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Comment by elevenoh | Hacker News Reader

Everyone is blaming meat.

Everyone I know who eats 90%+ carnivore diet looks/feels great.

CheapProcessedVeganFood co's perhaps?

There may be something else in play: carb consumption. If you are 90% carnivore, you eat very few carbs per day, and lots of protein. If you are vegan, it is possible to eat rice and vegan muffins and croissants all day. (The vegan muffins I tried from whole foods were some of the sweetest things I've ever eaten. The vegan croissants I had from WF used margarine and didn't taste anywhere as good as the butter croissants.) So a vegan diet can definitely be less healthy than a omnivore diet.

I think if you are vegan and ate 90% tofu / pea protein / rice protein products, and spent the rest of your intake on avocados and olive and coconut oil and almonds and pecans, you might also look and feel great.

I think it boils down to ketosis/water fasting/calorie restriction.

Even if you eat a very protein-rich diet, your body is not going to accidentally slip into ketosis unless you are really fastidious about keeping carbs almost entirely out. There is no benefit to ketosis for the average person versus a diet that is similar calorically, and also low on carbs/starch but not low enough to be in ketosis.

Any runner preparing for a marathon is going to tell you how important carbs are.

Everything in moderation.

I think CheapProcessedVeganFood (Big Soy, and food processors downstream of Big Soy) is being more opportunistic then causing. The case against meat is very wide and much of it is based on more solid science then the anti-fat science 50 years ago. I suspect in the next decade we’ll see a very clear connection between lower meat/dairy consumption and better gut health, which will explain most of the health benefits we see in a plant based diet.

Are you claiming there's some wealthy Vegan lobby that's paying scientists blame meat for health problems? You really think that vegan food producers are more powerful than the meat and dairy industries?

Seriously? The "nutrition" industry is absolutely huge and banks off of the fact that we don't really know anything about diet, except that trans fats are bad, lots of refined sugar is bad, and folic acid is important for pregnant women. They point the finger at all manner of foods from red meats to fruits and everything in between, in order to sell supplements, fad diets, overpriced holistic/integrative medicine sessions, etc.

There’s a lot of trends and over interpreted small studies within popular nutrition science, but the basics are quite solid and quite simple: eat less, eat much more vegetables and fruit. There’s also solid evidence that too much red meat causes cancer.

Exactly. Here is another point in case: Go to the website of whichever body governs nutrition in your country (or the WHO) and see what they recommend and why.

There is no global conspiracy against red meat, it's simply our current scientific understanding.

No one said it's a conspiracy. It is clearly a misunderstanding of our actual knowledge, which is why we have studies that show everything from associations between red meat and cancer, no effects whatsoever between the two, and even reduction in some cancers from red meat consumption. That is standard across the entire field of nutrition epidemiology, but "nutritionists" and health "experts" rely on the fact that, if they cite a single study showing a cancer connection, people will eat it up and accept it as fact.

I'm not sure what your point is: Do you disagree that red meat is a carcinogen?

The fact that we have studies that show the full spectrum of association is exactly what you would expect, and, assuming no biases, is a strong indication that it's not the most powerful carcinogen there is.

I would even hypothesise that for most people simply eating more vegetables and greens is more beneficial than leaving out red meat and not changing vegetable intake.

Also you are free to take as many risks as you want (mostly), and there are plenty of people smoking, drinking tons of soda etc.

Soy and corn are the largest and most destructive monoculture crops in America, though a large amount is used as animal feed.

Nonetheless, "veganism" does not imply good agricultural practices or less money or power — likely the opposite. Do not think of veganism as your local farmers market. Think of it as mostly destructive monoculture farming.

Healthy ecosystems require ruminants and other animals and plants to thrive. Modern agriculture is usually split up — barren feed lots, barren corn fields, etc. Regenerative agriculture like what the Savory Institute espouses is what's needed.

Vegans are also a great target market and quite lucrative. People who can afford to be vegan will pay higher prices for lower cost goods. I wouldn't be surprised to see lobbying from vegan food companies.

> People who can afford to be vegan will pay higher prices for lower cost goods.

It's kind of funny how "vegan" has become a marketing term to the extent that vegan food is supposed to be expensive.

Vegan food is the cheapest food there is and powers nutrition on a global scale. Think wheat, rice, potatoes, beans, every single vegetable, all fruit, and products made thereof, bread, pasta, noodles, oils, etc.

In most parts of the world the standard diet is predominantly plant-based and meat is a luxury.

It used to be the same in Europe - my grandparents had meat at most once a week, usually on a Sunday.

The expensive bit is that most vegans want to broadly maintain the flavors and textures of a animal products diet without the animal products.

Oh, agreed, for sure. My grandparents were Germans who grew up during the war, and for them meat was seen as a great luxury — even bread was seen as a speciality.

But in the US (and I think it is mostly an American phenomenon), veganism has taken on a sort of strange alter ego as a life of expensive vegan donuts and vegan restaurants that charge (no joke) $18 for a small sandwich.

So I think it's important to differentiate between the two kinds of veganism — the expensive fad diet kind, and the one borne out of necessity.

Soy and corn in america is the meat industry

Yes, and I've started buying grass meats fed from local farms. It does mean that meat is more of a luxury, but I think food should be quality over quantity.

Which makes them commodities unless you can upsell them as health foods.

One has much bigger profit margins, better automation, and responds better to scale. This is extra true if you can get people to pay a premium for plant-based meat or oat milk.

Just make sure they know they're making the world a better place at your 32.30% gross margin (Beyond Meat). Compare to the gross margins of even big meat players like Pilgrims Pride or Sanderson Farms at 5-6%.

Vegan food producers are just big agriculture, so it actually isn't that unrealistic that some multinational soy or corn corporation is pushing this because they make more money from food additives than animal feed.

Why is that hard to imagine?

The plant based meat industry alone had a $4 billion market in 2020, about 39% of which is in the US, and it's total is forecasted to grow to $14 billion by 2027. [1]

While not a direct comparison, the US meat market is around a $7 billion annual market. [2]

[1] https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/plant-ba...

[2] https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/me...

That doesn't make sense to me at all. You're telling me the plant-based meat market in America is 57% of the size of real-meat, and that the average spend on meat in the US is only 20$ per person per year?

>The market value of the processed meat is expected to rise from 714 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 to over 1.5 trillion dollars by 2022.

https://www.statista.com/topics/4880/global-meat-industry/

It looks like the ibisworld link might be conflating US exports of meat with the US market total

"Perhaps" = "claiming"?

Maybe the person should have used: "suggesting"? Anyhow, I share the sentiment that the "vegan lobby" is an easy target to pick.

> You really think that vegan food producers are more powerful than the meat and dairy industries?

The corn lobby is definitely more powerful than meat or dairy are, yes.

Why would the corn lobby be anti meat and dairy? 1/3 of the corn grown in the US is used for livestock feed.

I don't believe that I said they were, I just said they were more powerful.

I think the overall meat thing is not necessarily dietary science related. That seems to stem more from environmental or ethical concerns.

It seems to be more of a red meat and saturated fat issue. I don't know about who might be behind it, or if it is even misguided.

Could it also relate to ketosis perhaps? (Water) fasting and calorie restriction seem to have favorable effects on living organisms.

I don't know. I tend to just follow the "everything in moderation" philosophy and look to stay away from some things when possible, like trans fats, soda, and artificial stuff. I figure if both sets of my grandparents made it to their 80s and 90s that way (without major issues up to that point), then it should be good enough for me.

Personally, the reason I avoid red meat is tail risk. I want to reduce the odds that I die abruptly because of cancer or heart disease. How great I look/feel takes a backseat to ensuring I live 60-70 more years, rather than 20-30 more.

I think you are basing your worldview on hearsay evidence, elevenoh.

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