One Twin Went Vegan, the Other Ate Meat. This Is What Happened | Hacker News Reader

One Twin Went Vegan, the Other Ate Meat. This Is What Happened

iflscience.com

25 pointspseudolus12 comments

Trash study. 12 weeks. N==1. Non-blind. No calorie control.

I would go vegan myself if I didn’t feel like Vegans were always lying to me.

I don't know ... Being Vegan seems like believing that you know a lot about dietary science so you can provide yourself with what you need.

However not eating cows, swine, and birds seems like a small and easily managable modification to your diet that achieves a lot.

Yeah I’m with you on that much so far.

Of course the study is trash, but you can say the same about pretty much every bit of nutritional science, from paleo and Atkins to intermittent fasting. Vegans aren't unique in selling snake(plant) oil.

This is actually interesting.

I'll definitely no vegan and won't plan to. I do believe there are benefits to it.

But since China actually forced schools to serve eg. Eggs ( because of height difference with people from Japan) and they observed benefits within 1 generation and my personal experience with vegan people when I went to school ( they were sick more often and had to take additional vitamines) I never even considered it.

I'm really curious about separating the facts from the falsehoods. The article referenced seems to indicate that my personal observation isn't far off.

12 weeks, 2 adults, no nutritional guidelines. For all we know the meat eater could have went supersize me while the vegan had to resort to multivitamins, just to push a narrative. There is no way to extrapolate this, specially to developing bodies.

I haven't indicated that this is comparable to actual research.

It's interesting because they are "identical" twins and because of similar personal observation ( as i mentioned before)

Height isn't a good measure of health. Taller people are said to be happier but that is likely culture specific.

Did they have real health benefits besides extra height?

I would like to know the difference in sugar in-take between the two diets.

The cholesterol change is easily explained - meat and dairy are two of the main sources of LDLs (“bad” cholesterol) in the western diet.

The diabetes one is harder to explain/link, as there are too many variables. One possibility is that the twin that went vegan ate fewer sugary snacks due to the fact that most such things are not vegan.

What has happened? It's not clear from the headline.

> The results were subtle, but significant. Compared to meat-eater Ross, vegan Hugo experienced a massive drop in cholesterol and a sharp increase in resistance to type 2 diabetes. Hugo said that he struggled with the vegan diet for the first few weeks, experiencing huge cravings for meat and cheese, but he eventually got used to it and claimed to feel more energetic.

> Notably, the vegan diet was associated with a steadier blood sugar level and energy level, while the carnivorous diet resulted in harsher peaks and dips of energy. Interestingly, however, the vegan diet resulted in a severe reduction in gut bacteria diversity, while it remained stable during the meat and dairy diet.

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