Online title is Betrayal on Aisle 6😄 love it. Good summary and concluding advice, thanks for sharing.

I have just finished reading this thread from the beginning. A few things popped out at me. The first is the tendency we seem to have of throwing out 10 years worth of work because of a few mistakes of interpretation or omission. I may have found some errors too, but will not throw out the message of the book because of it. It is so easy to trash someone else's work. It is extremely difficult to actually do the work necessary to produce a book like this. Personally, I will keep Nina and simply disregard "Seth."

As to the discussion on the Masai study -- yes the research was a comparative study of 3 groups of Masai: those living the traditional cattle based lifestyle, those living in a rural setting that included grains and vegetables, and those living in town eating a western style diet. Genetically speaking, they were similar. So why pick out one gene to trash the entire study. All 3 groups probably had that gene.

The point of the study was to compare diet and health with 3 human groups with the same genetic background. It was a good study.

Most of the chit chat was on the traditional Masai and their genetic makeup and lifestyle that somehow skewed the findings. As I recall, there was also a study of Laplanders who were a herding group following the reindeer. Their diet and lifestyle--albeit in a far different climate zone--turned out to be quite similar to the traditional Masai in terms of diet and health. Yet there was a tendency by "Seth" to throw out the traditional Masai data.

It is easy to nit pick then "throw out the baby with the bathwater." The preponderance of the data presented is good. I like the balanced reporting style, admitting when a low carb study didn't get the expected results and a low fat study did. I was also impressed with the last chapter and the "gunk" clogging up the sewer system and causing spontaneous fires as a result of cooking with vegetable oils. Scary stuff.

Another criticism that I thought was nit picky was the discussion on the history of olive oil as a food substance. Why would I disregard the entire book on the difference of opinion as to what the ancient Greeks ate or what Roman soldiers were paid. Archaeology and history are best guesses or extrapolated data from digs/ancient garbage dumps and written documents. As any historian will acknowledge, there has been a lot of written material that has been lost so we cannot be certain about our facts. In addition, as we know, history is always written by the winner in any conflict and the victorious had lots of fun destroying cities and libraries in addition to other humans. We humans seem to love to destroy what others have built. I am not disparaging either archaeology or history. Their scholarship is based upon cumulative evidence while acknowledging many gaps in the data base.

Seems to me this is as true of conquering armies as it is of scholarship. Shouting down opposing views is an academic game with winners and losers. Keys was one of the winners and we are living with his POV. I, for one, am glad to see book's like Nina's exposing "the game" for what it is -- pure ego.

What this book has done is to review the evidence to date on the relationship between diet and health. . . primarily the evidence to date of the research on the relationship between fat in the diet and health. I thought she did a good job digging out and verifying the extant data.

Benay, you're a trooper!

Nina Teicholz debates vegan and co-CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey



http://www.podcast.de/episode/26195...+Mackey+2015 /

Another epidemiology vs. science debate.

The idea that correcting for various confounding variables strengthens an observation is just corrupt.

I love the argument that societies with high longevity all eat high starch diets. There are billions of people who eat high starch diets. How many people eating a traditional diet have there ever been on the planet? How many Masai? It's a ridiculous argument, the high starch side simply bought more lottery tickets, they're more likely to win.

Nina sounded great. I listened to both of their opening arguments, but it is a LOOOONG debate. Who ended up winning?

I can't believe that I listened to the whole 2 hours. John Mackey beat Nina Teicholz because he increased his favorable rating from 37 to 41 % and she only increased her favorable rating from 41 to 43%, or something like that. Nina may be a good writer, but she's not a good debater, she missed opportunity after opportunity to destroy Mackey's arguments. He accused her of not having any good epidemiological data for low cab to refute his epidemiological data for vegan diets. Of course there is basically no data either epidemiologic or randomized for a vegan diet. Anyway it wasn't the kind of debate that would change anyone's preconceived notions.

Why is it that none of the LC crowd has the gift of eloquence?

Also the hypocrisy of John Mackey is unbelievable. He's a confirmed vegan, but he sells meat in his stores because when he tried to not sell meat, his stores went bankrupt. So he'll sell meat to stay in business. However he does have a program with his employees to adopt a vegan lifestyle which has saved him $50,000 per employee, he says, in medical bills. I'm glad I don't work for him.

Which is why the vegan philosophy is doomed to failure, and in fact, acts as a barrier to humane animal practices. Which is just one of the many reasons I have developed a strong dislike for vegans.



I'm sure he's a liar as well as a hypocrite. My view of vegans was formed by that vegan doctor society, PCRM, stealing Dr. Atkins' medical records and outright lying about the manner of his death. Then, a few years back, there were all those vegan bloggers, some of whom were chefs, coming out with the news that their doctors were forcing them to eat meat because they were in serious health difficulties.

I can't look up the year or offer any links because the sites were taken down due to death threats. But I vividly remember (because I eat lots of healthy fat) that there was one chef in particular who was particularly brave and honest. She'd thought this was the best way to eat, she was stunned that it wasn't, and she divulged that some vegan bloggers had emailed her with, Don't Tell. Yes, we eat meat sometimes to stay healthy, but we aren't supposed to talk about it!

There should be a rule: any practice that requires death threats to support... isn't a good practice.

So I'm sure Mackey is lying about saving his health care costs, because vegans either lie about what they eat or they get sick.



And this is vegetarians. They eat things like eggs and cheese. They are actually getting some animal protein, B12, and K2; and they still get into trouble.

The final straw was when I wrote an exhaustively detailed post (on my cat blog) about how veganism was bad for humans, in the midst of an argument about how it was bad for cats. Vegan cat lovers piled on in the comments, assuring me they fed their cats meat. Which was reassuring... but then they are, by their own definition, "killers." And they would admit cats are not vegans... but humans were supposed to be.

It's reached the point where they are on a part with TV preachers in my trust levels. It's not a lifestyle, it's not a diet. It's a cult.

it has been my experience that writers are long term thinkers, not necessarily quick thinkers (needed in a debate). Writers think about a thing, look up references, write some pages, go back and rewrite those pages. This is the life of a writer. Many excellent writers are slow deliberate thinkers. Expecting them to be excellent debaters too is asking more of them than we should.

Clever debaters are trained to to win, no matter which side they take, and I have seen clever debaters change their POV in the middle of a debate.

It is also easy to spot errors in a debate from the comfort of home when not under pressure. Very difficult for a slower thinker to keep up with a barrage of attacks and catch them all when under pressure. Being a slow thinker myself, I can appreciate what Nina was going through over those 2 hours. That she still improved her rating was good.

Cheers and kudos for Nina for sticking up for LCHF and holding anyones attention on the subject for 2 hours.

As to whether or not vegans are living out compassion for animals...

The other day we saw the current movie "Mcfarland." It's the (more or less) true story of the triumph of a team of young athletes from a vegetable farm area in SoCal. Guess what they do before and after school? Harvest vegetables. I'll never eat a cabbage again without thinking of that relentless, back-breaking labor. And children are put into the fields as young as eight years old--as soon as it's "legal" for them to work on certain crops.

Speaking of inhumane practices.

I did randomly hear a bit of the debate where he is praising the brilliance of the various doctors attached to the vegan movement. I gotta give these guys credit, they do prop one another up and they know how to sell their message.

Why wouldn't a CEO of a major corporation be a good debater? He's had to sell his message to investors for decades.

This is an absolutely spot-on angle the vegans never consider.

A review of the book has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. I don't have the full text but it's apparently a positive review.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/102/1/232.extract.jpg

Here's a link to that review, if you can open it.

Unfortunately the author is from the Egg Board

Nina's book is still making waves three years after publication. Believe there are now more references to it than when it was published.

Malcolm Gladwell's newest podcast (and the previous one on McDonald's fries) tapped into her deep dive into fat studies through history.

https://www.dietdoctor.com/malcolm-...ated-fat-debate



She had so much publicity following her extremely controversial BMJ article, request for retraction, editor's decision that the effect of her book grows.
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=469995