Is Coffee healthy ?

Grahamsphillips

On paucity in the literature, I was referring to what you said “There were FIFTY reports of AMD in the world literature upto 1930. Now its the world’s leading cause of blindness…”

I trust your work is helping many people indeed. I am merely commenting on the dangers of going to the opposite extreme to go all meat in one’sdiet instead.

Grahamsphillips
Edited for relevance.
This was/is in response to your question about an extra 10 years life.
Whilst I am a beef producer in my retirement, our farm is carbon neutral and the stock are basically pets that we eat.(yep.)
We also grow our own veg and fruit and eat more fish and chicken than red meat.

That is a very individual trope.
I have a very good friend in their mid sixties who has an incurable lung disease.
They know the condition well, one of their parents died from the same disease.
They are currently questioning whether they want to proceed with a lung transplant.
Their issue is both their quality of life AND the quality of life of their partner who would/will have to nurse them for years.
Healthy, vital, years not drinking wine, eating meat/seafood etc are not necessarily years that everyone would desire.

Amberale This was/is in response to your question about an extra 10 years life.
Whilst I am a beef producer in my retirement, our farm is carbon neutral and the stock are basically pets that we eat.(yep.)
We also grow our own veg and fruit and eat more fish and chicken than red meat.

That is a very individual trope.
I have a very good friend in their mid sixties who has an incurable lung disease.
They know the condition well, one of their parents died from the same disease.
They are currently questioning whether they want to proceed with a lung transplant.
Their issue is both their quality of life AND the quality of life of their partner who would/will have to nurse them for years.
Healthy, vital, years not drinking wine, eating meat/seafood etc are not necessarily years that everyone would desire.

There’s considerable debate about how well “The War on Cancer” has worked. Truth is there have been some great successes (breast cancer; leukaemia etc) but solid tumours? VERY little progress. And how much of a benefit is a 3 month life extension if the QUALITY of life is atrocious?

This begs the bigger question of WHY has cancer gone from a vanishingly small cause of death (see eg from Boston above) to the No2 killer after ASCVD..

This by Szofia Clemens is compelling

Grahamsphillips

Do you think there’s a causal link between meat consumption (regardless of type) and cancer?

I have no opinion either way nor the slightest level of expertise to have an educated guess, just curious.

DavecUK I agree Dave but what is the primary driver? Why has cancer gone from extremely rare to incredibly common in 120y during which town air is cleaner and smoking rates have dropped massively? There’s a fascinating book called RAVENOUS by Sam Apple. It’s about the theory of cancer and the life of Otto Warburg. He of the Warburg effect. He discovered that cancer cells have a different metabolism and originated the idea of cancer as a metabolic disease. More here

Grahamsphillips

With the deepest respect, i think the basic assumption underneath your premise that cancer in ancient times was vanishingly rare, is flawed. Cancer and heart disease were with the ancients too all the way to the present day and the rates were not appreciably lower - especially for heart disease. We just don’t have enough historical data to support your hypothesis…on the contrary historical writings show that ancient medical texts were well acquainted with tumours and had extensive explicit references to cancerous tumours…if canxers were not common this would not.be the case…https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.29134

Further, the evidence of traditional societies throughout the world show that there is no society famed for producing longevity that subsists predominantly on meat. Instead plant based diet is the predominant source of calories. If we ignore that, it will be at our peril…

Grahamsphillips

You said “in many ways it’s a statement of the bleedin obvious! Two million years of evolution. We are designed to consume animals and specifically red meat. Why would it kill us! Evolution isn’t stupid!!”

However human teeth, jaw and digestive tract were designed to be omnivorous, not carnivorous.

https://www.biologyonline.com/articles/humans-omnivores

Furthermore chimpanzees have the nearest teeth to us (though their canines are far more pronounced) and though they do eat meat and can even be cannibalistic on other chimpanzees, meat typically only forms 6 per cent of their diet with insects forming another 4 per cent. Plant based foods form the other 90 per cent! Figs alone account for 50 per cent of their diet…

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-do-chimpanzees-eat/

So if chimpanzees that have more carnivorous type teeth than humans only eat meat as 6 per cent of their diet, how can humans be assumed to be designed to eat predominantly meat based diets?

@chlorox

In addition, are we not the only ‘carnivorous’ species that requires meat to be appropriately treated, stored and prepared to avoid harmful (potentially fatal) ill effects that our bodies aren’t capable of tolerating/neutralising naturally?

Grahamsphillips I agree Dave but what is the primary driver? Why has cancer gone from extremely rare to incredibly common in 120y during which town air is cleaner and smoking rates have dropped massively?

Well the reasons are for pretty much everything I mentioned, but especially diagnostics. How common were PET scanners 40 years ago, or cat scans 60 y ago, X-ray machines 100 years ago. When did they start testing for blood markers, or genetic predisposition.