Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by tkyjonathan | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

tkyjonathan

Be safe and go low-fat whole plant vegan. Statistically, the healthiest option for you.

View on HN

Meh, I think the whole low/non-fat trend is also a scam.... but who knows.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/why-eating-a-low...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2013/07/02/lowfat-...

yet humans supposedly increased in brain size by eating meats, oh it reduced stomach sizes too.

I tend to low fat vegetarian, though dairy is kept, but even I won't forgo meat all year round. It is silly to do so. The key as with all foods is moderation

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/eating-meat-le...

Yes, whole meat is a great choice when you live in Savannah and there is no produce besides grass. Not hamburgers and bacon.

For the rest of us, there are vegetables and grains.

Statistically, eh? Got a cite?

here are several http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/dxrates

Most of which are terrible. Population studies are generally awful, especially when you're using the population of people on a restrictive diet vs. people eating whatever the hell they want to. Especially when you consider the number of vegans who are actually active vs. the rest of the population, which is quite substantial in my anecdotal experience. I think what you can see from these studies is that avoiding processed foods, being a healthy weight, and being active are good for you.

Also, what about the studies showing the children of vegan (it might even be vegetarian, can't recall) mothers have lower birth weights, IQs, and are shorter than the general population? What about the rates of B-Vitamin anemia?

I think that the benefits of being a vegan are the benefits of being concerned with your health. I'd be interested to see a comparison between an equally fastidious group of meat eaters.

Disagree. Humans have always been omnivores.

Only if you want to look emaciated.

Jokes on you. I know powerlifters who are deadlifting hundreds of lbs, and they only consume a vegan plant-based diet (google "vegan powerlifting").

Animal proteins are an inefficient method of consuming nutrients. You may like meat, but its not efficient, and data has shown that it can cause cancer in your GI tract given enough time.

EDIT: There's a reason Soylent is vegan; not to appease animal lovers, but because its healthier for you and more efficient.

[1] http://blog.soylent.com/post/102285900727/announcing-soylent...

Animal proteins are an inefficient method of consuming nutrients

Care to explain why exactly?

I've always been thaught - ok, doesn't mean it's correct, or related, which is why I'm asking - that one difference between meat and vegetable eaters is the length of the large/small intestines: shorter for 'pure' meat eaters like cats, longer for herbivores like cows. And somewhere in the middle for humans as they are considered omnivores. Reason for this would be that it takes longer to digest/break down plants, which I assume is done by the intestines to extract nutrients for it?

http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb2/pb2ch9_ss4

Efficient how? You could make an argument that eating meat is a less efficient use of resources such as land and water, but I doubt that eating a whole meat-protein full of the correct amino acids is less efficient than eating a combination of vegetable proteins to get the same effect.

And yes, you do get vegan powerlifters, but they are very much the minority and an outlier.

> but I doubt that eating a whole meat-protein full of the correct amino acids is less efficient than eating a combination of vegetable proteins to get the same effect.

It is entirely possible to have a complete diet, "correct amino acids" and all from a vegan plant-based nutritional plan.

Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3967195/

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm saying it's more difficult.

> EDIT: There's a reason Soylent is vegan; not to appease animal lovers, but because its healthier for you.

More likely, it's because it's easier to utilize without spoilage.

Also, the cancers you refer to are not specific to meat, they're specific to cooked (moreso charred) food.

Milk and eggs provide a complete protein that's hard to find elsewhere without doing a lot of pairing.

That said, the "emaciated" point is probably moreso about the "low fat" part of the comment. Fat is critical for hormone production among other things, and it would be very hard to be a "powerlifter deadlifting hundreds of lbs" without adequate fat intake. More importantly, saturated fat (and specifically dietary cholesterol, the kind found only in meat and dairy) is particularly well utilized for hormone production.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6538617

The fat intake you allude to is entirely possible on a vegan diet. Saturated fats are exactly the fats you should not be eating.

"Saturated fats are linked to increases in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is positively associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Specifically, saturated fats have been shown to block the expression of LDL receptors[3], which ultimately prevents this unhealthy type of cholesterol from being filtered out of the bloodstream."

https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/203798419-1-5-Macr...

I think that view of saturated fats is falling out of favour.

> Saturated fats are exactly the fats you should not be eating.

Wide swath generalization at best, categorically untrue at worst. Keep in mind - if nothing else - there are a lot of very different and unique saturated fats.

A 2014 systematic review looking at observational studies of dietary intake of fatty acids, observational studies of measured fatty acid levels in the blood, and intervention studies of polyunsaturated fat supplementation concludes that the finding ″do not support cardiovascular guidelines that promote high consumption of long-chain omega-3 and omega-6 and polyunsaturated fatty acids and suggest reduced consumption of total saturated fatty acids.″"

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1846638

Conclusion: Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.

Meat is always cooked and often charred. Non-meat is not so that way.

> Meat is always cooked

No, its not. Raw preparations of meat are a thing.

I could quibble with aspects of this, but my point remains - it's not the meat that is associated with cancer, it's the preparation.

Red meat is and has been associated with cancer for decades, they've recently found the causative link and it has nothing to do with the preparation: blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/01/02/red-meat-cancer-immune/#.VYBs8mWCOnM

If you read that and concluded they've found the causative link between red meat and cancer I'd implore you to read more about it.

My original statement was inadvertently strong, they've found a causative link between red meat and cancer.. not necessarily the link that explains 100% of the association or anything of the sort, but a link that's universal across red meat, is dose dependent, and is readily repeatable.

It really is a landmark study: http://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2014-12-29-sugar-...

Charred is incorrect preparation. Food should be prepared in such a way that all parasites and pathogens are killed. In foods where it is possible, some Maillard reaction products are desirable. But you should not ever be burning your food if you can help it.

You could get by with just Pasteurizing all your food (or cooking sous vide), but any meat or fish you will probably want to sear for about 3 minutes per side before eating, because it just tastes better that way. The mutagenic products of the Maillard reaction are far more dangerous to bacteria than to mammals.

>I know powerlifters who are deadlifting hundreds of lbs, and they only consume a vegan plant-based diet (google "vegan powerlifting").

I am a powerlifter and deadlifting hundreds of pounds is vague. How many hundreds? A couple hundred? Not very impressive. Five hundred? More impressive. I also have an anecdote but it disproves what you said: I don't know a single powerlifter who can pull five plates who doesn't eat animal meat. Also anecdotes on the internet mean nothing.

>Animal proteins are an inefficient method of consuming nutrients.

It may be inefficient from an energy usage standpoint, but from a protein synthesis standpoint it's vastly superior. Plant protein doesn't have the amounts of amino acids animal protein does.

Even if what you say is true, quality of life must still be balanced with quantity of life. Your food is disgusting, full stop. I am not interested in living without food that tastes good.

It's completely subjective. Some people like the taste.

If someone wants to go full vegan, good for them. Just don't try to force that choice on everyone.

Obviously no one short of a tyrant can actually force veganism on anyone, but vegans saying "eat like me or die" is close enough.

Oh, there are "ethical vegans" who would, if they could get a 51% majority, make the consumption of meat illegal. They're the "meat is murder!!!!" types.

I don't have a problem with the "I have made a personal choice to not eat animal products" type of people.

> Just don't try to force that choice on everyone.

You're missing one of the primary tenets of being a vegan

Maybe you just never had a properly cooked vegan meal. Seriously, tastes may differ, but it's simply hard to believe there is no vegan food out there at all that you would not like. (for the record, I do eat meat)

Maybe you can make really good vegan dishes, but for myself there is no competition for animal fat for many existing types of cuisine, both in the preparation stage and in the flavor/mouthfeel of the final product.

I'd even say there's legitimate reasons to use MSG for certain preparations and flavors. Sparingly, mind you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com