Half A Billion Fewer Animals Are Being Killed Every Year Since 2007 As People Eat Less Meat

[DonFerrari]

scrapking said:

last92 said: 

I more or less agree with your point on dairy products, even though that has probably to do a lot with how dairy cattle is raised and how the milk itself is processed to produce cheese and other diary products. But be careful when you include "fats" in the "bad foods" category. If you know what you're doing, you can eat a lot of fats and still be healthy and lean...assuming you eat the "right" fats and a lot of veggies. Fats are not bad per se, this is a myth born from old (and totally wrong) beliefs that have been debunked by recent research. Sometimes, this misinformation is due to commercial reasons...like low-cholesterol foods, low fat food and so on. Ironically, you forgot to mention the one thing that probably caused the surge of nutrition-based diseases in the last century: (refined) carbs.

What is really damaging for the body is the combination of carbs and fats...and I'm pretty much convinced by now that sugar is a poison, plain and simple. I do everything I can not to ever touch it. There's just too much evidence about that.

I agree with almost everything you say here, with one asterisk:  when it comes to sugar, it's only refined sugar that is a poison.  You can eat fruit salads three meals a day and not get fat, not get diabetes, etc.  If you eat sugar in its natural, absolutely unrefined form, with plenty of fibre to slow the absorption, you'll do just fine.  The human populations that eat the most fruit have some of the lowest rates of diabetes, cancer, obesity, etc.

The research about refined carbohydrates has convinced me that flours and refined sugars are a poison and I avoid them.  However, I also avoid refined fats (olive oil, etc.) as I'm equally convinced those are problematic.  And the World Health Organization has confirmed that all meat probably causes cancer, and that processed meats (any meat that is smoked, cured, grilled, or processed in any way) definitely causes cancer.  So I agree with you that refined carbohydrates are a problem, but the research is that bad fats are the predominant cause of diabetes and that consumption of animal protein is tightly correlated to many cancers, so the preponderance of the best and most independent research suggests that reducing consumption of both animal products and refined carbohydrates is a plus for health.

I don't generally find the combination of unrefined fat and unrefined sugar to be a problem, I see no problem adding nuts or seeds to a fruit salad for example.

Really, eating whole foods is your only choice for optimal health.  Which isn't exactly mind-blowing, since we evolved eating mostly whole foods.  Not a lot of flour or hot dogs on the African savannah, after all.

Life expectancy on African Savannah is the hallmark everyone is aiming