Cohousing-L Mailing List: re: interesting article & data sets

[TR Ruddick (truddick]

Omar, I thought most of what you wrote made good intuitive sense, certainly a ripe field for research, except for the following:

 

 

> [edit] Most Americans eat

> excessive amounts of meat and vegetarians can be

> healthier in this respect and because they substitute

> meat products for fruits and vegetables (**CITE**).  

[edit]

> Omer Gersten

> UC Berkeley Demography Dept.

> omer [at] demog.berkeley.edu

 

Let me explain the limits to this statement as I perceive them, because I believe your hypothesis is based on faulty data and that therefore you won't get good results if you pursue this question.  Also I like to dispel the baseless assumption that I read here.

 

I once practiced vegetarianism.  And other kinds of controlled diet.  For much of my life I bought into the notion that eating a wide variety of stuff, avoiding fat, and going meatless occasionally was good for me.

 

After being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes I consulted with a dietician, followed recommendations to eat more carbs and cut back even more on fats and protein.  Then was advised by my doctor to go on Barry Sears' Zone plan, where you try to eat equal amounts of calories from oils, proteins, and carbs.  I did a lot of studying, considered other diet plans, felt confused.

 

Then a few years ago I started suffering from frequent bouts of vertigo, visual quirks, fuzzy memory, and general feelings of internal mind breakdown.  My battery of medical tests revealed nothing wrong physically--which is a nice thing to learn, but I still frequently felt the room spinning to the point where I wanted to lie down.

 

In December, enticed by some recent medical research reports, I went on the Atkins diet plan, which as you know consists of eating LOTS of meats and cheeses, only a few complex-carbohydrate vegetables, little or no fruits, and absolutely no refined starches or sugars.  My weight loss is gratifying, but even better: I no longer suffer from dizzy spells, my vision has improved, my mind is sharper, I no longer have food cravings that led to overeating, and I have no regrets about having sausage, bacon and eggs every morning.  Good outcome!

 

Atkins points out--and observation confirms--that for decades, diet experts have been making judgments about what foods are "healthy" based not on long-term controlled studies, but on little more than folk-wisdom and intuition.  Look at how many years the doctors told heart patients to avoid butter and substitute margarine; now we know that the trans-fats in margarine are near toxic compared to butter!  Consider the recent move to revise the "food pyramid" (which itself replaced the "four basic food groups) because the pyramid emphasizes too many starches and doesn't include enough "good" oils.  Dietary "science" is just now starting to read the results of long-term controlled studies--it may be years before they're incorporated into common practice.  Until then, we should consider dieticians as dispensers of the latest folk wisdom--as we should realize, sometimes folk wisdom is actual good advice, but often again it's ineffective superstition.

 

I am not writing this to trash vegetarians--personally I hate food faddism, I think people each should have the right to make dietary choices for themselves.  What I mean to point out is that you can't make the assertion that avoiding meat is necessarily healthier than not--there is NO long term medical data to support or reject the conclusion.

 

Oh, I guess I am a little touchy because many vegetarians have a holier-than-thou attitude.  Some of them really are holier I guess, but those are the ones without the attitude :-)

 

____  _

    |     |_)             Thomas E. "TR" Ruddick

    |     |  \             Nunquam Itum Agitabilum

 

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