Rab said:

Greenland Inuit 

Coronary atherosclerosis and heart disease were almost unknown among them when living in their original cultural environment. Their blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides were very low.

However Greenland Inuits living in Denmark at that time had much higher cholesterol and triglyceride levels due to higher Carb intake associated with introduced European diets that included sugars and grains 

http://www.docsopinion.com/2013/09/27/greenland-eskimos-fats-and-heart-disease/ 

I dove into your link in more detail, and there's something important: the study it's based on is false.  The Danish researchers didn't actually examine the cardiovascular status of the Greenland Inuit, they simply accepted as fact that the anecdotal evidence they'd heard was true (as chronicled here: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/omega-3s-and-the-eskimo-fish-tale/).  They published no medical reports on the Greenland Inuit they studied, because there were no tests.  Whether they were deliberately falsifying data, or just doing bad science due to incompetence, the world may never know.

This makes sense, as the results they published flew in the face of all other published data that was actually based on the scientific method.  We've looked at mummified inuit, and they were suffering atherosclerosis/heart disease, so it never made sense for that not to also be true in Greenland.  But to learn that the Danish researchers published junk science explains it.

The author of the link you sent me has no such excuse, and says things like "I believe there’s limited scientific evidence that this will help us avoid heart disease," with no suggestion as to why the author believes that the enduring scientific consensus is wrong.  The entire article is based upon 40 year old assumptions that were never tested and almost certainly were never true.

Rab said:

 Plants indeed do have organs, and indeed also have a vascular system that moves fluid which have the same basic function as blood

https://www.boundless.com/biology/textbooks/boundless-biology-textbook/plant-form-and-physiology-30/the-plant-body-178/plant-tissues-and-organ-systems-684-11908/ 

Research has shown that plants can indeed have something approximating "thinking and remembering"

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-intelligence-may-forever-change-how-you-think-about-plants 

http://www.bbc.com/news/10598926 

Fuchigole said:

It really looks like you're trying to convince yourself as if you're not alrady convinced of being a vegetarian. I really thanks for all the information given. I honestly think I couldn't live without eating meat and other things. I don't consider vegetarian/vegan to be bad but quite the opposite. It just not for me!

Interesting links.  This evidence is usually trotted out by omnivores, and yet it's a strong pro-vegan argument.  A human can exist on eating a very small number of plants, but an omnivore consumes the remnants of gigantic quantities of plans, after they've been filtered through the bodies of about 300 animals (approximately the amount of animals the average omnivore eats per year).  If you're concerned that plants feel pain, then go vegan as you'll eat hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times more plants in your life as an omnivore than you would as a vegan.

Rab said:

It's not as clear as you make it sound, the understanding either way is not there yet 

http://cardiobrief.org/2016/07/29/changes-in-eskimo-diet-linked-to-increase-in-heart-disease/ 

palou said

The argument was about if eating meat is natural (which I personally think isirrelevant to the question of vegetarianism). In contrary to fats and sugars, a very large variety of amino acids is needed by human beings, not something humans can synthesize, unlike some purely vegetarian species. This diversity can be found, without much trouble, in a midern vegan diet, by eating nuts, beans, certain greenery... Together, they have all we need. However, in any given pre-bronze-age environnement, it was far from guaranteed that the edible plants available had everything. Eating animal substance assures this, since just as yourself the animal is constructed from the diverse amino acids. That is why humans at least occasionaly consumed meat (or other animal products) in pretty much all prehistoric societies. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, also primarily consume plant matter, but do go out of the way to hunt smaller animals (insects, if nothing else) from time to time, even if much harder to obtain, and a vegetarian diet readily available.

How is it not as simply as I make it sound?  The article you link to doesn't contest the fact that the original Danish researchers actually made up some of their research, making claims they didn't even attempt to verify.

Also, going from a ketogenic diet to a high-carb diet doesn't tell us much.  Were the carbohydratest raw or refined?  There's a huge difference if you're adding broccoli or Oreo cookies to your diet!  The preponderence of scientific evidence suggests that both high fat and high refined carbohydrate intakes can cause heart disease.  Maybe it'll eventually be demonstrated that refined carbohydrates are even worse than saturated fat, but that doesn't prove that either is neutral for health, let alone good.

Again, the majority of the articles that suggests the Inuit (the term Eskimo should ideally not be used for the indigenous northern peoples of Canada and Greenland) didn't suffer heart disease seem to be accepting falsified 40 year old research, which is not confidence inspiring.

Even if we accept that their ketogenic diet was as health for them as some claim, the fact remains that it wasn't as good for them as (for example) the 98% plant-based diet the Okinawans ate.  But when mummified inuit show signs of heart disease, the preponderence of science suggests the inuit weren't as healthy as assumed.

On what basis do you suggest there's no evidence that vegans don't live longer?  The Adventist study found that vegetarians suffered 15% less mortality than healthy omnivores, and that vegans did better than vegetarians.

Besides, it's not mostly about living longer.  Help me live longer, and I'm interested.  Help me be more vibant in old age, and now I'm *real* interested.  The populations with the healthiest and most vibrant people in old age seem to be the ones that are most plant-based.  I've provided links backing up all of the above in previous posts in this thread, but will do so again upon request.  So yes, there actually is proof that vegans live longer.  It's popular to believe otherwise, just as it was popular in the early days of research into whether cigarettes cause cancer or not, for people to tell themselves that cigarettes don't cause cancer, or that it doesn't make *that* much difference.  We're at a very similar stage in nutrition research where the scientific consensus is hardening, but that there's a reluctance to accept it even as it becomes ever more clear.

Interesting links.  This evidence is usually trotted out by omnivores, and yet it's a strong pro-vegan argument.  A human can exist on eating a very small number of plants, but an omnivore consumes the remnants of gigantic quantities of plans, after they've been filtered through the bodies of about 300 animals (approximately the amount of animals the average omnivore eats per year).  If you're concerned that plants feel pain, then go vegan as you'll eat hundreds (perhaps thousands) of times more plants in your life as an omnivore than you would as a vegan.

I am not a vegetarian, I have never been a vegetarian, and have never recommended a vegetarian diet to anyone.  I believe in eating an evidence-based diet for optimal health.  At one point it used to look like the pescetarian diet (typically interpreted as seafood, dairy, eggs, and plants) was the healthiest for a lot of reasons (high quality fats that include lots of omega-3s, among other reasons).  So when the evidence seemed to suggest that was best, that's what I did.

As the evidence shifted, I shifted along with it.  I cut out seafood, dairy, and eggs as I learned that people who consumed dairy had a lot more diabetes, people who ate seafood suffered a lot more neurological disease, people who ate eggs got a lot more heart disease, etc.  I would love to say that I altruistically went vegan because of animal welfare, but I've known for decades that eating animals wasn't good for the animals and yet I did it anyway.  I'm not proud of that.

Instead, I selfishly adopted a plant-based diet as it became clear that was going to help me live longer and (more importantly) live better.  And not for the 3-10% of my life that I spent eating, but for the 90-97% of my life where I'm enjoying (or suffering) the consequences of what I ate in those brief moments of mastication.  Fair enough if you're not interested in life without eating meat and other animal products.  I used to feel the same way.  The epiphany for me was realizing that the amount of time I spend eating is small, but the amount of time I spend living life is large and that it makes more sense to advantage that.

I didn't respond to this one immediately because I wanted to check whether you knew someting on this subject that I didn't.  However, my research didn't turn up anything new.

There's no such thing as protein, per se.  Proteins are collections of amino acids.  The claim that when you eat plants you need to combine your proteins originates from 1971, and was retracted by the author in 1981, but has been believed by billions of people ever since.  Almost all proteins are complete proteins.  With the exception of gelatin, all proteins in all commonly consumed foods contain all essential amino acids.  They contain them in different ratios, but since the body has the ability to break down proteins and store amino acids for later combining, the idea that you need to engage in meal-by-meal protein combining is an oft-believed but completely false thing.  Here's a good summary of where the myth came from:  https://www.forksoverknives.com/the-myth-of-complementary-protein/

In fact, there's some evidence that varying your amino acid ratios from one meal to the next actually has a cleansing effect on the body (which means that always eating so-called "complete" proteins, like animal products and soy, may actually be disadvantageous for health).

So I don't see what problem you're identifying for pre-Bronze age diets, etc.  Every commonly eaten plant has every essential amino acid.  They have them in different ratios but, that's not only acceptable, that's possibly ideal.  If I'm understanding you correctly, what you've articulated here is something that's been believed by laypeople for a long time but that doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny.