https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...at-study-finds/

Confusing.
Avoid meat to lower risk.
Vegetarians had 23 % lower risk.
Vegetarians that ate fish but not meat had 13% lower risk.

So fish and meat increase risk........

Confusing.



Yet this contributed to increase in strokes etc. We have been told for years fat clogs the arteries....

I have whip lash.....

I wonder how much influence the healthy user bias had on these results? In western nations where religion isn't typically the main reason for a vegetarian lifestyle, people tend to opt for it because they're more health-conscious than average and believe it's a better choice. I doubt you'd find many vegetarians dining regularly at Mickey D's ordering all the same usual junk as their omnivore friends but hold the beef pattie and chicken, please. My guess is they're leading a healthier lifestyle in general. But even with that, levels of some important substances are low and health suffers.

The science is missing. Vegan diets are dangerous. It's all misplaced ethics and propaganda.

I'm upset that the humane movement to recognize our moral obligation to animals has been hijacked, to the point where you are supposed to be vegan, or one is a monster. And then you start feeding vegan to your pets and kill them.

What an ethical puzzle, right?

Where does this leave me, a cat lover who cares for obligate carnivores, and is something of an obligate carnivore myself?

And here I am a Farm-to-Table sort.....the most humane treatment is when one can raise an animal with care and speed thru the process to the freezer with great care. Makes me humble to thank each for its food.

Vegan/Vegetarian ( and others) miss this learning curve when food can be picked up at the grocer's meat aisle ready to cook.

( Im not judging; just saying...)

I have:

1. The teeth of an omnivore, some for tearing flesh and some for grinding cellulose
2. The digestive enzymes of an omnivore, some for digesting fats, some for digesting oils, and some for digesting starch/sugars
3. The alimentary canal of an omnivore. Cows and other ruminants have multiple stomachs to slowly ferment the cellulose. Horses and their kin have a mile long alimentary canal. Rabbits and others eat their own feces to run them through a second time to get the nutrients out of plants

I simply honor my body by eating an omnivorous diet. I do my best to eat meat that has been humanely raised and plants that aren't doused with excesses of herbicides and pesticides.

I don't believe a vegan diet is healthier. Vegans need B-12, choline, and other nutritional supplements that are either missing in plants or very difficult to absorb.

Now I have nothing against those who wish to be vegans, carnivores or omnivores, no matter how picky. (Those who aren't vegans and call themselves vegetarians are just picky omnivores.) I'm a picky eater myself - I don't do many carbs and don't eat many foods because I don't like the taste.

I do resent the minority of vegans/vegetarians with a "holier than thou" attitude. It's not their diet, it's their self imposed superiority that bugs me.

If it weren't for omnivores and carnivores, there would be little life on this planet.

Take the Galapagos Island's Marine Iguana. This cold blooded animal is a herbivore and once fed off the plants growing on it's island. With no predators to control the population it eventually reproduced and ate everything it could get nutrition from on the island.

With nowhere else to go it took to seaweed. But the water is cold so the little lizard goes into the water, comes out and basks in the sun to get warm again.

They kept on reproducing and soon the easy to get to seaweed has been eaten so they had to dive deeper and deeper to eat. Every bite means they have to hold their breath as long as possible to reach one bite of food, and have ther body temperature reduced by the cold water to the brink of freezing to death.

Now all they do is dive to the extreme limit of their endurance, grab a bite, go back to shore to warm back up. Those who can't dive deep enough die of either drowning or hypothermia. Thus the numbers are controlled by starvation instead of predation.

Having predators is simply part of nature's balance in a closed system.

Bob

When I think UK and fish, I think batter, deep fry...I'll need some very hard evidence to show that plain, unbattered fish "ruins" a vegan diet. Or that a low fat steak or pork chop does. Leaving room here for a lower fat diet to have some benefits versus SAD, if the carb sources are uncruddy enough...

In Yellowstone, the park became healthy and vibrant again when the wolves were brought back to keep the large ruminant population in check. Checks and balances.

Where my mother lives, the deer decimate the vegetation, including lovely gardens and shrubs; not far away, the population is kept in check by poaching.

Interesting what you say about wolves being reintroduced to Yellowstone and the corresponding results. I know a lot of elk and deer hunters in that area (one of my brothers lives in Wyoming, and I'm out there fishing every couple years) who cursed that move, but that was a while back.

In Fairfax VA and surrounding areas, we have deer like a McDonald's parking lot has pigeons. I have deer in my yard every morning. The county authorities saw the wisdom of controlled hunts using bows as weapons due to the fact that deer are so abundant in very populated areas. Not only do they eliminate the vegetation in surrounding woods and fields, but also anything of value in our gardens. They've caused injuries and fatalities (not just their own) on the roads and highways. Not good for either species.

If you eat fish, you are not on a vegan diet anymore (and IMHO not even a vegetarian but an omnivore).

From Merriam Webster:

Definition of vegan: a strict vegetarian who consumes no food (such as meat, eggs, or dairy products) that comes from animals

also : one who abstains from using animal products (such as leather)

Since fish are animals, you can't eat fish and be a vegan.

Vegan was coined in 1941 to separate true vegetarians from those who wanted to be included in the vegetarian "club" but insisted that eggs and milk came from vegetables instead of animals.

[satire] Since I don't eat chicken, I guess I could say I'm a Lacto-Ovo-Beefo-Porko-Fisho vegetarian

Bob

I wasn't getting semantic this time--certainly it would make the diet not vegan. It's the idea that a diet that would have been otherwise vegan would be "ruined" by adding fish to it, that it would be less healthful--not less vegan--that I was speaking to. "Plant-based" diet advocates like McDougall and Ornish etc. often point to groups that eat "mostly plants" to support an "only plant" diet.

Going back to semantical--yes, you could say that. Ovo-vegetarian includes all the things the person eats, eggs and vegetables. Omnivorous would be wrong, because there's lots of stuff the person doesn't eat. Ovo-vegetarian is a reasonable way to say that a person eats eggs and vegetables. We can say that means their not a "true" vegetarian. I don't care, I know what they eat from the terminology, that's what it's for.

Anyways, I think it's up to the vegans to make people who also eat eggs feel like they don't fit in, not us. Maybe we should be picking on carnivores who allow for a sprig of parsley next to their steak.

Re semantics...

I think even obligate carnivores animals (such as cats) consume small amounts of plant matter... if nothing else, from the semi-digested remains of the stomach matter in their prey.

And even the most herbivorous of herbivores (eg, the giant panda comes to mind) occasionally wind up consuming small amounts of animal matter... if nothing else, in the form of small insects that happen to be on the leaves/grass/bamboo that they stay busy stuffing into their mouths 10+ hours per day!

As for terminology describing various levels of carnivores, although it was years ago, I vaguely recall reading somewhere where carnivores were sub-classed according to the percentage of their diet that NEEDED to come from meat or animal products.

Hyper-carnivores were those that necessarily derived something like 70% or more of their energy and nutritional requirements from meat and other animal products (eggs/milk/etc); Meso-carnivores get something like 30% to 70% of their energy and nutrition from meat or animal products. Hypo-carnivores derive less than 30% of energy and nutritional requirements from meat or other animal products.

Omnivores, by definition, are ABLE to derive the vast majority of their energy and nutritional requirements from EITHER plant matter or animal matter...and apparently can switch back and forth quite easily.

True herbivores not only don't NEED any animal matter in their diets, they may not even be able to digest it even if they occasionally consume some.

And, obligate carnivores apparently cannot digest plant matter even if they occasionally consume some. For example, cats (obligate carnivores) will occasionally be seen eating grass but it is because the grass helps them regurgitate other matter that may be causing digestive upset.

By definition then, I think humans (and all mammals including cows and deer) start life as hyper-carnivores... fulfilling pretty much 100% of our nutritional needs via milk!

Since mammalian "herbivores" are all born with the ability to digest milk (an animal product) and obtain nutrients from it, I'm never surprised when I hear about something like a dear being seen chowing down on a dead bird or rabbits eating their young. I rather suspect that the ability to digest animal products remains intact, albeit somewhat diminished in the most herbivorous of mammals.

(BTW, They always say that a mother rabbit that eats her young is reacting to external stress but I wonder if possibly the doe is simply so nutritionally depleted by the birth process that she turns to the only source of meat available to her in order to quickly replenish the nutrients she needs!)

As for the difference between vegetarians/vegans. I'm okay with using the term vegetarian to describe a human who chooses to derive most of his/her energy/nutrition from plant matter but supplements that with animal products such as milk, eggs and honey (none of which requires that the producing animal be killed) and reserving the term "vegan" for those who refuse to knowingly consume any animal product. I'm pretty sure the vegans wind up occasionally eating some insect parts in their cereals but I'm willing to respect their right to NOT knowingly consume any animal product and recognize that this definitely differentiate them from "vegetarians" who willingly eat milk/cheese/eggs or whatever.

Pretty sure that, regardless of what humans choose to eat, we all remain omnivores... ABLE to derive MOST of our energy/nutritional needs from either plants or animals.

Vegans CAN obtain MOST of their nutritional needs from plants however, to remain healthy, they MUST supplement their diets with a few nutrients that are simply not bio-available in plant matter. I've sometimes wondered if the reason that people in third world countries eating essentially vegan diets still manage to remain reasonably healthy without supplements is that their "gathered foods" tend to be much more highly "contaminated" with insect parts and other bits of animal matter than the super-cleaned processed-foods that vegans in the US and other developed countries eat.

Just some thoughts.

Vegans come from a planet (as yet undiscovered by astronomers on earth) circling the star Vega.
Or have I read too many science fiction stories?





ETA: Science fiction stories

Out there somewhere is a paper on Jains who emigrate to Britain and suddenly get pernicious anemia. Which supports that theory.