On-going correspondence about veganism

[Take5]

I've been discussing my reasons for going plant-based with a group of friends for a few weeks, now - over coffee, then following up with the odd weblink, mainly concentrating on the health benefits, TBH. (We're all in our late 60s, 70s and 80s.) I've just received this from one of the guys:

"...I decided to dig a bit deeper into the topic, having plenty of pro stuff I've been looking at articles/research that don't support the philosophy of veganism, though not all of them are specifically related to plant based meals:

For some of the links you may have to cut and paste into your Search engine. No videos I'm afraid, I find words more stimulating and easier to check.

1. Meat consumption by country, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption

2. Cancer rates by country from
http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-cancer-frequency-country

3.Norway – Food consumption percentage changes in WWII – meat -60, Fish +200, Veg +100, Potatoes +120, Milk -40, Fruit -60, sugar -50, butter – 40. page 345 from the following
http://www.lorentzcenter.nl/lc/web/2008/319/CD%20LORENTZ%20CENTER%20WORKSHOP/NORDIC%20angell-andersen%20ann%20hum%20biol%202004.pdf

4. Norway – a PhD thesis indicating some cancers increased because of wartime effect and some didn't. Suggesting starting at page 67 from the following
https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/10724/AnahitaRahimi_thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

5. Meat free diet would mean the, "food chain [...] even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers since food would need to travel even farther and fertility – in the form of manures – would be in short supply". Michael Pollan the Omnivore's Dilemma. (2006) from the following
https://www.facebook.com/steve.agyei/posts/10153467435051881

6. The following quote is taken from a very detailed critique of the China Study book including the Study itself rather than the book with the same name. Lots of further links within the article.

“when we look solely at the variable “death from all cancers,” the association with plant protein is +12. With animal protein, it’s only +3”, taken from
https://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/

7. The remaining links are concerned with the work Esselstyn, Gregor, Campbell and McDougall. One of them mentions the key factor in their research is more to do with giving up junk food that one specific ingredient. Can't remember which one!
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-china-study-revisited/

8. https://theskepticalcardiologist.com/2015/08/04/the-incredibly-bad-science-behind-dr-esselstyns-plant-based-diet/

9. https://rawfoodsos.com/2011/09/22/forks-over-knives-is-the-science-legit-a-review-and-critique/

10. http://www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/prevent-and-reverse-heart-disease-by-caldwell-b-esselstyn/

11. http://www.drgourmet.com/askdrgourmet/health/heartattackproof.shtml#.WFUCIraLR7M

12. http://www.drsinatra.com/is-a-low-fat-vegetarian-diet-healthy-for-your-heart/

13. http://www.healthnewsreview.org/2011/09/criticisms-of-cnns-the-last-heart-attack/

14. http://anthonycolpo.com/forks-over-knives-the-latest-vegan-nonsense-dissected-debunked-and-destroyed/

15. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Forks_Over_Knives

16. http://www.aicr.org/about/advocacy/the-china-study.html?referrer=https://www.google.co.uk/

17. https://chriskresser.com/rest-in-peace-china-study/

18. http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html

19. https://thehealthsciencesacademy.org/book-reviews/how-not-to-die/

There are, of course, many more on both sides of the argument and I've no way of knowing which has credibility."

The reason Norway is in there is that I mentioned reading that, when the Nazis invaded Norway and the Low Countries, and removed all their livestock to feed the German army, deaths from heart disease went down, and only started to increase again once the war was over and the population(s) resumed their pre-war, meat-based diet.

I started in to check all these out, then realised that some of you guys have probably come across some of these links before, so I'm basically asking for your help!

Please!


Edited to make the links clickable.

[brimstoneSalad]

1. Meat consumption by country, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_consumption

2. Cancer rates by country from
http://www.wcrf.org/int/cancer-facts-figures/data-cancer-frequency-country

The saying "correlation does not mean causation" exists for a reason.

Cancer is complex, it's largely caused by:

Air pollution/smoking
Sun/UV exposure
Food contamination (mold)
Viruses and pathogens (particularly retroviruses, but also H. Pylori and others)
Certain foods (mainly animal products)
Genetics

And overall: bad luck, including things like cosmic rays.

You have to control for all known variables. A naive comparison of a couple lists fails severely in doing that.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikaandersen/2012/03/23/true-fact-the-lack-of-pirates-is-causing-global-warming/

Richer countries tend to eat more meat, but they also get less UV exposure, have better healthcare and fewer of these viruses, and have less contaminated food. Recently, richer countries also have cleaner air in their cities.

You can actually break it down by the kinds of cancer, and you can find very strong correlations to meat consumption in some cancers, weaker ones in others. Colon cancer in particular has a very strong correlation.

The general cancer correlation in populations is weaker than the heart disease one, where it's uncontroversial.

3.Norway – Food consumption percentage changes in WWII – meat -60, Fish +200, Veg +100, Potatoes +120, Milk -40, Fruit -60, sugar -50, butter – 40. page 345 from the following

There's no way to establish proper controls in a historical event like that.

5. Meat free diet would mean the, "food chain [...] even more dependent than it already is on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers since food would need to travel even farther and fertility – in the form of manures – would be in short supply". Michael Pollan the Omnivore's Dilemma. (2006) from the following

Animals are fed largely corn and soybeans which we have already grown, There's no increased dependency on fossil fuels by eating plants directly, particularly beans and grains. We'd have less dependency, because these products, fed directly to humans, would need less land to grow, and ship and store more easily than animal products (which are largely refrigerated).

A fruit based diet would possibly increase dependency, since fruit doesn't grow year-round in most places. It's not a very sustainable diet, I don't recommend it.

7. The remaining links are concerned with the work Esselstyn, Gregor, Campbell and McDougall. One of them mentions the key factor in their research is more to do with giving up junk food that one specific ingredient. Can't remember which one!
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-china-study-revisited/

Those links are not generally credible.
Hall is a venomous anti-vegan who will happily flirt with cholesterol skepticism and reference non-sources like Denise Minger if she thinks it will discredit veganism: she's a bad person with double standards who pretends to be a legitimate skeptic (on some topics she is, on veganism she is not).

See this article: http://www.theveganrd.com/2016/07/how-science-based-medicine-gets-vegan-diets-wrong.html

All together, that list of links is very nearly the who's who of anti-vegan pseudoscience. BUT Esselstyn, Campbell, and McDougall aren't credible either. Greger is the most credible of the bunch, but he makes mistakes too.

See my post here:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2282&p=23950#p23748

The trouble is that if you lower the bar for credibility that low, a lot of non-credible anti-vegan doctors and "experts" make the cut too, so you don't know who to trust.

See Ginny's article here (Ginny Messina is credible, she's an RD, so she has specific training in this and is part of the body that establishes consensus in nutrition):
http://www.theveganrd.com/2010/11/how-the-health-argument-fails-veganism.html

Very modest points, basically. And that's the trick; consensus makes modest claims.

Veganism is healthy, and there are reasons to eat no meat in the same sense there are reasons to smoke no cigarettes... but at the same time, one cigarette a year probably won't kill you any more than one burger will. It barely increases risk, and it does so to a level where it's not really detectable by credible means epidemeologically.

I've talked elsewhere on how I prefer mechanistic arguments to epidemeological ones, and this is why.

Please feel free to invite him here to present the arguments he finds most credible. But it's hard to argue very compellingly for a 100% vegan diet for health reasons. 99% is much easier, and not at all controversial. Experts, and the consensus, agrees that people should eat more veggies, whole grains, and beans, and less meat. Once you reduce it low enough, it starts to get to a level of harm your body can handle better and it doesn't stand out as particularly harmful in our lives when we're surrounded with greater harms like air pollution and filled with cancer causing viruses. The "signal" of cancer caused from a very small amount of meat is lost in the "noise" of everything else causing cancer.

[Take5]

Hi Brimstone

Awfully sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. I wrote a long reply, lost it and then Xmas intervened.

I did invite my mate over here to respond directly, but he said he didn't see any need for a response, since he mostly agreed with you!

[brimstoneSalad]

Hi Brimstone

Awfully sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. I wrote a long reply, lost it and then Xmas intervened.

I did invite my mate over here to respond directly, but he said he didn't see any need for a response, since he mostly agreed with you!

When you lose a reply because of an internet issue, 99% of the time you can push the back button in a modern web browser (any version of Firefox or Chrome after 2010 or so) and your reply will still be there saved for you. You can then select all, copy the reply, and navigate back to the thread to post it again (the post button on that page won't work, so you'll have to return to the thread with your reply copied).

Please let him know he can always come here for questions or help. I hope he'll consider reducing animal product consumption, i.e. becoming a "Reducetarian".
McDougall gives dubious health advice, but his philosophy on not being hard line and letting people eat whatever they want on holidays, for example, is very practical.
It's what we eat 99% of the time that matters most to health.

[Take5]

Thanks, Brim.

I might email my contact list and suggest everyone does that for the New Year. The goddamn planet won't wait for ever!

[brimstoneSalad]

It's a great newyears resolution.