that a plant-based diet will save us all. We keep speaking of meat as though it is only useful for obtaining protein and fat in the diet. But animal foods have the best forms of A and D (you can’t find D in high amounts in many foods, but for D3 all the food sources are animal) and K2, they’re the best sources of several (if not all) of the B vitamins, they’re the best source of sulfur which may turn out to be quite important in carbohydrate metabolism along with all its other functions, they provide a more bioavailable form of all the bone minerals, etc.
And get this? Animal proteins come with their own buffering agent. It’s called glutamine. That is, l-glutamine, and not to be confused with glutamic acid or the glutamates (which are also important in the body, and NOT the same as MSG, which is a protein salt, but still not the same as glutamine). It assists in the process of turning excess hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia in the kidneys. Now, your body must do this for ALL proteins you eat. Plant proteins are not exempt. But plant proteins are for the most part noticeably deficient in glutamine. Two exceptions I’ve heard of are wheat and spinach–and nobody in their right mind would rely on either of those foods for their main protein source. Lectins and phytates and oxalates! Yum yum! I can feel my bones dissolving already!
I am *so* unsurprised that Lierre Keith and other ex-vegans tell stories of bone loss suffered during their vegan years. We’re already seeing too many women getting osteoporosis on an *omnivorous* diet who didn’t have to, and I suspect this heavy emphasis on a “plant-based diet” is to blame. Women have already historically gotten the short end of the drumstick when it came to meat rations in far too many cultures throughout human history and now, the weight loss and dietary health industries seem determined to drive that final nail in. Y’all, if you want to still have all your teeth and bones into your elder years and you want to have grandchildren to spoil, stop listening to the wannabe herbivores. Please.
Don’t forget l-caritine and carnosine! Very important nutrients that are minimal or not found in plant foods.
“it slashes intake of polyunsaturated fats, which are the type of fat most likely to promote LDL oxidation”
Any sources for this?
Hi Jari,
I don’t have any studies bookmarked on this computer, but Stephan Guyenet and Chris Masterjohn have written some great stuff about the PUFA/oxidized LDL link:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/08/diet-heart-hypothesis-oxidized-ldl-part.html
http://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/precious-yet-perilous
Wow….you sure do great research! In your honor, I would say the word ‘minger’ should mean ‘to deftly skewer folks by analyzing and explosing their blatantly distorted or incorrect facts.
Love this. Forks over Knifes just got mingered. POW!
Super informative and unbelievably funny. Laughed myself to tears! THIS is what science teaching at schools should be like.
“it must be AWESOME to selectively choose reality like that!”
gawd you are uber-wonderful Denise…
“The cause of atherosclerosis”, by William Roberts, the chief editor of American Journal of Cardiology, it’s all well 2000′s.
All about cholesterol…
“atherosclerosis is one of the easiest diseases to produce experimentally, but the experimental animal must be an herbivore. It is not possible to produce atherosclerosis in a carnivore but with one exception, and that is in carnivores that have hypothyroidism due to thyroidectomy”
http://ncp.sagepub.com/content/23/5/464.full
Jenkins, the inventor GI-concept, all about cholesterol and the flawed science and dairy sponsored “research” behind the “cholesterol is not bad”-frenzy
Dietary cholesterol and egg yolks: not for patients at risk of vascular disease.
Can J Cardiol. 2010 Nov;26(9):e336-9.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076725
Hi Richard,
I don’t think anyone’s arguing that humans are carnivores, so I’m not sure how your first quote is relevant. Scientists have induced atherosclerosis not only in herbivores, but in omnivores as well (like dogs, pigs, and chimps).
As for your second link: Did you read the full-text? The authors try to use observational studies to “prove” eggs increase heart disease risk, and cite studies that have the very flaws I mentioned in this blog post — particularly failure to separate the effects of increased saturated fat intake from increased cholesterol intake. They also try to claim dietary cholesterol increases LDL oxidation by citing in vitro experiments, which often fail to reflect what actually happens in the human body.
The study’s authors aren’t exactly unbiased, either. As mentioned in the “conflict of interest” section of that article, two of ‘em have vested interest in making cholesterol look bad:
“Dr Spence and Dr Davignon have received honoraria and speaker’s fees from several pharmaceutical companies manufacturing lipid-lowering drugs, and Dr Davignon has received support from Pfizer Canada for an annual atherosclerosis symposium; his research has been funded in part by Pfizer Canada, AstraZeneca Canada Inc and Merck Frosst Canada Ltd.”
Don’t worry, William Roberts just uses bit of an unclear vocabulary. Essentially what he means that since atherosclerosis is only a disease of herbivores, then humans must be herbivores. Atherosclerosis cannot be experimentally initiated to animals who biologically flesh-eaters. He elaborates that biologically the optimal diet for humans is that of plant-based, vegetables, fruits and cereals. There’s no talk of humans being omnivores, period!
Your meat-eating Masai tribe, even the young blokes have arteries of an old middle-aged, Western men, plagued by atherosclerosis, although they seem to get away with with their 30km daily walks.
“Atherosclerosis in the Masai”
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/26.short
The inuits are well known for their poor cardiovascular health, (along with women who at the age of 19 look like 45)
“Low incidence of cardiovascular disease among the Inuit—what is the evidence?”
“The evidence for a low mortality from IHD among the Inuit is fragile and rests on unreliable mortality statistics. Mortality from stroke, however, is higher among the Inuit than among other western populations”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021915002003647
So, no the doctors of Forks Over Knives are long from the only ones believing animal products, let alone cholesterol, are harmful.
Denise Minger wrote:
“Scientists have induced atherosclerosis not only in herbivores, but in omnivores as well (like dogs, pigs, and chimps)”.
Yes, we have the exception, you are right!
“These studies initially were done by some Russian physiologists beginning in 1908. And atherosclerosis was not produced in a minority of rats fed these diets, it was produced in 100% of the animals! Indeed, atherosclerosis is one of the easiest diseases to produce experimentally, but the experimental animal must be an herbivore. It is not possible to produce atherosclerosis in a carnivore but with one exception, and that is in carnivores that have hypothyroidism due to thyroidectomy”
William Roberts, 2008
Sorry, not meaning to hijack your blog, however I missed this:
“so I’m not sure how your first quote is relevant”
It’s relevant because Williams is saying that cholesterol is the sole cause of atherosclerosis! He said this in 2008, so the Fork Over Knives crew is long from being unique.
Hi again Richard,
Based on what you’ve written, I’m disinclined to read Roberts, so forgive me if I’m misunderstanding anything by relying on your summaries. But the statement “cholesterol is the sole cause of atherosclerosis” has to be false because injecting cholesterol into rabbits does not produce atherosclerosis, as Nikolai Anitchkov had noted.
Chris
Hey, Chris.
Rabbits are herbivores, and indeed get atherosclerosis incase fed animal products. Ain’t working with dogs, cats and omnivores such as bears. I suggest you actually read what Robers says, after all together with Jenkins he is one of the most leading authorities in cardiovascular issues.
Hi Richard,
I don’t see where William Roberts has addressed the occurrence of atherosclerosis in omnivores. He seems to only be speaking of carnivores vs. herbivores, which is a false dichotomy. In at least one omnivore (pigs), researchers are able to induce atherosclerosis without the presence of hypothyroidism, which indicates that atherosclerosis isn’t exclusive to species classified as herbivores.
^Put me a source. And we’ll discuss about it.
Just catching up now. I want to also just throw in that dogs aren’t omnivores – they’re carnivores who are commonly fed an omnivore diet. So it strikes me that if induced in dogs – that it is more of a reflection on diet and less on species. The same experiment should be run again on dogs fed a carnivore diet.
Dogs are not carnivores. Cats are carnivores. Dogs are omnivores.
Interesting, please can you provide a taxonomic reference.
I misspoke.
I was trying to draw a distinction between dogs and cats.
I should say that dogs are carnivores but cats are obligate carnivores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore#Obligate_carnivores
I apologize.
But Richard, vegans and vegetarians suffer from heart disease and suffer from atherosclerosis.
Hey Fredric,
I have no suspicions over that in regards to dairy-eating vegetarians, out of whom most of in the Western world just compensate the meat with dairy, however do you any evidence of dairy-free vegetarians, vegans having atherosclerosis or poor heart?
Hi Richard,
This post explains the emergence of atherosclerosis in the Masai. Their arteries are actually the healthiest during the Muran period, when they’re eating mostly milk, meat, and blood; their atherosclerotic lesions skyrocket after age 40 or so once they have more dietary freedom and start eating sugar, flour, and vegetable oils:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/06/masai-and-atherosclerosis.html
The problem with the Inuit is that they haven’t been eating their true traditional diet for over a century, and any mortality statistics from the 1900s onward reflect the inclusion of Western foods. If you look at their diet in the ’80s, for example, some of the most commonly consumed foods are sugar, white bread, rolls, crackers, Kool-aid, soft drinks, and coffee: http://www.ajcn.org/content/55/5/1024.full.pdf+html
Even so, I’d say even their pre-Westernized traditional diets (as well as living conditions) are far from ideal for those seeking optimum health. What they ate before the influx of Western foods was out of geographical necessity, not a quest for longevity.
Are you serious?
The fact that young Masai guys have arteries that of old American men is very illustrating, don’t tell me that American males are oil-free vegans, and never consume sugars and vegetable oils. If the wild theory of Stephan was to have some credibility, the least he could is to show that Masai eat more vegetable oils and other crap as opposed to West. I doubt that very, very much. Stephens theory makes as much of sense as a claim that Atkins secretly consumed vegetable oils and sugary cakes as much as typical American or even more since he had progressed coronary heart disease already in his 60′s.
It takes a lot to get your arteries in worse condition than that of typical Americans have them. So, if anything you ought to be writing a lot about importance of physical, endurance exercise.
The inuit source I wired you was from Greenland were the amount of American junk food is not the pronounced as in Alaska. Also, pay attention that the Inuits in Greenland suffer more strokes than Western populations, and the Westerners eat plenty of crap. So looks like the typical Inuit diet still looms in the background explaining the difference.
So Basically your great meat-eating native populations are all in much worse situation than even typical Westerners, if these studies would match with Westerners with similar exercise habits the difference would be staggering.
Denise, it looks like you cannot even master the art of cherry picking.
Richard,
I’d like to see you write a masterpiece like Denise has done instead of being so accusatory–first you’ll need to learn how to use correct spelling and grammar.
Hi Richard,
Stephan was just making the same point that George Mann made in the paper; it’s not Stephan’s theory. Mann made the point that serum cholesterol and atherosclerosis declined in the moran even compared to children, which is proof of nothing but certainly quite interesting. The age comparison is seriously confounded by the fact that the moran consume copious amounts of stimulant herbs, engage in ritual lion hunts, and otherwise live completely different lifestyles than the rest of the Maasai. It’s the among the poorer points that Mann made, but Mann did not make a big deal out of it.
I do think, however, that you missed the central point of Mann’s work. He investigated hundreds of living Maasai for ECG evidence of previous MI and did not find any. Based on the age structure of the population he studied, his sample size, and the incidence of ECG evidence for MI among Americans, he should have observed a number of cases with evidence for MI if Maasai had similar age-adjusted risk of heart disease as Americans and he did not.
The central theme of his autopsy paper is the striking absence of complex lesions, healthy luminal diameter, and again, complete absence of evidence for MI.
I think you are generating a lot of confusion by suggesting they had lots of atherosclerosis, or as much as Americans, judging this by total thickness of plaque burden. Especially in this day and age, we know full well that the mean size of a plaque has nothing to do with predicting heart disease risk, but rather its composition is predictive. Lipid-rich, collagen-poor plaques are likely to rupture, which is the primary cause of ischemia. Less commonly, protruding plaques that themselves block a coronary artery are a cause, and likewise calcified or eroding plaques. The Maasai were essentially free this kind of plaque development.
The point here is not that the Maasai had perfect heart health, but they did have strikingly better heart health than typical Americans. For a population with a high burden of infectious diseases and exposure to copious amounts of smoke, this is impressive. If you are going to argue that their heart health was poor, I think you at least need to show that there are whole populations of vegetarians or vegans who do not have the degree of atherosclerosis that the Maasai had at similar ages.
Chris
Of course the inuit and masai have worse health on a western diet! They have had even less time to adapt to these foods than westerners. Why is it that american indians, pacific islanders, etc. all have much higher rights of diabesity than white americans?
Also, Atkins heart disease was caused by a viral infection. Who said he secretly consumed vegetable oils and cakes?
I reversed my heart disease and got off insulin by cutting out most plant matter from my diet. My HDL has gone up, my LDL changed from pattern B to pattern A. This on a mostly carnivorous diet. That is the best evidence I could ever have. No one will ever convince me that we are supposed to be vegetarians.
Richard,
Atherosclerosis has been induced using diet in normal domestic cats: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2092420
I’ve met PETA members who feed their cats tuna because they know that cats are obligate carnivores, so I’m sure you recognize that fact.
This line of reasoning is, of course, quite silly. If in fact it were true (and it’s not) that only herbivores develop atherosclerosis by means other than thyroid inhibition, then the fact that humans develop atherosclerosis could as easily be used to show that this generalization is false, because humans are not herbivores, as it could be used to show that because the generalization is true, humans must be herbivores. Thus it cannot serve as proof in either case.
Even in the rabbit, there are resistant strains, and the difference largely amounts to thyroid status. By your logic, then, the resistant strains must be carnivores.
Note also that another interpretation here would be that humans are a carnivore whose thyroid status has been disrupted. One could support this, for example, with research showing that thyroid supplementation prevents atherosclerosis in humans: http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/08/central-role-of-thyroid-hormone-in.html
Given these multiple interpretations of the same evidence, it seems to me that this evidence is not very useful in supporting any of these arguments.
Chris
In other words….if you see a patient getting cured from a disease and the drug used is blue…then the extrapolation that “blue pills cure disease” makes sense to you. The association is not conclusive, and what neisy states is correct, once omnivores are included in the analysis, the same ALS also is readily produced in omnivores. Understand where we fall on the eating chain scientifically is based on what our bodies can get nutrients from NOT based on what we decide to eat. Most ruminants or herbivores cannot readily digest meat–so they are called herbivores because their bodies cannot readily derive nutrients from animal protein. Carnivores are called carnivores because their systems cannot readily derive nutrients from grass or vegetables sources. Omnivores have evolved with the ability to eat AND transform both animal and plant sourced products into nutrients. Nothing suggests humans should only be herbivores. NOTHING. An omnivorous animal is actually more optimal because evolutionary-wise it is adaptable to what ever is available in the environment. Sensibly speaking, omnivores are the next evolutionary step in natural selection because that ability increases adaptability. The only way your argument and extrapolation makes sense is if science finds out there is a vestigial ruminant apparatus in humans.
Let us know when you find that.
“The doctors in ‘Forks Over Knives’ it seems, are among the few stragglers who still believe dietary cholesterol is harmful”
Dream on Minger…
http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/egg-cholesterol-in-the-diet/
That video uses a junk meta-analysis study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076725) that links some of the old LDL research addressed elsewhere. It’s only 4 pages, have you actually read it, or do you like your information to come from 3 iterations of whisper down the lane?
This is just a video about the paper you linked in your other comment, where two of the three authors are funded by statin manufacturers. No anti-cholesterol bias there, right?
LOL…
pot calling the kettle black….
Dr Jenkins, the inventor of “GI”-concept has been very keen on promoting dietary intervention to tackle disease. No, tell me, how would an advice to stay away from cholesterol rich animal foods contribute to statin sales?
I find it ridiculous how you dare to refer your blog as health-blog, your blog is nothing but a sales pitch for animal-products with the ever present “you’ll be screwed for staying on plant-based diet on the long-run”-pitch.
LMFAO! Thanks for that one
Vs. Campbell’s and the Vegan doc’s argument that “you’ll be screwed for including any animal products”-pitch.
^ Well, that’s the message the Western medical literature has been repeating for about 70 years, and looking at Loren Cordain fat belly, I think the “you’ll be screwed for including any animal products” -pitch is spot on…okay jokes aside, the point was that there’s no chance in a million year that blog is something what would be referred as “health blog”, this is more like some kind of a Lierre Keith-style, anti-vegan blog which tries to be scientific.
Check this out, about dozen latest articles screencaptured…narrated by Michael Greger MD, Denise & Atkins/Paleo folks ain’t telling you this stuff…meat is sickness-inducing toxic…I tell you that
http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/industrial-carcinogens-in-animal-fat-2/
Another claim which caught my attention was the claim that cholesterol can be too low….phew…I am too lazy these days, so you’ll get narrated screencaptures.
“Can cholesterol be too low”
http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/can-cholesterol-be-too-low/
“….Only pure vegetarians for practical purposes do not need statins, most of the rest of us do”
William C Roberts, 2009, the chief editor of American Journal of Cardiology
“Evaluating lipid-lowering trials in the twenty-first century”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19406281
*Yawns* Please Richard. I believe you to be an intelligent guy. Surely you can put together more dots than that. They’ve been telling us to load up on wheat and vegetable oils during that time too.
I’d advise you to hold your tongue a little bit and keep an open mind. Doesn’t mean you “have to” start eating animal products or quit promoting plants. However, some day you may have problems (like Denise did ie..the whole reason for starting this blog) and have to sit down to dine on a plate of crow.
Grok, nice blog you have, just checked it out.
I don’t see any evidence of long-term vegans supplied with b-12 having any health problems. I think it’s utmost ridiculous to start preaching something like that in the face of an ecologic catastrophy created by the meat-eating society. 65% of all grains cultivated in the world goes into feeding animals (98% of the annual 225 million soy production). Animal husbandry takes about 2/3 of world’s land-surface. 99% of the American poultry comes from factories.
“UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet
So, if something the shift should be in emphasizing the health and ecologic problems of meat for the sake collective well-being. If you like your ridiculously expensive organic, “ethical” wild-game then go ahead and eat it but make sure you shut your mouth up. Propagating for animal-products is outward irresponsible….. Okay, enough with the “vegan propaganda”, I am sure I made my point.
I love objective information. Since we don’t have any evidence of long-term vegans having health issues, in fact the opposite is true compared to omnivores, this should tell us that it might be good to take advice from long-term vegans instead of short-term vegans. We never get to hear objective information of Mingers vegan fare, therefore I give my two cents over the issue. Most likely it went like this: her raw-food diet consisted about 1000 kalories per day, out of which heavy abuse of nuts and olive oils made the intake of fat around 60-70%. In fact when you do this, screw up, you start a blog and maybe write a book about the dangers of veganism. That’s the usual story with short-term fad diet vegans. So, no, vegan per se, does not equal health. Fatty foods and low-calory regime does the trick.
Keep up the good work of bringing enlightment to the paleo-crew.
Richard, if you want to piss, please move it over to my blog. I’ll respond as time permits. There’s a whole lot wrong with the second 1/2 of your comment.
That said… I will
Alright,
just a quick note. I love this new study which destroyes Mingers grand idea of vegans getting good grade in epimologic studies conducted in the Western sphere for the sake of being just more health conscious than the overall animal-eating population. Well, now we have data from the third-world where assumptions being associated to veganism in the West do not bear similar merit.
Yang SY, Zhang HJ, Sun SY, et al. Relationship of carotid intima-media thickness and duration of vegetarian diet in Chinese male vegetarians. Nutr Metab. 2011;8:63.
hi
whats the deal with the hate on eggwhites
Esselstyn says that,”But when we consume dietary cholesterol, which is only found in animal foods like meat, eggs, and dairy products, it tends to stay in the bloodstream. This so-called plaque is what collects on the inside of our blood vessels and is the major cause of coronary artery disease.” but EGGWWHITES HAVE NO FAT OR CHOLESTROL…so whats the deal?
Richard–I’m not a vegan–or a foodist. But I do care about my health. when you get snarky or need to rebut everything that is said–it’s a turn off. If you are so unsure of your own diet that you need to justify it by rebutting anything/everything you see–then have at it but understand most will either ignore you or put you in a certain box. If you are wishing to convert–then the tactics you are taking will fail. Total turnoff, You don’t need to rebut everything, I doubt few posters here are going to rush to read anything you give a link to because you do not appear entirely lucid..and people tend to not seek out brainwashing sources. lest your behavior and mindset be catching. Just saying
Your first video only highlights the anti-meat findings of those studies. The very first study referenced clearly states that chicken with skin, hot dogs, and hamburgers all had no association with bladder cancer. But I guess your veggie/vegan folks ain’t telling you that stuff.
That’s one of the more amusing things about the Paleo diet, how bad most of its proponents look. Mark Sisson and our beautiful hostess excluded.
If you think they look bad now, you should have seen them *before* they went paleo!
Hi Richard,
Dr. Jenkins was only one of three authors for that article. Do you think it’s irrelevant that the other two were heavily funded and supported by statins manufacturers?
I’m sorry you feel that way about this blog. If you read through some of my other entries, you’d see that I actually eat mostly plant foods myself and am careful to never recommend a particular eating style to anyone. I write a lot about animal products because I feel they’re unfairly vilified, although I sometimes try to redeem some plant foods as well (ie, see my fruit post a few entries back). Like you, I used to believe anything animal-derived would promote disease, which is part of why I was vegetarian and vegan for a decade. When I started reading research outside of what the vegan community was regurgitating, I had to revise my long-standing perspective on animal foods because the science just didn’t support it.
“Dr. Jenkins was only one of three authors for that article. Do you think it’s irrelevant that the other two were heavily funded and supported by statins manufacturers?”
No, not at all. As I tried to hint already, despite majoring in economics, I cannot see the connection between the advice to avoid cholesterol-rich animal foods and increased statin sales, in fact, I see the contrary, plummeting statin sales following from advices such as that.
The fact the Jenkins, one of the biggest authorities in cardiovascular diseases, has his name on the paper definitely legitimizes it in my eyes. The biggest authorities in cardiovascular business, Jenkins, Williams and many others make an advice against cholesterol, so it’s not an a thingy of the 80′s, I am sure we can both agree to that.
Anyways, I love your manipulative skills, your above post certainly comes out very polite and almost convincing. But not exactly! Had you have a sincere interest in health you’d be 100% dedicated to encouraging people to avoid factory farm animals and since 99% of US poultry comes from the factories and over 90% of the pork and other meats, it would mean that you’d courage people who have no contact to wild game (the overwhelming majority) to follow mostly vegan diet pattern. It’s also very cute from you to try us make believe you’d be doing sincere research, beg me to laugh. Now you try to give the bullshit that we should not be vegans because your fad, raw diet failed. Unfortunately your advices makes you as part of problem, not the solution.
We are all much better when keeping the animal products in minimium, exactly as UN has been touting for a decade, whether they should limited 100% or not, is another issue, but that’s not your concern as long as people are filled by animals you are “careful to never recommend a particular eating style to anyone”, when this is not the case a hell brakes loose as we all can witness.
“because the science just didn’t support it”
LOL…..
http://nutritionfacts.org/videos/industrial-carcinogens-in-animal-fat-2/
Whether Campbells study is flawed or not is completely irrevelant, the same message has been echoed the Western medical literature for centuries, we have literally hundreds of meat/dairy/fish = sickness papers. In fact, the notion of animal foods making us sick was was already observed by Plato two thousands years ago.
anyway, thumbs up for you having the courage to keep the conversation rollin’.
I would like to see the “…literally hundreds of meat/dairy/fish = sickness papers…”" that is …scientific, randomized, double blind etc. and peer reviewed.. And Plato is now a nutritionist too?
“…. plummeting statin sales following from advices such as that….” How come you cannot stick to the known science . The intake of cholesterol has next to no relation to serum cholesterol, the liver just produces the levels needed. High inflammation- high LDL. And as we all know among the high inflammatory foods wheat products star as the absolute numero uno.. Please Denise don’t waste too much time on the fanatics who keep screaming don’t confuse with the facts, because I know what I have decided to know.
I’m thinking of the projection that within the next 20 years the most deficient resource and most expensive on the planet will be …WATER. I am wondering with such constraints and theoretically a diet heavily dependent solely on produce–what the actual famine situation would then be like? Any comments, besides suggesting we can a lot in preparation?
The thing about water is, it will never be anything but water even when contaminated, unless it goes through some kind of nuclear reaction which is very unlikely here on earth. The production and harvest of food will always be dependent on water through climate. This is largely out of our control but as the population increases it will grow to a state of non sustainability because of land or water requirements.
You certainly are a strong argument for giving scientists a liberal arts education! While extremely rigorous, you have a superb gift for explaining potentially complex matters in a way that makes them seem almost obvious.
Then again, maybe you’re just very, very intelligent.
and again… laughing, snickering and being wowed all the way through! – i can only thank you for your diligence – but then again – you are clearly doing what you are passionate about and exceptionally (yes… awesomely) good at.
upon moving to switzerland 2 months ago, my ancestral-noshing partner and child and i are getting serious about a website and perhaps workshops for all these “poor” affluent swiss/german/european people that look at us like we have grown 2 eyes in our foreheads (nod to Dana) not to mention the brain oozing out of our ears.
I thought the US was bad – but EU is horrid in just as many diet-fail ways – just to see the stream of addicts at 7 am pouring out of the bakeries with their (admittedly great smelling) crescent-shaped space-cakes of pure wheat (even space cakes just have a bit of hemp…)! and you try it – say “stop eating bread” to a swiss person and they quietly slide away smiling that “WTF was that?” kinda smile, happy they got away from you alive and unscathed.
i think we’ll start David-ing the Goliath here and see what happens (deportation probably…)
thanks lots Denise – you’ll be at the top of our references for those who can do the english (maybe we even translate you to deutsch!)
Ouh yes,
fresh new date from China (2011) Check it out, lady.
Vegetarian, not even vegan, at significantly lower risk for heart disease in China
Yang SY, Zhang HJ, Sun SY, et al. Relationship of carotid intima-media thickness and duration of vegetarian diet in Chinese male vegetarians. Nutr Metab. 2011;8:63.
Wonderful post Denise. I wish I’d had it, or something like it, to hand out to folks who came to see this film at the theater where I work. We were showing it the same week as AHS, so I was pretty much constantly biting my tongue to keep from having “discussions” with my customers.
Regards
It really is puzzling how Esselstyn still believes that stuff about wartime Norway. It looks like the improvement in dental health, at least, was due to reduced consumption of refined carbohydrate. ‘Dental caries in Norwegian children during and after the last World War’ says:
‘The cause of the decrease in caries frequency during the war and the cause of the increase after the war is discussed. Based on the rationing of the various food articles our tentative conclusion is that the decrease may be attributed to the lowering in consumption of refined carbohydrate and the increase in consumption of more natural foods . …’
[...] Here’s my blog for today – read Denise Minger’s critique on the movie Forks Over Knives. [...]
I thoroughly enjoyed this post. I laughed out loud several times. It was as gripping as an Academy-award-winning courtroom drama.
Considering that you are writing about dry scientific papers and data, you’ve got a real knack for making the information accessible, engaging, and extremely entertaining. This is incredibly rare; I hope you know what a gift you are to the planet. I’ll continue to read your blog with pleasure and I’d be thrilled to read any book you write (hopefully one day).
I’m now obsessed with the idea of testing this recipe for herring roe bread pudding. I’ll use almond flour and/or coconut flour and coconut milk. I’ve already found a recipe for the saft saus.
I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Ann Marie
Ann Marie,
When you test out that herring roe bread pudding, please make sure to put it in your blog!
Renae
I have not read the post yet but will asap.
About a book… as far as I know, Mark Sisson is working with Denise on a book! I think it will be published in 2012. It will teach us all how to disect any study – just never as good as Denise!
This was an amazing review, I love it how much of the boring graph reading and combing through studies you do so we don’t have to! Thank you so much! I gave up wheat a few months ago and after reading this I am so glad I did!
Absolutely amazing, I hate how I love scientific data so much. I believe plant base diets do have their time and place and definitely not for everyone. I really enjoyed how you pointed out all the pieces that were conveniently missed in the movie.
[...] det mesta. Jag fastnade dock för ett nytt superlångt inlägg av Denise Minger på Raw Food SOS: “Forks Over Knives”: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique). Hon är för bra för att skummas förbi. Inlägget handlar om en ny film: Forks over Knives, och [...]
Translation:
[...] mostly. However, I got stuck on a super long article by Denise Minger on Raw Food SOS: “Forks Over Knives”: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique). She is too good for a cursory glance. The article is about a new movie: Forks over Knives, and [...]
Well done Denise. I find your style of writing to be light and refreshingly lacking in dogma. Combined with your gift for disseminating research and breaking it down, you pack quite a punch. The world could use a few more of you.
Ben
[...] [...]
Denise, you are amazing! I recently watched “Forks Over Knives” and left feeling so frustrated. You are a brilliant researcher and a wonderful writer. I just shared this on Facebook. Thank you!!!
Denise, another wonderful blog–you really are an amazing one person show. However, a couple of comments, focused more on Esselstyn than on Campbell. You point out quite correctly that there was a rather high drop out rate, but then assume it might have been due to poor results. I suspect it might well have been due to either difficulty keeping to the diet, or such good results that they felt able to quit the discipline of those frequent visits and blood lettings.
Also you comment that though the results were good, maybe even better ones are available with a somewhat different approach. Maybe yes, but remember his patients were an extreme bunch–much damage had already been done. Recall Ornish’s “Spectrum,” which offers a spectrum of degrees depending on the point from which you start. Would you not approve of that? (and not incidentally, he offers evidence for regression of prostate cancer too–not bad?). And you refer us to William Davis as an example of a better way. I go to his website and find lots of ads for expensive supplements, but no links to published or other hard data on results; am I missing something, or can you direct me to such data? Both Ornish and Esselstyn had the courage to submit their results to the public.
So I am still thinking over the rich content of your blog, and feel profoundly grateful for all the intelligent hard work that went into it (and the light hearted tone too!) –but am still impressed by the real world results achieved by this vegan stuff.
Please keep going, and I look forward to that book next year.
Thanks and best wishes, Chris
May I?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Davis%20%2B%20Rockway
http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog/2009/11/what-goes-up-cant-come-down.html
http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/447/dr-william-davis-atkins-nutritionals-presents-best-of-2008-%E2%80%98encore-week%E2%80%99-episode-214/
Best regards.
Denise, where do you keep your internal organs? You are just chock-full of win.
Great post. I look forward to all your posts.
Thank you!
Thank you, Denise!
[...] NZ magazine has triggered a great deal of interest from readers and I felt motivated to share a wonderful blog that provides insight and answers to many people's questions. It's written by Denise Minger [...]
You’re a riot!
Excellent, Denise!
The Esselstyn family and Neal Barnard are pretty good walking advertisements for what they do. They have controlled weight and maintained health in themselves as models, and that is going to sell some program.
Neal Barnard says everybody should supplement with B12, no matter what their diet. He also looks healthy and dynamic.
The Weston A. Price photos are persuasive and data are impressive.
In China, meat-eating has been associated with wealth, which could mean meat-eaters endured less stress and less job-related risk.
The take-away for me as an individual is that one size does not fit all, and personalized medicine ought to already be here.
Neal Barnard–”healthy and dynamic”?????
Try “cadaverous”: http://www.harpworld.com/images/pix/PCRM100409.jpg
And needless to say, his writings and ideas are laughable:
http://www.purifymind.com/InterviewBarnard.htm
Neal Barnard is 58, pushing for 60′s. You can surely find unrepresentable pictures out of everyone.
Let say that compared to the chubby out-of-shape and obese low-carb crew, Cordain, Sears, Taubes, Jimmy Moore, Kendrich, etc, the vegan MDs come out looking like elite athletes.
Tom Naughton, at AHS, did a nice job of shredding the gist of your “argument”–namely that many people on low-carb diets are overweight, therefore, low-carb diets caused their obesity.
Tom’s talk: http://vimeo.com/27793037
Incidentally, there are virtually no elite athletes in any highly competitive (read: where millions of dollars are at stake) sport who do not consume mass quantities of animal protein in some form. Oddly enough, the people who most resemble elite athletes ARE elite athletes.
“Incidentally, there are virtually no elite athletes in any highly competitive (read: where millions of dollars are at stake) sport who do not consume mass quantities of animal protein in some form. Oddly enough, the people who most resemble elite athletes ARE elite athletes”
Lol….is this what you call logic? There’s no society where rape and murders are not persistent, should this little notion tell us that rape and murders are clever acts?
Besides, even in factual terms your remark is bull shit. And don’t worry I know all about the Taubes-style “If it wasn’t for the low-carb/high fat, I’d be much more fattier”-logic.
“Vegetarian Crowned Germany’s Strongest Man” (2011)
http://www.mfablog.org/2011/08/vegetarian-crowned-germanys-strongest-man.html
I see you’ve failed to address my point.
Let me remind you: vegetarian ≠ vegan. In fact, the highest quality proteins in terms of their anticatabolic/anabolic effects (Read: the best for gaining muscle/losing fat) are apparently various blends of proteins derived from milk and eggs.
Following your logic the “best” protein in your terms would be human protein, do we need that “high-quality”, high-growth facilitating human protein, no. I’d rather to choose the protein which is kindest to my kidneys and liver, although drinking some isolated nutrients is nut cup of tea to begin with.
Muscle meat proteins have lower biologic value than milk protein blends; even if nutritionally desirable human milk proteins are obviously not likely to become widely available for mass consumption by adults any time soon…Although this is interesting: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/02/25/134056923/breast-milk-ice-cream-a-hit-at-london-store And there is no evidence to support avoiding high-quality proteins per se for kidney/organ health; if protein (or calories) needs to be limited for some reason, the emphasis on quality oughta go up, not down.
Patrick Baboumian relied extremely heavily on quark (a type of cheese) and whey for his protein (which if you don’t know how weight lifting works, comprised the major component of his diet).
He is apparently going vegan as of this month, however, so it will be extremely interesting to see how well he performs with all-plant sources of protein.
Then again, low carb has taken many people from high cholesterol to low, from obesity to lower weight, from heart disease to some reversal and removed some people from the type II diabetes roster –go figure. The problem with pseudo science be it conducted by doctors or snake oil salesman or your latest magazine rag–it seldom is scientific except in the claims and throwing around a few studies or comparisons. That is all well and good but a true scientist will usually know the challenges (a component of any study that tries to be the devils advocate) as well as the criteria that must be considered before any position is either taken or bolstered. We are seeing a lot of “studies ” which either do not share the data they should (such as the results of their challenges and a control group–like maybe one fed casein but NOT using aflatoxin as a carcinogen/mutagen) without studies like this running side by side with the actual desired study or clinical trials–you have nada. Butkiss. Nothing. What is amazing is that this is passed off as science. But I also consider the venue. This is in a documentary , NOT because it defies the status quo, but because tthat in the vetting process for scientific study, this type of data does NOT pass muster because it fails to challenge or compare itself to the medical/scientific data of sources which may refute or contradict its own premise.
Please, allow me to send people here instead for Tom’s excellent video “Science for Smart People”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RXvBveht0
The AHS video, alas, does NOT show the slides, and so a big chunk of Tom’s talk seems nonsensical.
Thanks Elenor, enjoyed the video, the laughing irritated but otherwise good information.
Richard, your responses are defensive. This defensiveness indicates that you have an emotional attachment to your chosen dietary style and feel attacked when exposed to new and differing information. Your responses indicate a desire to argue, not reasonably discuss. Nutrition is not religion and should not be based upon belief but understanding. In order to gain understanding you will need to be able to receive new information. Your overly-emotional defensive stance will disallow for receipt of new ideas.
The epitome of a felicitous comment. Thanks for that.
They look cadaverous because their diet does not provide the amino-acids, fats and nutrients their body need. They are living of the meat and fat from their own body, what it can cannibalize. The body is looking for what the supposed “plant based diet” can’t provide.
Documentaries have long served as vehicles for propaganda (no surprises here). This one seems to be particularly flawed.
This documentary contributes nothing regarding the value of a meat-free working hypothesis for optimal nutrition as it contributes nothing regarding the value of any other working hypotheses. It is inconsequential.
And that is the reason why I appreciate this post, Denise. It is great that something as worthless as “Forks Over Knives” has prompted you to work out something as interesting as your post… regardless of its ultimate validity. You have made a contribution and this is always worth praise. Thank you.
DM……might i suggest you write a book called the Broken China study? You method and mind are perfectly suited to this. There will always be vegans because of dogma. But as a doc i am sick of reciting patients who are slowly killing themselves with this dogma. Id love to just write the a Rx for your book. Im patiently awaiting your assistance. Great blog as usual. Dr. K
Thanks, esp the part on Norway was awesome!
Wartime disease rate drops are always very suspicable, as diminishing of available calories, the believability of statistics and wartime stress are as well major possibly confounding factors. Wartime stress might add to the injury as those autopsy studies you referred seem to show. THINCS guys like Kendrick and esp Colpo have built an excellent case for chronic stress and dysfunction of HPA-axis as major contributors on metabolic dysfuntions in heart disease. Post-wartime Finland has been used as an primary example – consuption of animal products went down faster in control areas where there was no intervention. Perhaps radical interventions ie North Carelia project added to post-war stress by rapid cease of smoking and subsequent demise of small farming in Carelia bc of health fascism?
So far, the big picture on wartime coronary disease rates remains full of controversies and variables and seem next to useless other than wild hypotheses generating.
WOW! The best, most in-depth review I’ve read, about anything – ever! You have a new subscriber in me.
It took me 3 days to get through it, but this is the most in depth analysis I’ve ever read. Your humor and witty writing style amazes me! You put all of these scientists to shame and just proved that everyone should get their liberal arts degree before pursuing the sciences.
Thank you for this!
Wow. Denise, you’re just awesome. Great job again. You never fail to make me randomly chuckle throughout, too.
My favorite line:
Would Campbell warn the audience not to Google around for critiques of his study, because they’re all written by shills for the meat industry, or—worse—liberal arts majors?
Keep writing Neisy – we all eagerly await to hear from you!
Awesome, that’s just all I can say.
Thank you so much for this! So when does the best selling book come out?
I can not thank you enough for writing this critique. I just finished watching the documentary. It tries to back up its argument by citing scientific information, but what they present is as unscientific as it can be. You have done a wonderful job of cataloging it all. I am going to share your critique with the people who recommended me the documentary.
great read, denise, with some real lol moments
)
perhaps you should create an iphone app called ‘can i cite this ?”, so people can use it to find out whether the study/book/author that they are about to cite still has any integrity
)
i do have some proper points/questions to save for when i have a little more time
[...] “Forks Over Knives”—Is the science legit? [...]
Denise,
I just wanted to commend you for such an outstanding review. The level of detail you provide is simply brilliant! I recently watched the film and then for some reason remembered your blog. No surprise to see that you provided such an in-depth, comprehensive analysis here.
It’s great that you provide the supporting science and help to fill some of the “gaps” omitted from the data that was provided in this movie.
Again, absolutely brilliant review and thanks for so much for your sharing your knowledge and insight on this.
Best Regards, Scott
[...] [...]
I shocked myself by reading most of this. I am a “scanner” more than a reader but I actually found myself reading and rereading the details that you gave. I think and process globally but there are times when details matter and your discection of the details were very telling. When I heard about the movie my first thought was “Did they eat organic, pastured animals/eggs, et al?” I was never more weak and undernourished than when I was on a macro-biotic diet…My mother is from Germany and we had healthy, hot delicious food every day, growing up in Michigan. Despite our possible good genes (though 3 of the 7 of us died from cancer and one survived skin cancer) we ate a lot of meat and butter but my mom was very concious of health and good nutrition read Adele Davis books from early on. She made her own bread from the best ingredients she could find (and she bought rye bread from Canada that we ate with butter and honey while we played Euchre) I credit this diet with my health today since unfortunately in my early 20′s I got caught up in bulemia and anorexia because my then husband wanted me bone thin and put me on a low-fat diet. I got terribly malnourished and nearly died several times. Long story short, in the past 5 years or so I’ve seriously worked on my health. In the last year is when I went on the high fat/protien along with (more recently) bone broth and coconut oil with kefired raw milk and Cod LIver Oil and liquid Co-Q10 and I’m losing fat like crazy and I feel my back, shoulders and psosas “unfreezing” and my short term memory is coming back. I will be 50 next year and people think I am in my late 30′s even with all of the damage that my body sustained in the past. I credit it with the diet my mom gave us, lots of fat, meat and vegetables. We ate very little sugar, no soda and our treats were apples and sometimes pretzels (in moderation) and we could sometimes have a 7-up since it had no caffene, if we really begged. My poor mom, when McDoanlds came to town we begged her relentlessly for it and we maybe had it once a week after our Christian meeting on Sundays but not that often. My life course shows that the research for “Forks over Knives” is bunk. I’ve done every “diet’ known to man and they all fail in comparison to what I am doing now. The Chronic fatigue, (though I had the virus killed by an electro-something or other machine and that was a huge help) fibro-myalgia, depression etc. that I once had are all gone and my ex-husband possess them all instead. He continues his low-fat diet, “knowing that his arthirits “came from too much weight lifting when I was young” bull…he is a sugar/bread/donut hound, duh! Thank you for the lovely information and the time it took you to make it available to other souls. I don’t have to thank you for your passion because I know you can’t help that! Best.
Wow. Even if you only post every couple of weeks, you put out more quality information than almost anyone. I really don’t know how you do it!
You should write a book or something…after all, 2 or 3 of these monster posts would probably fill one up
Denise IS writing a book. It was announced on Mark’s Daily Apple
[...] also marked the release of Denise Minger’s review of Forks Over Knives, a new movie in which Campbell and his curious rats resurface once again. If you [...]
[...] and legitimacy of the facts and arguments presented. Some reviews have even gone so far as to deconstruct all of the evidence presented (it’s a long read. Like, really long). However, I would have never thought that my [...]
[...] Denise Minger has done her usual very thorough job of re-examining the science presented in this film… “Forks Over Knives”: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique)… [...]
Taking a Trip Down Memory Lane, Fishing for Our Good Friend Glutathione in the Waters of the Memory Hole: How T. Colin Campbell Helped Prove That Protein Protects Us | Mother Nature Obeyed – Weston A Price Foundation
I wish this link would have worked!!!
I don’t know why the pingback link got goofed up! Try this one instead (DEFINITELY worth the read!):
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2011/09/27/taking-a-trip-down-memory-lane-fishing-for-our-good-friend-glutathione-in-the-waters-of-the-memory-hole-how-t-colin-campbell-helped-prove-that-protein-protects-us/
[...] “Forks Over Knives”: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique) Extensive look at the “scientific” claims of the recent movie by Denise Minger at Row Food SOS [...]
Poor men …
This brain, this style, these eyes …
Bravo, Denise.
Richard, are you trying to be funny, or are you serious?
Hi Denise, What a tour de force that was, well done! I don’t know how you have the time or energy to do such thorough analysis and demolition on something like this! I could understand where you came from on the China Study and am only grateful that you took the time and applied the same rigour to this. I think most folk will take the film at face value – much easier that way – which is why we’re where we are now with the whole ‘grain’ (pun intended) debate. Tanks again.
Even if all of the Esselstyn patients fared well, a study shortcoming is that it is a highly selective sample and there is no evidence that these results are applicable to the general population.
Also, regarding the Esselstyn study, your 4 numbered points – except for point 1 – are not very convincing. Points 2 and 3 relate to the study not being a randomized clinical trial. But randomized clinical trials are often biased as well. Case controlled retrospective studies (I realize this isn’t one) are underused. And point 4, that many variables were changed does not detract from the study. The purpose of the study was not to pinpoint a specific dietary factor.
“The purpose of the study was not to pinpoint a specific dietary factor.”
Then why is it being used to promote a specific dietary intervention in the film?
Long and GREAT!!
Glad I read it
What seems obvious here, and concurrent with my comment of earlier, is that what works for one isn’t necessarily going to work for all. Having said that, I agree with an earlier commenter who said that it’s the processing of the foods that renders it poison to our systems, causing disease.
Richard, I believe that you “believe what you believe” pretty strongly, and I respect that, however it cannot be denied we evolved as omnivorous creatures, and thus our bodies need that mix of foods, including animal protein. Yes, I understand and realize that we do not live the same lifestyles as our predecessors, and that we are not living our lives in the same set of “drive to survive” parameters as they. However, an argument might be made that a different set of stresses is present in our lives today, causing a type of stress our ancestors didn’t face. I don’t think anyone can make the argument that we have evolved “beyond” the need for animal protein just yet….
To my understanding, no vegetable, legume, or grain, or any combination thereof, can give us the complete amino acid profile that our bodies need, and that can be found in animal protein. It seems that I also read somewhere that even soy protein, as in tofu, tvp, etc, has an incomplete amino acid profile.
It seems there’s no adequate substitution for animal protein when it comes to fueling the human body!
To promote the idea that mankind needs to adopt an unnatural vegan diet for the sake of the planet is irresponsible, at best.
Not to disparage you over much, but gluten (wheat protein) is only missing lysine in order to be a complete protein. Lysine is commonly found in legumes, so wheat + beans provides a complete amino acid profile.
There are other combinations that provide complete proteins as well, but you have to know what plant proteins are missing what amino acids, and what other plant proteins fill the gap.
This is actually in DM’s blog post in the section about Campbell’s casein studies, it’s just not laid out that way.
The trouble vegans tend to have is it’s very hard to do the protein thing properly and consistently (seriously, wheat and beans at every meal?), even though it is entirely possible. My roommate, an ethical vegetarian, had to move away from pure veganism because he was unable to manage this, and he’s a pretty smart guy. It’s a whole lot easier to just eat meat, which always provides a complete protein.
Never mind what wheat and beans will do in the small intestines of a susceptible person such as myself.
And I was one who found this way of eating tasty. Just not sustainable.
I am tired of fighting on a certain health forum countless variations of vegan/raw food diets. After I pour all my sarcasm (innate and quite impressive) on some promoter of a cold grass soup on a cold winter night, a defender of a warm hay (hay and hay only) stew shows up. I run to the mirror to check my look – no, I am still not a cow.
I respect your sarcasm but no wonder you are tired.
If you think there are only grass eaters and omnivores, and carnivores, you are rudely mistaken.
Have you ever been outside of your home? Nature is not a farm. There is more than just grass in this world, than cows and pigs and dogs. There are billions of different kinds of plants in many different places with many different parts(roots, tubers, leaves, stems) and fruits and seeds. There are many different animals, many different creatures.
There is sprouted, grinding, soaking, culturing, cooking.
Grass is not the only herb, furthermore there are many different species on this planet with specific ways of eating, including eating earth and mineral licks, parrots eat clay, elephants for example consume clay.
The diet recommended in this film is a starch based diet, not a cow diet.
“The diet recommended in this film is a starch based diet, not a cow diet”
Thank you, but thank you … I am pretty sure that starch isn’t good for me.
I think I’ll have a roasted cow for dinner tonight. If it kills half of the world’s vegan/raw food population, I’ll send my condolences.
Not funny.
I never said anything about starch being good (or not) for you.
Wow! I seriously would like to know where you get the concentration, focus, and critical mindset from, Denise.
For other folks who read that: Could you seriously remain concentrated and critical of Denise’s article all the way through? I think I lost my concentration on the half way and just “busyread” until the end.
The main thing I learned from this post is this: Everything that involves analyzing what people did in the past is speculation. Data collection is definitely not 100% accurate and neither is the thought-process of someone analyzing the data. It’s all, in my opinion, very subjective.
I found it helpful to read Denise’s post over 3 days time. There’re so many interesting findings, you really don’t want to miss out by rushing through it.
Dear Ms. Minger,
I can’t believe you have waged war against anyone who switches to a plant based diet to improve their overall health in this review.
Forks Over Knives has a simple message: avoid dairy and meat products and over time, one can reverse/prevent heart disease, diabetes and in some cases cancer.
You attack EVERYTHING in this film, it sounds like you really hate anyone who sticks to a vegan diet.
I am extremely disappointed with your review. I have been able to lose nearly 10 pounds over the past 2 months since I switched to a plantbased diet, and I feel much better for. This is my simple truth, are you going to spend another 10 pages and attack that too?
“Forks Over Knives has a simple message: avoid dairy and meat products and over time, one can reverse/prevent heart disease, diabetes and in some cases cancer. ”
Except doesn’t do as described. Every vegan I know has cancer and they had it after going vegan.
Are you reading Denise wearing blinders?
Gee you really should try to get out and meet some vegans.
Mary- in switching to a plant based diet, what else did you eliminate? Were you already eating clean and healthy with minimal processed foods, and clean meats (game, fish, or pastured/grass fed animal products)? Did you feel better after adjusting your protein from animal products to only plant products? If so- then that’s something to discuss, as it provides a direct comparison/contrast to the criticisms of the film.
However, if you weren’t eating clean, if you were eating lots of pizza, burgers, fries, processed flours (mind you, I love all these foods myself, although I stick to whole grains now, and love me some wheat, so I’m not knocking you here)- was your diet extremely high in carbs but not dense in nutrients? Lots of sugar? I’m thinking average US consumer here. If you switch from eating average to eating clean, you are going to feel better, but you can’t say it was directly the elimination of all animal products, since you eliminated so much at once. That’s what this review, and a lot of Ms. Minger’s writing is about- you can’t, as a scientist, say “we threw out all the animal products in the diet, as well as all the sugar, carbs, processed foods and inflammatory fats- and the people got healthy! It must mean meat is bad!” There are too many variables to make that kind of a statement.
Now- going back to the top of this- if the scientists had a good controlled study of healthy individuals who already ate clean (as defined above, or find your favorite paleo/primal site), and removed the meat, and they ended up even healthier, then you’re on to something. So far, the studies haven’t done that, or been designed around that. So we have a lot of badly created/correlated studies and statistics being bandied about to say ALL meat and animal products are bad.
And in case you missed it- no one here is slamming or hating on a veg centered diet- look at most paleo sites, and you’ll find lots of discussion about veggies and how to cook them. Probably as many ways to make a tasty salad or use an avacado as you’ll find on any vegan site.
You’ll also see a lot of meat eating paleos/primals/WAPs slamming industrial feed lots and grain fed cows and poorly fed animals who aren’t healthy themselves so aren’t really healthy for you either- which is vastly different from healthy, properly fed animals or wild game, which are healthy for you- and if you take the time to read further, you’ll find lots of discussion about the whys and hows, and what to look for in animals products, should you choose to include them in your diet again.
I’ve yet to come across a paleo diet blog saying anything at all about veggies being bad- lots of discussion about grains, but not veggies. Now, there might not be friendly terms with most vegans, but that’s something other than hating vegetables. I’ve yet to read any discussion that says ‘meat good, veggies bad’. Again, look around, and read, and take the time to read the whole post- there are several lines talking about agreement with a veg-centered diet. The whole gist of the critique though, is that the evidence to say animal products are bad or damaging to you is not currently based on strong science from well developed studies.
And if you pay careful attention, you’ll see it stated multiple times by Ms. Minger in multiple posts and comments- if you found a diet that makes you healthy and happy- good for you! Keep it up, and keep learning so that you can improve it more with time. Instead of getting upset, share what you have done- what are the actual changes you have made? What’s working for you, and what problems are you still having? That kind of thing.
10 pounds in 2 months?? If you went on a ketogenic diet you would lose 10 lbs in ten days!! After giving up all grains and legumes I lost 25 lbs in 2 months. amy GERD went away in 2 days and my Arthritis went away in ten days.
“….avoid dairy and meat products and over time, one can reverse/prevent heart disease, diabetes and in some cases cancer….”
Just wondering where you have found that, I would be really interested. As an independent scientific researcher I would certainly take any reference you can give under consideration.
James,
If you watched the film Forks Over Knives, this is the message.
Wow, OMG!
I can’t believe how hated, despised folks who advocate a plant based diet from this blog.
It’s like if you eliminate dairy and meat, you’re a commie or something. it is unbelievable.
Look all I care about is losing weight, and helping myself to reverse the damage done from decades of dairy and meat consumption.
OK? is that a sin or something? Denise and company and most of the bloggers seem to eguate veganism with evil.
Yeah Mary, did you actually read the review? Sure doesn’t look like it. Do you always over react like this when someone disagrees with you?
Random boss “Mary, I don’t think those figures you quoted in your report are accurate”
Mary, ” OMG, Did you just accuse me of being incompetent and EVIL ???”
It wasn’t the meat and dairy that made you a cow. It was what you ate with the meat and dairy. There is only one thing that makes people insulin resistant and that is carbohydrates. Try giving up bread and potatoes and rice and anything white. It is a painless way to lose weight.
There are millions of people currently living in rural South America, Central America, Asia, and Africa on diets of potatoes, corn, rice, millet, cassava, and other starch vegetables with complete freedom from IR.
Yeah, and they’re rapidly catching up with us Westerners due to the influx of cheaper, processed food options.
Citations, please.
Millet is a goitrogen. Bitter cassava is implicated in causing paralysis in rural Africa. Corn-based diets caused pellagra in the American South and Northern Italy 100 years ago. Potatoes contain varying amounts of solenine, a potent toxin which can cause death. (In the United States, wheat products are fortified to prevent pellagra and were heavily promoted by the government. Solenine levels in potatoes are regulated and for this reasons some varieties may not legally be sold. Therefore in the US the worst reaction seen is stomach upset and vomiting. It is unclear what level of millet consumption is safe, but in the US it is minimal. Most cassava available in the US is processed, sweet cassava, and much of the corn consumed is nixtamalized.)
It’s weird–you could have picked better banners, such as sweet potato, taro root, plantain, and, for northern climes, buckwheat and turnip. Of your list, only rice is fairly innocuous (and I’d be surprised if rice isn’t implicated in dental caries).
My perception was not that anyone was attacked, nor was “war waged” on anything. I believe the intent of this review was simply to call into question the faulty “science” behind the low-fat and vegan/vegetarian diets being pushed as the only true answer to good health.
You state yourself that your switch to a plant-based diet was only recent. Do you really want to weigh in on the long-term benefits of such a diet after being on it such a short time? Is that really your “final answer??”
I agree with you Ann. I didn’t see where Denise was attacking anyone. I know Denise and she eats mainly a raw food plant based diet. She had been raw food vegan for 7 of her 24 years. She loves animals and detests the inhumane treatment of factory farmed animals. I found this analysis completely subjective and written with good humor. She was merely stating where the movie lacked in scientific evidence. That’s all.
I meant objective–not subjective.
The movie doesn’t give a lot of scientific information, most is anecdotal. Limiting your intake of meat and dairy certainly is not a wrong approach, however if you do it to limit or reduce your weight, you’re going to be disappointed. Most of you weight is carb related and in particular wheat related. We are in still in the process of discovering how unbelievably unhealthy wheat in any shape or form is.
You will come across William Davis MD, cardiologist in many news releases in the next little while because of his book Wheat Belly.
The link gives the first part of an interview Tom Naughton had with dr. Davis:
http://www.fathead-movie.com/index.php/2011/09/12/interview-with-wheat-belly-author-dr-william-davis/
The second is about the dark side of wheat: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/page/dark-side-wheat-new-perspectives-celiac-disease-wheat-intolerance-sayer-ji
FatHead is another propaganda film.
Oh, I can think of a better one than that. How ’bout “It’s all rhetoric!” Or Keynes: “In the long run, we are all dead.” You might also think of responding to Neisy’s posts with a simple “So you claim.”
Here–Your hero: You’re either for him, or you hate Jesus and want the terrorists to win.
http://youtu.be/BhDhDRvHaGs
Are you responding to me?
Daniel Kirsner said: “Oh, I can think of a better one than that.”
A better what?
Daniel Kirsner said: “You might also think of responding to Neisy’s posts with a simple “So you claim.”.
I wasn’t responding to Denise’s post, I was responding to James comment.
So you claim.
Not worth it Daniel. They have either done some research or they haven’t. In the latter case it’s all blather.
“Opposition is True Friendship”–William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Denise, I love your blogs, and have immense respect for your precocious erudition and skill in handling statistics, but am going to question some of what you say in this “review,” while taking the liberty of bringing Dean Ornish into the discussion though he was not included in the film, since I think he belongs in the overall argument being pursued.
I will focus on Esselstyn, and the evidence for the success of his program, and largely stay out of your war against Campbell ( I agree that you really got him on the wheat issue–you definitely won that round on my score card.) However, though Esselstyn began his work without knowing about Campbell, he made some modifications in it after learning about Campbell, and the two are now working from the same page, so that I think we can read Esselstyn’s results as confirmation of the basic soundness of Campbell’s work. So I think you have a problem; you find many faults with the science behind the program, but are faced with evidence that seems to show that it works–and indeed, that it works spectacularly well. So you dismiss much of what it shows (“weepy personal stories”), and focus on things like Esselstyn’s now rather old published paper.
You begin by giving them all a pretty good mark–“I believe the ‘plant-based doctors’ got a lot of things right, and a diet of whole unprocessed plant foods…can bring tremendous health improvements for people who were formerly eating a low-nutrient, high-crap diet.” But then the qualifiers: “ Especially short term.” ( Short term? we see people who have had over 20 years of happy, healthy life after having been given up as virtually dead–short term??) And you believe that “the perks of eliminating processed junk are inaccurately attributed to eliminating all animal foods.” You are right that the movie focuses on the plants and not on low-fat or junky carbs, but you can’t get everything into one shortish movie–this ain’t a 300 page book. And you are right it does not mention fish–but McDougall has a DVD that talks about fish, and in fact much of the good news about fish can be reinterpreted as “not as bad as meat” rather than as “positively good,” and much of the research on even those omega-3s shows that benefits peak on rather small doses, and some of that benefit may diminish as you bring down the omega-6s, since the ratio seems as important as the absolute amounts.
But on to your critique of Esselstyn’s paper–which is not central to the movie, but I can see why you want to deal with it. In my previous reply I commented on your asssumption that “when studies have a significant drop-out rate, the folks who stick around tend to be the ones having the most success, while the failures slink away”–and suggested that this might well not be true of this group, for a whole variety of reasons, one of which is hinted at by the woman who joined recently, lost weight, cured her diabetes, and comments that you have to follow pretty rigorously or you leave the program. There was no control group–partly because there was no money ( that raises costs quite a bit) and on the other hand, in a sense there was a huge control group–the general American public. It was a “non-randomized study.” Quite true; Esselstyn is not a cardiologist, and could only get either volunteers or referrals from cardiologists who saw their patients as virtually dead, and gave them this last chance to grasp at some more life. And as you say, it changed a whole bunch of variables–it was a complete dietary overhaul–and that was central to the aims of the study.
You then go on to look with alarm at the published results. You acknowledge “super-low total cholesterol levels,” but associate them with “higher rates of cancer, mental illness, infection, and other fun stuff”; but these patients, and the docs (Ph.D. and M.D.) themselves seem remarkably free of such things, though many are well advanced in years. Then a few of the triglycerides are still high, and some of the HDL numbers “are looking pretty sorry as well.” Well, maybe, but Dean Ornish, after considerable experience of this sort of program, says this: “Vegetarians have low levels of total cholesterol, very low LDL levels, and very low rates of coronary heart disease, even though their HDL levels tend to be low and their triglyceride levels tend to be high.” ( Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease, 1996 p/b, p. 261). So these figures may not be as dire as you suggest; it is the end result that counts, not the surrogate markers.
Your critique ends with a pat on the back, a B+ for effort in effect, “useful work, but could do better if he really tried”: “All in all, Essesstyn’s study shows that a whole-foods, plant-based diet is probably (why the qualifier?) infinitely better for cardiovascular health than the junky cuisine many people eat. But it’s far from conclusive evidence that this diet is the best we can do for reversing heart disease, or that it would be generally effective in a population beyond his 11 self-selected subjects. A diet that reduces triglycerides and increases HDL more than his did, for instance, might have an even better outcome.” Well, one extra subject did turn up–the maker of the movie, who had no intention originally of being involved in this way, but saw a doctor who applies the C/E program, got tested, was alarmed, began the program, and very quickly improved his vital statistics substantially. And a good many patients have now followed this kind of program with success; Esselstyn mentions that he has now had 250+ patients in his program, and more doctors are getting involved, like Joel Fuhrman and those in the movie, and, of course, Ornish, whose program is now followed in several centers, and accepted by several insurance companies because it produces results and saves them money. No, more than 11 subjects, please; you are ducking plain facts.
Perhaps a diet that reduces TG and increases HDL more would produce an even better outcome–and I look forward to your book to supply some specifics, and some real life evidence, that this is indeed so. But while waiting for that, I am going to take a quick look at the paper that William Davis published, since he is a doctor of whose work you seem to approve, and the paper addresses these desiderata. Unfortunately I can access only the abstract, and we both know that there can be many a slip between an abstract and the full text of a paper. But here goes anyway.
Davis gathered a group of 45 male and female subjects with coronary calcium calcification scores of greater than 50, “without symptoms of heart disease,” and treated them with “statin therapy, niacin, and omega-3 fatty acid supplementation to achieve LDL and TG or=60, and Vit D supplementation to achieve serum levels of > or =50, in addition to diet advice.” After “a mean of 18 months” (meaning?) 20 experienced decrease in CCS of 12% average; 22 experienced no change or slow progression, and 3 experienced progression exceeding 29%. I do not find these statistics very compelling; his group was in no way comparable to the groups that either Ornish or Esselstyn worked with–this group was symptom free, and only beginning the long trek towards serious heart disease; even with this level of intervention, only 44% were improved, though for many progression was stopped or helped. Let us compare that with figures given by Ornstein, using no anti-cholesterol drugs: “After only one year, the majority (82%) … demonstrated some measurable average reversal of their coronary artery blockages.” (Program for Reversing Heart Disease, p. 17). Not bad after one year?
And about these statistics; one of the things that Ornish learned during many years of applying his program was that the correlation between lipid statistics and actual progress was much looser than he expected. He had assumed that total cholesterol would have to be below 150 for reversal to happen, but found that it was not so (pp. 19-21). What count are results and the cost of achieving them.
You worry about the low total cholesterol in Esselstyn’s group (would that not apply also to Davis’s group?), and about high TGL and low HDL; I worry about high statin doses and their combination with niacin in Davis’s group (I am going to assume that getting LDL below 60 involved fairly high dosage; please correct me if I am wrong). Some years ago there was a good deal of discussion about the dangers of combining the two–it seemed that this considerably raised the % of significant muscle damage. Now that there is an FDA approved drug that combines the two, it must of course be safe… but is it? We are learning that muscle damage is much more prevalent with statin use than used to be thought, even when patients make no complaints of pain or weakness or fatigue. Such damage involves the mitochondria, those tiny energy producing organelles within nearly all the cells of the body, and particularly dense in heart muscle–the heart has in fact been called “one giant mitochondrion.” Some years ago P. Langsjoen published several papers linking statin use to diastolic dysfunction or heart failure, showing that the latter improved with discontinuation of statins. There has been a good deal of work since then, including a paper by Owan in 2005 (PMID: 16003647) that used data from the Mayo Clinic to show that the ratio of diastolic to systolic heart failure had climbed rapidly since the early 1980s, and was now over 50% of hospital admissions for heart failure, a fact that many doctors have not yet taken on board. Diastolic heart failure is a problem for cardiologists, because they do not know how to handle it; Langsjoen’s suggestion that it is due to statins is clearly not welcome, butchimes perfectly with the spreading use of statins, and may very well be true. Stephanie Seneff in a series of blogs details how it might work (see a series of papers with full refs at http://stephanie-on-health.blogspot.com ). There is also a recent article by B.A. Golomb, “Statin adverse effects: a review of the literature and evidence for a mitochondrial mechanism”, PMID: 19159124, with a very full bibliography.
In view of this, I consider that any therapy that involves substantial long term statin doses to achieve some degree of improvement of the state of the cardiac arteries may in the long term be sacrificing the heart muscle itself to achieve that end. In addition, there is a good deal of evidence that statins increase rates of both cancer and diabetes. Diet based therapies are safer than drug based therapies, and even if Davis’s program does lead to long term improvement of those arteries, I would choose Ornish and Esselstyn, since they have demonstrated that also. And not just in those 11 patients: as many here have pointed out, the proponents make a very good case for the long term benefits of their program simply by the state in which they now are, though in their late 70s.
Another point. You mentioned cancer as a possible consequence of too low cholesterol while critiquing Esselstyn. One of the “weepy” stories we hear in the movie is that of a woman who cured metastisized breast cancer by following Dr. McDougall’s advice. Ornstein in Spectrum gives some details of a study (with controls) on prostate cancer that shows slowing and even partial reversal of that cancer with his program, and expresses confidence that it could achieve the same results with breast cancer, though ethical issues prevent him from pursuing such a trial. Granted that Ornstein’s program involves more than diet alone, but diet is a or the major part of it; more evidence for the basic validity of the C/E approach?
You suggest that there is possibly an even better path, and that may be true; even Ornish somewhere suggests that adding fish to his program may be compatible with reversal, though it has not been tested. As far as I know it still has not been tested; if there is ever good evidence for it, I shall rejoice; I love seafood, and live in coastal BC where local wild salmon, halibut, and prawns can all be freely obtained. I think that you, Denise, are as likely as anyone I know of to find a path that combines successfully much of the Campbell/ Esselstyn vegan approach with carefully chosen bits from the paleo doctrine, and I do look forwards very much to that book. But in the meantime, in between-time, I shall stay with what seems to me still the best and best tested regime.
I have one final question: from your website I gather that you had been a vegetarian or vegan for some 10 years before embarking on this very intense and personal quest for the perfect diet. But you yourself seem a pefect product of that diet–slim and healthy of body, wonderfully active and playfully creative of mind. If being vegan can produce both you and the Campbells and Esselstyns of this world, what more can we hope for? Why seek to leave paradise?
And one final word: Ornstein distinguishes between what he calls a “ prevention” diet and a reversal diet. Someone like you with already a long (at 24!) immersion in vegan and vegetarian diets may do just fine on his “prevention” diet, which does include some fish and so on. But most of us have not been so lucky, wise, or happy, and do need some version of his “reversal” diet. For most of us, damage has been done, and hard work will be needed to stop or partially reverse it. Whether that will include some animal protein remains for me a question, but for the time being I shall avoid it.
All in all, Denise, I think you have seriously underestimated and undervalued the good news conveyed in this movie. But I continue to have faith in your good will and high intelligence; now, how about a “review” of Fat, Sick, and nearly Dead, behind which Dr. Joel Fuhrman stands as supporting figure? I have already bought a juicer….
With best wishes, Chris Heppner
Hi Chris,
I really appreciate your comments. This is the kind of thing that moves our collective health dialogue forward — a calm, rational exchange of ideas focused on the science instead of personal attacks. Addressing some of your points:
However, though Esselstyn began his work without knowing about Campbell, he made some modifications in it after learning about Campbell, and the two are now working from the same page, so that I think we can read Esselstyn’s results as confirmation of the basic soundness of Campbell’s work.
Not necessarily. Esselstyn was achieving success with heart disease reversal when his patients were still eating animal protein (dairy), and as I understand it, the modifications he made based on Campbell’s work were more theoretical — not done because they visibly improved his patients’ health, but because he was persuaded by Campbell’s work that animal protein is harmful. Esselstyn’s program involves a lot more than what Campbell was espousing based on his research (particularly the dramatic reduction in not only animal fat but also plant fat), and the huge drop in omega 6 fats/linoleic acid is probably a large component of his program’s success.
So I think you have a problem; you find many faults with the science behind the program, but are faced with evidence that seems to show that it works–and indeed, that it works spectacularly well. So you dismiss much of what it shows (“weepy personal stories”), and focus on things like Esselstyn’s now rather old published paper.
I’ve offered explanations of why I think Esselstyn’s program works, and have never said his program is ineffective. Rather, I believe it’s effective for reasons other than the ones he gives. Esselstyn believes all fat causes endothelial cell damage, that dietary cholesterol is bad, and that reducing blood cholesterol to very low leves via diet and statins is necessary for preventing or reversing heart disease. I believe it’s only specific fats in excess levels that are pro-inflammatory and predispose LDL to oxidizing, and that his diet systematically reduces them by keeping all fat intake under 10% of total calories. That, combined with the elimination of processed food, should be enough to give nearly any program some success with treating heart disease. My concern is that animal foods are removed as part of a long list of dietary changes and their effect has never been isolated in the context of Esselstyn’s work. What if eating a whole-foods, low-PUFA/linoleic acid diet with no processed junk or refined grains is enough to achieve his results, without needing to go vegan? This is my concern, and given the fact that populations have remained heart-disease-free eating large amounts of saturated fat (but low PUFA) and animal products suggest that the elimination of these things might not be central in his program’s success.
You begin by giving them all a pretty good mark–“I believe the ‘plant-based doctors’ got a lot of things right, and a diet of whole unprocessed plant foods…can bring tremendous health improvements for people who were formerly eating a low-nutrient, high-crap diet.” But then the qualifiers: “ Especially short term.” ( Short term? we see people who have had over 20 years of happy, healthy life after having been given up as virtually dead–short term??)
Esselstyn has clinically documented the success of only 11 people. I’m thrilled those people had their lives changed and saved by Esselstyn’s program, and as I mentioned in this critique, found the personal stories quite touching. But 11 people, particularly 11 people who were self-selected and began the diet later in life while desperately ill, can’t be used to gauge the effects of the diet on the population at large. Perhaps I view this less optimistically because I routinely get emails from people on the McDougall program and other low-fat, plant-based diets who are facing health problems. The vegan “failure to thrive” phenomenon is very real, and the success of a handful of people in a unique situation isn’t enough to prove the diet will bring continued health for everyone who adheres to it.
In my previous reply I commented on your asssumption that “when studies have a significant drop-out rate, the folks who stick around tend to be the ones having the most success, while the failures slink away”–and suggested that this might well not be true of this group, for a whole variety of reasons, one of which is hinted at by the woman who joined recently, lost weight, cured her diabetes, and comments that you have to follow pretty rigorously or you leave the program.
It may or may not be true for this group, you’re right. There’s no way to know, and I have no doubt that the difficulty in adhering to Esselstyn’s program played a role in why some people left. But if even one or two of the folks who dropped out/didn’t complete the follow up did so because their health problems were worsening, it would change the picture of Esselstyn’s results. Any way you look at it, the 11 folks who stuck with the program were likely to be the ones having the best success on the diet and are not representative of the general public.
Then a few of the triglycerides are still high, and some of the HDL numbers “are looking pretty sorry as well.” Well, maybe, but Dean Ornish, after considerable experience of this sort of program, says this: “Vegetarians have low levels of total cholesterol, very low LDL levels, and very low rates of coronary heart disease, even though their HDL levels tend to be low and their triglyceride levels tend to be high.”
Seeing as a few of the patients did have lesions that worsened during the study, and some of the patients have lipid profiles that are almost definitely the atherosclerosis-producing “Pattern B” (high trigs, low HDL, small, dense LDL), my first thought is that the diet could benefit from further tweaking — particularly for those folks with sky-high triglycerides — to be fully effective and actually reverse (not just arrest) heart disease in all the patients.
Perhaps a diet that reduces TG and increases HDL more would produce an even better outcome–and I look forward to your book to supply some specifics, and some real life evidence, that this is indeed so.
The science behind this has to do with the etiology of heart disease and is already being written about in many places. Google “LDL pattern A and B,” “oxidized LDL,” etc. The goal is to prevent LDL oxidation by making LDL particles big/fluffy instead of small and dense, reduce endothelial injury, and reduce the formation of foam cells (lipid-loaded macrophages that have gobbled up oxidized LDL and contribute to plaque formation). Coupled with a diet and lifestyle that lowers inflammation, shifting the lipid profile to one with low trigs, high HDL, and large, fluffy LDL removes many of the steps involved in heart disease — without needing to keep total cholesterol under 150 like in Esselstyn’s program.
RE: William Davis — I was unfamiliar with the study he published, but if you read his blog or his recently released book, the theme of his work is in treating heart disease by reducing small LDL via diet (particularly eliminating wheat and refined sugar). He frequently writes about the individual cases of his patients and their success. I guess you could write the unpublished results off as anecdotal, but if that’s the case, the 250+ patients Esselstyn mentioned would also have to be canned as evidence.
And about these statistics; one of the things that Ornish learned during many years of applying his program was that the correlation between lipid statistics and actual progress was much looser than he expected. He had assumed that total cholesterol would have to be below 150 for reversal to happen, but found that it was not so (pp. 19-21). What count are results and the cost of achieving them.
I agree. I also believe it’s possible to achieve those results on a non-vegan diet that preserves the other elements of Ornish and Esselstyn’s programs (linoleic acid/omega 6 reduction, elimination of processed food, etc.).
In view of this, I consider that any therapy that involves substantial long term statin doses to achieve some degree of improvement of the state of the cardiac arteries may in the long term be sacrificing the heart muscle itself to achieve that end. In addition, there is a good deal of evidence that statins increase rates of both cancer and diabetes. Diet based therapies are safer than drug based therapies, and even if Davis’s program does lead to long term improvement of those arteries, I would choose Ornish and Esselstyn, since they have demonstrated that also. And not just in those 11 patients: as many here have pointed out, the proponents make a very good case for the long term benefits of their program simply by the state in which they now are, though in their late 70s.
Esselstyn’s program specifically used statins, and Davis is actually staunchly opposed to them except in rare cases (for instance, read his blog post here: http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog/2011/04/when-might-statins-be-helpful.html). I agree that statin use is generally a trade-off for worse problems.
Another point. You mentioned cancer as a possible consequence of too low cholesterol while critiquing Esselstyn. One of the “weepy” stories we hear in the movie is that of a woman who cured metastisized breast cancer by following Dr. McDougall’s advice. Ornstein in Spectrum gives some details of a study (with controls) on prostate cancer that shows slowing and even partial reversal of that cancer with his program, and expresses confidence that it could achieve the same results with breast cancer, though ethical issues prevent him from pursuing such a trial. Granted that Ornstein’s program involves more than diet alone, but diet is a or the major part of it; more evidence for the basic validity of the C/E approach?
I wrote that low cholesterol is associated with higher rates of some cancers, not that low cholesterol necessarily leads to cancer (the whole “correlation isn’t causation” thing) — sorry if that wasn’t clear! The point was to illustrate that low cholesterol levels are associated with their own set of problems and we shouldn’t assume lower is always better. There is a much more direct and causative connection between low cholesterol and mental illness, depression, hormonal problems, etc. since cholesterol plays a role in neuron signaling and is a precursor for hormone production.
But in the meantime, in between-time, I shall stay with what seems to me still the best and best tested regime.
Chris, the most I ever hope for is that folks find a way to be healthy and happy. If you’ve found something that’s bringing you the results you want, by all means, run with it and rejoice.
I have one final question: from your website I gather that you had been a vegetarian or vegan for some 10 years before embarking on this very intense and personal quest for the perfect diet. But you yourself seem a pefect product of that diet–slim and healthy of body, wonderfully active and playfully creative of mind. If being vegan can produce both you and the Campbells and Esselstyns of this world, what more can we hope for? Why seek to leave paradise?
I developed a large set of health problems as a vegan (mostly dental and cognitive) and was super unhealthy as a vegetarian (catching colds 2 – 3 times per month for basically my entire childhood, after going veggie at age 7… tons of ear infections, bronchitis, fatigue, etc.). Although my diet is still “plant strong,” it wasn’t until I added back some animal foods that my health truly improved.
And one final word: Ornstein distinguishes between what he calls a “ prevention” diet and a reversal diet. Someone like you with already a long (at 24!) immersion in vegan and vegetarian diets may do just fine on his “prevention” diet, which does include some fish and so on. But most of us have not been so lucky, wise, or happy, and do need some version of his “reversal” diet. For most of us, damage has been done, and hard work will be needed to stop or partially reverse it. Whether that will include some animal protein remains for me a question, but for the time being I shall avoid it.
This is a very good point — sometimes more aggressive measures are needed to reverse existing damage. I hope one day we’ll have more studies to shed light on the role of each specific change in programs like Esselstyn’s and Ornish’s.
Chris, thanks again for your detailed and thoughtful comments. I appreciate your readership.
On the point about extremely high aflatoxin to promote cancer, is it not a greater testament to the plant based diet that it was able to stop the cancer growth?
I just wrote a shorter, much less details and much less comprehensive review of my favorite and least favorite screenshots from Forks Over Knives:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/09/forks-over-knives-pictorial-review.html
Naturally, this one is cited.
Chris
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Plenty of Vegans hitting this post with blinders on. To those, I suggest re-reading it about 12 more times and you may see the actual message.
I’d like to see a study where Dr. Esselstyn is given 100 people with advanced heart disease and Dr. Animal Fat (name your favorite doctor who thinks top sirloin doesn’t harm the human cardiovascular system) is given 100 people with advanced heart disease.
One group follow Dr. Essy’s diet. The other group follows the diet high in dietary cholesterol and saturated fat (mostly from animal based foods).
Then we all get to kick back and watch for the next year, the next 5 years and the next 12 years.
I haven’t been to Las Vegas in quite some time. But I know where I would place my bet on a diet competition like that.
I’d love to see more vegans/vegetarians present argument like the gentleman Chris did above (and the lovely people that commented in the AHS wrapup post). That was thought provoking and welcome to me, and I greatly enjoyed the discussion between him and Ms. Minger.
Comments like yours and Richard’s basically give me a headache and make me want to write you and your opinions off, which is unfortunate if you are actually a thoughtful person with good reasoning skills. I’d also love for commentors like yourself to argue daily dietary practice theories separately from the treatment of acute disease and avoid creating strawman arguments. And while he’s kind of not thought about these days, before he went commercial, didn’t Atkins actually successfully use a ketosis diet high on animal protein and fat to treat acute heart disease (it’s been a long while, so I could be mistaken about the severity of those he treated)?
Anyway…
Does anyone know if there are any actual studies being conducted or planned to compare from a common baseline, such as healthy populations of primal/paleo to vegans or vegetarians? That’d be the interesting one to me.
ChristopherD: I’d also love for commentors like yourself to argue daily dietary practice theories separately from the treatment of acute disease and avoid creating strawman arguments.
Is it really a straw man argument to suggest that some think the Esselstyn diet could be improved by adding animal based foods, even “full fat” (not skim or non-fat) animal based foods?
There’s a guy named Uffe Ravnskov who wrote a book titled, “Fat and Cholesterol Are Good For You.” Dr. Ravnskov’s previous book, “The Cholesterol Myths” was mentioned (in a positive way) in the DvD “Fathead.”
So, let’s have an Esselstyn versus Ravnsov match up. Then we can find out if heart disease patients do as well with a diet high in (full fat) animal based foods as they did under Esselstyn’s program.
A study like that (without the competition aspect – an actual controlled scientific study) would be spectacular.
The vast majority of “high carb vs low carb” studies (I don’t know of any animal vs plant studies) tend to be not particularly low carb on the low carb side, or don’t control for potential confounding elements like PUFA’s. This means almost all of these studies must be taken with heavy caveats, and so they don’t leave you with a clear direction for what is healthy and what isn’t.
Epidemiological studies, like The China Study, tend to have such complex and misleading raw figures that the ecology fallacy runs rampant, and you are again left wondering just how reliable and complete a given scientist’s conclusions are. Case in point, Denise’s destruction of Campbell’s arguments based on the study.
A well-run study that specifically targeted the vegan health issue would be wonderful. As far as I know, it has never been done (else one side or the other of the debate would be quoting the snot out of it). In the mean time there is tons of anecdotal evidence that a pure vegan diet is, if nothing else, extremely difficult to maintain in a healthy manner.
[...] Raw Food SOS Critique of Forks Over Knives [...]
Hello,
I just want to say that it has been a very interesting read, and I am not entirely sure what to make of all the information yet. But I do have one comment on protein quality. I will declare now that I am not an expert on any of this stuff, I am just going by the information you put in here, some basic high school biology, and a little help from wikipedia.
Your statement below:
“The rats that stayed cancer-free on an unsupplemented gluten diet were the equivalent of a human eating nothing but wheat, every single day, from the moment they’re weaned off Momma’s teat until the day they die. A vegan eating a mixture of plant foods will naturally end up consuming complementary amino acids, and their body will synthesize the “complete protein” that Campbell says is cancer-promoting. For instance, in the common combination of rice and beans, beans supply extra lysine that rice is low in—the same effect as supplementing gluten with this amino acid.”
This on first glance seems to make sense, but I am nagged by that last statement regarding mixture of plant foods and implying that it is the same as supplementing gluten with an extra amino acid. Now, I have no idea how they supplemented the amino acids, but it seems to me the two could mean very different things.
It may be true that in any given vegan meal, two food groups could provide incomplete proteins that strictly speaking, could added up to complete proteins if you only talk about numbers of amino acids and percentages. But such foods are not made of proteins alone correct? it is bound up together with all sorts of other stuff, like minerals, fiber, sugars…etc. The body may digest actual foods very differently than say supplemented amino acids.
This is from Wiki on complete proteins:
“Absorption of the amino acids and their derivatives into which dietary protein is degraded is done by the gastrointestinal tract. The absorption rates of individual amino acids are highly dependent on the protein source; for example, the digestibilities of many amino acids in humans, the difference between soy and milk proteins[9] and between individual milk proteins, beta-lactoglobulin and casein.[10] For milk proteins, about 50% of the ingested protein is absorbed between the stomach and the jejunum and 90% is absorbed by the time the digested food reaches the ileum.[11] Biological value (BV) is a measure of the proportion of absorbed protein from a food which becomes incorporated into the proteins of the organism’s body.”
This sounds very complicated to me, but it looks to me like there is a possibility that two incomplete proteins from different food sources (which in amino acid counts and percentage may in theory add up to complete proteins) may not actually be broken down the same way by the body as an actual complete protein, or even the same time and therefore may have very different effect on cancer.
Furthermore, even assume that what you say is true, that in a given vegan meal, two incomplete proteins adds to a complete protein. How likely is it I wonder? That two food sources and their incomplete proteins extracted at the same time, the same place, to give full amino acids in just the right percentage as a complete protein, what are the chances? It seems to me very difficult to say. Yet, if you eat animal proteins, which I understand to mean complete proteins almost always, you are guaranteed to have all the amino acids available which are more likely to promote cancer growth correct? This may sound just being over technical, but many people eat meat every single meal, and over a lifetime, doesn’t that risk really add up? I can’t even think of how to calculate that risk…perhaps you can, you seem really good at the math stuff.
Thanks, I really enjoyed this piece, will continue to think more on the topic.
The key is that all of the amino acids are absorbed into the bloodstream – the where is a bit of a red-herring. It all gets into the blood no matter which part of the intestine absorbs it (that is, in fact, why we have different parts of the intestine – to facilitate the digestion of different nutrients), and that is the important part.
The way the body digests protein is to break it down into its constituent amino acids before absorption. So what you actually digest are the individual amino acids themselves, not the whole protein. Amino acids are also not used immediately, but stored until needed. There is no need to eat a complete protein at each meal to meet your amino acid requirements, so long as you are are averaging a complete protein.
Therefore, there is no reason to think that supplementing wheat with beans, for example, would not result in the absorption of the entire amino acid profile. Something in the food would have to actively block the absorption of the amino acids for that to occur. Vegans who eat a varied mix of plant proteins probably don’t have a protein deficiency.
With regards to protein, animal foods are simply easier. If you eat an animal, you get all of your amino acids. No planning necessary. Animal foods are also jam packed with key vitamins and minerals and fats that are either non existent or not very available from plant sources. In my opinion, the problems with cutting meat from your diet are likely more to do with vitamins and fats than protein specifically.
For a liberal arts major – your grasp of epidemiology and statistics is pretty darn good!
I agree about the difficulty with interpretation of correlational data. Don’t tell me the China study threw those those 9,000 variables into one gargantuan multivariate analysis to reach their vege verdict? Surely not.
My favorite line
“Do you smell a rat? I do… and it has hepatocyte necrosis”
Your post was awesome. I’ll be spreading the word.
Denise, could I ask please, when you were vegetarian and had all those health problems, were you eating any white flour, white rice, white sugar, or low-fat dairy?
I realise this could be a difficult question since you were only 7 when you went veggie. Can you remember?
Hi Jane,
My diet shifted a lot between the time I was 7 and the time I was 17, when I reintroduced animal foods. From ages 7 to 11, I ate a semi-healthy vegetarian diet (my parents didn’t buy stuff like soda or sugary cereals), but I was still eating wheat, dairy, and sugar in desserts. When I was 11, I was diagnosed with a wheat allergy and stopped eating all wheat, both refined and whole. A couple years later, I stopped eating dairy and soy because I was sensitive to those foods as well. From 14 to 16 my diet was wheat-free, dairy-free, nearly sugar-free, and soy-free. I was still getting sick all the time. When I was 16, I became a raw vegan, and this was the first time in my life I actually had energy and a functioning immune system. By the end of one year as a raw vegan, though, I had over a dozen cavities, receding gums, hyperactivity mixed with lethargy, constant brain fog, sleeping problems, muscle loss, and a sharp decline in short-term memory (although on the bright side, I still wasn’t getting sick!).
Hope that helps!
Denise, thanks, that does indeed help a great deal. It sounds very much like Chris Masterjohn’s experience. No animal foods, terrible dental health. I suppose it’s the fat-soluble vitamins.
James, is it really true that wheat is so unhealthy? I mean, whole wheat as opposed to white wheat flour? There is a whole industry devoted to wheat-bashing whose arguments are pretty suspect. Yes, doctors remove wheat from their patients’ diets and they get better. We don’t know what would have happened if they’d replaced all the white flour with wholemeal flour.
Is whole wheat so unhealthy? Yes, it certainly is for some of us. I ate whole wheat breads, cereals, and other products (taboule, pilafs, pasta) heavily for most of my life (ages four to forty-four); my diet was centered around it. My consumption of white flour, in the occasional serving of noodles or dessert, was minimal.
I gave up wheat entirely nearly two years ago, and suddenly a host of chronic health problems cleared up: depression, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, eczema, asthma. So apparently all that “healthy whole wheat” wasn’t, for me. But I’m not alone — I hear the same thing from dozens of other people who’ve gone Primal or Paleo.
So yes, the gluten, lectins, and phytates in whole wheat can cause real problems. For quick summaries, see http://www.marksdailyapple.com/why-grains-are-unhealthy/ or http://www.realfooduniversity.com/real-truth-healthy-grains/ .
Denise, many thanks for your (swift!) and helpful reply. You are of course right that Davis says critical things about statins on his blog–which makes it all the more curious that he seems to give them such a central place in his published study. Maybe someone who has access to the full text could throw some light on just what his protocol was?
And thanks for those notes on your early years–I am sorry they were so full of trouble. I, in contrast, despite all kinds of turmoil and difficulties in early and middle years, and varying dietary habits, remained in the best of active health until I was 70–and then got hit hard. So we do come at these questions from very different starting points! I will get back to you on some other points later.
Best wishes, Chris H.
Denise,
Do you have a boy friend? you need to get one girl.
Denise says: I’ve offered explanations of why I think Esselstyn’s program works, and have never said his program is ineffective. Rather, I believe it’s effective for reasons other than the ones he gives.
Bingo!!! Then follow Esselstyn’s program if you want to be hear attack proof. period. If his program is so powerful that it works and can reverse the heart disease, then let him explain why it works rather than your version of why it is effective.
Common sense: If Esselstyn’s program works and your program is diagonally opposite to his program then do you want me to draw conclusions for you?
No, it’s not common sense. It’s wrong because now people are following a program and focusing on unnecessarily strict behaviors like completely avoiding meat for the next 70 years of their life, when they could be enjoying a larger variety of foods and getting the same results.
I’ve got a program for making sure your car will start when you turn the key: keep your tires clean, change the oil regularly, follow the recommended maintenance schedule, and don’t ever, EVER listen to the radio while driving. The radio is the most important part; if you listen to it your car will slowly die. My program works, so let me explain why it works.
Denise says: that his diet systematically reduces them by keeping all fat intake under 10% of total calories. That, combined with the elimination of processed food, should be enough to give nearly any program some success with treating heart disease.
Sounds like you just need a cookie for splitting hair and nitpicking!!! You have criticized Campbell, Dr hammer MCDougall, Dr Esselstyn, Dr Ornish. Now you are on to, Esselstyn’s program is bound to work because on this program you don’t eat anything, so how you are going to get food born illness?
You have made lot of twists and turns since your first Campbell hammering. Now the evidence is so compelling that you are forced to accept Esselstyn works with some ego.
Esselstyn, McDougall, Ornish, Cambell …they all send pretty much the same message as opposed to yours. If you now accept one, doesn’t make any sense why would you lambaste others?
If you think it is non refined/ unprocessed component of their diet which is the kicker, then it is these luminaries who preached that whole foods concept first which now you want to piggyback on. If it wasn’t for these men then we will still be doing high fat, high protein along with potato chips and french fries.
You can write as many dessertations as you like, you have NO CASE in my opinion.
So in other words, since they thought of it first we should just follow along and not make any improvements to their diet recommendations just because they happen to be better than the standard American diet, gotcha.
Mark, do yourself a favor and quit commenting.
Seconded.
Dessertation? Does that somehow involve chocolate?
Earlier this year, Dr. William Castelli did an interview on diet and disease. Castelli was the director for many years of the Framingham Heart Study. So, how do Castelli’s conclusions line up compared to those of Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Cambpell?
http://www.prescription2000.com/Interview-Transcripts/2011-02-18-william-castelli-heart-disease-lipids-transcript.html
. . . . you know some of us knew you could shrink these deposits – I mean I learned you could shrink the deposits in people’s arteries when I was a medical student in Belgium working for a pathologist in the ’50s. When he did an autopsy he would call us over and say “Look at this coming back to Belgium at autopsy all these fat deposits in their arteries.” We said, “Well wait a minute if it’s coming back where did it go?” He said, “I don’t know where it went. Disappeared by 1942.” Well what happened in Belgium in the early ’40s, an army came and well right behind the army came the German trucks. They backed them up to all the farms in Belgium, northern France, Holland, Poland, all the countries the Germans invaded, the trucks showed up. All the meat and livestock went back to Germany and by 1942 in Belgium at autopsy all the fat deposits in the arteries had disappeared.
. . . . .
. . . . . . when we lower the cholesterol we lower the heart attack rate. So it’s a very important player. You know, we know that if I can get your total cholesterol down around let’s say 100 to 130 or so, and I have maybe not quite a billion people on the earth like that, and those people cannot get atherosclerosis. You know in the China Study, for example, when Chou En-lai was dying of cancer he started a study in China just like the Framingham Study. The only difference was it was in 880,000,000 people so it was a little larger than the Framingham Study. But you know they found these villages in China where you couldn’t get a heart attack or you couldn’t get diabetes and the women couldn’t get breast cancer and you know their total cholesterol were 127, but the chances we could ever get Americans down that low with diet and exercise are not good.
Here we go again. Cholesterol is a symptom, an indication that something is not as it should be. Especially the so-called bad cholesterol, actually what am I saying. I mean the lipoproteins , the low density ones, they are the ones that your liver produces in quantity when they are needed to fix something. You can do two things here. Trying to prevent that something is in need of fixing and help the LDL with antioxidants that it does not get damaged, because when there is a war going on in your system the ‘medics’ get hurt.
You want to lower your LDL? Try staying away from wheat and anything wheat related. see: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/page/dark-side-wheat-new-perspectives-celiac-disease-wheat-intolerance-sayer-ji.
or get William Davis’ new book ‘Wheat Belly’
James,
Which is more important, staying away from wheat or staying away from eggs?
Perhaps the leading Canadian stroke prevention expert, Dr. David Spence, says we should stay away from eggs.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2009/04/11/9083531-sun.html
“The only Canadians who should eat eggs regularly are those with a terminal illness,” said Dr. David Spence, a Robarts Research Institute scientist and director of the Stroke Prevention and Atherosclerosis Research Centre in London, which treats more than 6,000 patients.
“Who would you want to believe — the dietitian who works for the Egg Farmers of Canada or a doctor who has spent 30 years trying to prevent strokes? I don’t have any interest in this at all, but they certainly do. They are selling eggs, I am selling stroke prevention,” he said.
http://zestzfulness.blogspot.com/2010/11/cholesterol-in-egg-yolks.html
There’s been a widespread misconception developing among the public and even health practitioners, that consumption of dietary cholesterol and egg yolks is harmless. Much of this has to do with effective egg marketing.
Diet is not just about fasting cholesterol; it is mainly about the postprandial effects of cholesterol, saturated fats, oxidative stress and inflammation. A misplaced focus on fasting lipids obscures three key issues. Dietary cholesterol increases the susceptibility of low-density lipoprotein to oxidation, increases postprandial lipemia and potentiates the adverse effects of dietary saturated fat. Dietary cholesterol, including egg yolks, is harmful to the arteries.
Egg yolks are not something that should be eaten indiscriminately by adults without regard to their global cardiovascular risk, genetic predisposition to heart attacks and overall food habits.
It sounds like it’s time for. . . Chris “Cholesterol” Masterjohn to step in!
Sue,
I agree. Let’s have Dr. David Spence of Canada and Chris Masterjohn debate this.
By the way, Dr. Esselstyn uses the same argument when he tells people not to rely entirely on statins. Esselstyn says that although the statins will result in the liver producing less serum cholesterol, with every bite of steak, every drop of olive oil, you are still assaulting the endothelial lining of your arteries.
In one lecture Dr. Esselstyn gave, he mentioned that Tim Russert was taking statin. But Russert continued to eat the steak, cheese and other endothelial assaulting foods. Then, bam. Fatal heart attack.
Now, some have argued that it wasn’t the steak and cheese that killed Tim Russert. It was the Dr. Pepper and the Coco-puffs.
That’s why we need Uffe Ravnskov (author of “Fat and Cholesterol are Good for You”) and Esselstyn to duke this one out in a study where they each get 100 people with really bad heart disease. We can see which do better.
But Ravnskov can’t hold back. Ravnskov must have his heart disease patients choke down at least 8 ounces of either beef, chicken or pork each day, at least 1 egg each day and at least two ounces of cheese each day.
This way, we will have isolated the variables, so to speak.
Steel,
The liver only makes about 15% of the body’s cholesterol and the primary way it governs plasma cholesterol is through its role in clearing LDL from plasma via the LDL receptor.
I agree with you in principle that we should settle these questions with experimental evidence and that comparing different diets argued to be heart-healthy is important. I do no think, however, that it makes sense to use a dietary approach designed by Dr. Ravnskov’s since he seems to think that diet is irrelevant to heart disease and as such he doesn’t have a dietary prevention program. In any case, whoever’s approach would be chosen, it would be important to collect 200 people (or however many) and randomize them to treatments administered either by the same people, or by randomly selected people. Having someone be actually treated by Esselstyn or an “opponent” of his would seriously confound the interpretation of the study.
I suppose if you can get Dr. Spence to comment on this blog, you can get me to respond. But I think the others were suggesting I respond to your comments, which I’ve attempted to do.
Chris
Haha, I’d love to, but I’m so busy working on my “dessertation” that I’m practically drowning in chocolate and I can’t spend all night wiping it off the keys of my laptop.
Chris
Yes, Chris would probably do a better job. Really I have no comment on this. 30 years trying to prevent stroke?? Guess that’s how he makes his money. Like my brother-law , a pediatric surgeon says, if all people would eat and live healthy we would be out of a job. I know it was tongue in cheek but still. And of course with eggs I mean real eggs from pastured chickens, same as with pork and beef.
The rest is bull, or cascaded knowledge. I thought we were past this but apparently old lies die hard.
James, I asked you a question further up the thread which I imagine you didn’t see. Here it is:
James, is it really true that wheat is so unhealthy? I mean, whole wheat as opposed to white wheat flour? There is a whole industry devoted to wheat-bashing whose arguments are pretty suspect. Yes, doctors remove wheat from their patients’ diets and they get better. We don’t know what would have happened if they’d replaced all the white flour with wholemeal flour.
See the recent book, “Wheat Belly” by William Davis.
There are a variety of components in wheat that are known to cause various problems for certain segments of the population. However, there are also components that are known to cause deleterious effects for all humans. Whole wheat has a higher concentration of lectins (WGA) than white flour.
Mr. Monkey, or if I may call you Steel,
I think it is somewhat disingenuous of Dr. Spence to harp on the conflicts of interests that dietitians working for Egg Farmers of Candada have when he has his own. This is what the review cited in the blog you linked to says:
=========
Conflict of Interest: None of the authors receives funding from purveyors of margarine or eggs. Dr Spence and Dr Davignon have received honoraria and speaker’s fees from several pharmaceutical companies manufacturing lipid-lowering drugs, and Dr Davignon has received support from Pfizer Canada for an annual atherosclerosis symposium; his research has been funded in part by Pfizer Canada, AstraZeneca Canada Inc and Merck Frosst Canada Ltd.
===========
I don’t think this invalidates their arguments, of course, but neither does funding from the Egg Board necessarily invalidate the findings those studies. It’s important to trace the money trail, but ultimately the scientific questions should stand on their own merit.
I agree that heart disease is about oxidative stress, inflammation, and endothelial function. But this review provides no quality evidence that eating eggs hurts these parameters. He cites a study published in a cardiology journal showing that McDonald’s hash browns and Egg McMuffin worsen endothelial function whereas frosted flakes and orange juice do not. This was published in a cardiology journal and cardiology journal’s are notorious for providing useless dietary information. That manuscript would never been accepted as is in Journal of Nutrition or American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. There isn’t even a table providing basic nutrient breakdowns of the two meals. Is it possible that reused fryer oil caused the decrease in endothelial function, or that vitamin C in the orange juice protected against this decline in the other group? To Dr. Spence it is obvious that it was the cholesterol, but to me it’s not so obvious.
He cites two studies purporting to show that eggs increase LDL oxidizability. I don’t accept in vitro LDL oxidizability as a useful measure because this does not necessarily reflect the actual oxidation taking place in vivo. Nevertheless, one study I only have access to in abstract and it doesn’t even mention a control group. The other fed four diets and didn’t randomize the order, so is useless on that basis. Randomization is an essential pre-requisite for cause-and-effect inferences in all scientific studies, and that study would have been rejected outright from the British Medical Journal or from many meta-analyses based on its illegitimate (non-randomized) method of assigning trial order alone.
I don’t think we should always ignore these types of studies, but we should recognize them for what they are. It is disheartening that Dr. Spence spends no effort critiquing the strengths and limitations of the studies he cites. He just cites whatever is convenient.
Maria-Luz Fernandez has conducted a number of randomized, placebo-controlled studies showing that egg consumption has little or no effect on blood lipids in some 70% of people and that in most of the rest it increases total cholesterol without altering the total-to-HDL-C ratio, and that it tends to increase LDL particle size (considered good) without altering LDL oxidation. She responded to Dr. Spence’s review, though Dr. Spence didn’t grapple with any of her research in his review, nor in his response to Fernandez in which he stated rather simply and dismissively, “It is curious how Dr Fernandez, like many others, simply doesn’t want to look at the evidence.”
My curiosity is returned.
Chris
I guess what I find interesting is that whenever some doctor gets the idea into his head that he wants to treat or prevent a heart disease through nutrition rather than through bypass surgery, inevitably the doctor, whether its Ornish, Esselstyn or McDougall, always ends up pushing that plate of animal based food further and further away from the patient.
And with Spence versus stroke we see the same thing. Just as Esselstyn had made a second career of defeating heart disease, Spence’s career seems devoted to preventing strokes.
What does Spence say about eggs? Don’t eat ‘em, at least not the yolks.
Ah, but eating eggs don’t raise serum cholesterol levels very much. Spence says that what happens between the time you eat and the time your blood is drawn is a bigger player. Esselstyn reaches similar conclusions. Esselstyn has explained why statins might reduce your cholestrol count in a blood draw but don’t do as good a job of protecting your arteries as does a low-fat, whole foods, plant based diet.
Now, maybe there are clinicians out there in the universe who have dedicated their lives to stroke prevention and heart disease prevention who are using a diet that is high in eggs, cheese, chicken, pork and beef to prevent the next stroke or the next heart attack. Maybe such people exist. I just haven’t found them yet.
So, what is the guy or gal who wants to avoid a stroke to do? Listen to the egg industry that says eggs yolks are healthy? Or listen to Dr. Spence, Dr. Esselstyn, Dr. Ornish, Dr. McDougall, Dr. Campbell who say that they are unhealthy?
Assuming that this hypothetical guy or gal doesn’t want to try to become a clinical nutritionist on their own, following the lead of those doctors and rejecting the advise of the egg industry seems like the correct course. Don’t you think?
Hi Steel,
Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist practicing in Milwaukee and Medical Director of the “Track Your Plaque” program. He practices “preventive cardiology,” which I think is precisely what you are suggesting — using the food fork and other lifestyle changes to prevent the need for the medical knife. He advocates eating eggs with no restrictions other than appetite.
Is he right about everything? Maybe, but probably not. He’s human like you and me. But if you haven’t found anyone practicing any type of preventive cardiology who doesn’t eschew eggs, I think you need to look just a little bit harder.
I understand your point that Drs. Spence and Esselstyn think that the total exposure of the endothelium to lipids is what matters, and not simply exposure to fasting lipids. I think the evidence is very strong, however, that it is not exposure of the endothelium to lipids per se, but to oxidized lipids that promotes atherosclerosis. If you’d like my rationale for believing this, I described it here:
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Does-Cholesterol-Cause-Heart-Disease-Myth.html
If you prefer audio, I also described it here:
http://chriskresser.com/the-healthy-skeptic-podcast-episode-11
http://chriskresser.com/episode-16-chris-masterjohn-on-cholesterol-heart-disease-part-2
Or if you prefer video:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/08/my-ahs-presentation-is-now-online.html
If you find good evidence that eating eggs over the long term increases lipid oxidation in plasma, I will be happy to discuss it with you.
Chris
Chris,
[Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist practicing in Milwaukee and Medical Director of the “Track Your Plaque” program." He practices “preventive cardiology,” which I think is precisely what you are suggesting — using the food fork and other lifestyle changes to prevent the need for the medical knife. He advocates eating eggs with no restrictions other than appetite.]
Well, maybe the randomized trial featuring 200 heart disease patients should be an Esselstyn versus Davis matchup.
Does Davis allow his patients to eat, say, 8 ounces of beef each day, as part of his preventative cardiology?
If so, perhaps an Esselstyn versus Davis contest would get the issue of whether Esselstyn (and Ornish) got their results primarily by banning processed and refined plant foods (includling vegetable oils) or if their results were heavily dependent on telling their patients to stay away from (or limit) animal based foods.
For the average guy or gal out there, all of these detailed discussions about whether this or that scientific experiment was an intervention trial or an observation trial is unimportant.
The bottom line is: can I eat my top sirloin and avoid that heart attack?
Esselstyn says no. What does Dr. William Davis say?
By the way. I had a phone conversation with Dr. Esselstyn several months ago.
I told him that I had read his book, “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,” read many of the information he provided on his web site and decided to adopt his diet.
I also told him that some relatives of mine (aunt, uncle, 2 cousins) have adopted what I would call a Weston Price Foundation diet.
Standard food at their house these days is:
3 eggs and bacon for breakfast. Steak cooked with butter for lunch and dinner.
Their food is purchased from local farmers, not from corporate farms. Also, the beef is grass fed.
I told Dr. Esselstyn that my relatives eat grass fed beef. He chuckled and called it, “grass fed arsenic.”
So, his position is clear, to say the least.
Hi Steel,
Well I’m sure Dr. Esselstyn realizes that this is an enormous exaggeration. I hope this family is eating more than steak, eggs, and bacon. It’s worth noting that most of the groups Price studied did not eat steak every day.
Thanks for sharing,
Chris
Hi Steel,
I’m probably not the best person commenting to describe Davis’s position because I haven’t finished his book yet, but my understanding is that he does not place any limits on meat consumption because he believes that once you eliminate factors that disrupt appetite (among which he singles out wheat as particularly important) you will settle on a more instinctual eating pattern that provides what your body needs.
I should emphasize that the only reason I brought up Dr. Davis was because you said you weren’t aware of anyone practicing a preventive approach to cardiology that did not eliminate eggs. So, now you are aware of Dr. Davis, who promotes eating eggs as part of his plan.
I think it would be very valuable to test Esselstyn’s approach and Davis’s approach, but I think we should be careful of a few things.
First, each of these is just one of many approaches. It isn’t as if Esselstyn’s approach should act as some sort of prototype for the vegetarian camp and Davis’s should act as a prototype for the omnivorous camp. So you might show that one outperforms the other but it might not provide the definitive answers you want to question such as, “should I eat steak?”
Second, you might run into the problem that both are effective. If this is the case, you may miss out on any evidence for the efficacy of either if all you’ve done is compare the two. So you would instead want to randomize one large group of people to either approach or a control group that receives standard medical treatment.
Third, you’d have to realize that either of these approaches may be difficult to comply with. I think the best way to address this would be to develop as rigorous as possible a measure of compliance, and then publish the results both with an intention-to-treat analysis and a per-protocol analysis. The intention-to-treat analysis includes results for everyone, even those who dropped out or complied poorly, and the per-procotol analysis includes results only for those who complied well. The former addresses the question, “what will be the effect in the general population if we recommend this approach?” while the per-protocol analysis makes some attempt to understand what the true effect of full compliance is, although it is nevertheless seriously confounded by the fact that those who comply well are not a random sample of the total.
Incidentally, Esselstyn’s analysis of his own results violates basically every point contained in my outline of how to properly address these questions, which is why it constitutes rather weak evidence for the claims he makes.
Chris
Earlier, you posted, “I hope this family is eating more than steak, eggs, and bacon.”
If I had to choose between eating exclusively those or exclusively vegetables, I would choose the the meat and eggs.
Since, I value the phytonutrients, and antioxidants in vegetables, I eat those as well.
Again. If I had to choose between animal flesh and vegetables.
Dave
http://lowcarbdoctors.blogspot.com/
I’m sure there are other similar lists out there…
Thanks for this post. Can we get OFF this egg, dietary cholesterol thing? Please?
In the Norway graphic it says ‘rate’ so the number 24 doesn’t mean there were 24 deaths, but that 24% of 10.000 people died of cardiovascular diseases (aka 2400 people) so if you’re talking about a percentage of 30% that lowers to 24% that’s about 600 less deaths, not six, which is quite impressive considering that it all happened in a lapse of 5 years or so.
Be careful interpreting charts, specially if you intend to do so in a critical way.
Hi Lau,
The numbers are indeed actual deaths and not percentages. “Death rate” refers to the number of deaths per a certain number of people, usually 10,000 or 100,000 or another round figure.
If the numbers in the Norway graphs referred to percentages, it would mean that over a quarter of the total population was dying each year from heart disease or stroke. If that were the case, Norway would run out of human citizens pretty fast.
Regarding the Norway data and Dr. Esselstyn’s mention of it in Forks Over Knives. It is interesting that Dr. William Castelli reached a similar conclusion. Here’s an interview he gave back if February of 2011.
http://www.prescription2000.com/Interview-Transcripts/2011-02-18-william-castelli-heart-disease-lipids-transcript.html
Castelli:
. . . . you know some of us knew you could shrink these deposits – I mean I learned you could shrink the deposits in people’s arteries when I was a medical student in Belgium working for a pathologist in the ’50s. When he did an autopsy he would call us over and say “Look at this coming back to Belgium at autopsy all these fat deposits in their arteries.” We said, “Well wait a minute if it’s coming back where did it go?” He said, “I don’t know where it went. Disappeared by 1942.” Well what happened in Belgium in the early ’40s, an army came and well right behind the army came the German trucks. They backed them up to all the farms in Belgium, northern France, Holland, Poland, all the countries the Germans invaded, the trucks showed up. All the meat and livestock went back to Germany and by 1942 in Belgium at autopsy all the fat deposits in the arteries had disappeared.
Me:
Now, apparently there were some others who thought that “livestock” was part of the cause of heart disease.
Because in the 1950s a doctor named Lester Morrison, from Los Angeles, decided to do an experiment and put 50 heart disease patients on an “experimental” diet, a diet in which the amount of animal based foods was reduced (though not completely eliminated). On this experimental diet, the “banned foods” included egg yolks, butter, pork, animal fats, whole milk, cream and other foods made with such items.
Another 50 heart disease patients just ate like “normal.”
Dr. Lester Morrison tracked these two groups over the years.
After 8 years only 12 of the “normals” were still living and breathing. But in the “experimentals,” those backing away from that fatty animal based foods, 28 were still alive.
After 12 years, none of the “normals” were alive. But 19 of the “experimentals” were still alive.
So, maybe Dr Campbell, Dr Esselstyn, Dr McDougall and others are correct in steering people away from the pork and beef.
What were the “banned foods” replaced with?
[...] And to help you defend yourself, here is the great Denise Minger’s review of the new movie “Forks over Knives.“ Great review and the really good stuff starts halfway down under the paragraph header of [...]
Dr. William Willett has this to say about milk and protate cancer.
“A diet high in dairy products has been implicated as a risk factor for prostate cancer. In nine separate studies, the strongest and most consistent dietary factor linked with prostate cancer was high consumption of milk or dairy products. In the largest of these, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health, men who drank two or more glasses of milk a day were almost twice as likely to develop advanced or metastatic (spreading) prostate cancer as those who didnt drink milk at all.”
Seems like Dr. T. Colin Campbell is right. You can turn on and turn off cancer growth, simply by adjusting the level of that milk protein.
What about the effect on overall mortality? That is a much more relevant number than the response of a specific disease to diet.
Thank you Denise for your review of this film. Recommendations and “shares” about it have begun to abound on Facebook. I am leery of things that are popular on FB, just on general principles. I appreciate your exhaustive review of this movie; I have felt that the ideas that we as humans are better off eating only one sort of thing and only that thing, whatever that thing is, are based in pseudoscience at best.
I became very interested in the information about wheat that comes across over and over in the graphs. I wonder whether it is the refined enriched wheat flour that is the problem, and also whether eating whole grain organically grown wheat produces the same problems.
I, for one, have been following a balanced diet comprised of vegetables, fruits, fish, dairy and meat for many years. When I say balanced, I mean I try to get approximately equal amounts of calories from fats, carbs, and proteins. The real difference in my intake as opposed to many other folks’ is that I have been committed to eating NON-PROCESSED food for almost my entire lifetime. And, within the limits of my budget and availability, I choose organic food over non-organic.
I also stay away from all dyes and artificial fragrances and known carcinogens in personal products, cleaning products, and household products.
Additionally, I get lots of fresh air and exercise working in my organic gardens and walking my dog.
I know I am not a statistically significant population, being only one person, but I am almost 59 years old and I am pain free, disease free, full of energy and for the most part do not “look my age”. I’m not sure whether it is my diet, exercise habtis, or my avoidance of known carcinogens and artificial scents and dyes that is responsible for my good health; perhaps a combination of all of the above.
At any rate, I applaud your blog post and intend to post a link to it on my Facebook page in response to the recommendations that I watch the documentary.
Finally, I suggest this as a maxim for people to live by: “Moderation in all things, even moderation”
I have been primarily vegetarian for 40 years. Some dairy throughout this time, recently some white flesh included for social purposes and even the willingness to try blood meat (here, taste this. OK, a taste.). The one overriding factor that is not even addressed in all of this vegan vs animal products hoopla is the suggestion of moderation in the amount of food we consume. Most people eat way, way too much. The completely plant-based or completely meat-based argument is ridiculous. Our dental make-up even indicates we are omnivorous. There is something inherently unintelligent in fanaticism. Moderate the amount of animal products in your diet. That is smart. Moderate the amount of food you consume. That is brilliant.
Jon,
Sounds very reasonable, I suppose.
But again, this is what seems to go against this “moderation” concept.
If someone goes to see a doctor and gets diagnosed with hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, a large majority of doctors reach for the medications and surgeries.
You know. Maybe bypass surgery or a stent for the heart disease. Maybe Lipitor for the high cholesterol, Maybe Glucophage for the diabetes. Blah. Blah. Blah.
But then the patients complain about the drug’s side effects. Or maybe there’s some brain damage done to the patient during the coronary bypass operation. Or maybe the stent fails and there is a need for yet anothe surgery.
So, you have some exceptional doctors. Doctors like Esselstyn, Ornish, Campbell, McDougall, Barnard.
These doctors say, “Hey, guys. Rather than giving people more pills, giving people more coronary bypass operations, more stents, why don’t we get to the root cause of these diseases, the meaty, fatty, toxic American diet?”
At that point, the drug companies, the food industry, the hospitals and cardiology departments are not thrilled with doctors Esselstyn, Ornish, Campbell, McDougall and Barnard.
After all, there is a lot of money to be lost if people stop buying the T-bone steaks, the bacon, the Lipitor, the Glucophage, the coronary bypass surgeries, the stents.
Nobody wins excepts the people who grow rice or corn. But even the corn growers stand to lose because, currently, most corn isn’t fed to human beings as corn. It’s fed to animals, which will then be fed to human beings.
Are those doctors who appeared in “Forks Over Knives” different than your usual, “moderate” doctors? Yes. But that’s a good thing. Not a bad thing.
Moderation is okay. But that doesn’t mean you should smoke a moderate amount of cigarettes.
I agree with you completely.
Nobody says that a “moderate consumption” of crack, heroin etc. is OK. You don’t neccesarily die right away but it is unhealthy nonetheless.
This is something I found at Pubmed that I think applies to the whole Diet-Heart hypothesis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8252690
Differences in coronary mortality can be explained by differences in cholesterol and saturated fat intakes in 40 countries but not in France and Finland. A paradox.
CONCLUSIONS:
Over the years, France and Finland, with similar intakes of cholesterol and saturated fat, consistently have had very different CHD mortality rates. This paradox may be explained as follows. Given a high intake of cholesterol and saturated fat, the country in which people also consume more plant foods, including small amounts of liquid vegetable oils, and more vegetables (more antioxidants) had lower rates of CHD mortality. On the other hand, milk and butterfat were associated with increased CHD mortality, possibly through their effects on thrombosis as well as on atherosclerosis.
You left out the best part, and I know you didn’t miss it because it is right at the beginning of the abstract:
For decades, the coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality rate has been four or more times higher in Finland than in France despite comparable intakes of dietary cholesterol and saturated fat. A potential answer to this paradox is provided by this study of 40 countries and the analyses of other nutrients in the diets besides cholesterol and saturated fat.
There is quite the discussion here on eggs. Would you consider yolk and white part the same? Do they both raise bad cholesterol and or damage endothelial lining and cause atherosclerosis?
I would consider the egg white less harmful than the egg yolk. I think that is why Dr. Lester Morrison, back in the 1950s, banned the egg yolks but didn’t ban the egg whites.
Dr. Dean Ornish, in his late 1980s book, “Program for Reversing Heart Disease,” bans egg yolks but allows egg whites on his “reversal” diet.
The other plant based doctors (McDougall, Esselstyn, Barnard, Campbell) ban the whole egg.
When you get right down to the nub of it, just about every food item you eat on the plant based diets recommened by those guys have two features:
(1) Vitamin C
(2) Fiber
Generally speaking, that’s what tends to separate a plant based food from an animal based food. And it also tends to separate the “whole” plant based food from the “highly processed and refined” plant based food.
Imagine how different the whole “plants versus animals” diet debate would look if human beings were like cats and didn’t need to consume Vitamin C or fiber in their diets.
Right?
Oh. But grains don’t have Vitamin C. They do have fiber though.
One of the reasons I decided to go on the Esselstyn-McDougall diet is the issue of diverticulitus.
My father, when he was in his 50s, had to have a significant section of his colon removed. It was infected or diseased or something. At the time of the surgery, there was a concern that the whole dang colon might have to go bye bye and he would have to carry around, in his rib cage, a bag full of poop. It didn’t get that bad, thank goodness.
But in addition to reducing my risk of heart disease and prostate cancer (Dr. Campbell’s “China Study” and Dr. Walter Willett’s “Reconsidering Calcium”), I was also impressed by Dr. Campbell’s discussion of Dr. Burkett’s work on fiber in “The China Study.”
It seems that when a nation moves away from the whole foods plant based diet as eaten in less developed nations, you start seeing these digestive system related diseases.
That was the great thing about “The China Study.” Chapter 4, “Lessons from China,” is interesting. But the chapters that follow it, the ones where Campbell talks about heart disease, diabetes, auto immune disease and how the food industry manipulates what the public learns about nutrition. That’s Campbell’s huge contribution.
And even on the issue of “The China Study” itself (the Cornell-Oxford-China Project). I have a hard time believing that Dr. Chen and Dr. Campbell messed up the interpretation and somebody with no background in epidemiology just fell into the correct interpretation of the data.
Also, if Dr. Campbell had really “cooked the books” on the China Study, why would Dr. Esselstyn, in 1990, decide to use the China Study as the basis for changing the diet he would recommend to his patients? And then there’s the issue of “if the plant based diet isn’t based on correct interpretations of research, why does it seem to cure or alleviate so many western diseases?”
“why would Dr. Esselstyn, in 1990, decide to use the China Study as the basis for changing the diet”
Because he was duped. People like Denise and Chris Masterjohn who can crunch data with the use of computers were toddlers and grade school students. Esselstyn still gets the results he wants, so no need to change and eat crow. Limiting the available palette of foods for people with a history of food abuse (the reason they’re diseased) during his program may not be such a bad thing. Seems to be his M.O. anyway.
“no background in epidemiology just fell into the correct interpretation”
Pretty sure they were saying that about Einstein when he started busting up the big dog’s work. I know a lot of dipshits who have “backgrounds” or are “credentialed” in subjects that I wouldn’t listen to for a moment.
Grok: “Pretty sure they were saying that about Einstein when he started busting up the big dog’s work.”
Um. Before we conclude that Denise Minger or Chris Masterjohn is another Einstein, wouldn’t it be smart to wait until they develop and make public a dietary pattern? One that can achieve results equal to or superior to the results achieved by Dr. Esselstyn and the other plant based doctors?
It’s one thing to talk and blog about nutrition. It’s quite another to put ones ideas about nutrition in a very difficult rigorous clinical setting.
I’m sorry, you’re right. Einstein’s ideas were just chicken scratch nonsense on a notepad up until the day before they were published and practiced.
They are diiferent, I’m allergic to yolks, like volitile… but I use those whites as I please with no problems. I’m thinking its sulfur related from the bad experiences I’ve had.
Hi Mark,
Our discussion was primarily concerning the yolk, which is the part that contains cholesterol and thus the target of Dr. Spence’s criticisms. The placebo used in Fernandez’s studies was cholesterol- and fat-free eggs. I’m not sure exactly how they are produced but I imagine they are based on egg whites. As I indicated earlier, I don’t believe that the yolks cause endothelial dysfunction, but so far I don’t think anyone has targeted that accusation at the whites at all.
Chris
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Awe man…i just watched Forks over Knives and now I stumble on this. I did read the whole thing (including the links)…now my eyes hurt (must be the carrots) and even more confused. At least we can count on one thing in america…half of the truth. I was sold on the movie and I felt dumb when you pointed out the Norway graph…I figured it was to good to be true but I wanted to open up my pill bottle no more. I was just diagnosed with Lupus out of the blue…and I was looking for a cure (lol) now dashed with a dash of truth. I will read the fine print next time…great blog.
I suppose you are aware of the vitamin D treatment… just in case: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/news-archive/2009/vitamin-d-and-infant-childrens-health/, http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2011/08/02/new-study-concludes-the-need-for-vitamin-d-repletion-in-systemic-lupus-erythematosis-patients/(cites Vitamin D deficiency is associated with an increased autoimmune response in healthy individuals and in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus), http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2011/09/28/brazilian-study-on-sle-and-vitamin-d/ (cites Vitamin D insufficiency in Brazilian patients with SLE: prevalence, associated factors, and relationship with activity).
Best regards.
I get that that there was a vegan agenda in the movie, but what I got from it, was to eat better food and consider how my food choices affect my carbon footprint.
I can’t imagine I’ll ever live my life as a vegan or even a vegetarian (animals are so tasty), but attacking this movie for its flaws in a ridiculously long article was just annoying.
It’s such a shame that someone held a gun to your head and forced you, against your will, to come here and read a thorough analysis of the movie. The annoyance must have been excruciating. My heart goes out to you.
Thanks for the focused energy needed to comprehend the plethora of info in this film. Much was said about the dietary aspects but little credit for supporting the well-constructed portrayal of the current lack of transparency prevailing in agribusiness relations. Without agribusiness/government transparency, what kind of grand scale credible statistics can we rely on for the future? It would after all, have saved you much of the time and effort you committed to cross referencing statistical data. So I’d have to say focus is great but perhaps hyper focusing on selective parts of a respectably professional work will lead to extraneous work. To further that statement, all of the people that read your critique might be a bit prompted to lose their head in the information rather focus their energy on where it matters, where it makes a difference. People who don’t know how to eat are at the mercy of their own help as eating (What, that is) is a teetering habitual act, and there aren’t enough of us to slap corn/soy eaters on the hand every time they stick a MAC nugget in their mouth like a half bitten fingernail, or the end of an apparently delicious eraser. I mean to say that this critique is really something beautiful but it probably comes out wrong because of my evident bias. I simply mean to suggest energy be focused in more productive ways. Other than that, too each his own and I’m glad to have the opportunity to contribute my ideas followed by the pillaging of them.
Did a vegan sleep with your bf? You seem to have a lot of bias in your language. Most studies can be dissected and shown to have flaws if you look hard enough. Those flaws can be twisted in any direction.
Then dissect her dissection, Jen, rather than take a personal shot.
Looks like someone’s (Jen) posting a response without having read the whole text….
Maybe there are many flaws in this study but what we eat has a profound effect on our well being/lifespan. I’m on the Dr Dean Ornish diet for reversing heart disease and this is a peer reviewed, scientifically proven way to reverse heart disease ( actually the only way without pills, but I’m sure you already know this ) and follows closely to many of the conclusions that the China study has revealed. When it comes to food there will be endless points of view but looking at the current health of the industrialized world I see little benefit in endlessly protecting the status quo, so anyone that can help us to look at our present habits and make changes will potentially save countless others.
I think more important than looking at flaws is looking at potential ways to better the health of everyone.
What Denise is doing is just trying to be smart ass. She takes Esselstyn’s diet and then adds 1% – 5 % animal protein and tries to prove that it will achieve the same results. This is absolutely ridiculous. Just 2 decades ago when Ornish and Esselstyn ran plant based experiment, prior to that noone knew how to cure HD let alone reverse it. Reversing HD was unheard of. Only solutions available were pills, stents, and bypasses and then repeat of those till finally the person died.
Now she is nitpicking their diet and trying to win brownie points.
We have seen silly comments, stupid remarks, short sighted or ignorant. Sometimes you even wondered if these people were not reporting from an alternate universe. And then you have the special category of childishness. Grow up.
James, I am still interested in the answer to my question. Here it is for the third time.
James, is it really true that wheat is so unhealthy? I mean, whole wheat as opposed to white wheat flour? There is a whole industry devoted to wheat-bashing whose arguments are pretty suspect. Yes, doctors remove wheat from their patients’ diets and they get better. We don’t know what would have happened if they’d replaced all the white flour with wholemeal flour.
Some the best analysis of wheat so far are on this very blog, if you would take ten seconds and look. There really aren’t a ton of blog posts here, and the ones on wheat have great big letters saying “WHEAT” in them. You’ve been asking the same question for days now, so there isn’t much excuse for not actually looking.
The gist of the wheat issue that I get is that the jury is still out, but signs aren’t looking good for wheat. It is well known to be incredibly destructive for people with sensitive digestive systems, and there is even a serious disease specifically associated with the protein found in wheat (celiac disease). This disease is basically an “eat too much wheat and you’ll die” sort of serious disease. There are a number of studies that suggest gluten may be detrimental to even healthy digestive systems, though obviously not to the extent of a celiac sufferer.
New studies seem to suggest wheat is a major player in a number of diseases (including ALL the diseases cholesterol is blamed for), though it is still a relatively recent avenue of study and we need more studies of various types before we can speak definitively about it.
Thanks bigjeff. I have read it all, don’t worry. Yes, wheat is destructive to people with sensitive digestive systems, but what made them sensitive? The evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of white flour, white rice and white sugar being the culprits. Gluten etc can be dealt with provided the micronutrients are present that their digestion requires. If you have gluten intolerance it means the mechanism normally preventing it isn’t working, not that there is no such mechanism. Look up ‘oral tolerance’.
Sorry to completely disagree Jane. You’re correct about the white flour being not healthy. Pure starch only one step removed from sugar. Actually it turns to glucose in your mouth if you mull over it a bit. The real problems are with the wheat germ agglutinins and the lectins.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/page/dark-side-wheat-new-perspectives-celiac-disease-wheat-intolerance-sayer-ji
If you want to eat wheat take the white stuff and load it up with veggies for fibre.
Hi James, wheat germ agglutinin is a lectin. It’s normally taken up into enterocytes where it gets degraded. Might not happen if your gut isn’t working properly.
It is proposed that the wheat itself is what causes the gut to not work properly.
http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2010/3/12/the-argument-against-cereal-grains-ii.html
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/09/19/paleo-diet-solution/
Thanks Anon for mentioning Kurt’s blog. Yes, among the many others, Paleo, Neo-Paleo, Modified-Paleo, and many other like minded, Kurt Harris is clear level headed and easy to understand. He does not appear to have any agenda other than trying to get the truth out about a healthy diet and grains in any shape or form is not part of it according to him. As I have made clear I am of the same opinion and I have collected quite a data bank of scientific studies to back that up. And yes, Ancel Keyes was a fraud, but so was Fredrick Stare who ran the show at Harvard for many, many years during which time he was in a position to do even more harm. Even our dear Walter Willett is still only half convinced that they have been wrong all those years.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your well-researched critique of this documentary. It is so easy to take films like this as gospel and not research further. I hope everyone that watches Forks Over Knives also reads this. I look forward to reading your blog regularly now!
Thanks for providing a balanced perspective to the movie. I’m thinking about hosting a discussion of it as part of our wellness program and your review will certainly make that much more meaningful. I shared a link to your post in mine,
http://www.insideworkplacewellness.com/2011/10/how-to-green-your-grocery-shopping.html
[...] As health care provider and as a scientist think of myself as a pretty analytical person. I want to see results and I want to see results posted in truth: no data conveniently left out (i.e. Ancel Keys). From a scientific standpoint this movie had tremendous holes in its application. What agenda was the movie promoting? Well to hear the narrator describe it, we’d call it “whole food plant based.” But if we’re getting real, we’re promoting veganism. I get why the film was careful not to include the words vegan or vegetarian in the title or throughout the content. They wanted to be looked at more scientifically sound than to come across as promoting a dogmatic movement. But in the end, this is exactly what the doctors support, it is what they have applied and it is what the movie is trying to support. Again, I have no problem with a film supporting or marketing such material, but when you as Mat Lalonde says, “people that make or overstate their claims or make mistakes are treated to a question and answer period that makes a CIA interrogation look like a teenybopper interview.” Now I’m not quite as well versed in the chemistry and science (yet) as Dr. Lalonde, but I know enough to call shenanigans when I see it . And that’s exactly what this film does with meat, thus, you must expect that any respectable scientist will call you out for what you are promoting… sensationalism. Now I could write forever and break down every piece of information I found fault with in this movie, but I have people to see in practice yet and not enough time to do so. Good news however is that a wonderful writer Denise Minger has already done so for you! If you want to read (and I suggest you block off some time, because this is IN DEPTH and really well done) then here is the link http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique/#more-… [...]
HDL has been thought of as the good cholesterol but as in everything there is more to the story. it is much more than just a number.
The long lived Okinawans have a HDL in the 30s, and the “anti-atherogenic” diet of the Tarahumara Indians keeps their HDLs in the upper 20s.
So, having a high HDL is not a prerequisite or a requirement for optimal heart health.
There are subfractions of HDL and some are good, some not so good.
In recently published research on men in a three-week low fat program, blood tests showed that on entry the men (typical high-fat American-style eaters) had normal amounts of HDL, but the HDL tended to be pro-inflammatory.
Pro-inflammatory HDL promotes plaque build-up in the arteries. But after three weeks on a healthy low fat diet, exit blood tests showed the HDL had been converted from having pro-inflammatory qualities to having anti-inflammatory qualities despite the fact that total levels of HDL had on average gone down a little.
Anti-inflammatory HDL is beneficial because it does a good job of removing LDL from the arterial system.
The lead author Dr. Christian K Roberts and colleagues at UCLA concluded, “Pay attention to the quality of HDL, not the quantity, The function of HDL may be more important than the steady-state plasma [blood] levels.”
Journal of Applied Physiology, 2006; 101: 1727.
In addition other new research found that even one meal rich in saturated fat could interfere with the ability of “good” HDL cholesterol to protect against damage to arteries.
In the study, scientists at the Heart Research Institute in Sydney, Australia fed subjects 2 different meals. One meal was high in saturated fat. Three and six hours after each meal, the scientists measured blood flow and assessed how well HDL was protecting arteries from inflammation. The saturated fat meal essentially turned “good” HDL cholesterol into “bad” HDL cholesterol particles. Instead of being anti-inflammatory, they become pro-inflammatory.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2006; 48: 715.
Another study measured reverse cholesterol transport (RCT) which is the ability of HDL to remove cholesterol. When the subject were put in a healthy low fat diet, the level of HDL went down but the RCT stayed the same. This showed than while the absolute number may have dropped somewhat, the efficiency of the HDL went up.
In other words, having a high HDL from a higher fat diet, may not be a good thing and may in fact, be a bad thing. Yet, having a lower HDL from a healthy lower fat diet, may not be a bad thing and in fact may be a good thing.
The best way to raise HDL is to lose weight and exercise regularly.
Interesting comments.
My husband and I decided to go on a 15 day cleanse and basically followed Esselstyn’s program without knowing it. Since the cleanse (only fruits and vegetables) we have proceeded eating whole plant foods and added grains.
Results:
my total cholesterol dropped from 220 to 157; husband’s, after stopping Lipitor, dropped from 143 to 135. HDL up LDL down
Blood pressure mine has been and still is fine; husband had to stop taking high blood pressure medications as his blood pressure was too low taking it.
(monitors it 3 times a day)
Weight loss: Me 16lbs over a month, husband 12lbs over same period. After bringing on grains our losses have slowed but are still occurring.
Husband’s PAD has virtually disappeared.
We’ve both increased our exercises both cardio and weights. Husband works out 1.5 to 2 hours each day and increased swimming from 40 laps to 70 and has a new PR of 100 laps. I have increased my running from 1.5 miles a day to 2.5. Weight lifting has been added. I’m 52, my husband is 68.
We were meat loving carnivores, I personally was a cheese fanatic. The transition was easy, neither of us misses the meat, but figuring out new meals is a bit of a hassle.
We are amazed at the variety of foods there are to eat that don’t crawl, swim, or walk and how great we feel. Indigestion is gone, we now can eat spicy foods and not have to pay the price. Sleep is better.
You can argue correlations and philosophies and point out holes in the information of the movie but I’m more results oriented. I have tried to lose weight and lower my cholesterol using the eat less exercise more and all I saw was both keep creeping higher. My husband was resigned to having to take meds for the rest of his life. We now see a much different future.
What if Esselstyn and Campbell et al. are right?
The obvious question is: did you cut out processed foods along with the animal foods?
I imagine you probably did, and if so, how do you know it was eliminating the animal foods specifically, rather than the processed foods, that is responsible for your improved health?
Everyone recognizes that processed foods are extremely detrimental to our health. There is no debate, on either side of the vegan issue, that processed foods are bad for you. A vegan who primarily eats doughnuts and chocolate is probably going to be obese and die of a heart attack. This is no surprise, even though both of these are quite easily veganized.
So is it the processed food, or animal foods that are the problem?
You cannot eliminate both in one fell swoop and then claim it is animal foods that caused all the problems. This is why the conclusions of Esselstyn and those like him are unreliable, even if they ultimately see beneficial results. It is entirely possible that their results would be even better if they included animal foods in their diets.
This is why we isolate variables in science – so that we actually know what is causing what.
Define processed foods. Meat is processed through butchering and aging, milk is processed by being pasteurized and homogenized, cheese is processed, flour through milling, sugar, cereal and breads are all processed. If you mean fast food and bagged snacks and sugared drinks we were never fans. We like food too much to eat this tasteless crap.
So, yes we did cut out the very few that we ate. We are semi-retired and work from home. We make most all of our food from scratch with little processed foods. No soda, no fast food. Occasionally a potato chip – medium-sized bag would last more than a week and usually have to be thrown out before all was consumed. Desserts were made by me but usually only once or twice a year – neither of us are sweet crazy. I would say the most processed food we regularly had in the house was cereal, cooking oils, and baking supplies and pasta – oh and my beloved cheese. I abhor long lists of ingredients on any food product and would not buy them.
We thought overall we were eating quite healthily. Especially when compared to what we saw people eating when we where in public.
I understand variables and scientific research. While not a controlled study we do have data before, during and ongoing throughout our transition. Since basic health is based on blood pressure, heart rate, cholesterol and weight, I cannot point to anything that changed all of these for the better other than our eliminating intake of animal protein and the increase of fruits and vegetables. Our consumption of and therefore our elimination of processed foods was negligible.
That my husband was able to give up all medication within a two to three week period has our attention. No dieting, exercise or vitamin regimen has affected his need for meds in 13 years. After 10 years of my cholesterol increasing ever higher then to have it drop 63 points in 2 weeks is nothing short of amazing.
Of course our changes might be attributable to giving up coffee
Hi Julie,
I will be turning 60 on my next birthday. My diet sounds a lot like yours except I also eat eggs, chicken, fish and whole milk mozzarella. No processed foods, no wheat or gluten foods of any kind. I’ve been eating this way since I was in my 30′s when I was diagnosed with migraines. The neurologist put me on this migraine diet which includes the foods I mentioned above along with lots of fruits and veggies. But high protein is required for me
since my body needs the seratonin that I don’t produce in large enough amounts.
My cholesterol is 137 my HDLs are very high and my LDLs are low. I Jazzercise 5 times/week and I feel great.
I’m just saying, it seems like it’s the processed foods that make people unhealthy.
Hi Sue,
I agree with you that processed foods are the dirth of Western diets. But that is my point, we really didn’t partake in eating the stuff and still have the precursors of potential (me) and sustaining (husband) coronary disease. These symptoms only dropped once we eliminated animal proteins and grains.
I’m amazed we like eating this way now. We didn’t do this as a political or compassionate choice to save the earth and animals, we did it to rid ourselves of needing to be on prescription drugs for the rest of our lives and living with the side effects. I grew up on a dairy farm and my husband was, perhaps one of the best grill masters I have known. We LOVE animal protein in all shapes and types. We just don’t want to live with the effects.
If you can hold your cholesterol that low and still imbibe in animal protein, that’s great. But my husband’s history was making his future look really short or bad.
We will continue to track our health indicators and if they stay good we stay on this way of eating. If they go up we get rid of wheat. If that doesn’t work we go raw. If that doesn’t work we flip a coin, consider every medical professional an idiot and do what the heck we feel like
Hi Julie,
I know it’s difficult when you are genetically predisposed. There is so much information now linking wheat and grains to coronary heart disease. It will be interesting to see what your outcomes are. You should read Wheat Belly by William Davis.
Good luck to you.
Sue—one issue I would love to understand better is the issue of cholesterol and health…like yourself, I have very low total cholesterol (130-150, typically) with high HDL; however, I have struggled with health issues over the past decade am aware that there is a strong association between very low total cholesterol and health problems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocholesterolemia ; http://lmgtfy.com/?q=low+cholesterol+mortality ). I don’t know if causation is involved, and _if_ raising total cholesterol would be a good thing, I have no idea how to achieve this–eating more fat, drinking alcohol in moderation, green tea, niacin, etc. have all been for naught, although I have yet to try everything this AHS presenter suggests: http://www.tripleyourhdl.com/ …
It might be interesting to hear what Chris or Neisy have to say on this issue…
My question is this- you say you were eating mostly healthy, but had animal products- what is ‘mostly healthy’ and did you go back to those foods just without the meat?
You leave out a substantial amount of dietary information- and I’m only nitpicking because I’m interested, just to say, I am happy for you both and just wanting more detail as I’m contemplating changes in my own diet, and I know from prior experience that I can often make myself feel better mentally and physically by eating a steak (my own study of one)- so, I’m looking to compare/contrast.
1) you did a cleanse of veggies and fruit- I’m assuming it was a dramatic shift- was it also a shift in total calories? I.e., did you adjust your total fruit and veggie uptake to make up for the calories, or did you end up with a pretty severe reduction as well? Do you have estimates for total calories before/after the shift?
2) What was the shift in total fats?
3) What was the shift in starch/carbs? You state you didn’t eat a lot of processed carbs, so what did you eliminate/replace, if any?
4) You mention eliminating grains as well as meat- which grains? What other ‘healthy, whole foods’ (I’m thinking really starchy root veggies, etc) did you eliminate? If either or both of you are in any way celiac or gluten intollerant, your results could actually be from the elimination of grains. Or have you reintroduced them and had no issues?
5) How much did your variety of foods change? Are you getting a lot more micro nutrients now? My officemate dropped her blood pressure pretty quickly by increasing her potassium, mostly through increased fruits. She’s also in her early 60s, eats a wide variety of foods (many that would be verboten in the primal community too), and has healthy lipids/cholesterol- I would say she’s possibly a bit calorie restricted though, which may help in that respect.
6) The meat you eliminated- how much were you eating and what was it by majority? Standard grain fed beef? Industrial pork or chicken? Fresh fish? Farmed fish? Grass fed/pastured meats? Wild game? What other animal products did you eliminate?
7) Are you strict vegans now? Vegetarian? You leave that out. Whether you intend to or not, you imply vegan, and a lot of them seem to do really well to start with, but not necessarily for the long haul (and I know someone is going to write ‘if they do it right and supplement correctly….’).
8) Have you experimented at all with reintroducing animal products? Pastured beef or possibly game, or wild-caught fish? Since you like animal products and didn’t eliminate them due to ethical concerns, it seems that experimenting with reintroducing something you enjoy is reasonable.
As I understand it, no one has said that Esselstyn’s ideas are completely wrong- just that his studies don’t really back up his stance on animal products since there were such radical shifts in diet to start with. In accute conditions, his radical diet change works- but- and it’s a big one- it’s a radical diet change. Yours is possibly more subtle (although, possibly not, regardless of the possible initial lack of refined starches and sugars).
Campbell’s studies have been reduced pretty well on this blog, and he used correlations for his results too, which have since been mostly picked apart.
Oh- the other thing I’ve been noticing is that a lot of folks are trying to state that they are quite healthy and happy on what they eat now, animal products included, so in as much as you want to be respected for your newfound health, they want the same in return, and the vegan/vegetarian communities tend to use the good Dr.’s as bibles to thump with. That will rile anyone up.
Anyway, again- I’m happy that both you and your husband are doing so much better now, but still- there is a relative lack of detail in all the changes.
-Christopher
1) For 15 days we ate only fruits and vegetables (f&v) raw or cooked. No grains, no dairy, no processed foods, as the lambasted
doctors in this post say, nothing with a mother or a face. I would say we were following the food pyramid 30% fat, 30% protein, 40% carbs.
Calories were reduced, it’s hard to consume equal calories with just f&v to eating meat with carbs. But the smoothie/juice/recipes we were using did have a nominal calorie count so if these were correct we were at least consuming enough calories to sustain our BMI “ideal” weight – which was less than what we were doing previously, hence the weight loss.
As for calories before/after I can only speak for myself, my husband has been losing weight doing his own thing so, sorry I can’t be too specific. I was consuming between 1800/2000 a day on average (I don’t believe this can be exact but I wasn’t losing any weight) and dropped this to an approximate average of 1200/1500. We were literally eating whenever we were hungry.
2) Fats went to zero for 15 days, after the only fat I use is to slightly coat a pan for some cooking and what appears in milk-substitute drinks like hemp, soy, or almond drinks. The rest comes from nuts or avocados – naturally occurring. Now that you ask I will have to start tracking again.
3) Carbs were mostly breads – mostly whole grain based but did love sourdough and ciabatta, rice, cereal (whole grain-low sugar), Non-fat milk, f&v, pasta (white flour & whole wheat). We just changed the proportions around and took out the white flour/sugar items. So we eat probably 5+ servings of f&v a day with beans, a whole-grain something bread, rice, pasta. We love salsa and guacamole so instead of store chips we bake corn tortillas and make the dips without oil. We are also trying baking potato and yucca chips but those need some more tweaking. This is the only thing we missed during the cleanse was something to crunch on.
4) We did not give up starchy root vegetables, these and Portebello mushrooms have become our new meat. We just don’t use them as a carrier for butter, sour cream, etc. We either eat them with salt and pepper, herbs, or top them with a variety of nicely spiced veggies or beans.
5) I do not believe in the one nutrient one fix idea, food and our bodies are (obviously) still beyond the comprehension of science. Foods are not one thing or another they are a complex dance of nutrients that partner with our body. That being said, variety has so increased beyond relying on animal protein. It is far easier to toss down some cheese or munch on left over steak, chicken, etc. This is a plus and a minus right now as we learn how to cook again. I personally get tired of having to think about making food, but know I am retraining myself. After some time we will have a base of foods we can easily go to, but now it is labor intensive.
6) Meats we ate were red meats 1-2 times a week, chicken 1whole a week for the two of us, fish 1-2 times a week. We played with grass-fed, free range, wild caught, but prices were too much to sustain our intake vs our budget so the local groceries were where we bought our meats. We always had some type of cold cuts sliced for a quick nibble (minimally processed – don’t like long ingredient lists). We eliminated all meats, dairy, and white flour/sugar products.
7) We are feeling our way through what we will call the way we eat. Right now we would be called vegan but I am finding that is a moving target based on reading recipes from so-called vegan blogs. We are trying to eliminate any added fats and are mostly successful – just have to be more creative. Soy products are being tried but I’m not too convinced about their worth and taste – most products are quite processed so jury is out on this odd product.
I’m an optimistic pessimist I am happy to take this way of eating for a lifestyle if it keeps producing the numbers we have been seeing. I cannot foresee the future and I have a lot to learn, grocery shopping and cooking has become a whole new experience.
We did opt out after the 15 days as we had an annual weekend planned with a group of friends and we didn’t want to inflict our changes on them with so little time – we all cook a lot – and we didn’t have enough time to prepare so we could follow our choice.
It was fine, we felt guilty and had to talk ourselves into that it was only for a few days but we were happy to get home and back to eating our new way. The biggest thing we noticed and the most immediate was we both got indigestion immediately ingesting some pizza – neither of us had had a problem for nearly a month at this time, were on animal protein we were Tums poppers – this could have been guilt induced
As Esselstyn asks what is more radical, changing your diet or having your body flayed open from sternum to knee cap for a bypass? My husband has had the surgeon’s way, we will now try a different opinion.
Personally, I’m not agreeing with most of the bashing of either Esselstyn’s work or Campbell’s. Correlations in research are not because it is bad science. It is an acceptable outcome of science. If correlations are bad we humans wouldn’t be able to navigate the world on a daily basis. That’s how we decide many choices. If you have 50 actions that significantly correlate with one outcome that is important. Each research study can be picked apart and have other opposing studies compared to it to somehow “debunk it”. It is what a researcher does when building on previous research. They notice something may need more control, etc. and then do the research their way. Anyway, I just think there is a bit of baby out with the bathwater in some posts.
Additionally, I think studies that fail should be published so we have the full body of work good, bad and indifferent.
I will not jump on the bludgeon the meat eater’s wagon. Eating is a personal choice how and why we come to our decisions is ultimately up to us. I’m just for conscious thought about what we eat, here we can be swayed, but again ultimately we choose. Who knows, I may be grazing away and accidentally eat a bug, oh horrors!
Chris this is Denise’s blog not mine
– I thought I was giving too many details for the comments section, but I hope I have filled out enough info to answer your questions.
[...] http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique/ [...]
[...] argument is simply as narrow minded as the vegan one which throws a blanket over all animal products in any quantity are cancer causers. Pure lunacy. If you’re happy and healthy without animal products in your diet, by all means [...]
Great stuff as usual.
I won’t pretend to understand much of the scientific discussions in this argument. My understanding of the specifics is fleeting. I do find them fascinating however, and I do my best to understand as much as I can.
When I try to distill everything I have read along with my own personal experience, the message generally boils down to this: eat real food, both animal based and plant based and avoid anything processed. To be on the “safe” side, I also avoid wheat products. There just seems to be too much smoke in that area for there not to be a fire.
Anyways Denise, thank you so much for this blog. It has helped me understand many nutrition related topics a little better. Many thanks also to Chris Masterjohn and his blog.
I look forward to reading that book you apparently are writing. I am sure it will be filled with information and humor – a great combination.
Mario.
Anthony Colpo is a fraud, Denise. He is the greatest charlatan on the Internet. Please see it before you get the wrath of Colpo also like myself and Muata Kamdibe did.
Anthony Colpo is not a fraud. Have you even read his books?
I don’t think he is a fraud either. He is very abrasive however and it makes listening to him and his message a lot more difficult than it needs to be. I think a lot of his message is probably accurate, but he is so busy lambasting others that the message sometimes gets lost.
Couldn’t agree more with Mario. I too followed his argumentations with Dr.Michael Eades. Rob Wolf can be a bit that way too but in general I prefer Wolf over Colpo. Haven’t bothered with him for a while. There are better sources. One extremely clear and sometimes hilarious scientific researcher and journalist is Melchior Meijer. Too bad he only writes in Dutch and Swedish even though his English is perfect.
“I would say the most processed food we regularly had in the house was cereal, cooking oils, and baking supplies and pasta”
So, if I understand well, you eliminated these, right? Foods that are often cited as being rather unhealthy foods, in case you missed it.
Though, you go on:
“I cannot point to anything that changed all of these for the better other than our eliminating intake of animal protein and the increase of fruits and vegetables”
Really?
And:
“I understand variables and scientific research”.
Er… from here, doesn’t look like you do…
What a great and detailed post! I saw “Forks over Knives” and was going to write a critique on my blog but you’ve done such a great job it will be easier to simply link to your article!
You really highlight the problem with scientific research on nutrition – you simply can’t take just one variable and study it and come up with any kind of meaningful conclusion. There are just too many interactions that take place in real life.
Thanks for the obvious time and effort you put into this.
Hiram
Science and the scientific method are no better than our own minds. They are human activities and human creations. The scientific method IS VERY fallible flawed and considerably limited and has become a dogma of its own. There have been entire departments of science completely rewritten.
It is not the only form of learning. We need to keep a healthy perspective. It can ONLY lead us to provisional truths – AT BEST.
Science many times does NOT accurately help us understand the world around us. There are many things science does not have the ability to answer . Science and the scientific method is NOT the be all, end all.
ALL of us could be wrong- vegans and meat eaters a like about many things.
The arrogance of some scientists. I think scientists need to be stripped naked, thrown on a beach with no food, no water, no shelter, no clothes, and a hostile tropical beach environment . Do you need a randomized clinical trial to know a know how to handle dangerous predators? Of course not. Observation and life experience over and over matter. Clinical trials MEAN NOTHING when you are out there alone like Tom Hanks was in that movie.
WISDOM , not science, matters now. People who live among the animals are experienced – what THEY say matters. Real hunter gatherers living on remote islands. Science means DICK ALL then.
Scientists are so out of touch with reality and the public is tired of their tripe.
Razwell, you are making hasty generalizations about science and scientists, which is not something showing wisdom.
Actually, such comments feel to me just as arrogant as the scientists you’re taking on…!
The scientific methods ARE supposed to be improved on over and over, this IS a part of the scientific approach. The genuine one, I mean. No scientific method is ever supposed to be perfect.
The problem is neither “science” nor “the scientists”. It’s the individuals and their flaws, the peer pressure, the pressure of the industry, of fashion, and so on.
Where I do agree though, is when you claim that wisdom is more important than science. That’s certainly so. Science without wisdom is easily bent to suit one’s foolish goals, (but then guess what, it’s not science anymore! And that’s exactly what Denise and others are pointing out!).
But wisdom WITH science is more porwerful than wisdom without it. Once again, see Denise. Without her genuine scientific approach, her takes on such matters would be rants of no more value than those of a random blogger. (Well except for her style of course, which is great too
).
I recommend you’d check and actualize your definition of “science”: my take is that you missed the actual meaning of that word, and replaced it with a meaning of your own make. Which is not very.. wise.
François Marchand a.k.a. Wizzu
SCIENCE is a HUAMN CREATION. Yes, the problem IS WITH SCIENCE. It is NOT infallible. Denise Minger is just trying to make a name for herself.
ALL of us INCLUDING Denise could be wrong. Science is nothing more thn BELIEF ultimately. I repsect PHILOSPHY art and music so much more.
Science cannot answer or explain how MICHAEL JACKSON could dance so well.
Anthony Colpo , back in 2007 was challenged to a MMA cage match by Muata after an argument. Guess what Colpo did? Colpo fired back a racial insinuation at Muata. Colpo is a FRAUD.
Neither myself, nor Muata likes him.
I’m going to pretend I didn’t read this so I can continue to read your other thoughts with an open mind.
Glad I wasn’t the only one who picked up on the Japanese diet claims. My husband is a sushi chef and out of all of our friends, family, and co-workers I don’t know a single Japanese vegan or vegetarian. My husband grew up in the sixties in Tokyo and he paints a different picture of the daily diet- yes, rice and natto but whale meat and pork were also cheap in the day. Also the schools practically forced milk on the school children every day. The main difference between the Western diet and the Japanese diet was that my husband had to bike 10 miles to get to McDonald’s : )
The science in this documentary is iffy but if it inspires someone whose body is falling apart and can afford to eat whole foods make the switch, I’d say it’s worth the hype. But if you’re sick and poor, sorry to have disturbed your ignorant bliss for nothing.
Atherosclerosis affects only herbivores. Dogs, cats, tigers, and lions can be saturated with fat and cholesterol, and atherosclerotic plaques do not develop.
The only way to produce atherosclerosis in a carnivore is to take out the thyroid gland; then, for some reason, saturated fat and cholesterol have the same effect as in herbivores.
Although most of us conduct our lives as omnivores, in that we eat flesh as well as vegetables and fruits, human beings have characteristics of herbivores, not carnivores. The appendages of carnivores are claws; those of herbivores are hands or hooves. The teeth of carnivores are sharp; those of herbivores are mainly flat (for grinding).
The intestinal tract of carnivores is short, 3 times body length. The intestinal tract of herbivores is long, 12 times body length. Body cooling of carnivores is done by panting. Herbivores cool by sweating. Carnivores drink fluids by lapping. Herbivores drink by sipping. Carnivores produce their own vitamin C, whereas herbivores obtain it from their diet. Thus, humans have characteristics of herbivores, not carnivores.
Thank you. I was going to post this same type of information but you well exceeded my ability to make this salient point.
Just because we choose to eat meat doesn’t mean our bodies have the chemical ability (evolved) to appropriately manage these substances throughout our digestive system.
Huh?? We’ve been eating meat for 10 million years, grains for ten thousand. What do you think we evolved to eat?
Calling what you have regurgitated information is misleading. I should ignore all these nonsense posts, but you have touch the vitamin C issue, the only one that I would comment on (I refer to AHS and their presenters for anything else). There are a few mammalian and avian species that have lost their ability to generate their own ascorbic acid in their livers (or kidneys in less evolved birds). It is simply not true that herbivores doesn’t make their own.
It would be wise from you to try first to check the (in)credibility of your sources before posting unreferenced misinformation.
Here’s some research co-authored by Dr. David Jenkins, the Canadan Clinical Nutritionist who created the Glycemic Index, which is relavent to the man’s natural diet.
The Western Lowland Gorilla Diet Has Implications for the Health of Humans and Other Hominoids
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/127/10/2000.long
We suggest that humans also evolved consuming similar high foliage, high fiber diets, which were low in fat and dietary cholesterol.
We believe that an understanding of the diets eaten by the great apes might provide insights into the diet eaten by a common ancestor, which thus influenced the evolution of the human genome. Such knowledge may be valuable in understanding human dietary requirements. Anatomically, the digestive tracts of humans and great apes are very similar (Stevens and Hume 1995). It has also been estimated that the great apes differ in genetic makeup by <3% among themselves and that the difference between humans and the great apes is of the same magnitude (Sibley and Ahlquist 1984 and 1987). In addition, the great apes have many dietary factors in common, namely, largely vegetarian diets with high foliage and fruit consumption (MacKinnon 1971, McGrew et al. 1988, Tutin and Fernandez 1993). These conclusions are based on tracking and direct observation of feeding practices and fecal analysis. This dietary characteristic of high foliage consumption has been developed still further in certain old world monkeys (colobus monkeys) who have evolved foregut fermentation chambers analogous to herbivorous ungulates (Waterman et al. 1980). In terms of high levels of plant consumption, great apes differ from humans, and western humans in particular, at a time when, ironically, health recommendations all point to the increased consumption of fruit and vegetables (Health Canada 1992, Suber et al. 1992).
http://huntgatherlove.com/content/ape-diets-even-scientists-get-it-wrong
You are mainly arguing from a false dichotomy. A human is not a carnivore, nor a herbivore, but an omnivore, and a very particular and unique one at that. Saying that we don’t have the characteristics of a carnivore and therefore we must be a herbivore ignores the possibility of a middle ground. We don’t have the characteristics of a herbivore either. And we cook our food, which changed our GI tract through natural selection.
A rat is an omnivore, who eats both animals and plants, despite the protests of -some- people. And being an omnivore, like a human is an omnivore, it can be given atherosclerosis through feeding of industrial seed oils and sugar. Therefore there exist omnivores who can get atherosclerosis, without eating any meat for that matter.
If humans do not need to eat meat, then how come that vegetarians who do not eat meat suffer from cognitive impairment when they do not get exogenous creatine, only found in animal flesh? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21118604
Actually, creatine supplementation does not improve cognitive function.
Here’s some research on the subject.
Creatine supplementation does not improve cognitive function in young adults.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18579168
There were no significant effects of group, no significant effects of time, and no significant group by time interactions for RT [simple reaction time], CS , CSD , LRS [logical reasoning symbolic], MP [mathematical processing], RM [running memory], and MR [Sternberg memory recall] (all p>0.05), indicating that there were no differences between creatine and placebo supplemented groups at any time.
I think that you miss my point. It did not improve cognitive function in omnivores, since they already had enough, but it did improve cognitive function in vegetarians, since they do not get any from the diet. The study that you posted must have been done on omnivores then, I don’t see any mention of vegetarians.
-Our teeth suggests that we are omnivores. The necessary physiology to digest both meat and produce exists in our digestive system
-Our closest cousin the chimpanzee is an omnivore (it also has hands) and while it may not have claws to help get at animal proteins it uses tools like we do
-Pandas are classified as herbivores, but have a carnivore’s digestive tract
-Many herbivores are unable to sweat, and they too pant or find other ways to cool. i.e. Kangaroos will lick their wrists to cool down. Endurance hunters like the African Bushmen chase grass-grazing prey until their prey collapse because they are unable to thermoregulate while running. Birds can’t sweat, but a lot of them do eat animal protein. Heck, most animals aren’t able to sweat as their main means of thermoregulation. Horses and humans are one of the few that do. Oh, btw cats and dogs have sweat glands on their footpads.
-We have characteristics of both herbivores and carnivores…I guess that means we should be omnivores!
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-6a.shtml
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/230289
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/are-we-meat-eaters-or-vegetarians-part-ii/
from http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/basics/overview.html
Finally, a note about differences in digestive anatomy and physiology among animals. The digestive systems of humans, dogs, mice, horses, kangaroos and great white sharks are, to a first approximation, virtually identical. If you look more carefully however, it becomes apparent that each of these species has evolved certain digestive specializations that have allowed it to adapt to a particular diet.
These differences become particularly apparent when you compare a carnivore like a cat with a herbivore like a goat or a horse. Goats and horses evolved from ancestors that subsisted on plants and adapted parts of their digestive tracts into massive fermentation vats which enabled them efficiently utilize cellulose, the major carbohydrate of plants.
In contrast, cats evolved from animals that lived on the carcasses of other animals, and have digestive systems that reflect this history – extremely small fermentation vats and essentially no ability to utilize cellulose. Bridging the gap between carnivores and herbivores are omnivores like humans and pigs, whose digestive tracts attest to a historical diet that included both plants and animals.
the following is an old 2010 post on inspire.com, author unknown:
Humans are omnivores (meat and plant eaters) which means they have traits from both carnivores (meat eaters) and herbivores (plant eaters). That is why we have canine teeth and molars for grinding. Notice that your back molars are NOT flat for grinding like those of an herbivore. They are actually very sloped and can be used for grinding, chewing, or tearing. That’s why we chew tough beef jerky with our back molars, it’s what they were designed for. In contrast, look at the teeth from a pure herbivore like a horse or cow and their molars are much flatter.
Concerning perspiration…perspiration through the sweat glands is primarily limited to mammals. It is not a carnivore vs. herbivore property. Aligators and crocodiles are carnivores and do not sweat. Lions are carnivores and mammals, and they do sweat, just not very much.
The primary reason most carniverous mammals don’t sweat is because perspiration contains two smelly odorants, 2-methylphenol (o-cresol) and 4-methylphenol (p-cresol), which would alert prey which have highly developed senses of smell and would hinder their ability to hunt.
Also, not all herbivores have sweat glands. Pigs, rabbits, and elephants are good examples of plant eaters that don’t have sweat glands.
Concerning claws…not only carnivores have claws. Sloths, koalas and pandas are good examples of herbivores that eat plants and have claws used for tearing or climbing. Oppossums are a good example of omnivores (what humans are) that have sharp claws.
Back in 2007, Muata Kamdibe and Anthony Colpo had a najor argument. Muata challenged Anthony Colpo to an MMA cage match . Anthony Colpo ( knowing he’d lose declined). He then fired back a racical insinuation at Muata.
I want EVERYONE to know this. It is 100 % true.
Science IS flawed. The scientific method is VERY limited, flawed and fallible. Science can do no better than a provisional truth at best.
Do not overestimate science. It does NOT necessarily give us the TRUTH about the world around us. Remember that. The New Yorker has an EXCELLENT article: “The deline effect and the scientific method”
There is science and then there is TRUTH. Many times science will never lead us to the truth.
You people give FAR too much credit to the scientific method. THAT is arrogance. Denise is no diffrent than Mark Sisson, Colpo and the rest of these Internet idiot jerk weirdos.
No bias there at all is there? I am thinking if the science pointed in the direction you liked, you would like the science a lot more.
People like Denise and Chris Masterjohn and others may be many things I don’t know about, but I seriously doubt they are “internet idiot jerk weirdos”. They are extremely bright individuals who give a lot of their time and effort for people like me and you to learn from. Rather than railing against them, take the time to actually read and listen and you might learn something in the debate. I know I am learning more every day and I am extremely grateful to have resrouces like the people you disparage available to me.
Mario I appreciate your vote of confidence. I don’t mind being called a “weirdo,” but I do object to being described as “internet,” since I’ve been putting a lot of hard work into my ability to occupy three-dimensional space lately and I’d hate to think I’m not having any success.
Chris
Oops. I’ve changed my mind now. After reading this one, I’ll add you to my “Internet jerk weirdos” list whatever that is. Congrats you’re the 1st one
This is fun!
Ha, I had Razwell on my “internet jerk weirdos” list from the second I heard of him.
The delusional one is the one who says that there is science and that there is truth, and that science doesn’t always lead to truth, so science isn’t to be trusted. Well duh, but it’s the best we have. How do you propose we find this magical truth of yours? As Mario suggested, maybe all we need to do is have your opinion on things.
I don’t think that Denise has said or will ever say that science is infallible, but if we want to persuade others we have to use evidence and reason.
“How do you propose we find this magical truth of yours? As Mario suggested, maybe all we need to do is have your opinion on things.”
Was my thoughts exactly when reading Razwell’s rant. Thanks Stabby.
Obscurantism is always lurking around, ready to take control….
I agree with Razwell. Any person associated with that fraud Mark Sisson etc. is a weirdo. You Paleo people are all fat losers. How much you eat is far more important that what you eat. You’re even more dogmatic that the vegans are.
Denise slants things and is baised just as Colpo. All of you Sisson people are biased. None of you are objective and really searching for truth . Razwell is right.
Hi Michael/Razwell,
You’re welcome to hold whatever opinion you want of me, Anthony Colpo, Mark Sisson, and the scientific method—but keep in mind I can see IP addresses when you comment. If you’re going to post under two different names, try getting either an IP-hiding program or posting from another computer so it’s less obvious that you guys are the same person.
I actually agree that science can be woefully misused and “bent” from financial pressure or special interest to reach conclusions other than the truth. It’s unfortunate, but the scientific method is still the best thing we’ve got for objectively studying our world. Applied correctly, science should be able to illuminate the mechanics behind “ancient wisdom” and show why old traditions were valid. No doubt there are some elements of the universe and the human experience that science can’t yet touch, and perhaps never will—but nutrition and the effects of certain foods or nutrients on health is usually explorable through observation, hypothesis testing, data collection, etc.
As chiropteran excrement crazy as Razwell is, it could just be one of an unknown number of multiple personalities rattling around in his head.
That was a cute rant. Seems dirty Sanchez isn’t smart enough to use a proxy.
Since he brought up “fat losers”… Last time I checked, Denise, Colpo and Sisson were all ripped, and this tool was too big of a pansy to put his photos up.
Anybody want to put money on if you combined Denise, Anthony, and Mark’s bodyfat percentages, it would still be lower than this emotional loudmouth’s?
Hey Razchez, I heard if you take a bite of flesh the boogyman will fly out of your your butt! Be afraid my friend.
I am laughing so hard at your bogeyman comment! Thanks!
This may help you in the future:
http://i657.photobucket.com/albums/uu295/DanfromtheHills/argument-pyramid.jpg?t=1242335702
Hi Razwell,
I also recommend The Decline Effect. It’s an excellent article and if anyone else would like to read it, it can be found here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1
I think this effect largely results from the combination of reporting bias, publication bias, and regression to the mean.
I also agree with what you said about primitive wisdom. You might like my article on that topic, in which I made many of the same points you made, including the important distinction between knowledge and wisdom:
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2011/06/12/understanding-weston-price-on-primitive-wisdom-ancient-doesnt-cut-it/
Knowledge without love leads to arrogance, and knowledge without wisdom leads to great mistakes with harmful consequences. As a scientist, I agree with you that science can only supply us with provisional inferences about an objective truth. I don’t think the truth changes, but our imperfect understanding of it certainly does. And I agree that there are many things that science cannot and will never be able to test. In my life, the things I’ve become most certain about have been things I did not learn from science. What science has taught me most effectively is how little I truly know.
I would suggest to you that perhaps it is equally unwise to denigrate and ignore an entire category of inquiry as it is to exalt such a category at the expense of all others. Perhaps there are many ways of learning that provide different types of information, and perhaps there are occasions in which it is as virtuous to obtain enough humility and simplicity to admit we don’t know something than it is to obtain knowledge. In that case, the imperfections in the scientific method are not a cause for stumbling. They are a cause for joyfully appreciating how vast the world is and how miniscule our body of knowledge is in comparison.
Chris
(Chris Masterjohn wrote)
“In that case, the imperfections in the scientific method are not a cause for stumbling. They are a cause for joyfully appreciating how vast the world is and how miniscule our body of knowledge is in comparison.”
This is probably the most beautiful thing written on this subject, that I ever had the pleasure to read.
Thanks, this makes my day
Wizzu
Hi Wizzu,
Thanks! If I could somehow find a job as a day-maker I’d take it in a second.
Chris
Hi Chris,
OMG. . .you are such an inspirational writer! You and Denise have such a gift with words and humor. I expect to see your book on the bestseller’s list next to Denise’s (after you’re done with your dissertation, of course).
BTW has anyone ever told you that you look like Detroit’s ace starting pitcher, Verlander?–cute!
Hi Sue,
Comparing my humor to Denise’s is far took kind of you, but I appreciate it nonetheless. If I have any small gift in that area I can only say that some stars shine brighter than others.
I had never heard of Verlander till now but thanks.
Chris
My habit of proofreading comments during the brief lapse of time between hitting “post comment” and seeing the comment appear is probably not one of my strengths. You are “too kind,” Sue, too kind. I will try not to do this with my book!
Chris
I’ve had a fight with Anthony Colpo too. It’s really odd how so much of what he says is excellent, and the rest absolute crap. But the oddest thing was that he chose to post our email conversation on his site. If I’d been him, I’d have been hugely embarrassed to have the world see what a fool he made of himself.
Colpo is extremely abrasive and sometimes the message gets lost because of that. On the whole though, what he says makes a great deal of sense to me and he backs it up with real scientific studies.
If you disagree with him (I think of his pi__ing contest with Michael Eades in particular) he rants and raves and is like a pit bull on a bone but he normally backs up what he says pretty well.
Yes he does, which is why his conversation with me was so strange. He seems to have mistaken me for a government agent, and to believe the government is out to get him. I supppose if you’re as abrasive as that, you’re going to think everybody is your enemy. In fact he does talk nonsense about whole grains vs refined grains, and has not made the connection between micronutrient deficiencies, which he says are common as indeed they are, with consumption of foods which have had them removed. I cannot explain it.
[...] seen Denise Minger’s chronological, point-by-point rebuttal of the movie, be sure and check it out when you have some time to devote to it. It’s epic. I feel like I was fairly generous to the [...]
[...] check out this website for information. For an in depth break down of the movie, you can check out this link, which comments on both the flaws, and positive points to this movie. In my personal opinion, it [...]
Foods containing saturated and trans fatty acids enhance coronary occlusion
http://www.ajcn.org/content/64/2/253.long
Some dietary factors protect against the development of coronary heart disease and other dietary factors are pathogenic, enhancing atherosclerosis. The study by Watts et al titled “Dietary fatty acids and progression of coronary artery disease in men” emphasizes that foods containing saturated and trans fatty acids enhance coronary occlusion as shown by the technique of computerized angiography.
The saturated fatty acids incriminated were longchain saturated fatty acids-myristic, palmitic, and stearic acids. In men who ate foods containing these fatty acids coronary artery disease progressed, whereas in men who restricted these fatty acids in their diets coronary lesions stabilized, certainly a beneficial result. The foods that contained these fatty acids were all derived from animal sources, such as dairy products (milk, cheese, and butter), and red meat, particularly lamb. The foods that contained trans fatty acids hydrogenated by ruminant animals were also correlated with more coronary artery disease.
Animals do not hydrogenate fat, man does! To mix saturated and trans- fats is wrong on so many levels! They are two completely different fats. One is natural to the body and one is alien to the body. I stopped reading the article when it started saying that PUFAs were beneficial, especially vegetable oil. PUFAs have been proven to promote cancers in the body and it is strongly recommended that people lower their PUFA intake!
Please post things when you know what you are talking about. So far most of your posts have just been direct snippets of various flawed studies that promote your way of thinking. You are blind and quite boring!
I’m afraid this isn’t actually true. Animals fat does contain trans fat.
http://www.carolinehd.org/pdf/TransFatFAQ.pdf
This is not hydrogenated corn oil, its complicated but that’s how science is
Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease
http://www.ajcn.org/content/91/3/535.long
Classic blunder due to deficient basic science education. Similar examples: 1. Rat poison and water were found to be particularly toxic.
2. Cause of death: chewing gum while under the wheels of a speeding bus
nah. A meta-analysis is a beautiful thing. Grouping years of research together and crunching out the numbers in a huge, cumulative group – quite a powerful tool.Discarding poorly structured studies. Performing secondary meta-analysis on chosen points, improving outcome quality even more. And this meta-analysis pooled the results of over 300,000 subjects, finding no association between cardiac disease and saturated fat intake. They did a good job – and they looked at volumes of information, ie, “In contrast, a number of studies did not show significant associations of dietary saturated fat intake with CHD, including the Western Electric Study (17), the Honolulu Heart Study (9), the Ireland Boston Diet Heart Study (13), the Caerphilly Study (28), the Framingham Heart Study (16), the Israeli Ischemic Study (35), the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Study (15), the Nurses’ Health Study (33), the Malmo Diet and Cancer Study (14), and the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (18).
With respect to stroke, although inverse associations of saturated fat intake with hemorrhagic stroke were reported in 2 studies (11, 30), no association between saturated fat and stroke was found in 6 other studies (9, 14, 29, 31, 34, 35). The relation of saturated fat with ischemic versus hemorrhagic stroke may differ given their different biological mechanisms, and consideration of these 2 disease states as distinct endpoints may be important. ” I would say this research team knows their stuff. Do you? Did you read the study? Are you being provocative because you don’t like the conclusion? Research isn’t about what we like – it is about information. The information supporting a lack of causation of saturated fat to heart disease is pretty sound. Not exactly pirates and global warming, is it?
Lisa don’t worry. Nobody, but the severely disturbed or mentally challenged would mix you up with Lisa Smith.
Thank you James!
Dear “non-S” Lisa,
It’s taken me quite some time to go through all of this group posting of yours.
I enjoyed every bit of it.
And added you to my “most interesting posters” list.
Dear Wizzu – I also enjoyed your postings – but was way behind you as is an unfortunate norm for me. The discussion was great – surely one of the best I’ve ever seen!!
Dr. William Castelli, long time director of the Framingham Heart Study, in an interview says. . . . .
the recent Reader’s Digest said eat sirloin. Well that would be a mistake because when you eat fat it goes into your blood, as chylomicrons. Well they’re not atherogenic, but they’re quickly converted to two of the most atherogenic things we know of, chylomicron remnants and the free fatty acids. And they shower down on your artery wall after a high fat meal and make fat deposits.
http://www.prescription2000.com/Interview-Transcripts/2011-02-18-william-castelli-heart-disease-lipids-transcript.html
from http://coconut-info.com/diet_and_disease.htm:
Although Framingham is often associated with proof of the lipid hypothesis, the results of this 40-year study have been a disappointment to its promoters.
Investigators claimed that there was a 240% increase in “risk” of coronary heart disease, or CHD, between cholesterol levels of 182 and 244. But the actual rate of increase was only .13%.
Between cholesterol levels of 244 and 294, the rate of CHD actually declined.
Thus Framingham investigators found virtually no difference in heart disease for serum cholesterol levels between 182 and 284 the vast majority of the U.S. population.
Nor did they find that diets high in fat and cholesterol predisposed an individual to heart disease.
As Dr. William Castelli, the current director of the Framingham project, admitted as recently as 1992: “In Framingham, Massachusetts, the more saturated fat one ate, the more cholesterol one ate, the lower people’s serum cholesterol… we found that the people who ate the most cholesterol, ate the most saturated fat, ate the most calories weighed the least and were the most physically active.”
“There’s no connection whatsoever between cholesterol in food and cholesterol in blood. And we’ve known that all along. Cholesterol in the diet doesn’t matter at all unless you happen to be a chicken or a rabbit.” Ancel Keys, Ph.D., professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota 1997.
from http://www.becomehealthynow.com/ebookprint.php?id=1112 – and Dr. Gary Farr is worth a read. He knows his stuff and explains it very well.
Fact one: The liver does not use fats, saturated or otherwise to make cholesterol
Fact two: The liver does not make LDL, it makes VLDL
Fact three: VLDL is converted into LDL through triglyceride loss
Fact four: VLDL levels and LDL levels are totally unrelated – totally
Which means that: Saturated fat intake has no impact on LDL levels.
Once again, as with almost every part of the diet-heart/cholesterol hypothesis, when you start to examine the facts objectively, the whole thing starts to disintegrate in front of your very eyes. There is no way that LDL, oxidised or otherwise, can ‘cause’ CHD, and here are a few more facts to back this up.
Framingham first:
There is a direct association between falling cholesterol levels over the first 14 years and mortality over the following 18 years (11% overall and 14% CVD death rate increase per 1 mg/dL per year drop in cholesterol levels). Anderson KM JAMA 1987
In Framingham therefore, as LDL/cholesterol levels fell, CHD rates went up.
Then Honolulu:
‘Our data accord with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, and show that long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases the risk of death. Thus, the earlier that patients start to have lower cholesterol concentrations, the greater the risk of death.’ Lancet Aug 2001
In Honolulu, the lower the LDL/cholesterol, the greater the risk of dying – of everything, including CHD.
Then Russia:
The main author of the report on this study was Shestov, of the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, St. Petersburg. And the main conclusion of this study was as follows:
‘The results disclose a sizeable subset of hypocholesterolemics in this population at increased risk of cardiac death associated with lifestyle characteristics.’ Russian Lipid Research Clinics Prevalence Follow-up Study Shestov
In Russian, a greater risk of death from heart disease in those with low blood LDL/cholesterol levels
Then Japan:
Between 1980 and 1989, age-adjusted total serum cholesterol levels increased from 4.84 to 5.22 for men and from 4.91 to 5.24 mmol/l for women. Prevalence of age-adjusted hypercholesterolaemia of > or = 5.68 mmol/l increased from 15.8% to 29.4% for men and from 18.4% to 30.6% for women…. Considerable increases in total serum cholesterol levels do not offer an explanation of the recent decline in mortality from coronary heart disease in Japan.’ Okayama A, Marmot MG Int J Epidemiol Dec 1993
In Japan, as cholesterol/LDL levels went up, death rates from CHD went down.
How much more evidence would you like? Perhaps another study from the USA?
‘Kummerow and colleagues from the UI and Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Ill., studied 1,200 patients who were cardiac-catheterized. Sixty-three percent had at least 70 percent of their arteries blocked — enough to warrant bypass surgery. Of the 506 men who had a bypass, only 71 (14 percent) had plasma cholesterol levels above 240 (6.2mmol/l); 50 percent had levels below 200 (5.2mmol/l). Thirty-two percent of the 244 women who had bypass surgery had levels above 240 (6.2mmol/l); 34 percent were below 200 (5.2mmol/l)…
… a 3-to-1 ratio of LDL (bad cholesterol) to HDL (good cholesterol) is a low heart-disease risk? with a total cholesterol of less than 200 (5.2mmol/l) being the most desirable. However, in this study, Kummerow noted, 51 percent of the catheterized men had levels below 200 (5.2mmol/l) but needed a bypass.’ Paper by Kummerow Atherosclerosis March 2001
In this study, the majority of men who needed a bypass had cholesterol levels below 5.2mmol/l.
These were not, I will add, small studies, with surrogate end-points. These were great big studies done on thousands and thousands of people, and they measured death rates and blockages in coronary arteries, which are ‘hard’ end-points. They include Framingham – the study that is used to set the CHD prevention guidelines! And they all demonstrate very clearly that the rate of CHD has nothing whatever to do with the level of LDL/cholesterol in your bloodstream.
These studies were also published in journals as prestigious as the Lancet, Atherosclerosis and JAMA. This is not wacky, fringe research, carried out by people with a distrust of mainstream medicine. This is as mainstream and conventional as it gets, and all of this research utterly and completely contradicts the current cholesterol/LDL theory of CHD. And I will bet that you have never, ever, come across these facts before. For some strange reasons this research doesn’t get a lot of publicity.
Haven’t we learned by now to take the good and leave the bad. I mean, use some common since. I think we all could add more veggies and less meat. I am pro veggie and I guess I am a lacto ovo vegetarian. Yet, once in a blue moon I will eat about 2 ounces of meat. So who cares about the title of who we are? Vegan or what ever, are we eating healthy? That is the question.
The Vegan preachers that keep posting on over and over against the evidence seem to ignore that many on the paleo-low carb health community are ex-vegan, ex-vegetarians. They don’t fall for the vegan diet fantasy that is a cure all, they know better. They have tried it as it didn’t work for them, many after a while got sicker. While some Vegans still believe the fantasy that eliminating meat is a cure all and is an immunization for all sickness. We have already known… It will help for a while when coming from a SAD diet, but it isn’t an optimal or natural diet for most.
Yeah, exactly, I never thought of mentioning this… I, too, am and ex-vegetarian!
Actually I had been eating almost exactly as Ornish preaches, for about 15 years, conviced that it was the most sound way of eating (and making fun of those eating red meat, eggs and this artery-clogging buttter).
My heartburn, arthritis, acnes, obesity and back pain, after an initial improvement during the first year, all got worse over the years.
Then…
Supressing all grains, drastically reducing legumes and upping green vegetables (thanks to Dr. Mercola) definitly took care of the heartburn and acnes.
Eating more animal protein and fat, and less hi-carbs vegetables (thanks to Dr. Atkins) took care of my obesity (lost 38 pounds) and back pain.
Drastically reducing PUFAs and upping saturated and monounsaturated fats (thanks to many health bloggers, but mainly Peter @Hyperlipid) took care of my arthritis.
Oh and all this made me feel so much better after a couple of years, that I finally managed to stop smoking, at last!
Soo… going back to the vegetarian WOL which made me sick in the first place? No way.
Maybe it woks for some, why not… sure didn’t work for *me*!
Thank you for writing this review. My wife and I watched “Forks over Knives” with the belief that what was said in the movie was based on thorough scientific evidence. You have opened our eyes to many false conclusions the movie has presented. Dr. Edell, from KGO Radio in San Francisco would advise a carefull approach to becoming a “vegan” based on this movie. Our population in the US is becoming fatter and we all know that “fast foods” are not healthy. My wife and I are healthy eaters and we exercise too. She is in her late 60′s and I am in my early 70′s and we are in good health, but we eat very little processed foods and keep our portions of meat to a small level. Jerry Phillips
flat out, I can’t think of a single example, where I saw, read, or heard anyone say anything like:
” yea, I was dying, dying of Diabetes, heart disease, liver failure, liver cancer, brain cancer, ect, ect , but I finally got better and reversed all my diseases by eating that fillet of _________ ! ”
) EEEEE! warm fuzzy tradition!
– Meat Man
Denise:
Nice work! And, I mean WORK! Wow.
What I like MOST about you, is your fairness. If a movie or book came out tomorrow that proclaimed, VEGETABLES are the cause of most illness, you would no doubt, post a fair, objective counterpoint.
I look forward to MORE of your fair and balanced blog posts, or dissertations, or well TONS OF WORK.
BTW, Anthony Colpo, is AWESOME. Sure, hot-headed, but also, factual, and backs it up.
Dave James
I haven’t gotten through the whole article but this is a real eye opening critique of the studies cited in Fork over knives. I just watched the movie tonight and this is a good counter balance to it. Keep up the good work.
Side note: I posted a link to this article on Forks over knives facebook page two separate times and they took it down both times.
well that’s conclusive then. In science if your opinion angers someone or they feel your opinion must be suppressed then its a guarantee the individual has been challenged in an area of faith not of hard science. scientists arre instead amused by challenges based upon indefensible opinion. Faith has no place in science so suppression, anger, abusive language, name-calling, etc. are all clues. It lets you dismiss pretenders and concentrate on those with facts they can back up with data. Great thing is the faithers never learn so once you know the signs it makes life simpler. Haven’t seen the movie so now won’t bother since they’ve given the game away.
i’d still see the movie if i were you. come to your own conclusion with information you have at hand.
intersting. now i have been blocked from posting on FOK facebook page.
Steel Monkey, great stuff. May I make a suggestion? An under-appreciated problem with animal foods is metal imbalance. Meat is high in iron, which accumulates because it’s very difficult to excrete. Dairy products are extremely low in copper, which is needed for dealing with iron. In copper deficiency, iron can’t get out of the liver, and this can cause both liver malfunction and anaemia (because the iron can’t get to the bone marrow to make haemoglobin). A recent paper has shown that non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is linked to iron overload and copper deficiency. This is VERY important.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18505688
So what? Lots of veggies are rich in copper. It comes down to: red-meat-only-eaters who never eat veggies don’t eat healthilty. You don’t say? Well, duh! Tell us something we don’t already know.
“In copper deficiency, iron can’t get out of the liver, and this can cause both liver malfunction and anaemia (because the iron can’t get to the bone marrow to make haemoglobin).”
“This *can* cause”. Oh really? Sounds to me like the “too much protein *can* be bad for the kidneys” argument (i.e. not a single case has ever been produced to backup the claim). So, has there been one for iron accumulation in the liver causing liver malfunction and/or anaemia? I’m interested. Until at least one real-world case is produced, I take such statements as pure conjectures specifically formed to five opinions more apparent substance.
Wizzu
Dr. Lustig in “Sugar the Bitter Truth” blames non-alcoholic fatty liver on high fructose corn syrup. He walks the viewer through the metabolic process.
gager, I’m sure Lustig is right. He may not be aware that high fructose feeding causes copper deficiency.
‘Our data suggest that high fructose-induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) may be due, in part, to inadequate dietary copper. Impaired duodenum Ctr1′ (copper transporter) ‘expression seen in fructose feeding may lead to decreased copper absorption, and subsequent copper deficiency.’
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21781943
Hi Gager,
I’ve met Dr. Lustig and had the chance to talk with him and I think he’s a genuine guy doing a lot of good work. That said, NAFLD is one of the specialties of the lab I work in and I have some experience with it. I’m a little skeptical that fructose has a specific effect in promoting fatty liver in part because I fed rats a 60% fructose diet for nine weeks and they did not develop any fatty liver. There are some vague indications in the literature that the ability of fructose to induce copper deficiency is modified by the type of protein in the diet, and its effect on fatty liver may be somewhat dependent on including casein in the diet, which I didn’t. Even so, the effect of fructose on fatty liver is somewhat weak and inconsistent in the literature. I do think high amounts of fructose can be a stress that raise the requirements for other nutrients, but it is only one type of imbalance that can lead to fatty liver.
I have written what I think is a broader view of fatty liver here:
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: A Silent Epidemic of Nutritional Imbalance
http://www.westonaprice.org/health-issues/nonalcoholic-fatty-liver-disease
Iron overload is observed in some but not all fatty liver. It may contribute to a subset. There is a paper I cite in that article that suggests that the combination of iron overload and excess PUFA will lead to destruction of the ApoB particle and thus trap triglycerides in the liver by preventing their secretion into the blood.
Chris
Jane – Meat actually has nothing to do with NAFLD. See this for some good info: Molecular Pathology of Liver Diseases By Satdarshan P. S. Monga
According to the researchers, “dietary triglyceride accumulation in hepatocytes caused from oxidative stress resulting from insulin resistance or gene polymorphism is the first hit. Insulin resistance can exert a positive feedback mechanism on the oxidative stress status of the liver and promote the progression of the disease.” There is much more info in the book but meat is no offender. Given the way IR promotes the disease and the triglyceride accumulation, I’d say sugars and grains should be the foods to be wary of in NAFLD, not meats.
Thanks for the comments, Mark.
Yes, Anthony Colpo is not qualified at all and neither is Denise. I am not a scientist either. But I have logic and REASON. Somewhere along the line all of you people became hypnotized by the Almighty Colpo. He does not back anything up. Scientific studies are flawed many times. He selectively cites them , just as Denise does. Many times these studies are from 30 years or more back. We have to use our heads. Take it with a grain of salt. Whole departments of science have been rewritten. There IS truth out there. Science will not lead you to it more times than you might assume.Internet people give science exalted status. It will never lead to WISDOM.
WISDOM is what the ancients had. WISDOM is from life experience. You Internet people are stupid, and that is why you even bother to read people like Colpo, Sisson etc. . The bottom line.
Everyone could be wrong – both the vegans AND the meat eaters. MOST of you do not allow that possibility.
Science is NOT the be all ,end all. Stop worshipping it as if it is. There are PLENTY of things science CANNOT answer, nor has the ability to answer. You OVERESTIMATE human beings. Science is a human creation, activity, endeavor and is no better than our minds are. We really DON;T understand the world around us.
Just look at how the cosmology texts are being COMPLETELY REVISED AND OVERTURNED and rewritten. Completely rewritten is a lot different than modified a bit.
We got it all wrong.
I am not suggesting to abndon science, just keep a HEALTHY PERSPECTIVE. Do not overestimate it. PROVISIONAL truth are all it can offer – and that is at VERY BEST.
Science ONLY holds PROVISIONAL TRUTH. ANYTHING , ANYTHING in science can be revised with new evidence.And even then we cannot cliam to have gotten it right. It could be completely wrong.
MARK SISSON IS A SALESMAN. So is Colpo. ALL OF YOU are the VICTIMS.
@Razwell
Please stop writing now.
Please start THINKING now. Colpo and Sisson have SCAMMED all of you. And the vegans are being scammed by their “gurus”.
None of you can critically think. Sisson and Colpo ? PURE BULLSHIT.
ALL of us could be wrong. NONE of you are unbiased.
“ALL of us could be wrong”
“NONE of you are unbiased.”
You never get tired of stating the obvious, or so it seems…
Even if it turned out that some (or most) of “us” were not aware that none of us is unbiased, do you think that using a giant sledgehammer is going to be effective against such foolishness? If so, well…: “Please start THINKING now”.
I simply love these people who are unable to take their own advice. Lol.
Talk about tilting at windmills. Lol.
“Tilting @windmills”: was referring to Razwell crusade, of course.
“just keep a HEALTHY PERSPECTIVE”
You mean like yours? Bah-ha-ha!
T. Colin Campbell lowered his ballsack on Anthony Colpo ‘s face, whilst Denise Minger, Mark Sisson and the vegans feasted on low fat breadfruit to please the anti- cholesterol triads on the dark side of the moon. LOL !!!!!!!!
Are you 15, Razwell?…. Thought so.
Dear Chosen Juan : LOL !
Don’t be a victim anymore. You need to liberate yourself from ALL sides. Stop following Denise Minger , Anthony Conpo… Cockpo…I mean Colpo, Mark Sissel, I mean Sisson, Durianrider, etc. and the rest of your favorite Internet charlatans with a clear agenda, monetary or otherwise.
Start choosing reputable sources of information and think for yourself.
P.S. The food reward hypothesis of obesity is absolute B U L L S H I T. Internet cranks……..
PALEOTARDS
VEGAN TARDS
Still waiting for your references to “reputable sources of information.” Apparently peer reviewed papers published in scientific journals are not reputable?
How about providing some useful information rather than your ridiculous rants?
Dear Denise is it not possible to deny access to trolls that have on several occasions shown not be interested in a serious dialogue, never mind what alias they appear under. I value your opinion and am very respectful of most of the opinions of the different contributors. Taken together, while applying one’s own criticism, it makes for an insightful body of reference material. I have on several occasions used it to explain certain alternative and healthier approaches to nutrition to dietitians in Europe. The occasional troll on this site demeans the purpose of it . And Anon, just leave it,” paarlen voor de zwijnen.”
Hi Razwell,
Consider this a warning. You’re free to stick around if you want to contribute something substantial to the dialogue — but at this point you’ve entered troll territory, which is distracting to the folks who want to have a civil discourse. Shape up or ship out, kiddo
T. Colin Campbell has been made to look fooloish by a number of people, including Colpo to a lesser extent, but particularly by Denise. In her Rawfoodssos blog, she systematically tore apart pretty much all of Campbell’s claims against animal protein and the experience of Chinese people. Campbell’s efforts to defend his work were generally pretty lame, more or less just attacking Denise’s credentials as opposed to her actual analysis. He came as smug and wrong.
[...] have the studies been controlled for –" MiL: "Yes. Yes they have." Send her this link. Reply With Quote + Reply to [...]
Do you guys think Denise is snake oil?
Only in the sense that she is absolutely the cure for every ill.
I am a reasonably smart guy. I am much older at 52 so much of the science I learned in school is ridiculously outdated and I haven’t kept up as much as I should.
Having prefaced it with that, people like Denise and Chris Masterjohn make me feel like a complete moron. Their ability to analyze and grasp data is so far beyond my own capability it is embarrassing. I am just thankful we get their work for free.
I came here because the documentary literally scared the shit out of me and ive been on a vegan diet for the last 4 days. I still appreciate the film because it changed my diet in many healthy ways but I’m very thankful for this post because it brought me back from hysteria and allowed me to see that perhaps not everything is so cut and dry. Btw I’ve skimmed your other posts and I have to conclude that this is my new favorite blog. Your remarks are hilarious. Thank you for being the nutrition nerd that we all need lol
For more information, I’d suggest watching her discussion from the Ancestral Health Symposium (http://vimeo.com/27792352) as well as Tom Naughton’s likewise humorous-yet-insightful discussion (http://vimeo.com/27793037).
Two books I’d suggest reading:
Real Food: What to Eat and Why (amazing book. very detailed. also very cheap @ $10 on Amazon.com)
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (a nutritional classic. Observation of what traditional cultures ate before being westernized and what happened to some afterwards)
Good luck (and good health!)
Denise, this is amazing. Thank you! Really!
Generally it takes me forever to go through the average lengthy article, but I am hooked on this one. Kudos for your hard work, miss
More research showing that the Forks Over Knives movie is correct.
James W. Anderson, MD, FACN
Elizabeth C. Konz, MS, RD
David J. A. Jenkins, PhD, MD, FACN
http://www.jacn.org/content/19/5/578.long
High animal protein intakes have been linked to higher risks for CHD and cancer
. . .
Long-term studies indicate that higher carbohydrate diets decrease risk for CHD events. Of significance, the only diets that have been associated with documented regression of atherosclerosis are very low fat, high carbohydrate diets.
. . .
High fat diets increase postprandial hypertriglyceridemia and increase the concentration of atherogenic chylomicron remnants. The postprandial triglyceride rise is related to the amount of fat in the meal, indicating that high fat meals are followed by significantly higher triglyceride concentrations than low fat meals. These postprandial triglyceride-rich particles and remnant particles appear to be substantially more atherogenic than fasting VLDL particles.
. . .
Animal studies and human studies indicate that high-fat diets are associated with insulin resistance.
. . .
Finally, through the evolution of the ancestors of man, plant-based, high fiber, low animal fat diets were consumed. Stone tools and cooking methods sufficiently advanced to allow significant meat intake did not become available until the Paleolithic period. For 5 to 15 million years of the Miocene before the present time, consumption of high-fiber plant foods and exercise shaped the human genome. Such diets provide very little stimulus for cholesterol synthesis and greatly increase fecal bile acid losses compared to contemporary diets. The simian-like diets demonstrate a 30% decrease in serum LDL-cholesterol concentrations similar to those predicted for the Ornish diet. The evolutionary argument therefore provides a further reason for favoring high-fiber, low-animal fat diets.
Have you actually read the paper you link to? Or did you simply read the politically correct summary?
Let me quote the authors:
“these observations are questioned because appropriate adjustments for types of fat intake were not made [59]. High animal protein intakes also have been linked to higher risks for osteoporosis [60], and renal disease [61], but both of these areas are controversial [62,63]. Persons with diabetes or hypertension who have increased risk for renal disease may be especially vulnerable to the detrimental effects of large amounts of animal protein intake on renal function [63–65]. Thus, while we have concerns about long-term animal protein intakes exceeding 100 grams per day, at the present time we do not have documentation that this poses health hazards. ”
Oh, so they clearly reckon that at present time they don’t have any documentation backing up the opinion that eating lots of animal proteins poses health hazards.
So, where does this paper show that the movie is correct?
Well my brain hurts but I can now more effectively rebut quotes from forks over Knives.
I watched a video similar but different in college with Esselstyn in it.
Maybe do this one when you’re not force feeding casein rich milk to defenseless baby cows! – A Delicate Balance: The Truth – the prequel to forks over knives that no one ever heard of.
Two more pieces of data supporting the thesis of Forks Over Knives.
[1] Dr. Richard Fleming did a one year study of how high fat, moderate fat and low fat diets impact cardiovascular disease risk factors.
4 diets were examined. Two were low fat diets, phase I and phase II. One was moderate fat (MF). Another was high fat (HF).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12091753
“Phase I and II individuals also demonstrated an expected improvement in TC/HDL ratios, since they had the greatest reductions in TC and improvements in HDL-C. These changes subsequently changed their risk ratios, as shown in Table III. Perhaps most interesting were the increased levels of homocysteine, Lp(a), and fibrinogen seen in patients following HF diets. These factors appeared to be more dietary and less related to vitamin and mineral supplementation, as suggested by comparing the results in patients following the phase II diet and those following the HF diet, none of whom took additional supplements, as did those following the phase I diet.”
[2] Another study by Dr. Richard Fleming
The effect of high-protein diets on coronary blood flow.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11108325
The 16 people (treatment group/TG) studied modified their dietary intake as instructed. Ten additional individuals elected a different dietary regimen consisting of a “high-protein” (high protein group/HPG) diet, which they believed would “improve” their overall health. Patients in the TG demonstrated a reduction in each of the independent variables studied with regression in both the extent and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) as quantitatively measured by MPI. Recovery of viable myocardium was seen in 43.75% of myocardial segments in these patients, documented with both MPI and ECHO evaluations. Individuals in the HPG showed worsening of their independent variables. Most notably, fibrinogen, Lp (a), and C-RP increased by an average of 14%, 106%, and 61% respectively. Progression of the extent and severity of CAD was documented in each of the vascular territories with an overall cumulative progression of 39.7%. The differences between progression and extension of disease in the HPG and the regression of disease in the TG were statistically (p<0.001) significant.
All fats are not the same, nor are all high-fat diets equal. All “high protein” diets are not the same. The meaning of “high” is undefined. Since the text for these papers are not available for free, I can not say what the actual composition of these diets was.
Study indicating that there is no significant evidence associating saturated fat with heart disease: http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract
Study indicating inverse relationship of SFA intake and stroke mortality: http://www.ajcn.org/content/92/4/759.abstract
And then we have this: http://www.ajcn.org/content/91/3/502.abstract
““A focus of dietary recommendations for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention and treatment has been a reduction in saturated fat intake, primarily as a means of lowering LDL-cholesterol concentrations. However, the evidence that supports a reduction in saturated fat intake must be evaluated in the context of replacement by other macronutrients. Clinical trials that replaced saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat have generally shown a reduction in CVD events, although several studies showed no effects. An independent association of saturated fat intake with CVD risk has not been consistently shown in prospective epidemiologic studies, although some have provided evidence of an increased risk in young individuals and in women. Replacement of saturated fat by polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat lowers both LDL and HDL cholesterol. However, replacement with a higher carbohydrate intake, particularly refined carbohydrate, can exacerbate the atherogenic dyslipidemia associated with insulin resistance and obesity that includes increased triglycerides, small LDL particles, and reduced HDL cholesterol.”
This analysis of data from China is consistent with the conclusions reached by Doctors Campbell and Chen.
Diet, serum markers and breast cancer mortality in China.
Guo WD, Chow WH, Zheng W, Li JY, Blot WJ.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8063609
SourceCancer Institute, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing.
This county-based correlation study examined associations of breast cancer mortality with dietary habits and certain serum biochemical markers, utilizing data collected from an ecological survey in 65 Chinese rural counties. Univariate correlation and multivariate regression analysis showed that consumption of animal foods, including eggs, fish and meat, was positively linked to county-wide mortality rates of breast cancer in Chinese women.
@Steel Monkey
Why do you keep posting papers that do not back your claims nor that animal based foods are bad? Why not read what Denise has written and think a little for yourself. Your energy is remarkable. Misguided and blinkered, but remarkable. I thought I didn’t have a life …but then again, I’ve read Denise’s posts and all the comments twice. Sheesh.
Juan, Steel Monkey is posting some very valuable stuff. We all need to know whether there are problems with animal foods. If we want to eat vast quantities of them, will it cause some imbalance or other that we could take a pill to correct? Advice from the paleo blogosphere is generally, eat as much meat as you like, it’s good for you. You don’t need to worry about mineral deficiencies, meat provides you with all the minerals you need. This is dangerous nonsense. A high-meat diet can give you manganese deficiency. If you want to eat beef every day, you MUST take a manganese pill (not recommended) or donate blood regularly to lower your iron stores, or eat A LOT of high-manganese foods.
All this mineral imbalance thing sounds purely theoretical. No real-life study backs this up, unless I’m mistaken?
If I’m mistaken I’m very interested in reading such a study, I mean one having people eating only meat and ending up with actual health-threatening deficiencies.
In fact, there is at least one study refuting the idea that eating meat only causes any health problems, with volunteers eating meat only for more than a year if I remember well. Taubes refers to this study in GCBC but I just handed my copy to a friend so I can’t give the specifics. I’m sure someone here can.
Jane,
How would you respond to this?
http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
Later Stefansson went to prove his assertion that you could thrive on a meat only diet.
http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf
No ill effects were found after years of living on meat only.
gager, thanks. It looks like the Eskimos liked tea quite a lot -’this was the only element of the white man’s dietary of which they were really fond and the lack of which would worry them’ – and in your second link, Stefansson also drank tea (p658).
Tea is so high in manganese that Brits get half their daily intake from it.
Oh, please! Tea?
There is a danger in generalizing that all vegan diets are harmful and vegans are unhealthy, as well as that all meat-based diets are harmful and meat-eaters are unhealthy. Look back over the last few hundred years and we can see that science itself is flawed and imperfect. Publication bias and other factors must be taken into consideration when interpreting so-called “science.” (Do you REALLY think that if the dairy or meat-industries funded a study that showed the benefit of a vegan lifestyle, that those results would ever be made public?) Most science has an agenda; that’s why some medical journals are now requiring registration of clinical trials, so that at the completion, all results are published, positive or negative.
Anecdotally, my husband has been a vegan for over 30 years. He owned a roofing business (in Florida, no less!) for almost the entire time. He could easily out-roof any meat-eating roofer around. He worked many times from dawn to dusk only eating a large breakfast (of dinner-type foods), then a smaller lunch of fruits, nuts, and other more breakfast-like lighter foods around 2 – 3 pm. While those who worked with him had to take multiple rest breaks, he continued on. And he worked faster than anyone who knew him. At 54, he is the healthiest 50-ish man I personally know. He takes no medications for any conditions; he only uses “green” supplements occasionally (used to be every day when he roofed). He’s fit, healthy, active, and he’s not pale or corpse-like. So, you can’t tell me that a vegan diet does not provide enough nutrition to be healthy. It’s definitely not the end-all and be-all. He was also very active (obviously) when he roofed, and that contributes to his health, as well.
It’s more than diet that makes people healthy. Vegan, vegetarian, meat-eating… whatever it is, you can be healthy if you do it right. All of this arguing back and forth doesn’t make one side more right than the other, so why bother?
A meta-analysis of 40 case-control studies examining 20 different types of cancer found that those with high whole grain intakes had an overall risk of cancer that was 34% lower than those with low whole grain intakes.
Jacobs DR, Jr., Marquart L, Slavin J, Kushi LH. Whole-grain intake and cancer: an expanded review and meta-analysis. Nutr Cancer. 1998;30(2):85-96.
Higher intakes of whole grain were consistently associated with decreased risk of gastrointestinal tract cancers, including cancers of the mouth, throat, stomach, colon and rectum.
La Vecchia C, Chatenoud L, Negri E, Franceschi S. Session: Whole cereal grains, fibre and human cancer Wholegrain cereals and cancer in Italy. Proc Nutr Soc. 2003;62(1):45-49.
A prospective cohort study that followed more than 61,000 Swedish women for 15 years found that those who consumed more than 4.5 servings of whole grain daily had a risk of colon cancer that was 35% lower than those who consumed less than 1.5 servings of whole grain daily.
Larsson SC, Giovannucci E, Bergkvist L, Wolk A. Whole grain consumption and risk of colorectal cancer: a population-based cohort of 60,000 women. Br J Cancer. 2005;92(9):1803-1807. (PubMed)
Numerous compounds in whole grains have been found to be protective against cancer, particularly cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. These include fiber, lignans and phenolic compounds.
Slavin JL. Mechanisms for the impact of whole grain foods on cancer risk. J Am Coll Nutr. 2000;19(3 Suppl):300S-307S.
It’s tempting to leave these kind of comments to do their own dirty work. Why bother. Comparing one bad thing to another even worse only means that it could have been worse. Last time I checked whole wheat bread had a glycemic index of 79. White sugar (sucrose) has a glycemic index of 59.
All grains are bad. Celiacs are not people with disease, they are the canaries in the coal mines of wheat problems. Anybody who has, not only read Davis’ book, ‘Wheat Belly’, but also studied the references, and can get over his/her own biases and prejudices and approach this with an open mind, cannot but admit : we have been wrong for too long, time to change the game. Wheat is the new tobacco. Can’t wait to see the first law suits against the perps responsible for this crime against humanity.
James, if you have a copy of Wheat Belly, could you please look up ‘copper’ in the index? I can’t find anything on copper in Davis’ blog. He is a heart disease doctor, isn’t he? There is a large literature on the role of copper deficiency in heart disease. According to Leslie Klevay, more than 70 anatomical, chemical and physiological similarities between animals deficient in copper and people with ischemic heart disease have been identified.
Jane there isn’t. Nothing about copper. Davis is a cardiologist and used to do a lot of cutting until he got sick and tired of seeing the same thing all over again. I don’t know why he doesn’t mention it though I do have a hunch. You are correct about the correlation (or concurrency) however that is not the same as cause. It is also a well-known fact that vitamin B12 deficiency and copper show up side by side, and you know where that might come from.
James, thanks. I expect you mean myeloneuropathy? It seems doctors are realising that what they thought was B12 deficiency – always questionable in people eating a lot of animal foods – is actually copper deficiency. Apparently the enzyme activated by B12 also needs copper.
BTW, Klevay found that human volunteers developed symptoms of heart disease on a copper intake of 1mg/day, which is the same as the recommended daily allowance in the US. No wonder Davis is confused about copper deficiency, and thinks the problem must be wheat.
Hi Jane,
I just posted a review of Wheat Belly:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/10/wheat-belly-toll-of-hubris-on-human.html
Parts of it are a bit critical, so I was very happy to see that Dr. Davis really liked the review:
I think that your theory about copper can be reconciled to Dr. Davis’s theory about modern dwarf and semi-dwarf wheat being a problem. As I note in my review, semi-dwarf wheat has been shown to be deficient in copper and many other minerals compared to traditional wheat, even as a whole grain.
Chris
Whole grains good for you? Bad science. Baaaaad, bad science.
Confounding variables + mixing association with causation + Logical fallacy
Coufouding variables:
People who eat whole grains are generally more health-conscious than those on the SAD. Of course they will be more healthy since these also eat less sugar, and obviously less PROCESSED grains…. and probably exercise more, don’t drink sodas or junk food etc…
Mixing association with causation:
Why would it be that this association means that eating whole grains causes less cancers? Have you ever thought that, for instance, these poor people with colon cancer will probably, in the hospital, stop eating a lot of stuff, including whole grains? Has it been investigated? No, of course, since these pseudo-scientists just want to hammer the message “whole grain is good for you”.
That’s why these kind of “studies” are absolutely useless and utter trash from a scientific perspective. And that’s this kind of bad science that is supposed to backup the claims that grains are a healthy nutritional choice? Jeez.
Logical fallacy:
Anyway, what do you do when you eat more whole grains? You eat less refined grains. So you’re actually just replacing something awful with something less awful. Your health improves. Duh. How on earth does it mean that eating the “less awful” stuff is actually better than not eating any of this stuff? It doesn’t. It’s a logical fallacy. People using these in science, generally either have an agenda, or are under a lot of corporate pressure.
The processed grains vs. whole grains battle is a decoy to avoid the really interesting confrontation, which is grains (whole or processed) vs NO grains. Now show me a (serious, scientifically sound) study about *this*.
Wizzu, the evidence does say pretty clearly that whole grains are good for you. In northern India 100 years ago people who ate a lot of whole grains were studied and were found to have excellent health. Experiments were done on rats which showed their health was due to their diet rather than their genes. The paleo community does not discuss this work despite having, as far as I know, no criticism of Sir Robert McCarrison who carried it out.
Jane,
What types were consumed, and how were they prepared? Some grains contain more gluten and anti-nutrients than others, and soaking/sproating/fermenting makes them safe to consume.
Sally Fallon mentions in Nourishing Traditions that “in India, rice and lentils are fermented for at least two days before they are prepared as idli and dosas”.
I am not familiar with the study you mentioned, but I would assume (heh) that if this was 100 years ago, these people would still be following the dietary practices of their ancestors.
Josh, these people ate wheat, barley, buckwheat and millet. ‘The Hunza prefers wheat for his bread…They grind it between stones and make their unleavened chapattis..’
Wheat bread, unfermented. Yes, I was surprised too. The quote is from The Wheel of Health (Wrench 1938) which is available in full online. It has other surprises.
@Jane:
“In northern India 100 years ago people who ate a lot of whole grains were studied and were found to have excellent health”
“Were studied”? OK, when? How? By whom? Without an actual source that I can analyse myself, I’m not going to take your word for it.
As for rats… who cares what experiments on rats show? We are not rats, last time I checked. Rats are omnivorous alright, but they still are rodents. We are humans. And IMO we are torturing and killing thousands or these living creatures for about nothing else than making money for the big drug companies.
Wizzu, I would be delighted for you to analyse my source. It’s a short book called The Wheel of Health, published in 1938, and is available in full online.
I entirely agree with you about the animal experiments. They will not stop until we have a good understanding of human disease, and if you read The Wheel of Health you will gain just such an understanding.
@Jane
Hoooo. That’s the Hunzas thing, then.
I’ve actually already read this around 1986, just after having read both Dr. Kousmine’s books (“Soyez bien dans votre assiette jusqu’à 80 ans et plus”, “Sauvez votre coprs”). In case youd don’t know her, she’s been one of the first serious advocates of whole grains in Europe, and probably the first one to stress the importance of Omega-3s.
Dr. Kousmine was often referring to the Hunzas as a living proof of her nutritional theories, so out of curiosity I borrowed a copy of “the wheel of health”.
Despite finding this essay rather confusing, at that time, to me, all this seemed to make sense.
So I’ve been following such nutritional advice (which is extremely close to what Ornish preaches) for years and years (more than 20 years..). Guess what? My health didn’t improve in the least, quite the contrary. I took on about 45 pounds, had constant rosacea and acnes, heartburn all day long, back pain, joint pain, gas, postprandial hypoglycaemia, sudden drops in blood pressure… you name it. I was a mess.
I then went 100% vegetarian and everything… got even worse. And before you ask yes, I knew everything about B12 (supplemented) and proteins (grains + legumes combination).
So you see, been there, done that.
For me at least, this way of eating that Kousmine and Ornish push, is as good as poo. Supressing almost all grains and legumes has been the best thing I’ve done for my health (I still eat small amounts of chickpeas and rice from time to time, oh and some **fermented* soy products¨like Tamari and Miso).
I suspect a very, very strong bias in the studies and reports showing grains-based diets as being nutritionally sound. Nothing surprising after all, since -let’s not forget- grains and grain products are probably the most profitable existing food products, together with sodas and processed potatoes. Animal products, on the contrary, are among the less profitable. Do the math. Follow the money.
Hi Wizzu,
McCarrison’s recommendations drawn from his epidemiological studies in India, including seven years among the Hunzas, and his laboratory experiments, seem quite different to me than Ornish’s.
Here they are verbatim from “Studies in Deficiency Disease.”
“1. To ensure an adequate supply of vitamin B, the dietary should include wholemeal bread or nuts, eggs, glandular organs, fresh fruit, and green vegetables.
“2. To ensure an adequate supply of vitamin A, the dietary should include whole-milk, butter animal fats, eggs, glandular organs, fresh fruit, and green vegetables.
“3. To ensure an adequate supply of vitamin C, the dietary should include fresh fruit and green vegetables.”
To my knowledge, Ornish does not emphasize the need for animal fat and organ meats.
Chris
Correct Chris, I fully agree.
I actually wasn’t saying that McCarrison was one of the advocates of the high-whole-grains-low-saturated-fat craze, rather that his work was used (and twisted, but that’s another story) by Kousmine, and eventually Ornish who obviously borrowed a lot from Kousmine. Actually, the swiss doctor (who, interestingly, besides the grains thing, got a couple of things very right I think) was probably at the root of all this whole-grains-based school of thought.
BTW I seize the opportunity to thank you personally for all you’re doing for the community! I’ve been reading you with great enjoyement and learned a lot.
(Er…What happens when the nesting of replies reaches a critical point where the width gets unreadable…?)
Wizzu, I am astonished to hear you found The Wheel of Health confusing. I think it must mean you did not follow a Hunza diet at all. Your symptoms suggest to me multiple deficiencies, which would be pretty difficult to get on a Hunza diet. Chris is right, and I’m glad you are willing to listen to him, if not to me.
Hi Wizzu,
You’re welcome and thank you so much for your appreciation.
What happens, I believe you’ve taught us today, is that we stop replying within the nested thread and start anew from the bottom.
Chris
Mmmmh. Well guys, I think I finally found who’s the actual character behind the “Razwell” pseudo.
The uncanny resemblance in attitude leaves no trace of doubt in my mind.
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/content/pictures/homer/HomerSimpson38.gif
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/content/pictures/homer/HomerSimpson57.gif
LOL
As far as I know only birds and rodents eat grains without health issues. We have found mummies with rotted teeth.
James, as I understand it, rich people in ancient Egypt ate white flour.
Jane – again, some great books exist on this topic which could fill in some gaps/answer some of your questions. Wheatbelly, of course. An older book called Life Without Bread by C.Allen and W.Lutz does a great job explaining the decline in human health with the onset of agriculture. They talk about archeological digs that compare the skeletons from before and after Paleolithic times. We got shorter, got arthritis, our brains shrunk, and the ‘modern’ diseases of ‘affluence’ began showing up. It’s a good read.
You had me at Brave Little Toaster
I finally watch “Forks over Knives” this weekend, hoping I would learn something new after reading Chris Masterjohn’s review of the movie, but alas, not really. It was interesting to learn about the origins of the China study. Unlike you, I was kind of annoyed by the personal stories of success because there were only a handful of people. I mean, I could have made a movie with the same tear-jerking stories. It was too hokey for me.
My husband kept poking me about all the lines about eating a plant based diet, because he wants to believe that being vegetarian is healthier and doesn’t like meat because his father was a butcher and forced him to visit a slaughterhouse at age 7 – not a good thing for a sensitive male like my hubby. I was reading him snippets of your post, and he got a good laugh and saw your logic. Whew, I haven’t lost him yet!
Hi Phoebe,
I would like to take this opportunity to offer you a formal apology for nearly destroying your marriage, but I am glad Denise was there to save it. I can only hope that if I make mistakes of this magnitude in the future, someone like Denise will be there to pick up the pieces. But really, you didn’t learn anything from the clip about shark mating? I thought that was the best part!
Chris
The Paleotards and vegan scammers are both alike. They’re BOTH complete charlatans. Diseases happen. Many, if not most are NOT preventable. Diet will NOT solve most diseases, if any.
ANYONE making paradise health cliams from a diet is a complete FRAUD. Only stupid people who read these types of blogs are fooled.
The stroy is allll the same. Once I was sick, now I am doing great following so and so plan.,
Blow it out your ASSES FOOLS.
Lyle McDonald took a Paleolithic Poopy on top of all of your scamming heads. LOL !
Read Alan Aragon’s awesome article on that scammer Mark Sisson pimping products back in 2000, doing ANOTHER SCHTICK.
PALEOTARDS ! VEGAN TARDS !
Mmmmh. Well guys, I think I finally found who’s the actual character behind the “Razwell” pseudo.
The uncanny resemblance in attitude leaves no trace of doubt in my mind.
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/content/pictures/homer/HomerSimpson38.gif
http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/content/pictures/homer/HomerSimpson57.gif
LOL
You Anthony Colpo/Mark Sisson following STUPID ASSES……..
They get it ALL wrong. Get with the times.
Younger women are NOT, I repeat, NOT protected from coronary artery disease. Anthony Colpo displays his GROSS ignorance on this subject. He is giving you OUTDATED information- from DEACDES back – which we now know is out and out WRONG.
More women die from heart disease than any other disease- and it is not even close. Heart disease in on the rise on YOUNGER WOMEN.
Stop followng CHARLATANS like Minger, Colpo and Sisson.
Anthony Colpo should apologize to Muata Kamdibe for making a racial insinuation at him back in 2007.
First beer?
Heart disease rates in young women are rising due to the increase of obesity and type II diabetes. Premenopausal estrogen has in the past protected the repoductive-aged womans cardiac status. You know so little yet yell so loudly!
[...] you have seen the movie or your friends or relatives have I highly recommend reading the carefully-researched critical review of the film posted by Denise Minger, as it explains in detail how the film “deftly blends [...]
(A follow-up to Jane’s question)
(I choose to leave the nested replies since the width becomes unmanageable).
I probably communicated pooorly. I never followed a Hunza diet, that’s a fact.
I followed Kousmine, then went vegetarian on the top of it (and even vegan), and during the last 2-3 years before I threw away this way of eating altogether, I was eating almost exactly as Ornish preaches (I explained above what happened to my health – nothing good).
So, I actually just read “The Wheel of Health” among other stuff in the mid-80′s, while digging Kousmine’s references. Found it confusing at this time and I didn’t try to apply McCarrison’s recommendations (they were sort of conflicting with Kousmine’s ones).
I hope this is clearer.
Just tried to re-read “The Wheel of Health” now, and I still find it confusing. Kinda going in circles. Maybe it’s a matter of writing skills rather than actual incoherence, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s my own limits with english from the 30′s. The thing is, I have difficulties to take it seriously anyway, and can’t give it much credit.
My “been there, done that” wasn’t about applying McCarrison’s recommendations, but about the whole “eating whole grains is good for you” motto.
I read Wheel of Health and found strong evidence of biased reporting. The idea that vegetables and fruit are eaten raw because of fuel shortage in contrast to bread made from wheat that when baking is fuel intensive.
Also I suspect that cheese and milk are more of a staple than fruit. The Masai tribes of Africa drink milk and blood from cattle and the meat from cattle and are some of the healthiest without plant intake.
Also in another part of the report the Eskimos of Greenland are held in the same high esteem as the Hunzas as regarding health and vigor yet the Hunzas are the example given to support the claims of vegetarian diet as the healthy choice.
In another reference cattle fed wheat only developed health problems. And when rats were fed the dietary norms of northern India they also developed health issues.
Hi Gager,
I have not read Wheel of Health, which was not written by McCarrison, but McCarrison does not seem to me to have been an advocate of vegetarianism.
Here is McCarrison in his own words:
“As we pass from the north to the east, south-east, south-west and south of India, there is thus a gradual fall in the nutritive value of the cereal grains forming the staples of the national diets, this fall reaching its lowest limit amongst the rice-eaters of the east and south. There is also a gradual fall in the amount of animal protein, animal fats, and vitamins entering into these diets. The races of the north are either milk-users or meat-eaters or both; while those of the south and east use both meat and milk sparingly and sometimes not at all. Thus, the Pathans are meat-eaters; the flesh and fat of sheep and goats forming a principal constituent of their dietaries. They also use milk freely, chiefly in the form of buttermilk, curds and butter or ghee. The Sikhs are large users of milk and the products of milk; meat being only an occasional addition to their diet. The Maharattas also make free use of milk and milk products; an additional source of animal protein being eggs and fish. The Bengalis, Kanarese and Madrassis, on the other hand, are for the most part vegetarians; and although some of them do eat mutton or fish, millions do not, while milk and milk products are, in general, less extensively used by them than by northern races. It happens therefore, that as the nutritive values of the cereal grains diminish there is also a diminution in the amount of animal protein ingested and in the level of protein metabolism attained by the races concerned. There is, too, a precipitate fall in the amount of vitamins A and B ingested by the races of the south as compared with those of the north. Legumes (dhals), vegetables and fruit enter into all the national dietaries of India; but it is only amongst the better classes that a sufficiency of these is eaten. Accompanying this gradual fall in the nutritive values of the national diets there is a gradual decline in stature, body-weight, stamina and efficiency of the people.”
(The Work of Sir Robert McCarrison, p. 267-8.)
Regarding the Maasai, it is not true that they live or lived on animal products alone. Here’s a recent post I wrote on that topic:
=======
The Masai Part II: A Glimpse of the Masai Diet at the Turn of the 20th Century — A Land of Milk and Honey, Bananas From Afar
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2011/09/13/the-masai-part-ii-a-glimpse-of-the-masai-diet-at-the-turn-of-the-20th-century-a-land-of-milk-and-honey-bananas-from-afar/
=======
In her book, “The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters Between Maasai and Missionaries,” the Catholic feminist Dorothy Hodgson stated that most writings on the interface between Maasai and missionaries have been not only “simplistic, essentialist, and ahistorical, but they are premised (like much research on Maasai and other pastoralist and agro-pastoralist groups) on an understanding of ‘Maasai’ that is not just homogeneous but deeply androcentric.”
What struck me most about this passage was that this is exactly how I have come to view most of what is written about the Masai in the nutrition world, at least outside the actual ethnographic and ethnobotanical literature. The myth that they ate nothing but animal products is derived from the diet of the moran, which males eat between the ages of, say, 15-30. The women never eat this diet. Even the moran drink copious amounts of acacia tea and massive concoctions of various herbs. Before colonialism ended intertribal warfare, they were often forced by necessity into eating tubers, honey, and occasional fruit when on the march. The women were responsible for conducting most of the trade, and they purchased bananas, sweet potatoes, yams, corn, sorghum, beans and all kinds of plant foods from other tribes. The pastoral Maasai do not cultivate plant crops themselves, but they have always foraged for wild plant foods in addition to purchasing them from outsiders. Even George Mann, the most famous advocate of animal fat who studied the Maasai, reported that men began eating “a vegetable diet” after the age of 35.
One thing that has remained constant for the Maasai is that they have always used milk as their central staple. What else they eat depends largely on supply and demand, and the economic choices they have to make in response to these factors. When milk is less available during the 5 months per year that constitutes the dry season, they may eat more plant foods, or they may eat more meat, depending on what is available. This has varied through history, but they have always eaten both animal and plant foods.
Chris
401! I feel special now.
interesting smear campaign. I’ve only got through about half of this, so here are my comments thus far.
Besides my comments, something to remember overall, is that animal studies are extremely limited in external validity. Most current human studies I’m aware of show some kind of link between coronary disease and a meat-based diet. You can quibble about details why, but a correlation still needs to be explained.
Finally, personal health is one of three reasons to go vegan. The argument from animal rights is the strongest in my opinion, and the environmental destruction from raising and producing meat products is also robustly shown to be greater than car transportation. So you can turn a blind eye and claim that we need to “wait for more data” on the personal health side. I wouldn’t do that because I know personal anecdotes of the causal power, so that’s my choice.
Claim 1: This was a common line of thought decades ago, but as research progressed, we figured out that the body is actually pretty awesome at regulating cholesterol production in response to what we ingest from food. As this paper from 2009 explains, the supposed link between dietary and serum cholesterol stems from studies that had fundamental design flaws, failed to separate the effects of cholesterol different types of fat intake, or were performed on animals that are obligate herbivores (hey there, rabbits!). The doctors in “Forks Over Knives,” it seems, are among the few stragglers who still believe dietary cholesterol is harmful.
I find this impossible. She cites ONE study from I would guess literally 1000s of cholesterol studies, and what is her conclusion? Not that there ISN”T a link, but rather that some of the original studies had design flaws. She also states that 70% of of the population are negligably affected by cholesterol. Meanwhile, the largest health problem among Americans is high cholesterol and heart disease. She also ignores the documented cases of once-meat-eaters going “plant-based” and showing dramatic reduction in cholesterol and risk of heart disease (including reversing pre-existing heart disease). Besides studies I have personal evidence of this happening with my dad who is now off high blood pressure and cholesterol medication as soon as he stopped eating meat. SO, you can be picky and call into question the reported link between cholesterol and meat, but the fact is that SOMETHING in a meat diet is linked to coronoary disease issues. So, you have to explain away these facts even if you are picky about the details.
Claim 2: Let that sink in for a moment. Maybe it’ll hit a little harder if I told you that in the “high protein vs. low protein” experiments discussed in this paper, 10 low-protein rats died prematurely while all the high-protein rats stayed alive. In other words, the overall survival rate for the 20% casein group was much better than for the 5% casein group, despite the fact they had liver tumors. The low-protein rats were dying rapidly—just not from liver cancer. And as we’ll see later, the reason the non-dead, low-protein rats didn’t get tumors was partly because their liver cells were committing mass suicide.
This is my main evidence that this is a smear campaign. It is obvious that health issues will insue if you are only fed 5% protein, that’s why survival wasn’t a variable of interest in the study. But the main problem is that she fails to mention the extremely important finding (mentioned in the film) that given the high protein based on plant protein did not increase cancer AT ALL. So this condition completely refutes here qualm, besides the fact that her qualm stems from a misunderstanding of the study.
Claim 3: Did meat and milk intake go down? Fo’ sho’ (although clearly not to zero). But look what else happened. Sugar consumption was chopped in half. Both butter and margarine intake decreased significantly. Veggie intake shot up. And perhaps most significantly, fish consumption increased by a whopping 200%, a bigger change than seen with any other single food item. Need I mention the eighty gazillion studies showing the benefits of fish, DHA, and an improved omega-3/omega-6 ratio for cardiovascular health?
The paper also notes that total calorie intake decreased by about 20% compared to pre-war levels and weight loss was common. Did calorie restriction and sinking body mass play a role in mortality changes? Definitely maybe.
Not sure why this is a point against the film. They never argue for veganism. Just that people should swtiched to a plant based diet. Maybe if poeple eat only plants AND fish they are OK. But that doesn’t help every american meat eaters, that helps pesca-terians.
Claim 4: Animal foods didn’t really dwindle from Norwegian kitchens until the end of 1941. Even if we ignore the fact that changes in mortality would naturally lag behind changes in diet, it’s hard to blame the 1941 drop in cardiovascular disease on something that mostly happened in 1942!
Not sure what to think of this without seeing actual numbers. She states “something that MOSTLY happened in 1942″.
Claim 5: Well, golly. In both 1942 and 1943, when mortality made its steepest descent, animal protein intake was actually higher than it was before the war! The major decline in total animal protein intake didn’t happen until 1944 and 1945, well after Norway had already seen cardiovascular disease plummet. Again, this data isn’t rock-solid because of poor record keeping, and correlation isn’t causation anyway, but it sure doesn’t support the argument that Norway got healthier due to a plant-based diet.
Once again, this is because of the fish. So she supports the idea that maybe FISH is OK. So pesca-terians are vindicated, but not normal meat eaters.
This is a really great discussion, well informed, insightful. Only one thing – what’s missing is the common denominator to all of this – MICROBES.
Why does one do well on a vegan diet, at least originally – microbes. Only then the ‘bad microbes’ take over and health benefits go down. What causes the body to get out of balance?
Not one of the subjects brought up in the discussion is not powerfully influenced by microbes.
Wheat? Microbes again effecting the villi (spelling) in the intestinal track. Or even microbes effecting rhe plant growing process? Or even the new-fangled theory that modern silos and harvesting cause the wheat to be contaminated by fungi.
Disease? caused by microbes. As in all disease. ALL OF IT.
Manganese – anti-microbial. Low manganese in your diet, more microbes.
Fruit – some are antimicrobial.
Acid / Alkaline – influences microbes in the body.
Dental Caries – caused by anerobic bacteria.
I can’t see one thing in the entire mind blowing article and over 400 responses not easily dealt with if you logically, and in the spirit of learning, add microbes to the discussion.
And I’ll start – if there are only 4 blood groups, and recently it was discovered that there are only 3 types of intestinal microbial colonies, and all 3 types utilize a different B vitamin…what does that say about diet in the role of healing?
Pip
It’s interesting to find this thread. I’m feeling a bit shellshocked. I just emailed T Colin Campbell today (politely) to feedback to him that after following the suggestions in his book for a couple of years my health deteriorated and I have only regained my health by reintroducing quantities of animal foods. I hoped that in future work he would take account of individual variability in response to vegan diets. He sent me a rather aggressive and mildly paranoid email back – I’m astonished at his tone – he seemed like a nice guy in his book.
Agatha
Your vegan has no regard for human life, not even of his own. For this reason, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The vegan may come individually, or in strength. He may even appear as one of our own. But however he does, we must stop him.
I can no longer sit back and allow vegan infiltration, vegan indoctrination, vegan subversion and the international vegan conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
feeling some paranoia? Fearful of informed discussion?
Campbell always seemed more of a Buck Turgidson type to me
ok
Ohhh! I would LOVE to see that e-mail!
it sounds like you don’t know how to eat nutritionally. If you eat junk food all day as a vegan, you’re health will indeed deteriorate. One of the benefits of vegan diet is that it forces you to learn to eat healthy and really get the vitamins your body requires to be healthy. You probably just felt better becuase you ate more calories with your dead animal on a plate. it’s ok – Americans are used to allowing immoral actions due to laziness
Awesome post. What it really boils down to is this: BIO-INDIVIDUALITY.
The Wheel of Health is arguably the most important book ever written on the subject of health and disease. Its author Dr Guy Wrench was trained to believe disease is normal. All doctors who treat it with drugs and surgery believe this. The book describes his attempt to find out if it was true, and the reasons for his conclusion that it is not. Anyone who rubbishes this book, and I have never seen an attempt at this that was not an embarrassment for the rubbisher, should think again because of the profound implications for their own health.
I consider the Wheel of Health as having some good information. The mark of any good researcher is not to avoid information that goes against any personally held beliefs. In fact many good researchers will look for conflicting information in order to avoid embarrassment when publishing any conclusions.
The idea held by many that wheat is the cause of the superb health and stamina of the Hunzas is not supported by the facts. The fact that the Greenland Eskimos who have absolutely no plants in their diets and yet also enjoy the health and stamina equal to the Hunzas testify that wheat is not a factor for good health. In fact, the Hunzas may enjoy good health in spite of consuming wheat.
The grain of wheat is a grass seed. I can’t imagine how in the evolution of man that at any time before agriculture that the hunter gatherers were able to regularly consume any amounts of grass seed equal to what became available after agriculture.
When, after stating that the Huzas and the Eskimos enjoyed the same good health and then stating that the Hunzas prove that the plant based diet is the proper diet is glaringly biased and an unsupported conclusion.
While it is not possible to cultivate plants for food in the Arctic, the Inuit have traditionally gathered those that are naturally available. Grasses, tubers, roots, stems, berries, and seaweed (kuanniq or edible seaweed) were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location. – Wikipedia
The Eskimos are also exceptionally healthy. “The fact that the Eskimos of this polar tribe have such excellent physique, hair, and teeth, and such superb health without any trace of scurvy, rickets, or other evidence of malnutrition,” write McCollum and Simmonds, “is interesting in the light of their restricted and simple diet.”
It is also interesting as a counterweight to Hindhede and other nutritionists who plump for the excellent lacto-vegetarian diet. There are other excellent diets, and the wholecarcase one of the polar Eskimos is one of them.
- The Wheel of Health, Chapter 6
Hi Gager,
My impression of the Inuit diet is similar to Jane’s. In my studies I have not come across as much information on the Greenland Inuit compared to the Alaskan Inuit. I’m guessing their traditional diets would be similar, but if you have contrary information I’d be interested to see it.
Here is how Weston Price described the diet of the native Alaskan Inuit:
“The food of these Eskimos in their native state includes caribou, ground nuts which are gathered by mice and stored in caches, kelp which is gathered in season and stored for winter use, berries including cranberries which are preserved by freezing, blossoms of flowers preserved in seal oil, sorrel grass preserved in seal oil, and quantities of frozen fish. Another important food factor consists of the organs of the large animals of the sea, including certain layers of the skin of one of the species of whale, which was found to be very high in vitamin C.”
I haven’t read this book myself, but Melissa McEwen reviewed “The Plants We Eat” by Anore Jones, who lived among the native Alaskans for 19 years:
http://huntgatherlove.com/content/plants-we-eat
Thus, a whole book can be written about the plants they eat.
This article in Discover discusses some of the obscure sources of vitamin C in their diet, including animal products:
http://discovermagazine.com/2004/oct/inuit-paradox/article_view?b_start:int=1
In addition to eating what plants they can, these natives also consume important sources of vitamin C such as raw liver, seal brain, and whale skin. Other inland forest-dwelling natives that Price studied were familiar with scurvy and knew it could be prevented or cured with the adrenal glands of moose, which are very rich in vitamin C. It follows that consuming plant foods may be even more important for people who do not eat raw liver, seal brain, whale skin, and moose adrenals.
Chris
@B
My vegan diet was based on various vwhole grains, legumes, roots & tubers, a wide variety of veggies, herbs, fruits, nuts & seeds, flax oil, olive oil, Vit B12 and D supps. No sugar, no processed food. Still a terrible health outcome after a couple of years…
I’m not American by the way.
Agatha
Agatha, can you enlarge on this please? Would you say your diet was a strictly wholefood diet? And what exactly were your symptoms? I am trying to find out how people on a vegan diet get deficiencies. One way obviously would be to eat white flour/rice/sugar, but you seem not to have done this. Another possibility is deficiency of certain fats and fat-soluble vitamins. Do you think this was the case?
Unfortunately, many of the chronically ill found on forums for MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Crohn’s, Lupus etc are former vegans. I could understand why I got sick, my diet was horrible. I couldn’t understand why they did…until we learned more about micronutrients and the role of intestinal hyperpermeability in the onsets of disease.
Pip
Pip, do you know if these sick former vegans ate any white flour, white rice or white sugar? I have come across a suggestion that many vegans do this.
Utter waste of internet blog space. I will take my advice from qualified researchers with academic motives and not from someone whose experience and exposure to medicine and research methodologies can by no argument or means compare to the contributors of facts in Forks Over Knives.
Thanks for stopping by to share your wisdom, Skone. I agree, it’s better to take advice from “qualified researchers” whose motives you seem to know (good for you) rather than from an “unqualified” person, whose motives you also seem to know (yea for you), but who uses reasoned argument, common sense, depth of perception, and even, dare I say it, facts. Nothing trumps qualifications, though; not bad science, cognitive dissonance, or misinformation. Nope.
The world is being run by the best of the best “qualified” academics, yet it’s still going to hell as fast a speeding bullet. Sheep like Skone unable to think for themselves keep voting these tools into positions of power.
Hi Jane
Yes, this is an interesting point. I think it probably was a fat and fat soluble vitamin issue. Symptoms were dental cavities, dental abcesses, grey tinge to facial complexion, dry skin, dry lifeless hair, overwhelming physical fatigue, overwhelming brain fatigue, light and sound sensitivity, depression, frequent diarrhoea, intractable urinary infections, a growth in the nose, sinus pain. The skin on my heels became very dry and cracked – presumably a fatty acid problem (it’s all fine again now). I noticed my palms got a slightly yellow tinge – I wonder if my body couldn’t make the carotene to Vitamin A conversion very efficiently. I have MS which also became scarily aggressive having been very mild for the last 20 years (again it all settled down quite quickly after adding the animal products back in and treating the infections with antibiotics). The growth inside my nose has almost disappeared now and all the other symptoms have gone except some minor residual trouble with urinary infection. I didn’t eat any processed food (almost everything was home cooked from fresh ingredients) or wheat so I can’t pin the troubles on gluten or just eating crap.
It’s a shame really – I enjoyed the vegan diet and didn’t miss meat at all.
Agatha
This is only an anecdote but I think there is some value. A friend bought into the Madison avenue push for low and no fat diets and for two years straight he did all he could to avoid saturated fat. He loved Kentucky Fried chicken but he would always remove the skin and when he bought chicken strips he would ring the strips with paper towels until all of the liquid was removed. Ground beef and bacon was not allowed and all the fat from steaks or any cuts of meat was removed.
His symptoms started with his memory. He would not remember things he had said ten minutes earlier and his recollection of things 20 years ago had become distorted. Also he started gaining weight. Sometimes trying to understand his rambling would become a chore. I also noticed that he sometimes would drift into a trance.
I knew of his removal of all saturated fat from his diet and after numerous talks about the need for saturated fat to metabolize vitamins A, D, E and K2 he reluctantly started adding saturated fat into his diet. The improvement was within a very short time. He maintains that there was no difference but I was not the only person to see the difference. He has returned to his normal.
Reading your comments gager, it suddenly strikes me that I was also having lots of memory issues before I drastically reduced vegetable oils (except for olive and hazelnut, since these were supposed to be “harmless” monounsaturated) and dramatically upped saturated fat intake.
I made the connexion between the progressive changes in my diet and many other health improvement, but not for this one, go figure why since it now seems to makes a lot of sense!
For example, egg yolks = lots of fat-soluble vitamins and also lots of lecithin… isn’t the latter also supposed to help with brain functions…?
Also, my HDL was low-ish before the change. I’ve read it’s also a factor in memory issues, if I’m not mistaken.
Tthe food groups are a political fabrication based upon what modern agriculture needs to sell. The metabolism isn’t designed around them. For example, wheat and grains have only existed for about 10,000 years, less than 1.000 years for some gene pools such as north west Europe or native Indians. So if it were essential we would not have evolved. Even assuming we only go back 5 million years, one thousand years represents only 0.02% of that time. To put it in a time frame we can comprehend, assume the 5 million is represented by a single year, wheat appeared at about 10pm on December 31st. The metabolic crisis not simply due to a single factor but to many novel changes which have been occurring at an accelerating pace. For many the last straw has appeared and the organism is now failing.
“The food groups are a political fabrication based upon what modern agriculture needs to sell. ”
Aaaah, we think along the same lines.
I think you will probably like this article too:
Real Food Is Not Fungible: How Commoditization Eliminates Nutrition, Impoverishes Farmers, and Destroys The Earth
http://www.gnolls.org/2542/real-food-is-not-fungible-how-commoditization-eliminates-nutrition-impoverishes-farmers-and-destroys-the-earth/
Excellent inciteful article. And once foods became comodities it led to a drive to emphasize the most profitable. and this led us into the metabolism crisis. I read on this site a great deal of conviction fro those with opposing positions. It may seem crazy but its perfectly logical and due to a fundamental brain defect as a result of evolution often not providing optimum solutions. Today we refer to the problem as “sunk cost bias: and you can read about it in Michael Shermer’s book The Believing Brain. But Tolstoy noticed the problem and wrote about it:
.“I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives”
The scientific method is supposed to guard against this problem but only rarely does. Most scientific papers contain false conclusions. This was documented in a famous paper by epidemiologist John Ioannidis who found that among the 45 most cited clinical studies of the prior 15 years, 99% of the molecular research had subsequently been refuted. And for those epidemiological studies that so many here love to quote, 75 % had been refuted,; similarly for clinical studies. Papers are not what they might seem for the young and unwary.
I had never heard of the “sunken cost bias”! I investigated it, and the process actually feels very familiar to me. In such cases, I would probably rather have talked about a form of cognitive dissonance. I feel a little less ignorant thanks to you.
“Papers are not what they might seem for the young and unwary.”
For the unwary, definitly. For the young, well… it sort of depends, or so it seems.
Thanks, that’s an enormous help.
Agatha, sorry I tried to post ‘thanks, that’s an enormous help’ here, and it got misplaced.
Hmmm, it got misplaced again. Well, you got the message Agatha, hopefully, and thanks to you Pip as well.
Yes, Jane. quite a few of them did. And I’ve slowly come to the realization that part of the problem may be what’s “IN” the wheat.
And again, how can a diet produce all the needed vitamins and micronutrients if more than one food group is removed for whatever reason – say meat for ethical reasons and wheat for ‘health’ reasons. I don’t think the aveage person is going to be able to logically and systematically rebuild micronutrient food pairings consistently and for long periods of time – ie – for the rest of their lives.
Agatha – you might be interested in researching c. pneumonia and MS. I have a friend rebuilding her life now and was interested in your using the antibiotics to treat infections. Antibioitcs are supposedly very, very bad for us because they are indescriminant killers of both the good and bad bacteria housed in the intestinal tract. However, judicious use of them will take out the ‘bad’ ones, and use of antimicrobial pairings in food can tip us into good health again.
Pip
Thanks for the suggestion about C Pneumoniae Pip – you are bang on. I have in fact done this treatment with great success – I started it as a last resort (together with handfuls of probiotics!) when i was feeling at my worst on the vegan diet. It made a big difference in my MS but I have noticed further dramatic improvements in all sorts of ways since adding the animal foods back in.
Agatha
Every single bunch of those retarded vegans looks really angry. I have never seen a happy looking vegan, nor a health looking vegan.
Pale white disgusting, even the ones in the tropics!
It’s kind of like refilling an empty tank, isn’t it?
Also, with the dental issues, have you looked into cavitations being the cause of many diseases? I’ve just had dental surgery to correct improperly pulled wisdom teeth.
Pip
Hi Denise:
Did you see this study?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21673053
Yes, that’s right Pip – I do wonder whether I will go back to eating fewer animal foods (as I believe Denise does) once I have refuelled properly. I will look into the teeth issue.
Agatha
Denise, this is a great read. I just watched “Forks Over Knives” several nights ago. I enjoyed it and largely agree with a plant-based diet that eschews processed foods, but felt strongly that they implicated animal foods unfairly. Protein causes cancer? Not so fast. Thanks for your well-researched response!
@Fatburningman,
stay away from cholesterol and satured fat, buddy.
How eating red meat can spur cancer progression
“Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, led by Ajit Varki, M.D., have shown a new mechanism for how human consumption of red meat and milk products could contribute to the increased risk of cancerous tumors. Their findings, which suggest that inflammation resulting from a molecule introduced through consumption of these foods could promote tumor growth, are published online this week in advance of print publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)”.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-11/uoc–her111308.php
“Egg, red meat, and poultry intake and risk of lethal prostate cancer in the prostate specific antigen-era: incidence and survival”
“Men who consumed 2.5 or more eggs per week had an 81% increased risk of lethal prostate cancer compared to men who consumed less than 0.5 eggs per week”
http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/15/1940-6207.CAPR-11-0354.abstract
The first study you cite only concerns hypothetical cancer genesis. No actual link is established in this study, between actual meat consumption and actual cancers. The researchers attribute this to a pro-inflammatory *sugar* molecule (thus, nothing to do with fat or cholesterol).
The second study you cite seems to indicate a strong correlation between eggs consumption (no further details) and lethal prostate cancer. Again, no mention of cholesterol or fat.
And your conclusion is “stay away from cholesterol and saturated fat”…?
That’s a leap of faith, and absolutely not what this studies are about.
“The researchers attribute this ” – poor phrasing, lol
rather:
The researchers focus on a possible cancer genesis explanation due…. (to a pro-inflammatory sugar molecule…)
“a pro-inflammatory *sugar* molecule”
Made me curious so I investigated it. That would be Neu5Gc. Fascinating stuff, and certainly something to consider when going paleo and eating lots of red meat.
Peter (Hyperlipid) had a short article about it:
http://eatingoffthefoodgrid.blogspot.com/2010/12/neu5gc-live-fast-die-young.html
More diettary Neu5Gc, taller statures, shorter lives… mmmh…. not so cool.
As some metabolic types are specially sensitive to Neu5Gc, looks like regular checks for inflammatory markers could be a good idea when going paleo…
Most people are sensitive to glucose in one form or another. If there is disease present, from cavities to cancer, glucose is at the center of the fray. It’s energy that runs cells and NOTHING in the body happens without it.
SUBclinical inflammtion, meaning below the threshold of mostt modern medical testing, drives disease. If it’s pre-diabetes, then we say ‘oh, glucose is involved’. But ANY disease process has insulin resistance, but not to the level of being considered ‘diabetes or pre-diabetes’, All the supposed auto-immune diseases have insulin resistance as a ‘subclinical’ manifestion of the disease. Cancer too.
So, while the above link might be ‘only a hypotheis’ I’d like to respectfully point out that we have no ‘proofs’ that ‘everybody in science agrees on’ because every medical branch has ‘hypotheses” and only hypotheses until they eventually find the cure. Assuming they’re actually looking for the cure and not just ‘novel pathways to exploit’.
“That’s a leap of faith, and absolutely not what this studies are about”.
True, I was joking. I find the discuss about the dangers of cholesterol and saturated fats as ridiculous. It’s package that matters, that is bigger than the sum of the components. Unfortunately, we in the Western hemisphere are obsessed more with pharmacology instead of nutrition science.
I reformulate myself, stay away from animal products, buddy.
So the study was proven non-applicable, discussion of the supposed dangers of cholesterol and saturated fat consumption are ridiculous, yet you still warn about animal products?
Nah, I’ll happily be enjoying my breakfast omelettes or liver and onions tomorrow morning. The so-called “science” against nutritious animal foods wears thinner by the week.
Thank you, Ms. Minger!
I only listen to dietary advice from people older than I am, have normal body fat index, have no chronic illness, have no acute illness and use no prescription medications and have data to prove they’ve tested it on themselves. At 69 years old and interested in total mortality, why would I listen to anyone who has a worse track record than I do. No different than football coaches, you have to first win consistently before anyone will listen to your advice…
“…use no prescription medications and have data to prove they’ve tested it on themselves.” LMBO! OMG, that’s hilarious and as about as astute as anything I’ve ever seen supposedly coming from ‘traditional medicine’.
The next time somebody tries to put me on a med that’s been on the market for only two years and assure me of the ‘excellent safety record’, I’m going to ask them if they’ve tested it on themselves!
Pip
Hello there, it is always fun to see someone accuse others of bias while biased themselves. It is even better to see crowds of self proclaimed “intellectuals” praise this person for it, which we can secretly agree is the purpose.
If you want to be taken seriously, at least when critiquing objectively, try not making your blog sound like an 7th grade bubble-gum smacking cheerleader attempting to sound intelligent. You’ll be more effective anyway.
It is good to know that any study can be angle shot no matter how it is presented. As soon as someone says, “Eureka!” someone else pops up to say “it was all in your head”. People will tell you that you cannot even prove existence and in essence all logic is flawed so any logic involved in this critique is nullified. See, that easy and if people in this blog were around when the Heliocentric system was introduced they would have praised the reversal of the work by saying Copernicus had no other system to study so he failed to reproduce his work. Ms. Minger would have been the one to do it as well.
When you reverse someone’s major illness, then you can start critiquing others’ success. Otherwise, get out of the way you are just another skeptic that will try to disprove any claim given enough boredom and built up need for attention whoring.
Please, if you consider yourself “intelligent” spend your time finding data to help people and lead by example, don’t waste all that energy only shooting things down. You’ll never stop the world from trying things that work even if led by misguided studies, and if you have nothing to offer yourself… you’re just wasting everyone time writing something that will take days to read thoroughly. Let us know when you’ve saved someone’s life (oh wait you’re not a doctor so that’s gonna be harder than writing a paper).
Signed,
A meat eater
You are guilty of what you condemn. And it is apparent you either did not read or did not understand the critique. Critique in science has been around as long as science and it serves the purpose of saving us from bad science and it also serves the purpose of self correction (using science to correct science).
Denise attacks the bad math and the deliberate omission of information by the principals.
Your post in basically one long and elaborated personal attack against Ms Minger, and contributes nothing to the debate at hand.
This is what is called “ah hominem” arguments: attacking the person instead of attacking the arguments. Which is generally used when someone donesn’t find a rational way to attack the arguments.
Do you have something to say about the subject of the article..?
“A meat eater” Ha-ha, you think anyone actually believed that?
You must not have very good reading comprehension skills, because you pretty much missed the boat here friend.
Being that the national reading level is in the 8th grade range, I believe you just said Denise’s writing style is almost perfect?
P.S. Don’t be so quick to say she hasn’t saved someone’s life. To think you have to be a “doctor” to save a life is idiotic.
It must be quite amusing for Denise to see so many gallant knights jump up and defend her honour, but please guys, save your ammo for the really serious discussion. I confess I have done it too, but really some comments are so far out.. forget it. But what is beginning to bug me more is the wheat problem and how that fits in with this whole discussion. In most cases we are dealing basically with an offense to cell life, an inflammation, an improper response, maybe due to a deficiency. Chris M. mentioned the copper deficient semi dwarf wheat. I think it is more than that. We still have lots of copper tubing everywhere. Maybe it is something so obvious that is has been staring us in the face. I just rubbed one corer of my eye a bit and now I can hardly see. Totally forgot to wash my hands after I cut some jalapeño for the salad. I don’t see anything on my fingers.. still..
Hi James,
Just to clarify, semi-dwarf wheat is not just deficient in copper, but also in zinc, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, sulfur, and calcium. This information is from the Broadbalk Wheat Experiment, and I discussed it in my review of Wheat Belly:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/10/wheat-belly-toll-of-hubris-on-human.html
To my knowledge, no one has looked at the content of B vitamins, choline, betaine, or other nutrients found in dwarf and traditional wheat in such a reliable manner.
I did not mean to suggest that this was the only, or even primary, cause of cardiovascular disease or wheat intolerance. I just mentioned it to point out that there were consistencies and agreements between Dr. Davis’s perspective and Jane’s.
Chris
You raise an interesting issue but its wasted in this little argument. What you point out about saving lives with respect to doctors does have some widespread statistics. To sum up when doctors withdraw services or go on strike, death raters fall, whether its here or Canada or Israel or many other countries. For example during a go-slow in LA death rates fell by 18% then following a return to normal they rose by 3% above normal for five weeks. The problem isn’t the doctors but the protocols they are forced to follow through lobbying by drug companies and threat of malpractice suit. Every year the NEJ of M publishes the article on how many died as a result of medical error etc in the hope the numbers will decline if we alert doctors to them. But they never do. I’ve even discussed it with mu own doctor and he’s explained how he is constrained against the best treatment. Intelligent blogs like this where science and evidence can be thrashed out are extremely valuable. You just have to ignore those unaccustomed to intelligent discussion.
My my! Someones feeling pretty self-righteous!
Aussie dago, Anthony Colpo , farted so hard it propelled him to the moon where upon he met lunar horticulturalist , Bart Sibrel, to discuss the finer points of the cholesterol hypothesis over low fat nudie biscuits, under the direct supervision of Drs. Morgan Freeman and Bruce Lee.
Congrats for being the second person to ever make it on my “banned” list, Razzie. Shoot me an email if you want to re-enter the dialogue with something constructive.
Denise,
I would recommend that you do not encourage him to email you but instead tag any correspondence as spam, since you are now about to receive a barrage of vile and undoubtedly misogynistic correspondence from this truly demented individual. “Razwell” is a notorious troll that has behaved this way towards Anthony Colpo, James Krieger, Jamie Hale, Lyle McDonald, Carbsane, and undoubtedly many others for years. He will NEVER have anything constructive to say. I’m sorry that you will now have to deal with him. Thanks for the great work here, at any rate!
James -
Microbes. It’s IN the wheat.
This shows the 400% increase in 50 years -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704247/?tool=pubmed
Bacteria -
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4983639
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21787226
It’s not an improper response, its a overwhelmed response.
Pip
There is yet another basic medical myth here, Celiac Disease doesn’t really exist as it is described in the literature. What is termed CD is in fact a collection of symptoms experienced by a small percentage of the population at the extreme end of the distribution related to sensitivity to gluten and other toxic molecules in grains. Its not either or, its a continuum. At the other end of the population are the few who experience absolutely no adverse reaction. In between are the rest of us experiencing less severe symptoms to a lesser or greater degree. Many of us then end up using antacids or prescription medication to cope with these symptoms which appear and grow more pronounced with age as the body’s ability to tolerate abuse declines with age. Indigestion is a classic symptom and many who require proton pump inhibitors such as prilosec to suppress the symptoms will find that symptoms will disappear should they choose to avoid grains. But here is the rub, most people are unable to eliminate grains form their diet because gluten contains five opioids and opioids are addictive, creating endorphins This explains why many such foods are considered by many as “comfort foods” and have not only led to a population. suffering from indigestion but overweight or obese. Reducuing the saturated fat in the diet over the past fifty years simply led to a hunger hole, you have to get calories from somewhere so the hole got filled with an increased quantity of gluten containing items bringing with it poor digestion and metabolic syndrome. There are many excellent books written by experts on GERD (Gastro Intestinal Reflux Disease) which explain in detail. If you have indigestion try cutting out grains but worn everyone you might become as unpleasant and disagreeable as someone trying to quit smoking.. .
Correct Dave, it’s what William Davis is trying to explain in “Wheat Belly”. And Kurt Harris does the same in his blog. Both MD’s who have seen the light?
Let’s say they seem to indicate in which direction our research should be heading. For now.. The real problem with all these issues is really the enormous capability of our body system to tolerate abuse. Not easy therefore to eliminate all the confounders. To address Pip’s concerns: The W.U.R. in Wageningen (Wageningen University) has established a research team of young bright researchers (all PhD’s) to look into this whole domain of the world of microbes, but it may be a while. Personally I have my doubts about pinning things on singular activities or events. I think it may more have to do with balance. A bit of “bad stuff” may not be so bad if there is enough to correct or come with counteraction.
I think all of you are right about wheat. It really is the wheat, the refined wheat anyway. It’s the microbes too, which wouldn’t be a problem if micronutrient deficiencies from consumption of white flour were not crippling our immune systems. It’s copper deficiency, and B vitamin deficiency, and chromium and potassium, and most of all perhaps, magnesium and manganese. Without magnesium, you can’t make ATP. This means the carbohydrate in white flour is useless as a fuel, and will end up as fat (yes this really is what causes obesity, in my opinion anyway) or as ‘reactive oxygen species’. ROS and ‘oxidative stress’ explain pretty much everything. Manganese and copper are absolutely crucial in preventing oxidative stress.
Deficiency of basic elements is a chronic dietary problem. Take a look at ever fertilizer bag in the farm store and you won’t see many elements essential to humans in the analysis. Grow food on the same land year after year and elements like magnesium are bound to become depleted. Using that as an example, most people are now magnesium deficient yet it’s essential in the regulation of the calcium channel. If you don’t have enough then calcium in your diet is not properly absorbed and is retained in the soft tissue. If you are lucky this will cause painful bone spurs and tell you to do something about it. If you are not, the first sign may be a broken hip due to osteoporosis. However most people have the spur taken off thinking curing the symptom is curing the cause. Magnesium deficiency may well eventually lead to cancer because the calcium channel is essential to the health of every cell in your body, including the brain. I don’t understand why we already do not have standardized testing covering almost all deficiencies and illnesses. Complicated?, we already have it for your car; that little light on the dash calling for maintenance has behind it not periodic but continuous monitoring for hundreds of conditions, mandated by Government to keep your car in peak health. Why don’t humans have the same thing cars have had it for decades? Please don’t tell me testing for magnesium is too hard. In my business I have laborers who didn’t graduate from high school routinely testing molten iron for magnesium content and maintaining the concentration between 0.003% and 0.006%. To Paraphrase President Kennedy, we should choose to do these things because they are hard, not because they are easy. We need more Engineers in medicine.
The unrefined wheat still has all the problems Mr. Masterjohn described.
Flour will not get turned into ATP without energetic demand for it, anyway. And then there is the problem of its insulinogenic properties, unrefined and refined both.
Oxidative stress and immune system suppression are problems of grains, unrefined or not.
Hi FlowWTG, I missed this comment of yours. I am not aware of any evidence that whole grains promote oxidative stress, excessive insulin release, or immune system suppression. Can you tell me please, where you have encountered these claims?
Forgot vitamin E.
Make that Mixed tocopherols Jane.
A very useful point-by-point critique, and a clear counterbalance to the somewhat giddy claims of panacea made by FOK.
I was already predominantly vegetarian, but I allowed FOK to tip me over the edge into becoming an herbivore. I eat plenty of protein, just not the animal type. I was especially interested your revealing that a major aspect of the documentary’s recommended diet is a fats fast. That was not made clear enough.
Raw food is part of my diet but only part. I am blogging about my experiment with a strict vegetarian diet at http://soloherbivore.blogspot.com/ where I have linked to your excellent article.
Dave -
Not one disease is ever like listed in the literature is ‘textbook’. All have that same continium and most have overlapping symptoms with other ‘similar’ disease. For example – RA and AS – different manifestations of the same inherent disease. The only difference being which doc you saw, and which test went positive first.
On your second post – because the tests we have now, magnesium as an example, are pure garbage. They know that microbes can cell-jack cells for needed magnesium and a study I had, but lost and would KILL for a copy of now, showed that mycoplasma become 200% stronger when the HPA axis is activated via the stress hormone cortisol. So, as an example, magnesium depletion should be easity detected, but since that could be easily remedied with either nutritional supplementation or by actual food, no MD is going to write scripts for something that is ‘cheap’ or even ‘free’. The Industrial Medical complex is all about ‘treating the sick’ and not about ‘preventing the sick in the first place’.
James -
Don’t you think the problem is after years of abuse, the body might be unable to continue to compensate for so much ‘crud fuel’ so it falls into a disease state? Balance is great if we’re young and somebody warned us about any of this, but once the disease state starts, more and more systems are going to ‘blow’. This is probably a poor example, but I think of the body as a jalopy. It’s running on 7 cyclinders, has 2 flat tires, there’s sludge in the gas line, it needs a tune up. Everything wrong is part of the same ‘problem’ but if the MD first seen says ‘celiac’ or ‘lupus’ or whatever, nobody is looking at the flat tires or the insulin resistance. Does this make sense? Then, when enough of another system ‘blows’ – like heart attack – they treat it as a separate disease state instead of a continium of the original metabolic disease.
I understand your hesitation about pinning everything on one event (microbes) instead of maintainig balance, but I ask that you consider the possibility.
Jane –
I’m afraid I got lost – can you explain how carbohydrates end up as ROS? The ROS is always there, in every body system. If you’re saying the carbohydrates FEED the ROS, I’m going to agree with you totally.
Pip
I’ve come back just for intelligence. I visited some idiotic vegan website run by some idiotic person who insists that she is soooooo knowledgeable (a medical librarian), she eats and lives healthily, she will live forever and you can too if you become an idiot. Personally, I despise everything she stands for, including her idiotic optimism and everything else, including Zen (not her and not mine tradition), veganism (not her and not mine tradition) and everything else. Clearly, plant based diet affects minds negatively.
My, oh my, are you serious anna? Do you think there are no idiots, fools or charlatans among the meat eaters? That this is a vegetarian-only thing? Come on.
You are overreacting. Take care, since overreacting may lead to foolish choices. Don’t let a single person (an “idiotic vegan website” owner) dictate your reactions… that’s giving this person too much power over you;-)
I, for one, as a (more or less) Paleo eater, I’m all for Zen practise.
And I don’t despise vegans. Many among them have very respectable, understandable motivations. There’s a (very loud) minority preaching veganism as gospel, for sure, and these are annoying as hell. But I certainly refuse to judge all vegans from this perspective alone.
Wizzu, I was serious – to a degree. I do like this website more than the idiotic one I mentioned. However, I think I agree with the banned guy (Razzy) when he says that there is a problem with meat extremists too. I recently saw somewhere a totally grainless, legumeless diet which does seem to be as idiotic as the one recommended by idiotic vegans.
I don’t know whether loud vegans are a minority, but I know that vegans tend to be aggressive to the fascist level (and yes primitive). How else can you call the attitude “those who eat right (vegan) are healthy, those who are sick are to blame; I eat vegan, I’ll live forever and will never die” etc.
As far as Zen, yoga, natto etc. is concerned. Personally, I decided a long time ago that certain areas will remain unknown to me and I am not going there (in any sense, including physically). There is so much in life one can learn and I despise approach “I talked (once) to him … so he is my friend” or “I spent the entire day in India so am an expert.” Yes, I am multicultural, multilingual (English is my 7th) and “multidegreed,” but I think I’ll die Zenless and Hollywoodless.
Wizzu, I just think that my cultures and particularly the one I should be attached to (and I am) have everything I need and don’t have to go Zen just because this of that illiterate Hollywood star or this or that idiotic psychobabbler thinks I should.
Wizzu, I think there is a problem with extremists on both sides. I particularly dislike vegans because they seem to be aggressive on many levels. Obviously, on nutritional. But also on other levels and find this aggression particularly dangerous. They tend to imply that their views and their way of live is a way not only to health, but also to … peace. In other words, they say that we don’t need to know history, we don’t need to KNOW cultures, we don’t have to strive for civilised societies with civilised structures, etc. All we should do is to sit on our butts, eat some grass and repeat slogans about health, happiness and peace and health, happiness and health will come. Sure.
I think I have a problem with paleoists’ (?what the word?) unlimited belief in science. Science is fallible. More certainly scientists are fallible and are as susceptible to temptations (monetary for example) as anyone else.
I also have a problem with all this paleo talk. If one believe in evolution, one has to accept the fact that we are different from our paleo ancestors. Personally, I think that anyone who lived as late as early 1800s would die immediately in any of our cities (air).
“”If one believe in evolution, one has to accept the fact that we are different from our paleo ancestors. Personally, I think that anyone who lived as late as early 1800s would die immediately in any of our cities (air).”
Er… no. Evolution takes much, much, much longer than that. We are not that different, biologically, from our paleo ancestors.
As for vegans, I don’t have the same experience as yours with them… your description is partly funny and partly scary. Sounds like a description of a sect. I know that a handful of religious sects preach veganism, but not all vegans are in sects.
About science. Of course science is faillible. Anyone saying otherwise is a fool. Actually, I haven’t met such a fool in a very long time, which is reassuring. So I’m not sure what your point is. “Paleoists” having unilimited belief in science? Not sure about that. Care to provide a couple of examples?
Hi Wizzu,
I think Anna has a point in there somewhere. Quite often it seems to me that in popular paleo writings there is a misplaced emphasis on evolution. The principles of evolution are that we share common ancestry with other species, that populations change over time, sometimes but not always diverging to produce new species, and that this occurs primarily because more individuals are born than can survive and some die more easily than others, or become more or less fertile than others. The most salient points that we could infer from this about dietary needs is that we may share dietary needs with other species, that there is variation in the dietary needs of individuals within our population, and that the typical or mean dietary needs of the human population have changed and will continue to change over time.
To say that our needs are different from those of apes, yet have not changed much for the last 100,000 years, does not seem to me to have much to do with evolution. One can legitimately hypothesize that this is true, it just does not make sense to me to use “evolution” as a theme to market the theory.
At the Ancestral Health Conference there were a lot of great presenters who involved evolution in their talks but presented a much more nuanced and scientifically cautious point of view. I liked John Durant’s idea the best, wherein he discussed the evolution of zoos and showed how human concerns have paralleled zoo concerns over time, and that the most recent trend is to study the natural habitat of the animal in order to obtain a starting place for understanding how the animal can be healthy in captivity. Studying the natural habitat of humans will produce a rich source of information for us to tease apart and begin to understand how modern “captive” humans can be healthy. But again, the fact that we apparently share common ancestry with lions has little to do with understanding this point through analogy with how the health of lions has been improved in zoos.
Anna, you might communicate your points more effectively if you avoid using the word “idiot.” In English this is considered very insulting, and people generally do not listen to other people who think they are idiots. I’m a rare exception. I agree with the folks who earlier suggested I might be weird — I’m just not “internet.”
Chris
“people generally do not listen to other people who think they are idiots.”
True, and as the result we have the population we have.
Hi Pip, you’re right of course. I mean the ROS from NADPH oxidase or nitric oxide synthase which use NADPH coming from glucose metabolism.
Hi Jane,
And these enzymes are largely expressed because of inflammation, are they not? It seems, then, that minimizing inflammation is the best route to minimizing ROS produced by them. A great deal of ROS also come from mitochondrial electron transport, and I especially agree that nutrient deficiencies likely play a large role there. I’m sure they also play in to chronic inflammation as well, but perhaps a few steps more removed and thus more indirectly.
Chris
Hi Chris, well you know these enzymes do a lot of things in normal cells, for instance look up ‘NADPH oxidase LTP hippocampus’ and you will find superoxide from it is needed for your brain to learn. Quite extraordinary. But you’re right about inflammation of course. What causes the inflammation? I would say, oxidative/reductive stress due to micronutrient deficiencies prevents proper protein folding, which means the Unfolded Protein Response, which means inflammation if the UPR can’t cope or if autophagy can’t munch up the misfolded/unfolded proteins and other damaged stuff.
Hi Jane,
Fair enough, but obviously we don’t want to eliminate superoxide that is enabling something important like learning. Isn’t it fair to say that if there is excessive nitric oxide and superoxide being produced, it is likely coming from chronic inflammation that presumably shouldn’t be activated? It seems then that either there is a) a chronically present inflammatory stimulus that should be removed or b) some deficiency or miscommunication causing the inflammatory system to stay activated when it should instead resolve the inflammation. I agree nutritional deficiencies are likely to play a role here, though don’t you think that there could be other issues — like dysbiosis, for example, or deficiencies of things other than minerals, like DHA, for example?
Chris
Hi Chris, yes, other deficiencies and dysbiosis undoubtedly play a role. But what causes dysbiosis? Might it not be the removal of metals from our food that gut bacteria need? They can make vitamins, but not metals, and they probably need metals to make the vitamins. Just like we can make DHA if we have the metals. And chronic inflammation will resolve if metals such as copper are there. Copper is very important because it repairs basement membranes. With enough copper, the gut might not leak bacteria and LPS to activate TLR4 etc. Actually TLR4 makes cells retain iron, which might be what causes the damage.
Hi Jane,
Very interesting thoughts. I’ll have to look into that more, including for my own situation. I do think, however, that there are other pieces to the puzzle besides metal deficiencies. Don’t you think that antibiotics, for example, play a role?
Chris
Hi Chris, yes I’m sure they do. But why do we take antibiotics? Only because our immune system can’t cope with what it ought to be able to cope with.
Have you come across a concept called iron withholding? If you haven’t, it could be a revelation. Here’s a paper on it entitled ‘Iron withholding: a defense against disease’.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18487852
Sorry, that paper is only available in abstract. Here’s one by the same author which you should be able to get, entitled ‘Iron loading in humans: a risk factor for enhanced morbidity and mortality’.
http://69.164.208.4/files/Iron%20loading%20in%20humans:%20A%20risk%20factor%20for%20enhanced%20morbidity%20and%20mortality.pdf
Oh dear, that second paper doesn’t talk about iron withholding at all. But it’s short, and well worth reading. Eugene Weinberg is the guy, he discovered iron withholding, try something else of his.
Chris, I reserve the right to use the word “idiot” whenever I like. I hope one day the English “natives” discover the world (and languages) and learn that in many cultures Dale Carnegie still isn’t King, God and Messiah, they don’t spend their days smiling (yes, idiotically) and “idiots” are called “idiots.” They still live by not corporate commercialism alone.
I just scanned your comment. If you call my comment on evolution not sophisticated, that’s OK with me. All this stuff (nutritional, biological and the like) is definitely outside the scope of my competence. Certain health concerns have forced me to finally notice the field, but obviously I am not an expert.
Hi Anna,
I wholeheartedly affirm your right to use the word “idiot” and I did not object to this right. You said English was your seventh language, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you might not have noticed the degree to which it diminishes the communicative value of your post. I did not suggest your comment on evolution was unsophisticated. Rather, I expressed agreement with you.
Chris
As far as I can tell, inflammation results from one of two pathways – 1) trauma and 2) caused by microbes.
In trauma, say you are in an car accident and severely gash/smash your ankle. Correct me if I’m wrong, but white blood cells, neutraphils et al rush in and try to mitigate damage. What happens when the white blood cells are co-opted and house the very ‘bad’ microbes they are supposed to destroy? Isn’t this the very definition of ‘Trojan Horse?’ Isn’t this the theory behind leprosy and TB? Caused by cell wall deficient stealth pathogens difficult to erradicate because they HIDE IN THE WHITE BLOOD CELLS?
This might also be the reason that 10% of autoimmune onsets happen AFTER an accident. Stress hormones combined with trauma can = disease.
Pictures of CWD microbes in a macrophage –
http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/microbes.htm
How the microbes start an immune response –
http://www.physorg.com/news95689106.html
Which beggers the question, what does food have to do with all this?
Possibly, because foods are either alkaline or acidic, they influence the body’s ability to control various microbe populations. Almost everybody has e. coli – yet only a few succumb to disease. In a vegan diet, the main problem might be micronutrients, but another problem might be mostly acidic veggies which the bad microbes need to survive. The same could be said of the Paleo’s and meat being extremely acidifying.
And those micronutrients are the reason the cell walls are more porous too. The cells are there, they’re working, but instead of a spiffy new car, you’ve got a rusted out rust bucket letting anything in.
Balance is everything…but it’s damn hard to balance when the car blew up.
Jane – do you have any studies to support that “ROS from NADPH oxidase or nitric oxide synthase which use NADPH coming from glucose metabolism.?” I’m particularly interested in the glucose connection. You are more learned than I, but this quick Pubmed search says the opposite – that NO can control pathogens because it makes Hydrogen peroxide. It doesn’t create it, it controls what is already there.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC28421/
Which might explain why some docs prescribe NO patches (I think its the stuff they use for peart patients, but don’t quote me) or the old school HP IV’s.
Which is the point of the second point listed above. The microbes are already there. You can’t create a microbe out of thin air, electron transfer or not. It has to have other microbes to ‘swap spit (or genes) with and it doesn’t get really active until they reach a ‘quarum”.
The main problem is if the body is under funded (nutritional deficiencies) which are not made up, and years and years of this causes the body to self-canabalize itself looking for what it needs to survive (ie pulling calcium from bones because of loss of magnesium) then we can’t just say ‘bad vegan diet’ or ‘bad paleo diet’ of ‘crappy processed food diet’ if the diet is only part of the cause and everybody ignores how the diet changes the microbial population in the first place.
Sorry for the run-on sentence.
Pip, this is a very complex question and I need a bit of time to think about how best to reply. Hopefully tomorrow.
insulin resistance is a big supporter of inflammation too.
From http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=inflammatory-clues:
TNF-alpha—and, more generally, inflammation—activates and increases the expression of several proteins that suppress insulin-signaling pathways, making the human body less responsive to insulin and increasing the risk for insulin resistance.
So what causes the inflammation? Although type 2 diabetes can develop in patients of normal weight, most scientists agree that “obesity is the driving force,” says Jerrold Olefsky, an endocrinologist at the University of California, San Diego. After fat cells have expanded as a result of weight gain, they sometimes do not get enough oxygen from the blood and start to die, he explains. The cellular death recruits immune cells to the scene.
Insulin resistance causes inflammation, too. In a study published in the August online version of Diabetes, H. Henry Dong and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh showed that a protein called FOXO1 serves as a master switch that turns on the expression of another key inflammatory cytokine, interleukin 1-beta, which also interferes with insulin signaling. Normally insulin keeps FOXO1 in check; it “rapidly inhibits FOXO1” by moving it out of the nucleus so it can be targeted for degradation, Dong says. But when a person becomes insulin-resistant and pancreatic cells no longer produce enough insulin to overcome the resistance, activity of FOXO1 increases.
Dong’s results suggest that inflammation and insulin resistance reinforce each other via a positive feedback loop. And indeed, the two often come together: for instance, rheumatoid arthritis, an inflammatory disease, heightens the risk of insulin resistance developing, Dong states.
I don’t know anything about microbes and illnesses, but I suspect (as some people above) that it isn’t a good idea to eliminate entire categories of food. I’ve noticed that in all discussions usually the same illnesses are mentioned. For example, we hear that “fat is bad for heart” (and order not to eat fat follows) or “grains are bad for heart” (and order not to eat grains follows). If I understand it correctly, there are countless other illnesses and nobody seems to be interested in knowing how this or that elimination is related to them. In the meantime there are countless ways to get sick and die. Balance seem to be more sensible unless a specific illness imposes limitations.
I’m always amused when I hear people who eat the standard Western diet complaining about eliminating “entire categories of food.” Do any of them consume insects? arachnids? canines? horses? primates? seal/walrus/whale blubber? cow’s blood? Well, why not?
For the record, I eliminate a “category of food” — gluten grains — because while eating them I had a host of chronic illnesses (none of which had to do with my heart), and eliminating them made the illnesses go away. There are a lot of people in my situation, judging by the Primal/Paleo forums. No, we’re not interested in “balance” or “moderation” in eating foods that are toxic to our bodies.
“No, we’re not interested in “Balance” or “moderation” in eating foods that are toxic to our bodies.”
Well, what is toxic to your body, isn’t necessarily toxic to my body.
This is exactly the reason why I am against ideological elimination of groups of food. Various things are toxic to various people and if I eliminate all foods which are toxic to … somebody, I’ll starve pretty soon.
Eating insects, for example, is alien to my cultures and I am pretty sure that my ancestors had their reasons to ignore them (toxicity a possibility?). I have no burning desire to include them into my diet. I also don’t see a reason to do that. I must add that all my cultures took care of sufficient amount of protein and other nutrients and I
feel that I can survive without expanding into areas you suggest.
What is a balanced diet? Isn’t that what we are all trying to piece together? And, even though there is a steady stream of ever increasing scientific evidence that certain parts of our diet provide us with less balance than is ideal, we still do not know what the real causes of some health problems are. So we keep reading and researching. Isn’t it wonderful that we have the whole world at our fingertips?
You may be all for balance Anna. I don’t think you’ll find many people who disagree with you, but you may be taking in way too many Omega 6 for instance, which is fairly standard with the present diet recommendations and thus causing low level inflammation for years before your body can’t take it anymore. Your arteries may have hardened, may be clogged from all the repairing, etc.
Dr Larry McCleary, a retired brain surgeon, has written a wonderful book :The Brain Trust program, available used on-line for less than $10 (shipping included). Even though he doesn’t appear to be on a mission to ban all wheat products, fact is wheat is conspicuously absent from all diet suggestions. His book is all about how the high glucose levels affect our brain and how advanced glycation endproducts can do some real serious damage to our brain, but because there are billions of braincells, damage will most likely not be felt for many many years. Remember the movie with Meryl Streep : First do no Harm?
Dr.McCleary was involved with that that .
James, it sounds to me like McCleary has the same misunderstanding about wheat that Davis has. It’s refined wheat that’s the problem. Advanced glycation endproducts are normally removed by a process called autophagy. Failure of autophagy is implicated as a major cause – one might say THE cause – of neurodegenerative disease. Autophagy depends on minerals removed from white flour.
Interesting that you appear to have better than information than a brain surgeon and a cardiologist who both did extensive research. I’ll pose the problem to another expert in the field prof. Muskiet from Groningen University.
Hi James, well you know these scientists/doctors do their best, but they would be the first to acknowledge that they cannot spend their whole time reading the literature. I do, and have done for 30 years. I have an informal association with the Pharmacology department at Oxford university, where I provide information from the literature for the head of department.
Forgot to say, I have a zoology degree from Oxford, first class, and a PhD in developmental biology from Cambridge. I made a discovery in my PhD and postdoc work which led me to suspect that modern disease is caused by micronutrient deficiencies due to consumption of white flour, white rice and white sugar. This led to the termination of my career. Since then, I have spent my time reading the scientific literature, living on an inheritance.
Would someone please explain the food value of wheat. I’m not asking about the nutritional benefits because even poisoness plants could contain beneficial nutriants. Please put aside the flavor and culinary value. Nothing tastes better than a deep fried doughnut or freshly baked french bread.(not american french bread that contains sugar)
I don’t eat wheat, I gave it up years ago when advised by my doctor. Giving it up brought my triglycerides down to 55. Thanks for any help.
Wheat is a food of choice, like french fries. Its main benefit is a high caloric density so provides energy but nothing that isn’t obtained in higher nutrient densities from vegetable and meat sources. Its the reason you see “enriched” on products, if it wasn’t, table sugar might be a better source since it doesn’t contain the things that negatively affect many people. Perhaps a major benefit is it’s support of the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company sales of proton pump inhibitors such as Prilosec and other remedies for GERD, which is often caused by low low level sensitivity to gluten and other constituents. My Father used to call bread the staff of life but he was wrong. Where we came from in North-Western Europe, wheat appeared less than one thousand years ago consequently the incidence of GERD is much higher there and declines in frequency as you move South and East into the Mediterranean. Evolutionary adaption is a lot faster than traditionally believed but its not instant, it takes a failure to thrive and reproduce to winnow out tolerances from a gene pool.
Dave, enriched flour is white flour with some added vitamins and minerals. The minerals are the wrong ones, since the average modern diet already has enough calcium and iron which are very high in animal products. Some years ago I wrote to all the big pharmaceutical companies asking if they knew about metals and disease, and mostly they did not reply. I suspect they know. If they do, this is the biggest scam of all.
gager, what do you mean by the ‘food value’ of wheat if not the nutritional benefits?
Hi Jane,I tend to classify foods in a value as they relate to the ability to sustain life, in this case human life. I already have my answer to the value of wheat and grains in general. I would classify wheat as a food of last resort. By itself wheat could not sustain human life to any degree of good health. On the other hand I classify meat very high providing the meat contains lots of fat. Meat by itself contains all that is needed for humans to thrive. Vegetables as far as I know are not toxic but would only sustain life with supplements and a proper selection to provide that which is needed. I sometimes have vegetables with my meals but they are more of a garnish.
It appears that many vegans are in the same camp as those who practice pious fraud. I suspect they feel justified to lie if it would result in an end that they support. I hope this makes sense.
Hi gager, many thanks.
from wikipedia, but an important point is AGEs form with hyperglycemia – making both unrefined and refined grains huge contributors.
AGEs may be formed external to the body (exogenously) by heating (e.g., cooking);[2] or inside the body (endogenously) through normal metabolism and aging. Under certain pathologic conditions (e.g., oxidative stress due to hyperglycemia in patients with diabetes), AGE formation can be increased beyond normal levels. AGEs are now known to play a role as proinflammatory mediators in gestational diabetes as well.[3]
[edit] AGE formation in diabetes
In the pathogenesis of diabetes-related AGE formation, hyperglycemia results in higher cellular glucose levels in those cells unable to reduce glucose intake (e.g., endothelial cells).[4][5][6] This, in turn, results in increased levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) and FADH, increasing the proton gradient beyond a particular threshold at which the complex III prevents further increase by stopping the electron transport chain.[7] This results in mitochondrial production of reactive oxygen species, activating PARP1 by damaging DNA. PARP1, in turn, induces ADP-ribosylation of GAPDH, a protein involved in glucose metabolism, leading to its inactivation and an accumulation of metabolites earlier in the metabolism pathway. These metabolites activate multiple pathogenic mechanisms, one of which includes increased production of AGEs.
Examples of AGE-modified sites are carboxymethyllysine (CML), carboxyethyllysine (CEL), and Argpyrimidine, which is the most common epitope.
[edit] AGE formation in other diseases
The formation and accumulation of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) has been implicated in the progression of age-related diseases.[8] AGEs have been implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease,[9] cardiovascular disease,[10] and stroke.[11] The mechanism by which AGEs induce damage is through a process called cross-linking that causes intracellular damage and apoptosis.[12] They form photosensitizers in the crystalline lens,[13] which has implications for cataract development.[14] Reduced muscle function is also associated with AGEs.[15]
[edit]
Here is a list of toxic plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants
I wonder at the history of discovery at which plants are poisonous. How many people died in each discovery?
I would never graze on plants without knowing anything about them.
Here is a list of toxic plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants
I wonder at the history of discovery at which plants are poisonous. How many people died in each discovery?
I would never graze on plants without knowing anything about them.
Humans are omnivorous in order to take advantage of multiple streams of nutrition. This ability, however, doesn’t mean that we must ingest everything, it merely means that if fish are the primary source of available protein, we can eat them without ill effects. The same is true for all other animal and vegetable combinations.
Certainly, people adapted over millennia to eat what is local to them. People whose ancestors adapted to live where there is little vegetation and a short growing season have adapted to a high fat, meat-based diet, others who come from a background of tropical islands have adapted to a fruit and fish diet.
Being omnivorous lets us adapt to our environment in many different ways, and nature helps us change to fit those environments. There are healthy people in cultures that do not eat meat, and in cultures that dislike dairy products. Large groups of humans have prejudices and taboos against food that is considered perfectly edible by others. There are many who consider bugs tasty and others the find them repellent. Huge populations have cultural biases against pork. And these groups are all healthy.
The problem is that our global mobility has outstripped the speed at which evolution works. In the US especially we are now a blend are often a blend of multiple genetic variations with varying abilities to cope with the massive amount and variety of food that is available to us.
What this means is that we have more choice. By this I do not mean the varieties of food, but the exclusion of food types. In other words, I can select to remove certain things from my diet in the knowledge that I can make up for their nutrients in a different way.
I do not need to eat meat or dairy since I can get just as usable protein, minerals, and vitamins from an herbivorous diet. My body may argue with me a bit at first, but so long as I choose my nutrition thoughtfully, I can eat any way that I decide to.
I don’t consider myself “vegan” (which to me is a moral stance rather than a health choice) but my diet is close to that standard. I call myself an herbivore, and I feel comfortable with having made the choice to eliminate certain classes of foods from my diet because I’m smart enough and careful enough to eat a diet that is as well balanced as any omnivore’s.
Don’t you think that selection from various cultures can have risks. In each culture, people learned how to balance locally various types. Americans by extracting various foods out of the context probably risk imbalance. If one selects some food because of several minerals for example, one can miss the fact that this food has also components which in the “mother” culture were balanced by something, but are not balanced in a new culture or can risk duplication/overdosing of some nutrients. What is the meaning of “carefulness” if one is not familiar with the original culture (including oral, unrecorded) of this or that food. A friend from Chili for example recently commented on some foods – yes, we ate them, but we didn’t eat them with… or we didn’t eat them every day, or we ate them in such and such amount, etc.
It’s way too late to worry about that. Unless one is a member of a geographically or culturally remote community, the mixture of different types of food sources is too well entrenched to avoid.
Take, for example, the tomatoes for the ubiquitous Italian red sauce, potatoes, avocados, bananas, etc. There are foods that have been transplanted and are now considered native to places that had never known them 200 years ago, such as coffee, pistachios, olives, etc. No. That horse is out of the barn and ten miles down the road. Even people who are kosher, hallal, or macrobiotic eat foods that have drifted in from other cultures and other regions.
The way to deal with it is to use an open and intelligent mind to judge one’s own health and proceed accordingly. Blindly following the ideas of experts has seldom proven to be a good food strategy, but it’s something we all do from time to time. That’s why it’s nice to have questioners like Denise to remind us to pay attention more critically.
Thanks for the enlightening article. Perhaps the dangers of animal foods have been exaggerated. Still waiting to hear why it’s *good to include some animal products in the diet. That seems to be the underlying belief. Can anyone tell me? (Please don’t bring up b12).
Joe, animals are a good source of several important vitamins. Some vitamins are easier to obtain and use from animal sources. Chris Masterjohn has some info on this on the WAFP site. Does this mean eating animals is absolutely necessary? Maybe not, but since we can probably both agree “the dangers of animal foods have been exaggerated” what’s the point of going out our way to avoid them when there’s also a large body of evidence that says that might not be the best idea either.
Has the WAPF ever published one scientific paper? Or are they more like a mouthpiece for the smalltime, organic meat/dairy farmers? Grasping onto vague scientific ideas that conveniently support the animal products their supporters sell? How would avoiding meat be “going out of my way?” Given that I have none of the physical attributes that would allow me to procure meat in my natural tropical environment, nor the need to, given the abundant vegetation… wouldn’t I be going out of my way TO eat meat?
By blood tests show no lack of “fat soluble vitamins A, E, etc… Am I a fluke vegan who got lucky?
I’m sorry Joe, I failed to realize you were developmentally delayed. I was about to annihilate your comment, until I realized this. I don’t want to be “the bad guy who picks on the special kid.” Please accept my apology.
I’m sure you can find a local tutor who can help you learn to operate a keyboard and mouse so you can navigate to the answers you’re seeking on your own without someone else holding your hand.
grok do you wake up in the morning, filled with excitement, thinking, wow, another day of being an evil, sarcastic douche on the internet! What a life I have!
On the days where I check my email first thing and see reply comments like yours, yes.
Grok, if I might interject, I thought that you were one of the good guys. I try not to be too easily swayed by well placed rhetoric but Denise’s piece is so nicely crafted and besides, I like meat and would prefer to continue ingesting it so long as it remains safe, sensible and vital to do so. I have poured through the oceans of comments and as many of the individual viewpoints as possible and find myself impressed by a great many divergent ones yet still align myself with the Paleo movement. That being said, I have come to this opinion largely based upon my own employment of critical thinking, much the same way that Denise researched and formulated her attack upon the China Study and those that she believes are misrepresenting the results therein. Well, there isn’t much room for snide or derisive remarks from those who attempt to utilize the critical thinking process if they wish to have their intentions thought of as valid and sincere. Personally, I saw nothing from Joe’s most immediate response that would warrant such a caustic attack from yourself. I believe that what he was asking was completely legitimate and not born of palpable arrogance. Now, perhaps I missed his intended under text but I doubt that is the case.
That’s basically all I wanted to say. Carry on.
Hi Mike,
Please re-read his comments to my original response. Feel free to email me to find out exactly why I responded the way I did.
Thanks Grok. I’d just add that as I said in my comment to Jane, I do think that Americans eat too much “meat.” I don’t know if they eat too much meat in relation to plant products, but definitely too much “meat” in relation to skin, bones, cartilage, tendons, and organs. That’s a point I’ve made in a few places:
http://www.westonaprice.org/childrens-health/vitamins-for-fetal-development-conception-to-birth
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/03/anyone-doing-paleo-without-liver-bones.html
Chris
Congratulations to you. I’ve never read such an articulate, eloquent, funny and entertaining spin. Actually for a short while I was even thinking that maybe Prof Campbell had betrayed me in his book by making claims that you have uncovered to be unsubstantiated.
Fortunately I can think for myself and soon recognized all the spin and distortions in your rant, disguised as well-meaning critique.
Again and again you take sentences and statistics out of context and twist them until they seem to fit your case.
I’ll just pick a few examples:
You’ve in detail outlined how the Indian high-protein (HP) vs. low-protein (LP) study showed a higher overall one-year-mortality for the rats on the LP-diet than those on the HP-diet. (By showing us only a tiny excerpt that doesn’t even allow us to see whether that conclusion is generally warranted.) But you conveniently drop the fact that Prof. Campbell did his own experiments and in Appendix A of his book explicitly states: “They (the LP rats) lived longer, were more physically active, were slimmer and had healthy hair coats at 100 weeks while the high-protein counterpart rats were all dead.” Quite the opposite of what you claim the Indian study had found. So either Campbell is outright lying in his book (which I have no reason to assume) or your conclusions from the Indian study are simply not supported by later, more thourough experiments.
You also conveniently ignore that in Campbells laboratory they did not just research 5% (of total calories) casein vs. 20% casein diets, but varied the percentage between 5% and 20%. It showed that up to 10% dietary casein the cancer an its precursors didn’t significantly raise. Even at 12% they only rose moderately while at 14% they went through the roof. Now to make your argument valid, you would have to argue that a 12% intake of dietary protein isn’t enough for the body to regenerate. That in turn would be contrary to all available evidence.
Apart from that you are the one putting up a false dichotomy here: it is not so much about high-protein vs. low-protein but about mostly whole, plant-based vs. omnivorous with significant meat and dairy intake. As Prof. Campbells experiments showed, plant-based protein from wheat and soy didn’t significantly raise foci (i.e. cancer-precursors) development the way the dairy protein casein did. Soy proteins are complete in the respect that they contain all essential amino acids the body needs to synthesize its own proteins. So if you can have all essential amino acids from soy without raising your risk for liver cancer, why would you want proteins that in fact do raise that risk.
The same applies to the rhesus monkey experiment cited by you: Since there is simply no need to refrain from proteins with a whole, plant-based diet (hell, if you exclusively eat tofu you probably have a higher percentage of protein than the average omnivore) this study does in no way show that such a whole, plant-based diet would be deficient in anything.
Then your interpretation of the Norway data: spin and straw men. First you state “Animal foods didn’t really dwindle from Norwegian kitchens until the end of 1941.” Later you put up graphs that actually show that meat actually already did dwindle by the beginning 1941, as did dairy. Sure, sugar intake went down as well during that period and intake of fish went up.
And as you correctly point out yourself with so many changes in diet the decreased mortality from cardiovascular disease can not possibly be attributed to any single factor. But that only underlines Campbells argument: During that period Norwegians ate less meat, drank an ate less dairy products and ate more vegetables. Granted, they also ate more fish and perhaps the fish proteins don’t have the same problems as those from meat apparently have. (But tell that to a hard-core paleo dieter or even just a regular omnivore: there is no way they will replace all meat for fish.) Perhaps the positive effects in the reduction of milk and meat proteins and the increase of vegetables simply weren’t outweighed by possible negative effects of the increase of fish proteins. It’s all up to interpretation. However the change in the Norwegians’ diets during those years went into the right direction: More whole, plant-based food. And this *includes* a significant reduction in sugar and other refined carbohydrates as Campbell is never tired to point out. Prof Campbell’s message is *not* “Drop animal proteins and all will be well”, it’s “Eat a whole, plant-based diet”.
As a final example: You cite the study “Erythrocyte fatty acids, plasma lipids, and cardiovascular disease in rural China” and only pick those statements that fit your case. (*Within* China, there’s no association between plasma cholesterol and cardivascular disease -no wonder: their highs are our lows-, there’s a positive correlation of wheat flour and salt with disease etc.) However, you fail to mention one of the study’s main findings: The inverse correlation between the consumption of rice, legumes, flaxeseed oil and green vegetables with cardiovascular disease. Doesn’t that totally underscore Prof. Campbells case for a whole, plant-based diet?
After noticing your selective and arbitrary citations, I didn’t bother to look into the other sources you’ve named anymore.
Regarding your downplaying of the remarkable results of Esselstyn everything has been said better by another commenter before. I’m sure Esselstyns patients don’t care for their HDL levels so much as they care for being alive.
However, I still want to thank you for challenging my sceptical thinking skills.
I will still stay with the message of “Forks over Knives”. The weight of the evidence is just too strong (thank you SteelMonkey for all those valuable sources) and your -albeit entertaining- attempt at countering it just failed.
“The weight of the evidence is just too strong”
What evidence is that?
Campbell’s epidemiological study? The casein study in rats?
I mean no offense to you, but, anyone that understands the scientific method fairly well can understand the gaping flaws in these studies.
To my knowledge, not a single one of the Dr.’s in the PCRM have ever conducted a study comparing healthy omnivores that have removed sugar, processed and refined foods, vegetable oils, don’t smoke, and have low stress levels, with a similar “whole food plant based diet”. Without such controls, one can’t come to the conclusion that it was the meat.
In regards to Norway, that also is no evidence that meat is bad or that eating eating more plants is better. The population also decreased consumption of sugar and (I assume) refined foods as well. So there we have a few different variables: meat, sugar, refined foods, increased consumption of fish. Which was it? This study can’t show us that. As such, it’s rather erroneous of them to cite such a thing as proof that a plant based diet is ideal (and that meat is the trigger for all disease). Really, the increase in fish consumption contradicts Campbell’s casein study since all meat contains casein (it also can contain CLA, vitamins A & D, and a variety of fatty acids; all of which are anti-cancerous and beneficial for health, but that’s besides the point here).
I would suggest taking a look at Denise’s talk from the AHS: http://vimeo.com/27792352
Or Tom Naughton’s lecture on the scientific method: http://vimeo.com/27793037
| “The weight of the evidence is just too strong”
|
| What evidence is that?
|
| Campbell’s epidemiological study? The casein study in rats?
|
| I mean no offense to you, but, anyone that understands the scientific | method fairly well can understand the gaping flaws in these studies.
The casein study and the epidemiological China study are just parts of a big picture, as Campbell himself notes in his book: “Standing alone it does not prove that diet causes disease.” However the overwhelming majority of studys on animal-based food and disease all point into the same direction. Campbell quotes many of them in his book. Perhaps you haven’t noticed all the many citations that SteelMonkey has assembled in this very comments section.
| This study can’t show us that. As such, it’s rather erroneous of them
| to cite such a thing as proof that a plant based diet is ideal (and that
| meat is the trigger for all disease).
Nobody claimed it could. However meat consumption went down together with cardiovascular diseases
| Really, the increase in fish
| consumption contradicts Campbell’s casein study since all meat
| contains casein (it also can contain CLA, vitamins A & D, and a
| variety of fatty acids; all of which are anti-cancerous and beneficial
| for health, but that’s besides the point here).
Meat and fish don’t normally contain casein, so no contradiction here.
One more thing: “Gaping flaws in those studys”? “Tom Naughton’s lecture on the scientific method”?
Are you really suggesting that Campbell doesn’t know the scientific method? Actually he outlines it in his book with all the usual caveats that correlation doesn’t mean causation, empirical studies can never in the mathematical sense prove anything for sure, that you just always test a hypothesis with a certain predefined statistical confidence level etc. etc.
Are you suggesting that the editors of the scientific journals Campbell published in and the peers who reviewed his articles were all idiots who have to be given lectures on the scientific method and on how to recognize “gaping flaws”?
This is ridiculous.
Where are the peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals by you or Miss Minger?
Actually it was a real cancer epidemiolgist who pointed out the many methodological errors Denise Minger made in her first review of Campbell’s book.
I just watched the beginning of the “lecture” of Denise Minger you pointed to. Right at the beginning she ridiculed the notion that meat can cause disease though in the scientific community there is simply no discussion anymore that read meat consumption is related to colon cancer. Neither is there any discussion anymore that a high consumption of dairy products doubles men’s risk of getting prostate cancer. Those cases have already been settled, even if the underlying mechanisms haven’t yet been fully understood. (Is it the casein, the iron, the IGF-1 or all combined?) If you care to google “milk” and “prostate cancer” you will immediately find links to the hundreds of studys which have over and over confirmed these findings.
And the liberal arts major Denise Minger thinks she can just dismiss all this and ridicule those who just state the scientifically proven? What a hybris.
The word is hubris and I really think you’re out of your league in more ways than just idiomatically.
Hugo – this comments section is absolutely brimming with links to quality peer reviewed studies and meta-analyses. Peruse. Then, when you have more information, converse. But try not to attack – it makes you look as though you’re using temper to compensate for lack of information.
Hugo, the Norwegians ate less refined carbs during the war, and their dental health improved as a result. Denise missed this, but I have not found anything else wrong with her analysis. Perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough. I do think there is something seriously wrong with Campbell’s experiments, though. I suspect the casein might have been causing iron overload, which in some experiments it has been shown to do. In others, it prevents iron overload, which shows how difficult this subject is.
| Hugo, the Norwegians ate less refined carbs during the war, and their | dental health improved as a result. Denise missed this, but I have not | found anything else wrong with her analysis.
Well, first less refined carbs is part of a whole, plant-based diet, since refined carbs are in no way “whole”. Campbell points this out again and again. You’re punching straw men here.
You say that you found nothing wrong with Denise’s analysis after I’ve clearly pointed out just some of the flaws (statements not fitting to graphs, omitting important messages from cited studies etc.). Of course you’re free to ignore anything which runs against your opinion.
| I do think there is something seriously wrong with Campbell’s
| experiments, though.
Again: You’re free to ignore or even dismiss any evidence which can not be reconciled with your opinion. But then why bother to enter an argument in the first place?
Hi Hugo,
It is customary and acceptable when a thorough analysis of something has already been made to reference it and describe its most salient findings in a few sentences rather than rewriting everything that has already been written. Regarding Campbell’s rat studies, Denise referenced my article, “The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats,” which can be found here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/2010/09/22/the-curious-case-of-campbells-rats-does-protein-deficiency-prevent-cancer/
This article addresses all the concerns you raised about these studies.
Remember this was a review of the movie, not a review of everything in Campbell’s book. Denise has already produced a thorough analysis of the arguments in the book.
I also recently wrote another article on Campbell’s rats studies, which you might also enjoy:
http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2011/09/27/taking-a-trip-down-memory-lane-fishing-for-our-good-friend-glutathione-in-the-waters-of-the-memory-hole-how-t-colin-campbell-helped-prove-that-protein-protects-us/
Most of your points concern differences in emphasis rather than some sort of nefarious spin. Of course it is interesting that meat intake declined in Norway, but since Campbell et al argue against eating fish as well and group all animal products together as a category to avoid, it is worthwhile to point out that fish intake displaced meat in this case. Similar responses could be made to most of your other points.
Chris
Hi Hugo,
Thanks for the comments. Here are my thoughts (your text in bold):
But you conveniently drop the fact that Prof. Campbell did his own experiments and in Appendix A of his book explicitly states: “They (the LP rats) lived longer, were more physically active, were slimmer and had healthy hair coats at 100 weeks while the high-protein counterpart rats were all dead.” Quite the opposite of what you claim the Indian study had found. So either Campbell is outright lying in his book (which I have no reason to assume) or your conclusions from the Indian study are simply not supported by later, more thourough experiments.
I can’t offer an explanation about why Campbell wrote that in his book, because his studies clearly demonstrated the low-protein rats were in bad shape and generally died prematurely. Please do read the links Chris provided, since he plows through the research pretty thoroughly. I’m more inclined to trust the published data (showing premature death in low-protein rats) than a summary of the research in a book.
You also conveniently ignore that in Campbells laboratory they did not just research 5% (of total calories) casein vs. 20% casein diets, but varied the percentage between 5% and 20%. It showed that up to 10% dietary casein the cancer an its precursors didn’t significantly raise. Even at 12% they only rose moderately while at 14% they went through the roof. Now to make your argument valid, you would have to argue that a 12% intake of dietary protein isn’t enough for the body to regenerate. That in turn would be contrary to all available evidence.
This doesn’t change the fact that aflatoxin dosing altered the effects of the low protein vs. high protein diet, which was the main point in this critique of Campbell’s rat studies. As the monkey experiments showed, when exposed to lower (more realistic) doses of aflatoxin, increasing the amount of casein improved the animals’ health and didn’t result in precancerous lesions — the exact opposite of what Campbell’s high-aflatoxin-dosed rats experienced. I explained the researchers’ take on this anomaly in the review. The fact that 12% protein caused fewer lesions than 20% protein in Campbell’s experiments doesn’t invalidate this, particularly because Campbell himself concluded from his studies that anything above that 5% level was entering cancer-promotion territory.
Apart from that you are the one putting up a false dichotomy here: it is not so much about high-protein vs. low-protein but about mostly whole, plant-based vs. omnivorous with significant meat and dairy intake. As Prof. Campbells experiments showed, plant-based protein from wheat and soy didn’t significantly raise foci (i.e. cancer-precursors) development the way the dairy protein casein did. Soy proteins are complete in the respect that they contain all essential amino acids the body needs to synthesize its own proteins. So if you can have all essential amino acids from soy without raising your risk for liver cancer, why would you want proteins that in fact do raise that risk.
I explained the results of Campbell’s plant-protein experiments in this review. If you look at the breakdown of amino acids in soy, you’ll see it’s actually quite low in methionine. And as Campbell himself explained, restoring the low (“limiting”) amino acids in the plant proteins he studied caused them to behave just like casein.
Then your interpretation of the Norway data: spin and straw men. First you state “Animal foods didn’t really dwindle from Norwegian kitchens until the end of 1941.” Later you put up graphs that actually show that meat actually already did dwindle by the beginning 1941, as did dairy. Sure, sugar intake went down as well during that period and intake of fish went up.
How is it a “straw man” to argue that a fish-based diet can’t qualify as plant-based (which is what Esselstyn claimed in the Norwegians were eating during World War II)?
The chart I think you’re referring to was based on a small sampling of 30 – 50 families in Oslo during the war; the paper before that, which speaks of Norway’s whole population, indicates that meat didn’t drop significantly until the end of ’41. Even with the Oslo chart, whole milk and skim milk consumption clearly went up during 1941, although meat began dropping for the surveyed families.
As a final example: You cite the study “Erythrocyte fatty acids, plasma lipids, and cardiovascular disease in rural China” and only pick those statements that fit your case. (*Within* China, there’s no association between plasma cholesterol and cardivascular disease -no wonder: their highs are our lows-, there’s a positive correlation of wheat flour and salt with disease etc.) However, you fail to mention one of the study’s main findings: The inverse correlation between the consumption of rice, legumes, flaxeseed oil and green vegetables with cardiovascular disease. Doesn’t that totally underscore Prof. Campbells case for a whole, plant-based diet?
Apart from the fact that flaxseed oil isn’t a “whole food,” the findings of this paper run contrary to Campbell’s claim that blood cholesterol was strongly linked to the “diseases of affluence.” He made this claim repeatedly in his book, but the actual data from the China Study fails to show it. I have no trouble believing that whole plant foods are beneficial and have never argued otherwise. My point of contention is that the evidence condemning animal products is either misconstrued or nonexistent — saying green vegetables, etc. are healthy does nothing to prove animal foods are harmful.
Pip, I have realised the problem is that I don’t understand your question. Could you re-formulate it please? It’s true ROS are used to kill microorganisms and are therefore ‘good’. It isn’t true NO produces hydrogen peroxide, but that’s trivial. What you want to know is how ‘glucose makes ROS which make you fat’, I imagine.
Glucose makes fatty acids which activate NADPH oxidase in fat cells. Glucose metabolism also produces the NADPH, mainly by the ‘pentose phosphate pathway’. This is all part of normal fat cell metabolism, and will only produce obesity if it’s deranged. Obese people have been found to have a low magnesium intake, and calcium overload in their fat cells, possibly due to shortage of magnesium-ATP which activates calcium pumps. Calcium inhibits lipolysis and stimulates lipogenesis. ROS can cause calcium overload by activating calcium channels and inhibiting calcium pumps in the endoplasmic reticulum where calcium is stored.
science vs intuition
science is a bunch of super duper smart people taking opposite sides in scientific debate in order to reach universally established truth
intuition is the realization that ain’t no way in hell you’re not getting paid to write these blogs, oh and that everybody already knew many decades ago that too much mcdonalds kills and too much green giant saves
we already knew the facts: too much animal and processed food IS deadly. but you can never get too much raw veg, overdosing is impossible(and don’t think i’m talking about the red herring(pun) that is refined plants like white flour, sugar and oils capisci? just the healthy whole plants)
meat or no meat, you must maintain proportions of the food groups in every meal and every day, which is lastly and the least of which animal food, MOSTLY fruit and veg, second to which is healthy whole grains seeds nuts etc….if you swap out the animal products you replace them 1:1 with beans mostly along with an upped intake of other protein like tahineh in your smoothies, seeds etc.
in regards to the percentages in each meal, don’t worry about figuring out how much of each, because it has already been selected by you over the course of human evolution both in what you crave and what you need.
there is no doubt that the fast food/processed food/high-meat and animal consumption has just continued to ruin the health of those that partake in it.
so props for pointing out the major issue here which is that the movie didn’t distinguish between the health effects of meat vs processed flour/sugar/oil. but other than that, any science discrepancy is overshadowed by the larger issue of the DIRE NEED FOR EVERYONE TO ABSORB THE UNDERLYING FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH OF THE FILM, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE FACING DEATH AND DISEASE DUE TO THEIR POOR DIET
@Duh I think you lost us all here: “intuition is the realization that ain’t no way in hell you’re not getting paid to write these blogs” and maybe regained a few if they continued to read after that.
Denise in other words says above, “I believe the “plant-based diet doctors” got a lot of things right, and a diet of whole, unprocessed plant foods (i.e., Real Food) can bring tremendous health improvements for people who were formerly eating a low-nutrient, high-crap diet.”
We’re all a lot more on the same page than many of the people who treat this plant/animal thing like a religion like to believe.
“we already knew the facts: too much animal and processed food IS deadly.”
Animal foods and processed foods do not belong in the same sentence. And “healthy whole grains” are increasingly shown to be anything but.
Real food is good. Real food includes simple animal foods like lamb chops, beef liver, and salmon fillets as much as tasty leafy greens, sweet potatoes, bananas, almonds, and other plant foods. Is a McDonald’s burger real food? No! but it wouldn’t be real food even if the heavily processed meat in it was entirely replaced with soy, either.
You seem to acknowledge that animal foods are being unfairly grouped in with processed crap, but then dismiss animal foods anyway for unknown reasons. I hope you rethink this position.
FlowWTG,
‘..healthy whole grains increasingly shown to be anything but.’
I am not sure what your evidence on this might be. Can you give references please?
Hello,
Of course, I’m referring to the presence of antinutrients in grass-family seeds. Phytates, lectins, gluten, etc. This, plus the ability to get all the benefits and more of grains by eating vegetables and fruit instead, means that I do not see any reason for someone who has the option to just eat more vegetables and fruit to opt for consuming “whole grains” instead.
If you have references for some benefits to eating grains (especially the grains available to most under the moniker “whole grains”, which are quite different from those available to those on the Indian subcontinent decades ago) over other plant foods, I would love to see them.
Thank you for your different point of view, which is necessary in any dialogue.
So why not germinate the wheat, dry it, mill it and make a wonderful naan with it and eat it with all the other healthy recipes in dr.Davis’ book : Wheat Belly, lose the wheat, lose the weight, and find your way back to health
Thanks FlowWTG. I’ve been having problems replying, I’ll try again. No, I don’t have any references for benefits of grains over other plant foods. But it looks like phytate, lectins and gluten are only toxic under very specific, and one might say unnatural, circumstances.
@Jane:
“But it looks like phytate, lectins and gluten are only toxic under very specific, and one might say unnatural, circumstances”
On what do you base this opinion? What would be these “unnatural” circumstances?
Wizzu, here’s something on phytate from the British Medical Journal, 17th Sept 1977, p771:
‘…The evidence incriminating phytic acid, based on relatively brief studies on humans and animals, is often at variance with epidemiological evidence… In South Africa Blacks in rural areas are accustomed to a relatively high intake of phytic acid. Yet our studies on groups on very high intakes compared with those on lower intakes have revealed no differences in mean haematological values, whether in children or adults. Observations on contrasting groups have revealed no differences in mean serum calcium levels, nor in the mean cortical thickness or other dimensions of the second metacarpal. Indeed, we have found satisfactory calcification even in groups of mothers who have had numerous pregnancies and long lactations. Nor in the groups mentioned have we found differences in the growth rate of children. In our appreciation, Third World experience does not support the view that phytic acid is significantly prejudicial to mineral metabolism or to health. ..’
Thanks for the reference to BMJ Jane. The very first Google listing turns out to be Peter’s blog (quite well known) the second Dave’s and thus I discovered your interesting and quite entertaining discussion and exchange. I’m not ready not give up my position on the magnesium deficiency almost certainly caused by phytic acid. The evidence seems to be scant. I don’t care too much about epidemiological and observational ‘evidence’.
Hi James, glad you liked the discussions.
Is it your understanding that the magnesium deficiency seen in people eating modern diets is caused by phytate?
@Jane. I’m actually less concerned about magnesium being less available because of the presence of phytic acid than the fact that in general there is so little to begin with. Since dr. Charles Northern voiced his concerns about soil quality and its effect on the quality of our food, now almost a hundred years ago, things have gotten progressively worse. But I am worried about magnesium because of the fact that there is a real possibility that the so-called calcium deficiency may stem from magnesium (and Vitamin D) deficiency. I think I agree with William Davis MD that our modern variety of wheat has nothing nutritious to offer. And no, phytic acid does not appear to help.
Hi Jane,
All this would indicate, based on the part you quoted, is that it is possible to eat phytate and be healthy. That is very clear. I doubt any population on earth has ever eaten a phytate-free diet, and certainly the rest of the diet will determine whether the phytate causes harm, and whether the phytate-containing food is net harmful or beneficial.
Mellanby showed that unsoaked oatmeal, rich in phytate, inhibits the ability of a diet rich in fat-soluble vitamins to reverse tooth decay. Stephan has blogged about this:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/reversing-tooth-decay.html
I think these results are probably due mainly to the phytate, and I think this shows that phytate can cause harm in humans within reasonably “natural” circumstances.
Chris
Hi Chris, yes I’ve been wondering about that result of Mellanby’s for a while. I would like to know more about the children’s diet. They were eating bread, but was it white or wholemeal? Probably, white. We know that adding phytate to white flour produces bad results. I think Mellanby should have replaced all the refined carbohydrate with unrefined.
Chris, I just posted a reply to FlowWTG a bit further down, with a link to a paper showing that human gut bacteria have phytase just like rodent gut bacteria. I think this makes it unlikely that under truly ‘natural’ conditions phytate could be a problem.
Hi Jane,
“Hi Chris, yes I’ve been wondering about that result of Mellanby’s for a while. I would like to know more about the children’s diet. They were eating bread, but was it white or wholemeal? Probably, white. We know that adding phytate to white flour produces bad results. I think Mellanby should have replaced all the refined carbohydrate with unrefined.”
I think the simplest explanation is that if someone’s calcium status is marginal, phytate matters. These people had rampant tooth decay, so their nutritional status was clearly marginal, and while remineralization might depend on many nutrients, A, D, K, calcium and phosphorus are going to be the most important. In an otherwise replete diet, perhaps some phytate causes no harm or even provides a benefit by preferentially chelating iron. But it is not just the balance of metals that matters, but also their absolute amounts. If you are marginal in calcium, repleting calcium is going to be much more important than reducing a putative excess of iron. Spontaneously healing cavities is something rare enough that the typical modern dentist has no awareness of it; no doubt it requires not just sufficiency but nutritional superabundance. Thus even if one is not “deficient,” in a mineral, perhaps phytate taxes the system in this scenario if someone is simply at the margin of superabundance. In Price’s clinical diet, the whole wheat rolls did not seem to have any negative effect, perhaps because the diet was so deep into the range of nutritional superabundance — and perhaps yeast-leavened whole wheat is more nutritionally balanced than unsoaked oats.
I suppose it is possible that if Mellanby made the other grains whole, this would eliminate the negative effect of whole oats, but this seems to require a rather convoluted explanation. Oats are a whole grain. Do we need whole grains to counteract the negative effect of whole grains? Whole grains contain phytate. Is adding more phytate the appropriate way to neutralize the negative effects of phytate?
I think the lesson here is that the harmfulness of phytate is highly dependent on context, but whether the context must be “unnatural” for it to exert harm depends on one’s definition of “unnatural.” These people were probably eating refined foods, which are in a sense “unnatural,” but were clearly available to them with minimal effort. It might be better to say that phytate is only likely to be harmful if it is provided in great excess or met with marginal nutritional status of certain minerals, rather than to say that the context must be highly unnatural. One can certainly get nutritional deficiencies living in the wild.
Chris
Chris,
‘I suppose it is possible that if Mellanby made the other grains whole, this would eliminate the negative effect of whole oats, but this seems to require a rather convoluted explanation. Oats are a whole grain. Do we need whole grains to counteract the negative effect of whole grains? Whole grains contain phytate. Is adding more phytate the appropriate way to neutralize the negative effects of phytate?’
Well, if you look up ‘phytate caries’ you will find studies showing that phytate can actually prevent tooth decay. This is why I am puzzled about Mellanby’s result. Was it actually the phytate, or was it something else? Did the oatmeal stick to the children’s teeth, which we know were weak? Did it cause proliferation of caries-causing bacteria? If it did, would an improvement in the general health of the children, by giving them a wholefood diet, have helped?
I think it depends upon the whole diet. Phytates will inhibit to some degree the absorption of many nutrients. If the diet contains an excess of these nutrients then deficiencies won’t occur. A good example is the historic British Navy. After a time at sea many sailors developed scurvy due to vitamin C deficiency. The Navy solved the problem by adding limes and lemons to the diet, hence the old term Limeys as the name for Brits. However other ships did not experience this problem and it came down to total diet. those that lived entirely on fish remained healthy but ships providing ships biscuits experienced the problem It turned out that fish alone was an adequate diet but fish plus ships biscuits caused deficiencies. With respect to teeth, scurvy leads to hemorrhaging gums and the teeth fall out. So ships biscuits may be the reason we speak English. All the navies used them but only the Limeys figured out the problem. It made the French and Spanish navies easy to beat at sea so they lost the New World.
So saying that something has no teeth doesn’t necessarily make it a losing proposition.
I said “what would be these unnatural circumstances”, which eventually leads to the real underlying question: what would be the “natural circumstances” under which phytates, lectins and gluten would be innocuous to human health? How do you define “normal” in this context?
Care to elaborate on those looks Jane?
James and Wizzu, about lectins. You have to feed gigantic amounts of them to cause problems in rats. For instance in this paper, a diet containing 7g/kg of wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) was fed. Wheat germ contains 300mg/kg.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8399111
Normally, WGA gets taken up into gut cells and degraded. Vast quantities of it will overwhelm the gut cells.
About gluten. The scary thing is supposed to be that it opens tight junctions in the gut. But it has to open tight junctions to gain access to the gut immune system to generate ‘oral tolerance’. All the proteins in your diet would be toxic without oral tolerance.
‘The authors tested subjects in Argentina with asthma, skin problems, or stomach problems. It turned out that 57.6% of them showed a hypersensitivity to beef. 57.6%! This was much higher than tests for either cow’s milk or wheat flour.’
http://www.mattmetzgar.com/matt_metzgar/2010/12/beef-allergy-ii.html
Hi Jane,
“Chris, I just posted a reply to FlowWTG a bit further down, with a link to a paper showing that human gut bacteria have phytase just like rodent gut bacteria. I think this makes it unlikely that under truly ‘natural’ conditions phytate could be a problem.”
I think that just demonstrates plausibility for the hypothesis that some phytate is degraded in the intestines. That doesn’t mean that this is true for everyone, or say anything about how much is degraded, or show whether it eliminates the potential clinical significance of mineral-binding effect of food phytate. Certainly it adds to the “debatability” of the issue though.
Chris
It’s been a while since I studied rats, specifically – but should we take relative harmlessness in a rodent to indicate human adaptation, as well?
Extrapolation from rat and mouse models always has to be kept in context. It’s quite likely that they can tolerate antinutrients found in grains much more easily than humans.
As Michael Eades was apt to say: Rats are not furry little humans James
FlowWTG, I’m not sure that’s right. Look at the antinutrients. Gluten and lectins are proteins, and all animals can degrade proteins. So we’re left with phytate. Rodents can degrade phytate because their gut bacteria have phytase, and it was recently found that human gut bacteria have phytase too. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19674804
I thought higher intakes of calcium were positively associated with weight loss.
Sure the most dramatic association was with those who had the lowest intake of calcium in the first place…but still. The general consensus from diet gurus around the internetz is to consume lots of calcium to accelerate weight loss. Are you suggesting this is false?
Monte, would you like a reply on calcium? Yes, calcium has been found to help weight loss. It’s thought to act partly by inhibiting absorption of fat in the gut, and partly by suppressing circulating vitamin D, which would otherwise increase adipocyte calcium. Here’s a short account of this.
http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v11/n3/full/oby200350a.html
Ellen -
I don’t doubt that eliminating gluten from my diet would eliminate 90+% of my illnesses. There are more than enough studies in the literature to make going gluten free a first choice in treating chronic illness rather than jumping straight for immune suppression. However – and this is only my opinion – those that go gluten free react harshly to even a minor cross contamination of gluten in their foods once they manage to go gluten free for a while. Can you live with it…yes, and many do. And should I not be able to control my disease the way I am in the future, I will definitely go gluten-free before I get on the traditional medicine ladder. But that ‘allergic’ reaction concerns me. I’ve seen nutritionists with ‘black eyes’ and totally bloodshot eyes after ingesting ‘only’ a muffin they thought was gluten free. I’ve learned only a little bit about delayed onset allergies to make me more willing to explore ‘healing the gut’ in an attempt to derail the supposed autoimmune reaction to glutens.
Gager –
Thank you for the list of poisonous plants. I notice that many of them are antimicrobial. I wonder how much of the active ingredient is 1) anti-microbial and 2) if the original reaction could be a modified Jarisch-Herxheimer?
Jane -
Do you think the reason casein causes iron overload/prevents iron overload might be this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/science/21gut.html?ref=health
Thank you for more info on ROS – I need to think more about this because I think I’m using a term wrong.
OK, so what would ROS have to do with bacteroidetes and firmicutes?
Pip
“those that go gluten free react harshly to even a minor cross contamination of gluten in their foods once they manage to go gluten free for a while.”
Uh? Where does that come from??? I haven’t yet read anything about this.
It certainly doesn’t apply to me, nor does it apply to a couple of friends who supressed gluten from their diet.
I’m MORE tolerant now, than I was when eating gluten regularly. After 2 years without gluten, I now can eat a croissant or some pasta without a heartburn, a rash, or hours of painful gaz.
Same experience with my friends. After a period 100% gluten-free, they also can indulge on pastry from time to time without adverse reactions.
My take is the opposite as yours: once the gut of gluten-sensitive people has been given the time to heal from years of abuse, it can then take some gluten from time to time without going nuts.
Care to cite your sources?
I’ll add another comment to the discussion. I’ve haven’t read The China Study because … I couldn’t. I did have the book in hand, scanned it and concluded that it was a piece of vegan propaganda and that the title was misleading – when propaganda is called “study” there is a problem. Actually, there probably always is a problem with propaganda (and its distinctive style).
I am not surprised that Denise with her educational background (in addition to her interest in nutrition) dealt with this book.
Pip, do you really think gluten is so toxic? Of course, people with wrecked immune systems and gluten sensitivity will find it very toxic indeed. But under different circumstances they might find some other protein just as toxic. There is nothing special about gluten except that we eat a lot of it, and we normally eat it divorced from the micronutrients needed for its proper processing.
About casein and iron overload, YES! That’s just what I think! You know bacteria make lots of small molecules for grabbing metals from their environment, and these molecules include many antibiotics. It was found a long time ago that the manganese-deficiency disease perosis in chickens could be prevented with a Mn-binding antibiotic.
I suspect something like this is going on in obesity. You know those obese leptin-deficient mice have deficiencies of manganese (liver and brown fat) and copper (liver). Maybe their gut bacteria aren’t very good at helping absorb these metals.
Yes, I do. My question is ‘why’? It doesn’t start out like that, it’s only an intolerance but as more and more of the villi are taken out the process is exponentially accelerated. Why does it switch to ‘allergy’ after the withdrawl of gluten for an extended period of time? That’s the part that concerns me. While you don’t NEED gluten in your diet, I’m thinking an allergy is much harder to ‘undo’ so I’m only willing to reduce gluten to lower inflammation and see if it’s possible to actually reset the gut.
Which micronutrients are necessary for gluten digestion?
Was the chicken antibiotic a tetracycline?
That link I provided on the 3 types of gut composition – that’s even more groundbreaking than on first read. As a gimp, I hang out on different websites for others like us. As you watch people on the traditional medical ladder, you find that meds only work for 1/3 of the people no matter what the pharma reps say. Works for 1/3, sort-of works for the next 1/3, doesn’t work at all for the last 1/3. If you take that article from the NYTimes and use that as a jumping off point, you’ll find that those different gut types utilize the B vitamins differently. I’m working from memory here, but one type was niacin and the second type was B-12 and I don’t remember the 3rd B subtype. So the vegans can think what they want, but I’m telling you, if your primary gut type is X and you primarily utilize a B-12 matrix, you are going to be really messed up in the long run on a meatless diet.
OK, so what would ROS have to do with bacteroidetes and firmicutes? (she asks again in hopes for more info).
Jane – I really am trying to learn all about this world of healthy eating (who knew it would turn out to be important – lol) and how it ties to microbes. Do you think you’d be willing to email with me so I can learn, and not be bothering people uninterested in this subject on this thread? And while I’d like to post my email address that doesn’t seem wise. Is there a process where mine can be given to you if you were willing to email?
Pip
Hi Pip, Is it OK if we continue the discussion here, as long as Denise doesn’t mind? I gave my email address once and regretted it.
Yes, I think the chicken antibiotic might have been a tetracycline. What would ROS have to do with bacteriodetes and firmicutes? I can only speculate here. Perhaps firmicutes don’t help absorb Mn or Cu as well as bacteriodetes. Mn and Cu ‘detoxify’ ROS, they activate the superoxide dismutases, arguably the most important antioxidant enzymes.
The obese leptin-deficient mice, ob/ob mice, have tissue deficiencies of Mn and Cu, as I mentioned. And like obese people, more firmicutes and less bacteriodetes in their gut. Possibly, the bacteria influence metal absorption and leptin does too. Obesity is accompanied by oxidative stress, and arguably therefore, by deficiencies of antioxidant metals.
About gluten. It has a lot of proline, and bonds involving proline are difficult to break. The peptidases that break them are often activated by manganese, see ‘The activation of intestinal peptidases by manganese’, last paragraph.
@grok – yes she said that, then she said a whole bunch of other stuff which is basically a snow job aimed at planting seeds of misinformation in peoples heads who don’t know common sense and need a diet religion to cling to
@flow – yes my bad and i agree with what you say. i should have simply said that it is the rampant over consumption of both animal products AND processed foods which, when either of which is over-consumed will lead to health problems. although, to be fair, this health epidemic is mostly caused by very cheap processed foods like fast food, which uses some of the lowest grade meat money can buy so they usually are found hand in hand ie poor grade meat is over consumed + a whole mess of fake nothing on the side in the form processed flour, sugar, oil and salt, lots of salt btw too
i really feel it is most important to maintain the proper proportions on your plate. i find that a plate with multiple healthy items on it (which everybody knows by know) in the proper proportions, meat or not, is the key. quite simple actually and like i said it’s been programmed into us all through evolution in terms of what the body wants us to give it. but meat is always the least of the diet if at all, and in that case the vegetable chiefly supplementing it which is beans in most cases is eaten in the same proportion as the meat was, actually you can eat more of it since it is so healthy for you, although again, your ages old inner craving will tell you how much of each thing to have on the plate. problem is, the unhealthy modern diet found in wealthy countries of today has reprogrammed our sense of what we ‘think’ we like and we are lulled into a lullaby. we really just need to reprogram our taste buds to be more in tuned with what the body has selected by nature itself over human history
as for whole grains, to me i am still learning here, but i would have a hard time believing that brown rice in it’s naturally prepared state is bad for me in any amount(although maybe i haven’t dug deep enough yet). after observing my bodies reaction to changing my diet though i have pretty much stopped eating bread, it always makes my stool soft, white pasta does this as well as most refined starches (what else is new?). you’re stool should always be hard or at least not cloudy or break apart in the water.
strangely though for me, the most shocking and obvious physical change i noticed right off the bat when i stopped eating meat(relax everyone i still eat sardines on fridays
was the complete absence of a certain unmistakable rancid odor in my stool , as well as the complete vanishing of even the slightest hint of digestive discomfort, both of which i had taken for granted my whole life. and unfortunately for me, in jail of all places, i was able to see what effect certain foods had on both my cell mate and i, since we were in 24 lockup and every bit of food we got was accounted for and observed on the way out(not that you OBSERVED, but you could not turn off your senses of smell and you are locked in a room with one toilet 24 hours a day). the one thing that guaranteed every time made both of us smell funky in the nether regions and feel upset stomach was from the milk. and now taking the meat out it’s the same thing again
those funky smells and sore stomachs i used to take for granted you know, it never dawned on me what non meat/dairy laden poo would smell or look like after i saw and smelled it first hand. it’s quite an eye opener. but yes, moderation and proportion is what it’s all about. btw as a kid i used to pride myself in drinking an entire bag of milk in one day(yikes)
What exactly is the point of this rant? It seems you’ve completely missed the boat.
Sounds like you have a lactose problem. Raw milk might not give you those symptoms. Did I just say that? I must be on the WAPF payroll. “Check’s in the mail”? Where’s my check Sally? You bitch!
Nobody is advocating dairy here. Most of us don’t consume dairy, including Denise.
Damn, didn’t thread. This is for you @duh.
i said it was caused by meat as well. no lactose in meat. don’t twist my words
ya ok maybe she isn’t paid(maybe she is, maybe she isn’t). she has a vengeful agenda in any event. and in all honesty, the good doctors that she is critiquing also display some vengeance in their delivery, but understandably so. they have been struggling to get their point across for so many years and have faced restrictions and road blocks from both industry and government all along the way. so i can see why they worded things like that, not that i placed the most importance on those absolute indictments when i watched the film anyway….
as for these blogs by denise….two sentences saying ‘oh by the way i used to be vegan….’ followed by a venerable novel chock to the brim of sarcastic and scathing ‘oh snap yo you got owned son!” after every single fricken’ point she has to make is a display of split personality or what some would call double talk. i mean, after reading through it the average person would come away scared to even LOOK at a vegetable….
if she put more of her SELF in these articles, she wouldn’t come across so disingenuous and placating when hammering out the details. at least we would know if she even CARES either way about the issue. maybe it’s too late for her though in terms of what she did to her health so she said screw it….
oh what you didn’t know? too busy figuring out the damned quadratic equation that she so eloquently and most painstakingly laid out to put two and two together?
she tried a vegan diet in order to improve her self, which is honorable. but it blinded her to the point where she used that big brain of hers to figure out how to tweak the diet in order to achieve the results she wanted as quick as possible. she was wrong and made her self sick, possibly for life
and here we are today….she is now seeking comeuppance by writing these blogs, using that big brain to obscure the issue even more and corrupt people one at a time
and it’s working, this page might be the most visited critique of the film since it is so high on the google search
@Duh,
Ok my bad. There are billions of people on earth who don’t have crippling pains from meat. So maybe not try to apply your personal experiences with prison meat to the masses here on earth. Maybe instead look into Sally Fallon’s (yes WAPF) effort to get real food into prisons. Sick inmates are expensive inmates.
I agree animal products make you stink. Last time I checked smell had nothing to do with a foods ability to provide the body with important nutrients.
Rest assured she isn’t “paid”. This “paid by the meat industry” is a vegan fantasy. Why pay a 24 year old nobody with a low traffic blog when you can buy a shiny study from scientists which will make it into/onto the NY Times seen by millions in an instant.
So what is it… is she so good she’s just a face for a team of people writing propaganda funded by meat/dairy industry, or is she just a dumb kid with no analytical skill or credentials? I’m so confused about this.
Chew on this cud…. The paleo diet cant get mainstream either because of lobby, yet for the most part it’s considered a meat-based diet. Veganism (and especially vegetarianism) has way more traction in the mainstream. Paleo is barely a blip on the radar. Maybe the evil vegans are suppressing the meat eaters diet with their agenda. What a joke. When are vegans going to give up on this crap? No wonder people think vegans are weirdos.
“understandably so. they have been struggling to get their point across” I guess you’ve failed to see that Denise’s health struggled for years because dogmatic vegans told her she was doing it wrong. Hence the name of the blog… “SOS”. Maybe her displaying some vengeance (which she really doesn’t, unless your feelings are hurt by someone questioning veganism) is warranted. If you think Denise has a split personality, you are way too emotional about diet my friend. Only people “afraid” of animal products think that Denise is scaring people away from vegetables. She eats a ton of them, and fruit too. I guess your blinders caused you to miss her recent post about fruit which threw the fructose fear B.S. in the face of dogmatic paleos.
Saying that animals products are not the root of all evil is hardly scaring people from eating plants. Vegan’s whole propaganda pitch is based around fear. Disease/cancer, animal cruelty, killing the earth… all at the tip of the spear.
“put more of her SELF in these articles” This isn’t about her. It’s about poking holes in bad science taken as the gospel. What’s wrong with questioning authority? Do you live in the United States? That’s what we do here (or at least used to).
“she used that big brain of hers to figure out how to tweak the diet in order to achieve the results she wanted as quick as possible.” And what results were those? You seem to have a direct line into her subconscious. Please enlighten us on why it failed for her. I’m sure she’d like to know too.
“using that big brain to obscure the issue even more and corrupt people one at a time” Corruption? Wow, that’s scary! Should add that to my list above. LMFAO. Funniest thing I’ve read all week. Or maybe she gets hundreds of emails from struggling vegans (hence the blog name “SOS” again) because the dogmatic vegan community often fails to help their own. I’ve even gotten emails from struggling vegans looking for answers because they knew I’d tell them what they needed to hear, not what they wanted to hear (ie.. animals aren’t needed). FYI, veganism didn’t fail me. I did it almost a year and thought it was great, yet I’m not a cheerleader? I just love these Tyson® paychecks too much I guess.
“page might be the most visited critique of the film” Do you know how the google algorithm works? It’s at the top, because it’s the best, most highly linked, socially mentioned, blog mentioned, and commented on content for the topic. Thank you for helping it stay there. You’ve probably helped corrupt a struggling vegan.
“This “paid by the meat industry” is a vegan fantasy. Why pay a 24 year old nobody with a low traffic blog when you can buy a shiny study from scientists which will make it into/onto the NY Times seen by millions in an instant.”
Well said.
May I add my usual take on this “paid by the industry” accusation: do people realise that there’s MUCH more profit to be had by pushing grains-based products than by pushing animal products?
Profit margins are immensely higher on plant-based products than on they are on animal-based products…
Follow the money. Who’s making hte most profit?
There are far more odds, actually, that the proportion of researchers/bloggers paid by the grains industry, would be much higher than the proportion of researchers/bloggers paid by the animal products industry.
Very well said Grok. How ‘duh’ could have read anything Denise has ever written and think an average person reading it “would come away scared to even look at a vegetable” is absolutely beyond me. What on earth is ‘duh’ reading. It sure as heck not the same blog I have been reading.
It is a balanced, well researched, entertaining blog that is just a pleasure to go through. Duh is reading something different from what I am reading.
“How ‘duh’ could have read anything Denise has ever written and think an average person reading it “would come away scared to even look at a vegetable” is absolutely beyond me”
And it’s even, actually, total nonsense.
That’s even on the verge of slander.
As any sane people realises, Denise is absolutely not pushing a meat-only diet and has NEVER been warning against vegetable consumption. If she had, I would in fact be one of the first ones to criticize her posts!
“Duh” is just one of these people who have poor reading skills, or refuse to read with attention, who just make an opinion based on a quick read of a couple of paragraphs (if that), and then jump to criticizing ideas and opinions that they didn’t even understand in the first place.
Fighting windmills. Probably just for the sake of it.
| “I agree animal products make you stink.”
Maybe for some people – I found that I stunk (and sweat) more when I ate a whole grain-based diet. But then, I’m celiac (didn’t know it then). Gluten-grain-free, I’m stink-free
Stink results from the gaseous byproducts of fermentation bacteria in the gut. If you regularly eat something you don’t have the digestive enzyme for then opportunistic bacteria will set up permanent home in your gut and digest it when it gets there. For example lactose requires lactase, if you don’t have lactase you are lactose intolerant and a bacteria will ferment it. Sometimes this is ok, other times the bacteria or yeast are hostile, take over the gut and without treatment you can eventually die. Beano is simply an ‘ase you don’t have naturally to allow you to digest the sugar in beans instead of letting bacteria ferment it and produce stink. Remember Olestra the fake fat. It is a fiber chain which we have no enzyme for so in the gut it digested by bacteria leading to the ominous warning “possibility of anal leakage” on some products that carried it. Best stick to a species-appropriate natural diet.
Great article, very very comprehensive! Thanks man.
TEDtalks: “Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+”
Oh look! Plant-based diet is common among people older than 100 years. I’ll use whatever works. You can keep your meat.
OK, show us all the vegan centenarians?? Plant based diet is NOT the same as a plant only diet. The difference is HUGE, people like esselstyn and Campbell are scaring everyone away from all meat when a little bit (especially fish) is probably what keeps these centenarians alive…. none of them abstain from all animal foods.
Meat & Nutrition = Longevity
Nutrition for the Japanese elderly
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=1407826&query_hl=7&itool=pubmed_docsum
Abstract
The present paper examines the relationship of nutritional status to further life expectancy and health status in the Japanese elderly based on 3 epidemiological studies. 1. Nutrient intakes in 94 Japanese centenarians investigated between 1972 and 1973 showed a higher proportion of animal protein to total proteins than in contemporary average Japanese. 2. High intakes of milk and fats and oils had favorable effects on 10-year (1976-1986) survivorship in 422 urban residents aged 69-71. The survivors revealed a longitudinal increase in intakes of animal foods such as eggs, milk, fish and meat over the 10 years. 3. Nutrient intakes were compared, based on 24-hour dietary records, between a sample from Okinawa Prefecture where life expectancies at birth and 65 were the longest in Japan, and a sample from Akita Prefecture where the life expectancies were much shorter. Intakes of Ca, Fe, vitamins A, B1, B2, C, and the proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher in the former than in the latter. Intakes of carbohydrates and NaCl were lower.
Denise!:)
I am wondering what percent of your calories come from animal products? (or how many cals/day if that is easier?)
Thank you:)
[...] indispensable Denise Minger reviews the science in “Forks Over Knives,” a documentary that attempts to convince people that switching [...]
Charlie, the reason Japanese live longer if they eat more animal foods may be partly because the animal foods are displacing white rice. There is evidence of this in China. In Jiangsu province meat appears to protect against diabetes and obesity, but a Chinese colleague tells me this is because the more meat people eat, the less white flour or white rice they eat.
Hi Jane,
This may be the case, but it is a somewhat biased way to make the statement. It would sound different if we said that the reason white rice is harmful is because it is displacing meat. One statement is a corollary of the other, but the two statements have very different connotations.
It is worth noting that Asians do not eat “meat” the way we do. Most of the people I work with are Asian. When they eat “meat,” they eat the organs, the head, the bones, the cartilage, the tendons, the skin, and so on. One time I walked into the office and my Chinese lab mate was eating lunch. I said, “that smells good, what is that?” He said, “pig ears.” My Malaysian lab mate says the best part of the pig is the cheeks. To Americans, this stuff is not “meat.” Americans eat bizarre things like “skinless chicken breast.” This preposterous habit of taking the breast and throwing out not only the skin on top of it but even the leg meat, the bones, the neck, the organs, and everything else in the trash is almost certainly very harmful to health.
Chris
Hi Chris, very interesting that your Asian friends do that.
Do you know whether the increase in Chinese meat-eating in recent years is due to people eating more of what you describe or to invasion by McDonalds and KFC?
Hi Jane,
I’m not familiar with the data enough even to know whether there is an increase in Chinese meat-eating. But I have another interesting anecdote. Once my lab mate was having stomach problems and I suggested he use some ginger. I asked him if he used ginger back home for stomach issues and he said he didn’t get them in China.
Chris
Well apparently they eat 20 times as much meat as they did in the 1960s! No wonder people try to say it’s the meat that’s causing the increase in obesity/diabetes etc. But it isn’t, of course.
As far as I can gather, they still mostly eat the stuff we throw away, although McDonalds is getting very big there. Very interesting that your friend doesn’t get stomach issues in China, and does in the US.
The white thing is a good start but it doesn’t stand up to a careful scientific investigation. For example, in a two hour blood sugar response test, blood sugar rises faster and higher after eating whole grain bread compared to white bread. But then why eat bread in the first place, it is one of least nutrient dense foods available. The clue is the “fortified” claim. If it wasn’t fortified it would be starch (sugar) and not much else that isn’t available from healthier sources. Try to find fortified kale or collards, you won’t, they are nutrient dense already and contain little starch, the principle cause of the epidemic of metabolic syndrome. The reason most people cling to grain is not generally known. An obese person will give you the clue, often they describe grain base foods as comfort foods. This is the same as a cigarette providing comfort to a smoker. There are several compounds in grains which are addictive affect the same regions of the brain as narcotics such as heroine and cocaine. So if you suggest grain is not a very good food source you can expect less than rational responses as you often find with any addictive substance
I saw the movie and I too found it very interesting and thought provoking. The main point that I took from it was that any changes one can make in one’s diet and lifestyle to improve endothelial health is critical. Is this not our bodies main line of defense against atherosclerosis? Fascinating stuff.
Great review and critique, thanks for sharing.
@grog – i’ll take my diet advice from people in the nutrition field, and let you take it from a 23 year old nobody with an english degree who was still not intelligent enough to NOT make herself sick by her own diet choices…..
one would THINK, that a person who has genuine emotions (re: not alterior motives) who writes this spin would express empathy and sadness at these ‘break through revelations’ as they go against the underlying positive message of the film(oh right i forgot, she’s a vegan or something close to it, in that case i believe every single word; same reason i believed every single word in the film…..yikes). but her TONE is exactly the opposite. sarcastic, placating, overly cynical…….and again, she admits she made herself sick with her diet choices(ie that’s just plain dumb son! ooooh snap gotcha!)
good at writing, great! good at getting people to believe this crap in light of her own poor diet choices…..priceless
and i agree with you wholeheartedly about the extremists like vegans and paleos, SOME of them really ARE out to lunch, case in point, denise
ps – did anybody notice how directly after my last post, the commenter ‘comedian for hire’ posted the words, and i quote:
‘Great article, very very comprehensive! Thanks man.’
but now that post resides directly under the backlash of comments that followed my post? so before when you read the page(ie before the spin artiste got her hands on it) he was replying favorably to what i said. now when you read it he is replying to the those that disagreed with what i said. all done by sliding his post down a few notches.
lest we forget the actual nutritionist with actual experience in the field that did a harsh critique of denises china study ‘critique’ page and it was mysteriously removed permanently. not harsh, more like shot it down out of the sky
OH MY…
i just couldn’t get past her overall tone that’s all. waaaaay too sarcastic. i call it spin because it’s about percentages. the majority of the people who see this page (not the other pages she writes ie the ones that DON’T show up when you google ‘forks over knives’)will only make it to the first few points and feel so frightened by the overall TONE and say f- it.
the FEW PEOPLE who make it to the end and digest every point could be grouped into those that are worthy of it’s final message(please tell me it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of whole food plant based with a small amount of animals, cause i only made it to the second ‘bang bang nah’mean bruh?’)
or the group of people who really need the scientific truth about particular food choices as they need the specifics for more serious health reasons
so there! y happy? all this for nothin’
also it appears that i don’t know how to follow blog post positioning protocol so sue me : )
Hi Duh,
I think you’re being unfair. I generally find it obnoxious when people sarcastically mock other people, as I think this is usually rooted in ignorance and almost always promotes ignorance. If that was what Denise had done, I don’t think I would have made it half way through this post. I did laugh ten or twenty times, but I didn’t feel like I was laughing “at” anyone. It made the post much more enjoyable to read. A blog is a venue where someone with a sense of humor can take the liberty to use it, and by doing so can often get people who otherwise can’t tolerate reading a long scientific tome to be interested. I think you and I have different biases when reading this. If I had put a lot of stock in Campbell, then I probably would have been frustrated seeing something like this that really seems to undermine some of his positions. And perhaps it would bother me a little bit more if it came across as effortless and fun. But that would be my problem. The sarcasm and smugness just doesn’t exist in this article.
Chris
“I think you’re being unfair. I generally find it obnoxious when people sarcastically mock other people, as I think this is usually rooted in ignorance and almost always promotes ignorance.”
Well, I see a problem, or rather many problems. This statement “rooted in ignorance” IS dogmatic and yes, ignorant. Sorry to inform you, but hate of sarcasm (always, anytime) is typical of antiintellectual culture, particular the one shaped by Dale Carnegie. There is number of cultures which don’t have a problem with sarcasm and actually the most intellectual and sophisticated individuals favor sarcasm. Like everything else, sarcasm can be abused, but this is a different story. I can also assure you that there are individuals who deserve to be treated sarcastically, and the world probably would be a better place if crooks, thieves and
manipulators get what they deserve. Personally, I reserve a smile for those whom I love and those who deserve.
“Vegans think that eating grass and grass only…”
“hate of sarcasm (always, anytime) is typical of antiintellectual culture”
“the most intellectual and sophisticated individuals favor sarcasm”
You seem to never get tired of blanket statements, Anna.
About vegans, I’ll let them defend themselves, I’m not a vegan and probably never will be, though I don’t despise them.
About hate of sarcasm and “antiintellectual culture”, though, my life experience taught me that sarcasm is actually one of the favorite attacks of antiintellectuals… just the opposite as what you state.
“the world probably would be a better place if crooks, thieves and
manipulators get what they deserve.”
Aaaah, at last something we do agree on. Come here, gimme a hug. Now tell me, what would be your favorite punishement?
Wizzu, go away.
We can’t communicate. Your life experience and mine are obviously different. Clearly, my cultures have a sense that not all people are equal (in ethical terms). All this Carnegian “smile” or equally idiotic New Age “smile and hug holistically” are alien to me.
Punishment? Sarcasm is a good start (possibly can be occasionally also an end).
“Wizzu, go away.”
You wish! LOL
Anyway, last time I’ve checked, you were not the blog owner. You’ll have a hard time making me go away.
We can’t communicate? That’s your version…. and the easy way out.
Oh BTW from your last post it looks like you thought I was american and all Carnegie-mentally-shaped? You couldn’t be further from the truth… LOL…
Wizzu, Of course, I want a way out. I have other things to do, such as cooking and eating vegetables and … oh, horror, meat.
My philosophy is simple:
I believe that elimination of entire categories of food isn’t good. I believe that mixing everything with everything (out of context) can be problematic.
In general, I really dislike Social Darwinists and various demagogues (smile and peace will rule, for example). I tend to like intellectualism (to a degree) and my love is limited by ethical considerations (probably not typical)
Back to food. I dislike those who blame ideologically people for their illnesses without bothering to check genetic or environmental aspects.
That all.
Now, I’ll eat.
Bon appétit, Anna!
This time you’ve made your points clear, and guess what, I actually kinda agree with most of them. Funny, isn’t it?
Hi Anna,
I don’t think you owe anyone smiles, and I don’t recommend smiling all the time. I read Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” when I was 16 or 17, but I can’t remember whether I finished it. If I were to compose a list of my influences, Carnegie would be conspicuously absent.
I don’t think sarcastic mocking is necessarily rooted in ignorance, but I said it “usually” is, and this was an empirical statement. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of the time I see someone mocking someone else’s beliefs, I see substantial holes in their argument that they appear to be missing. I think it usually promotes ignorance because its signal to the audience is that the other argument doesn’t deserve to be listened to. Either the mocking is ineffective, or it biases others not to consider the subject even-handedly. Criminal trials are designed at least in theory to ensure that “crooks, thieves, and manipulators get what they deserve,” but there is a very sober protocol of behavior that would preclude much sarcasm in part because no one can get a fair trial in an environment where the prosecution is allowed to make too much fun of them.
Chris
Chris,
Somehow, I missed your comment.
“I read Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” when I was 16 or 17, but I can’t remember whether I finished it. If I were to compose a list of my influences, Carnegie would be conspicuously absent.”
Wrong, Chris, wrong, ridiculously wrong. We are not only what we read (or what we eat), but also what
we absorb in many other ways. It looks like you
negate the existence of upbringing, education and countless other ways of influence. The fact that
you don’t see the presence of SOCIETY, is a good
proof of what culture you are part of.
I am not interested in replying to the implication that humans should only communicate via courts. This
view isn’t not part of my dominant cultures, and personally I reject it.n ed
Somehow, I missed your comment.
“I read Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” when I was 16 or 17, but I can’t remember whether I finished it. If I were to compose a list of my influences, Carnegie would be conspicuously absent.”
Wrong, Chris, wrong, ridiculously wrong. We are not only what we read (or what we read), but also what
we absorb in many other ways. It looks like you
negate the existence of upbringing, education and countless other ways of influence. The fact that
you don’t see the presence of SOCIETY, is a good
proof of what culture you are part of.
I am not interested in replying to the implication that
humans should only communicate via courts.
@duh, You just keep digging this hole deeper and deeper. Denise is not offering nutritional advice, and all your other points are out in left field. Give it up man. We’re happy for you that you eat quality foods and feel great. We’re not surprised. Most of us eat plants most of the time. Everyone else here realizes this except you.
FYI, that comedian was just link spamming the site. If you owned your own blog, you’d see that sometimes hundreds of these come in every day. His should have never made it through the filter. He probably spammed manually instead of with software. Do you think it’s some kind of conspiracy that we threaded comments below yours so it wouldn’t look like this link spamming comedian was giving you praise? Ha-ha, please.
We keep hearing about these magically disappearing comments. Denise has addressed this before. Quit kicking the same dead horses. Tell this “actual nutritionist” to put up this fantastic surface to air critique on one of the million free places online. I’m sure lots of people (including Denise) would love to read it. If it’s any good, it’ll get passed around like a joint at a Bob Marley concert and be right at the top of the SERPs challenging Denise.
http://i.imgur.com/mtl9A.jpg
Looks like we got an Orange Alert here!
my new thought on the matter:
humans will continue to refine the vegan / vegetarian diet to a point where over time it will become more and more healthy. which, whenever that happens, will hopefully coincide with our unavoidable need to decrease animal production/consumption due to inevitable environmental restrictions
plus, ghandi couldn’t exactly walk into your average modern american grocery store and dine on the mind boggling selection of whole plant foods that are so cheaply available all year round, or the wide selection of b12 supplements). the concept of that even is completely new to human existence. if you had access to a good variety of veg in ancient times you were lucky to be in the right place at the right point in time. just think of the extremes of health choices that exist today and how the road is becoming more and more divided. i guess that’s why it’s such an issue. we’ve got unprecedented access to vegetable foods, and also the same unprecedented access to animal and refined foods
100 year old east indian man just ran the toronto marathon but was denied the world record from guiness because they didn’t make birth certificates at the time he was born. not sure how strict the vegetarianism is with his faith and therefore if he was vegan or vegetarian though.
here is a quote from his wikipedia page (fauja singh):
“I never thought of running a Marathon then. But slowly it grew”. What surprises many is that he supports his eight stone and six feet tall body frame with a very simple vegetarian diet. “I am very careful about different foods. My diet is simple phulka (chappati), dal (lentils), green vegetables, yoghurt and milk. I do not touch parathas, pakoras, rice or any other fried food. I take lots of water and tea with ginger.”
James, ‘.. But I am worried about magnesium because of the fact that there is a real possibility that the so-called calcium deficiency may stem from magnesium (and Vitamin D) deficiency.’
I agree with you. I would go further, actually, and say not only is there no calcium deficiency, but there may be no vitamin D deficiency either, because low circulating vitamin D is just a symptom of magnesium deficiency.
As an epidemiologist, I tip my hat to you for debunking a documentary that raised my eyebrows and then some. Maddening how people leave out basic science just to prove an agenda. I work in cancer prevention and specially tout the importance of focusing on social determinants of health to help combat disparities in cancer outcomes.
Wow, I impressed by the fact that someone in this land is actually familiar with the word “society” let alone is dealing with “social determinants.”
Weren’t we told by Thatcher and Reagan that society doesn’t exist, the rich are rich because they deserve to be rich etc.
BTW, one of the reasons I dislike vegans is their absolute belief that, if one eats grass and grass only, one will be forever young (and healthy of course) and their implied (or not only implied) blaming of people with health problems for their health problems the way Social Darwinists (a nasty bunch) blame the poor for being poor.
HAHA the best thing about this was the, i’m going to go cash my check from the “meat industry.” Reading this blog I trutly believed you worked for the National Cattlemans Association, FDA, USDA ir the dairy industry- maybe even all of them
I love self professsed ‘know it alls!’ Go back to school and lay off the internet learning- it’s hard to identify the legit vs. garbage 
Being a nurse I have to take care of all these Fat Ass carnivores that frequent the drive thru! Unfortunately, there is no moderation in this Brave New World, and for those who know ‘moderation’ good for you- you will live a long healthy life! I however, make choices holistically, ethically and spirtually. Its not just about the YOU (the human) it’s about the animals the earth and all of nature! The WHOLE picture sets you free, not just one tiny aspect of it. So I am vegan not to lower my cholesterol or just prevent CAD or other vascualr issues… But to be kind to my self the earth and other creatures!
PS I think you could have a successful career in Politics… Leave the nutrition to the experts- but do please correct their English/Grammar.
These “can’t beat the argument so attack the person” posts are rather tasteless.
They also, of course, do nothing to refute the evidence Ms. Minger has laid out.
“These “can’t beat the argument so attack the person” posts are rather tasteless.
They also, of course, do nothing to refute the evidence Ms. Minger has laid out.”
Yeah, the old ad hominem. The easy way out when confronted with people who happen to use logic, facts, and carefully constructed arguments, that contradict one’s beliefs.
It takes some effort to attack the arguments (and even more to refute evidence), but it takes vey little to attack the person. People are lazy (count me in BTW – I’m just aware of it).
Sort of resonates with the way that “it’s easier to state bullshit than to disprove it, which is the receipe for the accumulation of bullshit”. I read that somewhere on the Internet and loved it rightaway.
“…..Being a nurse ….” I knew that healthcare south of the border wasn’t in the best of shapes, but never in my worst nightmares could I imagine hospitals being populated by buffoons . Let me guess your political affiliation: Tea party? or former Alaskan governor fan club. I’m sorry I forgot her name
Yeah, it was a charming comment.
Guess I get to be the “asshole” again. More vegan fantasyland drivel.
“Go back to school and lay off the internet learning” – Because if she goes back to school, they’ll teach her all the right things like veganism right? I’ll assume that’s where you got your “learning” and were so enlightened.
If only all those “Fat Ass carnivores that frequent the drive thru” ordered veggie burgers, *Sigh* the world would be all sunshine and rainbows. You’d be out of a job for sure.
I eat animal products. I guess that makes me a carnivore rather than an omnivore getting most his calories from plants. Will you come take care of me? I could use my own ass wiper. My double chin gets in the way and I can’t see back there very well.
“I however, make choices holistically, ethically and spirtually” – Yeah, this really shines through in your comment. You get the full ROFLMFAO encore. Because the only people who can make choices like these are vegans.
And people think I’m the ass….
I really, really hope you are lying about being a nurse. You should not be working with any vulnerable population with that acerbic attitude.
Like I said… MODERATION! If you know it GREAT! Here’s to a healthy happy life! Many people, the people with the problems of vascualr disease and obesity do not know it! I do not try to turn anyone on to veganism, eat all the meat you want- my husband does and I respect him more than anyone and OH MY, he’s healthy. I am trying to point out that SOME people (well in my post I only referenced myself) do it for other things- NOT because we think meat will kill you…. Or make you unhealthy- that is all! There are SO MANY variables to every decision and trying to find obsolute Right and Wrong will lead a person on a ghost trail!
As far as my religious and political affiliations ‘JAMES’ you couldn’t be farther from the truth- just the fact that I call out the blogger (jokingly) on affiliations with 19.1 billion $ industry should raise awareness- totally beside the point and has nothing to do with it! If you want to know, I don’t claim ANY religion as you may know religion and spirituality = very different. AND I don’t claim any political party either!
hmmm where has all the objectivity gone?
Obviously not here since you have no scientific research to back up anything you do. You say she’s a “know it all.” Would love to have you as a nurse, someone who turns up her nose to plain research.
and if it’s written on the internet as they say….it’s the bible truth!
Why, of course. If you don’t get your information from the flakey old guy in the white coat who walks with a limp and serial prescribes big pharma products when a glass of water will do then you just don’t understand anything about diet, health and natural well being.
Sheesh.
Hey Guys,
Denise is simply brilliant! She has this all figured out. If you eat 1-5% meat then she promises that you will be as healthy as anyone on the plant based whole foods diet, if not more.
Great Job for the invention!!
Where does she promise anything of the sort? She makes no suggestions or claims, only critiques flawed conclusions.
Do not put words in her mouth, please. “1-5%”? What?
So a person who adheres to a 2000kcal diet/day will only eat 1%= 20kcal/day (of meat) to a 5%= 100kcal/day(of meat)?
Trolling in a language you don’t speak = fail.
600! Okay okay. I apologize. I won’t do it again.
It has been pointed out already a number of times, but I will repeat it again. Essentially the only criticisms of what Denise has written are criticisms of her background and not her research or arguments. Turns out that her research and arguments are very difficult to attack because she does her homework in spades. All is left is to attack the messenger, which is pretty damn lame.
This is still America and you can make the choices that you want. However, the evidence is there, for many disease processes, not just heart disease, that the more veggies you eat and the less meat (of any kind) you consume – you will be better off in many ways. Personally, I don’t want to take any medication (the pharmaceutical is a big business in the governments back pocket if ever I saw one!) and I want to stay out of nursing homes if at all possible. I will say that Dr. Esselstyn is very gracious and I am most certain he would offer to sit and talk with you via phone, email, or in person.
“However, the evidence is there..[..]”
That’s exactly what is discussed here and in many other places, that the evidence is actually NOT there if you look carefully.
That the “evidence” against meat and animal products is mostly fabricated, for bias reasons or with an agenda.
No one here want to take medics for illnesses, quite the contrary: the quest of people like Denise Minger, Chris Masterjohn, Kurt Harris, Dr. Davis etc… is the pursuit of a sound, (genuine) evidence-based way of eating to avoid illness, to live a full, healthy life. They happen to question the politically correct, conventional wisdom of “animal products are bad for you”, because the “evidence” against these products often reveals to be nothing but, once closely examined. Same goes for the diet-heart hypothesis, same goes for the cholesterol hypothesis. Once you start digging and looking at the real facts, these theories crumble into dust.
We’re being lied, we’re being fed propaganda.
Make your own mind of course! But I have a feeling you didn’t actually really read Denise’s article.. Am I wrong?
You are possibly closer to the truth than you think. For example the Lipid Hypothesis is still a hypothesis, how can that be? A hypothesis is something put up to test an idea, testing shouldn’t take decades, if it passes it becomes a theory, like evolution. Eventually the evidence may be so unequivocal it becomes fact. But the lipid hypothesis is on life support, 40 years later, still a hypothesis. And of course there is a reason, it didn’t come out of science., it came out of Washington politics. It was George McGovern’s brain child when he ran for President in 1968, a tactic to engender lobby support and gain publicity for his ill advised run for President. But it became enshrined in Government policy and government never makes a mistake so it kept providing research grants to try to prove it. Well over a billion dollars to date and still no dice, not even the famous Framingham multigenerational study of tens of thousands of people could find an association let alone cause and effect.
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/cardiovascular-disease/framingham-follies/
We’ve all been had,not only have we been lied to but our taxes for 40 years have been used to tilt at political windmills. And they tried so hard, I’ve regularly seen studies where the abstract and conclusions are actually opposite to what the data shows. In fact if you give a real scientist a paper to read, one who checks the data and the statistics, many times they quit reading part way through because its a waste of time when the authors turn out to be either liars or incompetent. Nowhere else in science have I seen this problem to this extent except perhaps pharmaceuticals and its because of the strength of the Washington lobbies. The USDA is responsible for the National Nutritional Guidelines and also for helping food producers and manufacturers. Tell you what you should eat then produce it…
Are you saying we are being fed Propaganda to become vegetarian or vegan? Last time I looked the majority leans toward eating ‘lean’ meat with the slogo “Go lean with protein” including beef lamb ham/pork veal and even organ meats and the ‘veg heads’ and ‘granolas’ are the minority? If I misread forgive me.Corporate America which we might agree, or maybe not has the politicians by the balls. One example is Ann Veneman who was Bush’s Agricultural Secretary for a large portion of his terms had ties to the BGH scandal, a major meat packing industry and she also employed a spokeswoman who was relations director for the Cattleman’s Beef Assoc. She also employed one her biggest Lobbyist (former president of National Pork producers Council) and several others who had ties to major meat industries.
Numerous times USDA members have accepted ‘corporate gifts’ from the meat and dairy industries. Some have been unloaded others are sneakier. You don’t see your local organic farmers that don’t have an annual profit 10-19 billion in their pockets bribing members of the government to let things fall by the wayside.
I don’t see on TV commercials about eating raw fresh broccoli provided by your local CSA. Instead I see (well forgive me I dont have a TV as of a year ago, but I read) commercials about drinking 24 ounces of milk/day and Tyson/Foster Farms chicken nuggets packed full of preservatives, which I might add, have been fined numerous times for not meeting safe practice acts but hey what’s a measly 4mill$? Maybe things have changed idk? You don’t seem like the type that eats stuff like this but that is what our children are taught and both the meat/dairy industry are part of Corp America. It’s all about the benjamins, the animals are highly mistreated and pumped full of prophylactic abx and growth hormones- that is the problem I have with meat consumption! I have no problem with the latter, people who fish for their own fish or buy local, free range-drug free beef.
My husband buys his meat from local farmers who slaughter there own meat he doesn’t eat the meat of corporate giants or even the local ones who are sent to Tx to be mistreated and then slaughtered. It is just tainted with indecency. So I point out the connectedness with major corporations and propaganda towards consuming more meat/dairy so the tycoons can make the humble 10-20 billion annually. They literally pay the government to tell people it is healthy to eat/drink more meat/dairy than they need in order to keep the economy rolling- so to speak. I am reminded of the high fructose corn syrup commercials saying it’s ok to eat HFCS in moderation (the people hear, “Oh HFCS is good for us? YAY” The corn industry is massive too- corn is in everything now. I dare to ask why ?$$
Ashley, I apologize and retract my words. Maybe your first comment that elicited my unfortunate response, was a bit differently intended than it came across. I have discovered that in your comments since then, you and I don’t differ all that much. I abhor what is going on in the world of food fabrication, the Cafo’s, the genetically messed up food stuffs, etc. I am a real omnivore, but avoid anything that has any connection whatsoever with Big Food and get my stuff locally grown or grow it myself. But I have shunned wheat for over a year now and feel great about it and have several patients with peripheral neuropathy and migraine head aches advised to do the same.
I’d be honoured to be cared for by a nurse like you
James, this is interesting. You are a medical practitioner, and this is why you can’t accept what I tell you about wheat. You have not only given it up yourself, you have advised patients to do the same. There is no going back. Given all that, I must say you have been remarkably reasonable.
You’re keeping good company Jane, and it keeps growing: http://www.theheart.org/article/1293667.do?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=20111102_topTen_new
and I am not sure you want to join the others: Fat, unfit, unmotivated: Cardiologist, heal thyself : http://www.theheart.org/article/1300255.do?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=20111102_topTen_new
Actually you should join forces with Mae Wan Ho:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/index.php
James: “You must be a member to access this content.”
Maybe my comment about fat cardiologist was a bit unfair, but it was dr.Brian McCrindle(pediatric cardiologist) who spoke at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congres who made the observation. However there still is a lot of misunderstanding and not all “specialists” are helpful.
DR. James L.King:
“…. I do not want to capitalize on the death of a visionary man like Steve Jobs, but it appears that Steve Jobs was using the Dr. Dean Ornish Cancer Diet, The Ornish Diet that starves you of vital fat based nutrients. Years of research showing how misguided that is.
The Ornish Diet recommends frankenfoods like frozen processed meals, which are full of Roundup-soaked, genetically modified soybeans and partially hydrogenated oils. Evidence that 70% of people are at least partially intolerant to gluten. Eating “whole grains” is simply not a way to pursue health no matter how many times we repeat the mantra, “whole grains are healthy.” They’re not. They’re cheap and easy to store, but they are responsible for a whole host of chronic diseases.
Dr. Ornish believes that grains are ‘Food for Healthy Humans’. High carbs put stress on the pancreas and cardiovascular system which cranks out all the insulin you need to absorb those carbs. It is simply unacceptable that unfathomably poor nutritional advice concocted in the 1970’s contributed not only to Steve Jobs’ early demise, but to the fattening of an entire generation…”
Thanks, interesting. I see the same problem here. Every week I go to the Pharmacology seminar, and at the lunch afterwards, the prof talks to me eating white-bread sandwiches. Occasionally he looks at them and says I shouldn’t be eating this, should I, and I grin and say no, and next week he’s eating them again. He’s losing his hair and his waistline, and knows what’s causing it. He is trapped, because the drug companies fund some of the work in his department.
James, ‘high carbs put stress on the pancreas and cardiovascular system ..’ Are you willing to entertain the possibility that whole carb foods do not do this?
BTW, it seems you are retired, meaning not any more a health care practitioner. Now you are free to change your mind! Only if the evidence says so, of course.
Good point. one of the health benefits of the internet is it provides an avenue for health discussion which is very difficult to subvert by major money interests, the food and pharmaceutical industries. Its no accident the politician who initiated the bogus lipid hypothesis was a Senator from South Dakota. Guess which moneyed interests back home benefited from it. Most individuals in the health care system and the dietary advice community have been subverted by these two interests. It is difficult to find even a single individual on a supposedly independent advisory body, including the major charities, that is not receiving money and benefits from them. At the lowest level drug company reps deliver free lunches for staff daily to many Doctors offices. In advertising for staff some doctors even point out free lunches as one of their employment benefits. You may witness this with your own eyes by making the last appointment of the morning and delaying your departure. Someone mentioned he’d rather listen to a nutrition professional than an amateur but he’d better check out conflicts of interests first, including the individuals professors from college. When the students at Harvard Medical School went on strike refusing to attend lectures from professors who received money from pharmaceutical companies it came to light that fully fifty percent t of the cost of running the school was currently coming from compromising sources, including the building of complete buildings and facilities. This is not a simple world with simple life instructions and choosing a diet based upon one profession’s advice or upon the last book read is a recipe for an early death. The contributor regarding Steve Jobs gives a good example. .
YES My first response was ‘tasteless’ having read it again- My words did not do justice to my beliefs and what I actually wanted to say! My first interpretation of this critique was that it was a ‘vegan bashing escapade’ Therefore, my thought, ‘why is ok they bash us but we cannot do the same?’ However, going back and looking through the whole blog I feel that the author is the most objective of us all! She remains that way pretty much throughout and even between the fine lines I believe that readers can see if they look close enough that just because she debunks a study it does not mean that she disagrees, that is the objectivity we need…. WOW she is really young to be this smart! I have sent an apology to her! I wonder what type of diet she is on now?
I feel a lot of us are fighting the same battle but we climb over eachother with biasism. I don’t want to be like that.We all want people to be healthy and fit and there are so many components involved. So many ways to skin a cat! I got out of cardiology because the redeeming qualities in heart disease are non existent- we just plasty, bipass, graph and balloon- YUCK hows about a little prevention? I got sick of telling people that ketchup does not equal a fruit group, french fried potatoes do not equal a veg group, microwaved beef (if that is what it is) with plastic cheese is not protein, a white bun does not equal grains and drinking the ice that melts in the bottom of your pepsi cup is not ‘drinking water’ ugh! Very dis-heartening in my young career. Anyways keep fighting the good fight. This seems more like a discussion forum than anything! Im gonna look into the wheat thing more, I do think over consumption has possibly led to increased intolerance genetically speaking, also with dairy as well… Oh and it would be refreshing to take care of a patient who is nutritional healthy too
Very rare in my field which is why I am so passionate about Education- Take Care!
Atta girl Ashlie. Welcome to the team
You’re a peach! I now understand your initial reaction and as such i cannot possibly fault you. Depending on the circles you move in, you are apt to run into a very outspoken reaction to the mainstream dogma of high carb low fat and especially no animal fat. Make no mistake a lot of those reactions come from people who are hopping mad because they were made to believe for half a century that their diet of margarines and vegetable oils and “wholesome” whole grain wheat would provide them with health and well being into a ripe old age, only to discover at 50 and 60 that their arteries were clogged, and many were in need of a bypass or worse. That all the good advice was not even based on bad science, but on willfully fudging the facts and in many cases misrepresenting the facts. Like somebody referenced already, it was Michael Eades digging into the Framingham report where mr Kannes really did a job on the facts. That one really opened my eyes.
So don’t take it too personally Ashley, some of these people are really hurting, and they are upset that their health was being jeopardized because people in charge were behaving fraudulently. I enjoy my steak and pork chops, but they are all locally grown under very humane conditions, grass fed, but at the same time our lunch is always a big salad. We call it our paleo salad because it does have sausage and bacon bits in it beside the olives, onions, garlic, nuts, eggs and blue cheese. Since my retirement we grow most of it ourselves. Even our own wines thanks to the University of Minnesota providing us with cold hardy varieties.
I am sorry Neisy, this completely off topic, but i think Ashley deserved a bit of explanation why sometimes the temperature goes up a bit.
ashlie, here’s what Denise told us earlier about her diet.
My diet shifted a lot between the time I was 7 and the time I was 17, when I reintroduced animal foods. From ages 7 to 11, I ate a semi-healthy vegetarian diet (my parents didn’t buy stuff like soda or sugary cereals), but I was still eating wheat, dairy, and sugar in desserts. When I was 11, I was diagnosed with a wheat allergy and stopped eating all wheat, both refined and whole. A couple years later, I stopped eating dairy and soy because I was sensitive to those foods as well. From 14 to 16 my diet was wheat-free, dairy-free, nearly sugar-free, and soy-free. I was still getting sick all the time. When I was 16, I became a raw vegan, and this was the first time in my life I actually had energy and a functioning immune system. By the end of one year as a raw vegan, though, I had over a dozen cavities, receding gums, hyperactivity mixed with lethargy, constant brain fog, sleeping problems, muscle loss, and a sharp decline in short-term memory (although on the bright side, I still wasn’t getting sick!).
Lou Ann,
There seems to be also evidence, the more you eliminate, the more endangered you health is. Lupus (whatever it is), for example, doesn’t seem to be a nice illness, but If I understand it correctly, it prefers vegans. I am pretty sure that the list is much longer.
Lupus and veganism? That would be an interesting read care to share your research? Also with the much longer ‘list’ ?
This ‘buffoon’/nurse has some learning to be learned…
This “buffoon” nurse has a lot of learning to be learned. However, I am not a teacher here.
Here is what the Lupus foundation has to say:
“There is no special diet for lupus, despite the numerous claims on the Internet and in various books and other publications. In general, you should try to eat a nutritious, well-balanced, and varied diet that contains plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, moderate amounts of meats, poultry, and oily fish, as fish oil has been found to help reduce inflammation.
Omega-3 fatty acids found in oily fish appear to decrease the risk of coronary artery disease and may also protect against irregular heartbeats and help lower blood pressure. For these reasons, omega-3 fatty acids are important for women with lupus, who are at a 5-10-fold higher risk for heart disease than the general population.
One food for people with lupus to avoid is alfalfa. Alfalfa tablets have been associated with reports of a lupus-like syndrome or lupus flares. The lupus-like effects may include muscle pain, fatigue, abnormal blood test results, changes in how the immune system functions, and kidney problems. These reactions may be due to the amino acid L-canavanine (found in alfalfa seeds and sprouts, but not in leaves), which can activate the immune system and increase inflammation.”
http://www.lupus.org/webmodules/webarticlesnet/templates/new_learnliving.aspx?articleid=2281&zoneid=527
As far as the complete list of illnesses associated with an unbalanced diet is concerned, I suggest you look for it yourself, since an unbalanced diet can have consequences for you, but not me.
Chia, Flax, Raspberry, Butternut squash, Pecan, Hazelnuts, and algae all have omega 3 fatty acids … A rather colorful array of foods. I eat a variety of foods I will not just rely on one source such as fish to give my body a nutrient it needs. there are all kinds of omega 3 fats including but not limited to EPA and DHA. I will spend time looking up vegan plagues; never in my many years have I heard of any particular to this diet except the B12 issue which can easily be refuted with one word- spiulina. But I am truly intrigued.
Balancing your diet is very easy if you know what is in your food and regardless of whether your a omnivore or vegetarian/vegan. It is possible, can be done and is done.
Thanks I appreciate your help!
i read that unsterilized hemp seed has the most omega 3′s and 6′s out of all plant foods and in the perfect balance too. is this true?
I made it to the end! Phew!
Such an excellent weighing of the facts from the gumph. Well done.
Mike (South Africa)
One of the hallmarks of a proper study is the showing of a dose-response effect. It seems that we have evidence of just such a thing when it comes to diabetes and animal protein.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/237103.php
I am curious what would lead you to eliminate all studies that involve Adventists. Are they somehow genetically different?
Evan,
I most certainly am not an expert, but I suspect some people might have a problem with this article.
Something tells me that the wisdom below, for example, will be questioned.
“Also, whole grains, beans and other legumes are known to improve glycemic control which slows the rate of carbohydrate absorption and thus reduces risk of diabetes”
Personally, I am guessing (ignorantly?) that maybe minimizing the amount of carbohydrates is better than slowing …
Anna, almost all energy that is delivered to the body is ultimately turned into glucose. The brain cannot run on anything else. The mere presence of glucose in the serum doesn’t create an insulin release from the pancreas. What does create an insulin release is a rapid rise of glucose in the serum. If fiber slows that rate of rise, the insulin response will be fully within the norms of mammalian physiology and will thus not trigger insulin resistance or the metabolic syndrome. Nobody lives without carbohydrates and your body will simply make them from what you eat if you don’t eat them.
Of the three food groups, carbohydrates, fat and protein, carbohydrates are the only group that can be eliminated without health problems. Protein and fat are absolutely needed for good health, nothing more.
“The brain cannot run on anything else.” Really?, do you have references for this?
For argument’s sake it is true that the brain runs basically on glucose. The brain is the biggest energy hog of all our systems. It removes something like 100 grams of sugar per day (that’s about half a cup) from the blood. However it should be noted that the brain doesn’t need carbohydrates for that. It is perfectly capable of getting that from protein. Yes, paleo people’s brains work quite well too. But they’d better get their protein supply on a regular basis otherwise the brain just digs into whatever else is available. That could be muscle tissue.
Do you realize just how much protein you would need to eat to fulfill your brains and the rest of your bodies glucose needs?
The rest of the body can do quite nicely on fat and more fat, which is a lot easier on the liver.
And, the brain can be fueled with ketones.
And you might make it all the way to 150 with a brain in top shape.
Poor poor thyroid.
Nah….Not mine, I spoil mine a bit with iodine and go quite easy on the rhubarb but splurge on Omega 3. Our pastured pork even provides my thyroid with wholesome 65% mono-unsaturated fat.
But keep the sugar away whether that comes as sucrose, wheat flour, or fructose. They are non-foods, inflammatory and rich producers of AGES. Don’t believe we were ever meant to eat grass seeds
James,
‘Don’t believe we were ever meant to eat grass seeds’.
Who ‘meant’ us to eat or not eat grass seeds? God? Richard Dawkins?
You are funny, but my money is on Ernst Haeckel.
I must admit Jane I immensely enjoy your contributions and will spend quite a bit of my indoor time this winter going through this blog and retrieve some of your links. I confess I am a sucker for the whole scientific report. Haven’t trusted any abstract anymore since the Framingham framing
Evan,
Clearly, this topic is outside the scope of my competence and I am unable to answer competently. You’ve asked an interesting question. I am looking forward to a discussion.
For all people who run into a meat based diet cause of teeth and then see ****** healed her cancer and improoved her teeth and also had a teeth grow back on a modified Gerson Theraphy.She had raw liver juice beside that no animal products. So what ican say. is be aware of what you eat.
Just two things…the ones that bother me the most about your review
1. Word choice – “Vegan vs plant based” as though those awful doctors are up to something extremely sneaky… Veganism includes restrictions on anything in connection with animal products, including honey, including table sugar which was processed over bone char, which is what we eat. Forks over Knives was not about animal welfare. The word choice is by definition not vegan, but rather plant-based.
2.”oh snap” really, for scientific literature? That’s not how it works. If there is conflicting evidence in the literature, a true scientist, would say “Interesting, I wonder why the results are like this for this set of experiments” and then would possibly be able to devise an experiment to isolate data that would explain the inconsistencies, even across species. Excerpts, are by default meaningless to make a point. The scientific materials and methods is pretty important in evaluating the validity of the results and the interpretation of those results.
The movie was careful because examining the correlations and ultimately the causation of diet to disease is very difficult.
All these posts are about you!! Fucking arrogant selfish human beings..( hippies) All the people i know who are vegan including myself, choose that lifestyle not only for their health, but for the health of the entire planet. And to not contribute to a disgusting industry of torture and murder. Do you people think about anything other than your own tiny lives!
some people think outside their own selfish existence and will be remembered for taking a stand against injustice, however small.
“I’m here today because of the arsons I committed at the Tandy Leather Factory in Salt Lake City and the Tiburon restaurant in Sandy, Utah, which sells the incredibly cruel product foie gras. The U.S. attorney wants to give me the maximum sentence and beyond not because of my “crimes” but because I am unrepentant and outspoken. My intuition tells me that this court is not going to show me mercy because I become suddenly sorry. So instead of lying to the court in a feeble attempt to save myself, as I’m certain many do when they face their sentencing day, allow me instead to tell you what I am sorry for.
I am sorry that when I was 19 years old I built two slaughterhouses that are still killing animals even now as I speak. I am sorry that Tandy Leather sells skin that has been ripped from the dead, and often live bodies of such animals as cows, ostriches, rabbits, snakes and pigs. I am sorry that the leather tanneries that supply Tandy Leather Factory poison the Earth with dangerous chemicals. I am sorry that the restaurant Tiburon profits from the force feeding of geese and ducks until their livers explode so that rich people can then use that as a pate for crackers and bread. I am sorry that they make a living from the dead bodies of wild and exotic animals. I am sorry that we live in a day and age where you can rape a child or beat a woman unconscious and receive less prison time than an animal liberation activist that attacked property instead of people.
I am sorry that my brother was so desperate to get out of debt that he flew from Iowa to Colorado just to get me in a taped and monitored conversation for reward money. I am sorry I am biologically related to such a worthless little snitch. I am sorry that I waited so long to become an Animal Liberation Front operative. For all of these things I will always have some regret. But as far as the arsons at the Leather Factory and Tiburon, I have no remorse.
I realize that the laws of the land favor a businesses ability to make a profit over an animals right to life. It also used to favor white business owners ability to profit from a black persons slavery. It also used to favor a husbands ability to viciously attack his wife and act on her as if she were an object. Those who broke the law and damaged property to stand against those oppressions were also called “terrorists” and “fanatics” in their time but that did not change the fact that society progressed and is still progressing along those lines.
So today I’m the bad guy. That is just a matter of historical coincidence. Who knows, perhaps a less brutal and less violent society will one day exist that will understand that life and Earth are more important that products of death and cruelty. And if not then to hell with it all anyway! Weather my supporters or detractors think I am a freedom fighter or a lunatic with a gas can makes no difference to me. I have spent years verifiably promoting, supporting and fighting for Animal Liberation. I have seen the animal victims of human injustice, thousands of them with my own eyes and what I saw was blood, guts and gore! I made a promise to those animals and to myself to fight for them in anyway I could. I regret none of it, and I never will!
You can take my freedom, but you can’t have my submission.”
— Walter Bond
Walter, I am sorry, but I am not buying. I can understand the reservations of ovo-lacto vegetarians and their refusal to eat meat – one can see a problem there. I can’t understand the grandstanding of vegans. IMHO, their wrapping in ethical terms their refusal to eat dairy and eggs is irritating. How does my eating of eggs affects hens? One can insist to inspection of conditions, on “naturalness” of conditions animals spend their lives, but this is different from the pomposity of “I don’t eat anything animal, and I am wonderful.”
How does my eating of eggs affects hens?
In commercial production, hens are slaughtered when they are no longer productive enough. There’s also the issue of hatcheries that produce those hens. Half of all chicks are male, and most of them are destroyed. Dairy has the same issues of unproductive females and unwanted males. While eggs and dairy are not flesh, slaughtered animals are a byproduct of their production. People who are lacto- and/or ovo- vegetarian for ethical reasons may as well just eat meat, because eggs and dairy are ethically identical to meat (with the highly rare exception of no-kill production, where males and females are all allowed to live out their natural lives).
“People who are lacto- and/or ovo- vegetarian for ethical reasons may as well just eat meat, because eggs and dairy are ethically identical to meat”
No, they aren’t, or at least they don’t have to be. Again, you don’t have a problem with humans having inhumane lives, but are concerned about animals. I just had a conversation with someone who works at Quest and heard about an innovation there – cameras watching every move employees make – and I am not in a mood of bubbling about hens. I am not even in a mood of fully expressing myself about hypocrisy (yes, sarcastically).
Now w here is a really big problem. When we’ve stopped everyone from eating animals how are we going to stop them from eating each other?
Yes. Personally, I believe that only a civilized, well structured society with mechanisms protecting the vulnerable and limiting the greed of the ruthless gives us a chance of survival. I also view all this vegan bubbling as a distraction, traditional in this land. See the history of “Jungle” and hijacking of real issues in the past.
Yes, it is possible to produce no-kill eggs and dairy. In reality, it’s almost never done. Even if a cow or hen is allowed to live out its natural lifespan, in all likelihood, the system that brought that animal into existence in the first place involved animal slaughter.
As for me, I’m an omnivore. I have no problem with humans eating their natural, omnivorous diet. I just don’t buy the ridiculous notion that dairy and eggs are somehow more ethical than eating meat, when in almost all cases, egg and dairy production involves the slaughter of animals.
Walter, I actually have more problems with your post. You mentioned that your brother was in debt, but didn’t mention the reasons. You also seem to ignore the conditions (“Jungle”) HUMANS spend their working lives in.
You shouldn’t be surprised then that I might see your activities as a distraction from main problems this nation is facing.
Brilliant debunking!
Curious however, since you reference Walter Willet’s work here, what you think of Willet’s belief that milk consumption IS strongly associated with prostate cancer in men.
Willet may not agree with China Study, but he is rather anti-dairy.
Steve Jobs got cancer from a vegan diet, much less than the magical 5% animal protein diet. And gorillas are dying from high starch diets even from heart disease even though it is only 1/2 the calories of ancestral diets
Oh boy… here we go again.
Fantastic work (again) and thankyou.
You might be interested in this study, which refers to experiments with casien and another liver carcinogen, safrole (sassafras tea).
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/28/11/2372.full.pdf
In our studies on modifying factors of safrole
carcinogenesis (9, 11), similar doses given to male Carworth
Farms CFN rats on riboflavin, tocopherol, and proteindeficient
diets resulted in much smaller hepatic adenomas in
comparable periods of time. Casein supplements aggravated
the safrole-induced adenomatosis, resulting in tumors larger
than those observed on protein-deficient diets. Osborne-
Mendel rats appeared to be more sensitive than Carworth
Farms CFN rats (8). Biotin supplements inhibited hepatocarcinogenic
activity of butter yellow as well as safrole, whereas
pyridoxine deficiency reduced the carcinogenicity of butter
yellow but not that of safrole.
Dave Boothman,
‘Phytates will inhibit to some degree the absorption of many nutrients’ – what nutrients do you mean?
‘..those that lived entirely on fish remained healthy but ships providing ships biscuits experienced the problem’ (scurvy)
Do you have a reference to this please? Are you saying phytate inhibits absorption of vitamin C? Were the fish supplying vitamin C?
The mineral nutrients most affected are Calcium, Iron and Zinc, others perhaps to a lesser extent:
Sandtead HH. Fiber, phytates and mineral nutrition, Nutr Rev 1992; 50: 30-31
Halberg L Phytates and inhibitory effect of bran on iron absorption in man. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1987; 45: 988
Turnlund JR. A stable isotope study of zinc absorption in young men: effects of phytate and alpha-cellulose. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1984; 40: 1071
Yes, vitamin C is in fish and it is in you and me. But the recent western tendency to eat only the least nutrient rich parts of the animal, the muscle tissue, presents a potential nutritional problem. No doubt caviar or fish eggs are the most nutritionally dense; after all they contain enough nutrition to make a whole fish. This is why the traditional Inuit not only survive but thrive on a steady diet of raw fish, reserving the heads for the children. They not only thrive but experience vanishingly low rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease as well as never needing dentist; until we “civilize” them. Dr. Weston Price spent 10 years collecting information from worldwide field studies preparing the following book explaining why this is:
Weston A Price. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, 1939. Now published by The Price-Pottenger nutrition Foundation.
I don’t know whether phytate interferes with the absorption of vitamin C but probably the reason for the ships biscuit problem is that in the digestion of grain the metabolism requires vitamin C thus depleting the adequate supply from the fish below the minimum essential level needed by the body. Remember, the digestive tract is outside the body, nutrients must pass through its semi-permeable membrane walls to get into the body. Most phytate is in the bran so whole grains are more problematic. Many people advocate sprouting or fermenting grains because this not only destroys the phytate but enhances the nutrient profile from starch and not much else to something containing many available essential nutrients, vitamin C being one of them. Sourdough bread is also preferable because again the phytate is supposedly destroyed. Digestion requires vitamin C and many nutritionists now advocate heavy supplementation to improve it. In fact it was mentioned today in the popular press, The Wall Street Journal, on the subject of the low Fodmaps diet which seems to have the best results so for in quieting the gut problems of those suffering IBS
Thanks Dave. It’s OK, I’ve read all the stuff on phytate and mineral absorption, I wanted a reference to sailors who got scurvy eating fish+ship’s biscuit while sailors eating nothing but fish did not. Perhaps you were thinking of the Inuit.
I think we are agreed that the only really healthy meat-based diet is one where the whole animal is eaten. Muscle meat on its own in large quantities is not good for you. The irony is that you can probably get away with it if you eat whole grains. They provide the missing manganese, and the phytate inhibits absorption of the excess iron. The iron-manganese ratio in the diet is emerging as a major factor in modern disease.
As a grad student in nutrition, I don’t have time to digest this entire post, but upon skimming you make some critical errors, that make your critique very amateur. You criticize the hysteria over dietary cholesterol as being archaic, but back up your claims using flawed studies with 1 author each and only looking at cholesterol from eggs. While it is true cholesterol from eggs does not raise blood serum cholesterol, you cannot make the same assumption that this is true for all cholesterol containing foods. Please do not let your agenda guide your ‘scientific’ research.
Please would you expand upon this
You’ll have to be more specific
@ Brett:
If you did actually find time to read the whole analysis you might be able to put the cholesterol reference in context. It is a given in biochemistry that cholesterol production is regulated in response to dietary intake, and unless you have actually found convincing grounds to question this generally accepted scientific principle, which you will find in whatever biochem textbook you use (or should be using), you are just wasting time asking for further documentation. What Denise is saying is not controversial or new, regardless of how much proof she presents.
Brett, Read what you wrote and look for the error.
This is not what you wrote but this agrees with the research.
Cholesterol in food does not raise serum cholesterol but the food that contains cholesterol may raise serum cholesterol.
High cholesterol is not a problem, high cholesterol may indicate a problem.
Of course you don’t. You’re too busy digesting someone else’s agenda. Funny enough though, other grad students have taken the time to read it. Please enlighten us on what this “agenda” is. We keep hearing about it and are genuinely interested.
Give it a pass Grok. It has been many years since I was a grad student, but I refuse to believe that a real grad student these days would concoct this kind of a comment. Actually I have three grad students in the family and they sound pretty mature to me.
Brett, you are a grad student in nutrition? Could you tell me please, what have you been taught about iron overload, and the iron-manganese ratio in the diet? I would suspect, absolutely nothing. Am I right?
grad student – review comments and explore links and you will get numerous citations that fully support the cholesterol theory presented here.
Men ….
I am beginning to be confused. Aren’t you both omnivores?
Chris, are you there? There is a new paper which suggests the effects of vitamin D on tooth decay found by Mellanby might not be due to calcification but to antimicrobials.
‘Although the original mechanism proposed for UVB and vitamin D related to calcium metabolism’ [reference to Mellanby's work] ‘the effect is at least as likely to involve vitamin D and its induction of the antimicrobials cathelicidin and defensins as already noted in periodontitis.’
http://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/dermatoendocrinology/Grant2DE3-3.pdf
Do you think magnesium deficiency could also be a factor since the ratio of magnesium to calcium is a controlling factor for the calcium channel. Many suspect that magnesium deficiency in the general population may be as high as 70%. We don’t have a magnesium lobby and the soils have become depleted over time. Its definitely a factor in the common occurrence of bone spurs as dietary calcium builds up in the soft tissue being unable to be properly absorbed.
Hi Dave, yes I certainly think so. The ratio of calcium to magnesium is emerging as a major factor in modern disease just like the ratio of iron to manganese.
Interesting, isn’t it, that white flour has had most of its magnesium and manganese removed and replaced with calcium and iron. Even more interesting that nobody comments on this.
No reason to comment on something so obvious for people who have studied this for some time. I have been aware of the issue for half a decade and have spent a lot of time trying to find evidence that would disprove my suspicion. I am beyond suspecting, and -although you’re not too excited about notions by McCleary- it was Larry McCleary who for once and all put my doubts to rest. The thing I was not aware of, or had forgotten was the sulfur issue. I remember though an interview Stephanie Seneff PhD had with Joseph Mercola. And then you brought it back up in my memory.
And then there is manganese, I am beginning to wonder what else we are missing with this great white stuff that turns out to be not so great at all
[...] difficult to avoid and most people find their health declines over time on a strict vegan diet. Denise Minger is one ex-vegan who has put her story online. Humans are a predator species and we should eat like predators not [...]
“Denise is smart,” she said profoundly. I am a recovering cold patient and I am actually reading her blog. Do you think that after this comment I’ll get invited to a warmer and milder climate where I will be able to eat raw and avoid colds?
Awesome analysis! thank you.
Still left not really motivated to change my diet in any way except maybe eat less grains. Love to boil this down to some sage advice on what to eat, in what quantities and have it all backed up by a properly set up test group and control group performed by an unbiased group of scientists (if that’s possible?).
Yes, very impressive.
As I said, I am reading.
Among other things I found this quotation from “The China Study:”
” We now had impressive evidence that low protein intake could markedly decrease enzyme activity and prevent dangerous carcinogen binding to DNA. These were very impressive findings, to be sure. It might even be enough information to “explain” how consuming less protein leads to less cancer.”
I am pretty sure that this style (I knew nothing about nutrition and still know very little) discouraged me from reading this what looked like a propaganda piece.
“Studies” usually don’t have two “impressive” and one “markedly” in one short paragraph.
Geez, did you read the post just 2 above yours? lol
Sorry, that was in reply to:
————–
HughMan (02:47:40) :
flat out, I can’t think of a single example, where I saw, read, or heard anyone say anything like:
” yea, I was dying, dying of Diabetes, heart disease, liver failure, liver cancer, brain cancer, ect, ect , but I finally got better and reversed all my diseases by eating that fillet of _________ ! ”
– Meat Man ) EEEEE! warm fuzzy tradition!
——————-
Why it didn’t post there, I can’t say. But Wizzu did say something very similar just 2 posts above his.
Amazing read. Your writing is spectacular and sprinkled with things that make me laugh out loud. I love your blog!
I’ve pretty much made a run through every type of whole food eating style there is… vegetarian, vegan, raw vegan, paleo, eating-only-when-you-can’t-take-it-anymore, and (of course) not eating. Having trumped anorexia almost two years ago, I’m now struggling with a new type of disordered eating, sugar addiction. Your site is very inspiring and a great reminder to eat intuitively without counting calories.
Follow the yakking sugar addict at http://butimnotperfect.wordpress.com/
Please, don’t eat sugar. I’m not a nutrition expert, but this I know. Personally, I reduced my insane intake of sugar just some two years ago.
It’s too quiet here. Personally, I wonder how many men are here, because they hope that one day they will be able to discuss important nutritional issues in person with …. the expert.
Too quiet? This is the 709th comment.
I’m here
Hi.
I have no idea for a fight.
My take-away from the movie Forks Over Knives and The China Study in pertinent part is that animal protein is fine as long as it doesn’t exceed 10% of our daily calories (10% from The China Study but 5% from the movie) which is why the movie is about a “plant-strong” diet. Also, in The China Study, the book has a list of food to eat all you want, a list to minimize, and a list to avoid. Fish is included in the minimize list, so this is not a “vegan” manual of eating. Eating fish therefore is encouraged. Also, in the typical 2000 calorie diet, 10% protein is 50 grams of animal protein, which is more than the typical person needs. So the movie and The China Study basically support commonsense: eat a diverse diet, don’t overdo protein, and keep it low fat. So sushi is fine.
But neither Forks Over Knives or The China Study (book) should be used as a guide for what to eat. That was the whole point of this article, and others on this site.
The China Study’s list of eats to eat/minimize/avoid is irrelevant to healthy eating, as it is based on heavily flawed science which has been conclusively debunked.
Additionally, what the typical person “needs” might be very different from is best for their health.
” So the movie and The China Study basically support commonsense”
The fact that so many people seem to think that “keep it low fat” is commonsense, merely reflects the efficiency of the unscientific and biased anti-fat propaganda. Not so-called “commonsense”.
It’s actually not “commonsense” at all, since it’s (historically) a very new idea, emerging in the 70′s despite strong scientific controversy and heavily voiced in the 80′s by the health authorities because of political decisions based on ill-conceived and biased studies (notably by Ancel Keys). Before that, commonsense was basically that you need to avoid excess of *any* kind of food. Fat had no special status in this area.
“Keep it low-fat” is actually a modern, fashionable, and most probably very, very dangerous nutritional concept. There is zero scientific evidence that eating fat in “normal” amounts (I mean amounts comparable to what people were eating before the low-fat craze) is detrimential to health, once you exclude the studies using those awful industrial refined vegetable oils and trans-fat containing products, which represent of course industrial crap playing havoc with our health.
“Keep it low-fat” = “Commonsense”?
Er… no, “keep it low-fat ” = brainwash.
Don’t bleat with the sheep. Investigate. Think for yourself.
Our understanding of what is or isn’t common sense is, of course, “shaped.”"Keeping it low-fat” must be modern. I suspect that for the fast majority of people excess of fat/animal protein wasn’t a problem – hunger was.
Check, for example, the 19th century literature (not the one which is promoted by the Olin foundation on PBS – ladies and gentlemen, upstairs and downstairs). You’ll see starving children and parents, not to mention starving students and artists. At that time, they had other concerns that how to replace a “bad” meat hamburger with a “good,”grass hamburger.
butimnotperfect, I used to have a problem like yours. I had a serious addiction to sweet coffee. At that time I had no idea about food despite being a scientist. 30 years and much reading of the scientific literature later, I have an explanation which perhaps you would like to hear? You may have something called reactive hypoglycemia. It means your pancreas is not sensitive enough to glucose, so it doesn’t produce enough insulin fast enough to avoid having to produce a lot more later on. This makes your blood sugar plummet and you get sugar cravings. The solution is to get your pancreas (insulin-producing beta cells) into good shape. If I might suggest, stop eating white sugar and eat dark brown (unrefined) sugar instead. It contains the minerals your beta cells need so they can regain their sensitivity to glucose. Mine were in awful shape, I suspect, and they’re fine now.
Hi Jane! Thanks for the suggestion, I’m definitely try to use natural sugars (honey, maple syrup, raw molasses) instead of white sugar along with larger quantities of whole foods. I have another question for you (and anyone else who may be out there) regarding hypoglycemia and a paleo diet: do you feel you need to eat very often? Right now I’m eating full size meals which leave me satisfied but not uncomfortable… but within two hours I’m very hungry again.
Also, does anyone have insights into what nutrients or specific foods I should fill up on when the sugar pangs hit?
i went from eating bags of oreos(ok that was in my early twenties lol) and candy bars to making smoothies with no problem. here is my most common way to make a smoothie that is perfectly sweet and delicious:
1)one or two bananas (base of all smoothies, gives the creamy texture and not so sweet so it allows sweeter fruit to take center stage flavour wise)
2)1/2 pear (although here is where you can experiment with all types of fruits like berries etc)
3)squeeze of fresh lemon
4)1/4 cup or so of almond milk or the like (regular milk, yogurt, sour cream, anything will do in moderation)
5)3-4 tablespoons of tahinah (100% sesame seed butter, gives a wopping 4 grams of protien per tablespoon, loaded with omega’s and other good stuff and provides a delicous nutty flavour. you can substitute other nut butters as well)
6)4 large ice cubes
Hi butimnotperfect, I overcame my cravings for sweet coffee by eating an apple every time I had them. It worked very well. I ate a pound of apples every day for a year.
The other thing I did was to start eating breakfast. A large breakfast of unrefined carbohydrate (oats/wholemeal bread + milk/butter/honey/fruit) fills you up for most of the day. I used to think eating breakfast would make me fat, but I could not have been more wrong.
Are you eating a paleo diet? Then oats and wholemeal bread are off the menu? They are very high in manganese, which your beta cells need to repair themselves and regain their sensitivity to glucose. If you eat a lot of meat, you may have iron overload, and it’s excess iron that damages beta cells.
Read Good Calories Bad Calories by Taubes. Don’t, if you have a sugar addiction as evidenced by cravings, substitute refined with brown sugar. That is simply refined sugar with some molasses added back in for color and consistency. It is not good for you and will result in prolongation of cravings. Read first. Then get rid of all refined sugars/honey/maple syrups/agave – they’ll all reinforce cravings. Palm syrup is low fructose and low glycemic and may not be as bad as the above but no good research to support that yet. Best thing is to stay away from all things sweet and cravings will quickly reduce. The Rosedale Diet might be a big help. And L-Glutamine and Gynema Sylvestre have helped many people get over cravings for sugar.
Reactive Hypoglycemia, can be extremely serous. My Daughter suffered for seven years taking advice from a dozen doctors who never diagnosed it. She ended up severely depressed for years, on SSRIs,, addicted to Ambien, hormonal insufficiency panic attacks, seizures and finally not sleeping, ever. Checked herself into a recovery center for 6 weeks and they got her sleeping a little after 2 weeks then slowly recovered a little more but still undiagnosed. We found her an holistic Doctor, he diagnosed reactive hypoglycemia within minutes, prescribed no carbohydrates after 2 pm and she then slowly and substantially recovered but still carries the injuries of the depression drugs etc. Never trust the regular medical profession to do anything except prescribe the drugs designated by the manufacturers for particular symptoms, and any prescription will not include diet. No wonder total deaths due to prescription drugs last year exceeded deaths due to traffic accidents. A species appropriate diet will allow you to avoid almost all illness and drug victimization, and I’ll leave you to guess what species appropriate implies.
Dave, I know how you feel because I was messed up by doctors and their ghastly drugs in exactly the same way your daughter was.
All we can hope is that the collapse of the world financial system will bring down the drug companies. I don’t see any other way it can be done. Here in the UK, biomedical researchers can’t get taxpayer money unless they have private sector money, and that means drug money. It biases everything they do and think. What they need is some catastrophe to stop their research and send them into their libraries.
Good to hear you make your own mind up on the subject Jane; I used to live in England so familiar with the system. It is a little less naive, at least some doctors are pushing back. In the U.S. the FDA regulates drugs but the cost of doing it is born by the drug companies so effectively the drug companies are self-regulating. The studies are carefully laundered because they don’t have to be registered effectively so a number different studies are done using contrived ground rules and statistics. Studies that show no benefit or negative benefit never see the light of day leaving only those usually showing marginally favorable results. Even studies paid for by the taxpayer such as the fabled Framingham study published only favorable data and even then the abstract and conclusions conflicted with the published data and were totally contradictory to the rest of it when it was finally obtained through the courts. Believe no studies unless you go through them carefully with a fine toothed comb and even then you will need a competent statistician to spot the data manipulation tricks. If you find a study quoting absolute benefit instead of relative benefit you should continue reading; it might be actual science instead of a marketing ploy. And the actual benefit should not be tied to a single disease but to all-cause mortality. Do you really want to die earlier from disease B in order to reduce your chance of dying from disease A, suicide does that more effectively. and the most recent data showing last year more died form prescription drugs than road accidents makes the suicide analogy less ludicrous. This is where we stand with statins and the logical conclusions from Framingham. On top of this statins don’t reduce cardiovascular disease death for the reason claimed.but for something much simpler and better fixed with diet or food supplements. CVD barely existed one hundred years ago and the simple reason. why is not found in the chemistry lab.
Dave, I agree with you. I expect you’ve read Questioning Chemotherapy by Ralph Moss. There are so many different ways the data can be manipulated to make it look as if cancer drugs work. They don’t. Nor do any other drugs work except to suppress symptoms. Suppressing symptoms often (always?) means suppressing the body’s own healing mechanisms. As for statins … magnesium does exactly what statins do.
Hi Jane:
I’ve been following your comment thread. I have a few questions about Manganese. Do you recommend a supplement, and if so, how much? Also, what do you think about using mineral suspensions instead, for increasing minerals in general, rather than taking a specific mineral supplement. For example:
http://concentrace.co.za/
I think there is some merit in the concept of minerals being to blame for health issues, but I also think macronutrient composition plays an important role.
Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge.
Hi Olga, I remember seeing the Concentrace website and thinking that’s a good idea. I’m not so sure now. Would your gut bacteria like it? They like whole food, not supplements, and they especially like fibre which provides a huge surface area for them to live on. Fibre is supposed to come together with the minerals they need. My own preference as you may have noticed is for wholemeal bread and oats, both very high in manganese as well as fibre.
Olga, I’m not sure what I said about gut bacteria liking fibre because it provides a surface for them to live on was correct. I’ve been looking for the article and can’t find it. They do like it, they ferment it, but does it also provide a kind of niche for them independent of the food value? I did think so and now I’m not sure.
Hi Jane:
I think a well balanced paleo diet is high in fibre. It should contain an ample supply of cellulose from non starchy veggies and fruits. I believe these should also supply all the necessary minerals along with meat. It has also been argued that the water available to our paleo counterparts would have been mineral rich. This is why I think adding minerals to water might be a good idea. In Dr. Eades book Protein Power,
he mentions at least one study showing that minerals are very well absorbed from water. I lent the book to a friend so I can’t supply the reference.
Olga, you’re right of course. The supremely healthy Hunza had glacier-derived water so rich in minerals it looked like milk. My own preference, in the absence of Hunza water, is for getting my minerals from plants, because we know they have the ones we need in the right amounts.
Of course you are right Jane. On all scores. However be careful what you wish for. It could be quite rough for a while. The principles that set in motion the French Revolution are already being set in motion. Why do you think the Occupy movement is being handled with a very soft touch? Avoid at all cost too much confrontation, because the general consensus is with the movement. A whole generation of young (25-35) has no work and no future, they have nothing to lose. Desperate people are always a danger to the status quo.
“The principles that set in motion the French Revolution are already being set in motion.”
Not even close. The standard of living of the occupiers amazing. If they are successful in their pursuit they will only limit their own opportunities.
The occupiers are pathetic.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/OAOrT0OcHh0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showi
I think you are confusing issues with principles. I apologize I even brought it up here. Not the occupiers are pathetic, your reaction is one of misunderstanding. I hope, otherwise it would be loathsome.
I generally appreciate your input gager, but the video you link to is one of the worst cases of disgusting agenda-motivated brainwashing lying pile of moralizing hypocritical and manipulating crap I’ve ever attended to since the last time I listened to a recruiter for the Church of Scientology.
James, yes it could be quite rough. It all depends on whether the government has (secret) plans in place to maintain the payments system when the banks go down. As far as I can gather, they do.
If a miracle happens and governments get told by scientists that bad behaviour is due to micronutrient deficiencies, and their removal from food should be outlawed, things will be a lot easier. It was shown by scientists here in Oxford that prisoner re-offending could be reduced by a whopping 40% just by giving them micronutrients.
“……If a miracle happens and governments get told by scientists that bad behaviour is due to micronutrient deficiencies……” Governments by and large should be in the know by now, however it is a different thing to act on knowledge if such knowledge would or could have serious economic consequences. There are too many business interests involved, a whole economic substructure that is underlying our healthcare industry. I am afraid that all we can do is what Denise has been doing: questioning assumptions, combing through scientific research and try and uncover possible biases, confounders not accounted for etc.etc. I think it is what Stephan Guyenet has been doing, as Chris Masterjohn, as Peter Dobromylskyj , as Stephanie Seneff, and many many others. I have been following Joseph Mercola MD developing into an avid Paleo, low carb, preferably no wheat supporter, so much so that he is in court half the time defending himself against nuisance lawsuits. Don’t expect it from the governments though until the voters force them to. In other words don’t blame the government, blame the uninformed general public and blame the companies run by the psychopaths (25% in leading positions??). And blame the scientists who value tenure more than the truth.
Mercola is not an MD. He’s a DO.
And neither is Michael Eades and Mary Dan and who knows my own doctor. Get your facts straight Ellen before broadcasting your ignorance. They all went to medical school and are all practicing physicians.
My facts are quite straight, thank you: http://www.mercola.com/imageserver/drmercola-license.jpg
I can’t speak for your own doctor — perhaps you should check his or her wall — but the Eadeses make a point of using “MD”, so I assume they *are* MDs. Mercola is not and, like most osteopaths, would probably be annoyed to have it assumed that his training was in allopathic medicine.
Is it really necessary to insult me for pointing out that someone’s title is incorrect?
Do we really have to get into this? I thought we had this all behind us. Osteopathic physicians attend 4 years of medical school followed by at least 3 years of residency. Practicing physicians but with a little bit more attention to holistic care, in other words, they are the real MD’s
So , it is either get your facts straight or get with the times. And please let’s not sink so low as it seems to imply: to smear someone’s reputation.
100 year old man named fauja singh just ran the toronto marathon in october. here is a quote about his strict diet:
“I never thought of running a Marathon then. But slowly it grew”. What surprises many is that he supports his eight stone and six feet tall body frame with a very simple vegetarian diet. “I am very careful about different foods. My diet is simple phulka (chappati), dal (lentils), green vegetables, yoghurt and milk. I do not touch parathas, pakoras, rice or any other fried food. I take lots of water and tea with ginger.”
What is your point? There are going to be a certain percentage of people who are healthy in their age as so long as they avoid donuts and potato chips, that’s just a fact of statistics. You would be cherry-picking examples. I would suggest that you suspend all believes about health and start from the basics with a firm understanding of epistemology.
not making a point just passing on a relevant and recent news story that’s all. i think it would be interesting to compare diet and lifestyles of centenarians. maybe we learn something? maybe not? i must look into this epistemology stuff though, i heard it makes you live to like 150!
tanya, I’ve just realised the diet of that 100-yr old man is exactly the diet that was eaten 100 years ago by the Hunza, probably at that time the healthiest people in the world. Very interesting indeed. I eat a Hunza diet myself, and have done for 30 years. My health has progressed to the point where I would not be surprised if I were running marathons at 100. My joints and my posture in particular have improved beyond recognition. I used to need a car, and now I walk everywhere and love it. I don’t run yet, but I’m still progressing.
thanks jane! i will definitely be learning about this now
It may be a little hasty to attribute his longevity to his diet. The hundred year old man looks horrible. Here in the US I have seen and associated with century old people in very good health.
Looks horrible? Here’s some photos of him. Looks pretty good to me.
http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Fauja+Singh
proof is in the puddin’ as you say….show us your example of 100 year old people on any diet that just completed a marathon. meat, wheat, dairy, veg, whatever. i mean, he’s 100 and he just ran a marathon for heaven’s sake! oh sorry, still not pretty enough for you yanks i guess…….
[...] If you do a print preview of some her "blog articles", it will turn out to be 30 pages, like her recent "rebuttal" of the film Forks over Knives. Why would she care to write so much to debunk a diet or real experts that support veganism, a very [...]
What is that?
Why would she care? Maybe because people tend to base their eating habits on research studies and if the results or methodology of those studies are actually statistical garbage or just interpreted incorrectly, we ought to know that before changing our diets. And the sad truth is that the vast majority of people wouldn’t know a thing about reading a study correctly.
In other words, she is doing all of us, including you if you’d just READ, a HUGE favor.
and don’t forget her bank account too (wink wink)
Please tell us what you know about her bank account.
Yes, Terry, please tell us.
i just did
Right. In other words: not much.
(wink wink)
how can she not be paid to do this is the better question
albert, take your head out of your a__. think about all of the enormous sums of money that corporations have paid to REAL politicians, REAL agencies, REAL corporations to cover their tracks and save face? come on man…it’s a cost of doing business. now you want us to believe anyone can use the anonymity of the internet to write an extremely detailed and not to mention time consuming blog(or 20 blogs of that length and intensity mind you, all planned neatly around their day jobs, families, friends, social life etc), submit comments to those blogs with total anonymity again with no clarity to anyone reading exactly who is responding(like all blogs do:), ALL WITH NEXT TO ZERO OVERHEAD MIND YOU AS THE BLOGS ARE FREE TO CREATE AND MAINTAIN and, wait….oh crap you’re totally right….
Officer, we got an Orange Alert here, perps ‘terry’ ‘albert’ and ‘christine’
http://i.imgur.com/mtl9A.jpg
How does one defend themselves against this type of claim of being paid to manufacture results that support a desired outcome? They don’t, there is absolutely no way a person can defend themselves but any reasonable person can see the error of the claim. First, there is no proof possible to show that a payoff did not take place. It is the burden of the accuser to provide proof of their claim. Next, the accuser is questioning the motive of the researcher and assigning their own bias to motive. Incredibly some people are very good at doing the analysis done by Denise and are totally motivated in a search for truth. Also the end motivation for this may be that it just makes Denise happy. It was Aristotle that said the end motivation for all our actions is the pursuit of happiness.
The proper and default position to hold is that no payoff was made unless evidence is submitted to show this is wrong.
I hope this is clear. I had a very difficult time writing this. I’m sure there must be those who could do a much better job.
so what is the concensus about whole grains and oils (especially oils?)…I’m worried i’ve led my poor parents down the path to ill health with completely wrong nutritional information. *guilt pangs*
“You only deal with in life what your knowledge is at the time”..according to one our great philosophers, Clint Eastwood. So, no Deb, it is of no use to anyone to have guilt pangs over what you thought best at the time. Been there done that. My life was ruined by the same “good” advice based on bad science and worse. Some was not even bad science, it was nothing but unscrupulously manipulating the facts to fit an unfounded theory. (Keyes, Stare, Kannell, etc.
I am picking up the pieces. My arteries will still be clogged for the rest of my life and I am doomed to take medication for hypertension, and I don’t know for sure whether I won’t get another angina attack.
Stay away from all polyunsaturated oils, which includes virtually all seed oils. Don’t use olive oil for cooking, it does not handle heat very well. that’s why you want cold pressed. Coconut oil and lard are the ones we have been using for the last two years. Get the lard from a local butcher, preferably from pastured pigs.( Most butchers will still give it away.)That way it’s higher in mono unsaturated fats (up to more than 60%).Let it sit on the stove at medium heat and you will have lots of baking fat that you can store inside or outside the fridge. If it stays fairly liquid at room temp. you have a large amount of mono unsaturated fat in it. You can even eat the remnants with a little salt sprinkled on it.
Never take an Omega 6 supplement, you are getting all you need and more already and more, you do need extra Omega 3. Actually, you need the EPA and DHA preferably from marine sources. We are very poor synthesizers of ALA, the plant based source. Fats of pasture raised animals have the healthiest ratio Omega 6 { Omega 3 (2:1). Feedlot or grainfed drops fairly quickly to an unhealthy 4:1
James, if you have clogged arteries and hypertension you almost certainly have deficiencies for magnesium and manganese. Magnesium you know about, it relaxes your blood vessels. Manganese you don’t know about, and the thing about manganese is this. It activates a family of very important enzymes that control maintenance and repair pathways. If your arteries are clogged, it means these pathways are not busy unclogging them. Your doctor will be completely unaware that maintenance and repair pathways even exist.
If you need extra EPA and DHA, it probably means you have copper deficiency. You should be able to make them from ALA, but it needs copper.
Thanks Jane. Yes, I have known about magnesium for some time and also that most of the supplement form it comes in (oxide) is not very helpful so we have switched already to the citrate form. I have been aware of manganese for a while but did not connect it with artery repair. I have had a bit of a lazy thyroid and correct that with iodine every now and then. Your suggestion may have an awful lot of merit because if I remember correctly manganese also affects the thyroid. Normally we should get enough manganese from a healthy diet, but I have been questioning the quality of our food for some time. A lot of the North American soils are severely depleted.
Denise must have given up reading these comments a long time ago since we have been moving off topic for quite a bit.
Interesting that you heard about manganese and the thyroid. I have too, and I’m inclined to believe it, but I’ve never been able to find the papers showing it. There are certainly papers showing a link between low thyroid hormone activity and copper deficiency.
Good point about the soils. Here in the UK, the worst soil deficiency is for manganese. I did a lot of work on the cattle disease BSE many years ago, and found much evidence suggesting the primary cause was manganese deficiency. I tried to publish my findings, and failed. I have now given them to Peter at Hyperlipid, who is a vet, and he thinks they’re very interesting. Hopefully he will blog about it.
James, if you’re interested, here is a paper linking manganese deficiency with scrapie, which is the same disease as BSE but in sheep. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569367/
The really interesting thing about this paper is that they looked at the iron-manganese ratio. Forage in scrapie-prone regions had an iron-manganese ratio twice as high as forage in scrapie-free regions.
I have a Chinese colleague who has found something strikingly similar in Jiangsu province wrt the growing diabesity epidemic. It’s associated with a high iron intake, and with white flour but not white rice. Guess what, the white flour has an iron-manganese ratio twice as high as white rice!
James, you gave me an idea. Is fat of grass fed beef usable in cooking?.
I cook occasionally marrow bones for broth, cool the broth in the refrigerator, remove fat and… throw it out. Can I actually use it?
I never tried coconut oil, but relatives, who are much less finicky than I am (everyone is), said I shouldn’t even try on the principle – if they couldn’t eat it, I shouldn’t even try..
There is nothing wrong with the fat and throwing it out is just a waste, however for cooking etc. I’d get some tallow from a local butcher and let it simmer to extract it. Most likely you’ll get it for next to nothing.
As far as coconut oil is concerned, I have no idea where your relatives get their funny appreciation of MCT’s because that’s what we’re talking about.
You should hear the pediatric brain surgeon Larry McCleary rave about it or maybe read Mary Newport MD how she was able to even partly cure her husbands Alzheimers. http://coconutoil.com/AlzheimersDiseaseDrMaryNewport.pdf
No, Anna there is absolutely nothing wrong with coconut oil. We eat it as a snack with a cup of tea, a rice cracker lathered thickly with coconut oil (solid at room temperature) and topped with dark chocolate sprinkles.
James, there can be some cultural differences. People I mentioned, bought, smelled it, try it and said … no. But we all love butter. Of course, good country style butter.
Before the crusade against animal fat Kentucky Fried Chicken fried all the chicken in beef fat. Now it’s done in plant fat and a lot less tasty and less healthy. Beef fat is the best next to lard.
I should also mention that McDonalds deep fried it’s french fries in beef fat also. Those days are gone.
Correct Gager. The top restaurants never stopped using lard. For one thing the blocks fit their frying units and secondly their customers were all commenting on the great taste of their food. And last but not in the least: cleaning their units had become an awful chore when they tried using vegetable oil. The grease simply could not be scraped out, the stuff was everywhere. Lard utensils could be simply washed off with hot water and a bit of detergent.
A friend of ours who is the chef cook in the top restaurant in our town, laughed about it. “Yeah, we tried, because everybody said it was much healthier, but I did not believe it for very long when for the first time we had to clean out the equipment. It took forever, and the whole staff hated it. But of course at the time we could not tell anybody, so we swore the whole staff to secrecy.”
Amin A. Nanji has done decades of research into the effects of oils and fats, and meats, in alcoholic liver disease. In some places low alcohol intake correlates to cirrhosis and in other places it doesn’t. Looking for protective and harmful dietary factors revealed two early results; beef seemed to be protective, pork harmful.
Later animal studies have shown – quite spectacularly – that highly saturated fats (beef, coconut, palm kernel oil; one could extrapolate this to include goat and lamb) are antioxidant and antiinflammatory in vivo. Whereas more polyunsaturated fats – lard (and probably duck and chicken fat) – tend to promote cirrhosis – but not nearly as strongly as corn oil, soy oil (and fish oil as a significant source of calories).
The fat found in pasture-fed beef tends to have a good balance of omega 6 (arachadonic acid) and omega 3 (EPA and DHA), while the fat found in pork meat has high levels of arachadonic acid and very little omega 3. However lard has less arachadonic acid and more linoleic acid.
Beef fat (and other ruminant fat) contains good natural trans-fats;
In 1979, researchers from the University of Wisconsin applied a beef extract to mice skin. The mice were then exposed to a strong carcinogen. When the researchers counted the number of tumors developed by the mice 16 weeks later, they found, to their surprise, that the mice exposed to the beef extract had 20% fewer tumors. The identity of this anticarcinogen was not discovered until almost a decade later, in 1987. Michael Pariza, the scientist who discovered CLA, later remarked that “few anticarcinogens, and certainly no other known fatty acids, are as effective as CLA in inhibiting carcinogenesis in these models.” [2][3] Although CLA is best known for its anticancer properties, researchers have also found that the cis-9, trans-11 form of CLA can reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease and help fight inflammation. [4][5]
The Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) made a seminal discovery demonstrating that oral CLA treatment prevents or ameliorates inflammatory bowel disease by activating the nuclear receptor peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR gamma).
CLA is also known for its body weight management properties, which include reducing body fat and increasing lean muscle mass. Over 30 clinical studies have been published investigating the effect of CLA on weight management. The trials have quite variable designs, which leads to inconsistency. However a meta-analysis conducted in 2007 concluded CLA has a small impact on fat mass. [6]
In July 2008, CLA received a no objection letter from the FDA on its Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status for certain food categories, including fluid milk, yogurt, meal replacement shakes, nutritional bars, fruit juices and soy milk. With GRAS status, food companies are now able to add CLA to products in these food categories.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid
Wow, more than an entire quarter of a football game took place while I read some of this. I wonder how many bratwursts, cooked to death over carcinogenic coals, were sold at the stadium during that time period?
I just watched the documentary last night (compliments of Netflix) and was doing some further research on it. This post was quite interesting, well written, and unlike a lot of other opinion pieces that had a contrarian opinion, didn’t seem to have a pre-established prejudice.
As someone who experimented with a raw vegan diet a while back (until I decided that the constant hunger probably meant that I should try something else), I appreciate your outlook on this. Eating mostly plants is a good thing, but the occasional meat / dairy probably won’t kill you.
Thanks,
Tom
P.S. — Being basically to “itchy” to sit still long enough to do it myself, I also appreciate your willingness to develop liberal arts complex…
“until I decided that the constant hunger probably meant that I should try something else”
Oh no, Tom. Constant hunger is goooood. You wake up, you are hungry, you think about food, you eat some raw vegan food, you are hungry, you think about food, you think more about food, then you eat again some raw vegan food, and do some more thinking about food …
This looks like a life of a thinker.
Matter of opinion I guess. Not for me, after I have eaten I want to feel sated, comfortable and content. I don’t want to feel appetite again for at least 3 or 4 hours. Actually after a breakfast of bacon and eggs and a large salad, I can easily skip lunch. But I guess on a vegan diet you can expect to be hungry again fairly quickly. As soon as you have worked most of the raw material way down your system -and not have gotten a lot out of it- you can expect to be hungry again. Actually you may already feel hungry while your stomach is still trying to work all that raw stuff out of the house. I heard a biochemist once saying that the best way to stay lean is to eat raw food because our body is not able to use a lot of it. Except of course the refined carbs, and they will make you hungry in a hurry, and of course fat in no time too.. Not many people can get by on just raw vegan for a long time without running into serious deficiencies. But we have discussed that and this is rehashing old stuff.
Your tallow properly extracted should not smell funny at all. It is the same smell as when you have a nice roast in the oven.
Coconut oil has no smell at all
I think I was misunderstood …
Tallow should have a slight grassy odour, something like a sheep or goat (or of course a cattle beast). Depends how sensitive your nose is. It’s not as strong as lamb, much less goat, but it is there. It’s probably due to a small content of short-chain fatty acids produced by comensal bacteria in the rumen.
Thank goodness someone else is willing to do all this damn work. Three cheers to your Liberal Arts Complex, I wish you utter happiness and health except that one little neurosis I hope you maintain. I’m not just selfish, it’s “the good of the entire internet” we’re talking about here.
This other thing must have hit a hot button with me or something. There was a comment up top from “a healthcare professional” (dontcha love that? Why can’t people just say they’re a nurse or whatever??) about morbidly obese people and how they lived on burgers and stuff so it must be meat that is the problem. I’ve heard this before. It’s crap and assumption by pre-biased bozos.
I used to weigh over 500#. (I still weigh way too damn much–I have come to accept this actually might not ever become normal– but a lot less.) Now granted, I spent most of 20 years retardedly believing whole grain pasta was better for me than steak and eggs, which is where much of the weight came from; my entire family handles carbs and gluten badly. Protein deficiency esp. when you’re already fat is beyond exhausting so then you have to eat yet more mega-carbs to try and get energy, because you feel weak, and some intolerance reactions are more like food-as-heroin addictive response than anything.
But the worst/most food [a period of my life where I actually DID eat as horribly as most people assume], came at the last 100#, for work/time fastfood reasons. If you’d asked me what I ate I would have said, “sandwiches, burgers and burritos.” Meaning, subway, taco bell, arby’s and mcdonald’s (I actually thought arby’s and subway were healthy. Yes, seriously.), mostly fast food, leaving out pizza just because it costs more so was less common, and leaving out “enough heated tortillas or cheap toast with margarine for an entire village”. I also ingested tons of soda and chips and fries and cookies and pastries and everything else that happened to be available at the drive-thru window along with my burger. Frankly any meat involved was by far the minimal ingredient. And I’m pretty sure taco bell meat may be more soy filler than meat, not sure but I wouldn’t doubt it…
So later on, after I’d lost about 170# eating mostly-meat, I went back and actually looked up the nutrition values for these places, wrote down about what I recalled buying as a standard (my favorite foods and the typical orders. Most food is hard to recall obviously, but when you make about the same orders every day for a year at a window (vs. just eat ‘whatever’ like most people do around the house), it’s a lot easier), and calculated how many calories and carbs they had, so what I ate overall per day. Swear I can’t believe I didn’t end up weighing 800 pounds instead. It’s a miracle I’m not profoundly diabetic. I must truly have the pancreas of steel. It’s a miracle I’m even still alive.
But blaming this on MEAT would be bizarre to the point of moronic. It wasn’t until I started REALLY EATING MEAT that I actually started getting healthier and losing weight. It wasn’t until I quit eating all gluten-grains that my severe asthma, severe allergies, severe acid reflux (and acne and bloating and brain fog and mega-cravings and occasional depression and . . .) “magically” healed. (Note: I was actually a vegetarian many years prior. I admit I lived far more on grains than veggies. I got fatter and unhealthier. Had I eaten only raw fruits and veggies yes I’m sure I’d have lost weight and been healthier at least for awhile. Unfortunately I would have been able to maintain that eating plan for probably about 3 weeks, particularly given most veggies just taste vile, green ones like bitter dirt in particular, to me.)
I’ve spent 5 years on the internet with a special interest in the super-morbidly-obese and observing tons of people. Now honestly, it turns out: nothing works. People so big lose only a certain amount of weight and the body stops losing it. (Even Dr. Jeffrey Friedman talked about this, and he’s got a metabolic ward and science for evidence, so it ain’t just me and the zillion people online I’ve met over this time saying it.) Not only that, but the massive weight loss may literally change the body so the eating plan that worked so well up to then at some point doesn’t anymore, or thyroid issues suddenly seem more present, or whatever (possibly a side result of unknown and hence untreated nutrient depletions, who knows.) Which is an issue because motive energy goes with fat loss so when that stops, energy stops, which means exercise tends to and natural driving toward energy-source foods (e.g. carbs) increases, which is just inviting all the weight back again. So I’m not saying that primal or lowcarb or whatever is a ‘solution’ to super obesity. But I’m saying they are _usually_ a solution _up to the point of_ just over morbid obesity. If you’re fatter than that, you’re probably only going to lose ‘some’ of it, which is still a lot of fat lost and much healthier. Alas, not all of it. Still you’re better off. But folks a little smaller can lose most if not all of it, and lose tons of medical symptoms and feel great.
To me the tragic thing truly is “healthcare professionals” who are so ignorant about nutrition. I worked at a blood bank as a 3rd job when younger and the nurses told me when I was ‘merely’ ~40# overweight: drop protein, avoid saturated fat and animal protein no matter what, focus on veggie oils instead, and up whole grains. Years of whole grain pasta with a little canola oil and basil, when I desperately wanted FOOD instead — which basically doomed my entire life, due to my years of attempting to follow this advice and the horrible (and addictive and gluten-intolerance-related) results. (Their insistence that I should do aerobics with the girls rather than lift weights with the guys is another equally horrible dose of advice.) Weight gain is my own fault entirely, especially the beginning and ending amounts when I knew I was eating crap, I am not saying otherwise, but bad advice for years in the middle, supported by everything in media seeming to support the evil of all meat, did NOT help. The fact that this horrible ignorance was in place all through my pregnancy and my child’s early life–a child that is now fighting serious obesity far younger than I ever did–did not help either.
Gary Taubes wrote a significant and excellent book about nutrition that is dense but highly readable even to layman like me, so I am sure any healthcare professional with half a brain ought to be able to get through it. And ought to, if they care at all about learning something useful about nutrition to help their patients. I actually work in the college textbook industry. Nutrition books are so bad that even I, a mere layman, could point out everything from bad science, outdated science, bias and outright wrongs as often in them as Denise does in anything the poor doomed Campbell might put out. The first thing anybody getting a degree in medicine or nutrition should do is go get themselves de-programmed, de-brainwashed, and a proper education that the ignorance of formal schooling (in great part thanks to the agrichem/ food/ pharma industries) didn’t allow.
Of course that would require one be autodidactic. This blog is an excellent example of someone who is.
PJ
Nice PJ. We might disagree on a whole lot of things, but it was a good comment no less. Thank you for sharing.
Guess what? I think I agree on just about everything with PJ, except I am beginning to wonder whether there was not a more sinister agenda behind the promotion of all the “healthy” carb and vegetable oil. Just wondering how much of this bad science and corrupted science was done and infiltrated the official institutions, with strictly commercial objectives and as a consequence with criminal intent. It never hit home as much as when I was going through professor Stephanie Seneff’s paper on sulfur deficiency. Why was it that exactly those things were discouraged that would have prevented all this “western” health misery from happening in the first place.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/sulfur_obesity_alzheimers_muscle_wasting.html It is now widely known that Ancel Keyes did it because of personal delusions, but Frederick J Stare, professor at Harvard did it because he was heavily connected to business interests. Two of his co-workers had to be let go because of scientific fraud. How many more have there been? and probably still are? Wasn’t it a UK study that recently discovered that most likely some 25% of people in leading positions are psychopaths. Not too difficult to believe when you see the Monsanto’s of this world destroy the gene pool of our seedstocks. Probably forever.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/index.php
Thanks Pj for your detailed story. Unfortunately you are not unique, including the false advice you were given and the lack of knowledge by professionals most believe should know and be able to provide guidance. Diet professionals are accumulating a database of similar individuals for a presentation in Washington sometime in the future. Please would you indicate if you would agree to be included in the presentation.
“Wasn’t it a UK study that recently discovered that most likely some 25% of people in leading positions are psychopaths.”
I don’t know about this UK study, but I am pretty sure that most (if not all) top managers in the US are sociopaths. One must be if one lies with open eyes all day long and preaches a commitment to a 80 hour workweek: “Repeat after me – I love my job, I love my boss …” Not normal, not normal …
I find nutrition textbooks from the 1950s and 60s are perfect. They only lost the plot when the counter-culture influence entered the mainstream.
Part of the vegan agenda is liberation FROM animals. It’s humiliating to a certain type of sensibility to depend on lower forms of consciousness. There’s no possibility of negotiation or consensus, of spreading enlightenment, with the beasts. (don’t get me started on the crypto-racist agenda in new age culture) Now, we liberated ourselves from dependence on the horse starting a century ago. How has that worked out for the equine race? Are horses happy and flourishing today? There is probably less cruelty to horses, there are certainly fewer of them. Some once prolific horse dynasties are no doubt extinct. There has been a kind of genocide of the horse in the west. And surviving horses (a herd animal) are more likely to be lonely.
“don’t get me started on the crypto-racist agenda in new age culture)”
Don’t get me started either. It’s not so crypto -bigoted in general (not only racist – there some other “nice”aspects). I would call it rather “new age” charlatanry.
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I’ve been paying attention to the health and disease correlation with diet, along with lifestyle, since 1984, and I can clearly say that your body reacts to anything you consume, giving you ‘response indicators’ as to how a food is being handled by your body. There are many variables, and different people will react differently, more or less, to some degree depending on their circumstances.
But a main thing is, keep your body’s ‘strength integrity’,…. live to perform, consume to both ‘perform’ and to ‘keep your body’s integrity’, and do all that by ‘being in tune’ with what your body wants, to perform well in life, and consume accordingly, depending on what your choices are to choose from.
The ideal is that you ‘just live’ and don’t think about it(and I mean that in the most positive and dynamic ways). You just ‘go’. Living to enjoy life and performing well in life.
Basically, no rules, just right, no diet.
But the general details for our best health are: we’re omnivores, with cooked food being a substantial part of our diet,.. again, generally, not necessarily all the time. Those circumstances, together, have been the norm in our history for at least hundreds of thousands of years, given the evidences. And, keep it in balance and in moderation as appropriate for you to be your reasonable best.
How a food is handled, or is usable, by your body is also dependent on the quantity eaten, the food’s state of being or how it’s prepared, and the quality.
Just went through all the comments again to sort out the solid scientific references and the ones that deserve some further study. It is fair to say probably that quite can of worms is being opened as soon as we dive into the nutritional aspect of what we call our food. Quite aside from anything else, it appears that on both sides of the divide there seem to be a fair amount of religious attachment to the taken stance.
@Jane One correction Jane that I must have missed the first time in the heat of the arguments, I am not a medical doctor in the sense as you most likely assumed. My graduate work was in the area of psychology, but I have for a long time been professionally interested in the effect that certain diets have on people’s behaviour. This whole blog with over 600 comments is for me a virtual reality show and I could study this show for the next couple of years. Which I might actually
This is my brief reply to Chris’s comment (10/05) which I somehow missed.
I try to post my comment in the right area, but I am not sure I succeeded.
I would to repeat it here.
“I read Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” when I was 16 or 17, but I can’t remember whether I finished it. If I were to compose a list of my influences, Carnegie would be conspicuously absent.”
Wrong, Chris, wrong, ridiculously wrong. We are not only what we read (or what we read), but also what we absorb in many other ways. It looks like you
negate the existence of upbringing, education and countless other ways of influence. The fact that you don’t see the presence of SOCIETY, is a good
proof of what culture you are part of.
I am not interested in replying to the implication that humans should only communicate via courts.
Clarification. I meant of course:
“We are not only what we read (or what we EAT) …
The entire comment is pretty sloppy and I apologize for it.
I’ve read75% of the replies thus far. No mention of Taubes and “Good Calories, Bad Calories”?
This is a must read and anyone after reading that book that thinks beef and eggs are bad for you has TURRIBLE reading skills.
I’ve mentioned it 2 or 3 times, and I did see it in another persons comment too. Much loved piece of work!
Wow, I read the whole thing. I’ve read “The China Study” and Esselstyn’s books after a close relative converted to Esselstyn’s recommended diet because of heart disease. I was previous convinced by the arguments, but it didn’t really do me any good since I find such a diet in its extreme totally impractical and highly undesirable. Your critique was quite persuasive and easy to read, despite the length. Thank you for being so detailed and passionate enough about the subject to write this.
777 Woot! Gonna go buy a lottery ticket.
Somewhere in the belly of this beast is the recent discussion of OWS. I started to respond “correctly,” but lost my spot, so I am … here not knowing what and who said exactly what.
My take. Yes, young people (and not only they) have a bleak present time and future and protests (the right ones – a hint) are needed. However …
The movement (?) started when an organized group with an ugly past, living abroad, designed the poster, defined the theme, formulated the name and ordered to show up at a designated place and time (by chance I was there).
Not a good beginning for a movement.
Secondly, American problems are structural (yes, unfettered capitalism is the problem) and should be addressed as such. I vomit when I see this or that multi- (many multis) millionaire notorious for labor abuses posture as 99%. Is Michael Moore who is notorious for firing his writers for the audacity of thinking about unions 99%? Really? Is Russell Simmons? Roseanne Barr? Paul Krugman? etc. etc. etc. Nor surprisingly, I see OWS as a distraction.
It goes like this:
People: we’ve lost our jobs and we’re hungry, we need housing, food, health care ..
Demagogues: Occupy Wall Street
People: we work 70 hours a week and we’re sooooo tired ..
Demagogues; Occupy Wall Street
This isn’t the only distraction.
Some two weeks ago, countless billionaires and multi (many multis) millionaires boarded their jets and limos to … you know … protest … a pipeline. The lily white gathering (OK there were a couple of token Native Americans) of the greatest users of oil pushed for their agenda of total dependence on …. you guess it … Arab oil. You got to love prostitutional “internationalsm.”
I appreciate that you spent so much time and effort to try to explain why this movie isn’t really worth getting too freaked out over. At the same time, I don’t really think it’s wise for people to blow off the idea of a plant-based diet, or a diet with less red meat and processed foods, or whatever. The facts remain: high cholesterol DOES come from certain foods, Americans DON’T know how much damage they’re doing to their bodies, and it’s not a bad idea for people to at least somewhat heed the arguments these doctors are making. The advice to blow this off as “sketchy” science is perhaps your view, but not one that should be shed upon others as the film is not suggesting you do anything unhealthy–as you disregard the points they’re making, though, you’re mocking the idea that people need to change their diets. And they NEED to change their diets, whether it be eating less processed sugars or whatever. I understand if you don’t agree completely, but don’t blow off the ideas they’re putting forth–Americans can use all the health advocacy they can get.
“…. high cholesterol DOES come from certain foods, Americans DON’T know how much damage they’re doing to their bodies….” truer words were never spoken except high cholesterol comes from refined carbs and not from fat or cholesterol. And it may be a generalisation but Americans by and large haven’t got a clue how much damage they are doing to their bodies. So we had liver, bacon and onions yesterday and today we had butternut squash, julienned carrots and rutabaga and kidney pie, and tomorrow we will have a large meat and cheese heavy pizza with our own cabernet-merlot.
James, yesterday you ate pie, and today you’re eating pizza. I hate to ask you an awkward question, but I can’t stop myself. Pie and pizza mean flour, don’t they? Is this white flour?
So it is Jane, so it is. I am a sinful person. The only thing I can offer to my defense, we have made our pizza’s for the Saturday family get-togethers, ourselves for as long as I can remember. We make the dough with spelt, buckwheat (which of course is no wheat at all) and quinoa.
Furthermore it is a European style, iow a thin bottom, unlike the doughy ones people are use to here in North America.
So don’t be shy, you can dig into my most intimate secrets (nutritionally speaking)
Oh and of course the same holds for all the pies. Baking soda and buttermilk works just fine to make it a little bit fluffy. Don’t spend too much time working the dough, spelt gluten are much shorter than their more malign cousins
During my stint in the US Navy I was without food for about four days during escape and evasion training when we managed to collect about a cup of buckwheat (some kind of grass seed). Even after boiling for four hours it was still tough and inedible. We went hungry that day as well.
I am surprised Gager that you don’t know anything about buckwheat, which is actually a fruit which has to be de-hulled. I remember my mother would always make pancakes (they were actually crepes as you call them here) with at least one third white buckwheat flour. And of course they would always be baked in lard. However the lard was probably healthier than what most people can access. These pigs were always outside and ate grass. Which is what our couple of pigs do now that we are retired onto a small homestead.
I was told it was buckwheat but after reading the wiki article I am not sure. Next you’ll tell me that the small rodent looking carcass we had to share among us the next day was not really a baby rabbit.
another testament to the durability and resilience of plant foods!
OK, I’d like another intimate secret revealed please. Why don’t you use whole spelt flour and whole buckwheat flour? No don’t tell me, it doesn’t work. Not fluffy enough.
So you eat white flour and lots of meat, and you have clogged arteries and hypertension. Hmmm.
gager, you are hilarious. I think I misunderestimated you.
I think you’re reading something into it that I either did not say or not intended. With spelt you don’t need the cardboard that people think will keep their arteries clean. The spelt flour body has all the nutrients you need, which is not the case with regular wheat and even less so withe dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties. I think it is a complete misconception that the bran of grass seeds will keep your arteries clean. It is the soluble fiber that you need and I thin I get all the soluble fiber and then some from the loads of veggies we eat. In fact one apple a day will do more for your arteries than all the cardboard that comes with whole wheat.
James, ‘The spelt flour body has all the nutrients you need’ … what is the ‘flour body’?
As far as I know, there is whole spelt flour and white spelt flour, and all white flour has had the germ and bran removed, meaning nearly all the Mg and Mn.
Only partly true as far I know. In regular wheat, and even more so in the newer dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties, the nutrients are concentrated in the germ. In the older varieties like spelt, and its ancestors einkorn and emmer there has always been a better distribution of the nutrients throughout the kernel. So yes, you will lose nutrients when you get rid of the bran and the germ, but not nearly as much as with regular stuff. The bran I don’t even want to consider any more. Unless you have a constipation problem and you need that kind of fiber to hold the fluids, about which I have my doubts as to the efficiency of this kind of “patchwork” nutrition. Cardboard is cardboard, whether it comes in a cereal box or a loaf of bread.
I still think all our fibre should come from our veggies and fruits, most of which will be soluble fibre. It’s probably the reason the Dutch used to lunch on a couple of eggs, sunny side up and the yolk not too well done, to not damage the good cholesterol, on two slices of white bread and ham, with lots of lettuce and tomatoes. We now usually skip the bread completely, but we do usually fry the tomatoes since it makes the lycopene better available and it reduces a bit the lesser desired properties of tomatoes. (after all it is a nightshade)
James, if you promise me you will think about your Mg and Mn (and Cu) intake, I will promise not to force cardboard down your throat.
Yes, high cholesterol can come from certain foods, but it’s NOT meat. In fact, it’s plant based foods. But, I won’t make the mistake most make and blame just plant based foods, certain ones in particular…. vegetable oils, sugar, process carbs
Hee, hee, hee ..
We’re all irritated by the same statement, but I was just too lazy to elaborate.
lost the plot he did…
Meagan, reread you comment – it doesn’t make much sense.
And yes, unlike Denise’s writing.
omg denise, i believe i m in love with u^^ thx for the research, great, and the critique
It’s interesting to see how much effort has been made to ddisparage the thrust of this documentary. The writer obviously had food allergies and could not eat a full vegan diet anyway, but her experience is not shared by most. Vegans who eat a wide variety of foods, and who get enough calories, have zero problems with protein. That’s another nonsense argument.
Everyone is welcome to eat as they choose. They will ultimately pay the price of good or bad health.
Esselstyn has worked with far more than 11 patients, and any investigation into his work would have made that clear. How deceptive to imply that he has only had success with 11. Unbelievable.
Is the writer of this article a medical professional? Do they have training in interpreting medical data? Or are they net researchers? How many medical publications do they have subscriptions to?
While you were probably great on your school debating team, this article falls so short of science that it’s painful. And your happy little admirers are going to let you do the thinking for them. Well done.
The medical professionals in this documentary are not the only people who have been espousing a plant based diet. You will find a lot more than one documentary about this, and so many scientific studies that all reach the same conclusion, if you search for them.
I feel sorry for those who read this as science, and continue on their merry way toward eventual ill health. True, individuals have to settle for second best food because of some sensitivities, and they feel much better once they adopt a food that satisfies what they need, or once they drop an offending food. But just like cancer patients who eat or smoke marijuana to help with nausea, the foods/marijuana will still have their inevitable side effects.
Lisa, there are a few problems with your statement:
“Esselstyn has worked with far more than 11 patients, and any investigation into his work would have made that clear. How deceptive to imply that he has only had success with 11. Unbelievable.”
You are misquoting what Ms. Minger has said. This is all in regards to Esselstyn’s study, not a reflection of his career. This is made clear enough, I believe.
“Is the writer of this article a medical professional?”
This is a fallacy known as Appeal to Authority. Whether Ms. Minger is a double-doctorate, has an MS, or is a Kindergarten teacher doesn’t change the weight of her statement any since it is based on the evidence cited and not on her word as an authority on health.
“Do they have training in interpreting medical data?”
I think it’s obvious that she can read a study and understand medical terminology. If you feel otherwise, please can you specify which study and what part has been misinterpreted?
“How many medical publications do they have subscriptions to?”
This is a fallacy known as Appeal to Majority. If she is subscribed to 1 or 100 journals, that doesn’t logically change what she has said any since, again, it is based upon the direct evidence cited.
“The medical professionals in this documentary are not the only people who have been espousing a plant based diet. You will find a lot more than one documentary about this, and so many scientific studies that all reach the same conclusion, if you search for them.”
Lisa, can you please provide me with the vast amounts of studies that have compared healthy omnivores that consume pastured animal products and do not consume refined and processed foods, sugar, white flour, and vegetable oils with vegans that do the same? There is a fundamental flaw with the research done and supported by members of the PCRM: it’s just not honest. Denise had discussed this at the Ancestral Health Symposium this past August (link here: http://vimeo.com/27792352).
Two studies that were mentioned which should be taken note of are this Polish study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20803902) which showed that vegans and vegetarians are more likely to engage in healthier lifestyle habits (which is why this study (http://thehealthyskeptic.org/is-meat-bad-for-you-no-but-junk-science-and-the-clueless-media-are) came to the flawed conclusion that an eco-Atkins was healthier than regular Atkins). The other study mentioned was one done with Taiwanese Buddhist monks who had very similar diets except one didn’t eat meat, and that group had a greater risk for heart disease than the omnivore (http://ymj.or.kr/Synapse/Data/PDFData/0069YMJ/ymj-52-13.pdf).
Really, there is no need to feel sorry for any of us that read Ms. Minger’s message. Many of us are health professionals ourselves that have a history of working with clients and studying the science ourselves.
Regards,
– Josh
Josh, I am so grateful that you posted this thorough reply to Lisa Smith. Specially the “Appeal to Authority” and “Appeal to majority” parts, which put a big grin on my face.
I was kinda nervous, since after reading Lisa Smith’s comments, which are so representative of how people refuse to acknowledge reality and resort to various biases and logical fallacies (some could go as far as calling it plain hypocrisy..), I was planning to write something along these lines… and I have so little time on my hands. And english is not my mother language.
So thanks for sharing your talent for both sound practical judgment and precision in structural analysis, AND also for saving me from the difficult task to write a long reply to Ms. Smith’s post.
Wizzu
Hi Wizzu, thanks for the pat on the back
.
I used to debate a lot, and that taught me a lot about people’s arguments (or at least, the arguments that attempt to use). I’d estimate that 99% of people rely on these logical fallacies, likely because they’re really easy arguments to make that seem absolute. This is why I largely don’t debate anymore, save for some health stuff, because with most things people are fine pulling facts straight out of the air, but with science that’s not so easy.
Josh, please could I ask you about the Tiawanese Buddhists? The paper says the following:
‘..In comparison to western vegetarians, Taiwanese vegetarians consume fewer fresh vegetables and usually cook their vegetables in oil. They also consume many deep-fried and refined soybean and grain products…’
I imagine the meat-eaters were eating less of these things? Do you think that might explain the result?
Hi Jane,
Unfortunately, I am not overly familiar with the study (certainly not as much as I should be or I’d like to be). I would direct your questions to Ms. Minger as I got it from her AHS lecture.
To answer your question though, yes, without knowing more, it is a possibility.
“This is a fallacy known as Appeal to Authority. Whether Ms. Minger is a double-doctorate, has an MS, or is a Kindergarten teacher doesn’t change the weight of her statement any since it is based on the evidence cited and not on her word as an authority on health. ”
based on the evidence yes. correct and absolutely 100% proof that has been peer reviewed and published in many medical journals all across the world like the scientists she is refuting? not at all
Hi Terry,
I do not completely understand the statement you are making, but I think I get your overall POV. My question to Lisa remains open to yourself as well:
“can you please provide me with the vast amounts of studies that have compared healthy omnivores that consume pastured animal products and do not consume refined and processed foods, sugar, white flour, and vegetable oils with vegans that do the same? There is a fundamental flaw with the research done and supported by members of the PCRM: it’s just not honest. Denise had discussed this at the Ancestral Health Symposium this past August (link here: http://vimeo.com/27792352).”
Regards,
– Josh
hi josh
well i’m not a vegan nor am i purporting that that diet is the healthiest. we can, as lay people, simply look at the hunza people and their proven longevity. they eat the diet you described. they consistently live the longest out of any if not all other peoples of the world and have been doing so for many years. who needs science after seeing that? longevity in numbers is the ultimate proof
my own logic tells me they have gotten the whole symbiotic thing right with mother nature. not only do they consume mostly whole plant foods, but they consume animal foods in the amounts that ancient times would allow, that mother nature intended. whereas, the family would own a cow and a few chickens, which would supply them with just the correct amounts of animal products making it impossible to over consume. these would typically be used as flavouring components in their mostly whole foods vegetarian diet such as in stews and curries etc. now and then they would eat fish or small game but very rarely.
the modernization of animal farming has shifted this special balance completely out of proportion. the amounts of meat and dairy and processed foods that the companies who sell them would like us to consume (and bless them for being businesses like any other business who must make their product appealing) combined with the low cost and availability of these products, will be one of many nails in the coffin for future generations. add to that pollution, radiation, light pollution etc
i’m not sold on veganism and am for now myself a vegetarian/part time pescetarian. but the balance i described makes sense. it’s just hard to wean people off these luxury foods which are in escence, addictive drugs.
cheers
“who needs science after seeing that? ”
Ho ho ho ho, we all do.
Because what your “logic” tells you is not good enough. Far from it.
In the past, wise men realized that common sense and “logic” were not enough to prevent people from seeing what they want to see, hearing what they want to hear, and make the conclusions they want to make. So they came up with the scientific method.
For genuine science, your conclusions about the Hunzas and their diet are mere hypothesis, which have to be examined closely to avoid jumping to conclusions like:
- the longevity of the Hunzas is due to their diet
- the longevity of the Hunzas is due to their diet and nothing else than their diet
- the longevity of the Hunzas is due to some magic ingredient in their diet
- the longevity of the Hunzas is due to (pick your choice) [absence of stress, their diet, their environment, the quality of their soil, their social bonds, the local climate, you name it....].
We need science. Baaadly. Without it, anyone can make any point about anything and call it “the truth and end of story”. Like “the diet of the Hunzas – and their diet alone – explains their longevity, so they must have the one, perfect, only true healthy diet and we should all eat a Hunza diet”. Nonsense.
I’m surprised that there are so many people who need explanations as to why we need (genuine) science in cases like this. No wait, actually I’m not surprised. See how they talk. It’s clear they are afraid of science. Puts their all-knowing egos in great danger.
ya well their diet was THE MAIN FACTOR in their longevity, and ho ho ho there really is a perfect diet for all humans and it is as close as possible to what the hunzas ate. no nonsense.
and since they were eating like this long before this all so important ‘science’ came about that makes them proof positive. we didn’t need ‘science’ to tell us to eat a mostly whole foods plant based diet with very minimal amounts of animal products then to achieve maximum longevity, and we sure as hell do not need it now, unless we have collectively gotten dumber, or we’ve been hooked on luxury/ ‘junk’ foods in deadly amounts and have been programmed to want them since birth no matter what anyone tells us.
next thing you’re gonna say that everyone should get their meat n potatoes in every meal, drink a litre of milk a day and have sunny d for lunch. you and i know the ratios. mostly whole plants, small portions of animal products, no processed food unless it’s for a treat. there is no nonsense and no science needed! humans are humans, we all need those same ratios every day, cats need meat, and mostly meat, all cats do, gorillas need veg mostly veg, all gorillas do. diets are species specific, there is no mystery(unless agri-business, politics and science have a say)
that’s really what this ‘science’ has achieved. we can look at all animal species and see that they have the same dietary needs within their own species, but as for humans? ‘oh no you have it all wrong, these people over here should eat lots of raw meat and berries, while these people over here should eat lots of rice with beans and milk, while these people over here etc…climate, stress, whatever you want to heap on people or animals the like, we all must get the same ratios that are optimum for our own species. that’s all i’m saying.
and to get my final thoughts out here, we do need science, maybe we do need it baaaaad. but what we need even more, like a hundred times more for the science to even BEGIN, is large full scale comprehensive studies performed on as many people as possible like the china study(again, not stating an opinion on that!) we need OTHER NEWER large scale studies more than life itself right now. bu-bu-bu-bu-bu-baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad! cheers
“…Listen to the people who are searching for the truth, flee from the ones who have found it…”. I don’t remember who said this, but it is certainly true for the science of nutrition. The problem is, and I keep hammering on it, that we are an incredibly adaptive bio-system, with billions upon billions of cells which can take an incredible amount of abuse because whenever there is some kind of attack or damage inflicted, there is an army of ‘defenders’ or ‘repairers’ rushing in. Often without us even being aware that there was any kind of trauma. Cf. the clogged artery problem, which has turned out to be not exactly what we initially thought it to be. And after LDL was mistakenly blamed, now the small dense LDL gets the blame. Yet, by looking at where the build up plaque happens in the first place, we may again be shooting at the messenger.
Our brain, the biggest energy user in this system, ‘loves’ glucose, but there are better ways of feeding the brain and as dr.Cynthia Kenyon proved with her C.Elegans, it definitely has an impact on longevity.
It may be oft a process of trial and error, looking at cohort studies etc. and drawing up a tentative hypothesis, or two, or three, and then design the research to see whether our hypotheses hold water. I do think we need science, to say otherwise is …unscientific?
Kenyon’s Silverstein Lecture
the most important thing is large scale observation. without this there is no science, this is what nutritional science is founded on. it’s unfortunate that the china study is still to this day the largest observational study on nutrition.
sure all animals are adaptive, sure it is nice to have an army of defenders waiting to cleanse us no matter how we abuse ourselves (and in turn abuse those defenders) be it through diet, pollution, stress etc. but all the number crunching in the world won’t tell us as much as simple observation of what different species need for optimum nutrition. humans are no different than any other organism in this regard, before even getting into all of the scientific details, 99% of what we need to know can be found by large scale observation.
cows require pasture to graze in for optimum nutrition, with certain ratios in place. hawks, snakes, and cats require most of their nutrition in the form of small rodents, again with certain ratios in place. humans require most of their nutrition from fruits and vegetables, with certain ratios in place. basically, if you can pro-create with another organism, that organism will also have the same dietary requirements as you. it is all a simple observation of species dependent nutritional ratios. this is not rocket science, although i agree there is nothing wrong with science AFTER the observational learning has taken place
to put the data before the basic common sense observations is putting the cart before the horse, or as spock would say, most illogical. if we can all agree on this basic and simple principal, we can then get on to the real debate of ‘what those ratios are’ which at that point, after the observational studies have been done would only be left with a relatively small amount of variation. i agree that it is not set in stone to the exact percentile, but to believe that one group from the same species must eat 20% of this and 80% percent of that, while another group from the same species must eat 80% of this and 20& percent of that…well, we all need between 8 and 10 hours of sleep at night, there is no group of people that requires 2 hours, while another 18 hours. every human falls in the 8 to 10 hour sleep requirement. every human falls within certain ratios for optimum nutrition
Terry,
Your posts are k-k-k-kind of entertaining, but they don’t bring m-m-m-m-much to the overall debate. Mockery is not much more than ignorance wrapped in laughter. If you have a real sense of humour in real life, it certainly doesn’t show here.
You write:
“there really is a perfect diet for all humans and it is as close as possible to what the hunzas ate”
Mere opinion. (Oh sorry, m-m-m-mere opinion). Leap of faith. Blanket s-s-s-statement. Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Baaaaad terry. Bring on the evidence please. (Oh I forgot, we don’t need them, sorry Terry).
Do you know that some attribute the Hunza’s longevity entirely to.. exercise? Other to positive thinking? Others to the water they drink? Others to genetics? The list is so long that it’s not even funny anymore.
And all these people (including you I’m pretty sure) only have access to second-hand, fractioned, and probably very distorted sources of information about the Hunzas. But people love coming up with crackpot theories as to why the world is like (they think) it is.
I can’t help but think that just like all those who have their own “logic” or “intuitive” -but definitive!- explanation as to why the Hunzas live so long, AND refuse to let some rationality enter the game, you’re simply unable to grasp the meaning of my previous comments, which I guess explains your sarcasm and p-p-p-p-p-p-ppigheadedness.
I hope it can still help some (more open-minded) readers to realise that nothing should be taken at face value.
Like so many others, you just believe what your eyes and ‘logic’ tell you. Sorry but it’s silly.
And you’re totally wrong about the need for studies being more important than the need for science. Without a genuine scientific approach when *designing* these studies, they are absolutely meaningless (crap in => crap out), and that’s exactly what happens in real world most of the time, and leads to the current mess in the field of nutiotional medecine.
Sorry but you got it aaaaaaaaal wrong. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll g-g-g-g-g-g-get it.
cool story b-b-b-bro…..
i say it again, there is an optimal diet for each species, humans are no different. we all will benefit from a close assimilation of this optimum diet for all humans. i’ll take back my assertion of what my opinion is about the makeup of that diet, but the greater point is that humans as a whole will routinely be healthier on a close likeness of this optimum diet, whatever it may be. every other animal in nature has an optimal diet, we are part of this animal kingdom. we will also do better on this optimal diet, again whatever this diet is.
and like this very passionate response above me says, don’t take anything at face value
This is simply incorrect. Many have quoted on this site their particular knowledge of one native group or another. Each one extremely healthy yet each diet very different. Weston A Price documented this fact in 1939 in his book “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” following ten years of field research covering ten very different native groups, from Inuit to isolated Swiss mountain folk. The common factor was not diet but a complete absence of our health issues including diseases as far removed from each other as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Yet each of these tribal member groups succumbed to our diseases once they adopted our diet. He provided detailed evidence including photographic evidence to the point that within families of many children it was possible to discern which children were born after the western diet was introduced to the family.. The only general conclusion we can draw is that there is no ideal diet however the typical diet in the Western world might be about as unhealthy as it can get.
Could you provide details in the diet difference? Western versus healthy.
In eleven words you’ve asked the billion dollar question which is going take longer to an answer longer than most will want. I can’t directly answer it but the following information will help. Firstly an easy answer to a simpler question, what is wrong with Western diet? In one word the chief villain is sugar; the body produces insulin to protect itself from the toxic effects of elevated blood glucose. Anything we eat that rapidly turns to blood glucose will produce a corresponding insulin spike. Insulin is an essential hormone but it is inflammatory and inflammation is a root cause of most terminal diseases in the West; cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and others. Type 2 diabetes is the result of the cells becoming insulin resistant, worn out, as a result of extended insulin abuse of the cells that are supposed to respond to insulin and in doing so turn the excess glucose into body fat. Hence being fat is just one more symptom of metabolic syndrome caused by eating too much of foods that the body turns into glucose. Not much point spending more time on this one, but there are numerous other negative constituents of the Western diet more easily recognized by looking at the common factors of these very diverse native diets which appear to result in far lower sometimes nonexistent levels of our common major diseases.
I might best pass on a quote from Dr Weston Price’s work because it’s more concise than I can be:
“-All primitive and traditional diets have a high food enzyme content from raw dairy products, meat & fish, raw honey; tropical fruits; cold pressed oils; wine and unpasteurized beer; and naturally preserved, lacto-fermented vegetables, such as sauerkraut, fruits, beverages, meats and condiments.
-Seeds grains and nuts are soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally leavened in order to neutralize the naturally-occurring anti-nutrients in these foods: phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, tannins, and other toxins.
-All healthy populations also consumed some sort of animal protein and fat: meat of land animals; fish; and other seafood; water and land fowl; eggs; raw milk and milk products; reptiles; and insects. Unfortunately pasteurized milk is not as healthy as raw milk, and homogenized milk is worse.
-Traditional diets also contain 10 times more vitamin A and vitamin D than the Western diet of today. These vitamins are found only in animal fats – butter, lard, egg yolks, fish oils and foods with fat-rich cellular membranes like liver and other organ meats; fish eggs and shellfish.
-There are also many times the minerals and water soluble vitamins in these diets – e.g. vitamin C and B complex – than are in our Western Diet.”
Price relates an interesting episode he experienced visiting South Sea Islanders who traditionally lived on coconut and palm products and fish and shellfish. On early contact with Westerners they found they could sell copra, dried coconut meat, for a good price. Demand in Europe soared and prices soared forming a bubble like our housing bubble as prices topped at 100 times. When the islanders became wealthy, traders arrived and sold them European foods such as cereal products, sugar, flour and jams. Then the copra bubble burst and , poor once more, the islanders were forced back to their traditional diet. But what happened to their health is interesting. Children born and growing during the supposedly good times exhibited our western afflictions, initially tooth crowding then decay along with the beginnings of our classic diseases. So in single families it was possible to see the older and younger siblings perfectly healthy with those in between, born during times of western wealth, exhibiting the typical western problem of a narrow center of the face producing a narrow jaw arch causing tooth crowding and sinus constriction. Did you ever wonder why evolution would create jobs for orthodontists?
In a nutshell to be healthy the common denominator is a diet exclusively of natural highly nutrient- dense foods. Few of our foods pass muster because what is missing due to farming methods becomes further depleted by processing. More than 10% of the average person’s calories now come from sugar, a material completely devoid of any nutrient. On this denatured fare the body’s autonomous systems strive to avoid malnutrition simply force more eating through hunger. It’s been calculated on some diets one would need to consume 200,000 calories to achieve a sufficient level of some nutrients.
Hi Dave:
I have often read that pasturized and homogenized milk should be avoided, but I haven’t been able to find exactly what is wrong with either. Could you please explain. Also, what do you suggest to those of us who do not have access to unpasturized milk. I live in Canada, and it’s illegal to sell unpastuized milk here. I can’t even find grass fed in my area. A local farmer recently underwent a hunger strike to get the attention of the Premier of Ontario in an effort to call attention to this silly law banning unpasturized milk. Thanks for the interesting post.
“Vegans who eat a wide variety of foods”
Lisa, are you a comedian?
No, Anna. Are you a rude person?
Josh, this article is smoke and mirrors under the guise of “research”, and just because it appeals to those of a certain ilk, it is deemed “authoritative”. I feel any attempt by me to provide links or the names of papers would be pearls before swine to those who are wedded to their scorched dead animals.
In reply to:
[..]“any attempt by me to provide links or the names of papers would be pearls before swine to those who are wedded to their scorched dead animals.”[..]
Ho ho ho. How convenient, really.
When faced with questioning of your fallacies, avoid any intellectual effort by using even more (and worse) fallacies. Add some bad faith on the top of it, and you’re all set. Great.
People using such pathetic rethoric subterfuges can’t be taken seriously by anyone with a functioning mind.
I’m not sure exactly what kind of nutritional or moral ideas you think you’re standing for here, but you should meditate this: “the worst enemies of an idea are not its detractors, but its poor defenders”.
Hi Lisa,
I am unaware of any study that has involved the necessary protocols that I had described (and most certainly none cited by members of the PCRM). If these studies exist, then I think it would be definitive proof of the claims made by the PCRM and its “Plant Based Diet Doctor Squad”. Thus far, all I have seen is a comparison of a standard American diet with a whole food diet that rejects animal products, which, when the results are applied to all animal products, is really poor science. Please refer to the lecture I had mentioned from the ACS, for a more detailed explanation. Likewise, this is covered briefly in the beginning of the article withe the words “Welcome to False Dichotomyville”.
It seems to me that Ms. Minger has done a thorough job of debunking Forks Over Knives, but you disagree. As such, I’m willing to ask: which points were wrong? Based on what evidence? For example, was she wrong in noting that Norwegian’s ate more fish and less refined foods?
Thanks,
– Josh
I feel any attempt by me to provide links or the names of papers would be pearls before swine to those who are wedded to their scorched dead animals.
And you think people here are rude, you hypocrite. That above is an insult. So defend your POV with facts and substance or get lost.
And you called Anna rude? Mirror time.
“No, Anna. Are you a rude person?”
No, Lisa, just intelligent, but your comments are rude and insulting.
Lisa, what an impressive bunch of “swines” Denise has attracted.
I am reading now the comments, and I, a nutritional zero, learning a lot.
Anna, you call me a comedian and I’M the rude one?
I have seen some excellent refutation in these replies alone, and the blinkered response. I am not a pretender to the scientific method as is the author, nor am I a fervent “fan” of a blogger. I made comments based on the things that can be read here and by anyone with access to Google and some medical journals online. I have no intention of spending my evening arguing with a bunch of people with closed minds, who accept pseudo-science as gospel.
Even when people responded with data, they were simply personally insulted. And pearls before swine it really would be. Anna, you seem to not understand the meaning of the saying. No-one is calling anyone a swine. Perhaps you should analyse the saying with your sharp mind and incredible grasp.
You say:
“Even when people responded with data, they were simply personally insulted”
More fallacies from your part. Jane, for example, has come up with lots of data and conflicting arguments, and is -rightfully so if you ask me- treated with respect by (almost) everyone here. She’s not the only one.
You read what you want to read and see what you want to see. Probalby blinded by quasi-religious beliefs which are clouding your judgment. Too bad.
Fervent fans… there are those here, but I am not. She is flawed, your journals are flawed. It’s also an utter waste of time to argue with those who accept any science as gospel.
I’ll take another for the team and be a bad guy… shut up Lisa.
WOW. WOW. WOW.
dr anna
Lisa, vegans define themselves in negative terms “We don’t touch …” and the long list follows. Don’t you think that your sentence “Vegan who …” is comical?
My “WOW” belongs of course to Lisa. I keep forgetting to hit the “reply” button. Sorry.
You shut up, Grok.
The mind readers come out. Now I’m a vegan and religious. How clever of you.
Actually, no, Anna. The sentence is not at all comical. Your impression of veganism is comical. You need to get out more.
Give it a rest folks. Ever tried to argue with a Jehovah’s witness? Or a Mormon? Not worth it, and in the meantime you’re clogging up the space here.
As I explained to Jane already, there is a lot of very worthwhile material here that I am planning on to give some further thought. Pull up the original scientific research and spend some time with the ones that raise a few eyebrows. Those are the ones that you want to go beyond the abstract or the summary.
Too much of this Lisa stuff just makes for more work for anybody who is sincere about digging for essentials.
You know… today that seems appropriate. I’ll take that advice.
Lisa, is it your position that a vegan diet is the healthiest human diet? Or perhaps, a lacto-vegetarian diet? Which do you eat yourself?
So, Ms Lisa Smith:
Do you, or do you not, have studies comparing a whole-foods vegan diet to a whole-foods omnivore diet? (besides this Tibetan monk study, which apparently doesn’t look good for the “plant-based” squad)
Do you, or do you not, have specific points Ms. Minger covered which you feel were somehow counter-refuted in “the comments”? Would you care to point them out, or explain yourself how Ms. Minger’s analysis was flawed in some case or cases?
Thanks.
I’m puzzled by how James managed to post another rude comment to me which doesn’t allow replies, but in the interest of closing my part in this discussion:
1. I still have no idea why he feels personally insulted at being asked to use a physician’s correct title, but calling osteopaths by the title they earned and proudly display (DO, not MD) is in no way a “smear”. (For the record, I’ve had surgery performed by an osteopath and would cheerfully seek osteopathic care in the future.)
2. I had enjoyed James’s contributions to these comments, but will make an effort to avoid engaging him in the future. I’d rather talk to people who admit their mistakes instead of engaging in snide comments about others’ “ignorance.”
Denise, thanks again for your wonderful analyses.
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It all started as a misunderstanding Ellen. I completely agree with you, if I’d have a choice between a DO and an MD, I would choose an DO.To the broader community your initial comment could easily be interpreted as a slight.: o he is not a doctor. In my zeal to defend Joe Mercola and holistic medicine, I jumped on it too quickly. This not your fault but completely mine. I sincerely apologize. I do take a little satisfaction from the fact that from this incident many who may not have been aware of the difference, now fully understand that DO is a title that a medical practitioner can wear with pride. To my own defense I would like to offer that because of my European background I am rather touchy on the issue of holistic medicine. Since coming to North America I have too often met with with complete misunderstanding by a large big pharma addicted community. I am in your debt for trying to get this rectified.
Thanks, James.
Lisa made a good point. I don’t care to check whether the writer of this review has her facts and interpretations correct, however It’s hard to take the writer seriously when she intentionally or unintentionally spreads gross misinformation or at best is not even aware of the studies presented in the film.
“1.The drop-out rate was crazy high! Since the initial 22 patients got slashed down to 11, we have to consider why the other half of the group slipped off the radar. Was it because they were feeling bad on Esselstyn’s program?”
This is ridiculous. Out of the severely ill, original 24 patients, six cancelled the experiment after coople of weeks for lack interest or trust for Esselstyn. Out of the 18 patients who stayed, 11 angiograms were received after five years. The rest of the crew just were available (one old man died but the autopsy revealed the heart-disease had not progressed), or not interested to have their veins opened and camera tucked in it, since, after all it was completely unnecessary at that point. Out of 11 angiograms 8 showed reversal of heart-disease and the rest (3) had their heart-disease not reversed but completely arrested.
I think it’s a great shame that Esselstyn didn’t try a Hunza-style diet instead of a vegan diet. Full-fat dairy products would improve it quite a bit. How he gets people to eat grains without dairy is beyond me. Cereal without milk? Bread without butter?
And what on earth did he think was wrong with a Hunza diet? Did he even know about the Hunza? Did he think dairy products were toxic because of Campbell’s experiments? Clearly, he wasn’t impressed with equally silly experiments done to prove grains are toxic.
Jane, I’m no expert on Esselstyn, but I think Denise mentioned that his goal was to remove all known triggers of heart disease and virtually all fat as well. Now of course, the stearic acid in SFA lowers lp(a), but I think that Esselstyn chooses to take a very old and outdated look at what are and are not triggers for heart disease.
I’m curious to hear Esselstyn’s explanation for why Tibet’s heart disease rate is 13% (mostly due to TB) despite a strong dietary staple of butter, or Sri Lanka having even lower heat disease rates despite their dietary staple of coconut oil.
The answer is simple. The blood cholesterol data profile predicting lowest mortality due to cardiovascular disease is one of high HDL and low triglycerides. High saturated fat intake will usually result in a profile where HDL is two to three times the value of Triglycerides. A diet low in saturated fat will produce a profile with triglycerides two to three times that of HDL. You can try this for yourself; I did and confirmed it. Alternatively you can accept the lipid hypothesis at face value but be aware that after forty years it is unproven and still a hypothesis and long past its use by date. Its a joke to play on your doctor if you have annual checkups because if you’ve done the experiment he will ask you what you have done to improve your cholesterol and the answer will produce something we call cognitive dissonance. In my case, head in hands and “you always have a hole for me to fall into.”
LOL, guess it has to be repeated over and over and over and over again. And then we start all over again, because it is impossible that “artery clogging saturated fat” could have this effect. So let’s start from the beginning:
Once upon a time there was this man by the name of Ancel Keyes …….
Josh, I’m sure that’s right. In fact the link between heart disease and fat is probably due to a link between fat and copper deficiency. Many years ago Leslie Klevay found a highly significant correlation between the fat content of foods and their zinc-copper ratio. Nobody noticed, of course.
The only thing wrong with dairy products is an extremely high zinc-copper ratio. It just means you shouldn’t eat them with refined grains, only whole grains. That would suit Esselstyn.
“In fact the link between heart disease and fat is probably due to”
*caugh caugh*, er, Jane, the problem is, there is no such link….
http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract
Unless you’re actually talking about a possible link between vegetable (seed) oils and CHD? Or trans fat and CHD?
Hi Wizzu, yes that’s exactly the point. There is no link, but it looked as if there was, due to the connection between fat and copper. A high-fat diet is likely to be a low-copper diet.
Many years ago it was found that mice on a high-fat diet developed heart disease, which seemed to confirm the fat-causes-heart-disease idea. Klevay repeated the experiments and found the mice did not get heart
disease if they were given extra copper.
To a competent scientist it never looked like there was a connection, it was merely a fabrication. Tests done using mice, rats, rabbits usually have only a single benefit, they are cheap to run. And most claimed results in most papers turn out to fail on further inspection. This was the whole point made by John Iodoannidis of the most cited papers in his field, epidemiology. Here is an easy to read article.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/dirty_little_secret/
Yes, I remember the Ioannidis work. In the case of fat and copper, the remarkable thing is not that people got it wrong, but that Klevay got it right and nobody listened. He died last year, which is a great shame because he should have had a Nobel prize, in my opinion. Lots of people talk lots of garbage about copper, but not him.
Hi Jane,
Sorry in advance to be a nuisance. But from here you’re not making any sense.
You say
“it looked as if there was” (a link between fat intake and CHD)
Where, When, did it “look like” it? Apart from plain bad studies with an agenda (or desperately tying to fit the results into the ‘nutirtionally correct’ paradigm), it never even “looked like there is” a link between fat intake and CHD.
Studies on mice?? Oh my god, please, Jane, don’t tell me you give even the slightest bit of credit to nutritional studies performed on rodents. Besides being cruel, these studies are entirely useless, apart maybe to form new hypothesis – which would then have to be backup by actual evidence, i.e. prospective, double blind and randomised studies performed… on humans.
Besides, if [high fat diet implies low copper which implies CHD] was true as you seem to put it (or am I mistaken?), there WOULD be a statistical link between fat intake and CHD.
So really, something’s very amiss in your reasoning, or maybe you’re trying to make a point which is not the one you’re appearing to make.
I really appreciate your input here, though. I read all of your messages. Your angle is refreshing and thought-provoking. Just that you make my eyebrows raise here and there, can’t help it.
You guys are really making my day, the start of my weekend: Two PhD’s arguing with a musician playing the fiddle in the middle. At the moment it seems that he is making more music for Prof Boothman, but regardless it must be quite fascinating for most of us to follow the links and keep our minds “to the grindstone”. Found already a very interesting study on” the homocysteine paradox” by just browsing through Klevay’s papers. Thanks Jane.
LOL James, YOU make my day with the great humour. No irony at all from my part,I genuinely mean it.
I’m a musician in actuality, you know.
(maybe you gathered that much, it’s not entirely clear from your post).
So Dave Boothman is a PhD? Didn’t know that. Too bad there’s not one like him (i.e. a knowledgable, curious, cholesterol-skeptic PhD with a solid good sense and an interest in nutrition) where I live….
Yes, I know my friend and I am pretty sure from the posts that prof Boothman teaches at Southwestern.
But there a lot more profs these days that seem to have second thoughts about many of our presuppositions and I think Ioannidis has been doing a great job. Just north of you you have prof. Muskiet from Groningen University who has upset the apple cart that had been ridden for so long by the lipophobe par excellence Martijn Katan, who on retiring made the only remark I agree with: we don’t really know a whole lot about nutrition and how it affects our health.
http://www.rug.nl/corporate/nieuws/opinie/2008/010_08?lang=en
The video interview is in Dutch but the whole article is in English.
So, prof. Boothman is one of Lisa’s “swines.” Ha.This place is funny.
Thanks for the hint, James.
But unless the article about Dr Muskiet (the one you linked to) has been poorly transcripted, or re-written by a clueless journalist, it looks like his also is a lipophobic:
‘If I drink a pot of sulphuric acid and drop dead, nobody is going to blame my genome.’ Because such actions never happen, evolution has not equipped us with genes that will prevent us dying from them. ‘Why can we not draw the same analogy with eating too many saturated fats or too little fish?’
Mmmh. Doesn’t this sound like he still thinks that eating saturated fats is…. bad?
The lipid hypothesis brainwash is like a die-hard virus. *Sigh.*
I think the remark intended something different.
I am still trying to find his original paleo oriented article that was in English. It is too bad that I only saved the Dutch version only the summary of which is in English. http://www.nvkc.nl/publicaties/documents/2005-3-p163-184.pdf
“…Homo sapiens is about 160,000 years old and our genome mutates with a rate of about 0.5% per million years. Because of the rapid changes of our environment in the past 100 years, we have caused a conflict between our genome with this environment, since our genetic material still resides in the Paleolithic era This conflict, and not our genome per se, is the
major cause of current chronic (degenerative) diseases, including diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease, certain cancer types, and some psychiatric diseases. With respect to nutrition, this conflict started about 10,000 years ago at the transition of our lives as hunter-gatherers to an agricultural
community that coincided with the consumption of a carbohydrate rich diet…”
http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-03-10/zxwmzamcavamnbbrsnrpCihmAzkcpbEdgEkdkontEfCjaDChxbeeqaswJuDE/RRCC-16919-the-western-diet-and-lifestyle-and-diseases-of-civilization_030811.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJFZAE65UYRT34AOQ&Expires=1322434819&Signature=O8Vo2ie4Jvgfcd%2B90UVFH6Vrzw8%3D
Muskiet is referenced in this rather lengthy article by:
Pedro Carrera-Bastos, Maelan Fontes-Villalba, James O’Keefe, Staffan Lindeberg, Loren Cordain. Hard to find a more erudite list of names
And if the link does not work Google : The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization (Research Reports in Clinical Cardiology)
Thanks James, but what does it have to do with Muskiet?
Wizzu, I entirely agree with you. I am being far too generous to Ancel Keys. Actually it’s my suspicion that this whole fiasco was cooked up by the drug companies. Or maybe the food industry. And Ancel Keys’ graph does show a weak correlation.
Why attribute anything to a conspiracy when there was already a strong bias against fat that has been around for a very long time.
With the bias in place there was a ready acceptance of any anti fat publication.
Jack Sprat from the middle 1600′s.
Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
And so betwixt the two of them
They licked the platter clean
Actually, Ancel Key’s original graph showed an extremely strong, in-your-face correlation, since as everyone should know by now, he conveniently selected the data to include in the graph… leaving out the countries which didn’t fit his hypothesis (and started the whole low-fat craze and giving birth to one of the worst medical mess ever).
Maybe you’re referring to a more recent graph by him (I’m not keen on Keys, from the day I learned this con job he performed..)? Or maybe the “corrected” graph, restoring all of the available data he left out, which indeed seems to show a (very) weak correlation..?
All of this is nicely covered in Peter’s (Hyperlipid) post: http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2009/02/cholesterol-presentation-between.html (and many other articles on the web of course, but I can’t help but giving Peter some publicity whenever I can
).
I don’t know whether we will ever find out what was behind Keyes fraud, but I do know that is has cause incredible harm, burdens our healthcare system and it still is the standard that most professionals live by. Here a frightening story that Melchior Meijer (the Dutch science reporter) just related:
“…Finnish authorities are so terrified of carbohydrate restriction,they plan to remove kids from the parental authority of an unnamed father and mother because they want to feed their kids from a more paleo perspective. UrsulaSchwab, professor of nutrition at the University of Eastern Finland,is as an expert directly involved in the case and the driving force behind the impending sanction. In the newspaper LisalmenSanomat she said yesterday: “A carbohydrate-restricted diet contains much fat, which increases the feeling of satiety. If you eat eggs and bacon for breakfast, it can take many hours before you want to eat again. If a child does not eat for hours, it does not get enough calories and nutrients. Parents who give their child a dangerous diet, need to be retrained. If that does not work, then the child must be forced to be transferred to a place where it gets enough food. “
She’s a dingbat but its not her fault. The real question is who gave her a PhD and put her in that position. It only emphasizes the need for parents to exercise extreme caution in who has access to their children. We are now at the point where probably half of college educations are a negative factor for developing life and survival skills. Its what comes of a multigenerational failure to leave school.
Esselstyn wanted to feed the patients like Tamahura indians, the papua highlanders eat, essentially it was the pre-1950s japanese diet or a died that was once consumed by large amount people in rural Asiaa, people who do not have a tradition of cattle herding. People who are immune to heart-disease that is.
Esselstyn has his recipe for fat-free humus, which can be used as surrogate for butter in (whole-wheat) bread. Esselstyn did not think it was good idea to feed sick people animal products, ‘cos they prolong the natural health creation of human body by placing a burden to liver and kidneys. Plants are easier to metabolize, which leaves the body more free to do the healing process.
Excellent.
Thank you so much.
Great work Denise. You should get together with Ben Goldacre of “Bad Science”.
I’m suprised nobody mentioned CNN’s recent documentary “The Last Heart Attack”.
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/podcasts/gupta/site/2011/08/29/sgmd.last.heart.attack.cnn
I thought it was excellent.
So Clinton gave up McDonald’s and is feeling better. A miracle.
Among other things, aren’t his life circumstances different?. Being active is one thing (reading, walking, eating are activities), being under stress he was is a different story (there’s somewhere a book “Hunting the President”). If I remember it correctly, immediately after the surgery Clinton talked very bitterly about this “hunting” and the damage it did. It was before he started to bubble about grass eating.
The CEOs in this video aren’t vegans. They eat humans before and after each meal which most of us can’t do.
IInteresting. Ornish was Clinton’s nutrition adviser in the white house and Clinton still walked away with blockage. At the end of the video Ornish said that heart disease could be as rare as malaria. Doesn’t Ornish know that malaria is the worlds number one killer?. Also when the blood was put in a centrifuge and the two blood components were separated, it was not explained that the milky blood laden with fat was the result of eating too much carbohydrates. Clinton after his surgery and diet change did not look healthy. When he said he had more energy and felt better, I suspect that he was endorsing the claim of better health.
I thought the video was lacking. So many claims but few examples of success.
BTW, all these CEOs bragging about their health and fitness (not to mention wealth) are clearly retarded. I’ve noticed that they usually drop dead soon after bragging. Some billionaire in California drop dead a month after his “I look sooooo young, I am a stud, I .. I ….”
I think Forstmann was one of them. Dead at 71. Brain tumor.
I think this article addresses this whole discussion pretty well:
http://j.mp/w0pZJb
I am reading this
Should We All Go Gluten-Free?
at this
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/Should-We-All-Go-Gluten-Free.html?ref=global-home&gwh=DE74EF2A511B80048E65397643B6BAB7
Not interesting. Seems to be superficial.
I’ll whine.
I think it’s time to kill this monster. I have no idea where new comments go. When I find them, they slip and escape. I was trying to watch prof. Kenyon (?), but lost the video and had just spooky voice.
Good balance to the FOK movie/book information and additional resources to look into for more detail. Skepticism is good in small amounts especially when everyone seems to jump on a band wagon of some sort promoting one thing over another. The critique was long, but also prompted more inquiry which is good when you’re trying to affect change. I’ve dropped 30 lbs since August of 2011 thanks to the motivation of FOK, but will admit I still cook with olive oil, avoid dairy (lactose intolerant), and just added fish back into my diet. The cost savings are significant, my health improved (I feel better) and my ingredient label reading much improved. The ability to have better information to make informed decisions is an important tool consumer/eaters all need to have in their tool box. Cheers
The Hunza average lifespan for a male is 53 years and for a female 52 years. So what. And of those that live longer originate from the same families which suggest that genetics have about the same influence as in any population.
Sorry terry, you’re all wet.
all dry now, and much cleaner now too! thanks gager : )
Healthy living advocate J.I. Rodale wrote a book called The Healthy Hunzas’ in 1955 that asserted that the Hunzas, noted for their longevity and many centenarians, were long-lived because of their consumption of healthy organic foods such as dried apricots and almonds, as well as them getting plenty of fresh air and exercise. He often mentioned them in his Prevention magazine as exemplary of the benefits of leading a healthy live style.
John Clark stayed among the Hunza people for 20 months and reported in his book, “Hunza – Lost Kingdom of the Himalayas”[18] that Hunza do not measure their age solely by calendar (metaphorically speaking, as he also said there were no calendars), but also by personal estimation of wisdom, leading to notions of typical lifespans of 120 or greater. He also reported at one stage having as many as forty patients, and that he was very successful in treating malaria and staphylococcus with medical drugs, but had trouble with dysentery.
Renée Taylor wrote several books in the 1960′s, treating the Hunza as a long-lived and peaceful people.[19]
Because the herd knows best. Lemmings come to mind
Terry, have you read The Wheel of Health? It describes the Hunza as they were before contact with the West, which led to a doubling of the population and a consequent decline in their health. Clark is often cited as proof the Hunza weren’t really that healthy, but by that time, they weren’t. The Wheel of Health was published in 1938, and describes what McCarrison and others observed a century or so ago. McCarrison was their doctor for 7 years. Have a look at The Wheel of Health if you haven’t, it’s available online.
cool, thanks jane!
[...] Forks Over Knives: Is the Science Legit? (A critique of the science behind “Forks Over Knives,” a documentary heavily featuring Campbell and his work.) [...]
@ Dave Boothman. thanks for the information. i really wanted to believe my ‘optimum diet theory’ lol. i can see that since humans have spread throughout the planet that naturally we would be eating different diets because different things grow in different places. but maybe you could elaborate on whether the healthiest people, as in the ones with the greatest longevity, ate foods in similar ratios to other long lived people? without looking at anything from an all or nothing stand point, and assuming all cultures ate some degree of all types of food whether plant or animal, my question is: is there any difference between the ‘nutrient ratios’ consumed by the longest lived and the shortest lived? again not looking at specific food types, but nutrient ratios consumed in the daily indigenous diet
i say this because it is not reasonable to me to think that other creatures have simpler parameters that entail a healthy diet, whereas humans do not. even considering different cultures adapting over many years to what they have available, since we are all the same species do we not also have any measurable diet parameters as well? or is there really no difference whatsoever in what we eat? forget the modern processed stuff, which is not food anymore anyway and not part of my question. tell me about naturally occurring whole foods and why there are no clear parameters in terms of nutrient ratios as it applies to humans, whereas these ratios are very clearly displayed throughout the rest of the animal kingdom.
to get the ball rolling, i observe the standard ‘protein and starch’ which is maybe the most widely accepted human diet for many many centuries at least. why do humans gravitate to meat n potatoes, or beans n rice, or tuna on toast, or chicken and waffles(ok bad example lol, whole wheat waffles mind you!). if we clearly have gravitated to this most basic meal on a global scale for centuries now, with no end in sight, surely this is the most basic example of a simple dietary parameter or nutrient ratio that humans have evolved into? there must be other parameters as well then yes? if we can establish these parameters based on looking at this evolution, then can we not observe other parameters? surely meat with no starch is less healthy, or starch with no meat as well? maybe we can all use some more fruit and veg in our diets no? (that last statement was uncalled for i know lol)
There is a great deal of evidence indicating regional populations do indeed adapt to a regional diet over many generations. For example European statistics indicate gluten intolerance increases as you move north and West in Europe. This correlates with the number of years wheat has been a staple in the diet; perhaps 10,000 years in the Middle East and less than one thousand in Ireland. Interestingly recent statistics show that within the European Union, Scotland has the greatest incidence of metabolic syndrome evidenced by obesity. However it is access to adequate levels of all essential nutrients which is important and now appears to be at the root of our downfall. Malnutrition is a major problem in the U.K. costing the single payer National Health Service in excess of $20 billion per year yet obesity is epidemic. its not calories and hunger its that too few nutrients go along with the calories. And junk science is one of the root causes providing baseless advice such as the reduction of fat consumption through low fat products when fat is where many of those essential nutrients reside. Isolated peoples don’t have junk science so are left with only natural food. However they do have more sense. Take the extreme example of the Inuit who live almost entirely on fish and in the long period of total darkness, raw frozen fish. Yet they also know to reserve the fish heads for the children because the heads contain much higher levels of essential fatty acids which are necessary for the growing brain and nervous system. A word of caution if you are ever lucky enough to visit with one of the few remaining groups; the children are very friendly and will want to share their candy with you but candy to for them is fish eyes; even their candy is nutrition dense. There are numerous reports of western anthropologists living with them for extended periods and when they return wishing to retain the diet they adapted to because the change back to a “normal” diet.induces a lesser feeling of wellness.
Pasteurization was introduced with the cover story of protecting the population against pathogens. Tall bout it on the internet but I was there as a child. My Father collected raw milk from the farm and delivered it in bulk door to door. when pasteurization was mandated he sold out to a larger dairy named Associated Dairies, the name Walmart stores trade under in England. Pasteurization severely damages the nutrition profile, converts the lactose to a lactose derivative which induces a rapid insulin response evidenced by frequent hunger cycles in babies The healthy bacteria killed by pasteurization are still there and negatively affect the immune system which depends upon continuous contact with live benign bacteria to remain calibrated to the environment. Homogenization reduces the fat particle size causing other health issues, No comparative double blind tests were ever done prior to its introduction and the entire process relies entirely on marketing propaganda.
Hi Dave,
Thanks for answering my question about pasteurization and homogenization. I find the info about homogenization interesting. I am aware that eating sugar, in it’s various forms, leads to small dense LDL. Are you saying that eating saturated fat that has been broken down into smaller units will do the same? Are fats assimilated intact? I guess I just assumed they were broken down into smaller units before being absorbed.
What do you think of ultra filtration of milk? Some brands in Canada sell pasteurized ultra filtered milk. The filtration process is said to render the milk sterile, which of course begs the question, why bother pasteurizing it first, but of course there’s that darn law that you can’t sell unpasteurized milk in Canada. Would filtration also damage the fats?
A high small LDL particle count is a symptom predicting an increased probability of cardiovascular disease but there is a certain amount of witchcraft in the measurement of cholesterol lipoprotein. The actual LDL number is not measured in the conventional blood test, it is calculated using an approximate formula sothe number can go up whae it is actually going down. My personal opinion is to use something else. Divide the Triglyceride number by the HDL, anything above 2.0 indicates you are approaching increased threat of a cardiovascular event. Doctors most recently have caught in to this and if your doctor has been attending meetings he will now be focusing on triglycerides and HDL. If you eat a very healthy diet you can cause that ratio to fall below 0.5, something your doctor will probably have never seen because most people are the walking wounded. But these numbers are still measuring symptoms. A measurement closer to cause would be a CRP (C-Reactive Protein) test which measures inflammation. In my limited experience the Tg/HDL ratio can be used as a surrogate for a CRP test because both are symptoms of the same cause, inflammation. However if you want to go further get an $800 Berkeley particle size test but I believe it simply provides confirmation of the same cause. Small particle LDL are probably damaged, oxidized particles and an indication of the outcome of whole body inflammation. Whats the best approach? eat an anti-inflammatory diet avoiding all polyunsaturated vegetable oils and fats,and avoid any food that stimulates all but a minimal production of insulin. why are polyunsaturated oils so bad, they are unsaturated and will easily saturate by tacking on oxygen atoms. when they do this they become oxidized and toxic, think of oxidized fat as rancid. Monounsaturated oils are potentially less harmful but remember, olive oil should be stored cool in an opaque container and not subject to heat. Best yet, get your olive oil by eating olives where it is protected. Olives probably evolved to turn black once mature to protect from light and oxidation. .
Thanks for the nice summary, but i was already aware of this information. I was more interested in the effect of pasteurization and homogenization on saturated fat and if that causes the same problems as eating insulinogenic foods. I suffer from the non-illness of familial hypercholesterolaemia and my trig/HDL ratio is outstanding after 10 years of eating a paleo-ish/low carb diet. My interest in milk fat is more for my children who still need to drink milk.
I don’t know …. I don’t buy this promotion of raw milk – it does seem to be unsafe. Not so long ago, mothers would loose 15 out of 16 their children to VARIOUS (not an epidemic) diseases. I recently, I read about a prominent journalist whose all 4 siblings died from various illnesses in the 1930s in this country.
As a genealogist who’s examined a lot of large families, I have to say if you’re seeing mortality rates that high outside an epidemic then something else was severely wrong. :/ Could you point us to some of the data you’re talking about?
As for raw milk, it *is* unsafe when the cows are ill — tuberculosis and brucellosis used to be fairly common in dairy cows. I wouldn’t buy raw milk from a farmer whose cows were not certified to be free of illness.
The advancement of Western civilization has resulted in an exchange of one list of the major causes for mortality for a different list. A personal strategy is to gain the new benefits without giving up the old ones. In North America we are generally not succeeding if you look at international mortality data. One key area is failing immune systems which has come about because of a long held belief that we generally understood the immune system when in fact we knew very little about it. Items such as raw milk and raw food while exposing us to risks which can be controlled train the immune system to protect us from risks which we are increasingly unable to control. Ask a specialist how to control cancer or cardiovascular disease and the only advice or treatment will be of symptoms; bypasses, statins, surgery, chemotherapy. Yet many isolated traditional native groups rarely experience these diseases. Cancer cells are present in virtually everyone but only some have or or get the disease cancer so we can conclude that cancer is the result of the failure of the body to prevent the existing cancer cells from developing into the disease. This is due to due to an aspect of the immune system we don’t yet understand. It’s thought to of as shameful to admit we don’t know everything but the opposite is the case. Accept the knowledge that comes from native customs and old wives tales until we truly have the science to do better. The statistics are shameful. Cancer research team leaders Beleveau and Gingrass for example report the rate of breast cancer in women in India at 19 per hundred thousand yet in the U.S. at 91 and they attribute it in part to diet. This is not an isolated statistic you can find the rates for men and women compared for many types of cancer in their book “Foods that Fight Cancer” This is in a country where flush toilets are just being introduced to the general population and cows roam the streets, yet as I watched Slum Dog Millionaire I never saw a sign of a pasteurizing plant. exchanging one set of medical threats for a worse one is never a good plan.
I mentioned my Father was in the dairy business in England and I was raised in the 1940′s so grew up drinking large quantities of unpasteurized full cream unhomogenized milk. At age 13 at school we were all given a TB test. The lucky one or two had apparently been exposed to TB and were already immune so escaped the shots. Apparently they hadn’t experienced the disease following exposure, so their immune systems must have taken care of it on contact. But if you want to drink raw milk today you can’t get it from the production lines of cows with marginal health maintained as production units through continual dosing with antibiotics in the feed. You will need to find a producer who maintains a naturally healthy herd using traditional methods. Its a funny thing when you see a farmer caring for his animals he is caring for you, and the opposite is equally true. I understand raw goats milk may be easier to obtain and it certainty is delicious and supposedly better tolerated by most individuals..
What do you think of Paul Jaminet’s notion that far more than ~18% of cancers are linked to infectious diseases? If correct, that would imply a double-whammy. First, we disable our immune systems through diet and the over-use of antibacterials, and second, we facilitate cancerous growth via inflammatory diets and promote its growth through an overabundance of sugars and other carbohydrates. I think it was also on the PHD site that I read that there was a strong correlation between patients who had died suddenly of heart attachs and recent viral infections.
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?p=3018
Specifically, I had A.M. Rosenthal of NYT in mind (born 1922) “with Rosenthal’s father dying in a job accident and four of his siblings dying from various causes” Wiki
Non-specifically, I had in mind the general high mortality among children. Not so long ago, I read … somewhere about a lone survivor (out of 16) in not so distant past. Among many other things, I suspect that cows were not certified then.
My mother was born in 1927. Of the thirteen births by her mother only 6 survived to adulthood. I read somewhere that infant mortality of 3 or 4 of 5 died before the age of 5 in the early 1900′s. Remember, penicillin was not discovered until 1940 and a simple infection would be deadly. The general population was more healthy in the early 1900′s because if you got sick you died. No unhealthy people walked the streets.
I recently began to research the genealogy from my father’s side of the family. I was able to successfully trace passage from Germany to the US in 1706 and follow the trail to the present day. Of course, it’s impossible to know those forebears’ complete stories, but it’s sobering to see how many died at a very young age in the 18th and 19th centuries — I don’t recall any of the families losing anywhere near 75% of the offspring, but there were early deaths sprinkled throughout. What was most astounding to me was the regularity of ancestors living into their 70s, 80, and even 90s in every century. (One GGGM lived to 104 in the 20th century.) Hardy genes? Healthy immune systems? Sturdy traditional diet? Hard to say. I hope to really research more of the tree and incorporate lifespan data into some sort of chart to show not only averages but also incidence rates of longevity.
You are making a mistake that is easy to make; but is critical. You are mixing two different monkey studies that are not using the same variables. One monkey study was “protein restricted” and high protein. In the OTHER study they were fed 5% ANIMAL protein and 20% animal protein.
Based on your analysis we can expect low animal protein fed monkeys to die young, but guess what, monkeys in the wild NEVER EAT ANIMAL protein. They eat bananas and other fruit and plants! You got that? Bananas! THEY ARE NOT MEAT EATERS!
This means they get enough protein eating fruits and other plants, which means the study that gave them VERY low protein actually took protein out of the food that they were fed, so that they got almost none!
An Angus bull can eat grass and grow big and strong! Because it is in his DNA. That is also why monkeys can eat fruit and plants and get enough protein. WE TOO can get enough protein from plants and fruits, we are only in danger if we only eat plants that are very low in protein. Beans and wheat and other plants provide plenty of protein.
“This means they get enough protein eating fruits and other plants,….”
You presume to know how much protein a monkey needs. How much do they need?
Also, you presume to know how much protein is in bananas. Please tell me.
And there’s more to this than just the name protein. Proteins are long strings of amino acids. Some are essential and others can be manufactured by the body from the essential amino acids. The essential amino acids are: leucine, isoleucine, valine, lysine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, phenylalanine and histidine. Inadequate dietary input of any one of these eventually leads to disease. Almost all animal foods and some vegetable foods contain all of them but you need to know which ones and how much you need. Animals seem to know by instinct, humans seem to lack this survival ability which is why mental health professionals report around three times the percentage of vegetarians showing up in ER relative to the general population. We have good capacity to store amino acids over a long period so illness can take five years or more to occur.
Don’t monkeys eat insects and larvae too? These are full of protein and don’t fall under the Plant Kingdom.
Bulls, cows, goats are all ruminants having 4 chamber stomachs. They can eat urea and covert it to protein. The microbes in their 4 stomachs break down and convert grasses and urea into protein. Monkeys have simple stomachs like humans. Get your facts straight!
Yeah, I know that I am different from a cow …
BTW, has anyone noticed how cows spend their days?
gager (19:54:00) : You think monkeys in the wild are not getting enough protein? Seriously? Maybe we should alter their genes so they crave the right foods, ha ha. Like we know better than nature, or better than God. Come On!
Next you are going to tell me that bulls who eat grass are protein deficient.
I’m retired from a working income but something I learned very early is to never assume. With that I have solved some very complex problems throughout my career.
Nature has only to provide marginal survival and longevity to reproduce. This does not mean that those that survive thrive.
I am also a hunter and I see much evidence of marginal survival.
Monkeys may or may not reach nutritional requirements and monkeys will eat meat given the opportunity. Just because they appear to live in harmony with nature means very little.
Dave, ‘..humans seem to lack this survival ability..’
It looks like our gut bacteria can make missing amino acids for us, see this paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7441383
‘In an attempt to clarify the nutritional enigma of the healthy strong physique of Papua New Guinea (PNG) highlanders who have a protein-deficient diet mainly composed of sweet potato…’
It looks like our gut bacteria can make missing amino acids for us
If you’re from Papua New Guinea.
“If you’re from Papua New Guinea”
I am not. I guess I’ll continue to eat animal protein. Meow.
[...] [...]
Excellent article. I’ve recently seen the movie and very much appreciated the research I was too lazy to do!
Denise, just wanted to clear up what I think is a li’l typo: “When the dose was raised to 0.5 parts per million, the low-protein rats didn’t get tumors”. That should be monkeys, not rats right? I’m obsessed with your blog since I found it a few days ago.
Those PNG natives are not vegetarians though; they get protein from pig, grubs, and used to eat each other. The LPD is not their preferred state. Any more than it is mine.
Very thorough summary/review. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this!
George, here’s what ‘Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention’ says about the PNG highlanders:
‘..sweet potato supplied over 90 percent of their total food intake, while non-tuberous vegetables accounted for less than 5 percent of the food consumed and the intake of meat was negligible… Extensive herds of pigs are maintained and, during exchange ceremonies, large amounts of pork are consumed.’
So yes, they eat pork, but only on feast days. Otherwise, they eat pretty much nothing but sweet potato. I imagine they like it, much as I like my diet of (mainly) wholemeal bread. You would hate it, just as I would hate your diet.
Sorry, Jane, but I probably wouldn’t find you or any of the PNG highlanders tasty. Yes, de gustibus …
I have a hard time believing the report of healthy PNG highlanders. Sweet potatoes are energy dense and nutrient poor. They would need to consume large amounts of sweet potatoes to meet nutrition requirements and that would lead to a swollen belly, and the pictures I’ve seen, many do have a paunch.
I have seen pictures of Irish before the potato famine in the mid 1800′s and many had swollen belly’s.
More than a million Irish starved to death when Ireland was hit with the blight because more than a third of the population was entirely dependent on potatoes as their only source of food.
Potatoes and water was the staple and although they live long enough to procreate and rear the young they were not healthy by any standards.
I feel the same about wheat; energy rich and nutrient poor.
There was a period in Europe when the population declined, thought to be due to climate when it was cold and damp. During that period however the population in Ireland continued to rise. One suggestion for this is that grain crops would not grow in the Irish climate at the time but they did in Europe where Rye dominated. However its probable that in those conditions the mold giving rise to the aflatoxin toxin flourished leading to an epidemic of aflatoxin poisoning. Many historical events correlate in time with climate years which promote this mold growth, such as the Salem Witch Trials and the French Revolution. One symptom of aflatoxin poisoning is an appearance of raving madness but another is infertility. Many historical records of witch trials match in time and place with years of wet overcast conditions in lowland country. So grain eaters beware, in the North East it’s been one such year and the toxin has already shown up in dog food recalls by Proctor and Gamble and other companies. I had dogs at the Master National field test in Maryland this October and one of them, the chronic chewer of anything found on the ground, returned with liver shutdown and emergency treatment at the Vet. If you check the USDA website nothing can be done with contaminated grain except to dilute it with uncontaminated grain to get it through a test. In addition at low levels below the accepted limit it is a suspected carcinogen, probably of the liver. Peanuts and peanut butter are also foods to be aware of for potential contamination..
“Many historical events correlate in time with climate years which promote this mold growth, such as the Salem Witch Trials and the French Revolution”
Wait a moment .. I think one could find other reasons for the French Revolution. But if this mold growth was the only one, I am all for mold.
Vive la ?(le?) mold!
Yes its only conjecture but there are so many other similar events. The common factor is apparent madness or demon possession, there’s even some old 8mm film of the last mass outbreak in France. While the French Revolution started with injustice as a result of poor harvests resulting from bad weather, the revolutionaries ended up guillotining each other in a seeming mass hysteria that went on till almost none of them were left.
“While the French Revolution started with injustice as a result of poor harvests resulting from bad weather”
Wow, there was nothing there in France (and elsewhere) just “injustice as a result of poor harvests.” Sure. You reminded me why I think that geeks (and medical doctors) shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Well, revolutions are revolutions and they “eat their children” – mold in grains or not.
My recommendation would be to know history, understand societies and strive for as egalitarian
societies as possible. Then maybe mold in grains will be less madness provoking.
You mean the LSD poisoning by the CIA of Pont-Saint-Evène which was covered up by ergotism?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont-Saint-Esprit#1951_mass_poisoning
gallier2, You need to take a hint from Denise on how to analyze claims. The official report is that seed grain that was treated with a mercury compound was accidentally ground into flour. Outbreaks of ergot poisoning has a history throughout the centuries and it was common to treat contaminated grain with mercury. The claim that the CIA was doing experiments adds up to total nonsense. Experiments with LSD was done in US prisons and during the 60′s under the suggestion of Timothy Leary people were popping LSD left and right.
You could argue whether the symptomology of the P-S-E incident fits as LSD dosing or ergotism (or mercury poisoning), but I would approach that incident from another angle. Not “would the CIA test LSD on an uncontrolled population?,” but rather “why would the CIA choose a town in France to run such a test?” In other words, the chance for this to be exposed and to cause scandal would be much higher in France or any Western European country than in, say, some Central American country. Also, how active were the CIA stations in various parts of the world in 1951? I cannot remember France as being a hotbed of activity from having read “Legacy of Ashes.”
“Peanuts and peanut butter are also foods to be aware of for potential contamination..”
I like peanut butter but not everyday. An open jar can last years sitting on a shelf in my kitchen. I have not had a bad experience with old peanut butter but a container of French’s Yellow Mustard went bad after about 8 years. The mustard turned brown and a little hard. Maybe I should have kept the mustard in the refrigerator.
gager, sweet potatoes are not nutrient poor unless they’re grown on mineral-depleted soil. Same for ordinary potatoes, and the Irish were reported to be unusually strong and good-looking on their potato diet.
Wheat is not ‘nutrient poor’ any more than potatoes are. I eat a lot of wheat precisely because it is an excellent source of minerals. The plant puts the minerals there because they’re needed for germination, meaning that if wheat really were nutrient poor it would be extinct.
This is not how science works. Nutrient density is an actual measurement of the content percentages for each essential nutrient. Wheat is macro nutrient dense for asingle macronutrient, carbohydrate but nutrient sparse for the other two macronutrients and for most micronutrients. There’s a reason why you see the word “enriched” on wheat products, its an attempt by Government regulation to compensate for micronutrient malnutritoin resulting from diets depending largely upon wheat. This isn’t new the work goes back over one hundred years with the experiments defining the previously common diseases such as pellagra and scurvy. The name vitamin comes form that period, beginning as Vital Amine when it was believed the essential micronutrients were amines. Being generally nutrient sparse wheat contributes to the epidemic of metabolic syndrome evidenced by the growing rates of obesity. It results from the body’s natural instinct to strive for full nutrition but when a food item of high calories and generally low nutrient density forms too large a portion of the diet the choice is between metabolic syndrome and malnutrition and survival demands the former. The body simply can;t get enough nutrition without consuming excess calories which elevates blood sugar. Elevated sugar is toxic so insulin is secreted to dispose of it as fat which is added to existing stores of fat on the body. Children and young adults are so active they can burn off excess calories but with each decade activity level and calorie burning declines and the fattening increases. Meat producers run profitable businesses and have figured out how to make animals gain the maximum weight in the minimum time at minimum cost. They pen up the animals to minimize activity and feed only grain, usually corn since it raises blood sugar even more effectively than wheat, and its cheaper..
Dave, you are talking about refined wheat, not whole wheat. Everybody agrees that white wheat flour is nutrient poor and toxic.
Sorry, no its grains in general. I know the talk about whole grains and the warm fuzzy feeling thing but there is not science to support it. In fact some suspect whole grains could be less nutritious than refined grains for two reasons. The part that’s removed in the refining process contains more of the anti-nutrients so induces poorer absorption of the nutrients in the grain. Secondly regulation does not require whole grain flour to be enriched for some reason so those added nutrients are missing. Then we are asked about the fiber as though there were data to support the healthful benefits of fiber.,there never was any. Recently some large studies have focused on fiber in an attempt to determine the truth. However none have been able to show any health benefit. In fact we do have results on an unintended study as a result of the introduction of the fake fat sold as olestra. You might wonder why chips containing it carried a warning of the potential for anal leakage. That kind of put paid to the potential market but the reason was that fake fat is made by linking carbohydrate molecules together in long chains with linkages for which we do not have the enzyme to break; in other word indigestible. In other words its a fiber. However some gut bacteria do have the ability to digest them and other fiber too by the simpler process of fermentation. most people feel this is less than desirable, especially the anal leakage. The amount of fiber in whole grains is smaller so will not cause problems to this degree but intentionally feeding what may be hostile gut bacteria to the detriment of the essential symbiotic ones is the root of many IBS symptoms and provides an explanation of why a low carbohydrate diet will often eliminate symptoms of IBS.
The Drs. Jaminet (“The Perfect Health Diet”) suggest that of the safe starches, white rice is relatively innocuous, presumably because the brown rice likewise contains phytic acid that white rice does not. Their findings are that white rice does not create the endocrine disruptions that wheat and other grains do, which of course runs counter to the widely-promoted notion that unprocessed rice and whole wheat is superior to the refined versions.
“Recently some large studies have focused on fiber in an attempt to determine the truth. However none have been able to show any health benefit.”
Doesn’t the fermentation of fiber by the gut flora create SCFAs? That process then protects the bowel from pathogens as well.
I don’t know that that means we should slavishly pump added fiber into foods or encourage over-consumption, as that would intuitively seem to encourage an imbalance in gut flora. It would seem that eating a balanced diet with fiber naturally found in fruits and vegetables would suffice.
That’s an excellent clarification. I knew rice rice was regarded as the least troublesome but really had never seen an explanation why, Veterinarians seem to know it generally, prescribing white rice for dogs recovering from gut issues. I’d repeatedly asked nutritionists why peoples depending substantially upon rice exhibit fewer problems than those depending upon other grains.but never got an explanation. As you say the fiber obtained naturally from leafy vegetables etc probably provides sufficient fiber for the essential gut bacteria. Unfortunately the gut has hardly been studied, viewed more as a waste channel than an essential part of the system yet now early studies are finding the gut bacteria produce most of the serotonin required by the brain and in recent studies on IBS it was found that fecal transplants were not only successful in eliminating symptoms in many sufferers but some with Parkinson’s disease also saw their symptoms also disappear. Puts a whole new slant on gut feelings. We need to know a lot more about how diet influences the gut and then how it influences the rest of the body and the role of fiber is one of the least understood.
It’s a fascinating field, to be sure, and humbling to think how much good health may be dependent on millions of gut inhabitants. Sadly, most Americans think they can eat some sugary yogurt conconction and all is well in the gut, when 90% of the gut flora (bacteroides) cannot be acquired through probiotic supplementation. To say nothing of course of the irony of eating adding sugars in “health” foods.
Finnegan, the reason white rice doesn’t create the ‘endocrine disruptions’ that white flour does is probably because of the lower iron content. White flour has twice as much iron as white rice, and recent work in China has linked this to the growing diabetes epidemic. Iron cannot be excreted, so the best protection is a high manganese intake and/or a high phytate intake.
Dave, enrichment of white flour means adding back a few of the micronutrients that have been removed and forgetting about the others. Whole grain flour contains them all, in the right amounts. Why should it be enriched?
Jane, when you say the right amounts I don’t know what that means. I researched nutrition content of whole wheat and this is my finding.
To meet minimum daily requirements for:
Total fat….8.81 lbs = 13,566 calories
Vitamin K…8.81 lbs
Calcium….6.61 lbs = 10175 calories
Copper….1.15 lbs = 1767 calories
Zinc………1.15 lbs
Potassium …1.89 lbs = 2906 calories
No vitamins A, C, D, or B12
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/5744/2
This looks very poor compared to meat. Pemican will supply all nutritional needs on 8 ounces.
This is what you would need to consume of whole wheat to meet daily minimum nutritional requirements and the resulting calories.
Energy dense, nutritional poor.
Total fat….8.81 lbs = 13,566 calories
Vitamin K…8.81 lbs
Calcium….6.61 lbs = 10175 calories
Copper….1.15 lbs = 1767 calories
Zinc………1.15 lbs
Potassium …1.89 lbs = 2906 calories
No vitamins A, C, D, or B12
gager, the ‘right amounts’ are the amounts needed to process the carbohydrate. Enrichment of white flour with calcium and iron is arguably insane, because they inhibit absorption of magnesium and manganese, which have anyway been almost completely removed and are essential for carbohydrate metabolism.
My understanding, and correct me if I am wrong, is that because humans have so little of the enzyme phytase the ability to absorb most of the minerals from non-sprouted grains is minimized. In other words, the mineral content is present in wheat breads, but it’s not bio-available to us.
As for the PNG diet, even if sweet potatoes are grown in a mineral-rich loam, I would rather have a diverse diet than a reliance on any single food. I cannot imagine that such a diet wouldn’t exhibit profound nutritional deficiencies over time. While one may survive on such a diet, does that necessarily mean it would be optimal?
Finnegan, studies on Africans eating a high-phytate diet have found no difference in various measures of mineral nutrition compared to those eating a low-phytate diet. Phytate need not prevent mineral absorption. There are experiments that seem to show it does, but there are others showing it doesn’t. It has even been found to improve copper absorption. It certainly can inhibit iron absorption, and this is considered by many people to be beneficial. Iron overload is implicated as a cause of many diseases.
“Phytate need not prevent mineral absorption.”
But that’s exactly what phytic acid does: “Phytic acid has a strong binding affinity to important minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, iron, and zinc. When a mineral binds to phytic acid, it becomes insoluble, precipitates and will be nonabsorbable in the intestines.” (Wiki.)
Wheat is also a big part of over-consumption of carbohydrates as a macronutrient (CDC reports that on average, US males consume 300 g. of carbohydrates per day, and US females 224. g.), along with corn and sugars. That impact alone cannot be ignored with the diabesity “epidemic.” The glycemic load of wheat as opposed to fruit or vegetable carbs is also worth noting (e.g., the GI of watermelon is very high, but the GL is negligible) in light of endocrine disruption.
The lectin content of wheat makes it a prime contributor to leaky gut and related diseases as well. As I continue to consider my personal nutrition, I cannot see wheat and most grains as anything but an indulgence if one is interested in eating for good health. The mineral content of grains, even if it were bio-available without sprouting or fermentation, would not be enough for me to go back to eating copious amounts of grains and pastas.
Your suggestion that wheat can chelate excess dietary iron is interesting: perhaps we should eat bread when eating, say, swordfish to counter any possible mercury?
Finnegan, phytate need not prevent mineral absorption: if your colon is acid enough (high fibre low protein diet) the metals fall off.
All the problems you attribute to wheat come from refined wheat, not whole wheat, whose minerals are necessary for many digestive processes.
Gager, I am skeptical too (probably obviously)
Epic material on China Study. Which one is debunked Minger or Campbell, take a guess.
“Epic material”
You should do comedy.
Wow, this guy in these videos uses a ton of fallacies against you. If you ever want to debunk him, just use this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MhhJAGjBIEw
It’s funny how he admits that he didn’t even hear your lecture before attacking you. This is known as putting your logic, or conclusions before your grammar or research. He also repeatedly uses off point remarks, ad hominems, appeal to ridicule and other fallacies against you. He constantly makes ad vericundiam towards Dr. Campbell. Anyway, not very sound arguments against you. Nothing that the good’ol 7 liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium can’t handle.
It amazes me how he even admits that he’s not qualified to review and challenge your work, but then he says that you, at 23, can’t possibly be qualified to attack Dr. Campbell, he’s ad vericundiam – or appeal to authority fallacy. He wants us to believe his circumstantial ad hominem against you – that because you’re 23 and were a vegan who had problems that you must have some agenda other than truth. He focuses on siloets of hunterse with a spear in an online presentation as a red herring to stear the conversation away from the facts you’ve presented. He then talks about how Dr. Hall agrees with you on wheat, so therefore she must have only gotten the data from you, and well, since you’re only 23, by this guy’s fallacious arguments, to immature and uneducated to have made a sound argument by simply looking at the data. He also uses guilt by association with the Winston A Price Foundation, which he does nothing to properly, point by point, refute Fallon’s research. These videos are so full of holes and fallacies, you should have a lot of fun with them – if you want to waste your time. I post up the info here on Fallacies so that your audience can study them for themselves and see how poorly argued this guy’s videos are.
Wow, sorry for my bad spelling!
OK, I listened for one minute – it doesn’t deserve more.
This guy is a pest. Send some hungry PNG to him to check if they are vegetarians.
Now, I’ll eat my roasted meat with some dairy, vegetables and … sorry guys, grains.
Ah, I forgot. I’ll eat also some chocolate.
[...] I have read this article. The author calls it “the longest movie review you’ll ever attempt to read”, and [...]
finally someone is making some sense
my wife is chinese so she must eat veg and rice to stay healthy. i’m from the good ‘ol u.s.a so i stick to my pork chops ‘n taders. we actually made two kitchens and take supper at different times just to keep our diets quarantined from one another
our kids are a mixed breed of course so they get half a plate cooked by chef dad, and another half a plate from chef mom
it’s a little extra effort but we manage. we just pray they never mary an inuit though, because all of that whale blubber required to keep them alive is difficult to come by in our neck of the woods. and an inuit without whale blubber as their main diet is dead in the water as we all know
or even worse, they could mary someone from one of those african tribes who guzzle cows blood. and for their people, if you cut off the cows blood supply you’re gonna die ‘fo shizzle’ as they say back in the sahara
great insight!
LOL…..@J Irvin
If you feel confident taking nutrition advices from an 23-year old amateur who is affiliated with non-scientific meat-lobby organization….well, then good luck. I rather take the message directly from people with professional credentials and history of peer-reviewed research, isn’t that revolutionary.
So what you’re saying is that you feel incompetent to trust your own 5 senses to study the data and look at the information yourself, and you need to rely on the fallacy of ad vericundiam to base your judgments, and though you’ve zero evidence that she’s affiliated with the meat lobby, you need to make an ad hominem fallacy that you’ve nothing to support, so therefore you’re also arguing the arbitrary, which is automatically dismissed (the onus of proof is on you), and based on your mention of her age, you feel insecure about it and therefore need to make a circumstantial ad hominem about her, not to mention her being an amateur, as if her age or being an amateur bears anything whatsoever on her ability to analyze the same charts and graphs that Campbell did, using basic mathematics and statistics. So instead you feel more comfortable basing your precarious decision on all of those fallacies, and yet you have the nerve to say anything about her.
I suggest, Jon, based on the clear-cut fallacies that you’ve made here, that you’ve either got an agenda to protect, your urban vegan religion (and don’t worry, I was one too once, then I woke up), and you care more about that, than you do the truth, and therefore, you’re incompetent to make any judgments about anyone else here.
I recommend you take a course in logic and the trivium method, and get your head checked. Anyone who uses that many fallacies in a single paragraph to support their position has some serious flaws in their ability to make clear and cogent decisions based on the facts of reality, which are provided and easily verifiable. The word fallacy comes from the Latin: Fallare – to lie or to deceive. You should be ashamed of yourself for making so many lies about someone that you’ve nothing to substantiate. Pathetic, Jon. Clearly you have an agenda protect, and it isn’t truth. If it was, you’d put Campbell under the same scrutiny, regardless of what ever PhD backs his name, and whatever funny uniform he puts on to make you believe whatever he’s got so say, regardless if it’s provably false or not. Furthermore, if you had any idea of the foundation of the Wundian PhD and allopathic MD systems, you wouldn’t so blindly defend them while putting down independent scholarship. Many of the greatest discoveries in health and the sciences were discovered by independent scholars.
So you’ve nothing but your lies. Next time check the citations provided before you make comment, so that you’re more prepared for the cold reality of your poor critical thinking skills and use of false rhetoric, so that way you don’t get smacked upside the head with it unprepared. I recommend a Cornell University Study for you, by Dunning, David and Kruger, Justin: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~dunning/publications/pdf/unskilledandunaware.pdf
Nice, J. I will only add that Denise is not giving nutritional advice.
I really think Denise should put a comments closing date in. The truth, though relative it may be, seems to bring out the worst in some and the best in others.
“I rather take the message directly from people with professional credentials and history of peer-reviewed research, isn’t that revolutionary.”
Yeah, and academia isn’t corrupt or stupid. Sure.
dr anna
@ J Irvin
Minger is guest speaker at Weston Price Foundations events. Do you think you can find some honest people there? Honest to their cause, but not honest to the pursuit of truth.
“Yeah, and academia isn’t corrupt or stupid. Sure.
dr anna”
Sure, and the Low-carb scholars make up a perfect example. However, in a big picture, it’s just that the chances are way better if you go by the academia such the American Institute of Cancer Research or World Cancer Research as opposed to a blogger.
“This strengthens WCRF/AICR’s recommendation for people to consume a plant-based diet including foods containing fibre, such as wholegrains, fruits, vegetables and pulses such as beans”.
http://www.wcrf-uk.org/audience/media/press_release.php?recid=153
Jon, what is your point that Minger is a speaker at WAPF? I know Sally personally, and have spent many hours talking to her. So what’s you’re point? Sally and WAPF are not supported and do not work with the meat industry either. In fact, Fallon and the WAPF all support your local grass fed ranchers and farmers and not the factory farms. They make this very clear, and in fact, have an entire system to help people find local ranchers and farmers who make everything local, fresh and raw. What’s that got to do with your big factory farms, your guild by associations, your leaping to conclusions, your arguing the arbitrary, your appeal to authority, and your fallacy (lie) filled arguments? You seem entirely confused. You’re still basing your opinions on hearsay and nothing on fact. “Chances are way better to go by academia”. I disagree with that, as the academics almost killed me over a period of 13 years, and it was people like Miss Minger, intelligent enough to think outside the box and not base every thought on appeal to authority, that saved my life. If you need an academic to tell you the exact same thing, well, Jon, then read Dr. William Davis’s book Wheat Belly if you need an allopathic academic to lay out the same things for you as here. Your arguments are based on nothing but vacuous assumptions and not founded on anything solid that you can back. Shame on you.
And Jon, your link does not differentiate between factory farms that feed their livestock grains and corn, anti-biotics and the like, with fresh, grass fed, organic meats. This is the problem I have with you people, is that you repeatedly fail, and fail and fail, to filter items like this when you blame meat. But furthermore, the more I look into these studies against meat, the less founded I find them to be, and the more tied to the “lowering the carbon credit” agenda of the bankers and the like. Interestingly, these same bankers through the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations are the ones who continually fund these “academic” studies, based on their own Wuntian and allopathic systems that they created themselves. I suggest you read Dr. Peter Glidden’s book The MD Emperor Has No Clothes. If you read through that, he makes the differences explicit, but being that he’s a Naturopath, no doubt you’d find reason to attack him too without first reading his book – as you love to base your arguments on ad hominem attacks. You do seem to have a serious problem with reading and studying things first, before you judge them. In logic, this is known as putting your logic before your grammar, or opinions before research. It’s a very bad habit and a rampant problem in our society due to the compulsory education system that has dumbed people down and removed their ability to do their own research and think clearly – via the classical 7 liberal arts (grammar, logic, and rhetoric is the foundation of all thought, removed from our education systems). This leaves them in the ironic position as you of always basing every opinion on some “authority” just because they have a degree behind their name or put on a funny uniform. Again, go up and watch the video I posted on logical fallacies so that you can at least begin to see how your opinions are based entirely on fallacies (aka lies).
“However, in a big picture, it’s just that the chances are way better if you go by the academia such the American Institute of Cancer Research or World Cancer Research as opposed to a blogger. ”
This is dogmatic. Not so long ago the academia was promoting “the negative eugenics” which contributed significantly to the death of millions and “the trickle down” which has contributed to “you know what.”
Not only is it dogmatic, but it’s a simple ad vericundiam fallacy, which is a simple lie. Jon’s argument is that if someone puts on a funny hat or a funny white coat, that they must be correct, and that somehow a researcher’s age bears on the research. Jon is all over the place with his irrationalism and failing to do his research before he comes to conclusions. It’s a sad state, but Jon is a victim of the system which he protects, which is irony.
Jon, Denise just seems to be an exceptionally bright and precocious (helped by her family’s background) individual capable of a serious and convincing analysis. I wouldn’t generalize here.
The China Study (the book) seems to be a piece of propaganda. I wouldn’t generalize here either.
as much as i agree with you jon, you’re not going to have much luck convincing anyone on this page of your opinions. however bear in mind, it’s just a blog. a dedicated forum would be a much better, organized, archived, civil etc pick your word place. on a forum there is less anonymity ie the shills are weeded out by the moderators. and that is important for any online discussion, constant moderation. a blog is the equivalent of a concert poster tacked to a lamp post in a busy city. any nameless person or animal for that matter can leave there mark on it and in the end it becomes a big mess
Nonsense from the clueless.
In some ways, a dedicated forum is much worse. The “moderators” tend to censor competing views so that it is just the choir singing to itself.
And I am a little puzzled by the criticism of the Weston A. Price foundation. This is hardly a industry based powerful lobby group. They support family farms and actually rail against big farming practices and its effect on our food supply. They support the consumption of organ meats, sprouted grains and raw milk. I guess the powerful “liver and kidney lobby” and small area dairies who try to promote raw milk must be a powerful organization who are financing Denise. And if the Weston A. Price foundation was a big powerful lobby group, do you really think they would pick a 23 year old liberal arts major to do their bidding. Think a little.
Denise has put forward tremendous research. The only criticisms I see are generally attacks on her background. I have yet to see someone dissect the work and point out its flaws. It is always about attacking the messenger because they can’t attack the message. Jon in particular looks like a fool in his attacks.
Mario, you’re exactly correct about the WAPF and how they only support local ranchers and farms, and somehow Jon and these others want, without any evidence what so ever, to tie Denise and WAPF to the factory farms which Minger and the WAPF work so hard against. People like Jon are so filled with their own lies and misconceptions that they’re prone to constantly come to false conclusions for the simple fact that they argue the arbitrary and constantly put their conclusions before any research. Those videos that Jon posted admit that the creator refused to even study and compare what Denise had laid out… so right off the bat you know the attack is going to be based on fallacies and not the actual research put forward. These are the tactics of morons. A moron is defined as someone who refuses to research something before he forms a conclusion.
“Those videos that Jon posted admit that the creator refused to even study and compare what Denise had laid out…”
I was right, I was right, I was right … when I refused to watch more than one minute. The guy started his video with attacking her age, her allergies …
BTW, the dinner was great. Clearly, much better than the videos.
forums allow specialization of certain topics so people of like minded views can exchange information without the politics and bs. forums are much more functional this way and allow freedom of expression for everyone without the big jumbled mess that this page has become.
you have a vegan forum over here so vegans can learn in peace with each other, paleo forums over there so they can do the same, bodybuilding forums, gardening forums etc
spammers and shills are a threat to forums and must be policed, opposing view points hold no weight since if you don’t like the forum and it’s views you can go to another one and feel welcome
forums ar much more functional for people who need to learn, blogs are more tabloid for those just passing by to see a bunch of radically conflicting viewpoints with no sub forums, moderation, and such anonymity that you really have no clue who you are exchanging with at any time
this page has 1300 some odd followers, forums have tens, even hundreds of thousands of members. blogs vs forums are two totally different animals.
which begs the qustion, why does denise not begin a forum? surely it would become successful and much more effective in bringing like minded people together than a blog. they will be able to learn from much more effectively and peacefully in a forum there is no question. and it will be much more orderly and people can focus on their discussions in peace
it’s like comparing teaching in a class room to preaching on a street corner. forums are the better choice in the long run!
“…which begs the question,”
Begging the question is neither begging nor a question. “Begging the question” is a logical fallacy.
I love her blog, much better in diversity than many discussion groups I belong to.
you mean all of the child porn discussion groups you belong to?
…And you know this how? Oops.
….and you’re curious enough to interject because? double oops!
he’d just like to know so he can find out some good child porn sites to join that’s all…
makes sense lol
There are no good child porn sites. They are depraved. Denise please remove the trolls.
Frida, Raj, Colleen, Ron, Ken, and all the other names mysteriously attached to the same IP address: y’all are out. If you want to be un-banned, feel free to drop me an email explaining what you have to contribute to the discussion. Long, wandering comment tangents are fine by me, but disrespect and trolling are not.
Thanks Denise. Peachy.
I may not always comment but i am an avid follower. I do comment a fair bit on Melchior Meijer’s blog. Too bad it is only in Dutch, but since a lot of quotes surface from Cordain, or Peter (Hyperlipid), or Steffan Lindeberg, or any of the others who appear have their reservations about our modern western diet, it does have a fairly international character. Melchior Meijer is the Dutch version of Gary Taubes, scientific journalist. And yes he follows what is going on here.
*Sigh of ease*
I was worried that this discussion was going down the drain. Thanks Denise.
To all, including those who I disagree with (sometimes violently so): thanks for the great discussion. It’s packed with thought provoking comments.
A special thanks to Dave Boothman, J. Irvin and James.
….and you’re curious enough to interject because? double oops!
I guess it depends on what you are looking for. If you are a vegan or a low carb fanatic and you just want to discuss things with people of similar views, knock yourself out. To me, that is of marginal benefit. If you are looking for people who will question mainstream thinking and provide arguments for things you had not thought of yourself, well a blog like this is a much better place. Like I said, to me the vast majority of the forums you espouse are simply the choir singing to the choir. If someone shows up with a different hymn book, they are not allowed to sing and they are never heard. To me, that is not what I am looking for.
I just watched all 4 of those videos. I think Denise wins. I could not find a serious criticism with the possible exception of her views on wheat. Does she believe it’s wheat that’s the problem, or white wheat flour? We don’t really know. I would guess that her views are evolving. That’s the great thing about Denise: she’s reasonable as well as careful and hardworking.
Peter and Loren may have their differences but both are pretty adamant that WGA is pretty nasty stuff, and you get it with whole grain. And yes without it, the rest is just a different form of sugar
I haven’t watched the videos, so I’m not sure what they said regarding wheat — but I’ll go on record with the following, because I’ve seen some weird interpretations attributed to my name. My stance is this: From a statistical perspective, wheat had the strongest association with vascular diseases out of any variable in the China Study, but from a cause-and-effect perspective, this means nothing until we do more studies in a controlled setting.
Given the nature of the data and the difficulty of capturing long-term food intake with questionnaires, it’s very possible that there were intervening variables that slipped under the radar. For instance, many of the wheat-based countries had a low intake of folate and probably B12 (which wasn’t measured, but it probably correlates with animal food intake, which was low in some of the wheat-based counties) — both these things could raise serum homocysteine, which greatly increases cardiovascular disease risk. Homocysteine wasn’t measured at all (I’m not sure how important it was considered when the study was conducted), so that’s a potential confounder we’ll never be able to account for in this particular data set. I do think there are some possible mechanisms — particularly involving WGA — that could give wheat a unique link to cardiovascular disease, but they’re mostly speculative at this point, and I’m not willing to make any claims until the evidence is solid.
The biggest reason wheat is important in the context of “The China Study” discussions is the fact that Campbell cited much weaker correlations to bolster his anti-animal-food arguments in his book, while sweeping wheat under the rug without a proper explanation of why its strong associations in the data would be irrelevant. At least two of his peer-reviewed papers mentioned wheat’s link with disease even *after* multivariate analyses, and one paper even offered a lengthy discussion of why wheat could be a contributor to metabolic syndrome and heart disease (especially in contrast to rice) — so he was clearly aware of wheat’s behavior in the data. Whether or not wheat turns out to be harmful in this sense, its exclusion from any discussion in “The China Study” highlights the book’s bias and cherry-picked evidence.
P.S. You guys are awesome and hilarious. I wish I had more time to hang out and comment.
Hi Denise, yes. You will remember the emails I sent to Campbell and his collaborator Richard Peto about this. Neither of them seems to be aware of the mountain of evidence supporting a role for white-flour-dependent copper deficiency in heart disease.
Many years ago I went to a talk by Peto’s mentor Richard Doll, who discovered the link between smoking and lung cancer, and he told us he never ate butter because it causes heart disease. I told him a study had just been published in Science showing that dairy products protect you against heart disease, and he got very angry. I think Peto and perhaps Campbell have been heavily influenced by Richard Doll.
When I first skimmed over The China Study (book) a few years ago, I thought “The author does not understand the scientific method.” However, your work has shown me that he does understand and is able to practice the scientific method. It’s clear to me now from the posts and comments on your blog that TCC PhD did a 3 step process:
1) analyze raw data
2) analyze corrected data
3) speak of results of #1 as though they were the results of #2
It’s not an inability or a mistake. It’s on purpose. He is simply lying.
Hi, I’m brazilian and I know a lot of americans eat more junk food than they should and this kind of food brings diseases. I’ve been vegetarian for one year and I never was the kind of person who eat junk food and I can tell you honestly that I’m so much better and healthy ever since.
i like how people who stand behind the number crunching will always be able drag the lay person who didn’t do the number crunching under the bus. some people didn’t crunch the data presented by campbell nor did they crunch the data presented by minger. so that makes them blind to any and all other evidence or studies found anywhere else in the world i guess and therefore totally inept stupid
if you didn’t do the science presented by the two parties in question you have no clue what you are talking about so take an effing hike buddy right!?!! half the people who are self proclaimed scientists about food are sick because they still couldn’t get it right so that says everything right there. everyone who doesn’t inspect every last bit of data on earth before putting a bite of food in their mouth is totally incompetent and has no clue how to eat right?
nobody is allowed to look at the bigger picture here, look at these numbers, look at campbells numbers, disregard everything else and have a nice day….
f off, stay confused and have a nice day more accurately
i await the witty responses from those hiding behind their ‘set in stone’ ‘numbers never lie so i am right’ types….that’s if you believe everything you read on the internets……LOL
Easy Colleen. I like to compare the discussion to a group of seriously interested people who are having a fantastic exchange of ideas while sitting on a patio somewhere downtown. Every once in a while a big bus comes lumbering by making a heck of a lot of noise. So we stop talking while the bus goes by and then continue. Or it might be one of those Harleys with loud pipes, because the rider has a small wee-wee. It is sometimes a bit of a nuisance but hey that’s life. The discussion still goes on.
What blows me away is that Denise is still following this and by golly are we ever off topic sometimes. Yet the main drift is still, we are all concerned about what we eat and most of us also know that there are no well defined set of answers. Yet we can all distill out of every thing that has been brought to the table that there is a beginning sense of awareness that there may be some problems with the consumption of wheat, especially the modern day varieties.
I also have the dreadful feeling that once indicted this wheat thing could be far more pervasive that we think. I applaud Denise for being very careful, but if I listen to Loren Cordain, Staffan Lindeberg, Peter @ Hyperlipid and many others, it could very well be that William Davis’ prediction that wheat may go the way of tobacco may not be all that far out.
By the way “Food and Western Diseases” by Lindeberg is on the web.
Of course someone can eat perfectly well and have a healthy life. I’m not blind about the evidences. Some people are healthy not becoming vegetarian, but I can tell only about me and I’m healthy now. I’m ovo lacto vegetarian and there’re also another reason why I decided to stop eating meat and it’s all about the animals. I know I always need to pay attention to my diet and it’s very common to me right now. I don’t care if you think I’m stupid for my beliefs or if you think i go with the flow and read bullshits on the internet. I respect your opinion and you can eat whatever you want, man. My country is free, just like yours.
“My country is free, just like yours.”
I was planning to comment, but … what the point?
my point is every person is free to eat (and believe) in whatever you want. That comment was to Coleen
@leticia
“my point is every person is free to eat (and believe) in whatever you want.”
Incorrect. No one is free to eat – or believe – whatever they want. Reality exists –> the truth matters.
My point was that I despise platitudes. That comment was to you.
actually i didn’t mean to reply to your comment leticial and i respect your dietary choices as they are similar to mine. i pressed the wrong reply button!
time to sit back and laugh at some more immature replies from anna as she defends her blog master : )
Thank you so much for this dissection of the Movie and these studies. I came home from work yesterday to my wife in tears after she finished watching “Fork over Knives”. She proceeded to tell me that our family should never eat meat again. No fish, no beef, no pork, nothing. (And honestly, I would rather die than never eat animal protein again. In fact, she said that I might as well “Inject the cancer cells in my arm if I want to drink a glass of milk.”
Hopefully the evidence that you had provided in this blog with plenty of links to the studies that led to this movie will provide me with enough ammunition to get her back off the cliff. You have gained another reader. I hope to incorporate some of the knowledge you provide into my families diet so that we can concern ourselves more with living our lives to the fullest rather than dreading our next meal of greens greens and more greens.
You might also give her a copy of Gary Taubes’s superb book _Good Calories, Bad Calories_, and point her to the chapter on “Diseases of Civilization” — once she learns about the history of cancer in areas where flour and sugar were introduced late in the game, it’ll be hard to continue blaming animal protein! (A later chapter, “Dementia, Cancer, and Aging,” explains likely mechanisms.)
By the way, there’s a thorough summary of _GC,BC_ here: http://gutsandblackstuff.com/2010/04/12/a-summary-of-good-calories-bad-calories-by-gary-taubes/
I’d strongly suggest reading the book “Real Food: What to Eat and Why”. It goes into great detail on what real food is, why we should eat it, and what’s wrong with our modern perception of “health food” (low fat, low calorie, etc. etc.). I really can’t rave about the book enough; it’s informative and packed with references.
I agree with much of what’s in that book, but found it a bit elliptical. That is, the author (Nina Planck) basically arrives at what I consider to be sound results, but does not offer much in the way of supporting evidence. She does include a bibliography, but her cites of studies and, well, Minger-esque analysis of data seems to be lacking. It’s still one that’s worth a look.
Love the video serie,
http://www.youtube.com/user/PrimitiveNutrition
71 high-class videos tearing down the paleo-bogus. Segment on the cholesterol deniers is particularly recommended (videos, 40-42) as it is also related to this thread. The part on Inuits is highly interesting as well (27&28).
Minger, still living in the Weston-Price “la la”-land? Eating lard and avoiding phytates? LOL
“71 high-class videos”…
I checked a couple. This work is, in my book, intellectually speaking at the high school level. And I found lots -LOTS- of cherry-picking. Extremely unscientific, partisan stuff.
The part where they criticise Jaminet’s longevity graph is particularly appaling. Just like Keys in its time, they just pick the countries which fit their explanation and entirely disregard those which contradict it.
And to you, these videos are “high-class”, and Denise Minger’s article is “cuckoo work” (well, you didn’t say it like that, but that’s your feeling, right?).
Definitly shows you extremely poor critical thinking skills. You could spend some time working on these, instead of posting more and more nonsense. You’d be better off.
Just like J Irvin put it above, you’re a victim of the very system you defend. Sad.
Lard has highest smoke point for cooking – this means is is the least oxidative out of cooking oils/fats. Do you understand the importance of that? Of using that which causes the least amount of oxidative stress in your body? If not – then stick to cooking with your canola oil and good luck with your health.
Mingers work gets refuted the very immeadiately she manages to get it published on a scientific platform. And, considering the sheer aggressiveness and dedicatedness of these animal-based fad diet pushers, it would be very bizarre if she was not trying to get her work published 24/7. Good luck with that. So far, its not even worth of refuting. Primitive gorilla-style number crunching ala Cigarette industry of the 1970′s.
Interesting. Nothing factual to back that up, and truly brilliant mangling of the inaugural sentence. Way to make your argument.
What is it the kids today say? Ahh, yes, “epic fail.” That’s it.
“considering the sheer aggressiveness and dedicatedness of these animal-based fad diet pushers”
LOL, like I said above, you should do comedy.
You sound sillier with each new post of yours, Jon.
So many fallacious arguments that your input could be used to create a full tutorial of bad faith rethorics. J. Irvin specifically pointed several ones among the fallacious arguments you’re using. I counted about double what he (she?) -rightly- pointed out.
But you seem to be unable to even understand what a fallacious argument is. You’re probably way too brainwashed and seem to entirely lack the ability to think for yourself.
You may have a bright future in politics, though.
What is sad is that in the end, it’s always people like you who rule the world, with all their foolishness, tunnel vision and partisan thinking.
“You know you’ve got to exercise your brain just like your muscles.”
(Sir Thomas Robert Dewar)
rather than go the Jon route and say that you’re argument isnt worth commenting on , shortly after or before commenting profusely on it, ill just point out your [Jon's] “trollish” (to insight emotion or take away validity in another or their argument with virtually nothing to offer in replacement, as well as little to no evidence other than “uh-uh”) behavior, and how even a simple college grad completely unversed in research and statistics can see that you are lining up her iterations and providing shallow to absolutely depth-less arguments against, hugely commiting the oversights with your own refutations that you are claiming exists within her brief study description. Honestly, I’m surprised you spent the time and effort just looking for visually representing ways to say, “and you see here.. she said X… nah-uh see on this other website.. stupid girl.. pfft.. do your wikipedia research before posting on my intArwebz!!” im saying it … im trolling… Jon you are retarded.. shurt urp and go eat some fatty meats til u gain mass to cover up that retarded hole you call a mouth.. it takes little to no brains to know that you’re an idiot.. (more raging n naysaying) … i mean … (more badmouthing and trashtlking)… just take some gourde type items and (tad more badmouthing) …
also.. i really liked the article minger, informative and compelling to consider the data. nice work lady (also also you’re cute)
Josh, I just read as much as I could get of that book. It’s brilliant.
Could people please call Lisa Smith “Lisa S” so that she doesn’t get mixed up with me please?
Highly recommended. This silly, giggling person debunking epideologic studies
Why would i listen to these over weight people on this video and someone who is the narrative giggling about the whole thing. Also dont compare humans with animals. Stop trying to justify your answers with your conclusions of comparisons.
epidemiologic, that is
Jon, do you think it would be possible to study the logical fallacies that I mentioned to you previously, so that you can begin to think clearly and not make repeated appeal to ridicule and other fallacies? It doesn’t make you appear very intelligent.
I’ve just interviewed Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly, for this week’s show on http://www.gnosticmedia.com. It’s explosive and he’s well familiar with and is a big fan of Denise’s work, which he sites in his book. Hold on, because this is explosive, and he’s got 20 years of clinical histories to prove that it’s not the animal fats killing us, but the wheat. And hopefully we’ll be able to get Denise on next week. I had hoped to have her on as a prelude to this interview.
J – I am looking forward to your interview with the Wheatbelly doc.because I do think increased carb (sugar and grain, refined or unrefined – doesn’t matter as similar insulin response is evoked) intake is a huge illness contributor ignored by T. C. Campbell.. I listened to Dr. Davis interviewed on Underground Wellness and he was phenomenal so this should be great. Can’t understand the venom you are receiving from poster Anna. Seems uncalled for and childishly spiteful. Wish you well and glad you mentioned the interview as it has brought me to the site you’re on and I see some other great interviews there too.
I am sorry, but I can’t find it on your site. Is it not yet uploaded?
Hi Deneen, I’m so sorry for not explaining earlier, but the interview was recorded today, 1.5 hours worth, so it’s being edited right now. I hope to get it out tonight, doing my best, but I just had to pick up my son. Tomorrow AM at the latest.
And it’s a fantastic interview, BTW.
He also 100% supports what Denise is doing here and is a big fan of her work.
excellent! I look forward to listening.
Well, well, well … It’s beginning to be really interesting.
J. Irwin, are you a face of gnosticmedia? I am sure gnosticmedia promote truth and truth only. Yes, sarcasm. I just glanced at the website and it was more than I needed.
Denise, you might have a much bigger problem than this troll you just banned.
I agree anna, I had to leave before listening to the interview. another nutjob.
Ah, you’re going to resort to the same sort of fallacies as Jon, huh? See the above video before you start slinging unbaked fallacies. Thanks.
Now, I am beginning to be confused. Aren’t neo-Nazis supposed to be vegetarians, just like the Master.
Who are you calling a neo-Nazi? So you’re just as full of ad hominem attacks and lies as Jon? You should actually listen and read and study, gather your who what where when before you attempt to determine why – iIt’s only logic and common sense. Otherwise it makes you look foolish. Why is it that so many people are willing to leap to conclusions before they study? Why do so many people put their logic (conclusions) before their grammar (research). You’d think that all of the false attacks thrown around here against Denise would make it clear to people that they have to base their opinions on the actual data and not their emotional reactions to something they clearly don’t understand.
No, Irvin, you won’t intimidate me. You are in the area of MY expertise.
No, but your false conclusions are enough to intimidate yourself. It sadens me to see people constantly resort to fallacious attacks and then think they’re actually winning some sort of intellectual conversation. I’ve said nothing to you, done nothing to you to ask for your sarcastic attacks and appeal to ridicule, and yet here you are, attacking me without merit.
Please provide a point by point analysis of the information on my site to back your claims, otherwise I ask that you refrain from your false attacks and argumentum ad ignorantium.
J – If you stop participating she will only have herself to direct her anger towards. Angry people are angry people – and they’ll lash out at whomever indiscriminately. Let her move on with her spite and judgements as her primitive behavior is an obstacle to any discussion. Much was learned here and thank you thank you to Denise!
Thank you, Lisa. You’re exactly correct. As they say, if you argue with fools you become one. Thanks for the reminder.
Yes, Irvin, what saddens you is my primary concern in life.
Wow, you must be really full of yourself and your ability to utilize sophist attacks. You personally attack me with fallacies that you pulled out of thin air, completely unsubstantiated. I asked you simply to back your statements with proof, point by point. So rather than own up to your BS, you throw out a red herring and appeal to ridicule that you are somehow a concern of mine. Fail.
Has anyone checked Anna’s IP address to make sure that she and Jon aren’t one in the same?
J, you claim that some of the video of the moon landing is faked without any evidence at all you accept that ridiculous claim. All those nonsense claims of faked moon landing has been thoroughly debunked. Talk about bad reason and logic.
I worked on surveyors 4, 5, and 6. Those men that went to the moon were courageous and do not deserve the bs coming from idjuts.
Gager, if you actually read the post, you’ll see that I did infact provide evidence. Whether or not you watched it is beside the point.
No, Irvin, I am pretty sure Denise will be able to check your “notoriety” easily.
Yes, my life’s work is stored permanently at Purdue University’s Special Archives Collections at the library there, headed by Dr. Dave Nichols. That’s the same facility that stores Amelia Earhart’s work. I’ve received quite a lot of academic recognition for my work, thanks.
Do you get some sort of ego boost by making unsubstantiated attacks against people? Is this some form of provisional self-esteem for you? Maybe you’re still eating wheat.
Anyway, I’m through feeding your insecurities and in-cognizance. Good luck with that.
Let it go J Irvin, engaging in an argument with anna or gager is a lost cause. You can’t win when faced with agressivity and sarcasm over the internet, unless you yourself resort to agressivity and sarcasm, or maybe publish over-long posts, that will only get read and understood by a small minority anyway.
“Do you get some sort of ego boost by making unsubstantiated attacks against people?”
You’re most probably right about that. Actually, in a way, ego boost is what we all get from posting on the net. Some apparently need to do that in a very unfriendly and immature way, that’s a pity but hey if they’re angry with the world as a whole, there must also be some explanation as to why. I’m not saying that I understand them but well… oh but wait yes, I do. I do understand them. I’ve been in their shoes in the past. Not any better than them. I just happened to grow up.
I’m with (non-Smith) Lisa, the discussion here is full of really great posts, let’s try and ignore those which lead nowhere at all. I’ll try to take some of my own advice.
Thank you as well. I told Lisa thanks for the reminder not to argue with fools, less we become one.
Amen to that! I can appreciate that it is almost impossible for a single person to moderate these comments, but I find the lack of moderation a bit of a nuisance. I grant everybody the freedom of speech, but I do have a bit of a problem when people get too far off topic, which of course is hard to enforce without engendering some hard feelings. Somehow or other there will always be a remark or comment that is related somewhere, somehow but that really is not concerned with the general drift of the discussion and because of it it does not help get the discussion any further: these remarks keep us moving in circles. I certainly don’t want to knock the people that have a hard time keeping up with the more intelligent musings, but it certainly does not raise such person or persons’ own awareness by degrading somebody else’s opinion or twisting words. Personal attacks should not be allowed. Please deal with the issues at hand and do some research before firing off another personal attack that in fact only exposes the worst in you for all the world to see. I find that embarrassing.
OK, since this is a nutrition site, I have a couple of questions to Mr. Irvin in this area:
- what diet does your friend (and sponsor?) Ahmadinejad prefer?
- what do you drink and smoke?
- what do you serve to the Holocaust deniers before your “discussions?”
Oh, have many more questions. Next time.
OK, brief summary of the events. Although my alma mater is ancient, although I lived and worked in a medieval city (yes at the same alma mater as an academic), although I had plenty of Latin and was interested in medieval universities in general and their programs, although I just skimmed the lengthy earlier Irvin’s comments, something didn’t seem right there- overdone, pretentious, disproportional. My instinct? (knowledge?) was correct. The fact that several years ago I participated in some too lightly moderated political forums, invaded by all sorts of nuts with their lengthy “scholarly production” probably helped too.
Whizzy, you didn’t surprise me – I was expecting. James, no surprise here either, even though I didn’t know what to expect. Lisa, I don’t remember a single comment.
My interview with Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly:
http://www.gnosticmedia.com/wheatismurder
Seems to be different motives for the podcast Davis is to educate nutrition and Irvin to expose conspiracy nonsense. Where is Ventura when you need him.
No, Gager, no. Whatever he does is subjugated to his main motive. I’ll elaborate late.
Great interview, Jan. Dr. Davis is really on to something there. I knew many of the problems with wheat before but was glad to hear them re-iterated. Also to know that it doesn’t matter if the wheat is whole or has been processed, it is still the same plant and has terrible properties. I was saddened to learn about the fact that all grains are really not a healthy choice. I guess I really need to take that Naltrexone so I can get off the grain! LOL.
I am not sure why you are getting so much flak about the interview especially from others here who I think (if I am following carefully) actually embrace a grain-free diet. I was pretty certain that Jane was the only one who was pro-grain here.
If it’s about the fact that you believe that Big Business cares only about the bottom line and not about the health of people, well, that just leaves me bewildered, because that is certainly the truth!
Anyway, I look forward to your interview with Denise!
Thanks, Deneen. There are too many people in this world who only care to dream up their own fantasies about the facts of reality, rather than studying and fact checking things for themselves via their own 5 senses. They’re jealous, insecure, and require provisional self-esteem by putting down others.
If you’re ever interested in studying the trivium method, you’ll realize that people who put their logic before their grammar are incapable of thinking clearly or deriving certainty, and are often prone to lies – and unfortunately make up the largest segment of our society. It seems that everywhere you go, people have their agendas to protect, rather than truth. It bewilders me too.
Thanks Deneen,
Always good to hear from some real people. As said before I don’t want to knock the slightly challenged but there is sometimes a thin line between the lesser gifted ones and the trolls. What I’ve done is, go through the whole blog and transfer the real comments and leave out the doozies. I may not agree with all those that I collect, but they form some substance at least that is worth considering and then I take my time to check references and google for the rest. That combined with Steffan Lindeberg’s Food and Western Diseases and Denise’s contributions will keep me busy most of the winter.
If you’re interested in Lindeberg’s book, drop me a throw away e-mail address and I mail you the link. Hope it is still there.
You can send that link to deenpac a_t ‘the mail that’s the opposite of cold’. Thanks James1
Enjoyed the Davis input but the host cheapened the interview. At a little after 17 minutes the host claimed that Bill Gates was in a conspiracy to kill 100 million people and then at 1 hour and 5 minutes the host again claimed that Bill Gates was involved to kill 10% of the population. Is that idiotic or what?
I wonder if Bill Gates knows about this?
It’s ‘idiotic’ only because that’s your personal, far-streched, taken-out-of-context, distorted interpretation of what the host actually said.
The host DID NOT ‘claim that Bill Gates was in a conspiracy to kill 100 million people’ [etc... ]
What the host did (and anyone can verify it), is to give a reference to an actual fact, that Bill Gates once explained, in public, that vaccines could be used on purpose to kill millions of people.
You don’t believe this? Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQtRI7A064
So well… did you twist the host’s words on purpose, or do you lack basic english understanding, or do you suffer from attention deficit, or were you simply in an off mood when listening to this interview?
If you were trying to make J Irvin’s look like a fool.. well… as anna likes to put it (ironically, with a stunning lack of lucidity about her own superficiality in analysis), ‘try harder’.
Bill Gates did not say that vaccines could or would be used to kill millions. Your own lack of research shows that you are being duped by the likes of Irvin, Jeff Rense and Jesse Ventura.
Do you think that anyone with an ounce of common sense would make a declaration of murderous intent.. Look at the whole presentation by Gates, not the few minutes that idiots use to support their nonsense.
http://skeptimommy.hubpages.com/hub/The-Vaccine-Conspiracy-Bill-Gates-is-NOT-Trying-to-Kill-Your-Children
What’s you problem with ‘COULD’.. which doesn’t mean ‘WOULD’ last time I checked..?
Besides, you don’t seem to be willing to adress your incorrect transcription of what ‘the host’ said, which is the subject at hand.
As for brainwashing, the video you link to with your name says it all about your resistance to propaganda. Whih quite seems to be equal to… zero. You’re certainly not in a position to give lessons.
I do agree, though, that Gate’s speach has been grossly distorted, with a purpose (just like you, incidentally, distorted J Irvin’s words – with a purpose, or at least so it seems).
I do agree, though, that Gate’s speech has been grossly distorted, with a purpose (just like you, incidentally, distorted J Irvin’s words – with a purpose, or at least so it seems).
Get out of the gutter Wizzu, you’re getting yourself dirty too. It’ll wear itself out eventually. Noticed how pretty much all of the real commentators have left? Leave the mud slinging to the experienced mud clingers. Not too difficult to analyze where the problems lie.
Actually you’re very right. I said I’d try to take some of my own advice and… didn’t. I realise I’m starting to be a part of the problem.
Thanks for the heads-up James.
@anna: I found absolutely nothing which would justify your froth-at-the-mouth accusations and insults. In my view you’re tilting at windmills. For me this case is closed, and I’ll let J Irvin defend himself on the whole preposterous neo-nazi accusation thing (though I think he would be better off by taking James’ hint and ignore you just like I’m going to).
I’m back to reading and archiving thqueenbee’s posts now.
Great stuff.
And it wasn’t clear what you would find? Sure.
Wizzu, any plans to join other IT specialists in Southern California …. in their training places?
Specifically Gates said that by improving health care we can reduce the population growth to zero. I’m in full agreement.
Some ways to improve health is through proper nutrition another is with proper vaccination. Vaccines have prevented me from getting trichinosis and polio.
Not trichinosis, I meant tetanus.
(NaturalNews) In a recent TED conference presentation, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to new vaccine efforts, speaks on the issue of CO2 emissions and its effects on climate change. He presents a formula for tracking CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C.
P = People
S = Services per person
E = Energy per service
C = CO2 per energy unit
Then he adds that in order to get CO2 to zero, “probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty close to zero.”
Following that, Bill Gates begins to describe how the first number — P (for People) — might be reduced. He says:
“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com
Bill Gates:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQtRI7A064&w=420&h=315
Lethal injection:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UioC6ARoLEM&w=420&h=315
Furthermore, Bill Gates’ Father was also on the board of Planned Parenthood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Gates,_Sr.
For more information on why this matters, watch the film MAAFA 21:
Planned parenthood is a very smart concept. The earth is quickly reaching the maximum population it can support or maybe we have passed the maximum.
Bill Gates supports zero population growth as should everyone.
So what you’re saying is that again you didn’t check the citation?
And your claim is completely false, and it sounds like you’re spewing that disproved garbage from Al Gore.
We covered how such claims are a bizarre distortion of the facts last year.
Not to mention we also covered this in the discussion that “doctor” anna attacked. Had either of you actually listened, you wouldn’t need to regurgitate such falsehoods without fact checking them yourself.
Here’s a documentary that flushes out this entire topic (as if the MAAFA 21 video didn’t already): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frxb9cMv9Lk&feature=player_embedded
But I get that you support the eugenics program and think its justified to adversely affect people’s lives and reproductive capability without their consent.
You should also watch the Lethal Injection film I already posted to you above. You have to put your research before conclusions. This means actually reading/watching/listening BEFORE coming to conclusions about evidence. But we also note that you went from accusing me of being an idiot for even bringing this issue up, and then you change your tune to supporting it. You’re a world of contradictions.
What I always say to eugenists: if you think there are too many people on the world, make a difference, start by killing yourself first.
Correction.
In my previous comment I meant of course “Wizzu” (and not “Whizzy”)
Folk, remember to eat your glutein, not doin’ so may jeopardize your health
Jon, I am not dropping grains, but reducing them (I really ate too much). I know a number of people who like me came from grain/meat cultures and who lived a long and healthy lives and their deaths had nothing to do with a diet. A bullet for example, can kill both a grain eating person and non-grain eating person.
Destabilization of the world by the Irvins and the like might give everyone an opportunity to check this truth. Good luck.
This is more interesting than I thought.
Two people who dominate (James and Wizzu) the forum and dictate who should live and who should die (or at least stay or go) like an open, confirmed and notorious neo-Nazi. Wow.
The problem might be deeper than I thought. Any connection between paleo? raw? and … you know what?
Yes, James, Deneen is a perfect Irvin’s “customer.” She was told to eat grains – she ate them. Now, she is told not to eat grains – she won’t eat them.
Bravo, Irvin. Success. This soul is yours – she will believe whatever you want her to believe and do whatever you want her to do – well beyond grains.
Gager, I think my elaboration can be now short. You see how it works. The pattern is the same – if you want to convince someone, convert someone,
etc. – you give them some chocolate – they like, they trust you, then … The rule number two – always insert some facts (like some real person) into the most insane theory, Deneens of the world then say: “But this is true, so everything is true.” The tsarist propaganda did this, the British propaganda did this, the KGB did, the Nazis did it, neo-Nazis (and their friends) do it.
BTW, dear triumvirate? (Irvin, James, Wizzu?), if you want this blog, you can have it. I most certainly won’t spend my days fighting Nazis and their … (the establish term is “collaborators.”
Excuse me? Please don’t speak of me as if I am not here.
Anna, I don’t know what your beef is with the others, but please leave me the hell out of it. I would never make decisions on my site based on what one person said. I practice medicine for a living and I have been studying nutrition for many years and have modified my diet accordingly )and advise others to do read, read, read and do the same).
I cut wheat out a year ago and have been trying to wean myself off of the other grains and starches altogether for months (potato chips remains my biggest vice). What Dr. Davis said in that interview only confirmed what I already knew (except the seborrhea, which I am going to research further).
So, there may be other medical practitioners out there like me, but I doubt there are many. So please don’t refer to me like I am a dime a dozen. I can assure you, I am quite unique and can and do develop my opinions given my own research.
Ugh, sorry about the typos. Auto-correct is a pain!
Yes, Deneen, the typos are the worst thing which can happen. I think you were told so.
dr anna
Denise, hasn’t Anna entered pure troll territory?
Calling people nazis and the like… gee… introducing a possible conspiration… attacking people for no reason at all… she’s really trying (consciously or not) to turn this blog into a mere playground for her ego.
In a (weird kind of) way it’s funny, and I think no one will take her seriously. But it’s a serious nuisance nonetheless in my opinion. YMMV.
Seriously me, a nazi supporter? OMG… *LOL* it’s one of the most preposterous things I’ve ever read. I guess it didn’t even cross anna’s mind to click on my name and check my website before resorting to such unsubstantiated, ridiculous (and extremely insulting) accusations.
I’m also thrilled (and baffled) to learn that I’m ‘dominating’ this forum. That’s a lot of credit…
@J Irvin: thanks for the interview with Dr Davis.
anne said: (talking about J Irvin)
“[..]an open, confirmed and notorious neo-Nazi”
[..]“holocaust deniers” [..]
To me, these are extremely serious accusation. I loathe fascism, intolerance, racism and all forms of authoritarian political systems.
I urge you to provide the sources on which you base these accusations.
If you do so and it happens to be true on further examination, I will publicly apologise to you and I will stop all conversations with J Irvin.
But I’m willing to bet that it’s just another of these blanket statements with which you constantly keep on polluting this little corner of the web, and for which you won’t provide ANY backup as usual.
Your move.
“I can assure you, I am quite unique”
If so, Irvin, no more souls for you. Try harder.
OK, Wizzu.
Let’s start with Neo-Nazism. Here what Wiki has to say:
“Neo-Nazism borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including militant nationalism, fascism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia and anti-Semitism. Holocaust denial is a common feature …”
Below is a fragment from CUNY’s website:
http://www.york.cuny.edu/~drobnick/holbib1.html#america
Holocaust-denial is a body of work that seeks to prove that the Jewish Holocaust did not happen. Although not all of the deniers, who prefer to call themselves “revisionists” in an attempt to gain scholarly legitimacy, make the same claims, they all share at least one point: that there was no systematic attempt by Nazi Germany to exterminate European Jewry. Those who deny the Holocaust believe that the Jews themselves, usually referred to as “Zionists,” fabricated the “Big Lie” in order to gain sympathy for a homeland and to extort money, in the form of reparations payments, from Germany.
The Nazis themselves can be thought of as the first Holocaust revisionists, for they tried to conceal their extermination program behind euphemisms such as “special treatment” and “final solution to the Jewish problem.” Present-day revisionists all share deep seated anti-Semitic feelings, a hatred of Israel, and a need to rehabilitate and glorify Germany, fascism, and the Third Reich.
The rest is provided by … Mr Irvin himself by promoting … well .. a Holocaust denier:
“Bob Tuskin hosts, and Jan Irvin co-hosts, in this interview with Vaughn Klingenberg on the Holocaust.
What happens when someone who’s born of Jewish heritage questions the veracity of the Holocaust using the trivium? Listen and find out.”
I didn’t watch the video itself (not good from my stomach in the morning) but I did scan comment applauding, applauding Mr Irvin for … the HOLOCAUST DENIAL.
This just one, blatant example.
Frankly, it’s hard to believe that an IT specialist can’t find information which is so easily available. And yes, another Holocaust denier, Ahmadinejad is a friend of your new “friend.”
Congratulations, Wizzu.
Ah, I forgot to provide a ling to a charming (yes, sarcasm) video:
http://www.gnosticmedia.com/bob-tuskin-and-jan-irvin-interview-vaughn-klingenberg-on-the-holocaust-commercial-free-version/
One more clarifying information. I quoted CUNY bibliography (and not any other of places dealing with the issue) any of for a simple reason – Klingenberg is listed there as one of the Holocaust deniers and their website was on top of my search results.
Wizzu,
I am still not ready to watch this video, but I glanced again at comments:
This what Mr. Irvin recommends:
“Jan Irvin on November 29, 2011 at 11:55 pm
You may find interest in seeking a film called Last Days of the Big Lie.”
Wizzu, the Holocaust denial is only part of his program. I really can’t spend more time and provide Mingeresque analysis, but the moment I saw his reference to GNOSTIC MEDIA I knew there was a problem. One glance at the website confirmed the correctness of my response.
When you study certain things you develop certain responses. For example, an art historian sees a picture and his response is immediate: “Ah, such a wonderful Bellini.” (I know I respond in this way). He/she doesn’t go around asking questions: “Do you know who is a painter? Can you provide references to this? Why do think it’s Bellini and not Picasso? etc.”
Similarly, with responses to bigotry. When you spend time studying and analyzing, certain responses are automatic: “Oh no, another one.”
Hey Anna, before you try to take things out of context again, you might like to know that that is a JEWISH show. You are unbelievably selective in your analysis, cherry picking what you like, again putting your logic before your grammar, which of course I know you didn’t even bother to seek out that citation and and view it before you posted it here out of context. You have some serious mental and personality disorders. You may have a vit. B deficiency. The show wasn’t bigotry at all, but rather it was looking a Jewish host with me co-hosting looking at all sides of the information from a non-prejudice, un-bigoted perspective and studying the bigotry caused by such ill-informed people as yourself. Congratulations for once again proving yourself to be emotionally biased, unstable and mentally deranged, incapable of listening to the very interview itself only gleaning one citation out of context, much less reading the description where this very fact was explained. In the first minute of the show, the host explained that he was Jewish and that the show was all about investigating emotionally reactive people such as yourself.
Irvin I’ll ignore your “compliments.” Your arguments were predictable. Sorry to disappoint you but whether or not someone was born somehow Jewish doesn’t matter. What he/she does – matters.
There is a trend in neo-Nazi circles to use people somehow Jewish as a shield – see he’s Jewish.
Now, some facts.
Recently, I heard a program on NPR about Native American children who were taken from there families and sent to some boarding schools where they received a special, very special education. Each day they listened to insistent and persistent “Look at this lady, she’s so white, so tall, so beautiful, so good, unlike those people who are short, dark, ugly and bad.” Guess whom the children ended up admiring and whom despising. Prejudices, ideology, myths etc. are not genetic – they are acquired. It’s a known fact, that those members of oppressed minorities who change their look, their beliefs, their religion to join the majority INTERNALIZE “PREJUDICES, MYTHS, CLICHES, etc.” Those who do it never say: “I stopped being Jewish, Black, Latino or whomever, because I was weak, I saw opportunities, etc.” but they say: “I did it because they are bad.”
Secondly, there are sick people and neo-Nazi love, love, love sick Jews – what not to love there – a Jew is sick and he is useful. etc.
Thirdly, it’s painful to say, but there are scoundrels among Jews, as among any other group, who would do anything for … oil money for example. Anyone you know? I can name a number of scoundrels.
Summary – your arguments are not arguments. Try harder.
Yes, Anna, you’re correct. You didn’t even hear the interview, know the host, know what we discussed, check the citations we used or anything else. In fact, I used the host, that’s why he invited me to co-host, so that I could use him. Yes, he called me sot hat I could use him.
That seems a bit assumptive and derogatory against my friend Bob, whom I think should be allowed to speak for himself, rather than your assumptive lies that we somehow used him or that he’s sick.
And then to say he’s bad without merit, without evidence, arguing the arbitrary, slinging your ad hominem fallacies and lies again. You say he’s sick but you don’t even know him, you’ve never heard his show, you’ve never talked to him, et al.
You know Anna, the Bible defines false accusers as Satan:
H7854
שׂטן
śâṭân
saw-tawn’
From H7853; an opponent; especially (with the article prefixed) Satan, the arch enemy of good: – adversary, Satan, withstand.
H7853
שׂטן
śâṭan
saw-tan’
A primitive root; to attack, (figuratively) accuse: – (be an) adversary, resist.
Seriously Anna, you really do have some mental issues. You could at least watch the video on logical fallacies so that you quit committing them, much less accusing people of being Neo-Nazis that aren’t, just because you’re confused, scared, or ill-informed on a topic that you refuse to actually study before you judge it.
And for your information, Kevin Annett is the guy who blew the story on the boarding schools. http://www.gnosticmedia.com/kevin-annett-interview-native-peoples-residential-schools-%E2%80%93-a-story-of-genocide-124/ – he was on my show 8 weeks ago, as we discussed the prejudiced practices against Native Americans. Duh!
And it’s funny that you would accuse my arguments as predictable, as yours are the predictable arguments of someone who judges things before she studies them. This is akin to a judge in court who tries a case without ever hearing it. It’s the logic of fools and morons. Congratulations.
But now that you’ve taken this thread way off course regarding my original post about Dr. Davis and wheat for your delusional escapades, I congratulate you.
Anns- I wanted to chime in briefly. I am a Human being that happens to be from a “Jewish” family. This being said not only do I not hate my “jewish family” I am not a bigot towards any group within my Human family either.
That being said, I hope you understand that the show we did on the holocaust was done with no other motive than wanting to learn and discover truth.
Please take the individual points one by one and judge them by there merit unto themselves.
Id be interested to see if you come up with a potion on the show that was bigoted in any way shape or form.
Enough of it. I am not going to continue.
Are you replying to me?
Yes, I will reply to you, arrogant and primitive bastard catering to the illiterate crowd. How dare you? Dictate to your militiamen, not to me.
Dr anna .
Wow, Anna,
Is this how someone who claims to have a doctors degree reacts to research and fact checking citations? Or is this the reaction of an emotionally driven child having a temper tantrum, that puts her beliefs and ideas before any research?
As they say “Don’t confuse me with facts, I’ve already made up my mind”.
How is it that you managed to get a doctors degree without learning even the most basic rules of doing research and checking primary citations first? Unbelievable!
You must be the Dr. Anna that the videos attack. If I wanted to choose the perfect example of why the Wuntian PhDuh system has failed, your above screeds would make the perfect example.
Speaking of illiteracy, as the first component in critical thinking is grammar – asking who what where when, which is also known as research, before one comes to ANY conclusions, wouldn’t someone who doesn’t put their grammar first and makes repeated use of fallacies be the illiterate one? Clearly it effects thinking…
And thanks for making it clear who’s the racist around here: “you, arrogant and primitive bastard catering to the illiterate crowd.”
Bob was very nice to you and very open:
Bob Tuskin:
“[...] I am a Human being that happens to be from a “Jewish” family. This being said not only do I not hate my “jewish family” I am not a bigot towards any group within my Human family either.
[...]
Please take the individual points one by one and judge them by there merit unto themselves.
Id be interested to see if you come up with a portion on the show that was bigoted in any way shape or form.”
And then you called him a “primitive bastard”. What gives you the right to call someone who’s Jewish a primitive bastard? You’re a very sick, mentally disturbed individual. I hope you get help.
“anna (00:23:49) :
Yes, I will reply to you, arrogant and primitive bastard catering to the illiterate crowd. How dare you? Dictate to your militiamen, not to me.
Dr anna .”
J Irvin, I just listened to the first part of your interview with
William Davis. I have to say, I’m pretty shocked. He thinks
abdominal obesity (‘wheat belly’) is caused by wheat whether it’s
whole or refined, when the evidence says pretty clearly the primary
cause is copper deficiency. Look up ‘abdominal obesity fatty liver’,
and then ‘fatty liver copper deficiency’.
Davis is a heart doctor, and should be very familiar with the large
literature implicating copper deficiency as a major cause of heart disease. But I have been unable to find anything about copper on his blog.
I I have read the first quarter or so of his book, and he seems to be making a pretty darn good case to me. Certainly the case looks strong enough for me to make some changes to my diet. I will eschew wheat in favor of other sources of relatively calorically dense carbs like sweet potatoes. I need the calories to support a pretty intense workout regimen, but he has me believing there has to be better sources of carbohydrate energy than grains, be they whole or refined. I eat a lot of vegetables, but they are not particularly calorically dense so I need other sources of carbs. I tend to limit fruit intake to berries and maybe a few pieces of fresh fruit per week because of distrust of fructose.
You’r now approaching the almost insurmountably mind barrier because the only way out of your calorie shortage is saturated fat. We say almost insurmountable because if you are under 50 years of age you were raised with the mantra of “artery clogging saturated fat” and probably believe this originated from scientific investigation when in fact it was originated by Proctor and Gamble as an advertising slogan designed to advance the sales of its newly introduced Crisco lard replacement. Crisco was formulated from hydrogenated vegetable oil, a toxic fat originally developed as an industrial and military lubricant. Hydrogenation saturated the vegetable oil making it something we call a trans-fat, but one not occurring in nature. Subsequently it was found that hydrogenated vegetable oil was indeed toxic, but it was assumed this was because it was saturated and ever since pretenders to science have performed studies considering these two lard and transfat as interchangeable making almost all data produced to date fatally flawed due to this self inflicted confounding assumption. More than a billion dollars of taxpayer money has been wasted in the quest to try to prove that saturated fat causes cardiovascular disease and of course this has failed because it doesn’t; quite the reverse is true. You don’t have to spend anything like a billion dollars to prove it to yourself using the following method. Eat your conventional diet for three months then have you blood tested too find your cholesterol numbers: LDL, HDL, Triglycerides. Talk with physicians regarding the latest interpretation of these results. You will find that a High HDL and a low Triglycerides is the profile predicting the least likelihood of a future cardiovascular event. Divide your current Triglyceride by your HDL. It will probably be around 2 or higher. 2 is the threshold above which risk is considered to increase. Now eliminate all grains and high carbohydrate foods from your diet and substitute saturated fat. Eat as much as you can, eat to satiation, it is scarcely possible to add body fat on this diet simply because human metabolism does not support it. Have blood tests done as often as you can afford to chart the magic number’s decline. In my case because I understand this aspect of human metabolism I waited six months. The Doctor presented the results and being a lipophobe he was amazed. He’d never seen a cholesterol report in which triglycerides was less than HDL, mine was far lower, 0.4 of HDL. LDL remained unchanged. No magic here its textbook metabolism but hardy anyone reads the textbooks because the biochemistry is so complex. If you’re a data freak, track your BMI, body fat percentage, fasting blood glucose, glycated hemoglobin HbA1c, all of them will improv and body mass distribution will shift from fat around the belly to increased muscle in other places. Many have done this, PhD Nuttritionists, Doctors, Engineers, Lawyers, people with bypasses, everyone so far finds the same thing.. .
A great little book published in 1958.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/fat/index.htm
Eat Fat and Grow Slim.
My last numbers from last spring.
Triglycerides 66
HDL 89
After eating an average of 3 eggs a day for more than a year with very little carbs and lots of fat.
Gager, you and others talk about heart and heart only, but don’t we humans have other organs/body parts. How does eating fat and fat only affect them?. Aren’t in fat and fat only also some hazardous “things,” particularly in excess … I don’t know … uric acid, phosphorus … whatever?
“We say almost insurmountable because if you are under 50 years of age you were raised with the mantra of “artery clogging saturated fat” and probably believe this originated from scientific investigation ”
Rings a bell here. It took me about 6 months of regular reading of Peter’s Hyperlipid, reading 2 times “Good calories bad calories”, 3 times “Atkins new diet revolution” and lots of research, to even START being less afraid of the dreaded ‘arterycloggingsaturatedfats’ boggeyman.
Even so, I had to actually check my blood lipids before and after the change (a change as you can guess, from mostly unsaturated fats in my diet to mostly saturated…) to stop believing the anti-saturated propaganda and stop feeling some kind of dread while eating my (organic) bacon and my (organic) eggs.
It’s indeed very difficult to escape the conventional wisdom about dietary lipids (and cholesterol BTW). And most of your friends start thinking you’re a nutjob to do the exact opposite as what is generally advocated. Whatever the amount of studies you refer to. Whatever the fantastic numbers in your blood lipid profiles you show them. Or the lost body fat (which they all notice of course, BUT refuse to believe that it’s due to my restricting of carbohydrates and my satfat gluttony).
It’s rather depressing, actually…
But getting rid of GERD, rid of low HDL and high trigs, rid of lots of bofy fat, rid of acnes… are pretty nice compensations.
It helped having my Mom. She had absolutely no patience with the new-fanged diet ideas that made no sense to her so she continued the way her mother had. Growing up allowing something like margarine to cross the threshold, in her mind amounted to moral turpitude. Nothing ever contained enough real fat, she ate ice cream only with double cream poured over it She lived on her own in her own home in a remote village till she was near 99 and when I took her to her last checkup the Doctor said “nothing much wrong with you, and you’r heart’s going to outlast everything else”. At the end, with several rounds of replacement friends all gone she decided she’d lived too long and simply stopped eating and died of undetermined causes four weeks later. This is how it was till such recent times. High death rates used to be caused by infection, typhoid, diphtheria, TB. etc. We’ve largely eliminated these thanks to science but on the other hand science has a lot to answer for with the dietary advice its inflicted upon us since the 1950′s. Bad western diet began before then but after 1950′s it was codified, defined as good, defended by any means possible except facts by what amounts to science con artists who exist to this day. My dogs know instinctively what they should eat but we don’t. Its as though we are approaching an evolutionary dead end.
But you MOM lived on a farm if I understand it correctly.
Speaking of food-not-food. My first encounter with American “bread” took place in a supermarket. I knew very few English words, but “bread” and “butter” were familiar. I reached for a package with a word “bread” on it with both hands, expecting familiar resistance. Whatever was inside practically disappeared.
I never touched this package again, but finding a real bread was a challenge at that time, even in New
York.
We lived in the suburbs of a large city. She moved to the a house in the village after I’d left, and lived there for nearly 40 years. Her grandparents were farmers so she had a connection and living near farms and having friends who are farmers frames your outlook on food. Some of us are getting back to this. Places I shop often list the farm the produce came from, but I notice most people shop the aisles, which we rarely go down. Fresh stuff is all round the outside walls.
Thanks Dave. I am 52. I don’t really have a phobia for saturated fats (at one point I certainly did, but I have done enough research now to realize most of that was based on a big pile of malarkey. However, to do some of the interval training and speed work that I do several times a week, I feel that I need to keep glycogen stores topped up. To do that, I need more calorically dense carbs. From what I can best figure out, the best way to get that is maybe from foods like sweet potatoes as opposed to bread which seems to have an awful lot of drawbacks, whether whole grain or refined.
I don’t worry about glycogen levels on long not so intense cardio bouts since it is my understanding the body generally burns far as fuel primarily in those sessions and doesn’t require as much glycogen.
Is it your belief that I would be better served by not even having much of those calorically dense carbohydrates like yams or sweet potatoes as well? Thanks in advance.
This is somewhat outside my area of knowledge. My focus has been on ways to improve health and longevity. Fortunately there is a lot of data linking different fitness and sports with health and mortality. one thing is clear, most aerobic activities do not increase longevity, some actually reduces it. It makes you able to perform better but at a price. However the one activity that does correlate with health and reduced incidence of fatal disease is high-intensity weight training. This involves moving relatively light weights very slowly for perhaps 3 repetitions to fully exhaust each muscle set. Muscles are key in the body’s glucose processing system and putting every muscly in peak condition achieves that. There is more than one type of muscle fiber and this exercise regime optimizes the correct muscle tissue makeup. In a large study aimed at measuring this effect it was found by chance that the incidence of cancer and mortality from cancer was 40% less in the test group compared to the control group performing an alternate program. Someone asked earlier why are we focusing only on cardiovascular disease and here is the answer. If you do this by controlling blood sugar it improves health and mortality in general. We now know at the genetic level why this is from Dr. Cynthia Kenyon’s work.
Unfortunately your activity of choice may require you to intentionally elevate blood sugar in order to complete the task, so it becomes a trade-off; how much is it worth, how much will it cost. At this time there are complex metabolic discussions going on as to whether on a strictly ketogenic diet the body adapts to reach peak ability to do what you want to do without resorting to what would historically have been artificial means because the means to do it would not have been available throughout evolution. Physical fitness is one thing evolution severely tested, the least fit were the ones eaten.
If you would like to pursue this further you could look to Fred Hahn who runs a fitness outfit called Serious Strength. In his life he’s run the gamut of fitness programs and has the worn out knees to prove it. He is also an active professional member of The Nutrition and Metabolism Society, familiar with most of the scientific work going on in this field.
http://www.seriousstrength.com/home/
Thank a bunch for the info. Very confusing in some ways. I will visit that site tonight when I have some time.
Dave, Cynthia Kenyon thinks controlling blood sugar means not eating any. This is simply not true. It means keeping your pancreatic beta cells in good nick. She will not eat sweet fruit, but it isn’t sweet fruit that damages beta cells, it’s excess iron.
So should we just ignore his 20+ years of experience with cutting wheat and seeing immediate reversal of with such issues? I’m not saying you’re wrong, But the mainstream also says it’s animal fats causing the problem while ignoring things like wheat.
If you read the reviews on Amazon, you’ll see about 100 reviews that fully back what Davis is saying.
If you have questions for Dr. Davis, send them to me and I’ll do a follow up interview with him next month.
J Irvin, no we should not ignore his 20+ years of experience, and I actually think he’s doing a lot of good. If telling people wheat is toxic is necessary for them to eliminate REFINED wheat from their diets, so be it. Refined wheat products are addictive, so this may be the only way.
BUT Davis is opening himself up to a lot of criticism which may destroy his career in the end.
“BUT Davis is opening himself up to a lot of criticism which may destroy his career in the end.”
It looks like he is destroying it energetically. Possibly with the book itself (I haven’t read it and am not sure I will); most certainly with such interviews.
Just as you’ve already destroyed yours with your vacuous screeds and empty attacks all over this website, against me and several others, proving your incompetence and inability to research and fact check before you attack things and people with your emotionally unbalanced biases…. not to mention proving you’re unqualified to call yourself a doctor.
And why would you even comment if you haven’t read it: “Possibly with the book itself (I haven’t read it and am not sure I will);”
More stupidity…
You’ve got some sick agenda, lady, and some serious head issues. You’re very insecure about yourself. Why you need to continually prove your insecurities and in-cognizance with your empty attacks is beyond me and most here.
Get off my back and go see a psychiatrist (not a psychologist, but the ones who put you on drugs).
As for the wheat/copper issue, it seems to me that the wheat blocks the body’s ability to absorb minerals, which would in turn lead to a copper deficiency. Getting off all wheat, including whole grain, has done the most for my health over anything. I’m not so sure Jane is correct that it’s only processed wheat, but all of it. Any whole grain wheat destroys my intestines for several days. But I’d go through the citations and studies in his book before judging and saying he’s wrong. And of course only those who’ve read it are in a competent place to judge the work he’s put forward. He’s also studied most of the material on this site.
J Irvin, the idea that the phytate in wheat blocks mineral absorption is questionable at best. Some experiments do seem to show that, but others don’t. And in the case of copper, it has been shown to IMPROVE absorption. Phytate is considered by many people to be beneficial.
If whole grain wheat ‘destroys’ your intestines, it’s because they are in a fragile state due to longstanding marginal micronutrient deficiencies. You may also have gluten sensitivity, which is not the fault of the gluten but of a poorly functioning gut immune system.
“… Some experiments do seem to show that, but others don’t. And in the case of copper, it has been shown to IMPROVE absorption. Phytate is considered by many people to be beneficial…” Making statements like that would be more believable if they were backed by the references they appear to imply. I’d like to believe it but find that next to impossible without the studies (RCT, and peer reviewed preferably, although the latter is often hogwash)
James, there is a problem here. I can certainly give you references, but I could also give you references showing the opposite. The chemistry is complex. All we can say is that if you add purified phytate to animals’ food, it can prevent mineral absorption, but this may not reflect the true situation. Where it does, the evidence suggests it’s beneficial, because it can prevent iron overload, and zinc overload, and possibly calcium overload. If you want to eat a lot of animal foods, which are high in iron, zinc and calcium (and low in manganese, copper and magnesium, which are high in plant foods), this is arguably just what you need.
Sorry, shouldn’t have said animal foods are low in copper. Liver is extremely high in copper, as lots of people have said.
James, here is a paper entitled ‘Enhancement of Cu bioavailability in the rat by phytic acid’.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3373335
There is also some work by Klevay showing the same thing, which I cannot find right now.
Jane, any study not performed on rats?
These aren’t reliable to conclude anything about human nutrition.
Their mere purpose is to draw hyptothesis which must then be proven by studies on humans.
Even nutrinional studies performed on pigs (which are already closer to humans than rats are, digestive-tract-speaking..) are only good at drawing approximative directions for more serious research.
I will never, never let anyone give me advice about my diet because of studies performed on rodents, and IMO nobody should, ever. This is no more scientific, IMO, than going by mere hearsay.
BUT beef and milk are extremely low in copper. Here’s a paper showing that even grass-fed beef is very low in copper and manganese, and very high in iron and zinc.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20374819
Anna, Davis is very far from being alone in his misunderstanding about copper. The authors of the China study have exactly the same misunderstanding. The literature on copper is very large and very confusing, and I only feel confident in what I say about it because I have spent many years studying it.
Wizzu, yes. I posted this a while back.
British Medical Journal, 17th Sept 1977, p771:
‘…The evidence incriminating phytic acid, based on relatively brief studies on humans and animals, is often at variance with epidemiological evidence… In South Africa Blacks in rural areas are accustomed to a relatively high intake of phytic acid. Yet our studies on groups on very high intakes compared with those on lower intakes have revealed no differences in mean haematological values, whether in children or adults. Observations on contrasting groups have revealed no differences in mean serum calcium levels, nor in the mean cortical thickness or other dimensions of the second metacarpal. Indeed, we have found satisfactory calcification even in groups of mothers who have had numerous pregnancies and long lactations. Nor in the groups mentioned have we found differences in the growth rate of children. In our appreciation, Third World experience does not support the view that phytic acid is significantly prejudicial to mineral metabolism or to health. ..’
In this discussion we may be avoiding a major issue. The calcium channel is one of the most important in the body, essential to the functioning of most cells. However the body uses magnesium to modulate the calcium channel. With most diets it is difficult to end up with a calcium deficiency but the same cannot be said for magnesium. For the calcium channel to function correctly the body must maintain the ratio of magnesium to calcium within limits. Magnesium deficiency results in the calcium channel not functioning properly. Because the body is so dependent upon the calcium channel magnesium deficiency results in a wide array of symptoms and diseases e.g. headaches, muscle spasms and tremors, menstrual cramps, kidney stones, heart problems (especially irregular heartbeat), and stroke and it is probable the epidemic of osteoporosis results in most cases from magnesium deficiency, since its estimated 75% of the population has a magnesium deficiency. Food is grown year after year in the same soil with no magnesium replacement so it is continually in decline in food. Taking calcium supplements will probably make the problem worse since this will tend to make the ratio worse. I know this isn’t intuitively obvious, but science is like that In the same way eating fat won’t make you fat and eating Albert Einstein won’t make you smart. Physicians knowledgeable in metabolism will routinely prescribe a magnesium potassium apartate supplement as a preventative before moving on to solve remaining symptoms.
Jane,
Beef liver is one of the highest known sources of copper.
One ounce, for example, contains nearly 4 mg.
Hi Anonymous, yes thanks. I have reservations about beef liver because it has a very high iron-manganese ratio. Lots of people think they can get away with eating a lot of beef as long as they eat beef liver too, but actually they are risking iron overload and manganese deficiency. Beef muscle has an iron-manganese ratio of about 100, and beef liver about 20. For comparison, wheat has a ratio of 1.
Jane, a small percentage of the population may suffer from iron overload. Most healthy people without genetic predisposition need not fear iron overload. Iron overload is certainly something that should not be ignored by those susceptible but for the majority of the population they need not concern themselves anymore than excessive salt intake. Blood test would show those who have the condition.
The CDC recommendations for iron overload are not to alter diet but to not take supplements of vitamin C or iron.
Yes, iron overload is a symptom of the genetic disease hemochromatosis resulting in an inability to control iron levels in organs. Why has evolution not eliminated the genetic defect? It protects against hemorrhagic plagues such as bubonic plague. The bacteria which infect the blood and tie up the iron are unable to do this effectively in people with this gene. In successive plagues throughout history in which a high percentage of the population did not survive, the gene was selected for, compensating for the rest of the time when it is selected against. It’s like sickle cell anemia in those of African descent for which protection against malaria was the factor. Perhaps this explains the confusion around whether the human metabolism has the ability to naturally control iron concentration which is not in question for those not suffering a particular disease.
gager, iron overload is implicated as a cause of many common diseases. Have a look at a paper entitled ‘Iron loading in humans: a risk factor for enhanced morbidity and mortality’.
http://69.164.208.4/files/Iron%20loading%20in%20humans:%20A%20risk%20factor%20for%20enhanced%20morbidity%20and%20mortality.pdf
Thanks for the link. Iron overload will be a part of my next blood test.
These links claim that manganese inhibits iron absorption.
http://www.naturalnews.com/033078_anemia_iron.html
http://www.ajcn.org/content/54/1/152.abstract
Jane, I personally get what you’re trying to say… I just might note that this sounds almost exactly like the vegan argument if you replace “wheat” with “animals”.
Hi Grok
Awful, isn’t it. I hate the ‘healthy whole grains’ mantra too.
After reading these comments. All i could think of was capitalism.
Amazon:
“The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health [Hardcover]
Thomas M. Campbell II (Author), T. Colin Campbell (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,086 customer reviews)”
“Wheat Belly”
Denise, back to work?
BTW, I think I remember another bit of that interview. Something about a conspiracy involving Bill Gates, to get everybody eating wheat so they drop dead and solve the overpopulation problem? Actually there may be such a conspiracy. Bill Gates is involved in a project to make the world fortify its food with iron, like many countries already do with white flour. Iron makes it even more toxic.
However, if this is supposed to make people drop dead, it’s very inefficient. Present experience suggests they actually live longer.
Jane, Hanlons’s Razor. “Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”
To search for conspiracy is not very bright. To conclude a conspiracy is even worse.
gager, are you absolutely sure there are no conspiracies? How about AIDS? I don’t mean the HIV-was-made-in-a-lab story, I mean this: HIV replication is promoted by iron, and blocked by manganese. Pregnant women and children in third world countries are routinely given iron supplements, which cause manganese deficiency.
Is this an accident? I don’t know.
Jane, I did not say there is no such thing as conspiracy. Nixon Watergate and the terrorist destruction of the trade centers are prime examples, but conspiracy has never come from conjecture.
Conspiracy as used today denotes a plot of evil or sinister intent.
Have you never heard the saying that “the road to hell in paved with good intentions”?
In addition, my research in regards to iron and HIV shows that iron decrease the chance of infection
“Increased susceptibility to infection results from both protein and energy malnutrition (macronutrition) and deficiencies of specific micronutrients, such as iron, zinc, and vitamins.”
“Iron-deficiency anemia, for example,
is the most widespread nutritional deficiency in the world and is especially common in women and children.”
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/pubs/pubs/books/oc50/oc50ch09.pdf
gager, protein-energy malnutriton was so called because it was not understood that the symptoms were due to multiple micronutrient deficiency. In the case of kwashiorkor, the patients actually have iron overload.
Iron-deficiency anemia is in the same category. Anemia is often accompanied by iron overload, which encourages growth of microorganisms including viruses.
The problem is not a low iron intake, but an inability to utilise the iron, which depends on other micronutrients.
Jane,
You write a lot about copper. My personal concern is low bone density and I know that copper is one of those metals which play a role in strengthening of bones. Can you give some recommendations regarding the best ways of getting copper, information about its interaction with other elements (zinc?), suggestions what to avoid, etc.
One of the highest food contents of copper is beef liver. One of my favorites. It also gives me a lot of energy and perks my mood.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/lamb-veal-and-game-products/4673/2
Hi Anna, this is a difficult question. I only know of one way to be sure of getting enough minerals, and that’s to follow a Hunza-style diet and never deviate from it. It’s easy for me because I have no family and never eat out.
The beauty of this strategy is that if you then have symptoms, you know they are due to stress and not to your diet, and that they will resolve themselves with time. This is the ‘maintenance and repair’ system at work. Your diet can have enough micronutrients for day-to-day functioning but not enough for maintenance and repair, and this is what chronic disease is all about.
I’m sorry this is not very helpful.
I just wanted to know if Hunza-style is a good diet? I read http://thepdi.com/hunza_health_secrets.htm it seems like something that would work for me. But what would be the pros and cons?
myfavisblue, the Hunza diet is a lacto-vegetarian diet with a little meat. A lot of whole grains, dairy products, fruit and vegetables, meat every 10 days or so, and sprouted legumes. This is from The Wheel of Health (1938), which mostly agrees with your article. The main disagreement is about chickens: the book says they did not keep chickens (and therefore did not eat eggs), while your article says their meat was mostly chicken meat.
The pros and cons. Pros: you get healthy. Cons: it may be very difficult to keep to it if you are addicted to meat and/or refined carbs. You have to give up ALL white flour, white sugar, and white rice.
Hi jane, thank you for the advice. Im not really doing it to lose weight. I just want to get healthy. I find myself over the years feeling restless at night and tired during the day. I know it is mostly due to my eating habits. I am mostly addicted to soda. If i go one day with out. I get this massive headache. I really want to make a good change. I like the ideal of this diet. I Probably eat more meat than what is given on the diet. But i will give a try. Thanks again, =)
Gager,
Thank you. I prefer chicken liver. Is it rich in copper too?
Calves liver has about 42 times more copper than chicken liver.
And I prefer goose liver if I could afford it. Yummy.
Yeah, I finally opened your link and checked chicken liver. Looks healthy to me – many nutrients and no caffeine (I find this 0 caffeine amusing)
I have another hopefully intelligent question:
“Is ghee a good fat?”
On this subject its worth mentioning that the guts of the animal are far more nutrient dense than what’s found in the meat department. Virtually all carnivorous animal species and most human cultures know this. The evidence is well documented. For example, wild canines live in competitive packs. Survival depends upon pack cohesiveness which depends up the leadership of the alpha male and female. The hierarchy protects these two in many ways until another becomes more suited due to age and experience.. When a kill is made the alphas eat first and they eat the guts, then pups are allowed to eat next because they are the future for the pack. The rest eat what we buy from the meat counter.
So shelve your cultural prejudices and develop a taste for the finer things in life as have most human cultures. Except for ceremonial occasions the Inuit reserve fish heads for the children, benefiting developing brains and nervous systems.
This is why I cringe when I hear women say that they take calcium supplements ‘for my bones’. 99% of them will respond in the negative when asked if they also take magnesium.
If one eats dairy, she/he need never take calcium sups but nearly EVERYONE should be taking magnesium.
Amen to that! I call them the Holy Trinity: Calcium, Magnesium and Vitamin D.
The anti Vitamin D mafia is at it again:
http://www.theheart.org/article/1327841.do?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=20111215_EN_Heartwire.
Guess what they used 800IU in 70 year olds!!. Those people need more to just survive, would get more from a half hour sun without a hat.
Cripes! I take 8,000 IU in winter and I live in a sunny (albeit very cold) clime! Those poor people were being starved of D!
If you’re black then take special note or warn your black friends especially if they spend most of their time indoors. The darker skin pigment is to protect against excessive sun exposure just as a tan does. But if you don’t have high sun exposure it becomes a threat. It associates with the significantly higher cancer rates in black people especially living up north.
I am not, Dave, but that is a very good point. They (their skin anyway) were made to be in the sun not in Detroit or Cleveland.
Also, as I understand it, obese people require more D as well.
I get my numbers checked and I hover around 70ng/ml. I am happy with that. I get viruses much less than before I supplemented and I am quite sure I am lessening my chances m of many chronic diseases. I will be very ticked off if they take our supplements away like they are threatening to do.
If they do that I’ll be able to stick it to them via the medicare drug plan. I’ve never used it but if supplements are on prescription I’ll run up quite a bill for them. Maybe all the old folks should threaten them with that. Bad diet leads to mental health issues and I see a lot of that in Washington, they are so far gone on the intellectual front if they found any brains I think they’d eat they’d just turn around and eat them.
Haha! No doubt about that!
http://www.theheart.org/article/1327841.do?utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=20111215_EN_Heartwire
Fixed it, but you got to be a member.
Yes these are all things we must do for ourselves, often against dire warnings. Problem is people believe what they read, a case of health management by last book read. In the case of vitamin D, get sun without sunscreen but without getting burned, take a D3 supplement but then, this is essential, get a blood test. Then increase everything till you get your number up near 100 ng/ml. In my case I take 10,000 units daily. The “experts” will tell you this is dangerous but when probed, can’t explain why if this is dangerous the acceptable upper limit on the blood lab report form is 100.ng/ml. Fake experts are easy to smoke out, they exist in a condition of cognitive dissonance. Its similar to the doomers against consuming too much omega 3. Turns out their limit amounts to about 4 ounces of wild salmon when you read the nutrition label, they probably want to put salmon on prescription, better stock up. if everyone followed the advice on this blog, and the saner discussion we wouldn’t need t worry about the escalating cost of health care. I’m almost 70 years old and only been to the doctor in the past 10 years for inspections and to get data, and to slowly educate the Doctor about health care. He’s often pretty good with sickness since he works in a sickness care environment. Why is it called health care when it’s actually the opposite?
Supposedly eating bear liver is a no no because of toxic levels of vitamin d.
Got that wrong, it’s vitamin A that is toxic.
I would add vitamin K. Obviously, I am not a trinity person.
Oh no. I don’t how this comment ended up here. I was responding to the trinity of calcium, magnesium and vitamin D.
I don’t supplement calcium, as it seems to be more than available through dietary sources. I am interested in boosting my supplementation of D and take a magnesium supplement, but it’s worth noting that L-taurine works synergistically with potassium and magnesium, keeping them balanced against sodium.
Correct Finnegan. I did not imply that you take calcium as supplement. Most people on responsible diets (rather low carb , higher fat) will have no need for it. I really try to keep supplements to a minimum, but it your dependent on the supermarket produce dept. the micro nutrients may not be there anymore. Apparently Glyphosate (Round-up) works as a chelating agent thus doing quite a bit more than it was supposed to. Monsanto really may have overdone it this time. It is noteworthy that the value of their shares has dropped considerably in recent weeks. More and more people are turning to farmers markets and organic produce, but not everybody has a Joe Salatin handy.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/joel-salatin-how-prepare-future-increasingly-defined-localized-food-energy/61949
Gager, but shouldn’t we be concerned about uric acid?
Nope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uric_acid
OK, people, I have an intelligent question:
Why grains (and thousand year old traditions) are blamed and not the disruption in those traditions. In many languages, bread and BUTTER, grains/cereals and BUTTER/fat milk/other fat are inseparable. The break with traditions is recent when we’re to told to eat pasta and grass (no fat), grains and legumes (no fat), no animal protein/fat at all, etc.
I never understood why New Yorkers declared pasta to be healthy food when I always knew that macaroni (whatever phonetic/spelling version) were “empty calories” (as my mother used to describe them and most bakery stuff, so loved by me). Does a change in name can transform unhealthy food into healthy one?
I think I can rephrase the question:
Why should I eat grains only (as Campbell tells me) or butter only (as Davis tells me), when my inclination is to eat bread and butter and my traditions tell me that this is the way to live. If I understand it correctly, the problem in past was when this or that part was missing (often, way too often). Those who tell us stories about wonderful healthy past are clearly unfamiliar with very unhealthy word “famine.”
I hate to say this, but a great friend of mine and her mother both died about a year after starting on high-dose vitamin D. I warned her against it. Low circulating vitamin D is a symptom of magnesium deficiency.
“a great friend of mine and her mother both died about a year after starting on high-dose vitamin D”
Oh no, proof by example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_example
You know, my dad ate coconut the day before he died. He never eat coconut before. Coconut must be toxic, or my dad would’nt be dead after having eaten some for the first time. Does it sound silly to your ears? I hope it does. It should.
In itself, your example has no relevance. Could as well say that it was a year after having started eating chocolate or whatever.
What did they die of, and why do you think it’s linked to Vitamin D supplementation?
“Low curculating vitamin D is a symptom of magnesium deficiency”
Among other causes, like lack of sun exposure. Which is the main source of Vitamin D for humans. Pardon me, but don’t you think that it’s possible that your focus on minerals is a little obsessive, and make you miss the big picture…?
Wizzu, I am not saying the vitamin D killed them. My friend thought high-dose vitamin D would prevent her cancer from recurring, and it did not. She thought it would improve her mother’s poor health, and it did not. She was a science writer, and did her homework on vitamin D. She believed the people who said you have to take enormous quantities of it. I am still angry about this, but I suppose I’m mainly angry with myself for not explaining things to her adequately. Any supplement can cause worse imbalances than it cures.
The drug companies make supplements as well as drugs, and Merck doesn’t care whether you take vitamins or Vioxx.
Thanks for the clarification Jane. Makes much more sense this way than it originally did!
Even so, one example still isn’t proof.
Granted, Vitamin D in high doses shouldn’t be considered as a magic wand against cancer (this is of course silly). Which does not mean it can’t help, and doesn’t mean that it *has not* actually helped, even in your example. Who knows.
I haven’t come across (yet) some solid, sound data about high-doses Vitamin D supplementation. I tend to keep mine at “reasonable” levels, like 10.000 UI every week in the winter, every month for the rest of the year. I couldn’t say if I’m right or wrong, I just follow my intuition (yes, VERY unscientific
).
Thanks for the clarification, Jane. Its makes much more sense this way than it originally did!
Still, an example like that doesn’t mean much. Granted, high-doses supplementation of D is not a magic cure for cancer. But it doesn’t allow to conclude that the supplementation can’t help, nor that it didn’t help even in the case you mention. Who knows. Too many possible confouding variables. Be careful not to jump to conclusions from isolated or worse, picked cases. That’s the whole point of Denise’s work BTW.
I haven’t came across serious, sound data about this (yet). Meanwhile, I try and keep my own supplementation of cholecalciferol in the “reasonable” zone, about 10000 UI per week in the winter, per month in spring and automn, no supplementation in the summer. That’s for my climate, to each his/her own.
Your point about possible adverse effects of supplementation, specially in the form of pharmaceutic suplements, is IMO very valid.
Jane I politely suggest you quit commenting now that we still think the last few comments may have been in error due to fatigue or some distraction. Either that or somebody else is commenting under your name. Maybe the real Jane left quite a while ago. But then there may be some truth to it. I know that when I take my umbrella with me it usually won’t rain. If my umbrella has such a big influence on weather systems anything is possible
James, which comments do you mean? I am still the same Jane. If you would list the things I have said you think are in error, I will try to explain what I meant.
“Low circulating vitamin D is a symptom of magnesium deficiency.”
Jane, I think it’s more like “low circulating vitamin D” is masking magnesium deficiency. People with low vitamin D often experience spasms when raising vitamin D – a sign of magnesium deficiency.
Hi Anna, do they? Interesting. Do you have a reference please?
I was thinking of a paper entitled ‘Low serum concentrations of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D in human magnesium deficiency’. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3840173
According to an old paper from the UK Ministry of Agriculture (‘Vitamin D and manganese in the nutrition of the chick’) vitamin D works together with manganese in such a way that an excess of one can partially correct a deficiency of the other. So if supplementary vitamin D makes people feel better, it might be because they have manganese deficiency.
I think deficiencies of magnesium and manganese are far more plausible than vitamin D deficiency, in people who can get outside in the summer. After all, Mg and Mn are mostly or completely removed from white flour, white rice and white sugar. How could we NOT have deficiencies?
I am becoming somewhat of the opinion that the needs for minerals may depend on what is consumed. I can only speak for my own myself in the instance when I consume carbohydrates I suffer from cramps in my feet and also a feeling of restless feet. When this happens I take some magnesium supplements and the problem goes away. If I don’t load on carbohydrates these problems don’t happen.
gager, yes exactly. The Recommended Daily Allowance may be far too low (or far too high) in many situations. I once wrote to the UK Department of Health about copper deficiency, and was told ‘copper deficiency is rare’. I asked how they knew that, and suggested the RDA was simply the average intake, and this was not denied.
I heard later from a senior Alzheimer researcher that in the case of vitamin B6, this was indeed how the RDA was determined. You find out how much people eat, and say ‘that must be enough’. He was deeply shocked.
B
I don’t remember where exactly (Hyperlipid? Protein Power? Archevore?..), but I’ve read that carbohydrates metabolism indeed increases the need for micronutriments, possibly dramatically so. This was including Vitamin C.
My own experience with low carb seems to back this up (just like you, I don’t need as much magnesium supplements than I used to before going low carb), but this is most probably partly subjective, since I get a sense of well-being from all this delicious dietary fat and the huge loss of body fat. Besides, recently I’m eating lots of (unsweetened) cocoa, which is supposed to be rich in magnesium so maybe it plays a role. (then again, with the depleted soils, who knows these days?)
It’s extremely difficult to draw any sound conclusions from one’s diet, since it’s extremely rare that we change only one thing at a time…
But one thing is for sure, eliminating grains was a huge improvement for me. And sorry Jane, I was eating *only* whole grains, as I had eliminated all processed and refined starches long, long ago, when adopting specifically this “Hunza diet” (lacto-vegetarian, some fish, lots of vegetables, seasonal fruits, raw milk dairy, whole grains, soaked or sprouted legumes, kefir, zero processed food) that you like to promote, twenty years ago. It improved my immunity alright (compared to the way I was eating before), but didn’t improve obesity, GERD, acnes, back pain, arthritis. Only supressing all grains and legumes did the job three years ago. So I’m certainly not ready to admit that grains, whole or otherwise, could be ever a part of my diet again. IMO these are to be considered as mere second-choice sources of calories when the rest is not available for climatic or economic reasons.
Wizzu, that’s a very interesting story. I think forcing ‘healthy whole grains’ on people against their will is a bad idea. Is it possible, do you think, that the benefits of giving up grains and legumes might have had something to do with the relief of exercising your free will? Suppression of free will is something society demands of us, and it may sometimes be necessary but it’s also unhealthy.
> “do you think, that the benefits of giving up grains and legumes might have had something to do with the relief of exercising your free will?”
What on earth are you talking about?
I have no idea why you would assume that my giving up grains and legumes has anything to do with ‘recovering’ free will?
As far ago as I can remember – since I left the family nest that is -, my food choices have always been from “free will” (if such a thing actually exists but that’s another story), based on the diet/helath information sources available to me at a given time, my own tastes (and gosh do I love rye bread, chick peas and basmati rice, and miss them!) and which seemed to make sense to me. No one ever forced me into a given eating pattern.
I smell a case of ‘ad hoc’ explanation here: instead of aknowledging that cutting (whole) grains can make an improvement to one’s health, invoke ‘psychological’ causes to explain the health improvement. Sorry if that is not your thinking, but from here it looks awfully like it!
Wizzu, have you gone 100% grain- and legume-free? I’ve recently minimized, but not eliminated, grains. I categorize them as a “splurge” item, and try to hew to grain-free at least 80% of the time. Obviously, I’m not incorporating as much bread and pasta into my diet and my health seems better for it, but if I want some Indian takeout on the weekend, it doesn’t seem to have any ill effect (rice), for one example. The 80/20 rule has worked well for me so far.
No, I’m 100% free only of wheat and rye, since even a very small amount of these (even very fermented) cause GERD for me, so it’s a no-no. (gosh did it take long for me to finally identify the bollteneck for my 25 years long GERD!! Thanks to all these bloggers I started to read several years ago!)
I do indulge from time to time on some basmati or thai rice, some miso (fermented soy and barley), some tahini or humus paste (chick peas), and some red beans. All these are for pleasure, once in a while, and in small amounts. As long as I treat them as that, i.e. pleasure, occasional foods, and not as staple, I’m feeling OK, my skin stays soft and my blood lipids stay beautiful.
I think that with grains and legumes as a whole, the old ‘YMMV’ is very pertinent. Being cautious with grains is very sound, but there is obviously much variance in individual tolerance. For wheat and rye, though, it seems like we’re so many to benefit from cutting it entirely from the diet, that for me the case is closed. There is no need for wheat and rye to stay healthy so better avoid it. My opinion.
I think it’s important that people question the CW on grains, and test out what the effects of eliminating or reducing them are WRT overall health. It’s very interesting to me to see how many people cannot tolerate grains at all. For me, if I have grains now, as mentioned, it’s an indulgence, not for any purported health benefit. Indeed, advertisements extolling “healthy grains” seem oxymoronic now.
> “if I have grains now, as mentioned, it’s an indulgence, not for any purported health benefit”
I had got that part.
– My reply, though answering to your question, was not entirely directed to you.
We are on the same wavelenght.
@James: yes, I’m also surprised by some of Jane’s recent input. Yet I would still say “yes” to a little get together around a drink.
The overriding factor regarding whether grains should be considered essential can be brought into perspective on New Year’s Eve at about 2 hours to midnight. Consider how much time there is left in the year as a fraction of the entire year since last New Year’s Eve. This is the same fraction as the time grain has existed as a staple food, compared to the period of evolution of homo sapiens. Grain clearly cannot be an essential food, evolution doesn’t work so fast and for some will trigger metabolic intolerance. Grain intolerance occurs in any population as a probability distribution. on the left, some are unaffected, others, so intolerant they are unable to eat blue cheese because the blue mold was originally grown on a grain medium. These two extremes represent a smaller percentage of the total. In between are the most evident by their numbers, supporting the multi-billion dollar proton pump inhibitor pharmaceutical manufacturers and Amazon in its sales of books about GERD and IBS. And for those who don’t read the books, the cancer surgeons who may remove the defective esophagus and colon. Its all a matter of probability and degree degree and as a person ages the probability moves from left to right
Cannot help but grin. Don’t follow this too often anymore because some of the comments are just too inane or from such a biased viewpoint there is simply no point. I love Jane, I really admire her patience and perseverance to keep conducting a civilized conversation where other less graceful or blessed individuals would have lashed out or just ignored. Her points of view have given me lots to think about and conduct research on, but recently some of her comments have really left me puzzled. Wizzu you and I could have a great discussion on ‘free will’, I think and maybe we would want Jane at the table too.
Who knows what kind of revelations we’d be able to witness after a couple Stella Artois.
Finnegan, I agree with you. We haven’t completely gone wheat free. Spelt is still a wheat, but we do eat it only occasionally. I just had the discussion with Eddy Vos, a regular contributor to Heartwire http://www.health-heart.org/author.htm
Afterburner.
I forgot to mention that in our discussion we talked about the conundrum we are really finding ourselves in. Can we really expect to feed the 9 billion if we wean ourselves off grain? It is one of the reasons that I will be doing a lot of research over the winter season with regards to some of possible deficiencies that Jane mentioned. So far I have only come across more and more references to problems with both gluten proteins, more problems with the lectins, more problems with the insulin spikes it causes. And only scant evidence that the fibre really does what seems to cascade. When prof Grant came up with the idea, he referred to studies dating back to the fifties. And yes, three of his references were to studies by our dear Ancel (fraud) Keyes.
It may quite well be possible that our scientific community is still only scratching the surface of this wheat thing. We may think we got it nailed down, but there may still be another layer to it.
And of course I have always loved my baguette with Brie or Camembert and a good bottle of wine.
” And of course I have always loved my baguette with Brie or Camembert and a good bottle of wine….”
One of the true dangers is all the fantastic tasting foods that come from wheat. I have not had some good french bread since bromated flour was pulled from store shelves in the mid 80′s. I have never had a donut I did not like. And pasta, I don’t need a fork, I’ll use my face.
Wizzu, you just told us you ‘get a sense of wellbeing from all this delicious dietary fat’. You went low-carb, which solved your obesity problem as it does for many people, just like a low-fat diet does for others. You clearly liked the low-carb diet better than your previous diet, and found it a relief. I suggest this relief was a factor in resolving your other symptoms.
“You clearly liked the low-carb diet better than your previous diet”
Which isn’t true. I would’nt say that I don’t like my current low-carb / high fat (but very high in vegetables) diet, but I prefered my former WOE as far as pleasure is concerned. “Delicous fat” in high amounts is a mere compensation for the very much missed basmati rice and chick peas, not to mention (whole wheat) pasta, and so on.
Anyway, I see that you were indeed coming up an ‘ad hoc’ explanation so that you may avoid questioning your personal belief that grains are not a nutritional problem.
‘Ad hoc’ explanations are circular logic fallacies, which go like this:
- If people feel better by avoiding grains, it must be from something else than avoiding grains, because I just *know* that grains are healthy. So I’ll come up with the following explanation: [insert theory here]
- If people have better lipid profiles by going low-carb and eating more saturated fats, it must be related to some other explanation than the lower carbs or higher saturated fats, because I just *know* that bad lipid profiles are due to saturated fats. So I’ll come up with the following explanation: [insert theory here]
- If the french eat more saturated fats but have lower CHD than the americans, it must be because they are protected by something (wine, vegetables..?) because I just *know* that saturated fat is bad for your heart. So I’ll come up with the following explanation: [insert theory here]
The list goes on. Read Taubes, Mc Kendrick, Eades, De Lorgeril.. they nailed this down quite nicely in the nutriotional field.
It’s all about beliefs and refusal to let go of them, for whatever reason: reputation, peer pressure, groupe thinking, pluralistic ignorance, short sight, or… good old pure pigheadedness.
It’s a pity, but well, people are entitled to their beliefs. But a very serious problem arises, when these people are in a position to give outdated, biased, opinionated, politically-correct and/or often plain wrong, or even dangerous, nutritional advice.
Jane, I really like your input about minerals, but seriously, now I’m pretty sure that you’re entirely missing the big picture by being so focused on them.
Thanks Wizzu. It’s very helpful to have your complete story. What is so puzzling is that you liked the grains, and went on eating them, although they were causing GERD, IBS and acne. All I am doing is trying to find a biochemical explanation. If grains are toxic to some people and not to others, how can this be? The standard explanations – gluten, lectins, phytate – all fall apart when examined closely. For refined grains, it’s easy: micronutrient deficiencies. But for whole grains, the only explanation I can think of is a food allergy. But food allergies mean a poorly functioning gut immune system, which would be due to micronutrient deficiencies.
How do you know that grains are only toxic to some. We are an incredibly adaptive system that can accommodate and repair years of abuse. I think grain is for the birds. But the newest post by Denise about Keyes is interesting
“you liked the grains, and went on eating them, although they were causing GERD, IBS and acne”
You seem to assume I *knew* they were. Which is once again *not* the case.
At the time, I viewed GERD and IBS as caused by nervosity/stress, or even possibly a psychosomatic condition. And I thought my (inflammatory-type) acnes was due to a genetic hormonal imbalance.
I just happened to try Mercola’s advice to stop eating grains (on the “why not” mode), and then discovered the benefits. This came as a revelation since I was very reluctant to consider my long belief in the health benefits of whole grains, belief which came from reading Dr. Kousmine’s books in the early 80′s. She was, just like you, advocating a Hunza-like diet, just with a little more animal protein (I don’t remember why).
I was so reluctant to believe it, that I tried re-introducing grains after some time. Bang, GERD was back after two days only. And my face started to develop the dreaded red spots annoucing those dadgum intradermic inflammatory pimples.
On the other hand, now that I’ve been grain-free for so long, I can eat some from time to time (even in the form of white flour products!) without ill effects. Pfew. I suspect something has been mended at the intestinal level, but that’s conjecture.
Ah and something else: maybe I didn’t make it clear, since you appear to think that I went directly from a hunza-like diet to a low-carb/high-fat paleo-ish one.
But it is not the case.
I changed my diet in three main steps, each step bringing better health.
I first kept the former diet (very hunza-like), but started avoiding grains in 2005 (mainly from reading Mercola.com), replacing them with starchy vegetables and roots (because at the time I still had faith in the nonsense that is a so -called “balanced” fats-carbs-proteins diet). GERD, IBS, arthritis and acnes went away. Lipid profiles did not improve though, and energy didn’t improve much.
Then in 2008 I increased fats, mostly mono-unsaturated (olive oil), and eat less carbs but it was not really a low-carb diet. Blood lipids improved slightly (lower triclycerids).
Then I started reading Hyperlipid and wanted to give Peter’s ideas a try. So mid-2010 I started eating more (organic) meat, upped the fat a lot including lots of saturated fat (organic butter and lard mostly), and kept rather low any source of starch. Things started to look bright: more energy, no more snoring, beautiful blood lipids (much more HDL than before).
So I decided to go VLC (à la Atkins induction) for some time to try and loose weight, and lost 24 pounds very easily, without hunger (BTW try avoiding hunger with a low-fat diet without resorting to pills or stomach fillers. Be my guest). Blood lipids improved further.
Now I’m back to step 3. I don’t know what will be next when I learn more, but going back to being a lacto-vegetarian and eating grains is NOT on the menu (maybe rice will make a comeback, though).
Cutting grains was the first step, and a powerful one in terms of effects on my health. Grains IMO directly *caused* my GERD, IBS and acnes. Not some mineral deficiency. Or if it was a mineral deficiency, what I eat *instead* of the grains did the job. Grains didn’t.
Typo: I didn’t loose 24 pounds but 44 pounds.
Sorry
James, how do I know grains are only toxic to some? Because there are, or have been, populations of very healthy grain-eating people. I am a healthy grain-eater myself. All foods contain things you can call toxins, which cannot be used by the body and must either be excreted or changed into something else.
Wizzu, sorry, I should have explained. I’m not suggesting you knew the grains were causing these things. I’m puzzled that if they were, they still tasted so good. But I suppose this is common, isn’t it. You have to eliminate foods one by one to find out which you’re allergic to.
OR, could it just be that all the carbohydrates raise your blood sugar levels causing your restless feet? Some kind of a reaction by your nervous system to increased levels of insulin?
When I went low-carb and cut grains altogether, my restless legs completely disappeared. Ditto for my limbs falling asleep while I slept. I used to wake several times each night with “dead arms,” having to stand up and “shake it out” so that I could return to bed, only to wake several hours later and have to do it all over again.
Since cutting grains and going low-carb, I have none of these problems.
Jane, many women who have been on high calcium (DIET or supplements)/high vitamin D diet now have health problems. The present recommendation is to take magnesium and VITAMIN K in addition to vitamin D and calcium.
What recommendation will be tomorrow? Some new life/world saving nutritional hero? Who knows? That’s why I am so skeptical about nutritional heroes of the day. Or new radical diets. Eat grass/grains only. Eat meat/fat only.
When I came to this country, I was surprised to hear that stress didn’t matter. “No, no,no,” doctors were saying, “Our great science proved that stress was irrelevant. It was a great discovery, people received grants, rewards, awards, etc. and now only people in backward countries believe this nonsense about stress.” Then, a new great discovery. A great scientist/woman is gracing the NYT magazine and a huge cover story warns the world about … you guess it … stress. The woman most certainly receives grants, rewards, awards etc. for her … huge discovery.
Similarly with antibiotics. People in the U.S. were eating antibiotics for breakfast, lunch and dinner, not to mention snacks and brunches. Then a new discovery, grants, rewards, awards – antibiotics are hazardous. Really? We didn’t know that. Sure.
I most certainly knew how important the Sun was for humans. Then Americans doctors ordered everyone to avoid this evil and American corporations did a good job of locking everyone for some 80 hours a week, attached to their desks/computers … away from this evil, eating their antibiotics at desks and “enjoying” stress. Nobody remembers this tiny detail of reality.
Anna, I am very interested to hear more about the women who have been on a high calcium/high vitamin D diet and now have health problems.
Jane, not only women.
Below, for example, is Phil’s (Phil6220) testimony:
http://www.inspire.com/groups/national-osteoporosis-foundation/discussion/calcium-magnesium-vits-d3-and-k2/
Anna, Phil6200 avoided fat. That is the cause of his problem, not the intake of vitamin D.
Yes, Gager, I noticed his avoidance of fat. Still, I am not sure this is the only cause.
And that is the raised point of my post. You don’t know until you know. There are so many variables that make knowing difficult.
Thanks Anna. I expect you know about the work linking vitamin D/calcium with brain lesions.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19083421
And about the failure of milk to protect against osteoporosis, which Klevay says is due to its extremely low copper content.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=10866
Ha. I didn’t know about lesions and copper. I don’t know much in general. I’ve been studying for the last couple of years in a very pragmatic, selective way (untypical of me).
No competition for Minger here.
Thank you, Jane.
Jane, if I understand it correctly, depletion of soil is only one the reasons of magnesium deficiency. If I remember it correctly, our beloved bad carbs are in conflict with magnesium and have won the war.
“Egg yolks are not something that should be eaten indiscriminately by adults without regard to their global cardiovascular risk, genetic predisposition to heart attacks and overall food habits.”
There was a claim of an 80+ year old man who downed 25 whole eggs daily all his life, and his cholesterol profile was ideal…
total cholesterol, 200 mg/dl; LDL, 142 mg/dl, and HDL, 45 mg/dl; his LDL/HDL ratio was 3.16.
“the lowest rates of all cause mortality are for cholesterol readings of 200<TC<240 mg/dl…"
With regards to meat like with all food, I think as long as it is consumed in moderation there's no problem. I say moderation, for it is quite easy to go into 50-70+g of protein in a single meal, while I've heard optimal protein amounts for muscle growth are around 30~approx g of protein per meal, anymore and the protein appears to be used mostly for mere energy production.
A very thorough look at questionable science. Well done, Denise. I really enjoy reading your work.
A point many have not considered: Doctors are not Scientists and frequently Nutritionists are not Scientists, or perhaps not very good ones. This is why we have the National Nutritional Guidelines coexisting with an epidemic of Metabolic Syndrome. Both these have coexisted for quite some time. But the point that Doctors are not Scientists is well illustrated by the following video in which the former became the latter as a matter of professional and personal survival.
Thanks Dave, enjoyed the video.
Thanks for that. I enjoyed that a great deal. I don’t eat that many vegetables (that is a quite the load of veggies in that diet), but I do follow much of her recommendations already. I found it entertaining and informative.
Sorry, but I have doubts. I think she exaggerates – with the load of vegetables, with her diet restrictions (no grains, no legumes and no dairy, including butter and cheeses), with her generalization and with her certainty.
IMHO, life without cheeses isn’t worth living. Life according to someone’s values isn’t worth living. Vegetables are healthy, but pushing insane amount of them into your poor stomach because someone thinks you should isn’t enjoyable. For many people, gobbling this amount of vegetables would result fast, very fast in diarrhea and depletion of all nutrients. Life in a bathroom, even the short one, is hardly worth living.
We are all different, with different family backgrounds, different traditions in the background, different past and different health problems (inherited or acquired or both) or lack thereof and telling everyone: “Do what I did” is absurd at best.
Actually, I’ve realized that I don’t know whom she’s addressing – fellow MS patients or general population – quite a difference.
Dr. Lutz, in his excellent book “life without bread,” has a very nice chart showing that pretty much every vitamin or mineral can be obtained from meat (with the exception of vit C, which you need less of if you mostly avoid carbs).
As for healthy whole grains, before adopting a low carb/paleo style diet, my husband and I were plagued by digestive issues. The “experts” said, that it was a problem that would resolve as the body adapted to the increased fibre. So we ate even more fibre and felt even worse for 10 years. Having now removed all grain fibre from our diet, we no longer have any digestive problems. It has now been 3 years. As I said before the only source of fibre required is cellulose from non starchy plants. We have had pretty much the same experience as Wizzu.
Olga, it’s true that most vitamins and minerals can be obtained from meat, but the amounts are not always ideal. The absolute amounts of certain minerals are less important than the ratios within pairs, these pairs being sodium-potassium, calcium-magnesium, iron-manganese and zinc-copper. The problem with meat is that it often has an extremely high iron-manganese ratio. This is potentially very serious because iron cannot be excreted, and it accumulates with age. It causes something called oxidative stress, which is generally accepted to be the cause of tissue damage in disease. Manganese protects against this damage.
No offense Jane, but I think you like to spout a lot of theoretical stuff as if it was a fact to fit your agenda. The facts are that for many, many people, present company included, whole grains are VERY unhealthy. I know for certain that I feel and perform better in life with a diet that emphasizes meat, vegetables, eggs, cheese and nuts. I also know for certain that I am not alone in that respect. I am not saying that ‘whole grains’ are necessarily bad for everyone, but there is no doubt in my mind that for a significant subset of the population (which includes myself), whole grains are something to be avoided.
Just from a pure logic point of view, looking around at all the omnivores and carnivores, who are perfectly healthy eating an almost/ or all animal diet I have to conclude that grains are a completely unnecessary dietary item. The body must surely be able to absorb what minerals it needs in the correct amounts. It is known that minerals are absorbed in greater amounts when they are deficient and in lesser amounts when they are replete, as long as you’re not taking pharmaceutical doses. And even then, iron absorption is less when the individual is not deficient. I’ve been severely iron deficient after a pregnancy and it was an uphill battle to take enough iron supplements to get the levels back into a normal range.
Dave, whose posts always seem to be very insightful and are very informative talked about iron in one post. There appears to be a small subset of people who have a tendency to retain too much iron. For the vast majority though, this appears to be a red herring.
Their ancestors was a survivors of hemorrhagic plague, black death for example. The genetic defect outwits the infective agent by making the iron in the blood unavailable to it. Evolution would have eliminated this variant if it didn’t carry this survival benefit, Not so many people survived the plagues without it. Sickle cell anemia sticks around because it carries protection form malaria. Think of these defects as species survival insurance. Its a burden for those who carry them though.
Dave, are grain-free?
Mario, please will you read this VERY SHORT paper entitled ‘Iron loading in humans: a risk factor for enhanced morbidity and mortality’
http://www.encognitive.com/files/Iron%20loading%20in%20humans:%20A%20risk%20factor%20for%20enhanced%20morbidity%20and%20mortality.pdf
Read it. Don’t know what you could have possibly thought was so thought provoking in there. I completely agree with Wizzu. I think you have completely lost the forest for the trees on this topic.
Mario, if you don’t find it thought provoking that iron overload is implicated as a cause of so many common diseases, you must have already known it before you read the article.
I can only try to warn people. The iron can build up in their brains, and this is thought by many scientists to be the main cause of Alzheimer’s disease. One of these scientists, the head of OPTIMA (Oxford Project To Investigate Memory and Ageing), told me the evidence indicates that Alzheimer’s starts around the age of twenty.
You want to see one thing and one thing only and like to completely and categorically ignore all the evidence which points away from your belief system. Wizzu nailed it. As far as this “study” goes, I don’t know where to begin. You have blinders on Jane.
Jane, it seems you have an unhealthy obsession with iron overload. It’s true that we don’t have a metabolic process to excrete iron but in a healthy human the iron is regulated through absorption. Also about 1mg of iron is lost daily through perspiration, shin shedding and hair.
In spite of your concern with iron overload it is still thought that a larger portion of the population suffers from a deficiency. Iron deficiency can lead to sudden death from organ shutdown.
Here is a good reference on the mineral iron and the metabolic process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_iron_metabolism
Yes, iron is regulated through absorption. BUT the absorption system is shared with manganese, so if you eat a lot of iron you will absorb less manganese. Iron causes oxidative stress, and manganese is protective. It’s really manganese deficiency that’s the problem. Also copper deficiency, because iron cannot get out of cells without copper.
Jane, I have another question.
For the last several months, I’ve been making regularly beef broth (marrow bones). I was wondering if it’s safe or there is potentially unhealthy accumulation of … iron? phosphorus? whatever? “They” say that it’s rich in nutrients. Can it be too rich?
I donate blood regularly. Doesn’t that help reduce serum iron levels?
“This is potentially very serious because iron cannot be excreted, and it accumulates with age.”
I was thinking today. All this talk about healthy gatherers is amusing. They lived healthily or not till some 30?, 35? without any time for accumulation and consequences. We have ambitions to live healthily till …. How do we know that chopping off entire large categories of food with their specific nutrients and relationships and concentration in other areas won’t lead to negative accumulation and consequences?
Wow what a read!!! Great job Denise, you can tell you spent a great deal of time researching this post! I feel like at a certain point not matter how great of a job you do presenting the information, dogmatic views prevail. Hopefully those that read this with an open mind can conduct their own month long personal experiments using subjective and objective markers (Blood lipids, glucose, and inflammatory markers) to see which diet works for them. My bias is too the low carb paleo, just so there is full disclosure
Another great article Denise. I can’t say how thrilled i am to finally get some control back in my life and have been going hard core paleo for six months now. wow….i have never felt so GOOD! i am eating about 80% raw meat with some berries and other veg mixed in. Before i was vegetarian and became very sick, my diet consisted of lots of beans (ew!), lots of greens, lots of fruit and rice. Now i am convinced that too much of that stuff is really poison to the system. I am now cleansed of such a toxic plant centric diet by flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood!
Although lately i have been getting headaches and loss of balance, usually followed by a total numbness in my face and left side of my body. Also strangely enough when this happens i also experience slurred speech! Oh well probably nothing that some more raw meat won’t cure. Off to the kitchen i go! Great job Denise!
I’m hoping this comment is just some trolling, but in case it’s not…
Sal, please go see a medical professional about your problem asap.
You did not mention it, but the symptoms you relate are typical of wheat consumption. If I may offer a suggestion, completely ban wheat from your diet. I don’t know where you get your meat, but chances are from the grocery store. I would not eat that meat raw because it is most likely from one of those Cafo’s and you could easily catch something awful from that. Actually if you can at all, avoid that stuff. It is very low in mono unsaturated fats, there is hardly any Omega 3 left in it. Those animals were all grain fed which is as unhealthy for the animals as it is for you and the animals need antibiotics to keep them “healthy”. So you are eating grain again plus a load of antibiotics. It won’t kill you, because the FDA has set a certain limit on how much antibiotics are allowed in the meat. Just as with the milk from those monster operations where they are allowed a certain level of pus and antibiotics in the milk too. Of course you cannot drink that stuff raw.
I don’t think our early ancestors had access to this kind of terrible stuff that only has the looks of meat. Also I think you are overdoing it a bit. 85% is a heavy load. Personally I would cut that at least in half, but you may want to do so gradually. You don’t want to trigger withdrawal symptoms. One other thing, have you ever tried a pork roast with lots of fresh ground nutmeg and white pepper, and a bit of course salt? You fillet a roast completely open, then season it liberally and then roll it back together and tie it in a few places. It should then go in the oven for at least 3 hours. First at 400 for 20 minutes and then back to 300-350 depending on how ‘hot’ your oven is. Turn or drip every half hour or so. I think you’re missing out on a lot if you stick to such a rigid raw meat paleo thing. I am not even sure if our ancestors ate it raw. Didn’t they have fire?
if i cut down to 40% raw meat then what do you suggest i eat in place of the other 40%? and no i am not eating any grains or breads whatsoever. i haven’t had pork roast in many years but when i did have it it was traditional german schweinebraten and always had potato dumplings on the side, and potatoes are a no-no in the paleo diet, those dumplings were so fricken’ good : (
are you saying i go 40% raw meat, 40% cooked meat and maybe increase my consumption of eggs?
my health problems only just began a few weeks ago, which is weird since leading up to it i have never felt better in my whole life. my digestion was horrible when i was vegetarian, that improved like night and day. my skin cleared up, my feet that used to be dry and cracked are now smooth and supple, i no longer lose energy half way through my shift. it’s been just remarkable. i will make an appointment with my doc though in the coming weeks to get a check up and a blood test while i’m at it. will report back with the results.
Trolling is lame. Find a better way to spend your time.
the word is ‘friggin’ Sal, not fricken. Unless of course when you are a fricker, in that case you should not really use fricken as an adjective to an adverb. When you really are a fricker then you use it as a verb, as in I frick, you frick. I am not a fricker so I don’t really know what it is that they do. But, and this is of course the clincher, if you are a fricker, you cannot be a paleo and therefore a paleo oriented diet might do you more harm than good. But you’re right, grain is no good for you either, it’s for the birds. Maybe you should try grass for a while. I know from a vegetarian friend who suspects his cat is vegetarian because he saw his cat eat grass on a regular basis. Maybe that is the case for you to. So out to pasture with you.
nope, still here. and still loving my raw meat! i’m staying with this raw meat diet and nobody can change my mind. too many fruits and vegetables almost killed me. plus, i thought everyone already knows all grains are killers lol! wow thanks for the update james lol!
maybe i can get banned by denise on good behavior, as i’ve done nothing but show diplomacy and respect to those on this blog. if i’m a troll it’s because i eat like one!
and cats require small amounts of grass to help digestion, please tell your friend this before he kills his cat by trying to make it vegan : )
“potatoes are a no-no in the paleo diet”
Oh, that very much depends on who you ask in the paleosphere.
I personally avoid potatoes because I’m extremely sensitive to insulin (a family thing) and potatoes are very high on the glycemic index and load so they are a close enemy of mine. But I personally believe that potatoes are entirely OK for most people, even in a ‘paleo’ diet. Just don’t overdo them to avoid the risk of disrupting glucose/insulin metabolism.
Just my opinion.
“if i cut down to 40% raw meat then what do you suggest i eat in place of the other 40%?”
More fat: non-pasteurised butter, non-hydrogenated lard, cold processed olive oil, egg yolks, walnuts, macadamia nuts. All organic or from an old-fashioned farm with similar practises.
You could also choose, for the raw meat you eat (which I hope is oganic!), the fattiest possible cuts, and eat more organs.
YMMV.
If you’ve never had Birkshire pork you are in for an absolute treat. I think we should celebrate Birkshire pork the way we celebrate christmas.
Yes, I celebrate both the same way.
BTW, why nobody objects to mass killing of cats by vegans? I love cats.
[...] movie, I did take some of it with a grain of salt and consulted the interwebs for further details. Raw Food SOS had an interesting review of the movie and posed the question, “Is the Science [...]
thanks everyone, that’s what i needed to hear : ) kartoffelknoedel here i come!
and about the cats, vegans should only be allowed by law to own rabbits, everyone wins lol
Could you spend more time actually writing about what you think is healthy?
Have you tried it or do you just like meat that much?
Jane said:
“Wizzu, sorry, I should have explained. I’m not suggesting you knew the grains were causing these things. I’m puzzled that if they were, they still tasted so good. ”
Uh?
If you really imply what it seems that you are implying, i.e. that foods which taste good to you should be good for your health and foods that are bad for your health will taste bad to you, well… i’m going to ignore your input entirely from now on, since I consider this idea as an utterly silly one.
Thank you! Thank you for a very compelling and well-researched critique of Forks Over Knives. I watched it last night and was just about ready to pitch meat out of my diet. While I still salute them for advocating a diet that emphasizes plant-based, unprocessed foods, your critique points out the clear short-sightedness of bailing on animal protein entirely. As a researcher myself, I don’t know which frustrates me more—advocacy completely devoid of any scientific basis or advocacy based on selective science. The former always leaves me unconvinced, while the other is flat-out deceptive. I truly appreciate the time and mental energy you devoted to more thoroughly research the research for those of us who just want the truth so that we can make informed and healthful decisions!
‘I routinely get emails from people on the McDougall program and other low-fat, plant-based diets who are facing health problems’ – denise
i think this is proof positive that these vegan quacks are doing more harm than good. the fact that people have to turn to someone outside of the medical profession for help speaks volumes about what these fake docs really now. keep fighting the good fight denise
Sal, does it not bother you in the least that you come across as small and petty?
I really take issue with your statement Sal that this is “proof positive”. The whole field of nutrition and the way it affects our health and well being, is new and quite undeveloped. I may not agree with dr McDougall and others, but that certainly does not mean that they are quacks. Even though we know that Omega6 and Omega3 are essential for us for instance, we have not known for a very long time that the complete imbalance between the two has the potential of, and probably is causing serious harm. etc. We are only just beginning to appreciate the vastness of the unknown. Reason enough for a professor of Food Science after a life of doing research and lecturing and publishing about it, upon his retirement stating: we don’t really know a whole lot (dr Martijn Katan PhD). That may be the problem with blogs like these. It attracts people from all layers of society, most of whom I think are concerned about their health, many have already discovered that what they been led to believe does not seem to produce the expected result. For most of them however they do not have the time to do the extensive research that would be required to come up with maybe tentative hypotheses. Maybe I am wrong but I have a hunch that there are many 100′s if not 1000′s who follow this blog without ever commenting. Just use it to distill their own verdict. After all this is a rich source of information. If you can discriminate between the good and the inane.
Sal, I routinely get emails from people following a diet similar to yours described above facing health problems. I’m a high school grad who never set foot in a university. I guess this is “proof positive” that the paleo diet pushers are doing more harm than good
Grok, I know that you are kidding, but I do see a problem with paleo diet pushers. I find it interesting that we are supposed to believe that “we” haven’t evolved at all and are no different than our paleo ancestors and … that we can personally “evolve” …. just like that …and drop whatever we’ve eaten our lives and start eating something totally different in our 50s, 60s, 70s.
The number of illnesses is huge, but the movement is partly driven by people with some serious intolerance who think that everyone else should eat … like them. Dropping all grains, legumes and diary is quite a radical step for most of us. What if other illnesses demand different restrictions? Why individuals who don’t have this intolerance or allergy should live the rest of their lives in terror “Don’t touch this, don’t touch that, don’t touch anything. Die.” How about a psychological aspects of “new lives.” I see a number of people in their 90s who haven’t had the easiest lives and have eaten all this horror “grains (a lot of them), dairy and legumes” and who are quite fine for their age. In other words, I think I am for a significant transformation of SAD, for dropping idiotic pyramid with grains the bottom, for promotion of natural healthy diet with fat in it, with restricted carbs, particularly of course the bad ones, but for a diet much broader than “grass and meat and fat.”
Arguments that something is killing someone, therefore nobody can touch it are not convincing. Nuts are not prohibited by paleo people, but people die at the thought of a one. Does is mean that I shouldn’t touch a walnut? I am not allergic to nuts or peanuts. I think they say that all grains are toxic to everyone, but I am not convinced.
I just talked to a friend who was born in Chili and discovered that they didn’t have dairy there. Is it possible that I, with many thousands of recorded traditions and a personal history of dairy eating, am different?
All I can say is, look to the National Geographic’s piece on the healthiest people in the world. They are those with the highest plant-based diets. One of those groups are the Seventh Day Adventists – particularly those in Loma Linda, California (where there are plenty of scientists and doctors who have conducted similar studies with the same results of “Forks over Knives”). Now, here is where faith comes in: The original diet for human bodies was plant based (refer to Genesis). CLEAN meats (see Deuteronomy) were introduced into the diet right after the flood. It so happens that this is also when the life expectancy of the human race started decreasing dramatically (and no, the animals did not enter the ark 2 by 2 but rather those animals identified as clean meats entered in 7 by 7 and the unclean animals entered in 2 by 2. Read the Biblical account of Noah and the ark for yourself.
What I am trying to communicate here is this: Our bodies were not created to consume flesh foods and in fact, they run better when nourished by the original diet found in the Bible which was plant based. This illumination on the diet was given to the church back in the 1800′s. Medicine and Science are just now catching up but God gave this information to the church many years ago so that we might live healthfully with a good quality of life and energy to be about the Father’s business. It is a win/win proposition.
There will always be those who choose the surgical knife to “fix” things rather than standing up and taking responsibility for their health through lifestyle choices. I “ain’t mad atcha” for doing so, but I think it is a sad commentary on a society that for the most part chooses death rather than abundant life. After all, God wants us to prosper and be in good health but we have a part to play in that through our choices.
Incidentally, I have two children: one is a physician scientist (MD/PhD); the other a physician/attorney MD/JD and they both agree with the information in “Forks over Knives”.
I am tolerant of all religions.
Nevertheless, I take issue when people start using faith-based arguments in scientific related discussions. These are the absolute worst to bring to the debate.
Citing excerpts from the Bible as element of evidence..? Oh, please!
Even if the Bible happens to be the word of God (why not after all), we all know that anyone can interpret the Bible the way he wants, which historically has led to at least as much hate and destruction than any other religion (or atheisms) has. Talk about cherry-picking!
“look to the National Geographic’s piece on the healthiest people in the world. They are those with the highest plant-based diets.”
Ooooh, someone didn’t get the cucumber part.
Translation: ASSOCIATION IS NOT CAUSATION.
Until you get this, you’ll stay stuck in blindness.
Besides, I don’t see what your arguments about a plant-based diet has to do with Ancel Keys or fat intake. Fat can be from vegetable sources, can’t it?
So I wonder… have you *actually read* the blog post? I doubt it.
I wrote:
“Besides, I don’t see what your arguments about a plant-based diet has to do with Ancel Keys or fat intake. Fat can be from vegetable sources, can’t it? So I wonder… have you *actually read* the blog post? I doubt it.”
Ooooops, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. My mistake. Retreating in shame.
Nothing in the bible is believable and if someone claims to know what god wants from us you should run for the hills.
“After all, God wants us to prosper and be in good health but we have a part to play in that through our choices.”
Oh people, we can’t have a discussion on dogmatic level only – whatever the dogma is.
“All I can say is, look to the National Geographic’s piece on the healthiest people in the world. They are those with the highest plant-based diets. One of those groups are the Seventh Day Adventists – particularly those in Loma Linda, California”
I actually dealt with this issue recently on a forum of interest to me … so I am prepared. Loma Linda is a small place and not everyone there is SDA. There are some 16 million of SDA in the world. The question is: “Why aren’t SDA outside Loma Linda as happy and healthy?”
[...] A devastating critique of “Forks Over Knives,” a film documentary of Campbell’s research, by blogger Denise Minger. [...]
I am not familiar with all the people in this “who they are” group, but clearly it includes crooks, conspiracy nuts (e.g. Gary Null) and convicted felons (e. g. Kevin Trudeau).
I am reading Davis’s Belly which includes the following passage (pp. 140-141):
The foods richest in AGEs are animal products, such as meats and cheese. In particular, meats and animal products heated to high temperature, e.g. broiling and frying, increase AGE content more than a THOUSANDFOLD. Also the longer an animal product food is cooked, the richer AGE content becomes.”
These AGEs (whoever/whatever they are) don’t seem to be nice “guys.” If Davis is correct, isn’t the diet rich in animal products problematic because of their presence?
What is AGE. This what I found and why I don’t like acronyms.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/AGE.html
Sorry, Gager.
Davis writes:
“AGEs are useless debris that result in tissue decay as they accumulate” (p. 134) .
OK, now seriously. According to Davis: “Advanced glycation end products, appropriately acronymed AGE, is the name given to the stuff that stiffens arteries … etc.” (p. 133).
So the problem is GLYCATION (whatever it is), caused of course by … wheat and … animal products, just because they are animal products and because they are prepared – slow long cooking is bad (long), fast high heat cooking is bad (high heat)
These concepts (glycation, AGEs) are obviously totally new to me.
If you are concerned about glycation then get an HbA1c test to measure the degree of hemoglobin glycaton. if you are in the normal range then don’t worry about it. But normal is lower than the typical average or median. In all probability you would have to be eating something other than a typical the Western diet to be normal
Dave, I don’t know whether personally I should be concerned – I don’t know what are the worrying symptoms.
I am interested in knowing what are the safest meat preparing techniques.
Hi Anna,
Sorry for my absence, as I’ve been a bit busy with things, but I know a little bit about AGEs because that are is the focus of my doctoral dissertation, so I thought I’d point you to a few things I’ve written. First, I address what Dr. Davis says about AGEs in my review of Wheat Belly:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/10/wheat-belly-toll-of-hubris-on-human.html
Second, I’ve written a rather detailed post about where AGEs come from:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2011/10/where-do-most-ages-come-from-o.html
You can also see some other posts by clicking on the “AGEs” tag on my blog:
http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/search/label/AGEs
In summary, AGEs are primarily formed from compounds that can be derived from proteins, carbohydrates, or ketones. To prevent their formation one must focus on broader metabolic processes and not on specific foods or specific macronutrients.
Hope that helps,
Chris
Thank you, Chris.
You make mention (early on) that nuts, and avocados are removed in these doctors recommended diets. Sorry you lost me there, the movie clearly shows “patients” eating those items. Watch a bit more closely. Now to be fair, I stopped reading your review there. Also I am an advocate that the science in this film is flawed, and sparse (to say the least), but so is yours? I am curious what gives you the authority or qualifications to make your own claims? I think you should revise your review, and possibly views. Also you need to focus on the accuracy of your statements, as you will lose people early on (like you did with me). I share your view that this movie is heavily biased. I also generally detest vegan food Nazi’s (people have a right to choose their own lifestyles…in either direction). I think your review is reckless and could have been much more powerful and informative, if you wouldn’t have made such gross errors early on…..
Some become lost more easily than others
If you had read it through, and the comments section, you would have learned a great deal and the answer to your original criticism. Your loss. As appears to always be the case, you are just another detractor who cannot attack Denise’s dissection of the data, so you attack her qualifications. Lame.
There is NO dissection of data. The fact that you use the statement “you are just another detractor who cannot attack Denise’s dissection of the data,” Shows your bias here. Also, qualifications are the basis of legitimate science, and I am not attacking hers…as she has none. Please no more from you. You are biased and snappy, and can’t seem to take in any opinions that refute your bias towards liking this author. Also the “lame” comment shows your maturity level.
“qualifications are the basis of legitimate science”
According to..?
According to the legitimate Scientific community, that does their own discovery. Lifting data from google searches does not make you a valid researcher. No point in arguing with you, as you have it all figured out already. Good luck with your ideals.