Vegucated, and whether it makes sense
A kind soul from the Gabriola Vegetarian Society asked me to tell you that they’ll be showing a film called Vegucated on Sunday, March 4th, at the Roxy. It starts at 3pm, and admission is by donation.
Now, before I go off to see things, I like to check them out a bit. So off I went to see the Vegucated trailer at Youtube, and took a look at the film’s synopsis:
Vegucated is a feature-length documentary that follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers who agree to adopt a vegan diet for six weeks. There’s Brian, the bacon-loving bachelor who eats out all the time, Ellen, the single mom who prefers comedy to cooking, and Tesla, the college student who avoids vegetables and bans beans. They have no idea that so much more than steak is at stake and that the fate of the world may fall on their plates. Lured with true tales of weight lost and health regained, they begin to uncover hidden sides of animal agriculture and soon start to wonder whether solutions offered in films like Food, Inc. go far enough. Before long, they find themselves risking everything to expose an industry they supported just weeks before.
So this film, it seems, is put forth by people who want to convince you that eating meat is bad for the fate of the world
and bad for your health. A line from the trailer: We’re looking for foods that have more nutrients and less calories. Why should we die unnecessarily of heart attacks, strokes and cancer if we don’t have to?
I don’t hold with the idea that a vegetarian diet is healthier than a traditional diet, so I part company with the film’s makers and flag-carriers on that count. I don’t believe vegetarians have fewer health problems than their meat-eating counterparts.
The film also seems to focus on cruelty in industrial-scale agriculture, which is indeed a problem. But the solution, it seems to me, is to eat local meat that has been raised properly (e.g. free-range grass-fed beef bought from local farmers) rather than to adopt a vegetarian diet.
What I like about vegetarians is that they’re willing to make huge changes in their lives because they think it’s the right thing to do. I was a vegetarian for many years, and a vegan for a few of those years, so I do understand the vegetarian message. I don’t, however, think it makes any sense, and that is why I’m not a vegetarian anymore.
That is way more than the vegetarian people would want me to tell you, but there it is. :-)
Filed in events,Gabriola Island 14 Comments so far
14 Responses to “Vegucated, and whether it makes sense”
kathleen on 22 Feb 2012 at 9:40 am #
Thanks for mentioning Vegucated, we’re showing it for anyone who might be interested in this topic.
Re your criticism about the health claims made in the trailer for Vegucated, FYI–There are plenty of sources that back up the movie’s claims that a vegetarian diet is healthier. Here’s one–”Eating guidelines for Vegans,” provided by the Dietitians of Canada, states that “A vegan eating pattern has many potential health benefits. They include lower rates of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. Other benefits include lower blood cholesterol levels and a lower risk for gallstones and intestinal problems.”
I, for one, am more interested in preventing harm to other creatures though…
Gabriolan on 22 Feb 2012 at 10:21 am #
kathleen –
You wrote:
The page you mention (Dieticians of Canada – Eating Guidelines for Vegans) articulates an opinion, but does not cite sources for any of these claims.
John Hudson on 22 Feb 2012 at 11:49 am #
Kathleeen, I’m afraid restating a claim — as the Dietitians of Canada website does — does not constitute ‘backing it up’. When I see advice from such organisations, what I want to see is the science on which it is based, particularly the controlled experiments that isolate other factors that might affect the health of participants whether for good or bad. So, for instance, people who set out to ‘eat healthy’ tend to consume a lot less refined sugar than in the average Canadian diet; they also tend not to smoke and get more exercise. Until you can isolate those variables, you have not got proof of a causal connection between not eating animal products and increased health.
When considering claims that a particular diet even ‘potentially’ contributes to lower rates of heart or some other disease, we should ask ‘Lower than whom?’ I don’t think there is any doubt that the diet of the average North American results in considerable health problems: the diseases cited on that Dietitians of Canada page are frequently referred to as ‘the diseases of civilisation’, since they are almost completely absent in cultures eating a traditional, pre-agricultural diet (including, for instance, the traditional Inuit diet, fully half of which consists of saturated fat from animal sources). The health statistics of Seventh Day Adventists have long been cited as demonstrating the benefit of a vegetarian diet, and one might easily jump to that conclusion if one compares their instances of major disease to that of the average North American. But if one instead compares them to Mormons — who eat meat but otherwise follow a similarly healthy lifestyle to that of Seventh Day Adventists (no smoking, no alcohol, no pop) — there turns out to be no evidence for vegetarianism as a contributing factor.
In my experience — I write this as someone who ate a vegetarian diet for five years and a strict vegan diet for one year — the vegan diet is a bit like pure economic theory, or condom use to prevent pregnancy or the spread of STDs: there is a theoretical outcome based on perfect implementation. So dietitians and others can claim a potential health benefit to a vegan diet based on an idealised intake of nutrients from non-animal sources. I have never met a vegan who was able to implement the diet in anything like this ideal way, and in practice vegans are almost always suffering from a variety of vitamin and mineral deficiencies. I know the following statement will offend some people, but despite the theoretical ability to maintain healthy body functions without recourse to animal sources, in practice a vegan diet constitutes an eating disorder for most people who attempt it.
If you want to read a truly terrifying — and justifiably angry — account of the health effects of a vegan diet over twenty years, I recommend Lierre Kieth’s The Vegetarian Myth.
_____
I admire vegetarians for their desire to reduce suffering and harm through what they choose to eat or not to eat. I believe very strongly that people should think a lot more about what they eat, where it comes from, and what is involved in its production. Factory farming is an appalling industry, in which both the physical and mental health of animals is cruelly assaulted in order to keep meat prices artificially low. It also results in meat of diminished nutrition and flavour, which is a point that those not inclined to the vegan all-or-nothing approach should consider.
However — and again I am writing this as someone who was a vegetarian and a vegan for a significant period of time –, I believe vegetarians fail to make a full accounting of the impact of their diet, and what they think of as causing no suffering is, in fact, only a remove or distance from the suffering. The thinking is ‘If I am not eating an animal, then no animal is being killed or is suffering in order to produce my food’. That belief is only possible because of the distance between the tofu on the plate and the massive destruction of wetlands and riparian habitats, the decline in biodiversity, the annual slaughter of billions of small animals and birds by agricultural harvesting machinery, and the gradual desertification of vast tracks of land through soil degradation.
When we see fields of soya or corn or grain, the first question we should ask is not ‘Is this being used to feed humans directly or to feed animals for human consumption?’ — the usual vegetarian accounting — but ‘What used to live here?’ Then, when we start to ask the important questions about how we can restore that environment, how we might feed ourselves without such destruction, how, indeed, we can build soil rather than depleting it, and what role local and sustainable animal husbandry should have in that future. Land activists such as Joel Salatin and Simon Fairlie are doing important work in this area, both practically and in their writing.
Bronka on 22 Feb 2012 at 11:55 am #
I suggest you look at the website of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) for the sources and studies that you are searching for. Indeed, in 1991, these physicians created a new four foods group to replace the erroneous one that we have lived with for decades.
You will, I am sure, find similar references and referrals to studies on the websites of the US Dept of Agriculture, the American Heart Association, the American Dietary Association, and the Mayo Clinic. Just about any registered nutritionist can give you similar information.
It’s all pretty clear.
John Hudson on 22 Feb 2012 at 12:56 pm #
It is far from clear to me, Bronka. PCRM, like many other organisations seeking to offer dietary advice, relies heavily on epidemiological studies, which are notoriously unreliable with regard to chronic health issues such as those resulting from diet. At best, such studies can be used to indicate statistical correlation between factors and outcomes, but statistical correlation is not biological correlation, and evidence of correlation is not evidence of cause. Then there is the tendency for researchers to go looking for correlations in epidemiological studies — especially when, as in the case of PCRM, they are an advocacy body –, and hence to find such correlation even if it means ignoring the evidence that doesn’t fit the thesis.
One of my favourite examples of epidemiological methodology is that compiled by John Yudkin, in 1957, in response to Ansel Key’s famous ‘Six Countries Study’, which purported to support Keys’ thesis that fat consumption caused congestive heart disease (CHD). Yudkin was able to demonstrate, using the same method that Keys employed, that owning a television or radio had a stronger correlation with CHD than any dietary factor. Again, correlation does not equal causation.
Keys himself is a good example of the phenomenon to which I referred above. His published study showed the correlation between fat consumption and CHD in six countries, which made for compelling graphs. His actual data set consisted of 22 countries, and he simply ignored all the data that didn’t confirm his hypothesis, i.e. all the countries in which there was not a strong correlation between fat consumption and CHD. This didn’t stop Keys’ hypothesis becoming the basis of subsequent dietary advice from the American Heart Association and numerous governments around the world. This is not science.
So, again, what I’d like to see are the controlled experiments, isolating other factors, and measured in terms of both disease rates and mortality rates. [The latter is important, because in a number of the (poorly controlled) studies of the health effects of particular diets on significant populations over time mortality rates among subjects have not correlated to disease rates, i.e. while specific diseases had lower rates among subject on e.g. low fat and high carb diets, more of the subjects died.]
_____
If you are interested in the sorry history by which nutritional advice based on little or no science, or contrary to experimental results, became public policy, I recommend Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories. It is a sobering read, and will make you question pretty much everything you are told about diet by governments and other organisations. I have come to the conclusion that there is no substitute for reading and understanding the published science itself, looking critically at the data selection and methodology, rather than relying on interpretation by bodies increasingly bound to a particular orthodoxy and unwilling to consider that they have made a massive mistake.
Gabriolan on 22 Feb 2012 at 4:37 pm #
Bronka –
You wrote:
What’s pretty clear is what those sites want you think. If every study on diet came to the same sort of conclusion, that would be very handy for us all. But there is no consensus among researchers, physicians, or others, it seems.
So to balance out what you read at the PCRM site, you might check out articles about the vegetarian diet at the Weston A Price Foundation. There you’ll find lots of information, too, but put forth by people who think a traditional diet involving meat and fat is healthy, and that a vegetarian diet is not.
Read it all, I’d say. Read the content that supports one point of view, then the content that supports the other. See what makes the most sense. Look up the research studies listed, and read those. Read what others have to say about those studies, too. For example, T. Colin Campbell’s China Study is often cited as proof that a vegetarian diet is best. Before you accept that conclusion, take a look at The China Study: Fact or Fallacy? and then see what you think.
I echo John Hudson’s recommendation of Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes. It’s not about vegetarianism, but has much on health and diet that everybody should know. It gives the reader a good sense of how we’ve gone from a few studies on one topic or another (cholesterol, say) to Received Wisdom. Fascinating. It should certainly be enough to make people wary of basing diet and health decisions on what some organization says.
So a wise person will do one heck of a lot of reading before believing any claims about diet and health, I think. Some smart person says so, or I heard there was a study shouldn’t be enough to convince anybody.
Now, if I were planning a major shift in diet, I’d start by asking my doctor what blood tests serve as an indicator of health. What exactly can those tests tell us? Then I’d go read up on that some more. Next, I’d have those tests done, so long as they make sense. There, that’d give me a baseline measurement. (I’d be particularly interested in the results of a hemoglobin A1C test, after spending the summer reading up on blood sugar, insulin, and related health issues. But I’m sure a physician would have many suggestions.) Then I’d try the new diet for a month or three. I’d pay attention to things like my energy level and how I feel on the new diet. At the end of my test period, I’d have those tests re-done to see if the values have changed. If so, do the new values indicate increased health or decreased health?
It seems to me that that would be a good approach for anybody who does decide to try a vegan diet.
(Although, of course, a vegan diet is the very last thing I’d recommend.)
kathleen on 22 Feb 2012 at 7:01 pm #
Although the diet and health thing does not interest me very much, let’s go back to it for a moment. I have to assume that Dietitians know more about the subject of eating and health than most of the rest of us do. The American Dietetic Association printed a position paper on vegetarian diets in 2009 that contains 5 pages of references. In the position paper they claim that “…appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.” We no doubt can go back and forth with evidence and lack of it forever but since I am not in the field of nutrition, just someone who eats, I have nothing more to say about that.
I am eating a whole foods, plant-based diet because I do not want to contribute to the horrors of factory farming. The health thing is not central to my reason for eating the way I do. It’s a bonus.
When I decided to remove animal products from my diet, I met with a nutritionist for a consultation and did lots of reading. My health has changed, but only in a positive way so far. I lost 20 pounds or so and my LDL (read “bad”) cholesterol dropped from “high” to “low” in a year. We all have to do what works best for us emotionally and physically and at this point in time a vegan diet works for me in both those areas.
I realize other people make different choices and I certainly respect that. Lots of people choose to eat local, free-range, grass fed animals. We all do what works for us. I can longer eat animals so that is not an option for me.
I repeat: We are showing Vegucated for people who are interested in this topic. Please join us if you are!
Gabriolan on 22 Feb 2012 at 10:29 pm #
kathleen –
You wrote:
Dieticians have certainly spent time studying these issues. And, as in any area, there are some who hold one view while others have a markedly different opinion. For example, Amy Kubal is a dietician who advocates a paleo diet, which is pretty much the opposite of a vegetarian diet. That professionals can disagree with their colleagues should be no surprise. For an extreme example in the realm of diet, we’ve got people like Dr Dean Ornish advocating a low-fat diet, and people like Dr Andreas Eenfeldt advocating a low-carb high-fat diet.
Accepting the views of one person or one group of people (whether it be an association of physicians, dieticians, or the folks who decide what this year’s version of the government food guide will be) seems a poor second to learning about the research before making dietary decisions, but I understand that many people opt to do just that. Fine by me – I get that people have busy lives and other priorities, and reading about nutrition and physiology is not everybody’s idea of a fun way to spend an evening.
I was a vegetarian for many reasons, too, and had anyone removed just one of those reasons, it would have made no difference to me.
I also understand that your primary interest is not , but you have made claims in this area, so you can expect others to comment on your claims if they are moved to do so.
Like you, I’m horrified by what goes on in factory farming. Cruelty, environmental consequences, and health concerns all bother me when it comes to factory farming. So I’m one of those people who seek out grass-fed beef from farmers who give their animals good and healthy lives. Unlike you, my own health improvements came from switching to a meat-based diet.
Anyway. I hope your diet continues to give you results you like, and wish you the best of health and happy film-watching.
Arlene on 22 Feb 2012 at 10:57 pm #
Hi Gabriolan, Thanks to yourself, and John Hudson as well! I appreciated reading your wise words. I was also, long ago now .. a vegetarian. I also tried a macrobiotic diet for a little while ( less than four weeks ). I agree with and understand, all that you and John have stated / expressed. I feel that vegetarians have to be extra vigilant to ensure they are providing their bodies with all the neccessities , supplements etc.. Vegans I think.. Might be living dangerously.. But each to their own. Vegans always look kind of frail to me… But I have not investigated their general lifespans etc.. I think it is important for babies and small children to have all nutrients required.. Which would sensibly include meats and fish , dairy etc.. ( at the appropriate ages ). I am eating less red meat though.. As I age.. And my portions are smaller too.. Which is a natural progression of things. I am into organic veggies, non GMO , wild caught fish, grass fed/ hormone free meats.. A balanced and sensible diet which respects nature around me.. That is how I live. (But, I make no judgements on what others choose to omit from their diets.. For personal reasons.)
Martin on 23 Feb 2012 at 4:46 am #
A large number of very interesting points have been raised and I will address only a few of them….
There is nothing in a vegetarian versus meat-inclusive diet that makes either option, as such, healthy or unhealthy. That is, it is possible to eat a healthy or an unhealthy diet as either a meat-eater or a vegetarian. Similarly, that vegetarians tend to have lower levels of obesity, type-two diabetes, cholesterol, etc., need not be causally due to being vegetarian, as such, nor does it suggest that eating moderate amounts of meat is intrinsically unhealthy. It is eating unhealthily that leads to poor health, whether the person be an unhealthy vegetarian or an unhealthy meat-eater.
At the same time, however, what we eat affects our health, and there remain good grounds to think that eating meat is connected with certain diseases, including increased risks of many cancers. For instance, in a recent major study (published in the British Journal of Cancer: http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v101/n1/full/6605098a.html) of 61,566 British men and women, vegetarians were found to be just over half as likely to develop cancers of the lymph or the blood as those who eat meat; vegetarians get notably fewer stomach cancers, bladder cancers, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas and multiple myelomas.
It is entirely right, of course, to point out that a correlation is not the same thing as a causal connection. This is why careful research needs to be done to control for the many factors that also influence cancer rates other than what we eat. Fortunately, this has been done and the results indicate a connection, not merely a correlation. In an interview with the BBC Professor Tim Key of Oxford University and lead author on the above mentioned study, points out: “The risk of cancer is moderately but statistically significantly lower in the vegetarians, and that’s after allowing for the differences there are in other things that affect cancer such as smoking and alcohol intake.”
Is this conclusive proof that a vegetarian diet is healthier? No, not necessarily. For one thing, “health” is a complex and more or less vague notion that is not simply reducible to cancer rates. For another, nutritional science is a complex domain and is constantly evolving – everything in science is subject to revision and good scientists are very careful and cautious about their claims. But it is evidence, and pretty good evidence at that, for the claim that a vegetarian diet tends to reduce cancer risk in comparison with a meat-inclusive one. And yes, it is always possible to find anecdotes of research that is either poorly conducted or else supports a different conclusion, especially if the research is funded by a body with a vested interest in people’s food choices.
The bottom line is that people need to think critically and to not swallow everything they hear, but at the same time it would be completely foolish not to take seriously what reputable scientific bodies or reputable scientists conducting large-scale studies are telling us. Those very few of us who have the training and expertise to independently assess the quality of the studies can do so, but the vast majority of us have neither the time nor the training (nor, let’s be honest, the capacity) to assess for ourselves the quality of the original research. We therefore rely on experts in the field and need to trust such organizations, such as the Dieticians of Canada, the American Dietetic Association (now the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics), etc., to have formed their opinions on the basis of sound science. Where experts disagree it is usually best to go with whatever consensus emerges. And it is not quite fair to say that there is no consensus in matters of nutrition. As best I can determine, the consensus is that eating moderate amounts of meat (where moderate is not to be confused with the North American “average”, of course) can be part of a healthy diet, but that there seem to be some health advantages to eliminating meat from one’s diet.
On the matter of “free-range” and related forms of animal husbandry versus factory farming, I’m fairly sure that most vegetarians would commend the move to the former (since it generally involves much less suffering for non-human animals) as a very positive step. Some others, depending on their reasons for being vegetarian, may see it as missing the (or at least “a”) central moral issue – that in any form of animal husbandry other sentient beings with a wish to live are being killed unnecessarily in order to satisfy our gustatory preferences. For comparison, some may point out, it is not how well or badly we treat a slave that makes having slaves immoral, it is simply that we treat them as slaves who are there for us to use as we see fit.
And yes, we certainly need to take into account the broader impact of our diet on life generally, and that can extend well beyond the simple matter of whether or not we are eating the flesh of a dead non-human animal. And though many non-human animals die in the provision of pretty much any food crop, including soy, corn and wheat, nevertheless a meat-laden diet tends to require more land, energy and resources than a vegetarian diet, and thus tends to result in a greater overall impact on life.
Gabriolan on 29 Feb 2012 at 6:56 pm #
Martin wrote:
Yet history shows that scientific bodies and scientists often get things terribly wrong, so there is no substitute for doing one’s own reading and thinking.
The American Dietetic Association position paper is often quoted as saying:
I plugged that entire statement into Google to see what others have said about this. One of the results Google found for me was the following excerpt from a book written by Loren Cordain, who is a professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Colorado State University.
Interesting. (The book then continues with a section entitled Vegetarian Diets and Nutritional Deficiencies, but Google Books won’t let me read that part.)
Still willing to accept that Dieticians Know Best? (And did nutritional experts know best in the past, when they opined that a vegetarian diet was dangerous?) I’m not. And I still encourage people to read the studies for themselves, or at least read what a variety of experts think of those studies.
Martin also states:
Martin, you might find Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlie to be an interesting read on this topic. George Monbiot’s review of the book, published in The Guardian, is here: I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly.
Martin on 05 Mar 2012 at 3:16 am #
(Moderator’s note: older posts on Gabriolan.ca automatically close to comments – more about that here.)
Firstly, let me thank you for re-opening the thread for an additional comment. I apologize for the length, but I think you’ll find it enlightening and worthwhile.
Secondly, let me say that I’m all for people doing their own reading and thinking. But my point was that not everyone has the time, training, expertise, or perhaps even intellectual capacity to become scientific experts on nutrition (or other area, for that matter). It is difficult enough to become an expert in even one area, let alone the multitude of areas that would be required if we were to disregard the claims of reputable scientific organizations. And there is a danger, in my view, in supposing that by reading some books one is more likely to come to the right answer than are reputable scientific organizations such as the ADA.
Thirdly, yes, scientists and scientific organizations are often wrong. But the fact that subsequent investigation often shows their claims to be false (or the fact that dissenters to their views can be found) is surely not reason to disregard what such scientific bodies tell us.
To illustrate the above points we need only consider the quoted passage from Prof. Cordain that you have so kindly provided. Given your insistence that there is no substitute for doing the relevant reading and that you encourage people to actually read the studies, it strikes me as ironic that you appear to have ignored your own recommendations in the case of Prof. Cordain. You appear to offer his views in support of your position, or at least as grounds for skepticism regarding the position of the ADA. But you do so on no other basis – so far as I can tell – than you take him to be a scientific expert on nutrition. Apparently, you take his views more seriously, or at least as seriously, as you do those of the ADA.
And what do we find when we apply your advice – to think for ourselves, read the studies, and examine the claims of the “experts” critically – to the passage from Prof. Cordain? The results are, to put it mildly, very interesting.
Prof. Cordain rejects the ADA statement and provides two quotes from two studies to support his position: one from a 1999 study and one from the EPIC-Oxford study (2009). Here, is a link to the 1999 study: http://www.ajcn.org/content/70/3/516S.full. Quoting from that study, he says:
“There were no significant differences between vegetarians and non-vegetarians in mortality from cerebrovascular disease, stomach cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer or all other causes combined.”
Then he adds: “I have italicized the last words of this sentence to emphasize the fact that vegetarians do not fare any better than their hamburger-eating counterparts when death rates for all causes are considered.”
Notice, firstly, the very subtle slide from “all other causes combined” to “all causes combined”. An innocent slip, you might think. The evidence suggests otherwise. Just take a look at the sentence that lies immediately before the quoted passage from the 1999 study. It reads:
“… in comparison with regular meat eaters, mortality from ischemic heart disease was 20% lower in occasional meat eaters, 34% lower in people who ate fish but not meat, 34% lower in lactoovovegetarians, and 26% lower in vegans.”
In context, then, it becomes clear that “all other causes combined” refers to all causes other than from ischemic heart disease – a disease where mortality rates were shown to be significantly lower for vegetarians. The authors of the study conclude that, “vegetarians had a 24% lower mortality from ischemic heart disease than nonvegetarians, but no associations of a vegetarian diet with other major causes of death were established”. Note also that the study did not establish associations between vegetarian diets and lowered mortality for all other causes combined. But as any good critical thinker knows, there is a big difference between not establishing a link (between vegetarianism and lower mortality rates) and establishing that there is no link (between vegetarianism and lower mortality rates). The study apparently concludes with the former, whereas Prof. Cordain, if I read him correctly, asserts the latter.
Suspicions of deliberate misrepresentation of the science only gather strength once we turn to the quote from the EPIC-Oxford study. In the previous post I gave the link to the cancer incidence analysis from the EPIC-Oxford study, which concluded that vegetarians have, overall, a moderate but statistically significant lower rate of incidence of cancer than meat-eaters. Here, then, is a link to the mortality analysis from which Prof. Cordain quotes: http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2009/03/18/ajcn.2009.26736L.full.pdf
Prof. Cordain quotes from that study as follows: “Within the study mortality from circulatory diseases and all causes is not significantly different between vegetarians and meat eaters.” Looks clear-cut, doesn’t it? However, once we put the quote in context we see that Prof. Cordain completely ignores the crucial qualification given in that very same sentence! Here is the full quote, with my italics added:
“Within the study, mortality from circulatory diseases and all causes is not significantly different between vegetarians and meat eaters, but the study is not large enough to exclude small or moderate differences for specific causes of death, and more research on this topic is required.”
Leaving out such a crucial part of the sentence – one that makes clear that the study does not support the claim that Prof. Cordain makes – surely can only be deliberate. For if the fuller context of these quotes had been included, then the claims Prof. Cordain’s says are supported by the studies would be shown for the clear misrepresentation that they are. Viz.:
“The results of this study and the earlier [1999] meta analysis fly directly in the face of the American Dietetic Association’s suggestion that vegetarian and vegan diets may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.” [My italics].
But that is precisely what has been shown by the studies! To be quite blunt, it looks as though Prof. Cordain has deliberately attempted to misrepresent the conclusions of the studies in his book.
Now you might think that, ironically, the fact that I’ve shown Prof. Cordain to be wrong (and mendacious to boot) by examining the original studies only proves your point – we can’t trust the “experts” and there simply is no alternative to trawling through the scientific journals for ourselves. But why did I bother to take the time to do that in this case? Answer: because it is more reasonable to take the ADA to be a greater authority on the state of nutritional science than Prof. Cordain, or, for that matter, any other single scientist. Hence, it would be rather surprising for him to be right and the ADA wrong. There will almost always be dissenters from any mainstream position, and sometimes they will be right, but reputable scientific organizations are best placed to reflect the broad consensus of scientists in their field. We all need to trust scientists to some extent. Unfortunately, in this case, you seem to have put a little bit too much trust in Prof. Cordain, and not enough in the ADA. So yes, I am still willing to accept that the ADA knows best (at least, better than Prof. Cordain!). In the light of reviewing the cited studies, are you?
Gabriolan on 05 Mar 2012 at 6:32 am #
Martin – I’m not willing to accept that the ADA, or any organization, knows best, or gets stuff right. I’m not willing to accept that Prof. Cordain, or any individual, knows best or gets stuff right. I don’t put trust in Cordain, or the ADA. Or anybody else, really.
I quoted that bit from Cordain’s book (which I have not read, except for the quoted excerpt that Google Books showed me) just to point out that apparently qualified people come to different conclusions after reading the same studies.
If I decide that the conclusions of a certain study are important to me, I’ll go read the study for myself.
Beyond that, I’ll agree to disagree with you regarding the ADA.
sigrid on 05 Mar 2012 at 6:37 pm #
We saw the film Vegucated on Gabriola yesterday and although it was inspiring in many ways, a nutritionist in the audience was duly horrified at some of the food eaten during the vegan challenge. No doubt the film makers hoped the faux meats and cheeses would help their participants transition to a vegan diet but that was not as clearly stated as it might have been.
It seems that the film makers were motivated by the need to expose and reduce farm animal suffering–a worthy goal. In their zeal, however, they did not emphasize the foods that would be healthiest to eat as a life-long vegan. Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who was involved in the challenge as a health consultant, did offer the participants healthy vegan food at his home and he certainly talked about the need for people to eat whole grains, legumes, vegetables, fruit, seeds, and nuts. But, unfortunately, we saw the participants eat soy dogs, faux hamburgers, and faux cheese. They also cheered about the fact that oreo cookies and some kind of icing in a tub, amongst other things, were vegan treats. Cute, but by all means, let’s not copy their eating habits.
Lots of people who eat meat and cheese and plenty of processed foods develop health problems. I’m guessing lots of people who eat faux meats, cheese substitutes and plenty of processed vegan foods do too.
So, by all means adopt a vegan lifestyle in order to reduce the number of animals living and dying in miserable circumstances. But do your homework and find out about healthy vegan food. Nutritionists can offer you a wealth of information about that topic. There are also books about vegan diets available that offer sound nutritional advice and delicious recipes to go along with that advice.