Foods to Avoid

[rocketdog]

Population studies over long time periods is where we need to be looking to answer those questions.

Unfortunately, there just haven't been enough vegetarian populations to draw any conclusions.

You don't need an isolated population of vegetarians to perform a study of them.  Is that how all your studies were conducted: on an isolated population of meat eaters? 

[Gumby]

Is that how all your studies were conducted: on an isolated population of meat eaters?

Nope. It's called evolution. We evolved to eat meat and plants — as evidenced by our acid/pepsin-based stomachs and small cecums. There's no good evidence to suggest that we somehow evolved incorrectly. And there is no evidence of any pre-industrial or pre-modern meat eating cultures who have degenerative/chronic diseases.

And in the paleolithic era, humans often dined on megafauna (woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, giraffes, hippos, etc) which would feed families for long periods — particularly when winter set in and no vegetables were even available. Humans were able to thrive in those conditions for over 2 million years — often migrating out of tropic zones to follow those animals over land bridges.

[rocketdog]

That is all well and good, but knowing what my body does with what I eat doesn't help me to know whether or not it's going to make me healthier or live longer.  Population studies over long time periods is where we need to be looking to answer those questions.

Er, isn't it the opposite? If I want to know if a food is healthy, I don't want to ask whether studies of people who ate it found that they did well or badly, I want to know what it will do to ME. There are a million billion complicating factors with observational studies that, as you've noticed, make the results nearly worthless in most cases.

Not at all.  Unless of course you're subjecting yourself to one of these studies to find out how certain foods affect YOU specifically. 

You can't look at how a food is digested and then extrapolate that all the way to "therefore, you will be healthier and/or live longer."  Not unless you can demonstrate that eating a substance always results in the generation of a cancer cell or some other blatant cause-and-effect relationship.  Our bodies are constantly generating toxins and free radicals and cancer cells thanks in large part to the things we eat and breathe.  You're trying to figure out what a billboard says by looking through a microscope.  All I'm saying is you need to step back and look at the big picture instead of getting bogged down in the minutiae. 

The best way to study how different diets impact human health is to simply follow the people who eat those diets over long time periods and then compare their incidence of illness and lifespans against other groups that follow a different diet.  Even better if you can have a population on one diet change to a different diet to see how it impacts them.  And if the population is from all different walks of life and in different geographic locations, then all the better because then you can't point to a single extraneous common factor that might be at work other than diet. 

[rocketdog]

While I eat a diverse diet, I think Rocketdog brings up an interesting reality that vegetarians tend to live generally as long and healthy (if not longer) than the general population with no significant finding of degenerative disease. I mean, Ive met stong and healthy Mexicans who are 70 years old who can walk 15 miles a day who subsist on basically tortillas. How does one explain that? I think the human machinery is a bit more adaptable than we give it credit for.

Um, doodle, you just explained it yourself. They walk 15 miles a day! That's how.

That's the secret!!!  We've all completely missed it!  Eat as much as you want of whatever you want, just be sure to walk 15 miles a day and you're good to go! 

Now that we have that matter settled, I'm hungry so would somebody please pass the Twinkies?

[rocketdog]

Is that how all your studies were conducted: on an isolated population of meat eaters?

Nope. It's called evolution. We evolved to eat meat and plants — as evidenced by our acid/pepsin-based stomachs and small cecums. There's no good evidence to suggest that we somehow evolved incorrectly. And there is no evidence of any pre-industrial or pre-modern meat eating cultures who have degenerative/chronic diseases.

We also evolved without deodorant or toothbrushes, but thankfully we discovered their benefits. 

[Gumby]

While I eat a diverse diet, I think Rocketdog brings up an interesting reality that vegetarians tend to live generally as long and healthy (if not longer) than the general population with no significant finding of degenerative disease. I mean, Ive met stong and healthy Mexicans who are 70 years old who can walk 15 miles a day who subsist on basically tortillas. How does one explain that? I think the human machinery is a bit more adaptable than we give it credit for.

Um, doodle, you just explained it yourself. They walk 15 miles a day! That's how.

That's the secret!!!  We've all completely missed it!  Eat as much as you want of whatever you want, just be sure to walk 15 miles a day and you're good to go!

Again, it's called the healthy user bias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_user_bias

Everything supporting Vegetarianism is about ignoring that variable.

[Gumby]

Yes, all the studies demonstrating the benefits of a vegetarian diet are fatally flawed.

Pretty much. They all compare vegetarians to a SAD diet and they don't adjust for the healthy user bias. Hardly a comparison worth buying into. You might as well just eat a SAD diet and work out more for the same effect.

[rocketdog]

Yes, all the studies demonstrating the benefits of a vegetarian diet are fatally flawed.

Pretty much. They all compare vegetarians to a SAD diet and they don't adjust for the healthy user bias.

The studies clearly state that they adjusted for exercise levels, smoking, lifestyle, and so on.  I'm not even sure you could get a study published if you didn't adjust for external factors. 

[Pointedstick]

The best way to study how different diets impact human health is to simply follow the people who eat those diets over long time periods and then compare their incidence of illness and lifespans against other groups that follow a different diet.  Even better if you can have a population on one diet change to a different diet to see how it impacts them.  And if the population is from all different walks of life and in different geographic locations, then all the better because then you can't point to a single extraneous common factor that might be at work other than diet.

This is actually the exact thing that Weston Price did. You should look into his research. It's pretty mind-blowing stuff.

[Gumby]

The best way to study how different diets impact human health is to simply follow the people who eat those diets over long time periods and then compare their incidence of illness and lifespans against other groups that follow a different diet.  Even better if you can have a population on one diet change to a different diet to see how it impacts them.  And if the population is from all different walks of life and in different geographic locations, then all the better because then you can't point to a single extraneous common factor that might be at work other than diet.

This is actually the exact thing that Weston Price did. You should look into his research. It's pretty mind-blowing stuff.

Yep... You can read it here..

http://www.w8md.com/nutrition_vs_physic ... _price.pdf

Basically every culture he came across on his journeys ate a high-fat diet, ate meat or seafood, ate fermented foods and had no evidence of chronic or degenerative disease or dental issues until members of the tribe moved to civilization and ate modern foods.

He actually tried searching for indigenous vegans and vegetarians in interior regions around the world — as he was looking for cultures untouched by civilization — and he only found cannibals, which tells you something.

Weston Price Looked for Vegans But Found Only Cannibals

[Gumby]

Yes, all the studies demonstrating the benefits of a vegetarian diet are fatally flawed.

Pretty much. They all compare vegetarians to a SAD diet and they don't adjust for the healthy user bias.

The studies clearly state that they adjusted for exercise levels, smoking, lifestyle, and so on.  I'm not even sure you could get a study published if you didn't adjust for external factors.

It just can't be done properly. Check this out...

http:///pmid.us/20803902

Selected lifestyle and health condition indices of adults with varied models of eating

The aim of this research was to analyse certain lifestyle parameters and health condition indices among people with traditional and vegetarian models of eating. The research conducted shows that vegetarians present a higher level of caring about their health, which is expressed on a scale of pro-health behaviours, than people with traditional model of eating. A higher percentage of them take up physical activity in their free time (80% vs. 70%), additionally, they more seldom drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. Alcohol abstinence is declared by 75% of vegans, 25% of lacto-ovo vegetarians and only 8% of people with traditional model of eating. Tobacco non-smoking is declared by 94% of vegans, 74% of lacto-ovo vegetarians and 67% of traditional eating people. It has also been shown that some psychosomatic health indices, especially concerning digestive duct/system, remain varied in regard to the model of eating followed. The research has proven that vegetarian model of eating influences other--non-eating--pro-health behaviours and in this way it shapes healthy lifestyle of research subjects.

Source: http:///pmid.us/20803902

How do you control for that? The answer is you can't. Denise Minger explains...

Since so many vegetarian-versus-omnivore studies are comparing a complete lifestyle overhaul (health-savvy vegetarianism) with health indifference (standard “eat-whatever’s-there”? omnivorism), it’s pretty hard to find a vegetarian study that can actually isolate the effects of meat. When a vegetarian’s main diet change is avoiding animal flesh rather than emphasizing fresh produce and moving away from refined foods, the health outcomes aren’t much different than those of standard omnivores.

Source: http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/01/06/vegeta ... t-disease/

So, all these studies are basically comparing über-health-conscious exercise-crazed and ultra-green vegetarians with SAD dieters and claiming some amazing victory because they think they can isolate the meat as a single variable. It's not possible. Even if they could (and they can't) the difference in mortality is shockingly small — which is kind of SAD if you think about it.

[rocketdog]

Pretty much. They all compare vegetarians to a SAD diet and they don't adjust for the healthy user bias.

The studies clearly state that they adjusted for exercise levels, smoking, lifestyle, and so on.  I'm not even sure you could get a study published if you didn't adjust for external factors.

It just can't be done properly. Check this out...

http:///pmid.us/20803902

That study doesn't imply it can't be done, only that it needs to be done.

[rocketdog]

So, all these studies are basically comparing über-health-conscious exercise-crazed and ultra-green vegetarians with SAD dieters and claiming some amazing victory because they think they can isolate the meat as a single variable. It's not possible. Even if they could (and they can't) the difference in mortality is shockingly small — which is kind of SAD if you think about it.

You're creating a red herring.  Not all vegetarians adopt a healthier lifestyle (other than becoming vegetarian).  In fact most don't, myself included.  And the ones who become "uber-health-conscious" must be an incredibly tiny minority because I've never even met such a person.  In fact, all the "uber-health-conscious" people I've ever met (like at the gym I used to belong to) were also meat eaters. 

Not all studies of vegetarian diets have been of lifelong vegetarians or Seventh Day Adventists.  There have been many studies where they took typical meat eaters and restricted their diet to a vegetarian one with no other changes to lifestyle, to see what - if any - health changes would result. 

I don't have time to spend all day researching examples, but here's one:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 033106.php

Excerpt:  A team of researchers led by Tim Key of Oxford University found that meat-eaters who switched to a plant-based diet gained less weight over a period of five years. Papers reviewed by Drs. Berkow and Barnard include several published by Dr. Key and his colleagues, as well as a recent study of more than 55,000 Swedish women showing that meat-eaters are more likely to be overweight than vegetarians and vegans.

[FarmerD]

C'mon Rocketdog, you can do better than that.  So a couple of the lead people in PCRM (an activist vegan and animal rights group) conduct a metastudy where they discover  -- surprise!!  --  a vegan diet is healthier than an omnivore diet.  Boy that's an unbiased 8 years old study. 

They may well be tightly controlled studies where vegans and omnivores have the same risk factors (same exercise patterns, same smoking habits, etc) where the only only difference between the two groups is ONLY the consumption (or nonconsumption) of meat and the vegan group came out healthier and lived longer. 

But I've never seeen such a study.....

BTW Neil Barnard has written a book where he says diabetics should be eating a vegetarian diet.  I followed a strict vegetarian diet (as recommended by Dean Ornish and Neil Barnard) back in 2008 for 9 months.  My LDL collapsed to 80 and my HDL to 25 while my blood glucose level soared - HgA1C was nearly 8 .  I never felt worse in my life.  Horrible hunger, sleeplessness, lucid dreams (not in a good way).  Switched to a low carb diet and HDl went to 50 and HgA1C went to 5.5. 

[rocketdog]

BTW Neil Barnard has written a book where he says diabetics should be eating a vegetarian diet.  I followed a strict vegetarian diet (as recommended by Dean Ornish and Neil Barnard) back in 2008 for 9 months.  My LDL collapsed to 80 and my HDL to 25 while my blood glucose level soared - HgA1C was nearly 8 .  I never felt worse in my life.  Horrible hunger, sleeplessness, lucid dreams (not in a good way).  Switched to a low carb diet and HDl went to 50 and HgA1C went to 5.5.

You have to eat the right kind of vegetarian diet.  You can still be profoundly unhealthy on a vegetarian diet, just as you can on a meat-based diet.  I could eat Twinkies all day long and call myself a vegetarian, but I would be profoundly unhealthy. 

[FarmerD]

BTW Neil Barnard has written a book where he says diabetics should be eating a vegetarian diet.  I followed a strict vegetarian diet (as recommended by Dean Ornish and Neil Barnard) back in 2008 for 9 months.  My LDL collapsed to 80 and my HDL to 25 while my blood glucose level soared - HgA1C was nearly 8 .  I never felt worse in my life.  Horrible hunger, sleeplessness, lucid dreams (not in a good way).  Switched to a low carb diet and HDl went to 50 and HgA1C went to 5.5.

You have to eat the right kind of vegetarian diet.  You can still be profoundly unhealthy on a vegetarian diet, just as you can on a meat-based diet.  I could eat Twinkies all day long and call myself a vegetarian, but I would be profoundly unhealthy.

I had two girlfriends who were "bad" vegetarians so I know what you mean. These women ate cereal and fruit juice for breakfast, a scone for midmorning lunch, some pasta and fruit for lunch, a lettuce salad and a bagel for supper. Basically they ate no legumes, nuts, or vegetables (iceberg lettuce doesn't count really).  Their diet was essentially 80% wheat and 20% suggary fruit.  I am quite sure your vegetarian diet is much better than theirs from the way you talk. 

For me, I had bought both Ornish and Barnards books (and read a lot of Joel Fuhrman) and I followed their advice to the letter so naturally I was quite disappointed.

[rocketdog]

C'mon Rocketdog, you can do better than that. 

Not when I'm busy at work I can't.

So a couple of the lead people in PCRM (an activist vegan and animal rights group) conduct a metastudy where they discover  -- surprise!!  --  a vegan diet is healthier than an omnivore diet. 

You're putting the cart before the horse.  These aren't people who were vegan and vegetarian since birth who set out to "prove" their diet was the best.  These are people who decided to adopt a vegan / vegetarian diet because that's what the research indicated was the healthiest. 

Boy that's an unbiased 8 years old study.

Now you're making a straw man argument: "The study is 8 years old, therefore it's invalid."  A study remains valid until the circumstances surrounding the nature of the study have statistically changed over time.  Studies like this don't expire after 8 years.  Heck, most of them take more than 8 years just to gather the observational evidence!

[rocketdog]

For me, I had bought both Ornish and Barnards books (and read a lot of Joel Fuhrman) and I followed their advice to the letter so naturally I was quite disappointed.

I've never read those books so I can't comment.  Were these diets designed to be lifelong diets, or temporary diets to address a set of health concerns, after which you transition again onto another diet?

I also don't know your personal health circumstances so I can't comment there either.  It's possible you changed your diet too quickly, or you're sensitive to certain foods, or your genetic heritage doesn't do well with certain types of diets. 

Unfortunately it's a complex issue.  There is no magic bullet, as in "Eat this and you'll be healthy."  There is definitely some trial and error involved.  None of us will ever know if what we're eating is benefitting us or harming us long-term. 

It would be great if we were all born with an expiration clock, and as we ate certain foods or engaged in certain activities, we could see our clock either advance or retreat.  If I live to 90, will that mean I would have normally lived to 80 but my diet is what gave me extended life?  Or might I have lived to 100 but my diet cut my life short?  It's a question we will never know the answer to (at least not in our lifetimes). 

So we all do the best we can and hope for the best. 

[hoost]

Back to the main topic, what are the thoughts on beer in the context of avoiding wheat in one's diet?  After reading several of these threads and doing some other research, I decided to cut out wheat as an experiment.  I don't have any complaints so far, but I'm wondering if all barley beer (I brew my own so I control the ingredients) has the same effects as wheat for someone who has no issues with gluten intolerance.  Does anyone have any insight on this?

[Gumby]

Beer has gluten (unless it's a guten-free beer). So, for all we know, a "beer belly" may in fact be a "gluten/wheat belly". You'll also notice that people don't get "wine bellies". That should tell you something.

However, Jaminet says that despite its shortcomings, beer is safer than bread (provided you don't drink tons of it). In a sense, the fermentation of beer isn't too different from the rumen of a cow — which is how a cow is able to detoxify the effects of some grain in its diet (though, even a cow can't detoxify a 100% grain diet).

We tend to neglect beer, because it is made from grains and therefore is presumptively non-Paleo. However, fermentation removes most of the toxins, and beer has some redeeming features:

* Various health benefits have been observed from consuming the bitter acids found in beer.

*Beer is among the best food sources of silicon in its most desirable form, orthosilicic acid. This is one of our optional daily supplement recommendations because many people are deficient in silicon, which supports bone health.

Source: http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2013/02/happy-super-bowl/

And, in general, you should always try to avoid eating foods that are high in polyunsaturated fats while consuming beer/alcohol, as the combination tends to be toxic to the liver.

[vtc]

Anyone research Bee Pollen, can it be consumed in large amounts if one is not allergic?  Seem's to contain almost every vitamin, a bunch minerals, amino acids, omega 3 and 6, etc...

http://www.vitaflex.com/res_beepola.php
http://www.alternativescentral.com/beepollen.htm

I found some contradicting info as well.

[rocketdog]

The best way to study how different diets impact human health is to simply follow the people who eat those diets over long time periods and then compare their incidence of illness and lifespans against other groups that follow a different diet.  Even better if you can have a population on one diet change to a different diet to see how it impacts them.  And if the population is from all different walks of life and in different geographic locations, then all the better because then you can't point to a single extraneous common factor that might be at work other than diet.

This is actually the exact thing that Weston Price did. You should look into his research. It's pretty mind-blowing stuff.

I did look into them, and they're a dangerous group with ties to the dairy and beef industry.  They give out plenty of other bad advice, not just bad diet advice.  Did you know they promote the bogus placebo treatment known as "homeopathy"?

http://www.westonaprice.org/homeopathy/

Or that they put childrens' lives in danger by irresponsibly advocating that parents consider not vaccinating their children?

http://www.westonaprice.org/childrens-h ... med-choice

That's all the reason anyone should need to completely disregard their non-scientific (not to mention hazardous) so-called "advice".  Here are a few other articles critical of this shady organization:

Stay Away from "Holistic" and "Biological" Dentists

The Weston A Price Foundation: Half Right and therefore Dangerous

The Misinformation of Barry Groves and Weston Price

Deadly Dietary Myths: Premature death is too high a price to pay for bad advice!

Nutritional Facts and Fiction: Fanciful folklore is no match for modern science!

[Pointedstick]

A lot of those articles are pretty shoddy, rocketdog. Three out of five of them were written by that same Joel Fuhrman guy who seems like he kind of has an axe to grind, and I didn't see any real counter-arguments besides, "the scientific literature says otherwise; these people are a bunch of dangerous quacks!" As you said before, we can duel with studies all day. I don't consider that appeal to outside experts to be very persuasive.

Fuhrman also cherry-picks statements and takes them out of context. For example, in one article, he writes an inordinately long criticism of the WAPF's infant formula recommendation while completely ignoring that the WAPF's overwhelming advice is to breastfeed and that any kind of formula--commercial or homemade should be minimized. Would he really advocate feeding babies commercial formula over a homemade formula with fatty, nutrient-rich foods? He acknowledged that fatty, nutrient-rich foods are good; does he believe that the WAPF-recommended foods are not fatty or nutritionally-dense?

I would be happy to abandon my beliefs (as I have many times before regarding a variety of subjects), but only if somebody could show me some real scientific evidence that refutes the claims made by WAPF, PHD, and others regarding things like the nutrient density of different foods, the digestibility of various foods, the importance of healthy gut bacteria and fermented foods, and so on and so forth. Not studies saying, "These people are ignoring 100 years of science!" But the ACTUAL SCIENCE that refutes their claims abut what food does to bodies.

Also, humorously enough, Fuhrman accuses WAPF writers of mostly citing research done by other WAPF proponents, but in the article you linked to by Barret, of the 15 references that don't point to court opinions, 9 of them are of Barret's own prior work.  What's good for the goose is evidently not good for the gander.

[rocketdog]

You'll also notice that people don't get "wine bellies".

You're hanging around the wrong crowd then. 

But seriously, I'd imagine that wine has more alcohol per calorie, so people generally consume less of it.  Even more so with liquor ("booze belly," anyone?)

Wine drinkers might also tend to be more health conscious, but with the recent resurgence of craft brews that demographic is probably shifting again. 

[rocketdog]

A lot of those articles are pretty shoddy, rocketdog. Three out of five of them were written by that same Joel Fuhrman guy who seems like he kind of has an axe to grind, and I didn't see any real counter-arguments besides, "the scientific literature says otherwise; these people are a bunch of dangerous quacks!" As you said before, we can duel with studies all day. I don't consider that appeal to outside experts to be very persuasive.

Those are the only articles I could find that went so far as to single out the Weston Price Foundation for criticism.  That doesn't mean WPF's studies and conclusions aren't contradicted by most other major studies; they are, but WPF isn't called out by name because most researchers aren't going to use their studies as a forum to grind their professional axe.