> Plant-based diets appear beneficial in reducing cardiometabolic risk factors, as well as CVDs, cancer risk and mortality. However, caution should be paid before broadly suggesting the adoption of A/AFPDs since the strength-of-evidence of study results is significantly limited by the large study heterogeneity alongside the potential risks associated with potentially restrictive regimens.
tl;dr (which you've heard many times before): Eat less/no meat if you want to live longer and healthier. Ignore this advice at your own peril. I learned this lesson the hard way.
In other words this study used zero direct observational studies.
No one has ever fed one person a meat diet and another person meat free diet and shown there to be a increase or decreased risk of heart disease.
Daily reminder that Hong Kong has one of the highest meat consumption per person in the world And one of the highest life expectancies.
India has some of the lowest meat consumptions in the world and one of the lowest life expectancies.
So clearly meat is not the demon some of these biased studies make it out to be.
Would love to know if a primarily plant based diet (lots of varied vegetables, berries, nuts and fruit) + some lean meat and plenty of seafood on top would be as healthy as plant based, or healthier even?
What is interesting about Seventh-day Adventists, aside from being a slightly different protestant denomination, is that they preach a very strong health message -- it's not like don't do these things and you'll go to hell, they don't actually believe in a literal hell anyway, it's closer to "The body is the Temple of God so you should take care of it".
Anyway, I digress. Adventists are by and large vegan or vegetarian (even after leaving the church I grew up in I'm still vegetarian), they don't drink and they don't smoke. They live on average a decade longer.
There are many factors that can lead to longer life and longer quality of life, as evidenced by other bluezones, but these are relatively easy changes that you can make to your life that will have a positive impact.
Hell you don't even have to be fully vegan/vegetarian to get the benefits. Just swap out a bunch of meals that would otherwise have meat with vegetarian alternatives. Have a steak once a month vs once a week (etc).
Note: My father is a retired Adventist pastor in Australia. I am no longer religious but was within the Adventist church from 0 to 22ish.
- [0]: https://www.bluezones.com/explorations/loma-linda-california/
- [1]: https://llu.edu/From another meta analysis which talks about this more directly:
>Nevertheless, several RCTs have examined the effect of vegetarian diets on intermediate risk factors of cardiovascular diseases (Table 1). In a meta-analysis of RCTs, Wang et al. (22) found vegetarian diets to significantly lower blood concentrations of total, LDL, HDL, and non-HDL cholesterol relative to a range of omnivorous control diets. Other meta-analyses have found vegetarian diets to lower blood pressure, enhance weight loss, and improve glycemic control to greater extent than omnivorous comparison diets (23-25). Taken together, the beneficial effects of such diets on established proximal determinants of cardiovascular diseases found in RCTs, and their inverse associations with hard cardiovascular endpoints found in prospective cohort studies provide strong support for the adoption of healthful plant-based diets for cardiovascular disease prevention
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/am/pii/S105017...
India and Hong Kong have very different levels of income. Comparing the two is rather misleading when that's going to affect things like access to healthcare
I'm not sure that's what the tl;dr should be.
- healthy user bias: People who choose a plant-based diet (or in fact, probably just about any structured diet) are more likely to be health conscious in general and more likely to have other healthy habits like exercise.
- latent variables: "meat eaters" follow a wildly diverse group of diets, including those who eat just fresh lean meats, and those who eat heavily processed foods like bacon and sausage. Or those who eat just chicken. Or just fish, etc. A lot of the contradictory claims about "meat" seem to have a lot to do with these distinctions.
- self-reporting errors: Most observational nutritional studies rely on self-reporting of diet - there's a ton of research that shows that people regularly misreport what they eat in these studies (both qualitative & quantitative).
All of this is not to dismiss the results either - a lot of the time observational nutrition studies are the best we have! Doing randomized controlled trials on these kinds of interventions is difficult, so observational studies are often the best we can get, but they're really only a piece of the puzzle.
Many of the other blue zones are heavy on the seafood, but on the flip side there are problems with seafood that have nothing to do with the actual fish themselves and everything to do with chemicals and the way we're trashing out planet.
https://www.youtube.com/live/LSIyg_Z_ye4?si=O5uMFqligFcuPS8m
A high ldl over the age of 60 is associated with a lower all cause mortality.
And you are kinda right, having a higher income means you can afford more red meat and live longer.
Is there some method to reduce the heterogeneity in medical statistics?
Take away the sugar, alcohol ,and seed oils and meat eaters are all healthy.
There is the problem all these studies: which of the above is the cause factor and which is irrelevant. In general vegetarians are likely to not smoke as well, so is it not smoking or is it their diet, or some mix - it is very difficult to tell.
Differentiating "meat vs. plant" is too narrow of a scope - or too vague of contexts for comparison.
From my understanding in regards to meat consumption and demographics who eat plant-based, these two fundamentals issues exist:
1) Burnt red meat produces carcinogens, and
2) it's the other food that the majority of people eat as part of meat [e.g. a burger with a bun + sugar-loaded ketchup etc], as part of the industrial complex-driven Western diet that are, where people who eat plant-based are likely more conscientious about the food they are overall vs. the general population who eat meat, where also I believe the majority who eat highly processed meat rather than straight animal product.
There are easily enough people and a growing body of carnivore diet followers that could facilitate including them as a comparison, but in reality there should be other groupings like ; and what about including measuring if the participants have historically done water-only fasting (and number of days on average), and number of water fasts they've done during the study period, etc - so then we can see if there's a chance in the distribution?
Such "complex" studies ideally need to have say 100,000 to 1,000,000 participants to get enough diversity - and we'd also want to be careful that the studies aren't co-opted or influenced-captured by industrial complexes and their own interests.
It'd also be ideal to include as part of the participant cohort dietary changes for willing participants, say switching 1,000 to 10,000 people to high-quality high-fat red meat - who perhaps have other arguably healthy diet-behaviour changes to how that cohorts distribution changes vs. the general population.
The issue with such a study is you'd need to subsidize some participants is industrial complexes have maximized accessibility to low quality-harmful "foods" - maximizing profits too to maintain market dominance by also having more profits/money to advertise to remind people to buy their brand - and so high-quality red meat, for example, is too expensive for most people to switch to - even if the long-term cost of cancer treatment and loss of productivity far outweighs the higher initial cost; and so industry isn't going to pay for such a study, it would likely have to be heavily funded through philanthropy.
I try to only get carbs from fruit, milk, and potatoes to keep the carbs clean.
Can you explain to us what it feels like to "feel at 110%"?
>then I'd get 10x the micro nutrients
10x some micro nutrients, and 0x others.
I like a plant-based diet myself and have been on and off them over life, but the one habit that seems to keep me healthier than others is avoiding bread, pasta, and cheese.
A lot of the problems with seafood have nothing to do with the animals and everything to do with the way we're trashing our planet.
I'm personally vegan for ethical reasons, not health reasons. I wonder how many people actually go plant-based for health reasons, I doubt it's the majority.
Edit: it's also statistical, not everyone is going to be healthier.
I dont get cramps but I do supplement magnesium glycinate or taurate daily you may want to look into that if you havent.
Ive fasted for multiple days and done cardio each day w/ no cramps, just sharing my experience.
Here is the study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33293274/
A ldl of 140 mg/dL had a overall lower all cause mortality than those with a ldl of 100 or below. Doctors will prescribe a statin at 130.
Good look having a ldl of 140 on a vegan diet. It's not happening.
If you are going to ignore my scientific studies then there is no use continuing this conversation.
I went this direction slowly over time, originally because I didn’t want to support what I see as being an incredibly inhumane animal agriculture system, but now I’ve found I get a lot more satisfaction from an occasional really awesome, expensive cut of meat than I did having cheaper meat more frequently.
Buying pasture-raised meat also made me realize that a lot of standard supermarket meat is just kind of…bad these days, see “woody” chicken breast.
But to me that feels like a distraction, because have you seen what vegans eat? vegan pizza with "fake cheese", vegan burgers, highly processed hummus on a daily basis, etc.
From my own observations, almost all vegans I know are vegan for ethical reasons, not for health reasons. The fact that it appears to be healthier is just a nice bonus. Therefore, claims that plant-based diets are just healthier because they don't ever burn their burger or put sauce on their bun, feels incorrect to me.
Further, looking at their 95% confidence interval graphs... you can see the many of trends could potentially be completely reversed and still within the 95% confidence interval. Their 95% confidence interval contain probable outcomes where 140mg/dL was the worst possible level as well
Further it also still finds increased risk for heart issues with higher LDL.
> Any increase in LDL-C levels was associated with an increased risk of myocardial infarction.
"It should be remarked that, in the majority of the cases, people adopting plant-based diets are more prone to engage in healthy lifestyles that include regular physical activity, reduction/avoidance of sugar-sweetened beverages, alcohol and tobacco, that, in association with previously mentioned modification of diet [62], lead to the reduction of the risk of ischemic heart disease and related mortality, and, to a lesser extent, of other CVDs."
"It has also been described that vegetarians, in addition to reduced meat intake, ate less refined grains, added fats, sweets, snacks foods, and caloric beverages than did nonvegetarians and had increased consumption of a wide variety of plant foods [65]. "
I know about 20-30 other vegans, and literally all of them are vegan for ethical or environmental reasons. None of them do it for health reasons, otherwise vegan pizza, vegan hot chocolate and vegan muffins wouldn't have been a thing.
My experience is also just anecdotal of course. And it might also be a difference in culture or country, perhaps.
Good to know, I didn't know this was the case. I wonder if going plant-based makes you more prone to engage in healthy lifestyles, or if having a healthy lifestyle makes you more prone to go plant-based.
Again, this doesn't negate the research on "diet X", but it does make coming to a conclusion more complicated.
Key word here, appears to be.
Upon deeper study, from what I have read, people who transition to vegan on average start having health problems related to the diet at an average of 5 years into the diet.
Note, a vegan diet is very different than a person who at least will still consume eggs or drink milk, etc.
Self-reporting may also be a major issue here as well, as it's possible that someone who is doing something for ethical reasons may put their cause above the ethics of being honest or lying; and metrics for health for the vast majority of people, especially if simply observational studies, aren't adequately or thoroughly gathered in the vast majority of cases; and especially long-term and qualitative comparisons on quality of life haven't been done yet - so the "appears" to be healthier could simply be a person feeling better because of feeling good for the ethics of it, no?
Re: "Therefore, claims that plant-based diets are just healthier because they don't ever burn their burger or put sauce on their bun, feels incorrect to me."
That's a straw man argument, I didn't make that claim.
There are proteins in meat that turn into carcinogens when burnt - I don't know if that's the case with whatever the plant-based "burgers" / patties consist of, if they turn into carcinogens from being burnt.
There are more counter-arguments to other things you state but I don't have time at the moment, e.g. your food examples of what vegans may it, they may also eat far less food than the average meat eater - which provides less food-energy for potential cancers, where it's known that lower calorie intake over a lifetime appears to also be a factor for life expectancy.
E.g. "The researchers found that people who cut their calories slowed the pace of their aging by 2% to 3%, compared to people who were on a normal diet. That translates, Belsky said, to a 10% to 15% reduction in the likelihood of dying early." - first google result for me, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/calorie-restricte....
It's one of these complex topics that no one has yet organized into a proper-complete distribution of arguments and counter-arguments, to lead towards designing adequate clinical trials to get definitive-scientifically derived answers - and that aren't perverted by influences of industrial complexes.
The preservative used for meat curing is a known carcinogen, and can't be replaced with any other known substance. Skipping it is also not an option, as botulism is a huge risk.
It's likely that self-reporting is indeed an issue, but I wonder whether it's not a "balanced" issue on both sides. E.g. there are so many people who want to eat meat, they might be willing to lie about their health when asked how meat affects their health.
When a study describes a finding as 'significantly associated,' it usually merely means that the study result can be assumed to not be due to a mere anomaly in the study data with a confidence of 95 % (the commonly used p-value of 0.05). This phrasing doesn't say anything about the effect size and its practical importance.
What is the effect size in the given study? I'm not able to find it.
The larger the sample size of a study, the more capable it becomes at identifying even weak associations between variables as "statistically significant".
The effect size might be tiny. I don't see the point of discussing these studies (and letting them influence your lifestyle) if the effect size is not part of the discussion.
The effect size should be front and center in summaries of scientific studies. I wish this was an enforced norm.
Hyperbole to quickly explain that my skin is better, my hormone levels are more even, better sleep makes my mood better, less brain fog. So some objective facts like I've improved my skin texture, and better sleep (longer, less interruptions, easier to get to sleep). Then a few subjective things like mood, brain fog, body doesn't hurt as much working out.
Side note I also feel fuller longer and have a hard time over eating, mostly due to having a large amount of both protein and fiber. So its helped me stay much leaner as someone that has issues with bingeing
>10x some micro nutrients, and 0x others.
I think a lot of the reason why it works is that it forces you to be aware of that 0x, and build verity into your diet. I have eggs, quinoa, milk, varieties of beans and nuts to help me meet that 0x, but I also have meat every few weeks you know?
I just started to think about meat being like 15% of the meal not 40%, but protein still be to focus calories wise. So if I made a taco salad it is closer to a 2 to 1 ratio of beans to meat over a kale/spinach mixed with quinoa with a lot of salsa and a little cheese
Plant based as I understand it mostly just means fill your calories with plants first then others like diary, eggs, meats etc. I think its much healthier than restrictive diets like keto, vegan, etc where you flat out can't have some foods. Foods just started to feel like a gradient of more to less optimal
So maybe this is a myth perpetuated for burned meat, too??
Indeed. There's also the issue of lean meat vs. high-fat meat - where the body needs and benefits from the fat concentration being there as part of digestion and proper nutrients, along with another significant difference between white meat vs. red meat consumption.
I eat meat too, though. Almost entirely chicken and fish. It would be really hard otherwise, though I do like tofu and a lot of meat substitutes.
That's just lying.
Yes there are edge cases. You could get hit by a car with a 140.
It's looking at all cause mortality.
A higher ldl seems to be protective. Of course it is. The body makes it for a reason.