is it healthier to eat no meat?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I think it's amazing, given the full spectrum of your beliefs about meat and veganism, that you consistently think everyone must be wrong about everything...rather than wonder if you were aggressively sold on something that isn't strictly true.

What do you think is that I believe that isn't strictly true? That ingesting heme iron significantly increases your chances of getting colon cancer? That seems to both be based on evidence and be a scientific consensus. You may argue it is less certain than, for example, saturated fat causing heart disease (because that's the theory that statins are based on, and medicine is a harder science than nutritional science), but it's about as certain as nutritional science by itself can get.

[Bold mine]

Two tenths of one percent.

Boru

[FlatAssembler]

What do you think is that I believe that isn't strictly true? That ingesting heme iron significantly increases your chances of getting colon cancer? That seems to both be based on evidence and be a scientific consensus. You may argue it is less certain than, for example, saturated fat causing heart disease (because that's the theory that statins are based on, and medicine is a harder science than nutritional science), but it's about as certain as nutritional science by itself can get.

[Bold mine]

Two tenths of one percent.

Boru

Then why do vegetarians, once you adjust for factors such as smoking, have around 7% less chance of getting cancer? If what you are saying were true, the effect would not be detectable by epidemiological studies, but it clearly is.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

[Bold mine]

Two tenths of one percent.

Boru

Then why do vegetarians, once you adjust for factors such as smoking, have around 7% less chance of getting cancer? If what you are saying were true, the effect would not be detectable by epidemiological studies, but it clearly is.

You keep throwing that number out. It doesn’t appear to be true.

https://veganhealth.org/chronic-disease-...getarians/

Vegans suffered from 67 deaths from cancer, with a rate not significantly different from regular meat-eaters (1.14, 0.88-1.47).

Boru

[Angrboda]

[FlatAssembler]

Then why do vegetarians, once you adjust for factors such as smoking, have around 7% less chance of getting cancer? If what you are saying were true, the effect would not be detectable by epidemiological studies, but it clearly is.

You keep throwing that number out. It doesn’t appear to be true.

https://veganhealth.org/chronic-disease-...getarians/

Vegans suffered from 67 deaths from cancer, with a rate not significantly different from regular meat-eaters (1.14, 0.88-1.47).

Boru

I must admit I am a bit surprised by that. Perhaps it's because vegans tend to eat a lot of soy, containing phytoestrogens which increase the risk of breast cancer.

This source claims that vegetarians have around 14% less chance of getting cancer, and there are quite a few sources making similar claims (I can't find one right now which claimed it's 7%, but that does not seem to be anomalious).

[The Grand Nudger]

Cancer gets us all, on a long enough timescale. If you want to scare people you've gotta find something weirder than cancer. You should make a youtube video about how eating meat, even thinking about eating meat... comes with a 7-14% increased risk of ebola.

[no one]

vegetarians get girly cancer, while carnivores get real, manly cancer.

[FlatAssembler]

Cancer gets us all, on a long enough timescale. If you want to scare people you've gotta find something weirder than cancer. You should make a youtube video about how eating meat, even thinking about eating meat... comes with a 7-14% increased risk of ebola.

But that would be obviously false. We know what causes ebola: it's a virus. There is no mechanism by which eating meat could increase the chance of getting it. Regularly taking Aspirin probably increases mortality from it, as the mechanism by which ebola kills is causing internal bleeding and Aspirin increases the chances of internal bleeding, but there is no such obvious mechanism by which meat might increase mortality from it either.
Heme iron (found practically only in red meat) almost certainly does increase the risk of colon cancer. There is mechanistic evidence of that, there is epidemiological evidence of that...

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay, okay...howsabout Lupus, then?

[FlatAssembler]

Okay, okay...howsabout Lupus, then?

Well, a quick Google search shows many studies that conclude saturated fat negatively affects lupus. I suppose you could use that as an argument against eating meat, but that wouldn't be nearly as strong as the argument from heme iron and colon cancer (because red meat is the only food that contains significant amounts of heme iron, and there are plant foods that contain a lot of saturated fat, such as coconut-derived food).