Saturated Fat Controversy

[FlatAssembler]

A cursory glance shows me that she doesn't say that at all. She points out those times when nutritional science has failed to live up to it's premise.

What can you get right?

I am quite sure she means that when she says stuff like "The basic tenets of nutritional science aren't based on rigorous studies." and "Trusting nutritional science doesn't lead to good outcomes.".

[The Grand Nudger]

So am I....? I haven't read her book cover to cover or poured over the details, but as I understand it she exhaustively laid out examples of studies that trashed their own results or concluded the antithesis of what their data showed due to it's being at odds with the prevailing current in the field. That's happened before, in science. It's hardly limited to one field. Paradigms become entrenched for a variety of reasons, not all of them reducing to any truth or accuracy.

What's the problem?

Or, more generally, with respect to some hypothetically healthy vegan diet and a hypothetically healthy omnivorous diet....what would the problem be then?

[FlatAssembler]

she exhaustively laid out examples of studies that trashed their own results or concluded the antithesis of what their data showed due to it's being at odds with the prevailing current in the field. That's happened before, in science.

Can you point me to some examples? All I can think of is creationists claiming that's what happens in biology, even though that's not remotely what's going on.

[The Grand Nudger]

Try phlogiston theory and the luminiferous ether.

Hell, we could even stick to dietary science, and recent dietary science. Take a gander at our old food pyramid.

Or maybe spontaneous generation?

Howsabout heirachical universe theory?

Lamarckian (and other) transumutation theories.......

(should I continue?)

[Abaddon_ire]

Most people wouldn't waste their time watching it

And the same is true for the YouTube videos "explaining" how environmentally unsustainable veganism is.

If it were me, I'd stick to the health angle.

And it is about health. Nina Teicholz is an idiot who claims nutritional science is not a real science.

You and all of us are natural omnivours. Veganism is a denial of your and anyone's fundamental nature as an omnivore. We are all the scavengers and hunters of the serengeti.

To deny that in principle is to deny our species in principle. We are not evolved for a vegan diet. It is not our nature. This by first principles, veganism is to deny humanity a right to even exist. It is to hurl guilt at the very nature of humanity. Can we test that? Sure. We have. And veganism fails. As far as I am concerned, militant veganism, such as you propose is not very different from breatharianism and has as much scientific basis. You might as well subscribe to Raelianism.

Face it. Veganism taken to it's logical conclusion, requires that you must rely upon artificial dietary supplements. There is no escaping that fact. The human body is simply not built that way. It matters not what justification you might invent.

Herbivores evolved to be herbivores, carnivores evolved to be carnivores. Omnivores evolved to take advantage of whichever was available. Nobody can change that. The human race evolved to utilise whatever available resource over hundreds of thousands of years.

The very idea that one can stop the sheer momentum of all of that evolution in favour of a misinformed religious belief is absurd. Somehow, we are all supposed to be convinced about the Vegan religion that we will all change our ways on the basis of the claims made without evidence? Sounds like the bible to me. Sounds like religion to me.

But suppose we did so. You would have choices. What would one do with the existing livestock? Cull it for no reason? Leave it to starve? What if they reproduce in the wild and there is nothing you can do about it? This is the problem with the whole vegan crapfest. It entails wholesale elimination of entire species either by intent or simple neglect. 

And this is the problem with vegans. The logical end point is that wholesale, many species must perish, become extinct, slaughtered even. Vegans are not fundamentally setting out to save animals. They want to kill them, to promote their particular nirvana.  They are not setting out to save humanity either because they think we are all worthy of death anyway.

This is a trope that has been sneaked in. Get somebody, anybody, to relax and close their eyes and imagine what a peaceful perfect world looks like. Then ask them to describe it. Guess what is missing? People. 9 out of ten.

[FlatAssembler]

Try phlogiston theory

I don't think was systematic disregarding and suppression of contrary evidence, as Nina Teicholz claims happens in nutrition. That was more like a nonsensical interpretation of evidence, when they found some substances gain weight when they burn, they claimed there was a substance named phlogiston which has negative mass and which goes away when burning. But that wasn't really disregarding and suppression of contrary evidence. And it's hard to tell if there was ever a point in time in which most chemists believed in that, like nearly all nutritionists today believe saturated fat cause heart disease.

luminiferous ether.

That was a hypothesis which seemed reasonable, but it was very hard to test. Still, as soon as they found a way to test it, they rejected it. It was not even remotely a suppression of contrary evidence.

Take a gander at our old food pyramid.

I am not sure what you are referring to.

Or maybe spontaneous generation?

Again, that was nonsensical (not the simplest) interpretation of evidence. It wasn't suppression of contrary evidence. Besides, it wasn't really a scientific consensus, there have been scientists who subscribed to the theory of biogenesis since ancient times, such as Empedocles.

Howsabout heirachical universe theory?

I don't know anything about it. What about it? When was there suppression of contrary evidence?

Lamarckian (and other) transumutation theories.......

Hey, listen, Lysenkoism (a form of Lamarckism) comes somewhat close to it. However, the most obvious difference is that Lysenkoism was widely supported by most scientists (but not nearly all of them) under one political regime (in the Soviet Union) and for a short period of time. The idea that saturated fat cause heart disease is supported by nearly all nutritionists in nearly all countries, and it has been like that for over a century now, so it's not really like Lysenkoism.
And, as far as I know, in every single of those cases, that theory was refuted by an expert in that field, not some journalist.

You and all of us are natural omnivours.

A natural diet of humans is hard to determine. And, even if we could determine that with reasonable certainty, it hardly follows that natural diet is the optimal diet. A natural diet certainly included non-sterile food, and there is no doubt that's not optimal.
Perhaps the best proxy we have for an optimal diet for humans is the content of human milk. Since it contains very little protein, so too does an optimal diet of humans contain very little protein.

Veganism taken to it's logical conclusion, requires that you must rely upon artificial dietary supplements.

And it seems to me that carnism, taken to its logical conclusion, requires claiming nutritional science is not a real science, much like Nina Teicholz claims.

[The Grand Nudger]

Jesus christ, you ask for examples....and you argue against them, lol.

Did the vegetables do this to you, or....are you, in fact, a vegetable?

---

Moving on, your main gripe, now, appears to be that you heard about this from a journalist...though I suspect you only heard about that journalist through some vegan nutball, lol. There are scientists who clued that journalist into the subject. I'm pretty sure somebody went through this way back in the beginning.

This doesn't mean that a person should run out and start ladling saturated fat onto a waffle cone, ofc. It only means that, like your piggie porn and fantasies of feeding the hungry, you'll have lost a silly argument that you never needed for veganism. What's wrong with eating what makes you feel comfortable with yourself, that tastes delicious, and is at least healthier than a diet of straight chocodiles and cheetohs, lol? That's always been how I get leery eaters to dip their toes into vegan dishes. Hell, tasty is enough for me.

If somebody tells me that I have to try a dish because it's out of this world good...I don't even ask what it's made of, and I certainly don't worry that I'll drop dead from a heart attack at the kitchen counter.

[FlatAssembler]

Jesus christ, you ask for examples....and you argue against them, lol.

Well, the examples you provide are not the actual examples of systematic suppression of contradictory evidence in science.

though I suspect you only heard about that journalist through some vegan nutball, lol.

Well, not really a vegan nutball. I heard of her from ReasonTV, and ReasonTV doesn't have much to do with veganism.

[The Grand Nudger]

They were, in fact, exactly that - and famously so, leading to profound changes in peer review and being the subject of mountains of spilled ink in the philosophy and history of science to this very day.

Science is a process, not an oracle. It's not actually that surprising when the process gets something wrong, that;s not why the issue of saturated fat (or any of those examples you asked for..but clearly didn't want) is notable. It's notable for the reasons exhaustively documented by that journalist, that other scientists had already been pulling the fire alarm over.

We can always have some sympathy and understanding for dietary recs made on inconclusive or low confidence studies. They're about health, life. If there's some chance that a thing is unhealthy, what percentage of confidence is enough to say something? This is understandable, but you've spiraled out into the nutosphere for no reason and to the detriment of your own position, and that's not.

[Abaddon_ire]

Jesus christ, you ask for examples....and you argue against them, lol.

Well, the examples you provide are not the actual examples of systematic suppression of contradictory evidence in science.

though I suspect you only heard about that journalist through some vegan nutball, lol.

Well, not really a vegan nutball. I heard of her from ReasonTV, and ReasonTV doesn't have much to do with veganism.

ReasonTV denies climate change. You OK with that?