Less Processed Meat, More Plant-Based Foods May Boost Longevity
npr.org
npr.org
One day I had this niggling doubt that I continued to be a vegetarian for cultural rather than ethical reasons. I tested that hypothesis by eating a hamburger. It was literally the worst thing I had ever tasted. I had to try hard not to throw up and offend my hosts.
Then I tasted bacon, hot dogs pastrami sandwiches and fried chicken and I understood why people like meat. That continued for a few more months.
About six months after the hamburger episode, I had another epiphany that I don't like eating animals since I don't like animals being eaten. I turned vegan. All's well that ends well.
There's a term for vegans who don't actually eat whole foods: "french fry vegan". It's as derisive as it sounds. If you're eating processed meat substitutes all the time as a vegetarian, IMO you aren't doing it right. I'm sure plenty of other people would agree.
And yet, vegetarians do eat those things sometimes. It's cultural. In the West (not just in the USA, in much of Europe as well), a lot of traditional foods are either meat-based or contain meat. My friends and I want to go out for a burger and a milkshake, because that's fun for us; I want a damn burger. A grilled mushroom on a roll is equally delicious, but it just isn't the same.
I couldn't disagree more. The vast majority of vegans are vegan primarily for religious reasons or because of animal welfare and/or environmental concerns (see, e.g., [0]). Heavily processed plant-based foods clearly address the religious and animal welfare considerations, and I suspect they're far more environmentally friendly than animal products despite the energy used to process and ship them.
Avoiding heavily processed foods is a good idea in general. But it's orthogonal to veganism. And eating heavily processed foods doesn't invalidate the benefits of veganism - aside from the health benefits, which are the primary concern for only a slim minority of vegans.
[0] https://vomadlife.com/blogs/news/why-people-go-vegan-2019-gl... - I assume this understates the share who cite religious reasons because of the bias toward English-speaking countries.
It seems you didn't even bother to read the article to check if it would make good segue into your vegan epiphany story: there is no mention of processed meat substitutes.
It also seems like the hamburger you tried was quite poorly prepared if hot dogs made a more compelling case for eating meat.
And also have a look at research by PCRM (group of doctors and medical pros): https://www.pcrm.org/term/processed-meat
Easy less processed food, and lots of fruit, veg, fiber, and protein from whatever source you like. That's the key to a healthy diet.
You have to try really hard to be unhealthy if you eat unprocessed meat, veggies, grains and stick to the basics. It's what millions of years of evolution engineered our body for. Not 300gr of smoked bacon every morning and 1L of fruit juice per day.
I just really believe, that for the most part my body knows the best whats good for him. I just have to really pay attention. So sugar might taste good, but my body does not feel good, when eating too much of it. Meat is good, but only if it is good meat and not too much (meat that did not suffer too much and pushed with medicaments).
So balanced diet, lots of vegetables ... the classical recommendation, seems right.
I already addressed the first part in another comment in this thread. I wanted to point out that the "protein" argument is dated and uninformed. Protein is everywhere, grains, nuts, seeds and vegetables. It does not need to be "extracted" through some external process, it occurs naturally and can be used by your body. Also no one "struggled" with this, huge populations of the planet have been getting protein from plants for a long time before modern fake meat.
But, Humans tend to take things too far, and inventing new ways of processing is really fun! So, most food today is over-processed. It’s acceptable to grind, dice, tear, smash, smush, squeeze, ferment, spice, salt, and cook veggies, lightly. Any more than that is risky territory.
I would hardly qualified lets say smoked bacon as processed food in that sense. But all of those microwave ready meals et al. large content of it is cheap filler masqueraded as actual product.
“Microwave ready meals” are typically just pre-cooked meals prepared for reheating - they’re probably not the best meals in terms of ingredient quality or cooking methods, and low-quality ones might have some plant starches as filler, but most of them are pretty straightforward.
Actually, most meat nowadays is injected with huge amounts of sodium. It’s like we’re all eating log term storage foods-even that raw meats.
But I just took a look in my freezer at two bog-standard ready meals I have there just in case - macaroni and cheese, and a beef lasagne. They’re each about 1.5g of salt, and there’s nothing notable about the ingredients.
NHS guidelines in the UK are <6g of salt (2400mg sodium) per day. US guidelines are 2300mg. Salt and sodium are not the same; 1.5g of salt is about 600mg sodium, or about 1/4 of the recommended daily limit. That seems entirely reasonable for a main meal.
Smoked bacon is exactly the sort of thing they warn to eat sparingly because it is a highly processed food. It doesn't really matter that we've been making it for some time, it is still highly processed. I'd argue that most of it has added chemicals and things like the meat you describe upfront. Even without, the actual curing and smoking is what makes it more harmful.
Hm cooked food maybe; processed food, not really, at least according to the current definition of it.
https://www.foodindustry.com/articles/the-4-categories-of-pr...
That is simply not true. Cholesterol are split in at least 2 different groups. HDL and LDL, the good and the bad respectively. But it's not the whole picture, a subgroup of LDL is considered mostly harmless as it rarely crosses into the bloodstream. The number that you really want to minimize is called LDL-p (LDL particles) in your blood, and surprisingly many saturated fats play a role in reducing that number, and increasing the HDL, which has been shown to be good for your health.
This article is well sourced, and covers almost everything. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/saturated-fat-good-or-b...
Here's a clip of Dr Rhonda Patrick, who is incredibly well informed on the effects of dietary cholesterol, basically saying the same thing: https://youtu.be/VnYeuES3joc
The reason that processed meat (that is meats which are smoked, salted, etc.) is recommended to not be eaten is because it has been shown to be carcinogenic.
The egg thing is based on the idea (I actually don't know enough to know if this is correct or not) that dietary cholesterol intake affects blood cholesterol levels, and eggs have a bit of dietary cholesterol in them.
I get that we're not very educated within this area but perhaps we should stay quiet then? What's the point in writing comments on HN about things we know very little about?
And any science news headline containing the word "may" should probably be ignored. That's a good sign that they're exaggerating a single study. The media makes money by sensationalizing research, not reporting it accurately.
As for eggs and cholesterol, about 80% + of cholesterol is produced in the liver, and increasing dietary cholesterol by HUGE amounts at best changes blood cholesterol by 2-4%
Sorry I can't dig up the study right now, but perhaps searching pubmed may find it.
Smoking is probably not good either.
I guess the curing time could also be relevant but I don't believe there is anything to suggest that curing time is an issue.
Knowing this I was wondering for ages "surely it can only be the nitrates" and that seemed to be the case. It is also possible to buy bacon safely cured without nitrates now too.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/opinion/antibiotics-and-t... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/05/most-... [3] https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/06/antibiotics-are-...
It's like eating a fruit vs drinking a juice, or eating raw veggies vs a broth. The original material is the same but it doesn't mean it holds the same benefits.
>It's like eating a fruit vs drinking a juice
Another thing that doesn't matter. What exactly do you think magically happens when you put an orange into a blender and mix with a bit of water that would make it lose its nutritional value?
You're free to believe what you want. A slime of chicken skin, fat and ligaments isn't digested the same way as a chunk of chicken breast. The nutritional values are just a small part of a big equation.
> Another thing that doesn't matter. What exactly do you think magically happens
Many things happen and none of them are magical. The glycemic index of a raw fruit isn't the same as a juice from the same fruit for example, you don't get the fibers, &c.
> The inuit did perfectly well on an all-meat diet.
That's another side of my point, they evolved on that diet, most people didn't. Do you think the lifestyle of the average first worlder has anything to do with inuit lifestyle?
Only if you buy a juice concentrate. Making your own juice is equivalent to chewing an orange.
>You're free to believe what you want. A slime of chicken skin, fat and ligaments isn't digested the same way as a chunk of chicken breast. The nutritional values are just a small part of a big equation.
Of course not, I'm not arguing for that. What I am arguing for is that there's nothing inherently unhealthy about eating any of those things, and that offal is actually very nutritious.
>That's another side of my point, they evolved on that diet, most people didn't. Do you think the lifestyle of the average first worlder has anything to do with inuit lifestyle?
If an American adopted the diet of an inuit in such a way that their caloric needs are satisfied then I doubt it would matter. It is definitely possible that the inuit have evolved in some ways to accomodate for their diet, do you have any sources for that?
All of these are healthy.
They might sound "disgusting" for modern consumers accustomed to 100% white meat, but none of them are harmful. In fact, bone marrow, skin, and organ meat contain many micronutrients that are less abundant in regular white meat, including vitamin A, B12 and collagen.
(Of course that means that the calf will take most -but not all- of the milk during that time. But then it is stated that the cost for the vet goes down a lot in exchange.)
Another option I found is to give several calves to one cow for 6 months, which has advantages and disadvantages compared to the first way. (Longer time with milk and natural suckling behaviour but calves without their mother and the smaller ones might get less milk.)
edit: Here is a list with places in Germany that do that:
https://welttierschutz.org/hofliste-mit-mutter-oder-ammengeb...
I'm not sure how to translate the key words for english googling.
Let's concentrate of the suffering of our fellow human beings...
If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.
"We should because we can"? There are many things that we "can" do that we better not do. There's no automatic logical deduction from "we can" to "so we should".
Killing animals for their meat is not like torturing animals for no reason (which indeed would be unnecessary).
And how steep would the slope be? E.g. what about killing rodents and house pests?
Yes, we're omnivores. Or it's complicated [1].
> and lions don't have grocery stores.
Sucks to be them.
But we have been eating meat for millennia, naturally, before we ever concerned ourselves about reading/writing and math, so there's that.
>If ducks stopped raping other ducks, they'd go extinct too. Not really sure if that's an argument in favor of human rapists, though.
That would have mattered only if the same conditions applied (e.g. extinction threat otherwise), which they don't. So it's looks more like a way to force the argument against eating meat based on a strong association with something obviously negative ("think of the children" style argument).
[1] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Are_humans_omnivores_or_herb...
Exactly the point I'm making. Humans don't face extinction if we stop eating animal products, so comparing us to lions is not a valid argument for why we should eat meat.
Just not for throwing the whole eating animals thing altogether.
Whether something is “natural” has no bearing on its goodness. And certainly plenty of the behaviors that cause human suffering are 100% natural.
“If carnivore animals has the same concerns and turned to tofu, they’d be dead.”
We’re not obligate carnivores so this is a non-sequitor.
“Let’s concentrate on the suffering of our fellow human beings...”
This is a fine conclusion that just doesn’t happen to follow from anything else you said.
Well, goodness also is not a logical argument. Good according to what, some arbitrary morals? Other people find it perfectly good to eat burgers.
>And certainly plenty of the behaviors that cause human suffering are 100% natural.
Only in the contrived sense, that we are part of nature as a species.
But we have long made the distinction that our more advanced developments concerning invention, historical developments, innovation, etc, are part of "civilization", and it's the behaviors that we already had before we developed those that are our "natural" part.
And we did ate meat before we had writing, and mobile phones.
>This is a fine conclusion that just doesn’t happen to follow from anything else you said.
Isn't not meant to be a logical deduction from something said earlier, it's meant to be about prioritization.
Rape, murder, and infanticide are all natural human behaviors by this definition, and they’ve become less common as we’ve become more divorced from nature. Also natural: having about half of your children die what are now preventable deaths. Life in nature is complete shit.
And I was assuming here a basically utilitarian definition of the good, because of your concern with suffering. Of course it’s debatable.
- rodents die in wheat field during harvest
- recently there was an article on HN of olive harvests killing hundreds of birds
- entire forests are destroyed with wildlife by burning to grow palms for palm oil
Not nearly as many, of course, and the same products are eaten by meat eaters as well, and most plants are grown for animal feeding, but yes, it's impossible to live a regular human life and not indirectly hurt animals, humans or the environment. You can try to minimize it, though.
But seriously, I come from a family of farmers, and I know that the things that farmers do to animals is way worse than anything you've described here.
https://epi.grants.cancer.gov/diet/foodsources/fatty_acids/t...
One study pointing in a direction in biochem can be safely ignored until it's been solidly replicated and built upon.
That isn't actually true. It is a very misleading claim spread to promote veganism. It comes from comparing the raw caloric value of field corn, to the caloric value of beef. In reality, We do not actually eat field corn, we turn it into HFCS and corn oil, this reduces the energy efficiency of corn dramatically. A plant based diet also should not be based on HFCS and corn oil.
Second, beef is the worst meat to compare to, it is not an accurate representation for meat in general. Chicken being fed on corn based feed produces 5 million calories per acre, more than almost all the plant based crops a vegan diet would generally be based on, including soy, and equal to staples like wheat.
Third, even in comparing beef they do it wrong. They are comparing to hypothetical beef raised entirely on corn. There is no such beef. All beef is grass fed for the first year, they are only finished on grain.
I agree that we don't eat much corn directly, but if it weren't used to feed livestock, we could use the land for something else, like potatoes or lentils or whatever grows in similar climate to corn, which are actually eaten. I'm somewhat doubtful of your claim that corn fed chicken produce 5 million calories per acre. Do you have a citation for that? The usual rule of thumb for going up one level in the food chain is that you lose 9/10th of the energy and corn only produces on the order of 12 million calories per acre. This random google result here [2] indeed claims about 1.4 million calories per acre for chicken.
[1] http://www.fao.org/3/a0701e/a0701e00.htm
[2] http://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calories_per_acre_for_vario...
[1] https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2017/07/02/low-carbohydrate-...
Does arithmetic count? The stats are available to look up yourself, the math is simple to do. But there's nobody funding publishing "debunk vegan nonsense" papers like there are people funding "make up vegan nonsense". So the only people you can find doing the math for you are just random people like the blog I link to later in this post.
>I agree that we don't eat much corn directly, but if it weren't used to feed livestock, we could use the land for something else, like potatoes or lentils or whatever grows in similar climate to corn, which are actually eaten
Most of those alternatives produce far fewer calories per acre than corn, which is the issue. An honest comparison shows most plant crops produce very low calories per acre, and require lots of diesel to produce and transport. Yes, you could grow something else. And almost all of those something elses are worse than corn fed chicken from an energy efficiency standpoint. If vegans want to argue the impact of meat vs plants in this way, then they need to apply the same standard to plants, and that means demanding that the vast majority of crops being grown are abandoned in favor of the tiny number that meet corn's energy output: corn, sugarcane, potatoes, palm. There's your acceptable vegan diet if we're going to limit things for being less efficient than corn.
>The usual rule of thumb for going up one level in the food chain is that you lose 9/10th of the energy
We're not talking about a natural ecosystem, which is what that rule of thumb is for. We're talking about animals that have been bred specifically to grow very large very quickly on very little food.
>and corn only produces on the order of 12 million calories per acre
No, corn produces 12 million calories per acre in human edible calories when converted to corn oil and HFCS. It produces 15 million calories per acre as livestock feed.
>This random google result here [2] indeed claims about 1.4 million calories per acre for chicken.
And it is very wrong. It is making up a silly number by using the human figure for corn calories per acre not the livestock feed figure. Then assuming chickens are fed 50/50 corn and soy when in reality their feed is almost entirely corn. It is also assuming a feed conversion ratio of 3, which is nearly double the actual ratio of 1.6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio#Poultry
Here's a post that shows math for why this vegan meme is wrong: https://bovinepracticum.weebly.com/ruminations/the-beef-vs-v...
They mainly seem interested in making emotional appeals, although they are probably right in that it is a better return on investment for them.
- rodents die in wheat field during harvest
- recently there was an article on HN of olive harvests killing hundreds of birds
- entire forests are destroyed with wildlife by burning to grow palms for palm oil
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/death-as-a-foodborne-illnes...
And btw you linked an article with the following conclusion : "The video confirmed what I already knew from evaluating the published evidence: it is healthier to eat more plant-based foods and less red meat."
>And btw you linked an article with the following conclusion
Yes. The point is that even plenty of vegans, who agree with his premise, know he openly lies to promote veganism.
https://www.thatnerdysciencegirl.com/2015/11/13/the-case-aga...
What is the basis for this belief?
>Load up on fresh vegetables and fruits instead.
Many fresh vegetables are inflammatory. Plants evolved chemicals to hinder herbation. Roots/tubers and fruit are generally fine, but leaves/stems/flowers are generally full of inflammatory anti-nutrients and should be cooked.
Please post sources.
Thank you.
Which is more authoritative than a comment on HN. I believe it’s on you to find a more authoritative source that contradicts the above.
I agree that ultimately facts are what matter, but I disagree on this point. In the real world where it's not possible to author or reference a peer-reviewed research study for every statement or decision you'd like to make, this authority has value.
TThe administrators of Harvard Medical School, a well respected university, were willing to publish this content on a domain they controlled. This implies that some trusted expert at this trusted institution authored, reviewed, and published this content. This means that they don't believe that this content is so inaccurate as to expose the institution to a reputation loss, as opposed to say www.fake-health-expert.example.com. In fact, this may have more authority than a peer-reviewed study that doesn't properly disclose its funding by e.g. the dairy or sugar industry.
This skin in the game of reputational risk is orders of magnitude different than your or my reputational risk by posting a comment to HN.
No it does not. It is a blog post. Tons of people have blogs on that domain. There is absolutely no standard of authority or correctness involved. You are falsely inferring that there are trusted experts involved. There is no factual basis for that belief.
But not the worst thing you can do if you are concerned about having a healthy heart[1]
[1] https://asunow.asu.edu/20170317-discoveries-despite-meat-hea...
"United Kingdom-based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality. Differences found for specific causes of death merit further investigation."
Everywhere I look, I see meat, especially red meat, being demonized, and increasing inflammation.
Ideas:
* 'Worse' cuts of meat (near bone, nerves, etc)
* Grinding/processing system introduces contamination.
* Processing mixes meats from many animals which spreads infections more.
* Smaller pieces of meat degrade with bacteria faster.
* Processed meat tends to be served with less healthy meals otherwise (more salt, fat).
First off, steak and bacon and pork taste delicious, and life on rabbit food is not, in my opinion, worth living.
Second of all, the only way that I can maintain anything close to what the literature says should be a healthy weight is when I slash grains out of my diet and eat low carb, high fat, supplemented by green vegetables. Any vegetarian diet's benefits pale in comparison to the threat of diabetes and general wear and tear from carrying extra weight around.
This is not a human diet, and humans are not herbivores. Herbivores have complex stomachs or eat their own poop (eg, gorrillas and rabbits).
After the health flush of the first few months, veganism is a downward spiral to pasty skin, mood-swings, depression, dark circles, fatigue, skinny-but-fat, Joint paint, constant hunger/lack-of-satisfaction, excessive volume of eating. Vegans eat like you wouldn't believe. And a great deal of wildlife dies due to agricultural farming.
And despite what people say, anthropologically we are not omnivores but carnivores. Radio-isotope analysis has us eating a diet close to a wolf by preference over the last million years. Unlike a pig, a genuine omnivore, we do not have a proper cecum.
But sure, a few humans are better adapted to a plant-based diet than others, and our distant genetics was herbivore which means these genes can re-express, but for most people veganism becomes a nightmare and explains why the level has historically been at 0.3%.