I am now cynical about all dietary advice. In Western countries the sort of people who eat bacon and burgers tend to have very different lifestyles from those who eat sushi. They are more likely to smoke and less likely to exercise. They are also likely to be less well educated and more likely to be poor and work at unhealthy jobs. Are all these factors taken account of in this study?
For example, as I understand it, black people in America eat a lot of white meat (chicken which is supposed to be healthier than red meat) and yet their health tends to be poorer than average.
Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
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Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chicken is one of the most inflammatory things you can eat. It’s loaded with arachidonic acid. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6428879/
It is far from "loaded". 0.15g per serving is not "loaded", and is half the level of salmon for example, which is promoted as healthy. Omega 6 polyunsaturated fats are highly inflammatory. But our intake is almost entirely from "vegetable oil", not chicken.
Chicken and eggs provide by far the most arachidonic acid in the typical diet:
https://epi.grants.cancer.gov/diet/foodsources/fatty_acids/t...
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nutritional science, so the error bars are big, the effect sizes are small and the confounding variables numerous. At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint, so there's that. If you want to switch to a more carnivorous diet, I'd suggest chicken instead of beef. The evidence for mammalian meat being slightly carcinogenic seems to be pretty solid, and the climate impact of beef is about ten times that…
Chicken is one of the most inflammatory things you can eat. It’s loaded with arachidonic acid. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6428879/
That's a way too bold assertion for the very weak evidence behind it. The studies are mixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachidonic_acid#Dietary_arach...
One study pointing in a direction in biochem can be safely ignored until it's been solidly replicated and built upon.
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#74I wonder how true this is. I have been trying to switch to a more carnivore diet - more red meat eg steak - for rumored benefits of lowering inflammation and boosting immune system. This is stating the reverse.
It's nutritional science, so the error bars are big, the effect sizes are small and the confounding variables numerous. At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint, so there's that. If you want to switch to a more carnivorous diet, I'd suggest chicken instead of beef. The evidence for mammalian meat being slightly carcinogenic seems to be pretty solid, and the climate impact of beef is about ten times that…
>At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint
That isn't actually true. It is a very misleading claim spread to promote veganism. It comes from comparing the raw caloric value of field corn, to the caloric value of beef. In reality, We do not actually eat field corn, we turn it into HFCS and corn oil, this reduces the energy efficiency of corn dramatically. A plant based diet also should not be based on HFCS and corn oil.
Second, beef is the worst meat to compare to, it is not an accurate representation for meat in general. Chicken being fed on corn based feed produces 5 million calories per acre, more than almost all the plant based crops a vegan diet would generally be based on, including soy, and equal to staples like wheat.
Third, even in comparing beef they do it wrong. They are comparing to hypothetical beef raised entirely on corn. There is no such beef. All beef is grass fed for the first year, they are only finished on grain.
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anything prepared for the microwave like that is high in sodium. We’re talking over a days worth of sodium all at once. Very far from healthy. Actually, most meat nowadays is injected with huge amounts of sodium. It’s like we’re all eating log term storage foods-even that raw meats.
Of course there exist low-quality or over-salted meals. But I just took a look in my freezer at two bog-standard ready meals I have there just in case - macaroni and cheese, and a beef lasagne. They’re each about 1.5g of salt, and there’s nothing notable about the ingredients.
Anything more than like 700-900 mg/day is less than ideal. 1.5g leaves you no budget for the rest of the day. (Though some sources say you just need to be below 2.5g. Still, that’s not much higher than 1.5g when we’re talking an entire rest of the day to eat.)
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#76I think the longevity of dietary advice is pretty low. Remember when eggs were the enemy, when fat was the enemy, when carbs were the enemy? Meat had to have it's turn sometime.
Huge sums are being spent to confuse consumers. Reliable research has actually been pretty consistent for decades and repeatedly implicates dietary cholesterol and saturated fat in a variety of diseases.
> Reliable research has actually been pretty consistent for decades and repeatedly implicates dietary cholesterol and saturated fat in a variety of diseases.
That is simply not true. Cholesterol are split in at least 2 different groups. HDL and LDL, the good and the bad respectively. But it's not the whole picture, a subgroup of LDL is considered mostly harmless as it rarely crosses into the bloodstream. The number that you really want to minimize is called LDL-p (LDL particles) in your blood, and surprisingly many saturated fats play a role in reducing that number, and increasing the HDL, which has been shown to be good for your health.
This article is well sourced, and covers almost everything. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/saturated-fat-good-or-b...
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#77I wonder how true this is. I have been trying to switch to a more carnivore diet - more red meat eg steak - for rumored benefits of lowering inflammation and boosting immune system. This is stating the reverse.
Animal protein is highly inflammatory. This is about the worst thing you can do if you are concerned about inflammation. Load up on fresh vegetables and fruits instead.
'Animal protein is highly inflammatory'. If this massive unqualified, non-referenced generalization is true then we can see that it doesn't translate into diffential mortality.
"United Kingdom-based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality. Differences found for specific causes of death merit further investigation."
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eating far less meat, but meat that is produced to far higher standards of animal welfare would seem a reasonable compromise to me.
There’s really no amount of nice treatment that makes taking a calf away from its mother alright. I’m not aware of any ways to produce dairy without systematic animal abuse.
By not taking the calves away from their mothers? That's how we did it for centuries, we only started taking calves away from their mothers when artificial milk replacements made it more profitable to do so.
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eating far less meat, but meat that is produced to far higher standards of animal welfare would seem a reasonable compromise to me.
There’s really no amount of nice treatment that makes taking a calf away from its mother alright. I’m not aware of any ways to produce dairy without systematic animal abuse.
I found a method that leaves them together for 3 months. That's an improvement at least.
(Of course that means that the calf will take most -but not all- of the milk during that time. But then it is stated that the cost for the vet goes down a lot in exchange.)
Another option I found is to give several calves to one cow for 6 months, which has advantages and disadvantages compared to the first way. (Longer time with milk and natural suckling behaviour but calves without their mother and the smaller ones might get less milk.)
edit: Here is a list with places in Germany that do that:
https://welttierschutz.org/hofliste-mit-mutter-oder-ammengeb...
I'm not sure how to translate the key words for english googling.
Re: Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's nutritional science, so the error bars are big, the effect sizes are small and the confounding variables numerous. At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint, so there's that. If you want to switch to a more carnivorous diet, I'd suggest chicken instead of beef. The evidence for mammalian meat being slightly carcinogenic seems to be pretty solid, and the climate impact of beef is about ten times that…
>At least a plant-based diet reduces your GHG footprint That isn't actually true. It is a very misleading claim spread to promote veganism. It comes from comparing the raw caloric value of field corn, to the caloric value of beef. In reality, We do not actually eat field corn, we turn it into HFCS and corn oil, this reduces the energy efficiency of corn dramatically. A plant based diet also should not be based on HFC…
That's interesting. I based my opinion on reports such as [1]. Do you have any (semi-)scientific references that support your opinion?
I agree that we don't eat much corn directly, but if it weren't used to feed livestock, we could use the land for something else, like potatoes or lentils or whatever grows in similar climate to corn, which are actually eaten. I'm somewhat doubtful of your claim that corn fed chicken produce 5 million calories per acre. Do you have a citation for that? The usual rule of thumb for going up one level in the food chain is that you lose 9/10th of the energy and corn only produces on the order of 12 million calories per acre. This random google result here [2] indeed claims about 1.4 million calories per acre for chicken.
[1] http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
[2] http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calories_per_acre_for_vario...