(April 11, 2014 at 9:53 pm)Aractus Wrote: Despite the claims made by vegans there is still has not been a study that has shown that eating healthy amounts of meat, eggs, dairy and fish produces bad health.

That'd be interesting.

Also, there is a proposed mental disorder Orthorexia Nervosa which is characterized by extreme or excessive preoccupation with avoiding foods perceived to be unhealthy. People who actually believe that meat - or any entire food group for that matter - is unhealthy for everyone, or that certain foods are unhealthy for them when they're not have the proposed mental disorder.

(April 11, 2014 at 9:53 pm)Aractus Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 5:03 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: http://nih.gov/researchmatters/june2013/...tarian.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23836264

That study is not real science. The results are skewed by the healthy worker effect, and furthermore they're obtained by data mining. Using these two principles you can "prove" that vegans anywhere are healthier, but it doesn't make it true. The study did not account for BMI or other factors - vegans have a lower BMI than the general population which on its own is a benefit. A proper comparison would be between vegans and meat eaters who are healthy weights. SDA's are vegetarian for religious reasons, the same with Hindus, the same with Buddhists.

Put simply that study just is not any good as science. Here is a recent study done in Austria:

• Nutrition and Health – The Association between Eating Behavior and Various Health Parameters: A Matched Sample Study
  Nathalie T. Burkert, Johanna Muckenhuber, Franziska Großschädl, Éva Rásky, Wolfgang Freidl
  
  Our results revealed that a vegetarian diet is related to a lower BMI and less frequent alcohol consumption. Moreover, our results showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with poorer health (higher incidences of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), a higher need for health care, and poorer quality of life. Therefore, public health programs are needed in order to reduce the health risk due to nutritional factors.
  
  

Despite the claims made by vegans there is still has not been a study that has shown that eating healthy amounts of meat, eggs, dairy and fish produces bad health.

Okay. You said it was a lie that "Vegetarians and vegans tend to live longer than people who eat meat." I gave you good evidence that they do, and you failed to refute it.

(April 11, 2014 at 10:31 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: Okay. You said it was a lie that "Vegetarians and vegans tend to live longer than people who eat meat." I gave you good evidence that they do, and you failed to refute it.

The SDA study has well known flaws, and I told you what they were. I gave you a more recent Austrian study that concluded that vegans have poorer health compared to non-vegans, and is a proper study and not data-mining.

poorer health ≠ don't live as long

The healthy work effect (or healthy user bias) would only work as a counterargument if the study found no difference. Since it did find a difference, finding that the vegans lived longer, the healthy user bias would suggest that the difference was underestimated.

The other factors don't have to be controlled for unless I want to suggest that veganism causes [lower] mortality.

The only real problem is that participants didn't update their dietary status throughout the study. The vegan and vegetarians could have gone back to meat during the study. But I doubt that very many of them did.

I was a Seventh Day Adventist for 17 years, and I have to say the vegetarians were or seemed healthier than the vegans, SDA, not only keep to a vegetarian diet because of religious reasons, but also for health reasons.

(April 11, 2014 at 11:08 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: poorer health ≠ don't live as long

LOL, um yes I'm afraid that's exactly what it is. Here's a short presentation by Dan Buettner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-jk9ni4XWk

Quote:The healthy work effect (or healthy user bias) would only work as a counterargument if the study found no difference. Since it did find a difference, finding that the vegans lived longer, the healthy user bias would suggest that the difference was underestimated.

SDA's live on average longer than the base populations of western countries, but that's not unique to SDA and is in fact the case for all Christians, and other faiths as well. The study did not separate people with lower BMI's from those with higher BMI's. The important question isn't whether a healthy weight vegan lives longer than an obese omni.

Say the vegetarian population is 10% of the general population - that's 10% of people who are concerned with their health and would prioritize it more than many of the remaining 90% - what you need to do with the remaining 90% is find the other 10% that are equally concerned with their health and then do a comparison. Without doing that you're not differentiating between those who eat healthy meat-inclusive diets, and those who eat unhealthy meat-inclusive diets, and therefore your results are truly and completely meaningless for the purpose you want to use it for.

We can go to any gym and find fit and healthy people on a complete range of different diets.

Quote:The other factors don't have to be controlled for unless I want to suggest that veganism causes [lower] mortality.

If you want to suggest that meat consumption or diary consumption or fish consumption increases mortality compared to no consumption then they do need to be factored and controlled. 63% of Australian adults are overweight - the numbers are similar in the USA and UK. You do not want to look at that 63%, nor do you want to look at the 1.5% that are underweight - you need to concern yourself with the healthy-weight population which might be 35% or so of the overall population and then you can draw your results as to whether veganism or other diets reduce mortality or not. Doing it any other way is junk science.

Quote:The only real problem is that participants didn't update their dietary status throughout the study. The vegan and vegetarians could have gone back to meat during the study. But I doubt that very many of them did.

There is no one diet that is right for everyone.

Those that claim otherwise are not just wrong, but morally misguided and have a mental disorder.

Also your assertion that you "doubt many of them" went back to eating meat is based on what? Do you have any evidence or is that another assumption? True that as the reason for their abstinence is religious it may not be as high as the based population, however the generally accepted figure is the one from Psychology Today that says 75% of vegetarians in the USA go back to a vegan diet with the average length of time on a vegetarian diet being 9 years. There's no data on vegans going to and from vegetarian diets - however it is possibly quite high as I've seen a number of Youtube videos of vegans who have gone between vegan and vegetarian a number of times.

(April 11, 2014 at 11:40 pm)Aractus Wrote:

(April 11, 2014 at 11:08 pm)Coffee Jesus Wrote: poorer health ≠ don't live as long

LOL, um yes I'm afraid that's exactly what it is. Here's a short presentation by Dan Buettner:

So a person who chooses castration in hopes of life extension is making the healthy choice?

Quote:If you want to suggest that meat consumption or diary consumption or fish consumption increases mortality compared to no consumption then they do need to be factored and controlled.

Good, I'm glad we finally agree on this.

--edited to add--

(April 11, 2014 at 11:40 pm)Aractus Wrote: Psychology Today that says 75% of vegetarians in the USA go back to a vegan diet with the average length of time on a vegetarian diet being 9 years. There's no data on vegans going to and from vegetarian diets - however it is possibly quite high as I've seen a number of Youtube videos of vegans who have gone between vegan and vegetarian a number of times.

Okay good point. I have to account not only any who returned to meat, but also for any who returned to vegetarianism. The latter might have occurred more frequently.
Plus, a vegan will be more likely to switch if they are experiencing health problems that could be a result of their veganism.

I'm sorry I mistyped the figure it's 75% of vegetarians in the USA go back to eating meat after an average of 9 years, not back to vegan, lol.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that the serious health problems can take 20 years to develop on a vegan diet, so we're only beginning to learn about the negative long term health effects and while you say that we didn't know about B12 deficiency until recently - that we also agree on - vegetarians are also very unaware of the risks of other deficiencies like zinc deficiency, protein deficiency and of course cholesterol deficiency. Plant based diets have been proven to lower cholesterol, so if you have a healthy cholesterol level and you go on a vegan diet you will become cholesterol deficient and that leads to mental disorder - anxiety, depression, anger and aggression.

Vegan diets are high in carbohydrates which our bodies break down into glucose (sugar ) it's good slow release energy, however like cholesterol our bodies are capable of producing glucose, and to remove the glucose from our blood we use insulin. If we keep having too much blood glucose then we can develop type 2 diabetes - how does a vegan go about lowering their blood glucose? They have to virtually remove all sweet fruits from their diet!

But that's not the main problem, the main problem is that our bodies can produce glucose, but they can't produce the essential fatty acids. They're actually called the essential fatty acids because we can't produce them. So low fat diets can be very dangerous. Diets too high in glucose can lead to low triglyceride levels and while that means you can't physically get fatter, it also means health problems including mental health problems. You never hear vegans talk about this, and the problem is that it's not a 100% settled science - in other words we don't yet know what level really is too low. Normal levels are "up to" 150 mg/dl - so what level is too low? Well at the moment anything below 10 mg/dl is considered very dangerous.

That would bring me to thyroid problems what if a vegan is diagnosed with an overactive or an underactive thyroid? Well the first thing they have to eliminate from their diet is soy (maybe not all soy, but certainly soy milk and other products high in soy), along with a number of vegetables. Another thing that can contribute to thyroid problems is gluten which is in wheat, which means you have to also look at eliminating all wheat from your diet.

Soy is not a natural product - raw soy is toxic to omnivores and to carnivores, it's only herbivores like cows that can digest grass that can eat soy. Moderate consumption of processed soy foods are considered safe, but we're now learning about the dangers of over-consuming soy - so you can't look to soy as a replacement food for something that is healthy and non-toxic.

• The Health Dangers of Soy
  
  Soybeans -- even organically grown soybeans -- naturally contain "antinutrients" such as saponins, soyatoxin, phytates, trypsin inhibitors, goitrogens and phytoestrogens. Traditional fermentation destroys these antinutrients, which allows your body to enjoy soy's nutritional benefits. However, most Westerners do not consume fermented soy, but rather unfermented soy, mostly in the form of soymilk, tofu, TVP, and soy infant formula.
  
  Unfermented soy has the following 10 adverse affects on your body:
  
  

  ---

  1. High Phytic Acid (Phytates): Reduces assimilation of calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc. Phytic acid in soy is not neutralized by ordinary preparation methods such as soaking, sprouting and long, slow cooking, but only with long fermentation. High-phytate diets have caused growth problems in children.
  
  2. Trypsin inhibitors: Interferes with protein digestion and may cause pancreatic disorders. In test animals, trypsin inhibitors in soy caused stunted growth.
  
  3. Goitrogens: Potent agents that block your synthesis of thyroid hormones and can cause hypothyroidism and thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked with autoimmune thyroid disease. Goitrogens interfere with iodine metabolism.
  
  4. Phytoestrogens/Isoflavones: Plant compounds resembling human estrogen can block your normal estrogen and disrupt endocrine function, cause infertility, and increase your risk for breast cancer.
  
  5. Hemagglutinin: A clot-promoting substance that causes your red blood cells to clump, making them unable to properly absorb and distribute oxygen to your tissues.
  
  6. Synthetic Vitamin D: Soy foods increase your body's vitamin D requirement, which is why companies add synthetic vitamin D2 to soymilk (a toxic form of vitamin D).
  
  7. Vitamin B12: Soy contains a compound resembling vitamin B12 that cannot be used by your body, so soy foods can actually contribute to B12 deficiency, especially among vegans.
  
  8. Protein Denaturing: Fragile proteins are denatured during high temperature processing to make soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein (TVP). Chemical processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines.
  
  9. MSG: Free glutamic acid, or MSG, is a potent neurotoxin. MSG is formed during soy food processing, plus additional MSG is often added to mask soy's unpleasant taste.
  
  10. Aluminum and Manganese: Soy foods contain high levels of aluminum, which is toxic to your nervous system and kidneys, and manganese, which wreaks havoc on your baby's immature metabolic system.
  
  Soy's antinutrients are quite potent. Drinking just two glasses of soymilk daily provides enough of these compounds to alter a woman's menstrual cycle. But if you feed soy to your infant or child, these effects are magnified a thousand-fold. Infants fed soy formula may have up to 20,000 times more estrogen circulating through their bodies as those fed other formulas. You should NEVER feed your infant a soy-based formula!
  
  In fact, infants fed soy formula take in an estimated five birth control pills' worth of estrogen every day.
  
  As dangerous as unfermented soy is, fermented soy from organic soybeans is a different story altogether and can be a beneficial part of your diet. Fermented soy is a great source of vitamin K2, and K2 (combined with vitamin D) is essential in preventing osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and various types of cancer.

  ---

Just a reminder that if anyone wants to debate this properly I am certainly interested.

The meaning of vegan has changed since my generation were children. I watched a video with Alex Jamieson where she explains this as well, that when she became vegan it was for her health not for animal welfare and since that time the entire meaning of vegan has shifted - and I agree with her.

Vegans do make the claims that a vegan lifestyle is better for health and better for the environment, but the nucleus to their lifestyle is the desire not to consume animals. And the problem with this is they make claims that are wrong - like that meat, fish, dairy and eggs are actually unhealthy for humans, this isn't true at all. In fact, red meat is the most nutrient dense food that there is, there is more nutrients in cattle liver then there is in any other natural foods that we consume.

Vegans have no scientific understanding of the human digestive process. There's just one thing I want to bring up here: enzymes. Do you know what an Enzyme is? If you had a very very basic knowledge of biology you could answer this easily, it's a really simple thing. enzymes are proteins that break down the nutrients in foods to be used by our bodies. Herbivores have enzymes that break down cellulose so that it can be metabolized. All mammals have a enzymes for breaking down lactose, although for most mammals that enzyme does not persist past the juvenile stage.

One of the things that happens when people switch from one way of eating to an extreme diet is that the imbalance in enzymes causes weight loss, but this is only temporary. What happens is, for instance, if you stop eating meat or grain altogether and just eat fruit and veg your digestive tract won't have enough enzymes to break down all the nutrients and you'll in fact pass a number of calories straight out. If you persist in eating this way - or any way for that matter - you cause the composition of enzymes in your digestive tract to change to adopt to your diet.

Soy is one of the most harmful products for this process. It interferes with how you should be digesting food, and that's why it's not healthy to over consume soy products. That's not opinion, it's science. So when I see vegans claim that you can have healthy pseudo-meats, what I hear is their claim that artificial processed foods containing soy and msg are going to be as healthy or healthier than the meat alternatives, and this simply is not true.

Vegans believe all deficiencies can be corrected with supplements, this just is not true. You have to work with the process in which the body works to break down nutrients using its enzymes, not in a way that simply doesn't work. B12 is a really interesting example on this one - many vegans will actually not want to say which health supplement vegans should take, and this is because vegans who take supplements in the form of a pill still become B12 deficient, and then have to be given it through IV. This is an example that although it may sound on paper as if a supplement will correct a deficiency, real world examples show that the supplements are not absorbed the way in which the same nutrient is directly from the whole food source.

Much of the information being spread by the vegan movement is FALSE. Take for instance 30 Bananas a Day - very well known and vocal. Yet the two people behind the 80/10/10 "Raw to 4" raw vegan diet, Freelee and Duranrider, have absolutely no diet expertise and yet people listen to them for health advice. Their problem isn't that the diet itself is bad, it's that the diet is bad long term. Using a vegan diet as a "short term cleanse" eg for up to 1 week is not an all bad idea doing that will reorganise the enzymes in your digestive tract, and when you go back to eating normally they'll reorganize yet again and it's not a bad way to give your system a rough kick, however the problem with them and with Douglas N. Graham the originator of 80/10/10 is that it's basically just a sugar high. It's not healthy, it's not wholesome it's just a sugar high. And people that are on it are simply experiencing that sugar high whist depriving their brains of the food it needs and becoming addicted to sugar.

Here's Doug Graham with one gullible young woman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIBMEGI7e8I

Who's since gone away from veganism after 80/10/10 gave her teeth cavities and other health problems and onto paleo (search through her other videos). It's true that going from one extreme to another isn't necessarily the best idea, however at least she's no longer unhealthy.

So these health claims are unethical in my opinion. Veganism can be helpful to people, however it can also be harmful. There is no solid scientific data that shows that humans can thrive on a vegan diet, and if you choose to follow it you are a guinea pig in an experiment - it's fine to do the experiment, but it's wrong to tell other's that it's the right way to diet.