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[|darc|]

Everyone knows vegetables and fruits are incredibly healthy - until you bring up the word 'vegan'.

Anyone who claims that "the science is clear" or that nutrition is a settled topic clearly is talking out of their ass. After experiencing health issues in my early 30s I've put an extreme focus on my health and have spent more time reading, listening, and watching nutrition related topics and media than anything else. There is practically no consensus on anything in the world of nutrition, and I am deeply skeptical of anyone who claims there is. I would suggest you discard assumptions and arguments from entrenched authorities on this topic and keep your mind open to other points of view.

No, I don't even agree with the "vegetables and fruits are incredibly healthy" premise outright. I would ask: Why? Because they're plants? Plants are incredibly diverse. Far, far more diverse in composition than animals are. Being a plant does not automatically make something healthy. Some plants are outright poisonous. Many plants are toxic unless certain parts are cut off or skinned, or cooked in specific preparations to inactivate their problematic components. Antinutrients like lectins and oxalates are common in plants, because with some exception (like fruit, for facilitating reproduction), plants do not want to be eaten, and have natural defenses to prevent it.

As for your meat heavy diet: Remember that you are much younger than Manoel and me. We are both in our 40s. A bad diet takes a long time to catch up with you. My mostly dairy based diet as a vegetarian took almost 20 years to catch up with me.

I'm 34 now. I've reversed my health issues (primarily GI issues, both upper and lower) and I am in the best I have ever felt in my entire life, including throughout my teenage years, eating a meat-heavy, fat-heavy low-carb diet.

You realize there's an entire community out there full of old people eating strictly meat for decades? And not just surviving but thriving with large muscle mass? (I'm personally not carnivore though and do eat some vegetables for their taste)

At 35 I had horrible pain in my joints, especially my back, my knees, and my hands. I couldn't sit nor run. On top of that I had chest pain, suffered from chronic fatigue, bad digestion and hemorrhoids. I wondered if I had to re-introduce meat into my diet. I did some research and found out that it is scientifically known for a long time that animal protein as in dairy or meat do cause arthritis. From what I understand the uric acid ( a byproduct of the metabolic breakdown of animal protein - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uric_acid ) is neutralized with calcium from your bones and forms tiny crystals in your joints, slowly destroying your cartilage.
I gave it a try and ditched dairy and it helped immediately. Within weeks my joints stopped hurting and I got my normal life back.

This is funny to me because the number one draw to the carnivore diet community is for arthritis issues. Famously the Petersons (as in Jordan Peterson, the psychologist) have popularized the diet for this purpose.

Meat or dairy aren't oxygen, you'll be more than fine without them. It will hurt no one to give it a try for 14 days.

And the science is clear: meat and dairy kill you slowly but surely. The WHO has classified meat as a carcinogen in 2015:

I eat a varied plant based diet with a focus on normal cooked plant foods and starch such as potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, muesli, etc., not just fruits or raw uncooked vegetables such as the Ex-vegans you mentioned. - From my observation most if not all Ex-vegans were fruitarians or raw foodists, neither of which provides enough calories and will lead to deficiencies in the long term as you described. Humans are used to cooking with fire for at least a million years, before modern humans even existed. Cooking vegetables saves on time digesting your food and thus frees up calories.

Remember that the word "vegan" only describes what you are not eating, not what you should be eating. Some vegans consume soda, candy and fried foods, others limit themselves to only fruits or uncooked vegetables. The secret is a varied whole foods starch based diet with fruits and vegetables and limited or no oil intake.

It's not that meat is "oxygen." Meat is more nutrient dense than plants, and contains fewer problematic compounds. It creates so many beneficial outcomes because a diet of meat is a natural elimination diet. At least you cook your vegetables, that's not just pre-digesting them, it's also beneficial for partially eliminating the antinutrients with which they are filled. But you will never completely eliminate all of that.

Just like "vegan" includes soda, candy, etc. the word "meat" also includes terrible processed meats that have no business in a healthy diet. None of these studies that correlate meat to negative outcomes are controlling for unnaturally raised and processed meats.

That's why I only eat wild animal products or animal products that are raised consistently with their ancestral lifestyles. If you don't purchase animal products keeping in mind what that animal was fed for its diet, you are just passing that garbage on to yourself. For almost all of the animal products I eat, I can (and sometimes do) speak to the actual person raising and feeding them.

Fat and cholesterol will clog up your arteries and cause heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, impotence and dementia, which is why Bill Clinton switched to a plant based diet

Bill Clinton famously ate tremendous amounts of McDonald's. Literally anything else would have been an improvement.

Natural fats do not create heart attacks. If that were the case, heart attacks from atherosclerosis would have been a much larger problem in history, but it's primarily a postindustrial problem. They have arisen in our society as a consequence of large quantities of fatty acids only made possible to produce/consume in such large quantities through industrial processes invented during the industrial revolution. Stable animal fats are healthy and beneficial, but polyunsaturated fatty acids created through industrial processes and consumed in large quantities in our modern society are prone to oxidation and create metabolic dysfunction.

And the cholesterol theory is straight up bunk science. Cholesterol tests are ridiculous and a poor indicator of heart attack risk; people can manipulate their levels from optimal to terrible to optimal again just by changing what they eat in the last 5 days. It's like taking a single blood glucose test and using that as an indicator of diabetes risk.

A natural animal food diet > a natural plant-based diet > processed unnatural "modern" western foods

[cube_b3]

I am with Darc. Balance is important. Bodies are different.
I had the aforementioned problems that Manoel and Christ mentioned.
I switched to vegan and it created a huge protein deficiency.

That said, red meat is bad. It is far more complex for your body to break down in contrast to chickpeas which have sufficient protein. It is entirely possible to have a healthy vegan lifestyle. Most Hindu's have done it since the beginning of time.

While we are on this subject, I would advise everyone to enjoy oatmeal in the morning. Add flax seed, berries and nuts. It is a gastrointestinal blessing. Eating meat is taxing on the digestive track plants are easier to break down.

[|darc|]

I am with Darc. Balance is important. Bodies are different.
I had the aforementioned problems that Manoel and Christ mentioned.
I switched to vegan and it created a huge protein deficiency.

That said, red meat is bad. It is far more complex for your body to break down in contrast to chickpeas which have sufficient protein. It is entirely possible to have a healthy vegan lifestyle. Most Hindu's have done it since the beginning of time.

While we are on this subject, I would advise everyone to enjoy oatmeal in the morning. Add flax seed, berries and nuts. It is a gastrointestinal blessing. Eating meat is taxing on the digestive track plants are easier to break down.

Super yikes. Berries are fine, but you have the rest of this entirely backwards. Red meat is fantastic and probably the best thing humans could possibly eat. Grains like oatmeal are counterproductive to your nutrition and how are plants "easier to break down" when they're full of undigestible fiber? Yeah, you're gonna take big shits because you're literally stuffing your digestive system with stuff it's not going to absorb at all and then shit it all out. You won't need to shit things out constantly if you eat stuff your body will actually absorb instead of reject. Like natural grassfed beef.

[cube_b3]

I eat beef fairly regularly and the consequences are felt the next morning.
I also feel the consequences, anecdotally, my cholesterol levels exceeded the normal range.

Since moving to the Texas, I've slowly made friends who are huge red meat connoisseurs.

Growing up, I did not develop a pallet for it, barely managed to eat the Brazilian stakes and briskets I was introduced to, but with time I have cultivated a pallet for mediterranean food. Gyro's, Beef Tenderloins, Hala Baghdadi (beef with chunky mango sauce and Beef Koobideh plate. I consume these dishes totaling atleast 4 servings a month.

Due to my social circle, I was consuming red meat more often than once a week and it resulted in high cholesterol. Keep in mind I exercise regularly and make sure I don't go over weight. It did not help mitigate, cholesterol would've been far worse without it. I Reduced the beef intake and it went back down. All the beef I consumed were at friends homes or premium restaurants with premium kosher/halal certified grass fed organic meat.

My research also confirms meat is bad for you, I've watched and read vegan propaganda like what the health to appropriate well researched peer reviewed studies, I've also had detailed discussions with my PCP. You can google the exact recommended beef intake.

Some people such as yourself may have a genetic advantage at digesting meat. I also have to abstain from high salt as it triggers high blood pressure. If I abstain from it my blood pressure is managed without pharmaceutical intervention.

Based on the fact I have shared Manoel's medical conditions in the past, I would strongly encourage him to abstain from eating meat and increasing his fiber in take to the max. I have seen many gastroenterologist and they have all recommended that. You need good smooth shit to avoid inflammation of the hemorrhoids.

[|darc|]

lmao. ancient medicine overload here -- cholesterol, salt, fiber... next, tell me about the four humors.

Total cholesterol is largely a function of what you've eaten over the last few days. It is not an indicator of your cardiovascular health. you could be the healthiest person in the entire world, eat the quote-unquote "wrong" foods in the 3-4 days leading up to your cholesterol test, and be told you're on the verge of heart attack. If you want to know your risk, get a CAC scan. If you want to know more about cholesterol and how it corrolates with nutrition, a good place to start is Dave Feldman's Cholesterol Code.

BTW, doctors receive almost no info/training on nutrition in medical school. They're hardly any better than your average info regurgitator. If your PCP is focusing on this metric, you desperately need a new PCP.

Salt restriction is admittedly the topic I know least about here, because I eat low carb. It's important to understand that metabolism is incredibly complicated and interconnected -- foods interact and your consumption of food X may change how food Y impacts you. Without sky-high amounts of carbs typical of the American diet, I don't retain tremendous amounts of water, which means I piss a lot more of my water which depletes salt much faster. I eat liberal amounts of salt in return, or I will lose electrolytes (a common problem for people who start off on a keto diet, called "keto flu"). Carbs are the only macro you don't need to eat, at all. Your liver will synthesize any tiny amounts you need, and the rest of your body will happily run off of ketone bodies from fats.

to all your "google it" shit -- you can tell someone to google anything and they'll find something to agree with them.
There are doctors, websites, studies, videos that will agree with you. There are doctors, websites, studies, videos that will agree with me.
You're going to have to work harder than that. If you need an easily digestible (ha) flashy video though, the upcoming Food Lies doc (trailer just dropped 2 days ago) looks to be really good, from a man I trust (well, as much "trust" as I can have for anyone on this subject at least). Of course, it'll just be another documentary in a sea of nutrition documentaries, so feel free to keep going along with the status quo if you think eating undigestible materials is good for your health. I won't get any money out of you either way, but doctors and pharma, on the other hand...

[cube_b3]

I am very much enjoying this exchange.
Although with Google references out of the window, I am not sure how to proceed.

I will say that my discussions were not restricted to PCP, in America, you are typically referred to a specialist by a PCP. Especially since we are tied down with insurance and in network. So the PCP can just refer you to someone that will be in network (Yes, I know you can also do it yourself but it takes double the time to not just research the doctor but also their network coverage).

When my PCP was unable to help me, I bounced through three different GI's... eventually having surgery to cut out the inflamed hemorrhoids. What every medical professional had in common was the instruction to eat more dietary fiber. I was even prescribed fiber in the form of psyllium. They had free samples in every GI clinic I went too. That is what lead me to the vegan path to begin with, as stated that lead to muscles breaking down. Unlike you, I don't go against veganism and I blame myself for not researching and having a nutritious vegan diet. I resumed animal protein, however, excessive consumption of meat led to the GI symptoms resurfacing so a balance needs to be maintained.

No google references. A 100% personal anecdote of how my body responds to meat and vegetables.

Lastly, if Brazilian cuisine is similar to Pakistani or Mexican cuisine the high spice is also hell on the asshole.