"The chubby anti-CICO crowd hate it when I point out this simple truth, but hey, they’re fat and I’m not."
LOL!
Knowing the details of this study from your write up, as far as the dietary guidelines, low compliance, difficulty of tracking actual practices by participants, etc., I'm surprised the study was published at all. "We divided a bunch of people into two groups, most of them didn't do what we said, and we have no way of verifying whether the others did or not, many people dropped out: Here are our conclusions!" I guess once they have the funding, they have to put something out, regardless of its worth.
sadly, the low compliance and high dropout rate renders the study a dud for comparing 2 year effect of vegan vs omnivore diet. I feel for the researchers though - we need more long-term trials of vegan eating that are not conducted by biased ideologues (Ornish, Barnard, Kahleova, etc), so this would have been a useful addition to the research.
It's a tough gig keeping research subjects motivated and compliant at the best of times, everyone is gung ho at first then old habits quickly kick back in. In this case, the researchers also had their trial interrupted by the massively disruptive scam known as 'COVID', so the regular in-person classes they had scheduled to assist with compliance went out the window.
I just went to clinicaltrials.gov, selected "intervention" studies and "vegan diet" as the intervention, and returned 122 studies. two of those had results posted, one was a 4-week study showing kids lost more weight on a vegan diet but had a greater reduction in waist circumference on mixed diet over 4 weeks. The other was a cooking study that did not examine actual health outcomes.
The remaining 120 are a mix of completed, active, still recruiting. I don't have time to go through them all, but most seem to be short-term endeavors where the intervention is measured in weeks, not years.
I hope we get more long-term trials, as I've mentioned to other readers it would be nice to have long-term data that doesn't come from the usual biased suspects (Ornish, Barnard, Kahleova et al).
Looking for non-gmo mayo led me to Colpo's debunking of Game Changers. The Net and rabbit holes were made for each other. In the past three weeks of increased activity, after being vegan two years now, I went for a mile walk after 30 minutes of light cardio earlier that morning. Ate a handful of potatoes, beans, popcorn and fell asleep. Awoke feel Terrible. Terrible! Even an egg and a biscuit didn't help. Took 2 days to start feeling better but noticing diminishing energy almost monthly and a grumpy back that has never been that way before. The next week, I repeated the now-experiment, struggling up the mile's slight incline, feeling like I was jogging underwater. This time, I got a burger and a couple tacos, ate them all and slept...and awoke feeling like Superwoman for the next week. No aches or pains. Now, I was always very athletic and slender and they used to bar the door at Nautilus and turn me away at 19, because I would try to go workout every day. I routinely walk 3 miles, at minimum, 3-4 days a week, like it is nothing...inclined included. I got a bit misty reading Colpo's review because now I can stop beating myself up for not looking like Nimai, despite eating what he eats (except soy; that is bad news all the way 'round and I won't consume it). Why can't I walk a mile - a Mile - but Dotsie Bausch can bring home Olympic Gold?! The Game Changerd movie is slick. When I first went vegan, I felt great. We all did...at first. My last convo with a vegan was when he was buying huge steaks at Whole Foods. That was when I started to suspect something being amok. I have a fast metabolism and am not a big eater, so the vegan thing has been a challenge. I keep looking at these athletes going, "Why is my back hurting from making a simple/easy batch of bean burgers?" I eat a vegan meal and my energy tanks out again in 2-3 hours! Steroids never occurred to me with Nimai, but you can cast a hard eye over that body being built on effing sweet potatoes with that bit of info...and Stallone and Ahnold definitely did them. I feel duped and angry because I have been blaming myself for my dwindling energy - and the more active I became, the worse I felt. I have always been fit and active. That burger & tacos meal confirmed my suspicions. I love eating vegan and how clean and light it makes me feel; my bean burgers are Awesome and I have always loved veg and eaten healthy...but I just...I can't...I can't "only." Not anymore. Now, I can clearly declare, my body needs meats...for whatever its reasons, it does, and I need to honor that with organics and regular inclusion. I haven't desired meat until I increased activity; this time, my body placed the order and I let it. Lately, I have had fleeting cravings for beef stew, bolognese, specifically red meat...not chicken, that I frequently tended to eat...but beef. That and a craving for fries only happens in my body when it feels I am starving it and it is in a state of depletion, so those were recognized alarm bells that began to make me suspect that veganism wasn't exactly all it was packaged to be for everyone. I read an article today, before stumbling on Colpo, by a woman who was vegan for three years and had bloodwork done. Extremely low in iron, A, D, zinc. She said she took supplements but knew that wouldn't "fix" it...and I take them, too, and it hasn't. She began re-incorporating meat into her regimen, while staying largely plant-based, and said she feels terrific and is now in perfect health. I felt immense relief reading that, and knew it was what I needed to do. It was an emotional discovery because you don't realize how strongly you have been over-riding your own internal knowing to follow or believe some bag of nonsense. There's a word for this - it's called gaslighting...and we are taught by the world to do it to ourselves, too. I will enjoy my big salad tonight but I am also going to bake the heck out of a rad homemade pepperoni pizza on a homemade focaccia crust...and some anise biscotti...and not feel a speck of guilt or regret. I also owe myself some burgers and tacos of the non-veg variety. I have *really* missed beef in dishes I cook like chili, minestrone, stew, Bolognese and it is such a relief to know I can make these as normal foods again. Didn't realize how much I was suppressing that need. A million thank you's 🙌💝💯💯💯 to those who have shared the truths and their own journey thru these quagmires, that some may be liberated from the layers of nonsense far too abundant here. Vegan may be right for some, but it isn't the sole/soul solution for me. Likely, that is true for some others, as well. We need to learn to be quiet (STFU) more and listen to that "still, small voice" within that knows far more than we do...and be very thankful for it...and the anti-bs warriors, and those kind enough to share what uplifts, enriches, encourages in what is becoming a world lacking in so many areas. Each needs to find the right balance for *them,* but is probably isn't veganism.
Honestly, I feel immensely relieved at every level to be stopping the vegan thing. Some people do "vegan til 6:pm" then have a normal dinner. PBWF, organics and non-gmo is restrictive enough! Since I stopped doing only vegan, I have eaten and eaten...burgers, tacos, chops, pizza...and within 3 days, I have felt stronger, clearer, far less achy and more sound all around. Even cooking meat last night was soothing, as my body looked forward to having it. I took a bite of a chop with coffee and couldn't stop eating it! The vegan depletion syndrome had me in no-judgment mode and my body needed that protein, or collagen, or whatever meat has that we need. I read where someone said, "We are adapted to eating meat." That is the moment I realized that truth and stopped doing vegan. People should be warned, seriously. Whatever it is about meat, our bodies need it, and that is just the no-judgment fact. I don't like it, neither do many, as we will hold to our lighter lifestyle (PBWF) but add meat in, too. We can also do it from a space of reverence, gratefulness, thankfulness, blessing. In the bible, they were getting manna from heaven, but tired of it complaining. What did the Lord give them? Meat. We don't have all the answers and it is uncomfortable not being able to understand it (all), but we Can come at it with the power we *do* have - gratefulness, reverence, thankfulness.
Ha, Colpo. We go back a long way. It is good to see you have not lost your rhetorical style. I try to rein it in myself because of the limitations: it is ad hominem, and, most of all, you may miss the real science. I’m undoubtedly not as thin as you are but on “chubby anti-CICO crowd,” it might be worth considering why people with a weight problem might want to look carefully at the question of efficiency of diets. I recommend:
1. A calorie is what?
Calories-in calories-out, diets, thermodynamics and all that - 1
don't take this the wrong way, but your method of argument is what people must resort to when attempting to defend the indefensible.
Elaborate discussions of the laws of thermodynamics and diesel engines are all well and good, but they completely ignore the reality that tightly controlled metabolic ward studies repeatedly FAIL to show any weight loss "metabolic advantage" for low-carb/keto diets.
When I talk about weight loss, I refer to fat loss, not the greater glycogen and water losses often seen on LC/keto diets.
Researchers measure the energy content of food in terms of calories. As you know, a "calorie" is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree Celsius.
Researchers have determined different macronutrients to provide different amounts of calories (energy) and can calculate how many calories provided by a given amount of a given food.
LC proponents had no problem with any of this when they believed they could cite studies or anecdotal tales showing LC diets to cause more weight loss at a given calorie intake. In fact, they went way beyond this, making ridiculous claims that one could lose weight on a LC diet of over 4,000 calories per day, yet not lose or even gain weight on a high-carb diet of under 1,000 calories (the adiposely-challenged Atkins and your friend Eades both made such claims in writing).
This was complete and utter BS, and when I came along and explained the glaring problems with free-living studies, and pointed to the dozens of metabolic ward studies showing no metabolic advantage, the low carb cult (and it DID behave like a cult) went nuts.
I was called a liar, and accused of having either too much natural testosterone or taking anabolic drugs by fat people who couldn't spell enanthate if their life depended on it. I was spammed, trolled, defamed.
The great irony of all this is that when I first highlighted the fallacy of the "metabolic advantage" lie, I was following a low-carb diet, and my comments were contained in a 2005 article DEFENDING low-carb diets!
That's what a sheer bunch of idiot cultists the low-carbers were. Idiotic is as idiotic does.
So when they thought they could use the calorie argument in support of their pet diet, low-carbers had no problem with it. When I came along and pointed out several decades of ward studies showed the metabolic advantage to be a fairy tale, all of a sudden you were all tripping over yourselves to discredit and diminish the calorie paradigm.
The real cracker being that you all still insisted low-carb diets offered a caloric metabolic advantage!! LMAO.
You're still doing it yourself, when you open the first of your hyperlinked articles with the line:
"The original promise of low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets was that more weight is lost calorie-for-calorie than with other other weight reduction methods."
You then bang on about the "The Carbohydrate-Insulin-Model (CIM)", which I have repeatedly dismantled.
No matter what effect diet has on insulin, you still need to explain why isocaloric diets of varying carbohydrate content show similar weight losses.
I'll ask you what I've asked the LC cultists countless times, without success, only circular argumentation and vitriol in return:
Do you, or do you not, have ward data showing isocaloric low-carb diets to cause greater fat-derived weight loss in human subjects?
If you don't like the calorie theory, then please present your own scientifically validated method for measuring the energy content of food, and the ward data using this method that shows greater fat-derived weight loss on a low-carb diet that provided the same amount of energy as the higher-carb comparator diet.
I'm not interested in diesel engines, I'm happy with the turbo unleaded unit I already drive.
I'm not interested in theoretical excursions that ignore the reality observed in real live humans, I'm not interested in untenable Sam Feltman 15-minutes-of-fame stunts, and I'm not interested in data mixed and matched from different studies on different continents using totally different populations as your buddy Eades infamously did years ago, kicking off a multi-decade animosity when I soundly lambasted him.
I'm not interested in a small, cherry-picked selection of studies that just happen to support the results you are after, as you presented in that paper you co-authored with Fine years back.
The point I have been hammering home for two decades now is that LC/keto diets offer no "metabolic advantage."
To the contrary, they seem to exacerbate lean mass losses. Not exactly what I call an advantage.
If you still dispute this, then PLEASE, provide the metabolic ward research involving real live humans randomized or subjected to both diets in crossover fashion, showing a LC/keto diet of identical energy provision to cause greater fat-derived weight loss.
BTW, out of curiosity, why did you publicly claim you emailed me to 'educate' me on your anti-calorie theories, and that my lack of response suggested I had undergone "spontaneous combustion"? Firstly, I never received any such email, save for one in which you presented no data but boasted of having 20 years' experience in the field, which to be honest, came off as rather smug and condescending and was duly ignored. Secondly, I think you know full well that if I had received such an email containing any kind of data portending to dispute my contentions, it would have received a spirited response.
Prior to publishing the first edition of The Fat Loss Bible, I emailed your colleague Eugene Fine to confirm his credentials. I never received a response. Did he undergo "spontaneous combustion"? Or did he just not want to engage with someone who held opposing views?
So please keep your response to the facts, and within the relevant parameters.
And the real problem: "Researchers measure the energy content of food in terms of calories. As you know, a "calorie" is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree Celsius."
That's the fallacy. The energy is not in the food. It is in the reaction. As above, Atwater understood that. The physical definition of a calorie is not what we are taking about. The calorie as used in nutrition as the heat generated in the calorimeter under specified conditions. Do anything else, store carbohydrate as glycogen or run substrate cycles, maintain membrane potentials (and other stuff not measured in metabolic ward), etc. and all bets are off.
First, I don't recognize "... publicly claim you emailed me to 'educate' me on your anti-calorie theories ... it would have received a spirited response." If I really wrote it it must have been many years ago "in my salad days when I was green in judgement." Apologies on that.
On the question at hand, what I am explaining, interestingly going back to Atwater, is that calories in cannot be measured because all we can measure is grams in. We don't know exactly how they are processed. Atwater made a lot of measurements, as I recall some along the lines of a metabolic ward study, and he came up with values for macronutrients. They were not precisely the same -- they did not necessarily exactly correlate with structure. As you know, calories/gram is slightly different for fructose and glucose, for example. To make things easier, he took averages and those are the numbers we use in usual diet analysis. They work remarkably well. Most of us recognize how constant our weight is despite obvious changes in macronutrients, day to day. Until it's not. And given the fact, again, that we don't know how to measure calories in, it is impressive how often the (Atwood) calorie = calorie out. It is how often "CI"=CO is true. That's what needs to be explained because it would sensibly violate the second law (or the precise version of the first law). Thermodynamics predicts variable efficiency. It is the biological effect (extensive feedback systems) that leads to homeostasis. That was my point. I don't invoke CIM as relevant. It is about mechanism (rates), not thermodynamics. It is, also, in my view not a model. It is a biological fact, insulin is adipogenic. And your rhetorical style has lost none of its charm.
Which doesn't address my point, the same point I've been hammering for almost 20 years, which you LC advocates so vociferously object to, yet can't provide a skerrick of valid evidence to refute.
My point is isocaloric diets of different macronutrient composition produce similar fat-derived weight loss. This has been shown time and time again in ward studies.
There is no such thing as a "metabolic advantage." After almost 20 years of calling me names, NONE of the LC ideologues have been able to provide anything resembling tightly controlled data from real live human beings to show otherwise.
Your friend Eades was even reduced to wanking on about 'insensible water loss' in what was supposed to be his grand debunking of my debunking of his, yours, and the rest of the LC world's nonsense.
That's pretty desperate lol
Yes, Atwater determined his caloric values in a calorimeter. You do realize of all three major macronutrients, fat is the least thermogenic in real live human beings?
Protein, which can be high on a HC or LC diet, is the most thermogenic. Next comes carbohydrate, which by necessity must be low on a low carbohydrate diet because ... it's a low carbohydrate diet.
Least thermogenic is fat, the dietary ballast of choice used to replace carbohydrate on a LC diet.
The differences, however, are so small as to have little to no impact on weight loss results.
Strike 1.
"It is a biological fact, insulin is adipogenic."
Such a comment is a lucid embodiment of the old maxim, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
I've explained this all before, but low-carbers, like their vegan counterparts, only hear what they want to hear.
So here we go again:
Yes, in experimental laboratory studies, intravenous infusion of insulin or exposure of fat and muscle cells to insulin in a petri dish can produce immediate-term reductions in lipolysis and increases in lipogenesis.
But as someone who objects that Atwater used a calorimeter to obtain his values, it behooves you to acknowledge that what happens in a petri dish doesn't automaticallly correlate to what happens in the human body.
The obvious, well-established but terribly inconvenient fact that you LCers willfully ignore is that, while insulin can 'convert' dietary carbohydrate to fat, dietary fat doesn't require this convoluted process because ... it already is fat!
lol
Even short-term dietary experiments fail to support the results seen in the laboratory studies; when volunteers are fed high- and low-carbohydrate diets of equal caloric content, the subsequent differences in lipogenesis are so small as to be meaningless in terms of fat gain.
See:
Acheson KJ, et al. Nutritional influences on lipogenesis and thermogenesis after a carbohydrate meal. American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism, Jan 1, 1984; 246: E62-E70.
Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999; 53 (Suppl 1): S53-S65.
Rather than converting the extra carbohydrate to fat and stockpiling it in adipose cells, the body responds to increases in carbohydrate intake by simply increasing the amount of carbohydrate used as fuel.
Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999; 53 (Suppl 1): S53-S65.
In well-known findings that you LCers blissfully ignore, researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia found that 240-calorie servings of cheese, beef and fish elicited greater insulin release than isocaloric servings of pasta and porridge.
Holt SHA, et al. An insulin index of foods: the insulin demand generated by 1000-kJ portions of common foods. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Nov, 1997; 66: 5: 1264-1276.
So if we were to adhere to your own claims, that would mean cheese, beef and fish are more 'adipogenic' than pasta and porridge.
Strike 2.
If insulin was the overriding determinant of fat gain and loss, we would logically expect to see consistent and stark differences in fat loss outcomes among dieters with normal and disordered insulin metabolism. But we don't. To the contrary, differences in insulin resistance and blood sugar control are not a reliable predictor of weight loss in response to calorie restricted diets in obese women.
McLaughlin T, et al. Differences in insulin resistance do not predict weight loss in response to hypocaloric diets in healthy obese women. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 1999; 84 (2): 578-581.
de Luis DA, et al. Differences in glycaemic status do not predict weight loss in response to hypocaloric diets in obese patients. Clinical Nutrition, Feb 2006; 25 (1): 117-122.
Strike 3, but I'll keep going.
Then there are the mixed studies with insulin-lowering drugs. If insulin was the true determinant of fat loss/gain, then these drugs should consistently lead to greater fat loss. But they don't. In a Danish study, investigators placed overweight and obese subjects on a calorie-restricted diet and randomly assigned them to take the insulin-lowering drug diazoxide or a placebo for eight weeks. While diazoxide did indeed lower insulin levels, no differences in weight loss, fat loss, resting energy expenditure or appetite were observed between the two groups.
Due A, et al. No effect of inhibition of insulin secretion by diazoxide on weight loss in hyperinsulinaemic obese subjects during an 8-week weight-loss diet. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, Jul 2007; 9 (4): 566-574.
Sorry, but the insulin hypothesis of adipogenesis is nonsense.
"And your rhetorical style has lost none of its charm."
My "rhetorical style" is not to rely on rhetoric but facts. I know this infuriates low--carb and vegan ideologues who prefer rhetoric, personal feelings, anecdote and absurd claims, but too bad - I make zero apologies for pointing out the cold facts.
Being told what you want to hear might soothe your cognitive dissonance, but can - and often does - lead to adverse body composition and health outcomes in the longer term.
Looking for non-gmo mayo led me to Colpo's debunking of Game Changers. The Net and rabbit holes were made for each other. In the past three weeks of increased activity, after being vegan two years now, I went for a mile walk after 30 minutes of light cardio earlier that morning. Ate a handful of potatoes, beans, popcorn and fell asleep. Awoke feel Terrible. Terrible! Even an egg and a biscuit didn't help. Took 2 days to start feeling better but noticing diminishing energy almost monthly and a grumpy back that has never been that way before. The next week, I repeated the now-experiment, struggling up the mile's slight incline, feeling like I was jogging underwater. This time, I got a burger and a couple tacos, ate them all and slept...and awoke feeling like Superwoman for the next week. No aches or pains. Now, I was always very athletic and slender and they used to bar the door at Nautilus and turn me away at 19, because I would try to go workout every day. I routinely walk 3 miles, at minimum, 3-4 days a week, like it is nothing...inclined included. I got a bit misty reading Colpo's review because now I can stop beating myself up for not looking like Nimai, despite eating what he eats (except soy; that is bad news all the way 'round and I won't consume it). Why can't I walk a mile - a Mile - but Dotsie Bausch can bring home Olympic Gold?! The Game Changerd movie is slick. When I first went vegan, I felt great. We all did...at first. My last convo with a vegan was when he was buying huge steaks at Whole Foods. That was when I started to suspect something being amok. I have a fast metabolism and am not a big eater, so the vegan thing has been a challenge. I keep looking at these athletes going, "Why is my back hurting from making a simple/easy batch of bean burgers?" I eat a vegan meal and my energy tanks out again in 2-3 hours! Steroids never occurred to me with Nimai, but you can cast a hard eye over that body being built on effing sweet potatoes with that bit of info...and Stallone and Ahnold definitely did them. I feel duped and angry because I have been blaming myself for my dwindling energy - and the more active I became, the worse I felt. I have always been fit and active. That burger & tacos meal confirmed my suspicions. I love eating vegan and how clean and light it makes me feel; my bean burgers are Awesome and I have always loved veg and eaten healthy...but I just...I can't...I can't "only." Not anymore. Now, I can clearly declare, my body needs meats...for whatever its reasons, it does, and I need to honor that with organics and regular inclusion. I haven't desired meat until I increased activity; this time, my body placed the order and I let it. Lately, I have had fleeting cravings for beef stew, bolognese, specifically red meat...not chicken, that I frequently tended to eat...but beef. That and a craving for fries only happens in my body when it feels I am starving it and it is in a state of depletion, so those were recognized alarm bells that began to make me suspect that veganism wasn't exactly all it was packaged to be for everyone. I read an article today, before stumbling on Colpo, by a woman who was vegan for three years and had bloodwork done. Extremely low in iron, A, D, zinc. She said she took supplements but knew that wouldn't "fix" it...and I take them, too, and it hasn't. She began re-incorporating meat into her regimen, while staying largely plant-based, and said she feels terrific and is now in perfect health. I felt immense relief reading that, and knew it was what I needed to do. It was an emotional discovery because you don't realize how strongly you have been over-riding your own internal knowing to follow or believe some bag of nonsense. There's a word for this - it's called gaslighting...and we are taught by the world to do it to ourselves, too. I will enjoy my big salad tonight but I am also going to bake the heck out of a rad homemade pepperoni pizza on a homemade focaccia crust...and some anise biscotti...and not feel a speck of guilt or regret. I also owe myself some burgers and tacos of the non-veg variety. I have *really* missed beef in dishes I cook like chili, minestrone, stew, Bolognese and it is such a relief to know I can make these as normal foods again. Didn't realize how much I was suppressing that need. A million thank you's 🙌💝💯💯💯 to those who have shared the truths and their own journey thru these quagmires, that some may be liberated from the layers of nonsense far too abundant here. Vegan may be right for some, but it isn't the sole/soul solution for me. Likely, that is true for some others, as well. We need to learn to be quiet (STFU) more and listen to that "still, small voice" within that knows far more than we do...and be very thankful for it...and the anti-bs warriors, and those kind enough to share what uplifts, enriches, encourages in what is becoming a world lacking in so many areas.
Once again, I've given you ample opportunity to present some actual published research or some compelling valid data, and once again all I get is deranged ranting and abuse.
In the space of this comments section you have intimated I am a "a shill for animal agriculture" - of course, you had no problem recommending hopelessly-conflicted The Game Changers back in February. You have no problem recommending a movie made by people who have literally hundreds of millions of dollars invested in fake meat production, but when I debunk your cherished vegan beliefs you falsely accusing me of being on the meat/egg/dairy payroll.
You arrogantly tell me what I should write about, telling me I "should stick with exposing the Convid crime". You mean the global psy-op committed by the same people who are conducting a war on meat and want us to subsist on a diet of bugs and beans?
I ask for data, and you fail to provide it, instead you have called me "selfish", a "wannabe carnivore", "a raving loon", a "raving rambler", among other things.
You've overstayed your welcome, Sheldon. Your antics are amusing and instructive to a point, but after a while they become little more than spam, abuse and trolling. That's not what the comments section is for. It's for furthering knowledge and expounding upon the article, for earnestly threshing out any points of disagreement.
It is not a sounding board for hateful extremists like yourself.
Because my articles on veganism seem to reliably trigger you into suffering mental episodes, I have removed you from my email list. I don't want to contribute in any way to further deterioration in your mental state.
Don't bother sending me another rambling email, as you've done in the past, because you're now on my spam filter. I just don't have time for this kind of nonsense.
¨ALL ‘animal’ B12 comes from supplements in their feed.¨
It is incredible how vegans can repeat such nonsense and believe it is true. This is a ridiculous attempt to falsely claim that omnivores get their B12 from the supplements given to the animals, not from the animals themselves. Therefore, it is ok for vegans to supplement B12 because, according to this absurd idea, meat-eaters are getting their B12 from supplemented animals anyway.
Please provide a study showing that meat from grass-fed cattle living on this planet for millions of years is actually defficient in vitamin B12, and that this ¨natural mistake´ must be corrected by exogenous supplementation.
For example, a study evaluating content of B vitamins in cattle under different diets found that B1 and B2 vitamins are higher in the meat from grass-fed cattle with no supplementation than in the meat from grain-fed cattle.
Anthony the raving rambler: most people love their dogs and cats while happily gorging on innocent murdered cows, pigs, chickens and other birds, fish, eggs, dairy ad infinitum.
I applaud you for caring for your animal
companion, but this proves exactly nothing when discussing veganism.
When it comes to mercy for ALL innocent, intelligent beings, your selfish appetite is your sole source of truth.
Sheldon, your answer tells us all we need to know about you. You have NOTHING other than insults. Yes, humans have a bond with dogs that possibly extends back as far as 30,000 years ago.
We owe them our loyalty just like we owe loved ones loyalty - my dog was like my son.
My"selfish" appetite and our undeniable nutritional need for nutrients not supplied by plant foods (B12, creatine, carnosine, carnitine, etc) is one determined by millions of years of evolution. I had exactly ZERO say in the process.
By the way, have you ever gone out on safari and lectured a bunch of lions and tigers about their "selfish" nutritional habits?
When it comes to your blatant myopia when it comes to veganism, methinks you’re a shill for animal agriculture.
To save time, I refer you to the YouTube channel of Mic (Mike) The Vegan. He has a masters in public health. His channel
Is LOADED with thousands of peer reviewed studies that completely debunk
EVERY nonsense carnist statement and ‘fact’ spewing from your animal blood-drenched keyboard.
I anticipate that you will discount this tsunami of independent evidence out of hand as do all of you proanimal holocausters; but I would expect nothing less from you on this topic…
"When it comes to your blatant myopia when it comes to veganism, methinks you’re a shill for animal agriculture."
This is known as the ad hominem argument. It is a sleazy form of debate in which, upon realizing one has no factual rebuttal to the other party's arguments, chooses to instead defame their character.
I'll ask you the same question I've asked all those other feeble-minded critics who've falsely accused me of having a financial COI :
If you believe me to be a shill for animal agriculture - an industry from which I have never received a cent - could you please provide the evidence?
More to the point, could you PLEASE tell me exactly where these alleged shill payments have been going, because between late May and 17 October this animal "murderer" spent thousands upon thousands of dollars keeping his beloved dog alive, so I could really do with the extra funds right about now.
If you can't provide this evidence, then you need to look in the mirror and accept that what you're looking at is a defamatory liar.
"To save time, I refer you to the YouTube channel of Mic (Mike) The Vegan. He has a masters in public health."
Ah yes, just another way of saying you don't have any evidence. A YouTube channel by a vegan influencer called "Mic the Vegan" (eye roll) is not peer-reviewed evidence, Sheldon.
I don't care what he's got a masters in, a university degree usually means you've spent at least 3 years having your critical thinking facilities bled from you.
Sheldon, I am an extremely busy person. I have paid subscribers chomping at the bit waiting for further installments on Carnivore diets, for example (hi Marg :) I simply don't have time to forsake reading published research in order to watch YouTube videos by biased influencers, that's not how science works, mate.
My experience with vegan influencers, authors and their crockumentaries has been that they are extremely dubious. If, however, you believe "Mic the Vegan" has cited research supporting your claims and refuting mine, you cite the specific studies and explain IN YOUR OWN WORDS why you believe they refute me.
I anticipate my request will be met with more irrational ranting and further invitations to view pseudoscientific vegan propaganda, but I would expect nothing less from you on this topic…
Vegetarianism is religious ethics (mostly Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and some Christian and Jewish sects, etc.- centered on the thou shalt not kill type notion)
Veganism is secular ethics, as in environment, and animal welfare.
Neither have anything to do with nutrition or health.
The Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet, as per The China Study, and the T. Colin Campbell's Center for Nutrition Studies, as well as the American College for Lifestyle Medicine, etc. is well-documented and based primarily on T. Colin Campbell's 70 year career in research as a nutritional biochemist. It is a comprehensive, research based concept of nutrition and provably superior in terms of prevention and even reversal of most if not all chronic diseases. #WFPB diet is actual nutrition science.
Potato chips and beer is vegan, and also vegetarian, but it is not #WFPB nutrition. So it will always be easy to find unhealthy vegetarians and vegans, for they have nothing to do with nutrition.
I'd highly recommend Cannibals and Kings by anthropologist Marvin Harris, which presents a compelling argument that the true motivation for the religious proscriptions against certain foods were for pragmatic ecological reasons - rapid population growth vs increasing environmental constraints.
For example, the early Indian proscriptions against slaughtering livestock were to preserve farmers' 'tractors' (oxen), and the cows that made those tractors.
The Jewish and Islamic proscriptions against pork arose in an area where the natural diet and shelter of pigs was removed to make way for crop fields. Eating pork meant diverting grain and water to feed pigs instead of humans.
Quality was sacrificed for quantity, and religious proscriptions were concocted to ensure compliance.
As for T. Colin Campbell, I cannot consider him anything other than a charlatan, for reasons that should be abundantly clear here:
I also think Mr Campbell's story reflects the egregious hypocrisy of vegans who claim to be concerned with animal welfare. His protein aflatoxin theory is garbage, yet how many thousands of furry little critters did he kill ("murder!") in order to flog this dead horse?
Why do the same vegans who have a problem with animal research praise T. Colin Campbell?
Thanks. I am enjoying your stuff, but this is something we'll have to disagree on. too many issues in my life in terms of physical well-being disappeared like snow before the sun when I made this change in 2015, and I have seen hundreds of cases over the years, directly or indirectly.I am friendly with the Campbell clan and the Esselstyn clan, and what I see is 4-generational plant-based clans, with hardly a medical bill among them. Consider me a lost cause ;-)
That's it exactly! Any diet based on ideology as opposed to nutrition can be unhealthy. As you say, potato chips and beer are vegan.
Whole, unadulterated fruits and vegetables are where the nutrients and micronutrients are at, plain and simple. Not nutritional yeast, man-made meats and other processed foods.
Eat what you want. But if you want to be healthy, eat most if your calories from a garden not a slaughter house or a conveyor belt.
ultimately, the study was a disappointment, but I do feel for the researchers. There is a dearth of long-term vegan RCTs, especially when you remove the ones conducted by biased ideologues (Ornish, Barnard, Kahleova, etc), so this would have been a useful addition to our knowledge base.
As I mentioned to Daniel above, it's a tough gig keeping research subjects motivated and compliant at the best of times, but in this case, the researchers also had their trial interrupted by the 'COVID' scam. This meant the regular in-person classes they had scheduled to assist with compliance had to be abandoned, plus the COVID tyranny and fear-mongering may well have triggered stress-related eating patterns among the subjects.
So I apportion the blame not to the researchers, but to the deviant globalist psychopaths who launched their depop campaign in earnest in early 2020.
Valid points and we need facts. I love carbs and would give anything to follow Ornish, Fiber Fueled, The Starch Solution, etc., etc., but makes me physically sick!
I wish there was a study on the Loma Linda Blue Zone ranked #1 on Planet Earth (So. Cal)! SDAs (Seventh Day Adventists) hold the winning position for longevity in the world - or did!! No meat - vegetarians — no animal products. How do the SDA diabetics exist on carbos/sugar or anyone! They do rest on Saturday - if you call going to church a day of rest.
Veganism is NOT a ‘diet’ but rather is a moral philosophy.
However, a WHOLE FOOD (not junk) plant diet is the ultimate method of eating for animal rights to their own bodies & lives, human heath and wellbeing and a cleaner world.
The evidence is massive and unimpeachable, not to mention common sense.
The animals that you wannabe carnists gore on, get the nutrients that you claim to get from consuming them, from PLANTS!
Eat directly from the source and skip the misery and cruelty.
People eat innocent intelligent beings for 5 reasons:
TASTE
Tradition
Habit
Convenience
Conformity
NONE of these reasons can justify the holocaust of murdering over 60 BILLION land animals and up to two TRILLION sea animals worldwide annually!
-I repeatedly ask you for the EVIDENCE showing as much;
-You repeatedly refuse to supply it because you don't have it;
-Despite repeated requests and despite me having given you ample opportunity to present some actual facts and figures, all you are ever able to respond with is demented, hateful drivel and rhetoric.
You're doing it again, describing meat production as "holocaust" and "murder", and referring to meat eaters as "wannabe carnists."
You are a hateful extremist, period.
Readers not familiar with Sheldon's unhinged style of interaction, and his terribly anti-scientific method of debate, can witness a vivid demonstration here:
Sheldon, you really need to get a life. You are convincing exactly ZERO people of the benefits of veganism with your hateful rants. If anything, they underscore the potential for B12-deficient diets to negatively impact cognitive function.
I don't know about the superlatives, but moral philosophy is a good reason to be a vegan. And for some, it is best for their "bodies & lives, human heath and wellbeing." For many of us, though, the sensibilities have gone beyond our biology." And, "a cleaner world" is a work in (slow, very slow) progress.
"The chubby anti-CICO crowd hate it when I point out this simple truth, but hey, they’re fat and I’m not."
LOL!
Knowing the details of this study from your write up, as far as the dietary guidelines, low compliance, difficulty of tracking actual practices by participants, etc., I'm surprised the study was published at all. "We divided a bunch of people into two groups, most of them didn't do what we said, and we have no way of verifying whether the others did or not, many people dropped out: Here are our conclusions!" I guess once they have the funding, they have to put something out, regardless of its worth.
Hi Daniel,
sadly, the low compliance and high dropout rate renders the study a dud for comparing 2 year effect of vegan vs omnivore diet. I feel for the researchers though - we need more long-term trials of vegan eating that are not conducted by biased ideologues (Ornish, Barnard, Kahleova, etc), so this would have been a useful addition to the research.
It's a tough gig keeping research subjects motivated and compliant at the best of times, everyone is gung ho at first then old habits quickly kick back in. In this case, the researchers also had their trial interrupted by the massively disruptive scam known as 'COVID', so the regular in-person classes they had scheduled to assist with compliance went out the window.
D'you think there'll be any further research into veganism, Anthony ?
Coz why, it'd be good to have some based on compliant participants - who don't have to be black, brown, yellow or pink ... just human.
But listen, mate: I'm beginning to tap my fingers on my touchpad (which I don't use) regarding more from you on carnivore. Just sayin ...
Hi Marg,
I just went to clinicaltrials.gov, selected "intervention" studies and "vegan diet" as the intervention, and returned 122 studies. two of those had results posted, one was a 4-week study showing kids lost more weight on a vegan diet but had a greater reduction in waist circumference on mixed diet over 4 weeks. The other was a cooking study that did not examine actual health outcomes.
The remaining 120 are a mix of completed, active, still recruiting. I don't have time to go through them all, but most seem to be short-term endeavors where the intervention is measured in weeks, not years.
I hope we get more long-term trials, as I've mentioned to other readers it would be nice to have long-term data that doesn't come from the usual biased suspects (Ornish, Barnard, Kahleova et al).
Carnivore articles coming soon!
Cool ! - finger-tapping ceased. (Pro tem.) [grin]
Looking for non-gmo mayo led me to Colpo's debunking of Game Changers. The Net and rabbit holes were made for each other. In the past three weeks of increased activity, after being vegan two years now, I went for a mile walk after 30 minutes of light cardio earlier that morning. Ate a handful of potatoes, beans, popcorn and fell asleep. Awoke feel Terrible. Terrible! Even an egg and a biscuit didn't help. Took 2 days to start feeling better but noticing diminishing energy almost monthly and a grumpy back that has never been that way before. The next week, I repeated the now-experiment, struggling up the mile's slight incline, feeling like I was jogging underwater. This time, I got a burger and a couple tacos, ate them all and slept...and awoke feeling like Superwoman for the next week. No aches or pains. Now, I was always very athletic and slender and they used to bar the door at Nautilus and turn me away at 19, because I would try to go workout every day. I routinely walk 3 miles, at minimum, 3-4 days a week, like it is nothing...inclined included. I got a bit misty reading Colpo's review because now I can stop beating myself up for not looking like Nimai, despite eating what he eats (except soy; that is bad news all the way 'round and I won't consume it). Why can't I walk a mile - a Mile - but Dotsie Bausch can bring home Olympic Gold?! The Game Changerd movie is slick. When I first went vegan, I felt great. We all did...at first. My last convo with a vegan was when he was buying huge steaks at Whole Foods. That was when I started to suspect something being amok. I have a fast metabolism and am not a big eater, so the vegan thing has been a challenge. I keep looking at these athletes going, "Why is my back hurting from making a simple/easy batch of bean burgers?" I eat a vegan meal and my energy tanks out again in 2-3 hours! Steroids never occurred to me with Nimai, but you can cast a hard eye over that body being built on effing sweet potatoes with that bit of info...and Stallone and Ahnold definitely did them. I feel duped and angry because I have been blaming myself for my dwindling energy - and the more active I became, the worse I felt. I have always been fit and active. That burger & tacos meal confirmed my suspicions. I love eating vegan and how clean and light it makes me feel; my bean burgers are Awesome and I have always loved veg and eaten healthy...but I just...I can't...I can't "only." Not anymore. Now, I can clearly declare, my body needs meats...for whatever its reasons, it does, and I need to honor that with organics and regular inclusion. I haven't desired meat until I increased activity; this time, my body placed the order and I let it. Lately, I have had fleeting cravings for beef stew, bolognese, specifically red meat...not chicken, that I frequently tended to eat...but beef. That and a craving for fries only happens in my body when it feels I am starving it and it is in a state of depletion, so those were recognized alarm bells that began to make me suspect that veganism wasn't exactly all it was packaged to be for everyone. I read an article today, before stumbling on Colpo, by a woman who was vegan for three years and had bloodwork done. Extremely low in iron, A, D, zinc. She said she took supplements but knew that wouldn't "fix" it...and I take them, too, and it hasn't. She began re-incorporating meat into her regimen, while staying largely plant-based, and said she feels terrific and is now in perfect health. I felt immense relief reading that, and knew it was what I needed to do. It was an emotional discovery because you don't realize how strongly you have been over-riding your own internal knowing to follow or believe some bag of nonsense. There's a word for this - it's called gaslighting...and we are taught by the world to do it to ourselves, too. I will enjoy my big salad tonight but I am also going to bake the heck out of a rad homemade pepperoni pizza on a homemade focaccia crust...and some anise biscotti...and not feel a speck of guilt or regret. I also owe myself some burgers and tacos of the non-veg variety. I have *really* missed beef in dishes I cook like chili, minestrone, stew, Bolognese and it is such a relief to know I can make these as normal foods again. Didn't realize how much I was suppressing that need. A million thank you's 🙌💝💯💯💯 to those who have shared the truths and their own journey thru these quagmires, that some may be liberated from the layers of nonsense far too abundant here. Vegan may be right for some, but it isn't the sole/soul solution for me. Likely, that is true for some others, as well. We need to learn to be quiet (STFU) more and listen to that "still, small voice" within that knows far more than we do...and be very thankful for it...and the anti-bs warriors, and those kind enough to share what uplifts, enriches, encourages in what is becoming a world lacking in so many areas. Each needs to find the right balance for *them,* but is probably isn't veganism.
Honestly, I feel immensely relieved at every level to be stopping the vegan thing. Some people do "vegan til 6:pm" then have a normal dinner. PBWF, organics and non-gmo is restrictive enough! Since I stopped doing only vegan, I have eaten and eaten...burgers, tacos, chops, pizza...and within 3 days, I have felt stronger, clearer, far less achy and more sound all around. Even cooking meat last night was soothing, as my body looked forward to having it. I took a bite of a chop with coffee and couldn't stop eating it! The vegan depletion syndrome had me in no-judgment mode and my body needed that protein, or collagen, or whatever meat has that we need. I read where someone said, "We are adapted to eating meat." That is the moment I realized that truth and stopped doing vegan. People should be warned, seriously. Whatever it is about meat, our bodies need it, and that is just the no-judgment fact. I don't like it, neither do many, as we will hold to our lighter lifestyle (PBWF) but add meat in, too. We can also do it from a space of reverence, gratefulness, thankfulness, blessing. In the bible, they were getting manna from heaven, but tired of it complaining. What did the Lord give them? Meat. We don't have all the answers and it is uncomfortable not being able to understand it (all), but we Can come at it with the power we *do* have - gratefulness, reverence, thankfulness.
That’s why they didn’t perform that concert. None of those losers in the audience was a vegan.
Ha, Colpo. We go back a long way. It is good to see you have not lost your rhetorical style. I try to rein it in myself because of the limitations: it is ad hominem, and, most of all, you may miss the real science. I’m undoubtedly not as thin as you are but on “chubby anti-CICO crowd,” it might be worth considering why people with a weight problem might want to look carefully at the question of efficiency of diets. I recommend:
1. A calorie is what?
Calories-in calories-out, diets, thermodynamics and all that - 1
https://richardfeinman.substack.com/p/a-calorie-is-what
Tells you why CICO is not correct as a rule in nutrition.
2. Calories-in-calories-out, substrate cycles and diesel engines
https://richardfeinman.substack.com/p/calories-in-calories-out-substrate
Gives you an example of source of inefficiency.
Hi Richard,
don't take this the wrong way, but your method of argument is what people must resort to when attempting to defend the indefensible.
Elaborate discussions of the laws of thermodynamics and diesel engines are all well and good, but they completely ignore the reality that tightly controlled metabolic ward studies repeatedly FAIL to show any weight loss "metabolic advantage" for low-carb/keto diets.
When I talk about weight loss, I refer to fat loss, not the greater glycogen and water losses often seen on LC/keto diets.
Researchers measure the energy content of food in terms of calories. As you know, a "calorie" is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree Celsius.
Researchers have determined different macronutrients to provide different amounts of calories (energy) and can calculate how many calories provided by a given amount of a given food.
LC proponents had no problem with any of this when they believed they could cite studies or anecdotal tales showing LC diets to cause more weight loss at a given calorie intake. In fact, they went way beyond this, making ridiculous claims that one could lose weight on a LC diet of over 4,000 calories per day, yet not lose or even gain weight on a high-carb diet of under 1,000 calories (the adiposely-challenged Atkins and your friend Eades both made such claims in writing).
This was complete and utter BS, and when I came along and explained the glaring problems with free-living studies, and pointed to the dozens of metabolic ward studies showing no metabolic advantage, the low carb cult (and it DID behave like a cult) went nuts.
I was called a liar, and accused of having either too much natural testosterone or taking anabolic drugs by fat people who couldn't spell enanthate if their life depended on it. I was spammed, trolled, defamed.
The great irony of all this is that when I first highlighted the fallacy of the "metabolic advantage" lie, I was following a low-carb diet, and my comments were contained in a 2005 article DEFENDING low-carb diets!
That's what a sheer bunch of idiot cultists the low-carbers were. Idiotic is as idiotic does.
So when they thought they could use the calorie argument in support of their pet diet, low-carbers had no problem with it. When I came along and pointed out several decades of ward studies showed the metabolic advantage to be a fairy tale, all of a sudden you were all tripping over yourselves to discredit and diminish the calorie paradigm.
The real cracker being that you all still insisted low-carb diets offered a caloric metabolic advantage!! LMAO.
You're still doing it yourself, when you open the first of your hyperlinked articles with the line:
"The original promise of low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets was that more weight is lost calorie-for-calorie than with other other weight reduction methods."
You then bang on about the "The Carbohydrate-Insulin-Model (CIM)", which I have repeatedly dismantled.
No matter what effect diet has on insulin, you still need to explain why isocaloric diets of varying carbohydrate content show similar weight losses.
I'll ask you what I've asked the LC cultists countless times, without success, only circular argumentation and vitriol in return:
Do you, or do you not, have ward data showing isocaloric low-carb diets to cause greater fat-derived weight loss in human subjects?
If you don't like the calorie theory, then please present your own scientifically validated method for measuring the energy content of food, and the ward data using this method that shows greater fat-derived weight loss on a low-carb diet that provided the same amount of energy as the higher-carb comparator diet.
I'm not interested in diesel engines, I'm happy with the turbo unleaded unit I already drive.
I'm not interested in theoretical excursions that ignore the reality observed in real live humans, I'm not interested in untenable Sam Feltman 15-minutes-of-fame stunts, and I'm not interested in data mixed and matched from different studies on different continents using totally different populations as your buddy Eades infamously did years ago, kicking off a multi-decade animosity when I soundly lambasted him.
I'm not interested in a small, cherry-picked selection of studies that just happen to support the results you are after, as you presented in that paper you co-authored with Fine years back.
The point I have been hammering home for two decades now is that LC/keto diets offer no "metabolic advantage."
To the contrary, they seem to exacerbate lean mass losses. Not exactly what I call an advantage.
If you still dispute this, then PLEASE, provide the metabolic ward research involving real live humans randomized or subjected to both diets in crossover fashion, showing a LC/keto diet of identical energy provision to cause greater fat-derived weight loss.
BTW, out of curiosity, why did you publicly claim you emailed me to 'educate' me on your anti-calorie theories, and that my lack of response suggested I had undergone "spontaneous combustion"? Firstly, I never received any such email, save for one in which you presented no data but boasted of having 20 years' experience in the field, which to be honest, came off as rather smug and condescending and was duly ignored. Secondly, I think you know full well that if I had received such an email containing any kind of data portending to dispute my contentions, it would have received a spirited response.
Prior to publishing the first edition of The Fat Loss Bible, I emailed your colleague Eugene Fine to confirm his credentials. I never received a response. Did he undergo "spontaneous combustion"? Or did he just not want to engage with someone who held opposing views?
So please keep your response to the facts, and within the relevant parameters.
And the real problem: "Researchers measure the energy content of food in terms of calories. As you know, a "calorie" is defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of one liter of water by one degree Celsius."
That's the fallacy. The energy is not in the food. It is in the reaction. As above, Atwater understood that. The physical definition of a calorie is not what we are taking about. The calorie as used in nutrition as the heat generated in the calorimeter under specified conditions. Do anything else, store carbohydrate as glycogen or run substrate cycles, maintain membrane potentials (and other stuff not measured in metabolic ward), etc. and all bets are off.
First, I don't recognize "... publicly claim you emailed me to 'educate' me on your anti-calorie theories ... it would have received a spirited response." If I really wrote it it must have been many years ago "in my salad days when I was green in judgement." Apologies on that.
On the question at hand, what I am explaining, interestingly going back to Atwater, is that calories in cannot be measured because all we can measure is grams in. We don't know exactly how they are processed. Atwater made a lot of measurements, as I recall some along the lines of a metabolic ward study, and he came up with values for macronutrients. They were not precisely the same -- they did not necessarily exactly correlate with structure. As you know, calories/gram is slightly different for fructose and glucose, for example. To make things easier, he took averages and those are the numbers we use in usual diet analysis. They work remarkably well. Most of us recognize how constant our weight is despite obvious changes in macronutrients, day to day. Until it's not. And given the fact, again, that we don't know how to measure calories in, it is impressive how often the (Atwood) calorie = calorie out. It is how often "CI"=CO is true. That's what needs to be explained because it would sensibly violate the second law (or the precise version of the first law). Thermodynamics predicts variable efficiency. It is the biological effect (extensive feedback systems) that leads to homeostasis. That was my point. I don't invoke CIM as relevant. It is about mechanism (rates), not thermodynamics. It is, also, in my view not a model. It is a biological fact, insulin is adipogenic. And your rhetorical style has lost none of its charm.
"That was my point."
Which doesn't address my point, the same point I've been hammering for almost 20 years, which you LC advocates so vociferously object to, yet can't provide a skerrick of valid evidence to refute.
My point is isocaloric diets of different macronutrient composition produce similar fat-derived weight loss. This has been shown time and time again in ward studies.
There is no such thing as a "metabolic advantage." After almost 20 years of calling me names, NONE of the LC ideologues have been able to provide anything resembling tightly controlled data from real live human beings to show otherwise.
Your friend Eades was even reduced to wanking on about 'insensible water loss' in what was supposed to be his grand debunking of my debunking of his, yours, and the rest of the LC world's nonsense.
That's pretty desperate lol
Yes, Atwater determined his caloric values in a calorimeter. You do realize of all three major macronutrients, fat is the least thermogenic in real live human beings?
Protein, which can be high on a HC or LC diet, is the most thermogenic. Next comes carbohydrate, which by necessity must be low on a low carbohydrate diet because ... it's a low carbohydrate diet.
Least thermogenic is fat, the dietary ballast of choice used to replace carbohydrate on a LC diet.
The differences, however, are so small as to have little to no impact on weight loss results.
Strike 1.
"It is a biological fact, insulin is adipogenic."
Such a comment is a lucid embodiment of the old maxim, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
I've explained this all before, but low-carbers, like their vegan counterparts, only hear what they want to hear.
So here we go again:
Yes, in experimental laboratory studies, intravenous infusion of insulin or exposure of fat and muscle cells to insulin in a petri dish can produce immediate-term reductions in lipolysis and increases in lipogenesis.
But as someone who objects that Atwater used a calorimeter to obtain his values, it behooves you to acknowledge that what happens in a petri dish doesn't automaticallly correlate to what happens in the human body.
The obvious, well-established but terribly inconvenient fact that you LCers willfully ignore is that, while insulin can 'convert' dietary carbohydrate to fat, dietary fat doesn't require this convoluted process because ... it already is fat!
lol
Even short-term dietary experiments fail to support the results seen in the laboratory studies; when volunteers are fed high- and low-carbohydrate diets of equal caloric content, the subsequent differences in lipogenesis are so small as to be meaningless in terms of fat gain.
See:
Acheson KJ, et al. Nutritional influences on lipogenesis and thermogenesis after a carbohydrate meal. American Journal of Physiology - Endocrinology and Metabolism, Jan 1, 1984; 246: E62-E70.
Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999; 53 (Suppl 1): S53-S65.
Rather than converting the extra carbohydrate to fat and stockpiling it in adipose cells, the body responds to increases in carbohydrate intake by simply increasing the amount of carbohydrate used as fuel.
Hellerstein MK. De novo lipogenesis in humans: metabolic and regulatory aspects. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999; 53 (Suppl 1): S53-S65.
In well-known findings that you LCers blissfully ignore, researchers at the University of Sydney, Australia found that 240-calorie servings of cheese, beef and fish elicited greater insulin release than isocaloric servings of pasta and porridge.
Holt SHA, et al. An insulin index of foods: the insulin demand generated by 1000-kJ portions of common foods. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Nov, 1997; 66: 5: 1264-1276.
So if we were to adhere to your own claims, that would mean cheese, beef and fish are more 'adipogenic' than pasta and porridge.
Strike 2.
If insulin was the overriding determinant of fat gain and loss, we would logically expect to see consistent and stark differences in fat loss outcomes among dieters with normal and disordered insulin metabolism. But we don't. To the contrary, differences in insulin resistance and blood sugar control are not a reliable predictor of weight loss in response to calorie restricted diets in obese women.
McLaughlin T, et al. Differences in insulin resistance do not predict weight loss in response to hypocaloric diets in healthy obese women. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 1999; 84 (2): 578-581.
de Luis DA, et al. Differences in glycaemic status do not predict weight loss in response to hypocaloric diets in obese patients. Clinical Nutrition, Feb 2006; 25 (1): 117-122.
Strike 3, but I'll keep going.
Then there are the mixed studies with insulin-lowering drugs. If insulin was the true determinant of fat loss/gain, then these drugs should consistently lead to greater fat loss. But they don't. In a Danish study, investigators placed overweight and obese subjects on a calorie-restricted diet and randomly assigned them to take the insulin-lowering drug diazoxide or a placebo for eight weeks. While diazoxide did indeed lower insulin levels, no differences in weight loss, fat loss, resting energy expenditure or appetite were observed between the two groups.
Due A, et al. No effect of inhibition of insulin secretion by diazoxide on weight loss in hyperinsulinaemic obese subjects during an 8-week weight-loss diet. Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, Jul 2007; 9 (4): 566-574.
Sorry, but the insulin hypothesis of adipogenesis is nonsense.
"And your rhetorical style has lost none of its charm."
My "rhetorical style" is not to rely on rhetoric but facts. I know this infuriates low--carb and vegan ideologues who prefer rhetoric, personal feelings, anecdote and absurd claims, but too bad - I make zero apologies for pointing out the cold facts.
Being told what you want to hear might soothe your cognitive dissonance, but can - and often does - lead to adverse body composition and health outcomes in the longer term.
Looking for non-gmo mayo led me to Colpo's debunking of Game Changers. The Net and rabbit holes were made for each other. In the past three weeks of increased activity, after being vegan two years now, I went for a mile walk after 30 minutes of light cardio earlier that morning. Ate a handful of potatoes, beans, popcorn and fell asleep. Awoke feel Terrible. Terrible! Even an egg and a biscuit didn't help. Took 2 days to start feeling better but noticing diminishing energy almost monthly and a grumpy back that has never been that way before. The next week, I repeated the now-experiment, struggling up the mile's slight incline, feeling like I was jogging underwater. This time, I got a burger and a couple tacos, ate them all and slept...and awoke feeling like Superwoman for the next week. No aches or pains. Now, I was always very athletic and slender and they used to bar the door at Nautilus and turn me away at 19, because I would try to go workout every day. I routinely walk 3 miles, at minimum, 3-4 days a week, like it is nothing...inclined included. I got a bit misty reading Colpo's review because now I can stop beating myself up for not looking like Nimai, despite eating what he eats (except soy; that is bad news all the way 'round and I won't consume it). Why can't I walk a mile - a Mile - but Dotsie Bausch can bring home Olympic Gold?! The Game Changerd movie is slick. When I first went vegan, I felt great. We all did...at first. My last convo with a vegan was when he was buying huge steaks at Whole Foods. That was when I started to suspect something being amok. I have a fast metabolism and am not a big eater, so the vegan thing has been a challenge. I keep looking at these athletes going, "Why is my back hurting from making a simple/easy batch of bean burgers?" I eat a vegan meal and my energy tanks out again in 2-3 hours! Steroids never occurred to me with Nimai, but you can cast a hard eye over that body being built on effing sweet potatoes with that bit of info...and Stallone and Ahnold definitely did them. I feel duped and angry because I have been blaming myself for my dwindling energy - and the more active I became, the worse I felt. I have always been fit and active. That burger & tacos meal confirmed my suspicions. I love eating vegan and how clean and light it makes me feel; my bean burgers are Awesome and I have always loved veg and eaten healthy...but I just...I can't...I can't "only." Not anymore. Now, I can clearly declare, my body needs meats...for whatever its reasons, it does, and I need to honor that with organics and regular inclusion. I haven't desired meat until I increased activity; this time, my body placed the order and I let it. Lately, I have had fleeting cravings for beef stew, bolognese, specifically red meat...not chicken, that I frequently tended to eat...but beef. That and a craving for fries only happens in my body when it feels I am starving it and it is in a state of depletion, so those were recognized alarm bells that began to make me suspect that veganism wasn't exactly all it was packaged to be for everyone. I read an article today, before stumbling on Colpo, by a woman who was vegan for three years and had bloodwork done. Extremely low in iron, A, D, zinc. She said she took supplements but knew that wouldn't "fix" it...and I take them, too, and it hasn't. She began re-incorporating meat into her regimen, while staying largely plant-based, and said she feels terrific and is now in perfect health. I felt immense relief reading that, and knew it was what I needed to do. It was an emotional discovery because you don't realize how strongly you have been over-riding your own internal knowing to follow or believe some bag of nonsense. There's a word for this - it's called gaslighting...and we are taught by the world to do it to ourselves, too. I will enjoy my big salad tonight but I am also going to bake the heck out of a rad homemade pepperoni pizza on a homemade focaccia crust...and some anise biscotti...and not feel a speck of guilt or regret. I also owe myself some burgers and tacos of the non-veg variety. I have *really* missed beef in dishes I cook like chili, minestrone, stew, Bolognese and it is such a relief to know I can make these as normal foods again. Didn't realize how much I was suppressing that need. A million thank you's 🙌💝💯💯💯 to those who have shared the truths and their own journey thru these quagmires, that some may be liberated from the layers of nonsense far too abundant here. Vegan may be right for some, but it isn't the sole/soul solution for me. Likely, that is true for some others, as well. We need to learn to be quiet (STFU) more and listen to that "still, small voice" within that knows far more than we do...and be very thankful for it...and the anti-bs warriors, and those kind enough to share what uplifts, enriches, encourages in what is becoming a world lacking in so many areas.
Sorry Sheldon, but enough is enough.
Once again, I've given you ample opportunity to present some actual published research or some compelling valid data, and once again all I get is deranged ranting and abuse.
In the space of this comments section you have intimated I am a "a shill for animal agriculture" - of course, you had no problem recommending hopelessly-conflicted The Game Changers back in February. You have no problem recommending a movie made by people who have literally hundreds of millions of dollars invested in fake meat production, but when I debunk your cherished vegan beliefs you falsely accusing me of being on the meat/egg/dairy payroll.
You arrogantly tell me what I should write about, telling me I "should stick with exposing the Convid crime". You mean the global psy-op committed by the same people who are conducting a war on meat and want us to subsist on a diet of bugs and beans?
I ask for data, and you fail to provide it, instead you have called me "selfish", a "wannabe carnivore", "a raving loon", a "raving rambler", among other things.
You've overstayed your welcome, Sheldon. Your antics are amusing and instructive to a point, but after a while they become little more than spam, abuse and trolling. That's not what the comments section is for. It's for furthering knowledge and expounding upon the article, for earnestly threshing out any points of disagreement.
It is not a sounding board for hateful extremists like yourself.
Because my articles on veganism seem to reliably trigger you into suffering mental episodes, I have removed you from my email list. I don't want to contribute in any way to further deterioration in your mental state.
Don't bother sending me another rambling email, as you've done in the past, because you're now on my spam filter. I just don't have time for this kind of nonsense.
Adios, amigo.
Do a bit of research: B12 deficiency in the general population.
Animals DO NOT produce B12. It comes from soil bacteria.
ALL ‘animal’ B12 comes from supplements in their feed.
Many people are deficient in B vitamins.
¨ALL ‘animal’ B12 comes from supplements in their feed.¨
It is incredible how vegans can repeat such nonsense and believe it is true. This is a ridiculous attempt to falsely claim that omnivores get their B12 from the supplements given to the animals, not from the animals themselves. Therefore, it is ok for vegans to supplement B12 because, according to this absurd idea, meat-eaters are getting their B12 from supplemented animals anyway.
Please provide a study showing that meat from grass-fed cattle living on this planet for millions of years is actually defficient in vitamin B12, and that this ¨natural mistake´ must be corrected by exogenous supplementation.
For example, a study evaluating content of B vitamins in cattle under different diets found that B1 and B2 vitamins are higher in the meat from grass-fed cattle with no supplementation than in the meat from grain-fed cattle.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19502506/
Anthony the raving rambler: most people love their dogs and cats while happily gorging on innocent murdered cows, pigs, chickens and other birds, fish, eggs, dairy ad infinitum.
I applaud you for caring for your animal
companion, but this proves exactly nothing when discussing veganism.
When it comes to mercy for ALL innocent, intelligent beings, your selfish appetite is your sole source of truth.
Sheldon, your answer tells us all we need to know about you. You have NOTHING other than insults. Yes, humans have a bond with dogs that possibly extends back as far as 30,000 years ago.
We owe them our loyalty just like we owe loved ones loyalty - my dog was like my son.
My"selfish" appetite and our undeniable nutritional need for nutrients not supplied by plant foods (B12, creatine, carnosine, carnitine, etc) is one determined by millions of years of evolution. I had exactly ZERO say in the process.
By the way, have you ever gone out on safari and lectured a bunch of lions and tigers about their "selfish" nutritional habits?
You should try it, let me know how it goes.
Anthony,
You should stick with exposing the Convid crime.
When it comes to your blatant myopia when it comes to veganism, methinks you’re a shill for animal agriculture.
To save time, I refer you to the YouTube channel of Mic (Mike) The Vegan. He has a masters in public health. His channel
Is LOADED with thousands of peer reviewed studies that completely debunk
EVERY nonsense carnist statement and ‘fact’ spewing from your animal blood-drenched keyboard.
I anticipate that you will discount this tsunami of independent evidence out of hand as do all of you proanimal holocausters; but I would expect nothing less from you on this topic…
Sheldon,
"When it comes to your blatant myopia when it comes to veganism, methinks you’re a shill for animal agriculture."
This is known as the ad hominem argument. It is a sleazy form of debate in which, upon realizing one has no factual rebuttal to the other party's arguments, chooses to instead defame their character.
I'll ask you the same question I've asked all those other feeble-minded critics who've falsely accused me of having a financial COI :
If you believe me to be a shill for animal agriculture - an industry from which I have never received a cent - could you please provide the evidence?
More to the point, could you PLEASE tell me exactly where these alleged shill payments have been going, because between late May and 17 October this animal "murderer" spent thousands upon thousands of dollars keeping his beloved dog alive, so I could really do with the extra funds right about now.
If you can't provide this evidence, then you need to look in the mirror and accept that what you're looking at is a defamatory liar.
"To save time, I refer you to the YouTube channel of Mic (Mike) The Vegan. He has a masters in public health."
Ah yes, just another way of saying you don't have any evidence. A YouTube channel by a vegan influencer called "Mic the Vegan" (eye roll) is not peer-reviewed evidence, Sheldon.
I don't care what he's got a masters in, a university degree usually means you've spent at least 3 years having your critical thinking facilities bled from you.
Sheldon, I am an extremely busy person. I have paid subscribers chomping at the bit waiting for further installments on Carnivore diets, for example (hi Marg :) I simply don't have time to forsake reading published research in order to watch YouTube videos by biased influencers, that's not how science works, mate.
My experience with vegan influencers, authors and their crockumentaries has been that they are extremely dubious. If, however, you believe "Mic the Vegan" has cited research supporting your claims and refuting mine, you cite the specific studies and explain IN YOUR OWN WORDS why you believe they refute me.
I anticipate my request will be met with more irrational ranting and further invitations to view pseudoscientific vegan propaganda, but I would expect nothing less from you on this topic…
Anthony a shill for animal agriculture ???? - you could scarcely be ... erhmm ... wronger !
Marg,
would you believe, after I criticized the bombastic Robert Lustig, one of his groupies even accused me of profiting from the sugar industry?
I just wish I knew where this alleged mountain of palm-greasing funds was going, because it's certainly not ending up in my hands lol
I fear you wash your hands of this kind of bullshit far too much, signor ... :D
In a word, no.
Vegetarianism is religious ethics (mostly Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and some Christian and Jewish sects, etc.- centered on the thou shalt not kill type notion)
Veganism is secular ethics, as in environment, and animal welfare.
Neither have anything to do with nutrition or health.
The Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet, as per The China Study, and the T. Colin Campbell's Center for Nutrition Studies, as well as the American College for Lifestyle Medicine, etc. is well-documented and based primarily on T. Colin Campbell's 70 year career in research as a nutritional biochemist. It is a comprehensive, research based concept of nutrition and provably superior in terms of prevention and even reversal of most if not all chronic diseases. #WFPB diet is actual nutrition science.
Potato chips and beer is vegan, and also vegetarian, but it is not #WFPB nutrition. So it will always be easy to find unhealthy vegetarians and vegans, for they have nothing to do with nutrition.
Hi Rogier,
I'd highly recommend Cannibals and Kings by anthropologist Marvin Harris, which presents a compelling argument that the true motivation for the religious proscriptions against certain foods were for pragmatic ecological reasons - rapid population growth vs increasing environmental constraints.
For example, the early Indian proscriptions against slaughtering livestock were to preserve farmers' 'tractors' (oxen), and the cows that made those tractors.
The Jewish and Islamic proscriptions against pork arose in an area where the natural diet and shelter of pigs was removed to make way for crop fields. Eating pork meant diverting grain and water to feed pigs instead of humans.
Quality was sacrificed for quantity, and religious proscriptions were concocted to ensure compliance.
As for T. Colin Campbell, I cannot consider him anything other than a charlatan, for reasons that should be abundantly clear here:
https://anthonycolpo.com/the-china-study-more-vegan-nonsense/
I also think Mr Campbell's story reflects the egregious hypocrisy of vegans who claim to be concerned with animal welfare. His protein aflatoxin theory is garbage, yet how many thousands of furry little critters did he kill ("murder!") in order to flog this dead horse?
Why do the same vegans who have a problem with animal research praise T. Colin Campbell?
Thanks. I am enjoying your stuff, but this is something we'll have to disagree on. too many issues in my life in terms of physical well-being disappeared like snow before the sun when I made this change in 2015, and I have seen hundreds of cases over the years, directly or indirectly.I am friendly with the Campbell clan and the Esselstyn clan, and what I see is 4-generational plant-based clans, with hardly a medical bill among them. Consider me a lost cause ;-)
That's it exactly! Any diet based on ideology as opposed to nutrition can be unhealthy. As you say, potato chips and beer are vegan.
Whole, unadulterated fruits and vegetables are where the nutrients and micronutrients are at, plain and simple. Not nutritional yeast, man-made meats and other processed foods.
Eat what you want. But if you want to be healthy, eat most if your calories from a garden not a slaughter house or a conveyor belt.
What a tax-payer wastefest -- more of the same.
Hi Nancy,
ultimately, the study was a disappointment, but I do feel for the researchers. There is a dearth of long-term vegan RCTs, especially when you remove the ones conducted by biased ideologues (Ornish, Barnard, Kahleova, etc), so this would have been a useful addition to our knowledge base.
As I mentioned to Daniel above, it's a tough gig keeping research subjects motivated and compliant at the best of times, but in this case, the researchers also had their trial interrupted by the 'COVID' scam. This meant the regular in-person classes they had scheduled to assist with compliance had to be abandoned, plus the COVID tyranny and fear-mongering may well have triggered stress-related eating patterns among the subjects.
So I apportion the blame not to the researchers, but to the deviant globalist psychopaths who launched their depop campaign in earnest in early 2020.
Valid points and we need facts. I love carbs and would give anything to follow Ornish, Fiber Fueled, The Starch Solution, etc., etc., but makes me physically sick!
I wish there was a study on the Loma Linda Blue Zone ranked #1 on Planet Earth (So. Cal)! SDAs (Seventh Day Adventists) hold the winning position for longevity in the world - or did!! No meat - vegetarians — no animal products. How do the SDA diabetics exist on carbos/sugar or anyone! They do rest on Saturday - if you call going to church a day of rest.
You refuse to get it.
Veganism is NOT a ‘diet’ but rather is a moral philosophy.
However, a WHOLE FOOD (not junk) plant diet is the ultimate method of eating for animal rights to their own bodies & lives, human heath and wellbeing and a cleaner world.
The evidence is massive and unimpeachable, not to mention common sense.
The animals that you wannabe carnists gore on, get the nutrients that you claim to get from consuming them, from PLANTS!
Eat directly from the source and skip the misery and cruelty.
People eat innocent intelligent beings for 5 reasons:
TASTE
Tradition
Habit
Convenience
Conformity
NONE of these reasons can justify the holocaust of murdering over 60 BILLION land animals and up to two TRILLION sea animals worldwide annually!
No, Sheldon, YOU refuse to get it.
-You repeatedly tell me I'm wrong;
-I repeatedly ask you for the EVIDENCE showing as much;
-You repeatedly refuse to supply it because you don't have it;
-Despite repeated requests and despite me having given you ample opportunity to present some actual facts and figures, all you are ever able to respond with is demented, hateful drivel and rhetoric.
You're doing it again, describing meat production as "holocaust" and "murder", and referring to meat eaters as "wannabe carnists."
You are a hateful extremist, period.
Readers not familiar with Sheldon's unhinged style of interaction, and his terribly anti-scientific method of debate, can witness a vivid demonstration here:
https://anthonycolpo.substack.com/p/clueless-ranting-vegan-tells-me-i
Sheldon, you really need to get a life. You are convincing exactly ZERO people of the benefits of veganism with your hateful rants. If anything, they underscore the potential for B12-deficient diets to negatively impact cognitive function.
I hope you received my response to your rant (I don’t see it on the thread).
As for B12 deficiency, meat eaters general have B12 deficiencies and should supplement as should vegans.
Are you aware that the only reason that meat has B12, is because their feed is fortified with it?
WRONG, WRONG and WRONG, as I already explained in my response to your unhinged February rant:
https://anthonycolpo.substack.com/p/clueless-ranting-vegan-tells-me-i
From my response:
"The meat of wild Spanish deers contains around 6 μg of B12 per 100 g.
You know how many B12 supplements or fortified feeds wild deer eat, Sheldon?
None.
The meat of wild kangaroos contains around 2 μg of B12 per 100 g, similar to beef.
You know how many B12 supplements or fortified foods kangaroos eat, Sheldon?
None. They're feisty buggers that would probably eye gouge you if you approached them with offerings of B12 pills or fortified foods."
You are stunningly ignorant of basic nutrition and biochemistry.
Where'd you get that rubbish about meat-eaters having B12 deficiencies ?
He got it from a deep, dark crevice ...
"People eat innocent intelligent beings for 5 reasons:"
Great straw man.
I don't know about the superlatives, but moral philosophy is a good reason to be a vegan. And for some, it is best for their "bodies & lives, human heath and wellbeing." For many of us, though, the sensibilities have gone beyond our biology." And, "a cleaner world" is a work in (slow, very slow) progress.