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There’s a new documentary making the rounds, “The Game Changers,” which makes the case that going vegan can improve athletic performance and is the superior diet for human health. On the other side of the coin is meat, fish, fowl, eggs, and dairy—foods that not only can hamper physical fitness—they can promote erectile dysfunction, endothelial dysfunction, and lead to heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes. Also, meat is destroying the environment.
I guess I’m starting to accept that such debates are never going away. Ever. Unlike science, which generally converges to truth, I don’t think nutrition (like religion or politics) is really capable of such convergence, especially when it comes to the most hotly contested vector of nutrition—dietary restriction. [If you need a primer on nutrition and its three vectors—dietary restriction, time-restriction, and caloric restriction—PLEASE pause for a moment to watch this short video explanation.]
There are many things wrong with this film. And there will be no shortage of people—some credible and thoughtful, many deceptive and thoughtless—who will attack this film. I find that this particular topic to be more about ideology than fact and science; in fact it’s the worst kind of ideology because it cloaks itself in what looks like science. At least we recognize religion and politics for what they are, I suppose.
If I’m going to contribute anything to this discussion, let me do so on two points related to this film that are not likely going to get a lot of attention.
1) Switching from the Standard American Diet (SAD)—a diet of zero DR/CR/TR (see above video to understand what this means)—to a fill-in-the-blank diet is going to improve people’s health. Full stop. That includes vegan and vegetarian diets. That includes keto diets. That includes Mediterranean diets. That includes an all potato diet. But this observation tells you nothing about how healthy a “plant-based” diet is compared to one that is “meat-based.”
2) Vegans and vegetarians are probably some of the most health-conscious people on the planet. This also means that when you compare these people to the general U.S. population, avoiding meat is but one of a myriad of differences between them. Observing differences in health outcomes is relatively easy. Determining the cause of those differences is virtually impossible.
Let’s address these in order.
1 | The problem with using the Standard American Diet (SAD) as a control group.
What often happens, either in the volumes of observational epidemiologic studies that get cranked out every day or, less commonly, in films like this, is that a vegan or vegetarian diet is compared to the SAD, with the SAD as stand-in for a “meat-based” diet, as if the only difference between the two diets is one eschews animal foods. Take a look below at the top 10 sources of Calories in the U.S. diet circa 2010. You tell me, that even if you think meat is a problem, tell me that meat is the only problem with this list.
- Grain-based desserts (cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars)
- Yeast breads
- Chicken and chicken-mixed dishes
- Soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks
- Pizza
- Alcoholic beverages
- Pasta and pasta dishes
- Mexican mixed dishes
- Beef and beef-mixed dishes
- Dairy desserts
I don’t think anyone would look at this list and question why Americans are so overweight and so sick. (By the way, there is not one item on this list that I do not absolutely love, except for #4. So I’m completely empathetic to the plight of anyone reading this who also craves these foods. They make up our default food environment and until that changes, we’re in for a rough ride, as a society.)
In the film, Bryant Jennings, an American heavyweight boxer, who stopped eating meat in 2013, and went vegan in 2015, talks about his conversion. “I grew up not even knowing about half of these other vegetables. Asparagus to me just came out like five years ago . . . My early years growing up in Philly, the only thing we knew was spinach in a can, collard greens and Popeye’s, KFC, everybody frying chicken,” says Jennings. “Most people say, ‘Oh, where do you get your protein?’ As if everybody that’s in KFC is looking at the back of a bucket, like, ‘Yeah, how much protein is [in here]?’ You all don’t know . . . You all don’t know what [you’re] eating. I’d never really thought about it like that before. What else was in the food I was eating?”
Jennings made the dietary switch for health reasons. “I just thought healthy eating, clean eating was much better. And it really has been great for me. . . Lots of peanut butter and jelly, oatmeal, quinoa, avocado, a lot of fruit and vegetables. I make my own burgers from scratch with chickpeas, black beans, lentils, quinoa, flax seeds, chia seeds. It’s all wholefoods,” he told The Guardian. In other words, Jennings went from fast foods to whole foods.
Typically, when people make the switch from the SAD to a vegetarian or vegan diet, it doesn’t just mean they’re striking a few numbers (3 and 9 in the case of vegetarians, and in the case of vegans, 5 and 10, too) from the top 10 list and adding in more sugar-sweetened beverages, grain-based desserts, and bread. They didn’t have a list to begin with. They weren’t paying attention to what they were doing, as Jennings points out. When people make a conscious decision to go from SAD to a vegan or vegetarian diet, they’re not going from a SAD to a “plant-based SAD.” Their diet, and often other aspects of their lifestyle that may impact their health, changes in myriad ways.
They eat more vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, and nuts and seeds. They eat less refined carbohydrates, sugar, and saturated fat. They exercise more and may put more of an emphasis on stress management as well as social support (as Dean Ornish’s program includes, for example). During the transition, they may quit smoking, quit or reduce the consumption of alcohol, and focus more on getting adequate sleep. While we could debate the evidence for and against each one of these interventions, the point is that there are many changes taking place, in addition to cutting out animal products, that are consistent with what many people believe to be healthy living.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have the SAD. Not only does it represent the foods in the top 10 list above, but it also tracks more closely with many behaviors that are not consistent with healthy living. Less likely to exercise, more likely to smoke, etc. What was the change, or what were the changes, that improved the health of people transitioning away from the SAD? The problem is that when you have so many variables that can and do change—often simultaneously—when leaving the SAD, it is an experimentalist’s and an epidemiologist’s nightmare.
2 | The healthy user effect.
In “The Game Changers,” there are several studies and articles [see a complete “List of studies” at the bottom of this post] that flash on the screen comprising “overwhelming scientific evidence connecting animal foods to many of the most common deadly diseases,” according to the film’s narrator. All of these were observational epidemiologic studies (or meta-analyses of observational studies) and carry many limitations that I’ve discussed before (in detail in the five-part Studying Studies series), with the healthy user effect as one of the most important.
Why are people reportedly healthier on a vegetarian diet compared to many non-vegetarians? Is it exclusively because these people eat fewer animals? Imagine a representative survey of adults in the U.S. collecting health habits of these individuals that included the following item in it for people that follow a vegan diet.
Select any of the reasons below why you are a vegan:
⃞ To reduce the impact of my food on the environment
⃞ To eat a healthier diet for my personal health
⃞ To reduce the suffering of animals
How many respondents would not check the “health” box? I suspect the proportion would be vanishingly small. In other words, they’re conscious about their health and they’re engaging in a challenging behavior—avoiding the consumption of animals—they think will improve it. Think about how health-conscious individuals compared on this survey to individuals in the U.S. who eat the Standard American Diet (SAD), a survey that also gathers information on physical activity, access to healthcare, cigarette smoking, vegetable consumption, fruit consumption, vitamin consumption, annual physical exam attendance, sleep habits, meditation, alcohol consumption, socioeconomic status, prescription drug adherence, shift work, and community ties. Think about how anyone following any particular diet that they think is healthy—Atkins, Weight Watchers, keto, Mediterranean, Jenny Craig, paleo, etc.—compare to people eating the SAD.
People who are health conscious are different from people who are not in many different ways. This is the so-called healthy user effect, in a nutshell. I would be hard-pressed to think of a situation in which there’s more potential for a healthy user bias (covered in more detail in Studying Studies: Part III) than comparing a group of people who adhere to a particular diet for health reasons and comparing them to people who unconsciously eat the SAD. When we observe people who consciously adhere to a particular diet, we also see accepted healthy behaviors increase and unhealthy behaviors decrease. It’s not just the diet in these people that is healthier. This shows up again and again (and again) in observational studies.
For example, one such study flashed on the screen was of the diet of Seventh-Day Adventists (SDAs) and their risk of colon cancer. A large proportion (about 30%, based on the reported person-years in the study) of SDAs adhere to a church-recommended vegetarian diet. According to a self-reported questionnaire, the vegetarians not only eliminated meat from their diet, less than 1% of them currently smoked cigarettes (compared to 7% in non-vegetarians), 12% of them had ever smoked in their lifetime (compared to 28% in non-vegetarians) less than 1% of them drank alcohol (compared to 9% in non-vegetarians), and they were more physically active (though not statistically significant) than SDAs that ate meat one or more times per week. There were other differences, some noted in the study, including lower aspirin use in the vegetarians (13% compared to 29%), higher age (54) at baseline (compared to 52 in non-vegetarians, though not statistically significant), and more females (61% compared to 45%, though not statistically significant) and almost assuredly others that weren’t accounted for by the investigators.
The investigators tried to adjust for these differences, but the problem is that this is not only hard to do, there are also other ways that these two groups are different that were not considered. (Both of these problems fall under the heading of residual confounding.) After a six-year follow-up, they found a statistically significant positive association with meat intake and the incidence of colon cancer, with a risk ratio of 1.85.1“[M]ost epidemiologists interviewed by Science said they would not take seriously a single study reporting a new potential cause of cancer unless it reported that exposure to the agent in question increased a person’s risk by at least a factor of 3—which is to say it carries a risk ratio of 3,” writes Gary Taubes in his 1995 article. “Even then, they say, skepticism is in order unless the study was very large and extremely well done and biological data to support the hypothesized link. Sandler Greenland, a University of California, Los Angeles, epidemiologist, says a study reporting a twofold increased risk might then be worth taking seriously—‘but not that seriously.’”
Remember, you should always ask, what are the associated absolute risks? In this case, I calculated (it was not reported in the study) the associated (and unadjusted) six-year risk of colon cancer to be approximately 0.38% and 0.54% for vegetarians and non-vegetarians, respectively. Whether this associated 0.16% difference over six years is attributable to the consumption or avoidance of meat is highly debatable.2Interestingly, the unadjusted absolute differences reveals an associated relative risk increase of 42%, while the reported 85% increase, see 1.85 above, came after adjustment. If the vegetarians were engaging in more accepted healthy behaviors, and fewer unhealthy ones, we would expect the association to get smaller after adjustment, not larger, as was reported. However, also take into account that non-vegetarians were two years younger at baseline. To give you an idea of the potential difference in risk based on age, the 5-year absolute risk difference of developing colon cancer at age 54 compared to 52 is an 0.1% increase in men [0.3% versus 0.4%], as well as an 0.1% increase in women [0.2% versus 0.3%] according to a calculator provided by the National Cancer Institute. What’s less highly debatable is how small the “effect” is, in absolute terms.
The sooner we all can move away from using observational epidemiology like this as a palette to paint our preconceptions with the better. Yes, observational epidemiology helped determine that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer, for example. Contaminated water and cholera. Scrotal cancer and chimney sweeps. I can assure you that those studies were not reporting associated relative risk ratios less than two and absolute risk increases of less than two-tenths of one percent. (For example, the reported relative risk of lung cancer in current smokers of more than 1.5 packs of cigarettes a day was 111.3 and 108.6 in men and women, respectively—over a 10,000% relative risk increase.) Perhaps most important (other than experiment) of Bradford-Hill’s “nine different viewpoints from all of which we should study association before we cry causation” is the strength of the association.
With such small associations between the consumption of meat and chronic diseases, combined with the high probability of confounding that should strengthen the association, we may be looking at a contrapositive case: If observational epidemiologic study after study either shows a small association, no association, or a negative association, it’s possible to read through the same observational studies most investigators and journalists use to implicate the consumption of red meat and increased risk for colon cancer for example, and conclude that since the observed associations are very small, the risk of confounding very high, the associated absolute differences (which are barely reported) minuscule, and these studies cannot establish cause and effect, that it’s more likely that meat does not cause colon cancer. In other words, a lack of association is evidence for a lack of causation. (For more of my thoughts on the issue of red meat causing cancer, check out my post, “Is red meat killing us?”)
My problem with this film is with its mode of inquiry, not the diet it espouses, per se. Let me state that another way. I’m not against a plant-based diet. I’m against misleading uses of subpar data and speaking with absolute certainty when a bit of humility and nuance should be the standard. The fact is that virtually any diet is better than the SAD from a health perspective. I’m sure we’d see associated improvements with any of the 47 diets listed on the U.S. News & World Report website if people consciously switched to one of these diets from the SAD. The more insidious problem is the healthy user effect. There are many variables that can and do change that could explain the small associations in these studies between meat or vegetable consumption and disease that have nothing to do with the meat or vegetable, making it virtually impossible to establish cause and effect.
– Peter
If you don’t use the SAD as the control group for dietary studies on Americans, what else are you supposed to use? It seems by its very nature of being the “Standard American Diet” that it’s the control group against which other diets should be compared. And let’s be honest, 7 of 10 of the items in the list are typically based around meat or dairy ingredients. If you disagree, just try to convince someone eating these things to have the vegetarian or vegan version instead and you’ll see just how integral meat and dairy are to the SAD.
Jason, the issue is that these “studies” are placing all meat eaters in the SAD group. Yes, eating vegan is better than the SAD — but as Peter says, so is just about any other conscious eating plan, including those that include meat.
My diet is as different from the SAD as any vegans, but I eat meat. I’d like to see the results of a study comparing conscious meat-eating to vegan diets before I’ll draw any conclusions on whether meat is bad.
There is a huge difference between the meat and dairy products on the SAD and what a typical Carnivore or Keto meat eater consumes. I would argue that’s the entire purpose of Peter’s post.
@Jason – Actually, most foods, ingredients, and flavorings on a standard American diet are from plants: grains (wheat, corn, oats, rice, etc), root vegetables (white potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onion, etc) legumes (peanuts, soy, peas, green beans, etc) nuts, seeds, seed oils, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, fruit, cocoa, coffee, tea, pepper, cinnamon, and on and on.
Look at a typical fast food meal where only the meat patty and slice of cheese is from an animal, whereas everything else is plant-based: bun, condiments, fries cooked in seed oils, and pop. Even the desert is often plant-based: cookie, candy, pie, cake, etc. And that isn’t to consider all of the plant-exclusive snacks people eat all day long and into the night. Even plant-based fake milks and creamers have increasingly replaced dairy.
What kind of fools do those producers take us for?
[thank you, Firesign Theater …] First Class.
That movie was a numbnutz treatment of the subject.
If MD’s get close to zero education in nutrition, however, how informed can one expect the general public to be?
PS I see that you worked “eschew” into the conversation; couldn’t be avoided, I suppose.
Thank you for this thoughtful article. After watching this, I was intrigued by the post-meal blood tests of the athletes and the “sleep” study. What are your thoughts on those?
Yes, I second this, Peter. Can you give you thoughts? Thank you!
3rd! Please share thoughts on these studies ( post-meal blood tests, sleep studies )
Yes, that’s the bit that struck me as well. Peter, your thoughts?
Dr. A, finally a simple explanation, what to think about when you eat.
Than you
Alan Dukar
No where can I find the kind of high quality insights that you provide in your emails, blog, & articles. Pure gold!
Five years ago, I purged all booze, sucrose & fructose, fast food & processed foods from my SAD, lost 65 pounds in 6 months & have easily kept it off.
Of those “foods,” my sense is that sucrose & fructose were the worst things I was eating –– that stuff is like pure poison to the body. I’ll bet that any vegan that continues to eat sucrose & fructose is no where near as healthy as I am.
I was hoping you would dive in on this interesting topic Peter. Any chance you will dedicate a podcast to the topic?
I would love to hear your thoughts on the blood and sleep studies featured in the film.
The movie seems to be converting many people to veganism. The blind leading the blind….
They definitely do a good job of selling the vegan lifestyle. Interesting to learn that James Cameron is heavily invested in pea protein and other vegan products.
All the best
See the Adventist Studies for as-close-as-you-can-get epidemiological evidence that the closer an Adventist gets to “vegan”, the further from chronic disease biomarkers they measure (other variables as close as reasonably possible).
Nothing in nutrition “science” is causal – it’s correlative. But, how much correlation does it take to hedge one’s bets for better health?
@Jason – Mormon communities in California near the Loma Linda Adventists have similar demographics (high religiosity, strong culture of trust, above average wealth and education, more access to healthcare, etc). Also, like the Adventists, they emphasize healthy diet and lifestyle, including abstention of alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and caffeinated tea. This is the healthy user effect, in comparison to the unhealthy user effect of those following the standard American diet.
Guess what? They also have greater health and longevity. So, if we are to believe correlations prove causation, we are rationally forced to admit that animal foods have absolutely nothing to do with the Adventists. This is further demonstrated by the large number of populations worldwide, particularly in Asia such as Hong Kong but also in places like Ikaria, that show a correlation of higher meat consumption to longer healthspan and lifespan.
Peter, You couldn’t have spelled this out any better. I’m sharing it and hoping it catches on. I think we need a revolution in understanding nutrition. Thank you for your truthful ideas and excellent writing. Best, Ken
When they talk about the dangers of eating meat, are there many studies that look at the difference between grass fed meats and wild fish vs non grass fed and farm raised etc. and if it has the same impact?
I wish the studies or these vegan documentaries would compare someone who is whole food Paleo vs whole food Vegan. And test health and disease markers on people switching from Paleo to Vegan to see if their health improves at all, and how it changes over the course of several years or longer. I mean, isn’t that what they’re so busy bashing? A meat-eating omnivorous diet? If they were just telling everyone to eat more whole foods, I’d be fine with it. But they’re telling everyone that eating meat is bad for you, and it’s all a bunch of brain-washing nonsense.
Their are thousands of former vegans or plant-based eaters who now eat Paleo because their health declined over time so badly on the plant-based diet that they had no choice but to try adding meat and animal products back into their diet. And the improvements were immediately apparent and rewarding, which is why they stay on a paleo diet for life.
Oh, and there’s a huge difference between someone’s diet made up of fried chicken and charbroiled burgers vs. someone who eats pasture-raised slow-cooked chicken and seared grass-fed burgers. That’s a meat-eating distinction that’s ignored every single time. But again, this goes along with the healthy user bias. Most meat eaters aren’t conscious meat eaters. They eat the cheap CAFO meat that’s either fried, grilled, processed or charred, and they’re rarely pairing that with colorful vegetables. Let’s not forget the beer, sugary drinks, french fries, and all the other obvious pairings.
P.S. Peter, I wish the opening paragraph made it a little more clear as to your overall opinion or frustration with this film. I want to share it with others, but I am a bit concerned that the first paragraph is misleading, making it sound like you agree with the claims on the “other side of the coin”. Nonetheless, I’m very happy you’re addressing this movie because people have been asking me about it and I don’t have the time or patience to address it thoroughly. Thanks for all that you do.
It looks like neither Peter nor his team engage in these discussions, so maybe this is a waste of my (our) time to post questions here. But since I already have it typed up, might as well post here.
I understand that the movie is a propaganda film, so I take the messages with a grain of salt. However, I really want to adhere to a vegan diet for animals, so unless there is proof that a plant based whole foods diet is absolutely the worst for my health and athletic performance, I will try. It’s just a bonus if someone can prove that the diet is actually better for health and performance.
One short question: A non-scientific experiment shown in the film is this blood separation test that shows that, just one vegan meal clears up the blood serum; thus suggesting that if we eat meat, our heart has to work much harder especially during our athletic pursuits (I’m a cyclist). Is this a valid point (despite the tiny little sample of three guys)?
@Newsleter Subscriber – You are getting ahead of yourself. If animal welfare is your main concern, you have to first prove that veganism is ethically better. The evidence doesn’t support that conclusion, though.
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/carnivore-is-vegan/
Having spent a lot of time coaching at our local high school, I can assure you that the average under 20 vegan is far less healthy than other students on the SAD diet. That’s because their vegan diet is a negative definition: no meat etc. Most of these kids survive on granola bars and other corporate food, and wouldn’t touch spinach, kale, etc. any more than the SAD kids. The term “diet” implies structure and definition like “keto”, “Atkins” etc. People want to substitute structure for self discipline, for which there is no substitute. How do you promote self discipline? By making people responsible for their choices and outcomes. The real source of dietary dysfunction is the victim narratives that are promoted by mass media. People naturally become victims of their diets, just like they’re victims of everything else. Why would they be victims in general and not be victims of their dietary choices? Perfect example is obese people who are completely exonerated of any responsibility and considered to be victims of their circumstances, genes, environment, etc.
Great article, thanks for the insights. Confirmation bias is pervasive for people switching from SAD to something more healthy, as evidenced by this article. It has not been lost on me that the vegan diet is biologically invalid. I’ll back this statement up in three different ways: 1) we have incisors – they are made for eating meat 2) the lenght of our digestive system is omnivorous: not shorter like carnivorous preditors, not longer like herbivores 3) we can’t get enough vitamin B12 from a plant-based-only diet to sustain our lives. Vegans must take pills.
A plant-based-only diet is extolled by certain researchers advising cancer patients trying to recover. I get that and it seems truthy, but I would not make a life-long habit out of it.
I like you Peter but this is very ignorant of the science. Why not debate Richard Burgess ‘Vegan Gains’ on his youtube channel and raise these exact points. They have been raised so many times as arguments against plant based diets and while they are technically correct, they are pretty ridiculous when put into the wider context.
Peter I’d like to know more about the effect on endothelial function and the film’s claims that heme iron vs veg-sourced iron is bad, and of meat-inclusive diets being more inflamatory than vegan diets.
The subject certainly seems inflamatory, but at 60 years old I would love to see more clearly what I should be eating (and all the other lifestyle options!).
I love Cameron and Arnie for their work on climate (The Years Project) and hold them in high esteem, but as you suggest, science should be based on fact (even if diet is based on varied micro biota and experts from around the compass).
(I subscribed due to your awesome interviews with Matt Walker – I hope you can continue to clarify which parts of The Game Changers you agree/disagree with and why, because I need your help 🙂
Hi Peter I agree with quite a few of the comments earlier. I think it would be appreciated by many if you would engage more on the comments that people are making.
I like how you’ve managed to critique the documentary and at the same time remain neutral and sitting on the fence . I think this is an area that could well do with a lot more investigation and discussion.
1.How about interviewing some of the scientists in the documentary in some of your podcasts?
2.As you do you do a lot of self testing on your own bloods/biohacking etc how about do some self testing/experimenting with some vegan diets, vegetarian diets, paleo diets, keto diets, vegan keto diets, predominantly vegan/vegetarian with minimal meat intake diets , combining all of the above with intermittent fasting calorie restriction and real fasting etc etc . Maybe some of your patients would like to volunteer!!
I think this topic is very topical at the moment and shouldn’t be shied away from!!
Are you up for the challenge Peter?
By the way I respect your work and love how are you analyse and break things down with eloquence. Keep up the good work. Respect
Here is a typical web blog that highlights confusion that exists.
A critique of Thomas Dayspring and Gary Taubes ..two people you know. Dayspring who is a professor of Lipidologist you had a interview series with on your site.
https://plantpositive.com/17-thomas-dayspring-lipidologi/
Any thoughts?
I would encourage people to actually try a whole food plant based diet and get regular blood tests to see if they really do become deficient rather than this article that seems to lean on fear mongering people away from it.
Deficiency can easily be corrected if one does occur.
I do like that this article highlights the issue with comparing diets to the SAD rather than a more healthy and mindful omnivorous diet.
There is a lot more positives to be gained for self and others by switching to a more plant based diet, remember plant based is not vegan.
@Shane – Numerous studies show that vegans and vegetarians have increased nutritional deficiencies. That fact, at this point, is beyond dispute. This is why those following these diets have to so carefully supplement nutrients to avoid the worst health outcomes that otherwise would result. Can we honestly call a diet healthy when it depends on supplements to maintain health?
As for plant-based, remember that includes every diet other than the carnivore diet. Many diets are both plant-based and animal-based: standard American diet, traditional foods, Mediterranean, primal, paleo, etc. Even keto is typically plant-heavy. On the other side, vegetarianism is unlike veganism in also being animal-based with dairy and eggs.
and what about this plasma in the blood. so many ppl asking me about that? what is the scientific explenation for this? why plasma was different in vegetarian blood? on what does it really prove?
It’s become easy to take shots at epidemiological and observational data (understandably). But what I find critiques like this missing are evidence in support of eating meat. Where’s that evidence? Who’s eating more meat and doing well out there? (Are there answers to these Qs?)
Even in the world of confounders in observational data and healthy user biases, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation anywhere with more meat intake to be healthier. Ever. Nor any clinical research of the kind. At least WFPB have Ornish, Essyslstn and Pritikin like program that are yielding great successes, even if there is significant overlap and there’s nothing new or fancy being promoted.
I have to agree. Are there studies proving the benefits of eating grass fed meat? Why haven’t there been studies proving that a keto or paleo diet helps reverse coronary artery disease?
I still eat meat, but I recently went on a vegetarian diet for two months and honestly didn’t notice much difference in anything. I figure I’ll do a test on myself soon and eat a healthy meat diet, get my blood drawn and then switch to a vegan plant based diet and check the lab results against each other.
@Nital – It’s so frustrating when people demand evidence of meat being health while being uninformed about all of the evidence of meat being healthy. It feels dishonest, in that they aren’t applying the same standards to themselves that they are demanding of others. There are numerous studies and population data about various aspects of health in terms of animal-based diets and related diets like low-carb.
Animal-based diets have higher levels of nutrients (fat soluble vitamins, omega-3s, choline, calcium, collagen, hyaluronic acid, CoQ10, and much else). Also, the longest-lived national populations also eat the most meat in the world. Even the Blue Zones (Okinawa, Ikaria, etc) actually eat a lot of meat and ate far more in the past, when the older generations were growing up. As meat consumption decreased in Okinawa, so did the lifespan. Yet, the opposite correlation happened in Japan with rising meat intake and longevity.
There are also all of the meat-heavy traditional communities, including hunter-gatherers, with less disease and physical stunting than seen on the plant-heavy standard American diet (yes, most foods that Americans snack on are from plants, particularly the unhealthiest foods such as carbs and seed oils). Then consider one of the healthiest populations in American history, as studied in Roseto Pennsylvania, who ate massive amounts of animal foods.
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2019/05/28/blue-zones-dietary-myth/
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/are-vegetarians-or-carnivores-healthier/