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Forums - General Discussion - Is becoming a vegetarian/vegan worth it?

SvennoJ said:

What evidence? Studies on the internet... They all come disclaimers that correlation does not prove causation. For example that study with 130k people over 30 years: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/vegan-meat-life-expectancy-eggs-dairy-research-a7168036.html
As would be expected, the risk was found to be most pronounced among people who also engaged in other unhealthy activities , including having a history of smoking, drinking heavily or being obese.

However, caution should be exercised when interpreting the results, as other more complex social and environment factors could affect the results rather than being solely related to diet. For instance, vegans are more likely to be younger than the general population and therefore have much lower mortality rates. Similarly, vegans can be more likely to come from socially affluent backgrounds, which can also influence mortality risk.

Then you have stuff that finds now difference or even shows the opposite with unhealthy vegetarians, but I guess that's sponsored by the evil dairy industry :)
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/do-vegetarians-vegans-really-life-longer

Anyway what is your explanation for the French paradox? 

You didn't respond to much of what I've been saying to you, for example my question as to what evidence do you have that vegans (many of which who do it for environmental and/or animal welfare concerns) are more health conscious than the average person.  Do you have something to point to, or are you just assuming that?  My experience doesn't jibe with your comment, but as far as I know neither of us has a metric to point to.

I'm not sure what you meant "studies on the internet"?  I imagine most research is available on the internet.

Yes, huge amounts of research is now sponsored by vested interests.  And as I pointed out, the bias in studies funded by those who would benefit one way or the other from the results is getting so brazen that health authorities around the world are increasingly ignoring all research that's funded by vested interests.  That article you linked to links to a tonne of industry-funded research that uses some questionable methods.  If public health authorities the world over are beginning to ignore such research, in favour of research funded by people who don't financially benefit from the results, then I see no reason not to join them.  That's true whether it's funded by the evil dairy industry (your words, but fits for an industry with business practices such as it has), or funded by Pom Wonderful (that wants you to falsely believe that pomegranates are the second coming when it comes to health, when there are much healthier foods such as amla/indian gooseberries).  I don't care if it's an egg marketing board, or an alliance of rice producers, bad science is bad science.

The conclusion near the end of the article you link to is that 75% of your plate should be whole plant foods, and the remaining 25% should be protein rich foods.  That's about as unscientific a conclusion as one can reach!  The average person in a wealthy country eats 2-3 times more protein than is ideal for optimal human health.  An overabundance of protein in the body doesn't raise blood levels of protein, nor does it build muscle faster.  In fact it does the reverse:  it ties up the internal organs trying (and failing) to absorb all this extra protein.  This creates an anti-nutrient effect on the body.  This effect typically lasts for about 6 hours, usually enough time to get you to your next protein-rich meal where the process starts all over again.  How can the authors look at the science and come away with that recommendation?  It makes no sense.

It used to be most research was independent.  It was done by public health authorities, or post-secondary institutions, or charitable foundations.  These days, the majority of research is done either directly or indirectly by industry (or other vested interests).  Directly is industry funding research, and a lot of that happens.  Indirectly is a study being stacked with researchers who are on the payroll of a marketing board or other vested interest, so the researchers benefit from the result looking a certain way.  I gave you several examples of how they can manipulate studies to get the results they want.  Here's a good video summation on "set up to fail" studies like that:  https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-fail/

Last edited by scrapking - on 06 November 2017

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Musouka said:

Maybe a 7-day vegan challenge will solve all your problems ;)

I think the best way is to do gradual food elimination over the course of several months and then see how you feel. Many people who tried switching to veganism temporarily report feeling less energetic because they seemingly rely on processed food and/or don't make the best decisions of what they should eat. I never thought I could ever live without white bread, but had somehow managed to eliminate 90% of my intake of it by doing it gradually. My salt intake has also decreased tremendously over the course of a few years (still working on that addictive processed sugar, though).

Ultimately, only you can decide whether it is worth or not and in what capacities (for you personally, for the environment or for whatever other reasons). Everyone will give you their personal beliefs on the matter, which are quite subjective. If you want to get to the bottom of this, you would probably be better off pouring yourself into scientific literature on the matter comparing eating habits, lifestyles and health. I find Mike the Vegan YouTube channel to be informative as he always cites peer-reviewed scientific research and appears to be objective enough about what is expected from a plant-based diet (inlcuding having to take in some supplements; which shouldn't be exclusive to such diet, by the way).

I am not vegan myself but I mainly subsist on chicken and fish plus the ocassional red meat once or twice a month. I have days where I don't eat any kind of meat. This works for me now, but I'm always looking into ways to improve my diet.

I was a pescetarian, watched Cowspiracy, and went plant-based on the spot.  I have known for a long time that animal agriculture was really bad for the environment.  As a teenager, and we're talking about 25 years ago now, I stopped eating beef for years after seeing this music video by Bruce Cockburn:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErS9HCh8GfE

Over time, meat moved from the centrepiece of my meals, to an accompaniment.  Gone were the steaks, in came the stir fries, for example.

I then learned how bad for health meat is, so I went pescetarian and did that for 3-4 years.  Yet my health didn't improve, it continued to gradually worsen.  As I ate fewer mammals, I ate more seafood and dairy and the health benefits proved elusive.

Finally I watched Cowspiracy and learned how bad for the environment animal agriculture is (far worse than I had ever dreamed, actually).  I went fully plant-based on the spot and have never looked back.

Coincidentally, Mic the Vegan's Youtube channel was the first resource I discovered after going fully plant-based, and he brought me further into the idea of eating whole plant foods for health.  I'm forever thankful for that, it helped me avoid the trap of going plant-based for the environment yet eating a lot of processed foods that aren't great for health.  Whereas before my health was trending in a negative direction, it's now significantly improved and trending in a positive direction, and my environmental footprint is much lower, so I'm extremely happy and thankful for how it's all worked out.

So many there's something to your suggestion of doing it all in baby steps.  That was my experience.  I started my veg-positive journey in 1988, and was finally completely plant-based as of spring 2015.  So for me it took 27 years.  However, being pescetarian, or an omnivore before that, was much harder than what I do now.  Every fork-ful is a joy when I know it's nourishing me optimally, has the smallest environmental footprint, etc.  And it doesn't hurt that I've discovered many wonderful flavours and textures that fall into the "Where has this been all my life?!" category, that I would have eagerly eaten as an omnivore if I'd only known how awesome they tasted.  My only regret is that I didn't make the switch 20 years earlier.

Please don't mistake this to be a judgement on anyone else's veg-positive journey.  It took me 27 years to complete mine, so who the heck am I to judge someone else's?  When I regret not doing it earlier, that's a very personal statement about how I feel about myself, not how I feel about anyone else's.



ArchangelMadzz said:

Wait a minute, are you telling me that people who eat like shit eating takeaway and McDonald's  etc die of complications related to their shitty diet? I never could've guessed..

Yes, but that's not an accurate summation of my comments.  People eating high quality meats, and doing so in moderation, are far more likely to get colon cancer than those who eschew meat entirely, for example.  So it's not as simple as eating whole foods and letting the chips fall where they will.  Well, it can be, but that's not a recipe for optimal health.  Neither is orthorexia, so in that regard I recognize the need for balance for some people.

Balance in my diet isn't for me, however, not if that means eating things that are bad for me.  I no more desire to eat (even in moderation) something that is hard on my kidneys and gut bacteria (meat/dairy/eggs/refined carbs) than I want to do heroin in moderation, or jump off of buildings in moderation.  I'm more likely to get stressed by knowing I'm eating something that's bad for me, than I am to get stressed by making sure my meals are nutritionally complementary to each other.  Your mileage may vary.



HoloDust said:
I've been vegetarian for some 23-24 years - and the worst thing I've seen in all those years are zealots on all sides of topic trying to sell you on their lifestyle and/or prove their way is the only right way - seems uncanny familiar with certain other topic.

Live and let die.

I hear you, I really do.  My veg-positive journey was 27 years long, so it behooves me to be humble.  :)

I do think the environmental reality should be lighting a fire under us, though.  If you believe the overwhelming scientific consensus on the environment (and I certainly do), we don't have the luxury of a lot of dilly-dallying on the subject.  And changing our diets to be more veg-centric is the number one way to do that.  We still need to heat our homes, and transport ourselves around, so our ability to move the needle on those other points is pretty limited.  However, our ability to make a dramatic and immediate environmental impact from forgoing animal products is huge.  And that's true for dairy and eggs as well.

So it's not quite as simple as saying people should do whatever they want, as each person's actions affect the rest of the planet whether they like it or not.  And it's fair and reasonable to communicate that to people, in my opinion.  But there are better ways to communicate it, and worse ways, of that I completely agree.



scrapking said:

You didn't respond to much of what I've been saying to you, for example my question as to what evidence do you have that vegans (many of which who do it for environmental and/or animal welfare concerns) are more health conscious than the average person.  Do you have something to point to, or are you just assuming that?  My experience doesn't jibe with your comment, but as far as I know neither of us has a metric to point to.

I'm not sure what you meant "studies on the internet"?  I imagine most research is available on the internet.

Yes, huge amounts of research is now sponsored by vested interests.  And as I pointed out, the bias in studies funded by those who would benefit one way or the other from the results is getting so brazen that health authorities around the world are increasingly ignoring all research that's funded by vested interests.  That article you linked to links to a tonne of industry-funded research that uses some questionable methods.  If public health authorities the world over are beginning to ignore such research, in favour of research funded by people who don't financially benefit from the results, then I see no reason not to join them.  That's true whether it's funded by the evil dairy industry (your words, but fits for an industry with business practices such as it has), or funded by Pom Wonderful (that wants you to falsely believe that pomegranates are the second coming when it comes to health, when there are much healthier foods such as amla/indian gooseberries).  I don't care if it's an egg marketing board, or an alliance of rice producers, bad science is bad science.

The conclusion near the end of the article you link to is that 75% of your plate should be whole plant foods, and the remaining 25% should be protein rich foods.  That's about as unscientific a conclusion as one can reach!  The average person in a wealthy country eats 2-3 times more protein than is ideal for optimal human health.  An overabundance of protein in the body doesn't raise blood levels of protein, nor does it build muscle faster.  In fact it does the reverse:  it ties up the internal organs trying (and failing) to absorb all this extra protein.  This creates an anti-nutrient effect on the body.  This effect typically lasts for about 6 hours, usually enough time to get you to your next protein-rich meal where the process starts all over again.  How can the authors look at the science and come away with that recommendation?  It makes no sense.

It used to be most research was independent.  It was done by public health authorities, or post-secondary institutions, or charitable foundations.  These days, the majority of research is done either directly or indirectly by industry (or other vested interests).  Directly is industry funding research, and a lot of that happens.  Indirectly is a study being stacked with researchers who are on the payroll of a marketing board or other vested interest, so the researchers benefit from the result looking a certain way.  I gave you several examples of how they can manipulate studies to get the results they want.  Here's a good video summation on "set up to fail" studies like that:  https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-saturated-fat-studies-set-up-to-fail/

I don't have any evidence, except that everywhere I get confronted with whole foods diets, it's all about improving health. That's just my experience with encountering vegetarian and vegan diest. It get most of my info in the waiting room on my chiropractor that always has documentaries running on the bad meat industry and amazing improvements people make getting rid of all their medication by switching diest. Ofcourse they have a nutritionist on staff and sell the supplements etc right there...

Why should I trust government funded research any more? They're the ones that added fluoride to the water supply and taught me drink 4 glasses of milk a day in school. Actually going off milk fixed my lifelong eczema. My kids have a mild form of it now, they get milk at school. They won't drink soy or almond milk though :/ Soy milk doesn't seem that good anyway.

Anyway I don't really trust any research, it always comes with an agenda. I'm healthy now, as I said before, don't fix what's not broken.

Schools are the places to start change with healthy school lunches. Instead my kids get offered Boston pizza days, Subway, Pita pit as lunch options. (It's optional luckily) Yet there are no healthy options. Kinda sad.



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Holy FUCK this thread got pretty long. Can't believe it's been several months already.

Anyway, here's what happened if anyone cares (probably not):

From June-August I simply tried to cut down how much sugar and fat I consumed. Stopping this and forcing better habits was good, but i was still on the border of healthy and unhealthy. I was still skinny, but i was considered 'skinny fat' by my doctor. Even with moderate exercise, I was still able to improve a lot more.

End of August I was about 190 and told myself to get it together. Today I'm about 160, so I'm honestly pretty damn happy. Some changes i made:

1. Red meat consumption cut by 90%
2. Mainly eat chicken or seafood
3. Drink about 65-85 ounces of water
4. Calorie cap of 1900-2100
5. Starting weight lifting for the first time in my life - did it 3 dahs a week; also dod cardio 4 days a week
6. Only eat one junk food every week

For anyone who's feeling unsatisfied with their health, I managed to do this in the span of about 9 weeks (end of August to today). It wasn't easy, but being physically appealing and feeling great is something everyone should experience themselves.

For anyone curious, my increases just from cutting red meat and dietary shifts are rather incredible. My planner says I started on August 30th, so these are my results in 70ish days:

Before-after:

Weight: 190-160
Consecutive pushups: 20-40
Pullups: 0 (whoops)-12
Bench press: ???-fifteen reps of 95
Leg press: twelve reps of 200
Bicep curls: eight reps of 15 to eight reps of 25
Leg curls: eight reps of 90 to twelve reps of 165

Lateral pulldown: ten reps of 50 to ten reps of 130



Those are some of the largest improvements. If you're on the fence, don't focus on magically going meatless. I'd say little red meat and getting serious about exercise has helped a lot.

This thread is pretty enjoyable, and I hope someone finds my results to be useful. :)



One of my very close friends is Vegan and I can say that she does not have nearly the stomach and digestive issues I do. She also has a great overall taste.



“Some parents let their young kids win at games, but mine never did. I don't think it was because they were particularly competitive, they just wanted to teach me a valuable lesson. Life is mostly just learning how to lose.”

Would rather stop fapping for a week than become a vegan



                  

PC Specs: CPU: 7800X3D || GPU: Strix 4090 || RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000 || Main SSD: WD 2TB SN850

SvennoJ said:

I don't have any evidence, except that everywhere I get confronted with whole foods diets, it's all about improving health. That's just my experience with encountering vegetarian and vegan diest. It get most of my info in the waiting room on my chiropractor that always has documentaries running on the bad meat industry and amazing improvements people make getting rid of all their medication by switching diest. Ofcourse they have a nutritionist on staff and sell the supplements etc right there...

Why should I trust government funded research any more? They're the ones that added fluoride to the water supply and taught me drink 4 glasses of milk a day in school. Actually going off milk fixed my lifelong eczema. My kids have a mild form of it now, they get milk at school. They won't drink soy or almond milk though :/ Soy milk doesn't seem that good anyway.

Anyway I don't really trust any research, it always comes with an agenda. I'm healthy now, as I said before, don't fix what's not broken.

Schools are the places to start change with healthy school lunches. Instead my kids get offered Boston pizza days, Subway, Pita pit as lunch options. (It's optional luckily) Yet there are no healthy options. Kinda sad.

You answered your own question.  People who talk about whole food diets are usually going to be focused on health, for sure.  There are lots of "ethical vegans" who are focused on animal welfare or the fact that vegan diets are much better for the environment.  It makes sense that your experience at the chiropractor may skew more towards the health conscious side of veganism, whereas if it were a store that sold fair trade clothing your experience there may skew towards the ethical vegan side more.

Government funded research is more reliable because that removes publication bias.  Industry-funded research generally won't be published if they don't get the results they're hoping for (that's true whether it's funded by the meat industry, the rice industry, whatever).  Research funded by government is generally published no matter the result, so it is considered a better level of research than industry funded.  Government-funded research is also usually not being done with a set goal in mind, so the research is generally not set up to fail (when the dairy and egg industries fund cholesterol research, the methods they use are set up in advance to fail to find any connection between cholesterol and heart disease, despite the fact that the overwhelming body of independent scientific research continues to find strong proof that cholesterol causes heart disease).

Government agencies did use to recommend people consume dairy, though increasingly they do not anymore (the U.S. is a different situation, but the current political climate there is unfortunately openly antagonistic towards science so it's maybe not surprising).  The recent draft guidelines on nutrition in Canada removed dairy as a food group and lumped dairy in with processed sugar as something you should never consume if you can help it.  Keep in mind that the people responsible for researching health for the government, and the people responsible for drafting the nutrition guidelines, are often not the same people.  And politics comes into play if a country produces a lot of dairy, as the government becomes worried about jobs in the dairy industry, their dairy exports, etc., so non-health considerations often guide nutrition guidelines, rather than science.  That's the way it was in Canada until recently.  They did a new process in Canada where they took out all the industry-funded research, and looked just at the science, and came up with new regulations that indicated beans were a better source of protein than meat, that eggs should be eaten sparingly, that for optimal health dairy shouldn't be eaten at all, etc.  Because that's what the science says, when you look just at the science not funded by the industries who're trying to sell you food.  And make no mistake, the research that Pom Wonderful does to try to get you to drink their pomegranate juice is just as bad as the research the dairy and egg industries do trying to convince you that you shouldn't worry about cholesterol.

If your kids won't drink soy or almond milk then I'd recommend trying hemp milk, or hazelnut milk, or cashew milk, or coconut milk, or oat milk, or...  you get the idea, there are so many alternatives that there's likely one they'll like (unless they're addicted to casein ;) ).

Soy milk is very healthy, there was never any independent research that suggested otherwise.  There were *theories* that it might be bad for you because of estrogen-like substances in soy.  However, this is compared to meat and dairy that contain *actual* estrogen, so that concern was always exaggerated at worst.  And when they did the research and they put it to the test, they found the exact opposite anyway:  the phyto-estrogens in soy actually *reduced* the level of estrogen in the blood.  It turns out phyto-estrogens are similar enough to estrogen that they (to simplify it) actually tie-up the estrogen receptors in the body, so that the body is less likely to absorb any actual estrogens in your food.  This leads to the hilarious scene of someone drinking milk or eating a steak (both of which contain actual estrogen) while saying they are trying to avoid soy to stay "more manly", but the dairy and meat they consume contain actual female hormones in it.

Back when I was an omnivore, I though I was healthy.  And compared to a lot of people I was.  But the problem with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality is that the first sign of heart disease is often death due to a heart attack.  There was a well known mountain biker who recently died of a heart attack during an event, despite living an active lifestyle.  Your arteries can be 90% clogged without you knowing, as the body will do its utmost to compensate (which hides it from you, often until it's too late...  because you're dead).  So I've chosen to exclude all products from my diet that include cholesterol because the independently-funded science is clear that eating cholesterol raises cholesterol, and that high levels of bad cholesterol over time clog arteries and lead to heart attack, stroke, neurological diseases, and even erectile dysfunction.  No thank you.

There are probably some decent Pita Pit options (maybe a falafel veggie pita for example).  Ditto Subway.  That doesn't mean the kids are choosing those options, and I completely agree with you that we need to keep the corporations out of the schools for all kinds of reasons, because they're always acting in the best interests of the corporation rather than the kids.  Of course, a meal from home could be better.  I don't know how representative the experience is, but I have friends who work in the school system who say that the overwhelming number of lunches they see kids bringing in are fruit leather, processed meats on white bread, pop, etc.  Almost 100% of it is processed food, and much of what they see is the worst stuff on the market.  That's anecdotal and I hope it's not representative, but from the commercials you see on TV I fear it likely is close to the mark.  :(



ampersand said:
One of my very close friends is Vegan and I can say that she does not have nearly the stomach and digestive issues I do. She also has a great overall taste.

That's an interesting observation.  One I recently made myself, as it kind of happened "under the radar" for me.  I thought I was healthy as a pescetarian (and thought I was healthy as an omnivore before that).  While I didn't have any major health issues, the devil's in the details.  I used to get occasional brief bouts of upset stomach a couple of times a week.  No big deal, usually just a few hours, and it had happened my whole life, so it was normal to me.  I realized after being on a strictly plant-based diet for a while that it doesn't happen to me anymore, I can't remember the last time I had an upset stomach.  I'm not sure if it was a digestive issue (all meat/dairy/eggs are bad for digestion), or whether it was occasional mild bouts of food poisoning (food poisoning is far more common with animal products, much rarer with plant-based options).  I used to be a lot more flatulent, and not being so may be due to digestive improvements too.

I used to get a white film on my tongue.  I used to have to scrub it like crazy with my toothbrush to keep it under control.  That's largely gone now.

My dental health is amazing, and I no longer get any plaque or tartar on my teeth, thanks to all the green tea I now drink.  Green tea is naturally ant-microbial and anti-viral, and it kills the bacteria that causes plaque, so each day I swish some around in my mouth before drinking it, just to stay on top of that.  Amla, which is powdered indian gooseberry, de-activates the bacteria that causes plaque, so I add some of that to my green tea.

Perhaps it would have been possible to get some of these benefits simply by reducing my consumption of meat and other animal products, but certainly not all of them (eating even small amounts of meat regularly reduce the bio-diversity of your gut bacteria, due to the toxic compounds created in the colon as they're digested).  And it's simply easier to hit all the marks nutritionally with plant foods as (on average) they have far more nutrients per calorie, so by eating animal products (and especially eggs, as they are the worst offender here) you're choosing to get fewer total nutrients than if you ate that amount of calories in a mix of whole plant foods.  Plants have a much wider variety of nutrients too, especially phyto-nutrients (an entire class of nutrients that have all sorts of great effects, especially anti-cancer effects, and are exclusive to plant foods).

I used to get cold scores like crazy, it sucked.  I used to take a dozen pills a day to keep it under control, and took prescription anti-virals with me everywhere I went in case the pills failed to keep it in check.  Meat/dairy/eggs are immuno-suppressing overall, whereas plant-based foods are immuno-boosting, so that makes perfect sense.  But it's a joy to no longer fight cold sores every day of my life.

As an omnivore (and later as a pescetarian) I used to have a lot skin problems (not on my face, but on my butt and other parts of my body), and that has largely cleared up.

I used to get sick (cold and flu) several times a year, like most people.  In the 20 months since going strictly plant-based, I have been sick only once.  And I've stayed healthy despite a lot of work-related stress over that time, so that's been really enjoyable.  :)

There have been other minor health improvements too, but those are the ones that stand out for me.  Like I say, compared to most people I was already really healthy.  Because of that I didn't go plant-based for health reasons.  So the health benefits showing up were a real surprise, but have been great.

My experience is anecdotal, but obviously since it's my experience it's strong motivation for me to continue.  While there's not one known disease related to failing to eat enough meat/dairy/eggs, there's a long list of diseases correlated to not eating enough whole plant foods, so my experience makes sense when one looks at the science.  And since sometimes the first clue that you have a health problem related to eating animal products might be a heart attack or a stroke, it's not a good plan to wait for symptoms to show up to make a change.

Last edited by scrapking - on 29 November 2017