Dr. Doug Graham (80-10-10 raw vegan)

[miniboes]

No, you shouldn't. You didn't even know what cholesterol is.

How did you determine that?

Vegan diets often lead to cholesterol deficiency

Your (not anecdotal) evidence is?

Everyone has to die eventually.

Why? Who decided that? Even if that is true, would that mean we should not try to prevent death?

As you can clearly see, the condition is much more prevalent among older people. And this is just people with the condition, not necessarily people that go on to die from that particular condition. Of people aged 45-54, 23% had CVD.

Take a look at this:

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx...eid=286620

300 autopsies were performed on US battle casualties in Korea, the average age was 22. I quote:

In 77,3% of the hearts, some gross evidence of coronary arteriosclerosis was found.

In this context, gross evidence means visible to the eye. In some of the soldiers, some arteries were clogged for 90%. This publication shows that heart disease starts decades before the age CVD is a clinically recognized problem (before symptoms arise). A similar study with over 1500 autopsies confirmed the findings. This study found fatty streaks, the first stage of atherosclerosis, in almost a 100% of children of age 10. So what's accounting for these plaques in kids? Well, autopsies were performed on people who died between ages 3 and 26, and the largest risk factor was found to be cholesterol. See in this graph how LDL cholesterol clogs the arteries;



Granted, it was only looking at 30 kids. So here's a study of 3000 kids that confirmed the findings:

http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/122442...k7W2xyb.12

So sure, it is diagnosed mainly in old people, but it starts at age 10 and cholesterol is definitely the largest factor.

Of people with CVD, only 33% reported their health as bad/poor - which is three times higher than the non-CVD population. So only 7.7% of people aged 45-54 both had CVD and reported their health as being bad. That's a lot less than the 30% figure you came up with.

Wait what? The 30% is not about how many people with CVD report their health as being bad, it's the percentage of deaths caused by CVD. I don't see how the two are even related. Also, it's a global statistic, not an Australian one. I quote the WHO:

"An estimated 17.3 million people died from CVDs in 2008, representing 30% of all global deaths(1). Of these deaths, an estimated 7.3 million were due to coronary heart disease and 6.2 million were due to stroke (2)."

Major preventable risk factors for cardiovascular disease include tobacco smoking, hypertensive disease (high blood pressure), high blood cholesterol, inadequate physical activity, overweight and obesity, poor nutrition and diabetes (AIHW 2004).

Poor nutrition, that one is important! Because you know, it leads to many of the other things. And guess what if you improve your nutrition and lifestyle? You can reverse heart disease.

No, you don't. When I pressed you to answer whether someone should continue veganism if they find that it's bad for their health, you gave me some nonsense about CVD

I told you that they should improve their diet because it is probably faulty, but if there is no other way by all means they should eat meat. However, for the huge majority of people a vegan diet is not unhealthful at all. Then I pointed out that the slight possibility of B12 deficiency really doesn't stack up against a cure for the disease that takes more lives than any other, which I think is highly relevant. To say your anecdotal B12 deficiencies weighs up against CVD is like saying the Dutch mafia is as powerful as the US military.

The simple fact is that that a much greater proportion of animals are edible by humans - in fact even animals which we generally have other uses for and generally do not eat: cats, dogs, horses, donkeys, alpacas, etc. are still edible, and available to provide nourishment if we find ourselves in a situation where we needed to eat such animals. Unlike domesticated grains, the original wild forms of these domestic animals (wolf, wildcat, wild boars, etc) are edible as well. Of course when thinking about land animals it is the herbivorous which are healthiest, but we can eat just about any of them. We can, and do, also eat a range of marine life.

You know, edible is a pretty vague term. Where do you draw the line between bad food and not food? Dirt is not food, but are donuts? Are extremely alcoholic drink, decisively bad for our health? Please define what you mean by edible.

And finally, human teeth are designed for meat. I see vegans often wrongly claiming that they aren't, but they are - we have teeth designed to shear the meat from the bone, and teeth designed to chew. Furthermore, the archaeological record has shown that people who ate large amounts of meat had little to no cavities in their teeth, but those who ate large amounts of grain had more cavities.

I agree, our teeth are designed by evolution to be able to shear meat. That proves nothing more than that we are designed to be able to eat some meat, and says nothing about if it is healthy. Also, I don't think cavities are relevant as they have little effect on natural selection.

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Because food production requires a vast amount of chemical inputs that livestock can provide (as well as shallow tilling, pest control, storage etc).

There are vegan fertilizers in the works, what else?

Because livestock can be grown in places and times where mixed veg cannot?

Well, we do need to feed the livestock with plants, so that does not seem relevant especially as 50% of the world's grains are fed to livestock.

Because livestock can process things which are not useful to us into that which is useful to us

Albeit not very efficiently, and we might as well start growing things that are useful to us instead.

Because livestock is not a weapon with which countries can wage war, or tinpot dictators can prop themselves up with.

I still don't see why we need to choose between using less fossil fuels and decreasing the scale of the livestock industry. Why not both?

Are you sure that your "interest to live" arises from your conscious...and if it did, how do we explain the startling similarities between ourselves and "non-conscious" life regarding the avoidance of death and harm? Anything you might reference as an example of an animals "interest to live" -including our own- is most likely going to apply to a rage of creatures that you would not attribute sentience to. Go ahead, try to come up with an example.

I am not really interested in having a discussion about interest to live as it is not nearly as important as sentience. But anyway, I think our disagreement on interests to live is mainly semantics. I see being aware of what is good for you an essential part of having interests, you do not seem to think that is so.

My second question asked whether or not we're only going to be appraising what we eat with all of this, whether or not this same criteria of suffering is applied equally to any human activity. If so...I'm mystified by your comments about fossil fuels being less deleterious and harmful than livestock production.

Well, as at least a hundred billion animals are slaughtered each year by the dairy and meat industries, I do think for now the suffering it causes is greater. But the livestock industry is the #1 emitter of GHGs, so do our interests not align here?

How do you propose that we meet our nutrient requirements (both in production and consumption), since you've taken away the one manner in which we know we can rely on indefinitely - the manner in which fertility is built "in the wild" and has been since time immemorial as causing more suffering....than fossil fuels. Is there an alternative to these two....have you told anyone about this alternative? A great many people would appreciate this information, myself included. Tell you what, I'll even cut you in on the trillions of dollars (and subsequent nobel prize) such a solution could rake in. Deal?

I'm not that brilliant. I do want to mention that I do not propose abolishing the livestock industry tomorrow, that is just not possible. It must be a gradual process to give the world time to adapt, a gradual process that is ongoing right now; veg*nism is getting more and more popular. I do think we could start by giving some more of our grains to people and feeding the cattle with grass/hay instead, which is healthier for them anyway.

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Even if that was an accurate summation of what Rhythm said (hint: it's not) it would still be a blatantly obvious false equivocation. You are equating a lack of motivation to act on one side with proactively working to exacerbate the problem on the other.

I do not think paying someone else to do the dirty work for you makes it any better. If Hitler pays the SS to kill jews, I think Hitler is as much of a killer as the people that turn on the gas chambers are. If one buys meat, one is just as much contributing to the suffering of animals as the people that shoot them are. You might not agree with the slaughter, but you know that it is an essential part of meat production (well, unless we're talking about the upcoming artificial meat, you guys excited for that?).