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- Hacker News
- Living to 100 is overrated anyways.
As if this planet will even be worth living on if climate change continues to go unchecked. Or if humanity will even exist after the inevitable mass extinction eventby xyst - always some excuse to keep eating meatby colordrops
- "Alter" is an interesting word choiceby rrjjww
- > the participants were randomly assigned to two groups: 24 followed a vegan diet for four weeks, while 24 followed a diet particularly high in meat.
This may be correct technique for a small-n, short-duration study.
But don't expect the results to be applicable to typical non-vegans.
by bell-cot - We need to collectively evolve as a species past intensive industrial animal confinement. To think, we can be more compassionate and don't need to sacrifice our health, and may in fact be able to live healthier!
- In such a world, if we still kept cats as pets, how would we feed them? Would non-industrial, more small-scale farming of animals be able to sustain that, or would exceptions need to be made? I use cats in this example since they, unlike dogs, are carnivores, and they must eat meat to live healthily (unlike us, where a bit of supplementation is enough for entirely vegan diets to be viable).
I'm curious how problems like this would be dealt with in a vegan world. Just let the cats loose on the local rodent and bird population, maybe?
by Moomoomoo309 - Most studies on diets are usually skewed because part of the results do not directly come to the specific diet (no matter if it's the vegan, carnivore, atkins, dukan, paleo or whatever) but from study participants "suddenly" following a well-defined eating regime (with a well defined upper bound on caloric intake).
Essentially, if you go from eating shit at whatever time of the day to following a well-specified eating regime... of course you'll get benefits.
Dumb example: this professor lost 27 pounds and got improvements across various markers by eating Twinkies - link: https://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profe...
by znpy - Both pure vegan and pure meat camps claim to have scientific evidence that it works, which make me question if change is what the body responds to. From personal experience, eating less often and fasting does seem to improve things like brain fog, indigestion etc.by farhanhubble
- That’s a false equivalence, not all evidence has the same quality. I don’t think there’s any doubt across serious scientists that meat intake should be limited for positive health outcomes.by andor
- People going vegan or going pure aktins or whatever have the most important thing in common, they are actually thinking about what they eat, reading labels and generally making conscious decisions about food.by Unit327
- Highly misleading title. They make you really dig up linked paywalled papers before you see any methods to see what people actually ate.
The methods say people were allocated to vegan versus "high meat consumption" foods, with participants free to choose their diets. The only restriction was you had to "try" to increase intake if losing weight, and "try" to decrease intake if gaining weight. (i.e. only isocaloric per basal rate, not across the board). Then the linked studies hint heavily that the vegan group tended towards less protein but more fibre, and roughly equal carbs (fat is not mentioned!!). Which at the very least shows the diets were not "equivalent bar for meat", let alone for "moderate" (i.e. potentially healthy) amounts of meat.
So they're not comparing "healthy wholefood vegan vs healthy wholefood meat diets". They're comparing availability and behavioural tendencies towards dietary choices when aiming for a short term vegan diet versus when aiming for a short term diet characterised by excessive amounts of meat.
I honestly don't get why they do studies like this. It's a waste of time for everyone involved. It's almost like they're only after a headline extolling veganism, rather than actually useful comparisons that could lead to real, actionable dietary insights. Really, if anything, a supported conclusion here could even be that meat diets are likely healthier given sufficient fibre supplementation.
by tpoacher - I can’t access the previous paper by the authors that contains details about the diets.
That being said, people don’t eat macronutrients, they eat foods. With equal caloric intake, a vegan diet is going to be higher in fiber and lower in fat and protein than a diet that includes meat. That’s probably part of why it’s healthy, but the reason for doing this study is to understand the mechanisms in more detail, rather than just claiming that one is better than the other.
When you say they should have supplemented fiber, you’re also implying they should have had less meat. According to the linked paper from this year, the meat-rich diet included at least 150g of meat per day, which is just a bit more than a chicken breast or a single burger patty. Probably in line with what many expect from a balanced meal.
by andor - Reminds me that I need to study the impacts of a vegan diet in the science literature to understand how aggressively I should be pursuing it. The times I’ve lived on a near vegan diet, I feel quietly better in lots of little unexpected ways. Happy to chase books or links if people have them lying around.by tomkat0789
- Dr. Michael Greger's "How not to die" is interesting.by markvdb
- A friend of mine chose a “macrobiotic” diet 35 years ago. Apparently practitioners have conferences, too, Or so ive been told.by xtiansimon
- I had to stop after 6 months because my testosterone dropped so much (serious, blood test confirmed). Felt way better for the first few months, then slowly lower energy and not like myself. Eventually realized more vegetables is good, but nailing is protein wise on true vegan diet is very very hard.