Four Weeks of a Vegan Diet Alter Signs of Inflammation and Aging | Hacker News Reader

Four Weeks of a Vegan Diet Alter Signs of Inflammation and Aging

uniklinik-freiburg.de

29 pointsmarvinborner65 comments

Reminds me that I need to study the impacts of a vegan diet in the science literature to understand how aggressively I should be pursuing it. The times I’ve lived on a near vegan diet, I feel quietly better in lots of little unexpected ways. Happy to chase books or links if people have them lying around.

I had to stop after 6 months because my testosterone dropped so much (serious, blood test confirmed). Felt way better for the first few months, then slowly lower energy and not like myself. Eventually realized more vegetables is good, but nailing is protein wise on true vegan diet is very very hard.

I am vegan except for fish, and find it works really well. Sardines are awesome!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism

A good term for that is pescatarian - as eating fish is neither vegan nor veg!

So not vegan at all.

I'd say their description is fair. We don't have a word for vegan+fish. Pescetarianism includes eggs, milk, etc.

So they're precisely vegan, with fish.

Except veganism is not a diet, but an ethical framework. The diet is a consequence, not the definition.

What is the term for the vegan diet sans the ethical framework? If there isn't one, that kinda sucks.

It does indeed exist, it's called the Plant Based Diet.

That makes sense, thank you!

That is absolutely wrong.

There is no gray area when it comes to veganism. Just because there is no word for that diet, does not mean you can just twist the definition of vegan for your convenience.

You could easily just say your a pescatarian who doesn’t eat dairy or eggs, and that would be more correct.

Sorry for not being perfect like you. For ethical reasons, I do not consume dairy or meat (except for fish). The vegan community should be more open to other perspectives, especially when someone is actively making an effort towards reducing harm.

Vegan Puritanism is totally antithetical to our collective goal of reducing animal suffering. Rather than being motivated by the prospect of claiming moral superiority, our goal should be to help the animals.

Killing and eating animals is not a perspective vegans will be open to.

You can reduce harm, but you cannot call yourself vegan until you actually eliminate the possibility of eating animals or their products from your life. There is no reason you HAVE to eat fish.

It's not really a moral issue, it's simply the definition of the word. Using an incorrect term to describe yourself knowing it is incorrect can be perceived as virtue-signaling or claiming your own moral superiority. For example, one could ask "why call yourself a vegan if you eat fish?".

There's no policing body here, but people are rightfully calling the double-standard out here.

Edit: Would also love to hear the ethics of why fish can be eaten when cows/chicken/pigs cannot. Doesn't sound ethically consistent to me at all.

I actually prefer not to call myself a vegan IRL both because of the issue you’re describing and because veganism is (rightfully) associated with having a toxic and intolerant culture. The only reason I said “vegan except fish” in my comment is because the title of the study used the word “vegan” and because the study was talking about veganism in a purely dietary/scientific lens, not an ethical one. I think this was a pretty reasonable thing to do.

If it doesn’t make sense for people to say “vegan except for chicken”, “vegan except for beef”, then why on earth would it make sense to say “vegan except fish”?

Fish aren’t lesser beings, they are living creatures like anything else.

Just stop saying “vegan except fish”. Say you eat plants and fish. That’s all you have to do.

> If it doesn’t make sense for people to say “vegan except for chicken”, “vegan except for beef”, then why on earth would it make sense to say “vegan except fish”?

I don't know why you take offense to someone saying "vegan except for beef" or "vegan except for fish." There is nothing inherently wrong with these statements. It just depends on whether you view veganism as a lifestyle or as a diet, which can vary depending on the context. In the context of a nutrition study, we are obviously talking about the diet, not the lifestyle.

It's not puritanism. You haven't grasped the ethical system if you don't understand that vegans view this as murder. Why should veganism have exceptions when we don't have exceptions for murder, rape, beating children? Most of us view animal exploitation at the same level.

If someone adopts a vegan diet purely for health reasons, are they not a true vegan? They haven’t accepted the moral framework that killing animals is wrong.

Should the study filter out people who eat entirely plant-based for reasons other than ethics. because according to you, that’s not a true vegan diet.

I think you are largely correct that veganism is a lifestyle, not a diet. But in the context in which my comment was made, it was perfectly reasonable for me to say “vegan except for fish,” because the study was analyzing veganism as a diet, not as an ethical lifestyle.

No, veganism is by definition an ethical framework, a term and movement created in the UK in the early 20th century, by the Vegan Society, which still exists, and has a very specific exact definition on their webpage that hasn't changed.

What you are talking about is the Plant Based Diet, which minimizes but doesn't fully exclude animal products, and is not an ethical framework.

You might as well say "I eat Kosher except for pork". It's nonsense.

I assume you mean that the study should not have said “vegan diet” and instead should have said “plant-based diet.” In that case, I agree with you. But don’t direct your anger towards me; direct it towards the authors of the study!

I'm not really angry at you, maybe slightly frustrated at the confusion everyone has about veganism. Appreciate your candor in any case. I'm definitely angry at some other people in this thread through.

Then you would be twisting the meaning of pescatarian. There is no gray area when it comes to pescatarianism.

Pescatarianism isn't an ethical framework like veganism is though.

People would provide significantly more global benefit for their cause, compared to their individual contribution, by not putting people off their cause wholesale.

Just an observation I have found recently.

And occasional steak? I love steak.

I am a pesca-pescaterian, btw.

I'm also vegan except for fish. And meat.

Correlation is not causation, especially in a sample of 1, the plural of anecdote is not data etc etc. Protein is easy, just eat some beans and rice, tofu, tempeh etc. You can't just take the diet you had before and subtract things and expect it to work, you have to substitute. Make sure to get B12, D and maybe omega 3 and creatine either as supplements or fortified in foods, and get your levels checked every year or so.

I've been vegan for 15+ years, and I'm willing to say there are zero health benefits over a healthy omnivorous diet. The people who find one are misattributing it. It's not that vegan is healthier, just that what they were doing before was decidedly unhealthy. For a lot of people going vegan is the first time they actually think about what they eat, read labels etc, which is where most of the benefit comes from.

It is absolutely not "very hard." It is challenging at first because like anything else, the startup costs of new habit formation can be high. But tofu, soy milk, seitan, tempeh, lentils, and many other plant protein sources are highly available and easy to cook with once you try. Been at it for a few years myself and at this point, it's extremely easy. I take protein shakes when working out, just like I did when I ate animal products.

Everyone is different, but if you weren't actually able to hit protein macros then I think that's a skill that isn't too hard to improve for most people (if they have a decent reason for wanting to go vegan in the first place).

I’ve been vegan for 14 years. Protein is not very very hard, unless you have multiple dietary restrictions on top of plant based. Which, if I can be frank, tend to be self imposed when people complain about this to me after dabbling in plant based.

Dr. Michael Greger's "How not to die" is interesting.

That book is highly-biased in favor of veganism. Greger is very controversial. Any mention of him ought to also acknowledge this. Also, he wears a lab coat but doesn't see patients, which is weird AF.

A friend of mine chose a “macrobiotic” diet 35 years ago. Apparently practitioners have conferences, too, Or so ive been told.

Highly misleading title. They make you really dig up linked paywalled papers before you see any methods to see what people actually ate.

The methods say people were allocated to vegan versus "high meat consumption" foods, with participants free to choose their diets. The only restriction was you had to "try" to increase intake if losing weight, and "try" to decrease intake if gaining weight. (i.e. only isocaloric per basal rate, not across the board). Then the linked studies hint heavily that the vegan group tended towards less protein but more fibre, and roughly equal carbs (fat is not mentioned!!). Which at the very least shows the diets were not "equivalent bar for meat", let alone for "moderate" (i.e. potentially healthy) amounts of meat.

So they're not comparing "healthy wholefood vegan vs healthy wholefood meat diets". They're comparing availability and behavioural tendencies towards dietary choices when aiming for a short term vegan diet versus when aiming for a short term diet characterised by excessive amounts of meat.

I honestly don't get why they do studies like this. It's a waste of time for everyone involved. It's almost like they're only after a headline extolling veganism, rather than actually useful comparisons that could lead to real, actionable dietary insights. Really, if anything, a supported conclusion here could even be that meat diets are likely healthier given sufficient fibre supplementation.

I can’t access the previous paper by the authors that contains details about the diets.

That being said, people don’t eat macronutrients, they eat foods. With equal caloric intake, a vegan diet is going to be higher in fiber and lower in fat and protein than a diet that includes meat. That’s probably part of why it’s healthy, but the reason for doing this study is to understand the mechanisms in more detail, rather than just claiming that one is better than the other.

When you say they should have supplemented fiber, you’re also implying they should have had less meat. According to the linked paper from this year, the meat-rich diet included at least 150g of meat per day, which is just a bit more than a chicken breast or a single burger patty. Probably in line with what many expect from a balanced meal.

> When you say they should have supplemented fiber, you’re also implying they should have had less meat

Why? This is a non-sequitur. As are the other assertions in my opinion. You can have meat based diets rich in fibre (e.g. the mediterranean diet), and you can have vegan diets completely devoid of them (e.g. living off McDonalds plantburgers for the rest of your life).

The problem is this conflating of veganism, which at its heart is an ethical movement, as a nutritional one. So designing studies that intentionally blur this line isn't doing anyone no favours.

If I see a study comparing vegan junkfood against the mediterranean diet where the vegan diet still comes on top, I'd change my tune. But the reverse scenario, i.e. comparing meat-based diets of a nature that most people would intuitively consider unhealthy anyway (i.e. not necessarily because of the meat) against vegan diets which most people would intuitively consider healthy anyway (i.e. not necessarily because of the veganism) provides zero useful evidence.

And if I were to make a dietary choice for ethical reasons, I would much more appreciate insights coming from impartial science over an echo chamber, academic or otherwise.

Both pure vegan and pure meat camps claim to have scientific evidence that it works, which make me question if change is what the body responds to. From personal experience, eating less often and fasting does seem to improve things like brain fog, indigestion etc.

People going vegan or going pure aktins or whatever have the most important thing in common, they are actually thinking about what they eat, reading labels and generally making conscious decisions about food.

That’s a false equivalence, not all evidence has the same quality. I don’t think there’s any doubt across serious scientists that meat intake should be limited for positive health outcomes.

Most studies on diets are usually skewed because part of the results do not directly come to the specific diet (no matter if it's the vegan, carnivore, atkins, dukan, paleo or whatever) but from study participants "suddenly" following a well-defined eating regime (with a well defined upper bound on caloric intake).

Essentially, if you go from eating shit at whatever time of the day to following a well-specified eating regime... of course you'll get benefits.

Dumb example: this professor lost 27 pounds and got improvements across various markers by eating Twinkies - link: https://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profe...

We need to collectively evolve as a species past intensive industrial animal confinement. To think, we can be more compassionate and don't need to sacrifice our health, and may in fact be able to live healthier!

In such a world, if we still kept cats as pets, how would we feed them? Would non-industrial, more small-scale farming of animals be able to sustain that, or would exceptions need to be made? I use cats in this example since they, unlike dogs, are carnivores, and they must eat meat to live healthily (unlike us, where a bit of supplementation is enough for entirely vegan diets to be viable).

I'm curious how problems like this would be dealt with in a vegan world. Just let the cats loose on the local rodent and bird population, maybe?

It's still in the early commercialization stages, but I think the best solution to this is lab grown meat for pets.

https://meatly.pet/

^ that's an example of one I found.

> the participants were randomly assigned to two groups: 24 followed a vegan diet for four weeks, while 24 followed a diet particularly high in meat.

This may be correct technique for a small-n, short-duration study.

But don't expect the results to be applicable to typical non-vegans.

"Alter" is an interesting word choice

Living to 100 is overrated anyways.

   As if this planet will even be worth living on if climate change continues to go unchecked. Or if humanity will even exist after the inevitable mass extinction event

always some excuse to keep eating meat

Always some excuse to look down on other people.

Do you look down on murderers and rapists? Or if you think that analogy is too strong, what about people who beat their children, which was considered normal and expected 60 years ago.

I won't bore you with a litany of habits that I disapprove of, because I am not stupid enough to believe that you care about what some random on the Internet riding a high horse thinks of you.

Murder isn't a habit unless you are a psychopath.

For how many years did you consume the mangled corpses of sentient beings before you went vegan? How can you live with yourself knowing what you have done?

Now apply to other people whatever mental gymnastics it took you to forgive yourself, and leave us be. kthxbye

I have a very hard time living with myself. I feel like a murderer that got out of prison and is still grappling with his past crimes.

There is no forgiveness, I feel fully guilty.

You project your mental gymnastics. Make assumptions based on your own cognitive dissonance. It's obvious which view is the simple and consistent one.

i ain't reading all that

i'm happy for u tho

or sorry that happened

>> short comment

> I ain't reading all that

You reveal your crude thought process and intellectual laziness which explains everything about this thread.

Do you ever wonder why people's eyes glaze over when you talk to them IRL?

This isn't a dinner party, it's an on-topic thread on a nerd forum.

LOL

None needed.

Dahmer said the same thing about cannibalism.

Stay mad.

Don't stay ignorant.

Anger is a reasonable response to abuse and exploitation of sentient beings.

always some excuse to avoid putting the blame on the corporations, unchecked O&G

Corporations don't exist without customers. Both sides are at fault. Individual effort matters. The thousands of animals you didn't eat throughout your lifetime would thank you.

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