Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

As a vegetarian I am pleased to hear that those fish oil supplements are not all that they are cracked up to be.

As a child I was made to feel that as a vegetarian, if I did not take these fish oil supplements, then I would probably die. No TV advert or doctor told me that, just ambient peer pressure from good, well-meaning friends and their mothers that indulged in these fish oil things. The fear of god is one thing, scientific evidence from the back of the packet is something else. Looking back it is a miracle that I did not give in to the peer pressure.

I am part of the self-selected control group of vegetarians. We exist so any normal people (i.e. in the meat-eating cult) can see if you really need fish, meat or some scientifically proven meat/fish dietary supplement thing. As it happens the vegetarian control group, even if some of them do wear leather shoes, tends to outlive those that are tied to their beliefs about things like eating their fish oils, getting tonnes of protein from beef, eating things because those vitamins can only be found in pigs not celery and so on.

Hence I can quietly keep my feelings of "told you so" to myself on this one, rather than go round my friend's mum's house and tell her how wrong she was to try and force feed me that fish oil stuff.

> Hence I can quietly keep my feelings of "told you so" to myself on this one

Yes, quietly post to an international forum of thousands of users how you're keeping those feelings to yourself.

As a vegetarian myself, I would suggest that you'll hold an audience longer by dialing the "smug" knob down a notch. People like their meat, and someone waiting since childhood to say "I told you so" isn't likely to change their mind.

On the other hand, calm and reasonable explanations aren't likely to change their minds, either. Because, damn, bacon sure tastes good.

As it happens the vegetarian control group, even if some of them do wear leather shoes, tends to outlive those

I am sorry, but no such thing happens. There's a lot written on the subject why you can not directly compare "vegetarians" to "everyone else". For example, vegetarians not only do not eat meat, but also smoke and drink less, and exercise more than the general population and are in general more health conscious. So there are many confounding factors involved.

However, if you study people who are vegetarians not for health reasons, but, for example, religion - you suddenly find no health benefits, but rather quite a few increased risks.

Here's one of the articles on the topics, and plenty of scientific links inside for the curious.

http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/01/06/vegetarians-and-heart-disea...

Key quotes for those who like TL;DRs:

The good news for the vegetarians is that their Lp-PLA2—a marker specifically for vascular inflammation—was lower than in the control group. But that’s where the good news ends. The researchers seemed pretty surprised to report that the vegetarians had higher levels of CRP (borderline significant at p=0.05) than the omnivores, along with higher homocysteine and triglycerides.

The surprising results? The vegetarians had significantly thicker arterial walls (p<0.0001), reduced flow-mediated dilation (a predictor of cardiovascular events) (p<0.0001), higher blood pressure (p<0.05), and higher triglycerides (p<0.05) than the omnivores. (According to the paper, the raised blood pressure might be related to some popular high-sodium vegetarian foods such as processed protein food substitutes, fake oyster sauce, and tomato paste.)

In the researchers’ multivariate statistical models, vegetarianism had the strongest association with both artery thickness and diminished flow-mediated dilation out of all the variables documented—including age, gender, and triglyceride levels.

As might be expected, the vegetarians also had lower B12 levels and higher homocysteine than the control group—but even after adjusting for these, vegetarianism remained strongly linked with less-healthy hearts. The researchers concluded with this:

In summary, contrary to common belief, vegetarians, at least in the Chinese, might have accelerated atherosclerosis and abnormal arterial endothelial function, compared with omnivore control subjects. The increased risk could only be partially explained by their higher blood pressure, triglyceride, homocysteine, and lower vitamin B12 concentrations.

In my experience, there are two types of vegeterian: those that just get on with it and the smug evangelising types who feel it necessary to preach at the flimsiest opportunity (e.g. what have leather shoes got to do with diet?). A balanced diet is necessary and in most Western societies this is easier to achieve for omnivores. Your friend's mum thought she was doing the best for you and all you can do in return is be self-righteous. Grow up, you'll probably stop being a hipster vegeterian when you do.

I respect your choice to be vegetarian. I am sure there are times where your friends/family members harassed you for your beliefs; I sympathize. However, there are others who are not necessarily vegetarians and you come across as a over compensating dick.

Just saying.

I ate meat today and it tasted good. I was happy. I just wanted to let you know.

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