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Comment by gorena | Hacker News Reader

http://examine.com/faq/will-eating-eggs-increase-my-choleste...

Many of the studies referenced on that site are funded or carried out by egg lobbying groups. One study literally compares eggs' effects on cholesterol levels compared to a diet of sausage and cheese. It's important to be critical of biased research! This is not good science.

And a tiny glimpse at your post history shows that you are a rabid advocate of a vegan diet. Not exactly unbiased yourself.

Please reply to my comment based on its scientific merit without resorting to an ad hominem attack.

There was no scientific merit in your comment. You mentioned that some studies out of a list of many that disagreed with your opinion had potential for bias in their conclusions due to external motives. I merely pointed out the same potential for bias in your conclusions.

I don't have a financial incentive to promote healthy food, whereas the studies I've criticized do have a serious conflict of interest. It isn't difficult to see the difference.

You're right...there is a substantial difference. Financial motives generally tend to be much weaker than religious or philosophical motives because financial stakes are much easier to trade, liquidate, or abandon. If the evidence ever becomes overwhelming that eggs are bad for you, proponents of egg consumption can easily become a proponents of kale consumption. Veganism, being a fundamentalist philosophical extension of more pragmatic vegetarian diets, does not share the same strength of motive; evidence to the contrary is a refutation of the validity of the entire belief system. It will always be much harder to move away from a belief system than it is to move away from money.

I'm sorry, but I really think you are just trolling and I won't have any of it. You see, veganism is based on scientific fact and nutritional research, not conjured beliefs. If you have reason to think there is significant scientific research to dispute my claims, please cite those as I've asked, rather than appealing to another attack on my character. By the way, the evidence is already overwhelming to implicate eggs as damaging to your health. One just has to be reasonable and willing to seek out the information to make own unbiased conclusions.

I'm sorry, but the one absolute metric we do have in terms of nutritional quality (athletic performance) shows that intelligent inclusion of animal products provides better results than a vegan diet. In terms of longevity, basically all the "blue zone" diets do include animal products in moderation. You might be able to push your cholesterol numbers down slightly with a vegan diet, but note that some cholesterol is necessary for optimal health, so there is no reason to play "how low can you go".

Furthermore, you can't make blanket claims like "eggs are damaging to your health", because there are tons scenarios where that is untrue. Are eggs a bad dietary choice for someone who already consumes a high saturated fat, low fiber diet? Probably. On the other hand, eggs are an integral part of my diet and I would be much less healthy without them.

You should at least be honest about your motivations as a vegan. I don't care if you want to take a stand against subjugation of animals, that's fine, but don't try and sell the diet to people who don't share your feelings in that regard with health scare tactics. That's just plain lame.

> the one absolute metric we do have in terms of nutritional quality (athletic performance) shows that intelligent inclusion of animal products provides better results than a vegan diet

Please cite any references which support this claim.

Well controlled studies on elite athletes are pretty hard to come by, because nobody wants to go off a routine that is working for them and potentially be set back several months for the sake of science. The people near the top are hyper-competitive and will do whatever it takes to win.

That being said, in addition to the anecdotal evidence that vegans are VASTLY under-represented in the upper echelons of strength and power sports compared with their relative abundance in the general population, there are some good studies comparing muscle protein synthesis following ingestion of whey vs soy protein:

http://jap.physiology.org/content/107/3/987.short http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/2/373.short http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1743-7075-9-57.pdf

There is also some data suggesting vegans have slightly lower free testosterone and free IGF-1 than omnivores too, though at the highest levels rampant steroid use probably makes this a moot point.

The first two studies were done by the same author from the same "McMaster University" and were directly funded by dairy lobbying boards, whereas the third study was funded by the US Dairy Research Institute - not exactly fair and unbiased. Still, none of these data support your earlier claim, "intelligent inclusion of animal products provides better results than a vegan diet". And your anecdotal evidence is not relevant to this discussion anymore than one's anecdotal evidence of a 100-year old, allegedly healthy grandmother eating bacon every morning should lead one to conclude it's okay to eat in that way.

> There is also some data suggesting vegans have slightly lower free testosterone and free IGF-1 than omnivores too, though at the highest levels rampant steroid use probably makes this a moot point.

Again, you are using conjecture over peer reviewed research. Take a look at http://nutritionfacts.org/2013/02/12/less-cancer-in-vegan-me... if you're interested in actually learning the facts.

Finally, the down votes just serve my point. People rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend animal products have some magical effect on human health, especially in athletes, which is a true ode to powerful industry lobbying.

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