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Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

I don't eat much meat - I don't eat beef or pork at all, I eat some fish and chicken. I think too much meat is hard on your digestive tract, and the high caloric density with relatively low micronutrients makes it a bad call for me. Chicken, fish, yes. Beef, pork, other mammals, no.

BUT, the China Study book is very questionable. There's a very thorough rebuttal here:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2JXW2AQARAXZL/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...

It's a very good rebuttal. I agree with a low-ish meat diet, but the China Study book (as opposed to the actual study) is riddled with errors and bad science.

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You can also see one which was posted here:

"The China Study: Fact or Fallacy?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499447

I don't want to be right yesterday, so thanks for that link. I agree that the book contains lots of promotion, but it still helped me a lot in understanding the role that nutrition has in our lives. My take home from that book is that eating a lot of processed foods and meat is harmful, and it's better to eat whole foods instead, mostly plants.

Edit: I'm not a vegetarian by the way.

> eating a lot of ... meat is harmful

As one of the links explains, the data shows almost the opposite. More meat was weakly protective.

That's funny, I specifically avoid fish (but eat other mammals) because I care more about the mercury in fish (and all aquatic meats) than I do about the non-cerebral badness of meat.

Yeah, nutrition is funny with all the conflicting advice. I did some looking into it and the rates of mercury poisoning are extraordinary low - fish-eating societies like Okinawa and Japan tend to be quite healthy and long-lived, and it takes eating an immense amount of fish to get mercury poisoning (something crazy like 5 servings/day, if memory serves). I feel pretty comfortable eating 1-3 servings of fish maybe 3-4 days per week, chicken or no meat on the other days.

> too much meat is hard on your digestive tract

That's completely crazy. Meat and fat are the easiest things to digest. There is no such thing as an allergy to meat, whereas something like a quarter of people have various allergies to grains, or various nightshade related plants.

Pretty much all plants have various toxins to prevent digestion. That's why plants in general need so much heavy processing and cooking to eat safely. You can eat a freshly killed animal raw reasonably safely. Eating a lot of raw grains or sweet potatoes could kill you.

Yes, there is such a thing as an allergy to meat (generally specific kinds of meat, just like you'll have an allergy to specific kinds of plants).

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