The Vegetarian Myth

Okay one last try. Ill be as neutral as i can.
It is possible to eat healthy as a carnivore.
It is possible to eat healthy as a vegan.
Both have their pros and cons. Both diets require planning if you wish to get all essential building blocks for your body. What can i say, every health guru has his/her preferences what is good for you and what should be avoided. Only you can tell what suits you, so try out different things and then decide.

It is possible that you have not visited this thread
Important threads for Diet and Health
and read some of the threads therein.
I recommend the Life without Bread and the Ketogenic threads.
You should be able to put your science background to work here, if you think knowledge is worth it
The reason people look at the issue differently than you is that they have read those threads, and the rquisite books, and so have a good understanding of what's at steak here.
 
It is possible to eat healthy as a carnivore.

Yes, for most people it is. Eat mostly animal meat and fat.

It is possible to eat healthy as a vegan.

No, for most people it is not. Although it depends what you mean by 'healthy'. If you mean optimal health, then no, for most people. But some people's optimal health isn't very impressive. As you can imagine, it's not black and white. Who do you want these questions answered for? Yourself? If so, then experiment, without prejudice. Your body will tell you what's right.
 
This conversation has been bugging me still... Sorry for my previous rudeness, my intentions were only to contribute my mere 2 cents, but im not that good at presenting my thoughts without them being loaded with emotions...
Lierre keith still seems a bit too wacky and biased to me to just accept everything she says. Im sure you guys notice it too, that shes very good at manipulating the reader by writing in style that is hard to disagree with. but her hatred for vegans is distorting her vision i think. Every example she has of vegan ppl is like she dug out the 10 retarted vegans, and says everyone of the rest is the same. but okay, im sure she has her reasons were they good or bad, i cant tell.

Im a bit saddened that some of you dont seem to listen to what im trying to say, "because im younger than you" . Yeah, age is one factor, and obviously i dont have the experience you have, but... thats quite dangerous attitude to have. How can you learn from others if you are blinded by your own superiority? everyone can learn great things even from 5 year olds, if they can put aside their preassumptions.

Im a bit moody myself and i got a little mad when vegans get attacked with such poor reasonings that many here seem to swallow without chewing! But im working on my unhealthy feelings, and these forum posts have benefitted me at least if i couldnt be of any "help" to anyone else! Guess i shldnt tell others how to advance if i cant even handle myself first! I go with what seems right to me, without always having 100% proven facts to support me, so.. Take my posts as my personal thoughts only, nothing more, nothing less! Ps. Im sure there are many pro-carnivore writers out there with better understanding of things than keith!!!
 
Im sure you guys notice it too, that shes very good at manipulating the reader by writing in style that is hard to disagree with.

What you wrote in this sentence could be seen as manipulative with the bolded lead in.

Sorry for my previous rudeness

Yeah, age is one factor, and obviously i dont have the experience you have, but... thats quite dangerous attitude to have. How can you learn from others if you are blinded by your own superiority?

The quote above could be taken a rude as well in terms of telling people they are “blinded by your [their] own superiority”

But im working on my unhealthy feelings, and these forum posts have benefitted me at least if i couldnt be of any "help" to anyone else! Guess i shldnt tell others how to advance if i cant even handle myself first! I go with what seems right to me, without always having 100% proven facts to support me, so.. Take my posts as my personal thoughts only, nothing more, nothing less!

Do you see what seems to be a contradiction between what you wrote that I bolded and what you wrote in terms of people with more experience being ‘blinded by your [their] own superiority?” and having a "dangerous attitude."

I figure you are trying to be genuine, so I figured I’d point out what I wrote above.
 
but im not that good at presenting my thoughts without them being loaded with emotions...
Im a bit moody myself and i got a little mad when vegans get attacked with such poor reasonings that many here seem to swallow without chewing! But im working on my unhealthy feelings, and these forum posts have benefitted me at least if i couldnt be of any "help" to anyone else! Guess i shldnt tell others how to advance if i cant even handle myself first!

Seems like you're still being run by emotional energy. I can assure you we've all moved on and have concentrated our attention elsewhere. Meanwhile you're still exercised by a discussion initiated by you on a forum that has a consensus on non vegetarianism as being the healthier choice. Members of this forum have gently tried to engage you in your query and give our perspective on why we don't consider a vegetarian diet to be optimal for health. There has been literally years of research and discussion on this topic. You're subjective experience and opinion carry little weight by comparison. Maybe consider looking into topics of psychology and cognitive science for insights into one's emotional nature.

BTW, disagreement does not equal attack.
 
Lahje, I think you are trying very hard to fit the square peg (you and your veganism) into a round hole (this forum). The effort is appreciated but I don't think it's going to work.

There are plenty of former vegans and vegetarians here whose health suffered due to this diet. Myself included. We do respect your choice to follow your vegan diet but I think it's clear from the answers you have received so far that we have no intention of agreeing with you that it's a healthy choice for most people. No matter how much you apologise for being rude, compliment forum members on the quality of their conversational style or try to make nice.

It is data that changes our mind, not opinions and kind words. And it is convincing data that your arguments consistently lack.


Sorry for my previous rudeness, my intentions were only to contribute my mere 2 cents, but im not that good at presenting my thoughts without them being loaded with emotions...


You apologise for your rudeness and admit that your thoughts tend to be loaded with emotions, and in the very next sentence you go on to make another emotional claim about your opinion on Lierre Keith and her take on vegans.

This is a rather poor argument in favour of vegan diets. To me this is evidence that the veganism does impact on the quality of thinking and contributes to cognitive difficulties - as has been mentioned in this thread over and over again. Did you bother to read it?


Im a bit saddened that some of you dont seem to listen to what im trying to say, "because im younger than you" .


It's not because you're younger than us. There are plenty of people younger than you here and they do an outstanding job analysing the data presented here correctly as well as meaningfully contributing to the knowledge base. This may be harsh but it's quite telling that none of them are vegans.


How can you learn from others if you are blinded by your own superiority? everyone can learn great things even from 5 year olds, if they can put aside their preassumptions.


Our superiority comes from data that points towards our take on the vegan diet being more objective and accurate than yours.

And who said we want to learn from you? This forum is a school. New members are welcome to come here to learn, not teach.

You literally just rejected 76 pages of data on the inefficiency and harmfulness of the vegan diet becuase you have an emotional opinion - and you want the entire forum to change direction because of your opinion and despite the data?

This is not your forum to come here and preach. But maybe you could set up your own forum and see if there is some audience who would be interested in your emotionally charged opinions?


I go with what seems right to me, without always having 100% proven facts to support me, so..


Which is the exact opposite of what this forum is about.

We are after discovering as objective picture of reality as possible, not after honouring subjective opinions of one member.


Take my posts as my personal thoughts only, nothing more, nothing less! Ps. Im sure there are many pro-carnivore writers out there with better understanding of things than keith!!!


Oh certainly, there are 76 pro-carnivore pages in this thread packed with data.

It would help if you could read through it all with an open mind, rather than reading to selectively pick data that already supports your emotional opinions, or look for reasons to reject the data provided. Which is exactly what you did with Lierre Keith's book.
 
Lierre keith still seems a bit too wacky and biased to me to just accept everything she says. Im sure you guys notice it too, that shes very good at manipulating the reader by writing in style that is hard to disagree with. but her hatred for vegans is distorting her vision i think. Every example she has of vegan ppl is like she dug out the 10 retarted vegans, and says everyone of the rest is the same. but okay, im sure she has her reasons were they good or bad, i cant tell.

Please include the excerpts from her book where you feel the above issues are occurring, so we can properly understand your argument and see how you're interpreting her writing. Without exact quotes, it's difficult to comment on what you're saying.

Also, no I did not notice that Kieth was manipulating, wacky and biased in her writing. I thought it was an excellent distillation of the problems with vegetarianism. If you're having trouble finding specific arguments against what she's saying, maybe it's because of that and not because you are being manipulated by her.
 
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the following may lead to misinterpretation without a few remarks:

Our superiority comes from data that points towards our take on the vegan diet being more objective and accurate than yours.

We are never closed to learning new things, though, IF new reliable data comes along.

Also, it's not about "superiority". That's just the word that lahje used, and which Mike rightly picked up on. It is unnecessarily charged, but a pretty common deflection when one sees comments as being an attack on oneself, instead of just about data.

And who said we want to learn from you? This forum is a school. New members are welcome to come here to learn, not teach.

Well, we DO teach and learn from each other, regardless of where one is. But it's a dangerous thing to just want to come over and "preach", because what you may actually end up teaching others is what they should NOT do if all one does is express emotionally charged opinions about L. Keith, without data or quotes to support one's claims.

That said, I appreciate what seems to be lahje's attempt at being more sincere (?). It's difficult in the beginning, and one may come off as manipulative, because part of the ego is screaming and doesn't want to let go of beliefs one identifies with.

There is nothing wrong with having come to the wrong place, lahje, and you don't need to defend yourself or anything. If you are not sure and want to do as suggested, and familiarize yourself better with the forum, you are welcome to. (After all, this is not a diet forum only. The psychological aspect, for example, shows us how little we know ourselves, and how we can be influenced by trends, emotions, the food we eat, etc.) But to keep talking about L. Keith's book or the vegetarian diet before doing so, is most likely going to be met with the same kind of replies you received before.

My 2 cents.
 
That said, I appreciate what seems to be lahje's attempt at being more sincere (?). It's difficult in the beginning, and one may come off as manipulative, because part of the ego is screaming and doesn't want to let go of beliefs one identifies with.

That is a very good an interesting point. It's a really big freedom to get to where you don't define yourself through your identifications because knowledge and understanding are continually evolving. I find it pretty easy to move on from something that might have been quite valuable to me after new and better information becomes available. Case in point; Gurdjieff. Once G was seen in a more objective light, I really had no problem repositioning what G taught in light of new information. I did not 'throw the baby out with the bath water.' There are many very insightful and useful things G taught. But neither was I so identified with G that I became stuck, refusing to accept the implications of what was in front of me because I was attached to a certain idea of G.

But I agree, there was an effort to be sincere on lahje's part. (I believe) And that takes courage. Hopefully lahje will not become discouraged.
 
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the following may lead to misinterpretation without a few remarks:


Thank you for pointing that out Chu, I agree that some parts of my response were a bit over the top and incorrect. In fact, I did had a couple of second thoughts about the sections you picked up on. lahje commented on the quality of conversational style on the forum and I do admit that my own manner of expressing my thoughts didn't live up to that standard.

It was the below aspects of the forum rules that I had in mind when writing my reply and referring to data vs. emotionally charged opinions:

Terms and rules


Methodology:
* Facilitation of the creation and the sharing of objective knowledge by providing the framework / resources / moderation and "elder brother guidance." As Gurdjieff has said:

On the fourth way there is not one teacher. Whoever is the elder, he is the teacher. And as the teacher is indispensable to the pupil, so also is the pupil indispensable to the teacher. The pupil cannot go on without the teacher, and the teacher cannot go on without the pupil or pupils. And this is not a general consideration but an indispensable and quite concrete rule on which is based the law of a man's ascending. As has been said before, no one can ascend onto a higher step until he places another man in his own place. What a man has received he must immediately give back; only then can he receive more. Otherwise from him will be taken even what he has already been given.​
* Capitalisation, sharing, analysis of information on key topics

* Scientific approach. Collection of direct and indirect data (videos, articles, books extracts,...) , sources validation, elaboration and challenge of hypothesis and theories consistent with validated datas.

* Maximization of the signal to noise ratio


While at the same time I myself failed to observe many of those:


Values of this forum:
  • objectivity
  • respect
  • sharing
  • relevance
  • empathy
  • constructiveness
  • temperance
 
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translated with DeepL:
Tierisch, proteinreich, kariesarm: So ernährten sich die Brandenburger Slawen

Animal, rich in protein, low in caries This is how the Brandenburg Slavs fed themselves
header-slawen.jpg


pic-2-slawen.jpg


The jaw of a woman in her mid 40s from the Slavic Middle Ages (right) [first image] is completely free of caries. However, the teeth are strongly chewed. Caries with fistula formation (hole in the jaw) shows the teeth of a 40 to 44 year old woman from the early modern period (above) [second image]. Below massive tartar, which is caused by inorganic plaque deposits.



Eat naturally - live healthily. Great thing. But faith struggles rage for the right, possibly only true way. A look into the past will probably help - into those early times, when humans still lived as biological beings - in nature, from nature, with unadulterated food, produced regionally, fresh and of course free of industrial ingredients.

The idealization of the diet of the ancestors gave rise to the palaeodiät. It recommends Stone Age human food: meat, fish, eggs, nuts, fruit. Nothing cultivated, because Stone Age means before the invention of agriculture.

In fact, hunters and gatherers from the epoch before the Neolithic Revolution, which began about 12,000 years ago and turned life upside down, were better off. It seems paradoxical that food supply also became more delicate with sedentary life. In fact, farmers and ranchers had become more dependent on the weather. As long as this "normal" behaviour lasted, things went well and the population grew. But even a small deviation led directly to hunger.

A low meat diet

This is supported by the falling life expectancy: While the Stone Age people lived to be 30 years old on average, the sedentary ones managed to live to 20. They had more children, but they probably died very early. In addition to hunger, it was mainly infectious diseases that caused people to get hungry. The average body size also shrank.

But didn't the early farming communities eat "healthy wholemeal food"? Is their low meat diet supposed to have been detrimental? Indeed, they ate wholemeal, but was that healthy? The teeth, a durable and therefore for archaeologists enormously informative part of human skeleton finds, say otherwise.

The Berlin anthropologist Bettina Jungklaus does not deal with the Stone Age; her research focuses on the ancient Brandenburgers. The transition from protein- and carbohydrate-dominated food also plays an important role in her studies. Using skeletons, she investigated how people in the region where Berlin was founded 800 years ago fed themselves and what effects this had on their health. Bettina Jungklaus knows the early Templinians, Bernauer and Spandauer. From her teeth she can read whether the people were poor or rich, whether and in which phase of life they were starving. The place where the skeletons were found also tells us whether they lived in a rural or urban environment.

Fishing was the most popular source of food

The investigations began in the High Middle Ages (10th to 12th centuries) - for a reason that can be found in the cultural change brought about by Christianisation. Until around the year 1000 the Slavs burned their dead, under Christian influence they went over to earth burial. Therefore, skeletons and teeth, which are to be examined anthropologically, only exist from this time on.

In the late 7th century, the Slavs immigrated to today's Brandenburg region. The Jewish merchant Ibrahim ibn Ja'qub gives a small insight into the conditions at that time. In 973 he reports from a trip to the region that there is cheap grain and large horse wealth there. Bettina Jungklaus points out that rich grain harvests were rather rare. The crop yield was between two and 15 grains per seed. Thus the yields were "only sufficient for more than mere survival under favourable conditions". The technology was on a low level: oxen pulled hook ploughs that only scratched the soil. Other sources tell us that agriculture was not the preferred source of food for the Slavs anyway, but fishing.

Christianisation, which progressed with the conquest of the Mark Brandenburg by Albrecht the Bear (after 1150), changed the death rituals, but the German lords granted the Slavs over the centuries again and again their fishing privileges.

Stockpiling in the cities

For her nutrition studies Bettina Jungklaus used 112 teeth with 2303 teeth from Havelland with an agricultural lifestyle as well as from the early urban populations of Spandaus and Wusterhausen. One result says that "the caries burden of Slavic populations was surprisingly low, which is possibly connected with a high consumption of protein-containing foods such as meat, fish and dairy products". Caries does occur - in Havelland such damage was found on 44 percent of the teeth; 3.9 percent of all teeth were affected. In early urban Spandau, which probably had a "better" supply situation, 63.6 percent of individuals and 7.9 percent of their teeth were affected.

The bigger tooth problem was the degree of wear. All teeth were ground down, partly only stumps were left. A consequence of hard chewing work: hard food, a high proportion of hard fibres and many abrasive particles. In fact, millet, which had to be chewed with great difficulty, played a major role, but above all the processing of flour. On the one hand, hard husks were left behind, and on the other, stone particles got into the food between millstones during grinding. Probably the food was also burdened by the stove ash. Thus the millet porridge turned into an emery mass. The large photo above shows the teeth of a woman in her mid 40s without a trace of tooth decay, but with a strong tooth abrasion.

In the middle of the 12th century, German-speaking settlers moved in. They came mainly from the Rhineland and Flanders, founded villages and towns, brought new ways of life with them, expanded the arable land and thus the cultivation of grain. Now horses pulled more efficient, soil turning ploughs. Production increased and more people could be fed. The flour was ground more carefully, meat consumption decreased, and carbohydrates increased. In the cities, stockpiling was introduced.

In the countryside, people simply lived

For this time of the late Middle Ages (12th to 15th/16th century) Bettina Jungklaus had 584 teeth with 11,000 teeth at her disposal. They show increasing caries stress and allow a stronger social differentiation. Two examples shed light on the differences: those buried in the cemetery of the Templin Hospital belonged to the poor, the sick and the frail; 78 percent of their teeth were carious, 18.8 percent of their teeth showed such damage on average. The funerals at the Dominican monastery Strausberg were quite different - many of them were aristocrats, at least those close to the upper class. Of these, only 42.7 percent suffered from tooth decay, four percent of the teeth were affected. They lived more strongly from protein-containing, high-quality foods such as meat, fish and eggs. So did the wealthy of the city of Bernau, for whom, for example, less tooth abrasion was observed. That speaks for refined food, for example better entspelztes bread - the man bread from wheat, the people bread from coarse rye. On the other hand, the rich Bernauer, who probably also nibbled on sweet delicacies such as imported raisins, suffered much more frequently from caries.

In the countryside people lived quite simply, often from cereal porridge, at least poor in vegetables. In the long winters the mass disease scurvy caused by vitamin C deficiency developed. Up to half of the children showed the most severe deficiency symptoms.

The situation became really precarious in the early modern period (16th to 18th/19th century). In particular, the so-called Little Ice Age with poor harvests and the Thirty Years' War worsened the nutritional situation. The population shrank. Meat consumption declined, rising food prices plunged the poor into famine. The potato did not enter Prussian life as a poor food until 1738. The lower classes were forced to eat vegetarian, very one-sided food.

The less sugar, the better

Caries infestation was finally driven to almost one hundred percent by two modern inventions: industrial sugar production from beet in the 19th century and roller mills, which eliminated germs and bran and produced white flour that was low in vitamins and nutrients.

Dental hygiene was hardly known to our ancestors; there is evidence that people chewed on birch sticks and cleaned interdental spaces with shavings. The first bone cleaning sets were made around 1500, the first toothbrushes since 1728. These were not mass goods. And the Stone Age chewing gums made of birch pitch were used more to anaesthetise painful teeth than to care for them.

The question as to whether a vegetarian or meat-rich diet was better today plays a subordinate role in the condition of the teeth. It applies: The less sugar, the better. But above all: cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
 
I'm speaking with a vegan and he claimed:

"It's about refusing to contribute to unnecessary suffering, which is very possible.

However, how much occurs in the process of what you seem to think is involved in creating the bulk of the food vegans eat is completely different. For the same reasons most of us are vegan, are the same reasons we eat primarily local, primarily organic (ideally home grown and sprouted), and crop rotation, water harvesting, companion planting, and permaculture exists. All of these greatly reduce the amount of suffering involved in making healthy food which most vegans eat. Why would we contribute to the massive horrible companies that are tied to Big Ag?

Furthermore, I believe it is over 60% of the mono-crops created (which did involved clear cutting( is used strictly for.. you guessed it, to feed livestock. Not fit for human consumption. Lower the demand for meat, increase the amount of space where crop rotation and biodiversity can occur. Especially if you use water-harvesting and permaculture, and lasagna gardening growing techniques."

Is there anything to this?
 
Don't worry he later gave the suggestion that some vegans can get their B12 from consuming cow dung. .... I've heard someone suggest eating dirt before, but never poop.

Also isn't that technically an animal product?
 
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