Hacker News Reader

Comment by windexh8er | Hacker News Reader

This is likely the best reference we have to date given the size and timeframe of the study:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

There are many other short term studies that support this fully. You may not want to believe red meat consumption is indicative of negative health indicators, but most notable cardiologists in the field fully support the position.

View on HN

Hate to break it to you, but even cardiologists can’t summon causation from correlation.

So your claim is you have better scientific basis than industry experts? I'll gladly challenge you to a 6-12 month comparison of you eating meats and me eating a primary plant based diet and pay for WellnessFX panels. If you lose you repay me.

Edit: vegetable --> plant, and if I win (we can agree on some defined objective comparisons and scoring offline) I'll even donate the money you'd have repaid back to the charity of my choosing. I'd be glad to make our miminal findings public as well.

No, what I’m saying is that correlational studies are fundamentally incapable of proving causation[0]. Furthermore, despite 50 years of nutritional advice in line with the study you linked to, and despite reductions in red meat consumption[1], health outcomes have gotten catastrophically worse, not better. So maybe the conclusions that people are drawing from these studies are wrong.

Read Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes if you want to do a deep dive on how so many people can be so wrong about something for so long. It will completely undermine your faith in experts along the way.

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t...

[1]: https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/januaryfebruary/us...

Gary Taubes has his own biases and problems: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/gary-taubes-and-the-case-ag...

In fact, the study he proposed to test his hypothesis failed: https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Manage-Weight/NuSI-study-bac...

That's not to say Taubes has not written a lot of good and important things, but it is an example of someone who is in so deep that they are missing the forest for the trees. Carbs are obviously not the devil, it's just that the overabundance of cheap, processed carbs have made the diseases of abundance commonplace.

That’s all fine and we’ll, but I’m not mentioning Taubes for his carbs hypothesis (btw, he goes to great pains in Good Calories, Bad Calories to make sure the reader understands that his hypothesis could be wrong because it is also lacking the necessary type of study to demonstrate it’s effectiveness). I’m linking to him because he has important stuff to say about the limits of epidemiology, in general, and the terrible state of nutrition science, more specifically.

You can see how frustrating it is that someone is providing actual studies while you're providing links to the NY Times?

The article in the NY Times is by a highly respected science journalist. It examines a bunch of epidemiological studies and explains why they are fundamentally limited. It should be required reading for anybody who wants to make decsisions based on epidemiology.

You should read it. Seriously. It’s way more important than anything else on HN right now. I promise.

You're choosing a position based on a personal bias and ignore scientific evidence by industry experts. You also won't back up your unfounded claims and chose to ignore the challenge I've presented. I wonder why...

> chose to ignore the challenge I've presented. I wonder why...

My guess here is that it's because you offered somebody a 6-12 month physical challenge on a discussion thread about nutrition. Unless you're willing to engage in a 6-12 month comprehensive study of messageboard thread challenges, which we will cofinance (but in the end, if we find that these types of challenges are generally accepted as arguments, I'll compensate you for your half of the research budget, and vice-versa), you must concede that that's a silly thing to wonder about...

No, I’m ignoring the experts because anybody with half a brain can see that they are wrong. And I ignored your silly challenge because it has no bearing on the argument we are having.

I have already done this for the past 5 years on a rather strict ketogenic diet eating a fair share of red meat. It's been nothing short of amazing for my health. I'm not saying it's the only way to be healthy, far from it. We are very adaptable. But for me at least, it does not seem to be detrimental in the least.

You've done panels? I had done Paleo for years and on a whim I decided to try plant based for 2018 and have seen many improvements as well. I'd be curious how your panels compare to mine, especially with regard to cardiovascular focal areas.

I'd be curious how your panels compare to mine

Do you have a link to your before/after panels? I'd be curious to see this, and also be interested in your before/after diet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com