Saturated Fat Controversy

[FlatAssembler]

We don't actually produce more grain than we need, for example. People are starving.

Famines have little or nothing to do with our ability to produce food. In Venezuela, food production is record high now, yet people are starving. It's just epic economic mismanagement by incompetent politicians. Even during the Great Chinese Famine, the food production did decrease due to the poor weather and the Four Pests Policy, but only slightly. Over-reportings of the amounts of food people actually had, that's what played a major role there.

Additionally, the majority of grain grown isn't fit for human consumption and the land it's grown on doesn't support production for human consumption.

What makes you think that most of the grain that's produced isn't fit for human consumption? How can it be determined which grain is fit for humans and which isn't? Do you have some statistics that show that most of the grain that's fed to farmed animals isn't fit for humans?
My grandfather used to keep chickens, and the food he way buying for them was mostly grains of maize, apparently those same grains of maize that we cook and eat.
I realize it may sound unfair to ask for references for such claims, but you need to understand that the amount of effort needed to produce nonsense is way lower than the amount of effort needed to refute it.

why you don't see blocks of tomato growing on pasture.

Well, yes, some plants, such as tomatoes and lettuce, have special needs from the ground to grow successfully. But, if I am not mistaken, trefoil and pea have about the same needs, and wherever trefoil grows, pea can also be grown. And wheat and corn generally require even less nutrients and water to grow, except that they, unlike trefoil and pea, can't grow where the soil is very low in ammonia.

They've been bred and conditioned for affability and receptiveness

And we can't get out of that hole by digging.

Grain production isn't allowed to operate on a supply and demand basis.

As far as I know, nearly all economists are against subsidies and price controls, except perhaps in the cases of emergencies (most economists think price controls aren't useful even in emergencies, but it's not like you can't find an economist who would argue they are useful then).

In fact veganism would appear to harm more animals as this paper shows.

Yup, that tired old "Well, growing plants for food also causes deaths of some animals, such as mice." argument. Taken at the face value, it's true. However, you need to consider that there are basically two ways of growing cows for meat:
1. Feed them with grains, and kill about 5 times more mice than if you ate those plants directly.
2. Try to feed those cows with grass. And since grass is much less rich in nutrients cows need than grains are, it's going to need much more land. That means cutting down the forests, and again unintentionally killing countless animals.

If you are going to reject science based medicine, then you have a problem.

If they reject the mainstream science that saturated fat intake leads to heart disease (I haven't found them saying anything like that, but you seem to imply they say that.), then it's not science based, it's fringe theory based.

Furthermore, the Inuit have nearly an exclusive meat diet out of necessity. Oddly this should give them an increased incidence of CVD, but it doesn't.

Ah, this tired old Inuit argument. Do I even have to explain why that's wrong?
1. Inuits mostly eat fish, and meat from fish isn't as high in saturated fat as milk, eggs and meat from birds and mammals are.
2. The Inuits actually suffer from atherosclerosis more often than people in the US do. It's a myth that they have an exceptionally low rate of heart disease.

Among GOCADAN participants, the age-adjusted prevalence of carotid atherosclerosis exceeded that of U.S. black and white population-based samples.

3. As their diets get more westernized, the heart disease rates among Inuit population decreases, rather than increases.

Heart disease mortality for Alaska Native people declined 25% between 1979 and 2003.

If omega-3s in fish protect against heart disease, how is this possible? It looks like eating a lot of fish also increases your risk of getting heart disease, that saturated fat in fish increases your risk of heart disease more than omega-3 decreases it (if it decreases it at all).
4. Don't you think bringing up such hard-to-test claims (that Inuits have a low rate of heart disease) is a form of Gish-Gallop?

Or are you claiming that veganism is the only "proper" diet?

It's hard to tell. But you don't need to know the right answer to recognize a wrong one. A diet that includes a significant amount of meat, dairy and eggs will, in all likelihood, include a lot of saturated fat, it will include a lot more calcium than human body needs but a lot less Vitamin K than human body needs, and it will include a lot more protein than human body needs, possibly even more than it can take.

They are 100% grass fed here.

Where? And extraordinary claims require evidence.

Pigs don't graze.

Pigs can eat grass. Now, whether they can, like cows, get all the nutrients from grass by eating it all their waking hours, I don't know about that.

Chickens don't graze either.

Chickens can also eat grass. Again, I don't know if they can get all the nutrients they need from grass.

Farming is by nature a rather smelly business

I am not sure what you mean. I meant that the place that pigs are kept near my town is rather smelly, and, if it was clean, it wouldn't be smelly.

Once again, I simply don't care what superstitious nonsense muslims believe.

Unfortunately, beliefs inform actions and actions have consequences. The fact that they demand cows be slaughtered without stunning has horrible consequences. The fact that those who operate slaughterhouses apparently care about what Muslims believe more than they care about animal welfare also has horrible consequences. And the fact that they won't use a more effective stunning method for pigs than suffocating them with CO2 for some reason also has terrible consequences.

You sure treat your pal Dr. Greger like one even though he trots out egregiously false claims.

And those egregiously false claims are...

You have to live a long time for any such effects to appear,

Well, the same goes for, for example, smoking and cancer, right?

Not my problem.

OK, they fixed it.

Milk consumption does appear to be strongly related to CHD death in communities where susceptible people live long enough.

What do you think that means? Are you trying to say you probably aren't susceptible? How can you possibly know that? Or that you don't expect to live long? Why?

Do you know who else claims that science operates on faith? Young earth creationists. That alone is confirmation that you have a religion.

Affirming the Consequent Fallacy.

On what fucking planet did I ever suggest anything to do with human milk?

And what does "balanced diet" mean, if it doesn't mean that the proportion of nutrients in it is similar to that in human milk?

Still haven't figured out that this is not what evolutionary biology is about, eh. There's a clue in the title.

Do you agree with me that it can't tell us anything about nutrition?

You have done nothing but contradict mainstream science.

Where?

And how exactly the fuck have you any clue what diet my parents provided for me?

They told you eating meat and drinking milk was good, right?