I consumed exactly zero plant-based calories during all of 2021 — no alcohol, no plant-based cooking oil — NOTHING from a plant.
I ended the year in about the best shape of my life — and now that I understand nutrition better I plan to get back on that plan (trying to be “moderate” this year has been underwhelming).
Basically, meat makes you healthy and plants make you fart, give you dry skin, and don’t do anything at all for your musculature.
All the vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients are more highly available in animal-based foods than they are in plant-based food, and the macronutrient profile is basically ideal for human health as well.
It honestly makes me sad that so many people incorrectly think that red meat is not healthy. Red meat is in fact the most nutritious food you can eat and it is an ABSOLUTE TRAGEDY that this is not more widely understood.
I am not judging anybody, you can have whichever diet you want.
Nothing from a plant is dangerous according to any scientifically based diet.
We did not evolve with a carnivorous only diet, there are many studies about hunter gatherers and they have mostly a vegetarian diet with occasional meat.
Their gut microbiome is much more varied, and a varied ecosystem is a resilient ecosystem, therefore you are less vulnerable to pathogens bacteria.
On the other hand i’ve been vegan for over 10 years, i can squat 300lbs and I’m 190lbs at 10% bf at almost 50 years old. All this without supporting the most cruel and polluting industry. Who is right?
When you eventually die from colon cancer, remember this day and remember that somebody warned you that too much meat is bad for you. Also, try reading up on the benefits of leafy greens. I suspect you'll take neither of these advice, but here ends the attention to your health that you'll receive from me.
In eating meat you are probably eating some cancer that was present in the animals. Not sure if acid digested animal cancer can cause human cancer, anyone know of a study?
I agree. Meat is the most nutritionally complete food. I haven't eaten vegetables in years. There's nothing more gentle on the digestive system than meat.
It appears incontrovertible that it is harder (but not impossible) to have a nutritionally complete diet without meat, and particularly without dairy either.
It appears also incontrovertible that the additional components required to complete such a diet are expensive to produce (in terms of energy and high quality arable land) and likely cannot be scaled to any significant proportion of the population.
Perhaps if 80% of edible crops weren’t feed to livestock and subsidies were removed from animal agriculture then those will be no-issues. I find appealing that anyone on HN being a progressive and open-minded public with an objective opinion would be promoting an environmentally destructive industry like the animal AG.
Vegetarian diets are not expensive even with meat/dairy being subsidized ($38B/year in US).
Vegetarians need to make sure they exercise and consume high quality plant proteins: vegetables, nuts, legumes, beans and whole grains and keep a normal BMI.
Meat eaters have the opposite issue: too much protein and fat leading to heart disease (#1), cancer (#2), stroke (#5) and diabetes (#8). Hip fractures do not even chart.
Heavy resistance exercise, for example power lifting, is an excellent way for women (and men too!) to significantly increase their bone density. I've personally confirmed this with a DEXA scan as has everyone else I lift with that got a DEXA scan too.
I don't see why the same effect couldn't be achieved on a vegetarian diet, if nutrients and micronutrients were adequate.
I wonder to what extent the standard American diet results in obesity results in on-going, daily power-lifting as people just move about and if this effect is strong enough to appear as “vegetarians more likely to fracture hips”.
> The single questionnaire administered at recruitment was the only method of assessing diet and lifestyle information; therefore, we could not account for changes in the diet group or covariates over time. Additionally, food and nutrient intake in vegetarians in recent years could differ from when data were collected at recruitment due to changes over the last two decades in the availability of vegetarian food products, such as increases in the number of available meat substitute products [49]. Consequently, the generalisability of our findings to modern-day vegetarians is reduced.
But for me more striking are some things that are not explicitly checked, e.g. they excluded from their data those that had prior hip problems and the meat eaters were on average significantly older - could there be some selection?
Also studies seem to get somewhat different results depending on the exact data:
> Other epidemiological studies have found that adherence to diets low in meat consumption, such as the Mediterranean diet and Alternative Healthy Eating Index, was protectively associated with hip fracture risk [33, 34], and adherence to Western diets in which meat consumption is high was positively associated with hip fracture risk [35]. Conversely, total meat intake has been inversely associated with hip fracture risk [21]. These results cannot be fairly compared with risks in vegetarians and non-vegetarians, which no other study has directly assessed.
What is not clear to me is how the final % is reached as those that died during the 20 year study period are taken into account up to their death. So a woman died of cancer at year 10 gives 10 years of 'no hip fractures to the pool of years while a woman that lived throughout the study
If I do a simple division of cases divided by person years I get the following "annual chance of hip fracture":
* Regular meat-eater: 394 / 252610 = 0.1559‰
* Occasional meat-eater: 247 / 145639 = 0.1695%
* Pescetarians: 80 / 74077 = 0.1079%
* Vegetarian/vegan: 101 / 84042 = 0.1202%
In words: pescetarians have the lowest annual chance of hip fractures (11/10.000), followed by vegetarians (12/10.000). Meat eater have the highest chance of fractures, with occasional meat-eaters (17/10.000) having a higher chance than regular meat-eaters (16/10.000).
Unless I read this data VERY wrong the chance of fractures is much lower for vegetarians and vegetarians than meat eaters.
[+] [-] jononomo|3 years ago|reply
I ended the year in about the best shape of my life — and now that I understand nutrition better I plan to get back on that plan (trying to be “moderate” this year has been underwhelming).
Basically, meat makes you healthy and plants make you fart, give you dry skin, and don’t do anything at all for your musculature.
All the vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients are more highly available in animal-based foods than they are in plant-based food, and the macronutrient profile is basically ideal for human health as well.
It honestly makes me sad that so many people incorrectly think that red meat is not healthy. Red meat is in fact the most nutritious food you can eat and it is an ABSOLUTE TRAGEDY that this is not more widely understood.
[+] [-] Mildlypolite|3 years ago|reply
Nothing from a plant is dangerous according to any scientifically based diet.
We did not evolve with a carnivorous only diet, there are many studies about hunter gatherers and they have mostly a vegetarian diet with occasional meat.
Their gut microbiome is much more varied, and a varied ecosystem is a resilient ecosystem, therefore you are less vulnerable to pathogens bacteria.
[+] [-] bamboozled|3 years ago|reply
Same goes for eggs.
Vegetarians eat these things too.
[+] [-] neuralRiot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tartrate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagraff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markeibes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrankyHollywood|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rapjr9|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onnnon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gassiss|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabogh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somewhereoutth|3 years ago|reply
It appears also incontrovertible that the additional components required to complete such a diet are expensive to produce (in terms of energy and high quality arable land) and likely cannot be scaled to any significant proportion of the population.
[+] [-] neuralRiot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spicymaki|3 years ago|reply
Vegetarians need to make sure they exercise and consume high quality plant proteins: vegetables, nuts, legumes, beans and whole grains and keep a normal BMI.
Meat eaters have the opposite issue: too much protein and fat leading to heart disease (#1), cancer (#2), stroke (#5) and diabetes (#8). Hip fractures do not even chart.
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
Well, some believe that some of those falls are actually the result of the hip fracture.
[+] [-] User23|3 years ago|reply
I don't see why the same effect couldn't be achieved on a vegetarian diet, if nutrients and micronutrients were adequate.
[+] [-] sokoloff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mildlypolite|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lock-the-spock|3 years ago|reply
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
> The single questionnaire administered at recruitment was the only method of assessing diet and lifestyle information; therefore, we could not account for changes in the diet group or covariates over time. Additionally, food and nutrient intake in vegetarians in recent years could differ from when data were collected at recruitment due to changes over the last two decades in the availability of vegetarian food products, such as increases in the number of available meat substitute products [49]. Consequently, the generalisability of our findings to modern-day vegetarians is reduced.
But for me more striking are some things that are not explicitly checked, e.g. they excluded from their data those that had prior hip problems and the meat eaters were on average significantly older - could there be some selection?
Also studies seem to get somewhat different results depending on the exact data:
> Other epidemiological studies have found that adherence to diets low in meat consumption, such as the Mediterranean diet and Alternative Healthy Eating Index, was protectively associated with hip fracture risk [33, 34], and adherence to Western diets in which meat consumption is high was positively associated with hip fracture risk [35]. Conversely, total meat intake has been inversely associated with hip fracture risk [21]. These results cannot be fairly compared with risks in vegetarians and non-vegetarians, which no other study has directly assessed.
Most interesting is this table:
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1291...
What is not clear to me is how the final % is reached as those that died during the 20 year study period are taken into account up to their death. So a woman died of cancer at year 10 gives 10 years of 'no hip fractures to the pool of years while a woman that lived throughout the study
If I do a simple division of cases divided by person years I get the following "annual chance of hip fracture":
* Regular meat-eater: 394 / 252610 = 0.1559‰
* Occasional meat-eater: 247 / 145639 = 0.1695%
* Pescetarians: 80 / 74077 = 0.1079%
* Vegetarian/vegan: 101 / 84042 = 0.1202%
In words: pescetarians have the lowest annual chance of hip fractures (11/10.000), followed by vegetarians (12/10.000). Meat eater have the highest chance of fractures, with occasional meat-eaters (17/10.000) having a higher chance than regular meat-eaters (16/10.000).
Unless I read this data VERY wrong the chance of fractures is much lower for vegetarians and vegetarians than meat eaters.
[+] [-] coldtea|3 years ago|reply