Comment by tpoacher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tpoacher | Hacker News Reader

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.

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