We were sold a bill of goods with the whole “fat is bad” push. It’s bullsh*t.
But my cholesterol has risen and my doctor wants me on statins. Brain fog is a common side effect of those. I declined. I don't believe my higher cholesterol is dangerous in a carnivore context, but even if it were, I would tend to choose a clear mind and a sudden death over a fogged mind and longer life.
I also have extended strict vegan experience, and stopped partly due to brain fog.
I notice in this thread there is little mention of this giant portion of the heart-health puzzle, and talk of nutrition only.
I've been doing weight training for years (because I don't enjoy endurance exercise) and it's kept my numbers in strong shape. I eat a vast amount of animal products (although heavily biased towards fish and eggs instead of red meat), and could not imagine for a second a vegetarian and especially vegan diet.
I think a vegan diet requires supplementation (B12, and god knows what else), for one thing, and most vegans aren't doing it for health reasons but for moral ones.
But I still think the biggest health killer is a lifestyle with insufficient movement in the day to day. Many people don't even walk anywhere, and their ever-increasing sizes show it.
18 months is around 2% of your total expected lifespan. Cardiac issues take decades to build up. It’s far too early to draw conclusions about the diet after less than 2 years, especially when you spent twice as long on a vegan diet immediately before the carnivore diet.
Since May I've gone off the diet and been indulging in carbs/sugar at every turn to try to get back up and above my normal weight (I'm at 165lbs now) and it has been like dropping a neutrino bomb on my cognition. I would describe my new mental state as being in a stupor. Writing this recap I'm struggling with word recall and remembering all the events of my diet and just generally feel lethargic/slow. Once I get to 170lbs I'm hoping to give the diet another go this fall and maybe be able to go for a bit longer and give me time to experiment with other calorie sources like sweet potatoes/white rice/berries.
Anyways, leaving this comment here for myself as a note to reflect back on and some anecdote for anyone interested in trying the diet. I'd recommend it if you're curious.
Another thing you might consider along with white rice is (ab)using one day per week as a carb stuffing day to artificially float your weight a bit, if that's a concern. I've found that injection of carbs didn't cause carb-induced brain fogging through the rest of the week, and I use it to occasionally eat unhealthy things that shouldn't be consumed frequently. I eat a low calorie, low sugar diet that I'm quite happy with, so that optional carb-heavy day is a nice flex point in an otherwise rigid dietary approach.
Yea I think if I can't control my weight the second time around, I'll consider doing a carb day on Fridays so that I have the weekend to recover. Thanks for that suggestion!
One of the major reasons I hold the medical and bio community is such low esteem - they don't know what they don't know yet act as if they do. Most can't manage a DoE correctly. But imagining systems? Nope!
On one hand, this is due to poor science journalism. The media loves nutritional research because telling people what they are doing wrong generates clicks. It is very easy to sensationalize. "A small correlation between celery and colon cancer in a specific population from a specific region" (or whatever) in a scientific paper becomes "Celery slowly killing you, Harvard researchers prove".
One the other hand, this is how science works. We do experiments, get the results of those experiments, and try to make the best use of the data we have. Usually, the truth is much more complicated, but there are always bigger and more complicated experiments which need to be done to understand this more complicated truth. This happens all the time in all fields of science, but isn't as visible to the broader public because most research isn't all that relevant or interesting to non-scientists.
It is REALLY hard to design good (ethical) experiments in nutrition. The scientific consensus now is very different than what it will be in 10 years, because we will have more data and higher quality data. This will allow researchers to continue to incorporate more complexities and nonlinear effects. So you're right in that "linear thinking" is not ideal, but a linear model is better than no model.
That is not how science works. A scientific experiment has to have enough statistical power for the claim you are trying to make. If it doesn't, then you don't make the claim.
As you say, it's extremely hard to make good (I would say even decent) nutritional studies. The vast majority of nutritional studies are not even close. Why then do dieticians pretend to be medical doctors and give advice based on these studies? Why do they give advice to entire nations based on scientific-sounding gobbledygook?
When you don't know something, the scientific thing to do is to say you don't know. Physicists don't claim they know how gravity works at the quantum level just because they have some models that sorta kinda work sometimes. A linear model of a non-linear phenomenon is not in any way better than no model - it's obviously worse.
The “fat is bad” push is a product of the sugar industry and using nutrition labels to sell products to consumers based on fear. And it was an easy sell because people were getting fatter (due to sugar intake and nutrition-devoid white bread).
Which brings me to gluten free: If you think you have gluten intolerance but you don’t swell up when eating whole wheat bread (e.g. no celiac disease), you’re probably eating some crappy off-the-shelf loaf with all kinds of additives.
Gluten free is just as stupid as Keto diets. The only real diet is in balance. It’s real fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other plants. Meat contains MINIMAL nutritional value compared to the plant world.
In fact kale juice alone is proof milk is not necessary.
There are links to various studies in the article.
In terms of nutritional value let's start with 100g of cooked kale, you're getting vitamin a/c/k and some manganese but not much else. Broccoli has vitamin a/c/k/folate. Bell peppers vitamin a/c/k/b6. Potatoes vitamin c/b6, potassium/manganese. Tomatoes vitamin a/c. Avocados have vitamin c/e/k/b6/folate/pantothenic acid and some potassium. Olives have iron and copper.
At this point a pattern is emerging, significant amounts of vitamins a/c/k, some folate, some b vitamins if you're lucky, and mineral wise it's mostly manganese and potassium. Spinach and mushrooms are much more interesting, with spinach having vitamins a/e/k/riboflavin/b6/folate, calcium/iron/magnesium/potassium/manganese. White mushrooms have vitamin riboflavin/niacin/pantothenic acid, iron/potassium/copper/selenium.
It should be noted that these are all 100g servings (cooked where appropriate) which might not be ideal. So while kale is indeed incredibly rich in vitamins a and k (1021% of your daily value in just 100g of kale!) it's really, really not useful to you if you're already eating even just reasonable amounts of vegetables, as leafy greens especially usually contain lots of vitamins a/c/k. Something that is lacking in most of these is minerals in any significant quantity, nuts in general do a lot better with a 100g serving of most types of nuts providing 15-85%~ of your DV in minerals, but it shouldn't need to be explained that eating 500 kcal of nuts to get close to your DV in minerals isn't ideal.
When compared to meat or animal products liver would be the gold standard, with 100g of beef liver containing significant amounts of vitamin a and all of the b vitamins as well as folate, along with large quantities of iron/phosphorus/zinc/copper/selenium along with some manganese and potassium. With just 100g of liver and 100g of kale you're going to get roughly >85% of your DV vitamin and mineral needs with the exception of vitamins d/e and magnesium/potassium. Other cuts of meat (beef/chicken/pork) or animal products aren't quite as good but you'll still be getting decent amounts of b vitamins (sans folate) and iron/phosphorus/zinc/selenium and calcium from cheese specifically. With fish/seafood it depends on the type but sardines are a particularly good example providing lots of vitamin d/niacin/b12 and reasonable amounts of calcium/iron/phosphorus/potassium/copper/manganese/selnium.
This comment is all over the place so to try to conclude and put it more succinctly, the common deficiencies that vegetarians face (vitamins d/b12, calcium, iron, zinc, omega-3) shouldn't be dismissed so easily especially when trying to make the point that meat contains 'minimal' nutritional value. Even nutrients that are commonly used to fortify foods (calcium, iron, thiamine, niacin, folate, vitamin d, iodine) are all readily found in meat/animal products with the exception of folate (it's abundant in liver but common in vegetables).
Calcium, iron, and zinc easily obtained in collard greens, kale, spinach, brown rice, whole wheat, etc.
Point being: there should be no deficiencies (including cholesterol) when eating balanced plant foods.
From one faddish extreme to another.
Anecdotally, I feel best when I eat a varied diet where ~20% of my calories come from healthy i.e. unsaturated fats and ~60% of the calories come from whole grain carbs.
Serious question though: did you feel great in the early phases of your vegan diet? If so, maybe you're getting a rush from the positive feedback of adhering to a set of strict rules.
> We were sold a bill of goods with the whole “fat is bad” push.
Honestly, the messaging for over a decade now is that carbs are bad. No one is like, thumbing their nose at "pop nutrition" by saying this.
We are definitely going to find out that this also was a horrible overcompensation.
I didn't feel great initially on the Carnivore diet. In fact it took months and months to get my system cleaned out. I had diarrhea for most of the first year. I quit sugar six months ago, which as also been a huge help. I realize it may not be for everybody however right now it is for me. My doctor told me, "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it." I can go hours without eating if I have to. I never get "hangry". I eat when I'm hungry, as much as I want until I'm full.
The current zeitgeist that says we all have to eat plants for optimal health is plain wrong. I'm 52 years old. I've done a lot of experimenting. Fat is not the enemy. Carbs are the enemy. Also, just about any diet that relies on drastically restricting your caloric input is bound to fail.
> Honestly, the messaging for over a decade now is that carbs are bad
Maybe, but for YEARS it was "fat is bad". And it isn't. It is incredibly satiating. And that messaging came from Big Ag, who completely buried the very valid research of an English scientist, John Yudkin.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-co...
kudos