Slashdot Mirror

Personally I see more hope in the personalized, drugless approaches, such as Dr. Bredesen's MEND protocol. For me large part of medical scientists are too obsessed about finding drugs and don't pay enough attention to alternatives.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

https://chriskresser.com/new-h...

https://www.aging-us.com/artic...

The US government is still subsidizing wool production from WW2.

Yes, but it's a $5 million subsidy. That barely registers on anyone's radar against the $16 billion in overall agricultural subsidies. The farm bill comes up every 5 years or so. Usually it's pretty stable, but there definitely is incremental change each time. Regardless, this is a red herring - we can't refuse to make any changes simply because we think the government is too corrupt. A much larger obstacle to my argument is the fact that no competitive, tasty, and nutritious meat substitute currently exists!

questionnaires are horse shit

Perhaps, but I fail to see studies supporting your assertions about the health of a meat-based diet. I'm quite aware that the studies I pointed to are merely correlation studies.

pointing out the conflict of interest in those who push a plant-based diet.

It's just not an interesting argument. You brought up people from over 100 years ago. Meanwhile, there are actual scientific papers to discuss - and to your credit you've done just that.

But let's not get too hung up on health claims... obviously an unapologetic carnivore such as myself does not find them significant enough to act upon. Your paper says:

Thus, we posit that while dietary intake is an obvious and essential component of health, it is a trivial risk factor for obesity, metabolic, and chronic diseases (15, 55, 73, 113, 114). Our position is rapidly acquiring support given the “tiny” effect sizes and “massive confounding” inherent in nutrition research (61, 138–140). For example, when compared to the relative risk estimates of smoking tobacco, estimates for dietary factors are an order of magnitude smaller (140). In fact, these estimates are so trivial, “crude and imprecise” that most diet-disease associations may be considered spurious (141). As such, we posit that measuring “diet” per se is tangential if not irrelevant to the major public health issues faced by industrialized nations (113, 114).

I pretty much agree with that - it does not matter much whether I eat a meat or a plant-based diet, so if fake meat is better for the environment, tastes the same, and provides plenty of protein - what do I care?

You can survive, but you won't be healthy: https://chriskresser.com/why-y...

I hope that you can re-read that article and see what utter pseudo-scientific BS it is. Vegans are well aware of the dangers of B12 deficiency, and they take supplements to compensate. Whether the B12 was made in the gut of an animal or in a lab, the human body does not care. Vegetarians get plenty of B12 from dairy and eggs. For someone like me who doesn't have an ideological reason to avoid meat, I'm highly confident that I'd still have plenty of B12 in my diet even if McDonalds switched to vegetable-based "meat" patties. Some of his links are hilarious since they directly contradict other parts of his paper. He actually links to this abstract, which supports his claim that vegans "often" suffer malnourishment (as opposed to cheeto-eating omnivores?) but directly contradicts some of his other stuff:

Vegetarians exhibit a wide diversity of dietary practices, often described by what is omitted from their diet. When a vegetarian diet is appropriately planned and includes fortified foods, it can be nutritionally adequate for adults and children and can promote health and lower the risk of major chronic diseases. The nutrients of concern in the diet of vegetarians include vitamin B(12), vitamin D, -3 fatty acids, calcium, iron, and zinc. Although a vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients, the use of supplements and fortified foods provides a useful shield against defi

"The medical profession has an ethic: First, do no harm".

That looks like a reference to part of the Hippocratic Oath. Honoured, regrettably, in the breech these days.

"Medical Care Is 3rd Leading Cause of Death in U.S."
https://chriskresser.com/medic...

Admittedly that dates from about ten years ago. I expect the butcher's bill has grown since.

Salt is actually super healthy food, don't listen to big pharma.

It's Time to End the War on Salt

For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the Institute of Medicine urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already convinced 16 companies to do so voluntarily. But if the U.S. does conquer salt, what will we gain? Bland french fries, for sure. But a healthy nation? Not necessarily.

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urineâ"an excellent measure of prior consumptionâ"the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

Shaking Up the Salt Myth

Salt has been the subject of controversy in recent years, and has increasingly been blamed for a number of poor health outcomes, such as high blood pressure, heart disease and stroke. Salt is ubiquitous in our modern diet, with Americans consuming an average of 10 grams per day.

Most of what we read and hear these days is telling us that salt consumption needs to be reduced, and it has even been referred to as âoethe single most harmful substance in the food supplyâ.

But is salt really as dangerous as we have been led to believe? Or is there a healthy, even beneficial range of salt that we should be eating? And could the governmentâ(TM)s low salt recommendations actually be harmful to health?

In this series, Shaking Up The Salt Myth, I explore the history of salt in the human diet, as well as the physiological requirements for salt and theories on the âoeoptimalâ dietary salt range. I present evidence for the dangers of too little and too much salt, and give recommendations for the type and amount of salt to include in the diet.

This series will present the bare facts about a highly misunderstood but essential part of the human diet.

Well, I trust Chris and he also talks about statistically significant vs clinically significant. But maybe Chris is just trying to mislead people to push his agenda. \_()_/

https://chriskresser.com/cocon...

It was later shown that it wasn't "all fats", just saturated fats.

Not even saturated fats anymore, just trans-fats. The whole "saturated fats are bad" was just propaganda by the industry to sell their hydrogenated oil.
Random link on the topic: https://chriskresser.com/new-s...

Lustig is full of crap

Chris Kresser is not a doctor: http://chriskresser.com/about/
"is a globally recognized leader in the fields of ancestral health, Paleo nutrition, and functional and integrative medicine"
Translation: He's a journalistic writer and doesn't hold a degree in medicine. He also apparently does not provide references to claims in his writing.

Dr. Mercola's number one recommendation in all of his books is to eat less meat and more vegetables:
"Dr. Mercola’s Total Health Program: The Proven Plan to Prevent Disease and Premature Aging, Optimize Weight and Live Longer! "
"Effortless Healing: 9 Simple Ways to Sidestep Illness, Shed Excess Weight, and Help Your Body Fix Itself"
"Take Control of Your Health (2007, with Kendra Degen Pearsall)"

And your health-essentials link has no author which makes me more than a little suspicious. Although they do provide a link to their trusted physicians if you need to get some prescriptions written.

Eh, not so sure about the cholesterol..

http://articles.mercola.com/si...
http://chriskresser.com/the-di...
https://health.clevelandclinic...

I know these sites are not the leading authority on such matters - but my own anecdotal evidence suggests that the common idea of "healthy" eating is ... wrong.

Real food is good and healthy.

Real Food = (unprocessed): fruit, veg, meat, dairy, nuts, etc

Processed sugars (or any processed carbohydrates) = the bad guy

Eat natural food, you'll feel more full, for longer, and be healthier.

This has been the state of the research for over a decade now. Dietary cholesterol is broken down immediately, has no correlation to blood cholesterol. Blood cholesterol levels are set by the liver, and the liver raises them in response to sugar input, lowers them in response to fat in the diet, as the liver uses cholesterol to make bile salts which it uses to break down fats. here is a very well sourced article on the matter: http://chriskresser.com/the-di...

Citation? Ask any of the residents of high lattitude and they'll explain that, in summer (or winter), they have daylight - real daylight - until they go to sleep, at which point they frequently use thick curtains to block the light.

Citation.
Citation.
Citation.
Citation.

The study that originally connected nitrates with cancer risk and caused the scare in the first place has since been discredited after being subjected to a peer review. There have been major reviews of the scientific literature that found no link between nitrates or nitrites and human cancers, or even evidence to suggest that they may be carcinogenic. Further, recent research suggests that nitrates and nitrites may not only be harmless, they may be beneficial, especially for immunity and heart health.

Amusing stuff. More nitrate from vegetables than from like 500 hotdogs. 90% of your nitrite exposure comes from internal manufacture.

No, it does depend on the species. IIRC only like one species of WHALE bioaccumulates toxic species of mercury. http://chriskresser.com/is-eating-fish-safe-a-lot-safer-than-not-eating-fish

And when the pollutants leave their portion of the waterway and enter that of someone else, they will be charged or sued for damages, just like they would be if they piled up garbage on the edge of their land and then shoved it over onto someone else's.

You don't really hear a lot about evil corporations dumping toxic sludge on their own land, anyways. Certainly not when there is a profit motive in keeping it clean. A clean river is more valuable for recreation and fishing than a toxic river is for dumping, especially when you take lawsuits from downstream rights holders into account.