Is NPR kidding? A Novel idea ? Quoting an Ancient Greek physician?
And would someone please define a "plant-based diet"?

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...ge-idea-anymore

Gee whiz. That's sorta what I call cooking, low-carb wise. It takes less time and trouble to steam frozen veggies in the microwave than it does to nuke frozen entrees. A whole spaghetti squash takes about twelve minutes--if you poke it REAL GOOD so the steam escapes and it doesn't explode. I think kids would love spaghetti squash--especially if it explodes once in a while.

You moms know better than I do what it means to say, "The kids won't eat it." I mean, how many meals will they pass up before they realize that's ALL THERE IS? 'Course, you have precious little control over what they can cadge with their allowance money at the nearest convenience store. Or even at school. Too bad about that.

I guess Michael Pollan came the closest to defining a "plant based diet:" Eat real food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

Unfortunately, corn chips, potato chips, raisins, orange juice, pasta, and Wheat Thins (to name a few) are all plant based.

I eat a plant-based diet: that pig, that cow, that chicken ate a lotta plants and plant products, no?

As long as the doc brings accurate information, having him/her at the grocery store is downright friendly. For most people, any dietary guidance would be an improvement, especially if it starts with, "Cook stuff."

Thanks for the article.

I've been a mom and I think it means, "I can't take the whining." That is not a put-down either. Moms can be SO tired nowadays, what with sinking into working poverty of time and dollars and energy. If you can reduce stressors, you take advantage. I say ugh too on whole-grain pasta.

Scary to think of doctors hijacking food to "link food and medicine". Medicine today is drugs and procedures. Medicalizing food? Please, no. I picture them making excess profits off sick people using prescriptions for food based on faulty guidelines. Is that cynical?

NPR journalists are as clueless as other journalists when it comes to health reporting. drinking the plant-based kool-aid. Oh wait, is kool-aid from plants? or maybe petroleum products? sorry, I digress.

Glad to see plans to get doctors involved. Doctors need training as much as patients. Where are they getting this training, and is this article the product of assuming that plant-based diets are epitome of a healthy way of eating? For some, that may be true. For most, it's not quite that simple when ignoring animal proteins.



The WHO considers heart disease and stroke to be caused by high blood pressure, tobacco use, elevated cholesterol and low consumption of fruits and vegetables. Interesting way of describing this, as high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol are symptoms of another root cause and among several markers for Metabolic Syndrome. I start to get a hollow feeling anytime the WHO is referenced, as they don't really understand how to eat to control vascular disease and spend time trying to rid people of symptoms rather than spending time identifying root causes. Any related nutrition training a doctor receives should be considered suspect and incomplete, only part of the story. But hey, WHO knows their stuff!

"In America, over 50 percent of our food is processed food," Nadeau tells her. "And only 5 percent of our food is plant-based food. I think we should try to reverse that."

Isn't processed food more plant-based than real food? For instance, the cheese in a "real" mac & cheese is 0% plants, but in a processed version it can be in essence margarine.

Although I certainly agree that food should be the foundation of our health I would not seek out a doctor to provide nutritional advice. "Eat a plant based diet" is the new mantra. Everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. For most people "eat a low carb real food diet" would be a better way to go. How many doctors give out that advice? We are familiar with some of them here but they are still few and far between.

Jean

Dr. Nadeau... googling around, there are articles from 2012 where he describes himself as a vegan. But there's this from 2015.



Sort of interesting that he's a vegan, or at least was a few years ago--but rather than pushing not eating meat, he's pushing eating more plants, and it's the processed foods he's really going after. The only time animal based food comes up directly in the article is in saying to make real macaroni with real cheese. But some reporter did make decisions about what to leave in, what to leave out, I wonder if Dr. Nadeau thinks his message was fairly portrayed?

No, one point for diabetes. The carbs in real macaroni and cheese would spike my blood sugar just as much as the boxed stuff. And food palatability/how comfortable people feel eating it, is something I consider important regardless of the eater's age. As an adult in the culture where I live I expect the freedom/resources to select and control my own food and eating and don't expect a young child to have that. If I somehow ended up in a similar situation without freedom and was offered only foods I found disgusting (maybe a care facility or something with no relatives able to smuggle in tasty stuff?) I'd feel frustrated being told to eat it or go hungry until I did. Not suggesting anyone should give in a child's whining by feeding them junk. I just like to put myself in the other person's place and imagine how I might feel in their circumstance. So I think this mom in the article is wise to recognize her kids might be grossed out by some foods (I'd hate whole wheat macaroni and cheese myself) and maybe work in some healthier options gently.

Exactly. The SAD is almost all plant based. Only 12% of a typical fast-food burger is meat.

My guess is by plant based they must mean plants that still look like plants when you eat them, not plants that look like Froot Loops.

Well, at least he believes there's a difference.

Zei, I was just about to post the same thing!

And that 12% gets blamed for all the bad things. So subbing a black bean version is supposed to fix everything!

"Only 12% of a typical fast-food burger is meat."

Okay, I am absolutely not a fast food apologist, but this is somewhat misleading. A McDonald's burger patty is 100% beef, without fillers or extenders. This is true of many fast food places.

So, throw away the bun (and order without ketchup if you're seriously avoiding sugars) and you're left with something Atkins friendly, which for me means healthier than most of the cr&p sold in the middle of the grocery store. I'm looking at you, Kashi bars!

Looking at McDonald's burgers, something like 30-50% seems to be meat in terms of weight.

Even so, I've heard that these end up as "processed meat" in the statistics. E.g. you eat three burgers a week and they are about 1½ lbs total, so your stats show you're eating 1½ lbs "processed meat", when in reality it's way below 1 lbs. In the process, the crap, i.e. the sugary dressing and the forever fresh space buns and so on, get labelled as processed meat which of course they are not by any means. Any truth in that? If so, no wonder "processed meat" looks dangerous. (Even if it isn't true it's no wonder because you eat a lot of crap, for instance I don't think that eating a burger will increase your daily dose of sugar by whatever amount it contains. In crap epi stats, that is.) But we all know the problems of confounding, right?

For me, processed meat isn't a frozen patty which is 100% mince. For me, processed meat is that cheap hot dog that contains about 20% meat, 31% butchery leftovers*, and all sorts of crap like soy, flour, and additives on top of that, everything processed into a pink mush.

*: I dunno about legislation in e.g. the US, but generally in Finland they want to call their sausages meat products which means you need to have >50% of "meat and comparable ingredients", so you might have 10% of actual meat and >40% of whatever you can wring off the carcass after cutting off all the stuff you're selling as proper meat.