Ernie1 You are correct. You can be a perfectly healthy vegan/vegetarian so long as you are really focused. (And take supplements as well). Trouble is the processed food industry hijacks the Vegan movement (your females are particularly susceptible to their marketing messages) that its inherently healthier (it isnt) and better for the planet (debatable not not my area of expertise)
Is Coffee healthy ?
Most of not all vegan alternatives and worst processed food than what they replace
Decent De1pro v1.45 - Niche Duo - Niche Zero - Decent is the best machine ever made -
chlorox Is there an article that usefully combines all the points wirh rhebsupporting evidence behind your argument against keys that I can refer to vis a vis eg that white paper so as to get an idea of the debate?
The evidence is all around you, just need to look, really look.
saturated fat = raised cholestorol. The clear evidence that this might well be bollox.. A big old time beer drinker, 12-15 pints per night, they won’t eat a lot (if anything), plenty of calories from beer. Go to pub, sit at bar, sink loads of beer, go home beat the wife and fall asleep. probably alcoholic.
Most if not all of them will have raised cholesterol, high blood pressure and other problems….but last time I looked, there was no fat at all in beer?
Just like the cholesterol thing with eggs, because eggs contain cholesterol it must raise it = patentlly untrue and disproved.
The recommended diabetic meal plan (fortunately some medics fighting against it) = yeah if you want to stay on drugs and loose limbs, go for it. The NHS seems to like to manage diabetes, not get rid of it (type 2 obv)
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I am not as interested in keys’ findings concerning saturated fat and raised blood cholesterol as I am about his dietary recommendations especiallyvia a vis the Mediterranean diet. However with reference to your analogy, there may be an association between heavy drinking and heavier intake of calories including of saturated fats in their diet - see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34611697/#:\~:text=Heavy%20drinkers%20consumed%20more%20total,and%20saturated%20fat%20in%20grams (although it was tested in a hiv positive population)…and if so then the alcoholic beer drinker may not eat much in the pub, but he may be packing away more bacon rashers and steaks at home than teetotaling contemporaries…
My uneducated suspicion is that rather than the nature of the fats being consumed (other than trans fat and oxidised fats which are bad), the real issue is the obesity factor where total caloric intake greatly exceeds one’s actual need leading to the balance being stored as fat in the body and liver - where that issue exists it seems entirely expected to me for blood cholesterol to increase substantially to the degree of such issue and that would be accelerated by genetic factors etc.
Having done some more reading on oils after your mention of seed oils, is it your view that polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) oils are hazardous fo cardiovascular health due to their far higher propensity to oxidise compared to monounsaturated fats and to saturated fats and that the rates of heart attacks etc have been increased by the food industry gravitating to safflower, sunflower, sesame, corn, and soybean oils for cooking oils and for use to make margarine etc.?
chlorox Yes precisely that. I’ve just interviewed Chris Knobbe about his new book on that subject. My podcast Isn’t out yet so here’s an alternative:
chlorox Yes PLUS the seed oils are devoid of crucial micro-nutrients inc the fat soluble vitamins A:D:K and E
Ernie1 We can clearly survive without eating animals.. but thrive is more difficult. We can’t ignore evolution and our evolutionary biology is clear. We’ve designed to eat animals. To be specific: plants don’t contain the same (micro)nutrients and where they do, they are not as readily absorbed. The same is equally true of protein. Plant protein and animal protein are VERY different. My interest is not just surviving (lifespan)- its a long life led in optimal health (healthspan).
chlorox There’s actually a lot of controversy about the Blue Zones. Some of the longevity has been hyped and some of the narrative has been hijacked by vested interests. I’m not saying the whole thing is meaningless- not at all but there’s more to it. Its of equal value to consider the various hunter-gather tribes (yes some still exist) like the INNUIT - incredibly healthy and eat almost exclusively animal fat and blubber - ie a diet of a VERY high % Sat Fat. Same is true of the The Maasai: a pastoralist tribe living in Kenya and Northern Tanzania. Their traditional diet consists almost entirely of milk, meat, and blood. Two thirds of their calories come from fat, and they consume 600 - 2000 mg of cholesterol a day (Wikipedia). The common thread here is ZERO processed food and ZERO seed oils
The soybean oil lobby especially has caused tremendous undeserved damage in the west against the palm oil industry painting palm oil as being dangerous to cardiovascular health due to the fsct that 50 per cent of palm oil is saturated fat. Of course at the same time they push PUFA oils as being heart friendly. This has real world consequences on the economies of various developing countries apart from the public health ramifications. (In fact, the other 40 per cent of palm pil is monounsaturated fat and only 10 per cent is PUFA).
chlorox I disagree. Obesity “comes along for the ride” but its an association NOT a causation. The SAD (Standard American Diet) is 60% comprised of what I call The Trifecta of Evil. Added sugar, processed carbs, seed oils. For a whole variety of reasons these food are delectable, highly calorific, devoid of nutrition, toxic and addictive. The root cause of the metabolic disease is what happens in the cells and the endocrine system. That’s what causes cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, type2 diabetes and so-called auto-immune diseases. It also explains why you can be fat but perfectly healthy, or thin and very unhealthy!
DavecUK 100% ! Beer is calorie laden and specifically sugar laden. All my ProLongevity clients get CGMs (Continuous Glucose Monitors) so I can see the sugar spikes in real time. Raised sugar leads to raised insulin which leads to metabolic syndrome/type2 diabetes/fatty liver and general tragic health. And yes the deranged lipids, high BP, terrible sleep.. need I go on! I’m NOT anti-alcohol (a glass or two of red wine is positively healthy) and I love a beer. Its a question of “the dose makes the poison”
One of Zoe Harcombe’s best ever presentations - she was a Veggie for 20 years so speaks from experience as well as knowing the science
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Edited because I’ve done it again.
Just gonna bow out and keep my opinions to myself.
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I have read some criticism of the blue zones but i thought some of the criticism was really overstated (for example the idea thta records in some societies was poor and parents could be mistaken for children - it cannot be seriously accepted that parents could be mistaken for children in okinawan society which was so highly interconnected and where even outside family, it was customary for okinawans to be part of non familial friendship groups of 5 on average that lasted their whole lives)…
On inuit, modern day inuit have poor health compared to other Canadians with life expectancy 10 years at least less than he national average. This is likely contributed to by modern life factors but even for inuit living 2000 years ago, i found this article that pointed out that their mumified remains ahowed evidence of high levels of arthrosclerosis - which indicates that reports of them being free of heart disease may be wide of the mark …
https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl/apr/eskimos.htm
On the masai, I found an article that referenced an autopsy of 50 masai men which found extensive arthrosclerosis in their blood vessels corresponding to far older American men. Althoigh they did not die of heart attacks it was also found that they had abnormally large blood vessels which was probsbly why the gathering plaque had not completely occluded those vessels. The possible cause of such abnormally large vessels could be the fact that masai men walked 19km a day more than modern Americans would, which in fact caused them to be in caloric deficit and which caused almost all of them to be very slim and thin. As well it also turned out masai only ate meat 1-5 times a month nd that they got most of their calories from milk which doesn’t comfortably place them in the category of almost purely meat eating humans.
https://nutritionstudies.org/masai-and-inuit-high-protein-diets-a-closer-look/
Thus article in fsct also presented historical references that showed that the inui did commonly suffer from heart disease.
Furthermore the masai life expectancy is among the lowest in the world - 42 for men and 45 for women! Even if it is assumed that their high fat diet is not the cause, they could be dying of other causes before the gathering plaque finally causes the heart attacks that were impending…
Perhaps the true situation is more nuanced than our current understanding can tell us…
Granted those factors you mentioned may exacerberate the condition, but it must be remembered that even in ancient times there was cancer and arthrosclerosis and dementia though the lower life expectancy in earlier times and societies meant that people died of other causes before they sometimes could manifest thereby leading to the fallacious conclusion that such issues did not exist in ancient times. So even when there were no PUFA oils and no highly processed foods and no refined sugar in existence, those health problems bedevilled humanity even then…
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Popped up 2 days ago!