Philosophical Vegan Forum

Hello everybody!

I recently had an enlightening debate here on the forums, during which two different cases were made using studies to back up their arguments.

The one side, which proposed weight gain through nuts, submitted the following sources:

http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/07/c ... -nuts.html
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/08/n ... ought.html

The other side, which proposed no weight gain through nuts, submitted the following sources:

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/nuts-an ... -evidence/


What do you guys make of this? There seem to be two different scientific consensuses about the impact of nuts on weight gain. Maybe this is a good opportunity to share methods and techniques to distinguish good from bad science.

Any constructive help and input is appreciated.

Stay curious.

I would love to see more studies on this topic done in the context of vegan diets.

The real trouble with these studies is that they tend to be done in the context of animal product containing diets, and when there's something that unhealthy in a diet, compounds in the nuts may partially mitigate the metabolic effects of those products, thus appearing less fattening than they may be in vegan contexts.

Like miniboes said (I think), an extra thousand calories of nuts caused a little weight gain, but nothing like you'd expect from oil or animal products.

They may be something like a middle-ground in terms of richness or potential to be fattening, but they're also nutritional powerhouses and contain a lot of essential fatty acids. Nuts are also very satiating.

Not to make a Middle Ground fallacy: https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/middle-ground
We just need more information on this topic. As far as the science goes to date, it seems reasonable to believe that likely amounts of nut consumption don't lead to significant weight gain.

We could do a study on it, but who's going to fund a study on nuts in a vegan diet?