Peer Ederer's Arguments against Vegetarianism

Bee body parts should also add protein. It helps to balance out the high sugar load of the honey as well as slowing the rate of digestion lowering the overall GI

I am waiting for FlatAss to chime in now telling us that bee legs cause heart disease.

So you think the changing climate, pesticide use, destruction of land for agriculture or residential /industrial use or the fires just recently here in Australia had no impact on bee populations.

Well, like I've said, it seems to me the dangers of climate change are massively overblown. It's been said that polar bears would go extinct because of it, yet there are probably more polar bears now than there were in the 1970s. Similarly, we are using less and less dangerous pesiticides over time. If using those more dangerous pesticides didn't cause the extinction of the bees, then so won't the pesticides we are using now. Unless we all switch to organic farming, since organic farming uses more dangerous pesiticides.

Just last year, nearly half of the pesticides that are currently approved for use by organic farmers in Europe failed to pass the European Union's safety evaluation that is required by law

And forest fires haven't increased over time.

Too inconvenient to be a REAL vegan so you cherry pick what's easy so dismiss animals even if they are critical to our bio diversity just because they have 6 legs.

No, I mean, when you say "Animals should have rights.", you usually mean creatures that can suffer. You don't mean fish which continue swimming as usual even when they have a hole in their fin and that don't change behaviour even as parasites eat their whole bodies, yet alone animals with even simpler nerve systems such as bees.

Find me more recent scientific evidence that points the other way, then we have a real discussion again.

It's easy to find. Here is one from 2019:

They found that eating just half an egg a day was linked to a 6%-8% increased risk of having a heart attack.
(...)
Overall, the study found eating eggs boosted total cholesterol by about 5 points compared to people who were on diets that didn’t include eggs.  Most of that increase came from an increase in LDL, or “bad” cholesterol.

But right now, it seems you have massive bias against non-vegan diets and you cant see past them.

It's not a bias because, if you ask your doctor whether eggs and avocados are harmful to heart health, you will probably get a response such as "Yes, especially for people with type-2-diabetes or already high cholesterol.". I don't know about you, but I have both high cholesterol and a family history of type-2-diabetes.

I am waiting for FlatAss to chime in now telling us that bee legs cause heart disease.

I don't think they do. I don't think it's likely that they will be the most significant source of methionine in your diet. Do they even contain a lot methionine? I know grasshoppers contain it, but they are only very distantly related to bees.
Still, why would honey be healthy? Honey is basically sugar, the main difference between honey and sugar is that, in sugar, the glucose and fructose molecules are bound, whereas, in honey, they aren't. If honey is healthy, then so is sugar.

It's easy to find. Here is one from 2019:

Quote from: https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/news/20190315/are-eggs-the-cholesterol-enemy-again?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=86f203a223c0c358a67b14f7e529e1bccd536590-1587388031-0-Ae3K7YlZ_E9sKY5Hs353ksmVHV474pPJwOqqJhELHigH1Ry5dRMfnjFn0Ajla6TVKjwmRJBnmgc-zXal9_zFR9A1vTq_6F-P-gQc98MfpPXf_T8B33vQZIvPjyGjojd7l7eOs9fy-F9zxmAiFbP7vq6ZTnijDrS9D9xFCTwMZ4z220d1H68YthbUM9gMrq-0Bg4UZ5QCIOTkNr58R6FCpxrwNaX1O0jVO1fEz0jg6GQQ-J2mUA1rbisZxAX9HU3rfsh7u8U_UPoo6bPwCHFU2jl4hnE7bukrv64kB3aoYbmiaoKKZQXAs8bS43zkJWN948UB_vJJWZppHP-XDZbBmMq6Q8ORxBYVrkmKrbtlrPBOaAqkDkoDWVsT3Eizo38UXbbnCeFNqAkDapp3Q_xah-CwYzej2fVkllnenxvx0cOcCUPGY7QBMGdfM4SP5Fe_Ql7fONuGop_UKKq3gWlL7cTeYutuRKD-P69Jsunmk_n1MINM2ND3t-NCu_LGarcSbhwUNgHEietZkYXFqg6X3eXSmybO9kXVdwMYzbqIzSvtJrP9XwWGYUULhV3l-Rjxd0eN1V4-9kzvoVVZ4oCWu7wzKXhzz1aH8lrrvQVRtXjO

They found that eating just half an egg a day was linked to a 6%-8% increased risk of having a heart attack.
(...)
Overall, the study found eating eggs boosted total cholesterol by about 5 points compared to people who were on diets that didn’t include eggs.  Most of that increase came from an increase in LDL, or “bad” cholesterol.

[/font][/size]

Cool, will look into it

It's not a bias because, if you ask your doctor whether eggs and avocados are harmful to heart health, you will probably get a response such as "Yes, especially for people with type-2-diabetes or already high cholesterol.". I don't know about you, but I have both high cholesterol and a family history of type-2-diabetes.

I have actually been tested. Although my cholesterol was lower than the clinics device could detect. I eat loads of dairy, eggs and meat.
Yeah, I def think genetic is one under rated point here. Some people will just naturally be better off with different diets.

Quote from: MaNaeSWolf

I am waiting for FlatAss to chime in now telling us that bee legs cause heart disease.

I don't think they do. I don't think it's likely that they will be the most significant source of methionine in your diet. Do they even contain a lot methionine? I know grasshoppers contain it, but they are only very distantly related to bees.
Still, why would honey be healthy? Honey is basically sugar, the main difference between honey and sugar is that, in sugar, the glucose and fructose molecules are bound, whereas, in honey, they aren't. If honey is healthy, then so is sugar.

I totally agree with you here. Sugar is bad and people dont realize how much of the stuff they are consuming in nearly every product.
But I have a dab of honey once in a blue moon.

This is me three years ago.

Worst vasectomy ever! 
Hope you're good, buddy.

Quote from: Psychomech on April 16, 2020, 12:52:09 AM

I like butter. I also like red meat.
This is me three years ago.

https://ibb.co/7KGjcMx
(I appear to be having issues inserting the image directly).

I don't eat much butter now. 

But hey, your smiling. And still got your health 

You can be healthy and vegan in the 21st century - no question. But only because technology and an over abundance of food (for people wealthy enough) has gifted us the ability.

I've had friends that went vegan and as a result were pale as death, went dangerously underweight and lacked a lot of vigor and stamina. There's a healthy way to do things and an unhealthy way of doing things

Vegan is not synonymous with health

Omnivore is not synonymous with unhealthy

You can enjoy milk, eggs, cheese, honey, meats etc and still be healthy.

People think vegan food is more natural and unprocessed. That's not necessarily  true. Some foods that are vegan are absolutely unhealthy and very processed. Like all that pretend meat crap. Or even 'veggiev burgers and the like. Full of processed soy, salts, preservatives, artificial flavours etc. And other vegan foods that try to imitate the 'real' thing end up being sugar laden calorie bombs with little nutritional value



Just eat healthy and eat foods in moderation. Cut the processed crap and refined sugars and you should be fine.

Did anyone cover that this image is wrong?

Should have been quite obvious to shifter.

This flat assembler guy reminds me of people that say gluten is bad because a fraction of the population can't tolerate gluten. So everyone should avoid gluten

Eggs are not harmful to the majority of the population because most people don't suffer hypercholesterolaemia

If you're not one of those people, enjoy an egg or 2

Also the link between saturated fat and cholesterol has been debunked as BS. Enjoy your avocados

I only take dietary advice from 148 year olds.

Quote from: Shifter

That's not the only study into bees and determining the consciousness by the way. There are plenty that are finding out that bees posses a level of sentience we dont appreciate

If somebody claiming bees posses super-human mental capabilities doesn't trigger your nonsense detectors, then I can't help you. And even if that were true, I don't see any particular reason to think a vegan diet would somehow cause more suffering to the bees. Feeding cows with grain, as it usually done today, involves a lot of transportation, and many insects (including many bees) are killed by that transportation.

A lot more insects would be killed to produce the grain to feed cows and the grain used to feed people. Of course a lot of things are killed to produce non meat foods aren't they? Hey I keep coming across vegans saying that 50% of grain goes to beef production. However in Brazil 90% is grass fed. In America all cattle are in pasture and the grain fed are moved into a feed lot 4-6 months before harvest. In Australia 97% of cattle are grass fed. Are there other countries that overturn this balance? The 50% figure just doesn't sound right from the countries that I am aware of. Do such a small proportion of cattle or cattle eating grain for such a small time really eat as much grain as humans?

Quote from: Shifter

Are you not concerned about their dwindling numbers?

No, because such stories are usually nonsense fear-mongering. They have told us the same about polar bears, when almost no scientist believed that, and, of course, it turned out to be false.

Quote from: MaNaeSWolf

You have now created a conspiracy theory to justify your views.

It's not really a conspiracy theory. But if you don't understand why the Earth isn't flat, I don't think you can understand that. If something sounds crazy, like that eggs and avocado don't cause heart disease (or, for that sake, that the Earth is flat), it almost always is. But you probably can't see why...
But let's try it this way, I am not saying WHO is in a conspiracy to say eggs and avocados are safe, I am saying they are thinking that simply telling people to avoid eggs and avocados might lead to them replacing them with something even worse. A conspiracy would be if they were knowingly lying or keeping a secret to achieve some evil end.

I haven't looked up the definition but going by that it isn't a conspiracy. However it is the same as a conspiracy theory except with a patronising rather than evil intention. You are making up an explanation that suits you because you don't like the facts. How does it seem crazy that eggs and avocados are safe? Both are recognised not just by WHO but by regular nutritionists as very nutritious. There are slight concerns about getting too much cholesterol from eggs but it has been reasonably argued that dietary cholesterol isn't guaranteed to affect blood cholesterol by a huge amount. I know of a person who was on a vegan diet and had high cholesterol. The contents of an egg are a self contained rich food package that baby chicks rely upon for the first 21 days of their life. They are an awesome food that humans using the brains we evolved due to eating meat were able to work out was a good idea to eat.

Quote from: MaNaeSWolf

What I was saying about burden of proof is, that you cant prove everything is safe.

Really? Well, let's say you walk into a forest and are feeling hungry. Would you pick up a random plant, assume it's safe to eat and eat it, just because, as far as you know, it hasn't been proven to be unsafe? Obviously, the burden of proof is on one who claims it's safe.
And this situation is even worse than that. It's more like if you weren't sure if that plant was safe to eat, but you knew a plant closely related to it was deadly poisonous. So, the burden of proof is even higher.
But it's even worse than that. It's that your textbook is telling you that plant, as well as plants related to it, are deadly poisonous, and somebody claims that that particular plant actually isn't. That's now a very high burden of proof.

Sorry but that is a really bad comparison. We have a very healthy food that some vegans want to avoid on idealistic grounds (ie. all animal products are bad foods so we will find some post hoc justification to explain it) and that we have eaten for a long time. Saying that a food that is widely known as healthy and recognised as such by authorities is like a potentially poison plant doesn't slice it. If you want to make an outlandish claim you should prove it.

Quote from: MaNaeSWolf

And when you do a meta analysis on hundreds of epidemiological studies, you get close to something you can start taking very seriously.

Actually, no. A huge number of epidemiological studies supposedly showing fish protects against heart disease is not enough to prove omega-3-acids protect against heart disease, they can also be interpreted as showing that people who eat fish consistently eat less red meat (which contains a lot more saturated fat that causes heart disease). Similarly, a large number of epidemiological studies failing to find a link between sugar and diabetes should be interpreted as showing that people who eat less sugar tend to eat other things that cause diabetes (saturated fat, honey...).

In that case a meta analysis (or research that checks your hypothesis) should be just the trick. Given the role the appropriate version of omega-3-acids (derived from fish)play for the brain eating fish is a great idea anyway.

FlatAssembler

In an earlier post you attributed most methane production to cattle. Hasn't research indicated that sea molluscs produce more methane than cattle?

In America the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated in 2007 that only 2.8 percent of American greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture.  The amount hasn't changed since 1990 even though meat production has increased almost 50 percent and milk production by 16 percent.

Wasn't the planet covered by massive herds of herbivores that used to move in response to predation by carnivores. For example America used to have vast herds of buffalo before humans arrived. If herds of cows are the main issue then why didn't the climate change peak way back then and the world at an end already or something?

Could it be that humans negative contribution is reducing the numbers of herbivores grazing and improving the vegetation rather than having herds of cattle in existence?


Sorry if real life doesn't fit the vegan narrative.

BTW FlatAssembler

If you want to be healthy as a geriatric and strong without drugs when you get old like Dr Shawn Baker then you should eat lots of meat and exercise. Get away from that vegan nonsense. Dr Baker is in his 50s.



Yeah I know that guy is an extreme being a carnivore for years but you are an extreme as a vegan. You should join the rest of us somewhere in the middle.

Eggs are not harmful to the majority of the population because most people don't suffer hypercholesterolaemia

And maybe smaller amounts of oxidised cholesterol that does get into your blood from the food is more harmful than the non-oxidised cholesterol that your liver produces. What? You aren't sticking with the mainstream science, so why should I then?

Also the link between saturated fat and cholesterol has been debunked as BS. Enjoy your avocados

As far as I know, nobody would deny saturated fat in food increases your cholesterol levels. Some people claim it doesn't matter because it increases both your high-density cholesterol and your low-density cholesterol, and high-density cholesterol supposedly protects against heart disease, even though there is quite some evidence against that (the fact that omega-3-acids, which convert LDL to HDL, don't appear to protect against heart disease, studies showing high HDL appears to increase the risk of heart disease just as much as high LDL does...).

Are there other countries that overturn this balance? The 50% figure just doesn't sound right from the countries that I am aware of.

Well, according to FAO, livestock consume annually about 6 billion tonnes of feed dry matter, about half of it being grass. But, since the feed conversion ratio for grass-fed cows is around 5 times that of grain-fed cows, we can estimate that around 10% of meat from cows comes from grass-fed cows. I believe I've read somewhere that FAO estimated it's 9%, but I can't find it right now.

There are slight concerns about getting too much cholesterol from eggs but it has been reasonably argued that dietary cholesterol isn't guaranteed to affect blood cholesterol by a huge amount.

It's not about dietary cholesterol, it's about saturated fat tricking your liver into thinking your cholesterol levels are lower than they actually are and needlessly (and harmfully) producing a lot more cholesterol than it should.
This is like saying that sugar isn't harmful because the glucose you eat doesn't affect much the glucose levels in your blood. It's not glucose you eat that's the problem, it's the fructose that you eat that makes your liver behave as if the glucose levels in blood are a lot lower than they actually are and needlessly (and harmfully) convert glycogen and protein into glucose. 

Sorry but that is a really bad comparison.

I was referring to the MaNaeSWolf claim that I bear the burden of proof if I claim (just like nearly all nutritionists do) that the trans-fats found in butter are harmful.

Given the role the appropriate version of omega-3-acids play for the brain fish eating fish is a great idea anyway.

Hey, listen, flax contains far more omega-3-acids than fish do. And the importance of getting enough omega-3-acids for the brain health is, I guess, about as exaggerated as the importance of getting enough calcium for bone health is. Yeah, your brain is partly made of omega-3-acids, but that doesn't mean it needs lots of it. That would be like saying that fuel for cars needs to contain lead because a car is partly made of lead. Similarly with bones, osteoporosis is usually caused by a lack of vitamin K or vitamin D, rather than a lack of calcium, and getting calcium without getting vitamins K and D is worse than nothing: it causes atherosclerosis.

Hasn't research indicated that sea molluscs produce more methane than cattle?

Yes, most methane in the atmosphere is produced by under-sea methanogenic bacteria. But grass-fed cattle produce more methane than people using natural gas does. So much so that total emissions of methane in the atmosphere are decreasing over time in response to there being fewer grass-fed cows around the world, rather than increasing in response to us using more natural gas (as a cleaner alternative to coal).
This is the diagram I've used in my video:

In America the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated in 2007 that only 2.8 percent of American greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture.

Well, like I've said, greenhouse gas emissions are not the biggest problem with animal agriculture. The biggest problem is that giving antibiotics to animals in factory farms leads to super-bacteria.

Wasn't the planet covered by massive herds of herbivores that used to move in response to predation by carnivores.

There are two billion cows around the world right now. The number of wild ruminants might have decreased slightly (I am not sure how it can be known), but not by two billion.

Could it be that humans negative contribution is reducing the numbers of herbivores grazing and improving the vegetation rather than having herds of cattle in existence?

No, because the amount of methane in the atmosphere has beeen increasing ever since the measurements started, it has doubled since the 19th century. There is agood reason why Allan Savory is widely viewed as a crank.

If you want to be healthy as a geriatric and strong without drugs when you get old like Dr Shawn Baker then you should eat lots of meat and exercise.

Just don't bring up this low-carb nonsense, OK? I would wager no qualified nutritionist believes that.

It's easy to find. Here is one from 2019:

Quote from: https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/news/20190315/are-eggs-the-cholesterol-enemy-again?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=86f203a223c0c358a67b14f7e529e1bccd536590-1587388031-0-Ae3K7YlZ_E9sKY5Hs353ksmVHV474pPJwOqqJhELHigH1Ry5dRMfnjFn0Ajla6TVKjwmRJBnmgc-zXal9_zFR9A1vTq_6F-P-gQc98MfpPXf_T8B33vQZIvPjyGjojd7l7eOs9fy-F9zxmAiFbP7vq6ZTnijDrS9D9xFCTwMZ4z220d1H68YthbUM9gMrq-0Bg4UZ5QCIOTkNr58R6FCpxrwNaX1O0jVO1fEz0jg6GQQ-J2mUA1rbisZxAX9HU3rfsh7u8U_UPoo6bPwCHFU2jl4hnE7bukrv64kB3aoYbmiaoKKZQXAs8bS43zkJWN948UB_vJJWZppHP-XDZbBmMq6Q8ORxBYVrkmKrbtlrPBOaAqkDkoDWVsT3Eizo38UXbbnCeFNqAkDapp3Q_xah-CwYzej2fVkllnenxvx0cOcCUPGY7QBMGdfM4SP5Fe_Ql7fONuGop_UKKq3gWlL7cTeYutuRKD-P69Jsunmk_n1MINM2ND3t-NCu_LGarcSbhwUNgHEietZkYXFqg6X3eXSmybO9kXVdwMYzbqIzSvtJrP9XwWGYUULhV3l-Rjxd0eN1V4-9kzvoVVZ4oCWu7wzKXhzz1aH8lrrvQVRtXjO

They found that eating just half an egg a day was linked to a 6%-8% increased risk of having a heart attack.

[/font][/size]
Thanks for the link.
First, I thought you where against epidemiological studies. This study is similar to the epidemiological studies I posted, just a lot smaller.
BUT, I did find it interesting, and maybe shows that the science is still not in. I think there needs to be studies linking genetic traits to heart disease, as there seems to be a great link there. I eat somewhere between 3 - 20 eggs a week and have zero HDL detectable in my blood. My wife eats 0-3 eggs a week and has high cholesterol. So I dont think diet is the only factor.

Well, like I've said, greenhouse gas emissions are not the biggest problem with animal agriculture. The biggest problem is that giving antibiotics to animals in factory farms leads to super-bacteria..

I agree that antibiotic resistant bacteria could become a major issue as I think that there are a lot of places that do not use antibiotics with a lot of care and regulation (Im looking at you USA)

The other issue is greater than animal products, it is farming practices around the world in general. And this is a super complex issue. Even if you had to 100% remove meat consumption from this, irresponsible farming practices remain.

But overall, I dont see anything that cant be solved with better regulation.

Quote from: Onlooker

Are there other countries that overturn this balance? The 50% figure just doesn't sound right from the countries that I am aware of.

Well, according to FAO, livestock consume annually about 6 billion tonnes of feed dry matter, about half of it being grass.

It states that the livestock sector  "consumes annually about 6 billion tonnes of feed material in dry matter, including one third of global cereal production. 86% of the global livestock feed intake is made of materials that are currently not eaten by humans. In addition, soybean cakes, which production can be considered as main driver oF land-use, represent 4% of the global livestock feed intake. Monogastric consume 72% of the global livestock grain intake while grass and leaves represent more than 57% of the ruminants’ intake" FAO

If 86% of the feed intake is made from materials that are currently not eaten by humans how can the vegan claim that half of the potential food supply is being wasted on cows be true?

You can estimate all you want from ambiguous related things but, of the countries that I am aware of that is the proportions. Wouldn't it be better to look at the proportions in other countries rather than your guestimate? Particularly since your calculations contradict the explicit fact from FAO I put in the above paragraph?

But, since the feed conversion ratio for grass-fed cows is around 5 times that of grain-fed cows, we can estimate that around 10% of meat from cows comes from grass-fed cows. I believe I've read somewhere that FAO estimated it's 9%, but I can't find it right now.

I would estimate that up to 97% of the meat comes from grass fed cows in places where 97% of cows are grass fed and a commensurate number to the percentage of grass fed cows in lower percentage countries. Having a good feed conversion rate means that the cows just need less food on their way to be harvested. It doesn't change the proportion of cows and thus beef produced. Am I missing something?

Quote from: Onlooker

There are slight concerns about getting too much cholesterol from eggs but it has been reasonably argued that dietary cholesterol isn't guaranteed to affect blood cholesterol by a huge amount.

It's not about dietary cholesterol, it's about saturated fat tricking your liver into thinking your cholesterol levels are lower than they actually are and needlessly (and harmfully) producing a lot more cholesterol than it should.
This is like saying that sugar isn't harmful because the glucose you eat doesn't affect much the glucose levels in your blood. It's not glucose you eat that's the problem, it's the fructose that you eat that makes your liver behave as if the glucose levels in blood are a lot lower than they actually are and needlessly (and harmfully) convert glycogen and protein into glucose.

That's a theory but eggs are a very good source of high-quality protein combined with vitamin B2, selenium, vitamin D, vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and zinc, iron and copper. Studies comparing 1-3 eggs per day with no eggs always find HDL going up but total and LDL either remaining the same or only going up slightly. Certain eggs even lower triglycerides. Even for the people where LDL levels were raised they changed the LDL particles from small and dense to large. Small dense LDL particles are associated with a increased risk of heart disease.

Thanks for letting me know about the butter. I couldn't easily see where you got it from so I thought you were talking about eggs.

Quote from: Onlooker

Given the role the appropriate version of omega-3-acids play for the brain fish eating fish is a great idea anyway.

Hey, listen, flax contains far more omega-3-acids than fish do. And the importance of getting enough omega-3-acids for the brain health is, I guess, about as exaggerated as the importance of getting enough calcium for bone health is. Yeah, your brain is partly made of omega-3-acids, but that doesn't mean it needs lots of it. That would be like saying that fuel for cars needs to contain lead because a car is partly made of lead. Similarly with bones, osteoporosis is usually caused by a lack of vitamin K or vitamin D, rather than a lack of calcium, and getting calcium without getting vitamins K and D is worse than nothing: it causes atherosclerosis.

I did say the appropriate version. I meant the version that the body uses not the version that only some people can covert to the form the body uses. I didn't say you need lots of it but I wouldn't avoid eating fish either. By the way the two analogies you use don't match up. The fact that cars are partly made of lead means that they need lead in the fuel is not the same as bones and calcium. A car body is fixed while bones are dynamic and are completely replaced within 7 years (from memory). Also, not having vitamins may render calcium worse than useless but both vitamins and calcium are needed to build the bones.

Quote from: Onlooker

Hasn't research indicated that sea molluscs produce more methane than cattle?

Yes, most methane in the atmosphere is produced by under-sea methanogenic bacteria. But grass-fed cattle produce more methane than people using natural gas does. So much so that total emissions of methane in the atmosphere are decreasing over time in response to there being fewer grass-fed cows around the world, rather than increasing in response to us using more natural gas (as a cleaner alternative to coal).
This is the diagram I've used in my video:

That sounds like an oversimplification to assume that something that doesn't cause the majority of the methane must be the explanation for methane levels in the atmosphere that don't correspond to increasing natural gas usage. It would be like assuming that natural gas (which I am assuming produces least methane based on your rankings) must be the cause if the levels had gone up. Since it is a natural gas could there be a natural process that removes it from the atmosphere that could have increased for some reason?

Quote from: Onlooker

In America the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated in 2007 that only 2.8 percent of American greenhouse gas emissions come from animal agriculture.

Well, like I've said, greenhouse gas emissions are not the biggest problem with animal agriculture. The biggest problem is that giving antibiotics to animals in factory farms leads to super-bacteria.

I'd be happy for factory farms to be abolished.

Quote from: Onlooker

Wasn't the planet covered by massive herds of herbivores that used to move in response to predation by carnivores.

There are two billion cows around the world right now. The number of wild ruminants might have decreased slightly (I am not sure how it can be known), but not by two billion.

Quote from: Onlooker

Could it be that humans negative contribution is reducing the numbers of herbivores grazing and improving the vegetation rather than having herds of cattle in existence?

No, because the amount of methane in the atmosphere has beeen increasing ever since the measurements started, it has doubled since the 19th century. There is agood reason why Allan Savory is widely viewed as a crank.

The methane up and then declined. We don't know why. Since Allan Savory is getting real world results are you saying you ignore that because he is not part of the cosy consensus? His results speak for themselves.

Quote from: Onlooker

If you want to be healthy as a geriatric and strong without drugs when you get old like Dr Shawn Baker then you should eat lots of meat and exercise.

Just don't bring up this low-carb nonsense, OK? I would wager no qualified nutritionist believes that.

We are better off eating meat alone than we are eating a plant based diet. Carnivores thrive while vegans wither. However I am saying that we should run with being omnivores as that is the most natural diet. I am not advocating low-carb.

If 86% of the feed intake is made from materials that are currently not eaten by humans how can the vegan claim that half of the potential food supply is being wasted on cows be true?

Weirdly, though, Peer Ederer made the same argument, just slightly different phrasing, and I responded to it in my video. Have you watched my video and are trolling?
That high-fiber grain that's suitable for cows (for they need a lot more fiber in their diet than humans do) is mostly grown on the land that would be suitable for growing food for humans.

I would estimate that up to 97% of the meat comes from grass fed cows in places where 97% of cows are grass fed and a commensurate number to the percentage of grass fed cows in lower percentage countries.

I am not sure what you mean.
What I am saying is that meat from grass-fed cows plays very little role in human nutrition, even though grass comprises a significant amount of the food for cows around the world. Cows aren't magical creatures that can produce nutritional elements from plants that contain very little of it, such as grass. What's going on is that large amounts of grass are converted to very little meat.

It doesn't change the proportion of cows and thus beef produced.

It does. Those grass-fed cows give very little meat. That's why meat from grass-fed cows is more expensive.
Look, let's say you have one cow fed with grass and one cow fed with grain. Let's say a grass-fed cow needs around 5 times as much feed (and I think it's significantly more) to give the same amount of meat. So, you have 5 units of feed for the grass-fed cow and one unit of feed for the grain-fed cow. So, for those two cows, 5/6=83% of feed is grass. See what's going on?

eggs are a very good source of high-quality protein

As far as I know, claiming that eggs are a source of high-quality protein is banned in many countries as deceptive advertising.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/who-says-eggs-arent-healthy-or-safe/

Studies comparing 1-3 eggs per day with no eggs always find HDL going up but total and LDL either remaining the same or only going up slightly.

I don't know about that:

Overall, the study found eating eggs boosted total cholesterol by about 5 points compared to people who were on diets that didn’t include eggs.  Most of that increase came from an increase in LDL, or “bad” cholesterol.

I did say the appropriate version.

I think that you first need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that omega-3-acids actually help against heart disease or neurological diseases, and only later can you discuss whether the ALA to HDA ratio is important. Since it hasn't been proven omega-3-acids protect against heart disease or neurological diseases, the claim that the ALA to HDA ratio is important seems like an obvious ad-hoc hypothesis to me.

A car body is fixed while bones are dynamic and are completely replaced within 7 years (from memory).

OK, well, the neurons in your brain don't get replaced.

Since it is a natural gas could there be a natural process that removes it from the atmosphere that could have increased for some reason?

Which natural process? Why would it increase? Why would the amount of methane-consuming bacteria disproportionately increase?

His results speak for themselves.

What results? It would take decades to see whether his policies would actually lead to lower methane emissions. And one of the basic principles of science is that incoherent hypotheses aren't being tested, and his hypotheses are obviously incoherent with what we know about ecology.

We are better off eating meat alone than we are eating a plant based diet.

How? You brain runs primarily on starch, you will inevitably have neurological problems if you aren't getting enough of it. And eating too much protein inevitably leads to kidney stones, though I am not sure if that's a problem unless you only eat very high-protein meat such as rabbit meat. Is it possible to avoid getting too much methionine on a carnivorous diet? Maybe if you avoid muscle meat, though liver meat still contains large amounts of it. What about vitamin C? Cats whose liver stops producing vitamin C die rather quickly, and human liver can't produce vitamin C from glycogen even when it's healthy. What about fiber? Though we don't need nearly as much fiber in our diets as cows or rabbits do, we still need some. It's also why wolves are sometimes eating grass, they need some fiber.

Humans really aren't built to be strictly carnivores or herbivores.  Rather, we're built to be omnivores.

Quote from: Onlooker

If 86% of the feed intake is made from materials that are currently not eaten by humans how can the vegan claim that half of the potential food supply is being wasted on cows be true?

Weirdly, though, Peer Ederer made the same argument, just slightly different phrasing, and I responded to it in my video. Have you watched my video and are trolling?
That high-fiber grain that's suitable for cows (for they need a lot more fiber in their diet than humans do) is mostly grown on the land that would be suitable for growing food for humans.

He pointed out that cows eat grass so they aren't in competition with us. You said in a world where only 90% of meat comes from pastured animals it is ridiculous. But I can't see how 3% or 10% or whatever the overall percentage of cows is equates to 90% just because grain is more efficient at producing meat. As regards the high fiber grain that is suitable for cows. I agree that it is grown on land that is suitable for feeding humans but only 14% of the grain used for all livestock combined is suitable for humans so humans would be eating the other 86% of the grain grown on that land. I suspect that things like pigs or chickens would likely dominate the 14% rather than cows but don't have the figures.

All grain is high fibre. That part gets removed because we can't digest it and some goes to livestock because they can digest it. The rest goes to humans. The fibrous part will be removed whether animals are fed on it or they aren't. There isn't some special high fibre grain grown just for animals. Being omnivores with digestive systems very close to carnivores we can't get nourishment from the same types of things that they can just like a cow can't digest meat like we can. The parts we can't use get used by ruminates.

Quote from: Onlooker

I would estimate that up to 97% of the meat comes from grass fed cows in places where 97% of cows are grass fed and a commensurate number to the percentage of grass fed cows in lower percentage countries.

I am not sure what you mean. What I am saying is that meat from grass-fed cows plays very little role in human nutrition, even though grass comprises a significant amount of the food for cows around the world. Cows aren't magical creatures that can produce nutritional elements from plants that contain very little of it, such as grass. What's going on is that large amounts of grass are converted to very little meat.

I beg to differ. We would probably die if we tried to eat exclusively grass as we would get no nourishment from it. However cows are designed for a plant based diet and can eat exclusively grass and get perfect nutrition and make nutritious meat that we can eat. It isn't magic it is biology.

Quote from: Onlooker

It doesn't change the proportion of cows and thus beef produced.

It does. Those grass-fed cows give very little meat. That's why meat from grass-fed cows is more expensive.
Look, let's say you have one cow fed with grass and one cow fed with grain. Let's say a grass-fed cow needs around 5 times as much feed (and I think it's significantly more) to give the same amount of meat. So, you have 5 units of feed for the grass-fed cow and one unit of feed for the grain-fed cow. So, for those two cows, 5/6=83% of feed is grass. See what's going on?

Maybe I'm missing something but you seem to be confusing the feed of all pastoral animals with the feed of cows and missing the fact that if 97% of the cattle producing beef are fed grass then 97% of the beef comes from grass fed cattle whether grain fed beasts are much more food efficient or whether they are not.

Quote from: Onlooker

eggs are a very good source of high-quality protein

As far as I know, claiming that eggs are a source of high-quality protein is banned in many countries as deceptive advertising.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/who-says-eggs-arent-healthy-or-safe/

That article does quote some one who points out that much larger studies have found contrary results. It is interesting and invites further research but is hardly conclusive.

Studies comparing 1-3 eggs per day with no eggs always find HDL going up but total and LDL either remaining the same or only going up slightly.

I don't know about that:

Overall, the study found eating eggs boosted total cholesterol by about 5 points compared to people who were on diets that didn’t include eggs.  Most of that increase came from an increase in LDL, or “bad” cholesterol.

Okay I accept that the Doctor who writes that is a Doctor but he is a Vegan activist for goodness sake. If Dr Shawn Baker says something will you also accept that as gospel?

Quote from: Onlooker

I did say the appropriate version.

I think that you first need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that omega-3-acids actually help against heart disease or neurological diseases, and only later can you discuss whether the ALA to HDA ratio is important. Since it hasn't been proven omega-3-acids protect against heart disease or neurological diseases, the claim that the ALA to HDA ratio is important seems like an obvious ad-hoc hypothesis to me.

If you like.

Quote from: FlatAssembler on April 21, 2020, 11:24:22 AM

Quote from: Onlooker

A car body is fixed while bones are dynamic and are completely replaced within 7 years (from memory).

OK, well, the neurons in your brain don't get replaced.

Quote from: Onlooker

Since it is a natural gas could there be a natural process that removes it from the atmosphere that could have increased for some reason?

Which natural process? Why would it increase? Why would the amount of methane-consuming bacteria disproportionately increase?

More food?

Quote from: FlatAssembler on April 21, 2020, 11:24:22 AM

Quote from: Onlooker

His results speak for themselves.

What results? It would take decades to see whether his policies would actually lead to lower methane emissions. And one of the basic principles of science is that incoherent hypotheses aren't being tested, and his hypotheses are obviously incoherent with what we know about ecology.

He greens arid areas. Shouldn't that both cool and reduce carbon in the atmosphere?

Quote from: FlatAssembler on April 21, 2020, 11:24:22 AM

Quote from: Onlooker

We are better off eating meat alone than we are eating a plant based diet.

How? You brain runs primarily on starch, you will inevitably have neurological problems if you aren't getting enough of it. And eating too much protein inevitably leads to kidney stones, though I am not sure if that's a problem unless you only eat very high-protein meat such as rabbit meat. Is it possible to avoid getting too much methionine on a carnivorous diet? Maybe if you avoid muscle meat, though liver meat still contains large amounts of it. What about vitamin C? Cats whose liver stops producing vitamin C die rather quickly, and human liver can't produce vitamin C from glycogen even when it's healthy. What about fiber? Though we don't need nearly as much fiber in our diets as cows or rabbits do, we still need some. It's also why wolves are sometimes eating grass, they need some fiber.

I think you mean the brain runs primarily on glucose. The body can break down protein and even more easily fat to sugar if necessary. The brain has high energy demands. I would expect that if it had no fuel neurological problems would be the least of your problems. I don't know about the kidney stones. Even people on carnivore diets seem to be fine so I don't know if there is anything in that. I don't know about the methone but we and all the other animals that are meat focussed seem to manage. If Vitamin C was a problem then people on carnivore diets would die of scurvey pretty quickly. The way I think it works is that Vitamin C is used for production of carnitine and dealing with infections. Meat provides carnitine and higher levels of protein results in more urea which covers Vitamin C's other function. What do we need fibre for? There are rumours that it helps us to poop regularly. I am trying to answer those questions but like I said before I am just saying we should be omnivores as nature intended. I am not pushing a carnivore diet.

I agree that it is grown on land that is suitable for feeding humans but only 14% of the grain used for all livestock combined is suitable for humans so humans would be eating the other 86% of the grain grown on that land.

Well, according to FAO, about 33% of human-edible grain around the world is consumed by livestock. And according to vegan sources, it's way more than that. So, there is a competition for food itself, yet alone for the land.

There isn't some special high fibre grain grown just for animals.

Yes there is, they are called fodder crops. They have slightly lower requirements of the land, but there aren't vast areas of land that are suitable only for fodder crops, so much of it (according to FAO, it's around 40%, according to vegan sources, it's a lot more than that) happens to be grown on land sutable for growing grain for humans. Plus, much of the land used for grazing could also be used for growing crops for humans. So, yes, there certainly is competition for land between livestock and humans.

Being omnivores with digestive systems very close to carnivores we can't get nourishment from the same types of things that they can just like a cow can't digest meat like we can.

How are we close to carnivores? Almost all birds and mammals can synthesize vitamin C themselves, human beings are one of few mammals that need to eat fruits and vegetables to survive.

The parts we can't use get used by ruminates.

Hey, listen, now, according to this article, byproducts constitute about one-seventh (14%) of the feed for pigs. My guess would be that it's way less for cows, because, well, cows don't have the teeth to chew the corncobs.

We would probably die if we tried to eat exclusively grass as we would get no nourishment from it.

Well, my guess is that we would have trouble getting enough glucose from grass, because most of the glucose in grass is in celulose, and we can only convert around 2% of celulose into glucose, and for cows that percentage is a lot higher. But cows are no better than we are at extracting protein and fat and other things needed for growth from grass than humans would be, right? And cows that eat grass need to eat quite a lot of it to get enough protein and fat.
I've read some stories of people surviving for extended periods of time eating nothing but grass, but I doubt they are true.

missing the fact that if 97% of the cattle producing beef are fed grass

Look, some amount of skepticism in science is good, but questioning basic facts isn't going to get us anywhere. Questioning that grass plays little role in nutrition of cows today really isn't going to get us far. Maybe I was wrong in the video to claim it's 9%, maybe it's around 20%. And maybe it's even less than 9% (because the ratio of the feed conversion ratio for grass-fed cows and grain-fed cows is more than 5, grass-fed cows tend to be thinner...). But insisting it's more than 50% isn't getting us anywhere. And questioning that grass-fed cows emit much more methane (unless maybe if they are given the right kind of probiotics) than grain-fed cows do also isn't going to get us far.
I have published scientific papers about linguistics (about my alternative interpretation of the names of places in Croatia) and about computer science (about my attempt to implement an efficient sorting algorithm in the programming language I made), and this type of discussion seems profoundly anti-scientific to me. First of all, I feel it's a huge red-herring. I mean, we basically discuss about whether meat could be produced in a way that isn't horribly damaging to the environment, and I feel like the implication is that if it could be, it's ethical to eat it even though the production of meat, as it is done today, leads to super-bacteria.

Okay I accept that the Doctor who writes that is a Doctor but he is a Vegan activist for goodness sake.

Is he? Who is the author actually, I didn't bother to look at it? I have tried to open it again, but I just get endless stream of captchas.

More food?

But the methane in the atmosphere has been increasing ever since the 19th century, so why would the number of methane-absorbing bacteria only apparently start increasing significantly in the 1990s?

He greens arid areas.

You realize Australia didn't have ruminants all until the 18th century, yet much of it was green? Clearly you don't need ruminants for plants to grow.

Shouldn't that both cool and reduce carbon in the atmosphere?

Well, it's a lot more important not to significantly increase the amount of methane in the atmosphere than not to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, right?

I don't know about the kidney stones.

I am not sure either, I have just read a few stories of people going on carnivore diets and having terrible health problems caused by it. Obviously, all we have is anecdotal evidence. There aren't countless people going on carnivore diets so that we can properly study that.

Quote from: Onlooker

I agree that it is grown on land that is suitable for feeding humans but only 14% of the grain used for all livestock combined is suitable for humans so humans would be eating the other 86% of the grain grown on that land.

Well, according to FAO, about 33% of human-edible grain around the world is consumed by livestock. And according to vegan sources, it's way more than that. So, there is a competition for food itself, yet alone for the land.

Two things I notice about the link:

1. It is not FAO. Perhaps you copied and pasted and forgot to change the FAO
2. It has the 86% quoted there and I can't find any 33% on the page.

Quote from: Onlooker

There isn't some special high fibre grain grown just for animals.

Yes there is, they are called fodder crops. They have slightly lower requirements of the land, but there aren't vast areas of land that are suitable only for fodder crops, so much of it (according to FAO, it's around 40%, according to vegan sources, it's a lot more than that) happens to be grown on land sutable for growing grain for humans. Plus, much of the land used for grazing could also be used for growing crops for humans. So, yes, there certainly is competition for land between livestock and humans.

I could say no given what you were answering but I won't bother with that. Fodder crops are grown for animals whether they are vegetables or corn or natural grasslands, pasture or prairie. Of the fodder crops I suspect the natural grassland grown for livestock would tend to lean toward things like cows and the cultivated land where things like vegetables etc. are grown are the areas that could be used to grow human crops would lean toward things like pigs. (Of course natural grasslands and forests could also be cleared but that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing.) If anything I suspect food production for pigs and foul would be in competition.

Quote from: Onlooker

Being omnivores with digestive systems very close to carnivores we can't get nourishment from the same types of things that they can just like a cow can't digest meat like we can.

How are we close to carnivores? Almost all birds and mammals can synthesize vitamin C themselves, human beings are one of few mammals that need to eat fruits and vegetables to survive.

Well the Vitamin C thing is rather complicated. Yes we don't produce Vitamin C and on a diet of meat and vegetables that we are supposed to have the average onset of symptoms of scurvy is 4 weeks and we will die after a time of scurvy if we don't get any Vitamin C. However, if we eat meat alone we can go for 20 years without any relevant problems. We can work around it and lean more toward the carnivore side of things biologically then herbivore so that is probably why we don't produce it.

We are close to carnivores because our bodies are designed to eat meat. Our stomachs are like a lion's stomach tweaked to enable us to be omnivores. We have canines for tearing meat but they aren't as developed as a lions because we don't normally use them to kill our prey due to our hands and brains facilitating other methods. Herbivores are very different.

I will probably remain on an omnivore diet but the results of humans on a carnivore diet are very interesting:

Quote from: Onlooker

The parts we can't use get used by ruminates.

Hey, listen, now, according to this article, byproducts constitute about one-seventh (14%) of the feed for pigs. My guess would be that it's way less for cows, because, well, cows don't have the teeth to chew the corncobs.

It is probably way less because they eat so much grass. Pigs probably eat foods similar to us as they are not ruminates. If anything competes with our food production it would be them I suspect.

Quote from: Onlooker

We would probably die if we tried to eat exclusively grass as we would get no nourishment from it.

Well, my guess is that we would have trouble getting enough glucose from grass, because most of the glucose in grass is in celulose, and we can only convert around 2% of celulose into glucose, and for cows that percentage is a lot higher. But cows are no better than we are at extracting protein and fat and other things needed for growth from grass than humans would be, right? And cows that eat grass need to eat quite a lot of it to get enough protein and fat.
I've read some stories of people surviving for extended periods of time eating nothing but grass, but I doubt they are true.

Yes we can't digest cellulose but no there is no problem for cows to eat only grass and thrive due to getting everything they need. Minerals and bacteria in soil enable plants to produce nutrients that are accessible to things like cows who incorporate nutrients into their meat that omnivores and carnivores like us can get great nutrition from. That is how life on this planet works.

Quote from: Onlooker

missing the fact that if 97% of the cattle producing beef are fed grass

Look, some amount of skepticism in science is good, but questioning basic facts isn't going to get us anywhere. Questioning that grass plays little role in nutrition of cows today really isn't going to get us far. Maybe I was wrong in the video to claim it's 9%, maybe it's around 20%. And maybe it's even less than 9% (because the ratio of the feed conversion ratio for grass-fed cows and grain-fed cows is more than 5, grass-fed cows tend to be thinner...). But insisting it's more than 50% isn't getting us anywhere. And questioning that grass-fed cows emit much more methane (unless maybe if they are given the right kind of probiotics) than grain-fed cows do also isn't going to get us far.
I have published scientific papers about linguistics (about my alternative interpretation of the names of places in Croatia) and about computer science (about my attempt to implement an efficient sorting algorithm in the programming language I made), and this type of discussion seems profoundly anti-scientific to me. First of all, I feel it's a huge red-herring. I mean, we basically discuss about whether meat could be produced in a way that isn't horribly damaging to the environment, and I feel like the implication is that if it could be, it's ethical to eat it even though the production of meat, as it is done today, leads to super-bacteria.

Reading the beginning of the paragraph I was thinking you are a clever fellow but don't have relevant expertise. But if you realise that slaughter of cattle is often completely humane and environmental damage from meat production can be even less and your main issue is factory farming and super bacteria then you are really thinking for yourself. I am also opposed to factory farming.

Quote from: Onlooker

Okay I accept that the Doctor who writes that is a Doctor but he is a Vegan activist for goodness sake.

Is he? Who is the author actually, I didn't bother to look at it? I have tried to open it again, but I just get endless stream of captchas.

Dr Greger

Quote from: Onlooker

He greens arid areas.

You realize Australia didn't have ruminants all until the 18th century, yet much of it was green? Clearly you don't need ruminants for plants to grow.

Well yes literally … but that is rather pedantic. It is true that Australia didn't get ruminants until the 18th century. Kangaroos don't use rumination but rather mercyism. They are designed to have a plant based diet and have 2 stomachs instead of the 4 that ruminates use. They spit up bits of undigested food and chew and swallow it again like a ruminate and they break down cellulose. Indeed their stomach is more efficient at extracting energy from cellulose than a cow's stomach. So yes technically there were not ruminates. Nevertheless I think that is a pedantic distinction that doesn't prove your point.

Quote from: Onlooker

Shouldn't that both cool and reduce carbon in the atmosphere?

Well, it's a lot more important not to significantly increase the amount of methane in the atmosphere than not to increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, right?

Methane is considered a more potent greenhouse gas but of course how it plays out and the impact is likely very complicated. Apart from the fact that it appears to be largely produced naturally in the sea the best and worst methane producing cattle differ by 30% so there is scope for a 30% reduction just by selectively farming the ones that fart less before even attempting to breed cattle with a lower fart volume. I believe scientists have this breeding on their 'to do' list already. These types of innovation should be applied before we start thinking about compromising our well being.

BTW you might like to know that I can't help noticing that most vegan activists are screaming that methane levels are going up and blaming cattle. However you have said they are going down and provided the figures. I believe you are more credible than they are.

Quote from: Onlooker

I don't know about the kidney stones.

I am not sure either, I have just read a few stories of people going on carnivore diets and having terrible health problems caused by it. Obviously, all we have is anecdotal evidence. There aren't countless people going on carnivore diets so that we can properly study that.

I believe that Harvard are currently doing a study. Interestingly the other end of the scale has been studied. When the health outcomes for vegans are studied by someone other than a Seventh Day Adventist or vegan activist the results are the same as we see in real life. I couldn't help noticing the association with cancer. I have encountered a few examples of vegans getting cancer but it never occurred to me that it could be related. Now go have a steak for goodness sake!

I think Jordan Peterson is an interesting guy, but I really hope you do not take health advice from him.

Perhaps you copied and pasted and forgot to change the FAO

It is by FAO, just not on their website which usually rejects me with an endless stream of captchas. This forum also often does that for some reason, BTW.

It has the 86% quoted there and I can't find any 33% on the page.

What else do you think "one-third of cereals" means? "Cereals" means "grain edible by humans", while "grain" can mean both grain that isn't edible by humans and one that is.

Fodder crops are grown for animals whether they are vegetables or corn or natural grasslands, pasture or prairie.

The litierature there seems to distinguish between "fodder crops" and "grass".

However, if we eat meat alone we can go for 20 years without any relevant problems.

Look, I am not interested in anecdotes of people going on carnivorous diets for an extended periods of time, for the same reason I don't take seriously the anecdotes of humans being surviving only on grass for long time or being able to drink only sea-water without kidney failure.

Herbivores are very different.

Herbivores are obviously very diverse. Some species of monkeys, closely related to humans, are herbivorous.

Pigs probably eat foods similar to us as they are not ruminates.

And how much celulose can they digest? Obviously, pigs do eat grass, but I don't know if they are able to survive on grass alone like cows. Do you have some source for that?

Reading the beginning of the paragraph I was thinking you are a clever fellow but don't have relevant expertise.

Well, the implication in that is that you can have relevant expertise in this. You can't, it's like apologetics. Producing meat as it is done today is incredibly inhumane and will lead to the environmental catastrophe of super-bacteria. Instead of admitting that, people make up excuses that, if we stop eating meat, there will somehow be hunger in the world and that meat can be produced in a way that doesn't hurt the environment (usually actually hurting it in other ways by emitting large amounts of methane or over-grazing). There obviously won't be a famine if people give up meat. While cows do convert grass into edible food, grass today plays a very small role in the nutrition of cows, because grass-fed cows don't grow as fast and, while grass is less expensive than grain is, it isn't free, and a grass-fed cow needs many times more feed than a grain-fed cow does. And politicizing with the numbers doesn't make the field more rigorous. And even if there were a possibility of giving up meat leading to global hunger, then you are protecting us from a hypothetical danger (hunger caused by people not eating meat) by putting us into a real danger (super-bacteria).

I am also opposed to factory farming.

And how can you be sure that the meat you are buying comes from animals that haven't been given antibiotics and that live in clean enough environment not to make the antibiotics necessary for the meat to be safe?

Dr Greger

Well, he is a relatively well-respected person in the world of nutrition, isn't he? He isn't somebody like Neal Barnard, who claims sugar doesn't cause diabetes.

Kangaroos don't use rumination but rather mercyism.

OK, maybe. I don't have time to study that, I am studying computer science and it's rather demanding. What I do know is that most of the scientists think Savory is a crank and that attempts to feed people with grass-fed cows doesn't have a stellar track record (it almost always leads to over-grazing, rather than greening).

Apart from the fact that it appears to be largely produced naturally in the sea the best and worst methane producing cattle differ by 30% so there is scope for a 30% reduction just by selectively farming the ones that fart less before even attempting to breed cattle with a lower fart volume.

Well, now, obviously, it depends much more on what the cow is fed with rather than what kind of a cow that is. Grass-fed cows emit something like 3 times as much methane as grain-fed cows do, rather than around 30% more.

Increased methane emissions of grass-fed cattle are also an unavoidable result of ruminant digestion, as cows fed a natural diet of grass, hay, and other forages produce three times more methane than cows fed corn and grains.

BTW you might like to know that I can't help noticing that most vegan activists are screaming that methane levels are going up and blaming cattle. However you have said they are going down and provided the figures. I believe you are more credible than they are.

Well, thank you! Unfortunately, if Allan Savory gets his way, methane levels will start drastically rising again.
Yeah, animal rights activism is unfortunately polluted with pseudoscience and that has a significant impact on the welfare of animals. It's truly sad that the Humane Slaughter Association managed to lobby the governments into mandating that pigs are to be killed using CO2 instead of being killed with electricity, when the death from electricity is instantaneous, while it takes pigs around 30 seconds to lose consciousness if they are suffocated with CO2 and it causes a lot of suffering. Allan Savory is also sort of an animal rights activist, although of a wrong kind.

I couldn't help noticing the association with cancer.

Hey, listen, now, I've read about soy possibly causing breast cancer because of containing compounds similar to estrogen. But if soy causes breast cancer, then so does cow's milk, for it contains literal estrogen. I've also read the low-carb advocates claiming carbohydrates in diet cause cancer because of cancer cells supposedly being more immune to high sugar in blood than normal cells are. Well, there is only one natural food that causes a spike in glucose levels in your blood by tricking your liver into thinking there is less glucose in your blood than there actually is, it's honey. Other than that, I think it's well-accepted that red meat slightly increases the risk of colon cancer.

I think Jordan Peterson is an interesting guy, but I really hope you do not take health advice from him.

LOL.

But I note that he isn't advising anyone to go carnivore. He just gives his personal experience and it is very interesting as it seems to align with the experiences of other people who go carnivore in terms of lower body fat, increased lean tissue, losing physical and mental ailments and being generally healthy after a long time on that food choice.

Quote from: Onlooker

It has the 86% quoted there and I can't find any 33% on the page.

What else do you think "one-third of cereals" means? "Cereals" means "grain edible by humans", while "grain" can mean both grain that isn't edible by humans and one that is.

Quote from: Onlooker

Fodder crops are grown for animals whether they are vegetables or corn or natural grasslands, pasture or prairie.

The litierature there seems to distinguish between "fodder crops" and "grass".

I went to it to confirm the distinction you wanted me to see and did the obvious thing of clicking on the link "cereal" since you were also talking about what they meant by that. The page the link took me noted that "Cereals are generally low in the essential amino acid lysine but relatively high in another: methionine." We need lysine for our lean tissue and cereal seems to be a poor substitute for meat for obtaining it if it is low in lysine and didn't you type words to the effect that methionine is the amino-acid that causes cancer and heart disease in humans? So do we give up beef because we are worried about cow farts and poison ourselves daily with something high in methionine while eating substandard protein not to mention poisoning the environment generally with the commensurate increase in pesticides used with an increase in cereal growing? How many times have we heard the vegan anthem of growing more cereal where beef is produced. Why not just reduce beef production to make way for tobacco crops? Sheesh!

Quote from: Onlooker

However, if we eat meat alone we can go for 20 years without any relevant problems.

Look, I am not interested in anecdotes of people going on carnivorous diets for an extended periods of time, for the same reason I don't take seriously the anecdotes of humans being surviving only on grass for long time or being able to drink only sea-water without kidney failure.

There are some high profile people doing it. Do you think Peterson is lieing?

Quote from: Onlooker

Herbivores are very different.

Herbivores are obviously very diverse. Some species of monkeys, closely related to humans, are herbivorous.

Quote from: Onlooker

Pigs probably eat foods similar to us as they are not ruminates.

And how much celulose can they digest? Obviously, pigs do eat grass, but I don't know if they are able to survive on grass alone like cows. Do you have some source for that?

Pigs can't digest cellulose. They are better than us with fibre and can eat grass and survive on it but not for long.

Quote from: Onlooker

Reading the beginning of the paragraph I was thinking you are a clever fellow but don't have relevant expertise.

Well, the implication in that is that you can have relevant expertise in this. You can't, it's like apologetics. Producing meat as it is done today is incredibly inhumane and will lead to the environmental catastrophe of super-bacteria. Instead of admitting that, people make up excuses that, if we stop eating meat, there will somehow be hunger in the world and that meat can be produced in a way that doesn't hurt the environment (usually actually hurting it in other ways by emitting large amounts of methane or over-grazing). There obviously won't be a famine if people give up meat. While cows do convert grass into edible food, grass today plays a very small role in the nutrition of cows, because grass-fed cows don't grow as fast and, while grass is less expensive than grain is, it isn't free, and a grass-fed cow needs many times more feed than a grain-fed cow does. And politicizing with the numbers doesn't make the field more rigorous. And even if there were a possibility of giving up meat leading to global hunger, then you are protecting us from a hypothetical danger (hunger caused by people not eating meat) by putting us into a real danger (super-bacteria).

In what respect is it inhumane to have grass fed cattle?

It isn't just hunger. As the Professor Director of Global Academy Agriculture and Food Security at the University of Edinburgh, pointed out:

“Meat has massive social benefits. It’s an important source of dietary protein, energy, highly bioavailable micronutrients, even small amounts of animal-sourced food have a really important effect on the development of children, in the developing world on their cognitive and physical development and they are really important.”

BTW his title looks like you can have expertise in this area.

He also noted:

“Often the argument is made that going vegan would minimise land use, and the modelling studies that have been done demonstrate that that’s not the case."

Taking the same approach used to formulate climate change policies it doesn't look good for the vegan argument about minimising land use.

Quote from: Onlooker

I am also opposed to factory farming.

And how can you be sure that the meat you are buying comes from animals that haven't been given antibiotics and that live in clean enough environment not to make the antibiotics necessary for the meat to be safe?

Consumer protection laws. However first the products need to be clearly labelled regarding things like that - much like free range eggs are labelled and they dominate the shelves because we pay for them. The trouble is I don't know who will call for the change. Vegans don't buy meat so the industry wouldn't be too interested in them. Carnivores are interested in meat and health but, in spite of the high profile status of some, I suspect there aren't too many carnivores around.

Quote from: Onlooker

Dr Greger

Well, he is a relatively well-respected person in the world of nutrition, isn't he? He isn't somebody like Neal Barnard, who claims sugar doesn't cause diabetes.

I only know of him as a vegan activist. Vegans would definitely respect him. I hope for his sake he is respected more generally. I know he has come under criticism for using a lot of licence in a video.

All I am saying is that when someone has the appearance of being incredibly biased you can't expect people to just accept what they say. You can't expect me to treat Greger's ideas as gospel any more than you would treat Baker's words as gospel.

Quote from: Onlooker

Kangaroos don't use rumination but rather mercyism.

<b>OK, maybe. I don't have time to study that, I am studying computer science and it's rather demanding.</b> What I do know is that most of the scientists think Savory is a crank and that attempts to feed people with grass-fed cows doesn't have a stellar track record (it almost always leads to over-grazing, rather than greening).

Take a look into kangaroos digestive systems when you get a chance and you should get confirmation of what I said.

The footprints are in the snow. Are they the vegan scientists by any chance? They can keep their fingers in their ears if they want but Savory has produced results. Savory explains that if you herd a group of cattle into an area and keep them there they will destroy the land. However if you graze them and then regularly move them it greens an area. He puts it in the context of the ancient world with large herds of herbivores grazing then running to new areas due to hunting from predators. Farmers can easily use this replication of the natural system by having multiple fields and herding the beasts into different fields in a planned manner.

For what it is worth I watched a You tube about a farmer who has achieved similar results but seems to have come up with it independently or at least it seems his late father did.

Quote from: Onlooker

Apart from the fact that it appears to be largely produced naturally in the sea the best and worst methane producing cattle differ by 30% so there is scope for a 30% reduction just by selectively farming the ones that fart less before even attempting to breed cattle with a lower fart volume.

Well, now, obviously, it depends much more on what the cow is fed with rather than what kind of a cow that is. Grass-fed cows emit something like 3 times as much methane as grain-fed cows do, rather than around 30% more.

Sure that simple change yields a tenth of the perceived benefit of factory farming cows but it is an easy change using existing types of cows but gives a significant result. We need to try rather than giving up before we start. There may be enormous potential in breeding and we even have GM up our sleeve these days.

Quote from: https://awellfedworld.org/issues/climate-issues/grass-fed-beef/

Increased methane emissions of grass-fed cattle are also an unavoidable result of ruminant digestion, as cows fed a natural diet of grass, hay, and other forages produce three times more methane than cows fed corn and grains.

We haven't even started scratching the surface to find out the possibilities when they look at breeding for lower emissions. We shouldn't give up as the alternative is cattle stuck in an unpleasant 'factory farm' environment. Sometimes butchers identify their stock as grass fed so you can make a difference by buying that to support it.

Quote from: Onlooker

BTW you might like to know that I can't help noticing that most vegan activists are screaming that methane levels are going up and blaming cattle. However you have said they are going down and provided the figures. I believe you are more credible than they are.

Well, thank you! Unfortunately, if Allan Savory gets his way, methane levels will start drastically rising again.

Methane is supposed to be more potent than carbon. However it depends on how things play out. I don't know how much greening each beast does. If they green to a degree that acts as a carbon sink to the equivalent of the impact of their farts they break even. At some point the carbon getting sucked in by the greenery could outweigh the methane. I can't quantify the amount of greening per beast compared with farting. However it is hard to get your head around how restocking the planet with herbivores and greenery could be bad for the environment. We might even develop ways of neutralising it. People are innovative. With marine organisms producing so much methane and to a lesser extend ruminants since those creatures first appeared on earth something must have happened to methane in the past and either that natural process or some human intervention could change things.

Yeah, animal rights activism is unfortunately polluted with pseudoscience and that has a significant impact on the welfare of animals. It's truly sad that the Humane Slaughter Association managed to lobby the governments into mandating that pigs are to be killed using CO2 instead of being killed with electricity, when the death from electricity is instantaneous, while it takes pigs around 30 seconds to lose consciousness if they are suffocated with CO2 and it causes a lot of suffering. Allan Savory is also sort of an animal rights activist, although of a wrong kind.

That is terrible!!!! The term 'do gooder' comes to mind.

Quote from: Onlooker

I couldn't help noticing the association with cancer.

Hey, listen, now, I've read about soy possibly causing breast cancer because of containing compounds similar to estrogen. But if soy causes breast cancer, then so does cow's milk, for it contains literal estrogen. I've also read the low-carb advocates claiming carbohydrates in diet cause cancer because of cancer cells supposedly being more immune to high sugar in blood than normal cells are. Well, there is only one natural food that causes a spike in glucose levels in your blood by tricking your liver into thinking there is less glucose in your blood than there actually is, it's honey. Other than that, I think it's well-accepted that red meat slightly increases the risk of colon cancer.

It is widely accepted that there is a slight increase in risk but the foundations are very weak. An army of researchers did a systematic review of cohort studies that included more than 1000 adults and reported the association between consumption of unprocessed red and processed meat and cancer mortality and incidence. They found "The possible absolute effects of red and processed meat consumption on cancer mortality and incidence are very small, and the certainty of evidence is low to very low."

"The possible absolute effects of red and processed meat consumption on cancer mortality and incidence are very small, and the certainty of evidence is low to very low."

No idea why you sent your bot here.

He just gives his personal experience and it is very interesting as it seems to align with the experiences of other people who go carnivore in terms of lower body fat, increased lean tissue, losing physical and mental ailments and being generally healthy after a long time on that food choice.

Why do you take those anecdotes of people eating a carnivore diet without problems any more seriously than the anecdotes of people eating a grass-only diet without problems? Science seems rather clear both are impossible.

We need lysine for our lean tissue and cereal seems to be a poor substitute for meat for obtaining it if it is low in lysine

As far as I know, grains generally contain enough lysine. Wheat is an exception.

didn't you type words to the effect that methionine is the amino-acid that causes cancer and heart disease in humans?

As far as I know, of the grains, only sesame seeds are comparable to milk regarding their methionine content.

Do you think Peterson is lieing?

Well, he possibly is lying. Even when it comes to philosophy, many of his points are probably lies, rather than honest mistakes. Like, you know, his claim that Nietzsche predicted that communism will kill 100'000'000 people.

In what respect is it inhumane to have grass fed cattle?

You realize grass-fed doesn't imply pasture-raised? Grass-fed can also mean hay-fed. Usually, though, it means that the cow has been fed grain all its life except before slaughter, so that its meat contains more omega-3-acids (which supposedly protect against heart disease).

It’s an important source of dietary protein

Most of the people these days are probably eating too much protein, rather than too little.

energy

Well, we are best at deriving energy from starch, and there is almost none of it in meat. Some meat does contain glycogen, which is similar to starch, but it's usually not eaten, people usually eat muscle meat, rather than liver. So, yeah, meat is hardly an important source of energy.

highly bioavailable micronutrients

It's a complicated story. Yes, for example, most plants that contain large amounts of calcium also contain oxalates which prevent its absorption. However, I think that kale would be a better source of calcium than milk is, because it contains large amounts of calcium, it doesn't contain oxalates, and it also, unlike milk, contains relatively large amount of vitamin K which are needed for calcium to be absorbed into the bones. Similarly, many people claim the form of vitamin A that's usually present in meat more bioavailable. While it's indeed more easily absorbed, it doesn't have the same health effects in humans that vitamin A found in carrots does. Moreover, the form of vitamin A found in livers of bears, for instance, is poisonous to humans. It's also often claimed that omega-3-acids found in meat are more bioavailable than those found in plants, but, as I am sure you know, that's a highly politicized issue.
And, obviously, the bioavailability of nutrients in raw meat is next to zero (because human beings mostly can't eat raw meat), while it's higher in raw plants.

BTW his title looks like you can have expertise in this area.

That's talking about nutrition, not about what would happen with ecology if people stop eating meat. And from what he is talking, it seems to me he isn't an expert in nutrition.

Often the argument is made that going vegan would minimise land use, and the modelling studies that have been done demonstrate that that’s not the case.

Well, regardless of whether a lacto-vegetarian diet results in less land use than a vegan diet does, both require significantly less land than the way people are currently eating. I think he is referring to this study (highly criticized in the vegan circles for using quite a few non-evidence-based estimates), though, if he doesn't provide a citation, what's presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

free range eggs are labelled

Free-range simply means cage-free, it doesn't mean pasture-raised. It may even be less humane than using battery cages, free-range chickens are often kept in such densely-populated rooms that they have no choice but to defecate and urinate on one another. Here is a photo from a chicken-farm that qualifies as free-range:

They can keep their fingers in their ears if they want but Savory has produced results.

Well, homeopaths would claim the same thing about their non-mainstream ideas. If I claimed to have implemented a sorting algorithm more efficient than introsort (which is used in C++ standard library) and that my measurements confirm that, would you trust me? Or would you assume I am mistaken? Or possibly even lying? If so, why apply different standards to Savory?

He puts it in the context of the ancient world with large herds of herbivores grazing then running to new areas due to hunting from predators.

As far as I know, in ancient times, people were letting cattle graze as long as there was no poisonous grass there. Pastures that contain dandelions, for instance, are useful while dandelions aren't blooming. When they are blooming, they are about as poisonous to cattle as they are to us, but domestic cattle don't know that, so they will eat it anyway and many of them will die. That's why many places in Croatia are called "Travanj" (April), "Svibanj" (May) or "Premalitje" (probably a name for a specific period of the year in Old Croatian), those names referred to pastures that were useful in that time of the year. Predators were not much of a problem, because most pastures were enclosed with fences.

There may be enormous potential in breeding and we even have GM up our sleeve these days.

Maybe, but we cannot base our decisions on the assumption that some technology which doesn't exist today will exist.

With marine organisms producing so much methane and to a lesser extend ruminants since those creatures first appeared on earth something must have happened to methane in the past and either that natural process or some human intervention could change things.

How do you think a human intervention could make methane molecules less stable in the atmosphere?

It is widely accepted that there is a slight increase in risk but the foundations are very weak.

How do you know foundations are weak? To somebody who hasn't seriously studied it (like Neal Barnard), it may seem that the foundation for the link between sugar and honey and diabetes is weak. If all the nutritional authorities say so, it's probably based on some foundations which is unknown to you.

cohort studies

If it's based only on epidemiological studies, it probably wouldn't get accepted by all nutritional authorities.

This is a particularly unreadable thread.

Quote from: Onlooker

energy

Well, we are best at deriving energy from starch, and there is almost none of it in meat. Some meat does contain glycogen, which is similar to starch, but it's usually not eaten, people usually eat muscle meat, rather than liver. So, yeah, meat is hardly an important source of energy.

Ignorance

Carbs and protein have the same calories per gram

Also. You can live without carbs if you had to. You cant live without protein

In the absence of carbohydrates and abundance of protein your body can turn some of the amino acids from protein into glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis

Just stop peddling your ignorance.

The key to a healthy body is a balanced diet. One that happens to include animal products. And a healthy lifestyle that incorporates activity and exercise is essential

This is a particularly unreadable thread.

Well, my guess is that you haven't been in discussions about veganism before, to be trained to follow them.

In the absence of carbohydrates and abundance of protein your body can turn some of the amino acids from protein into glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis

You realize that, when your liver converts protein into glucose (usually because of fructose from sugar or honey tricking it into thinking the glucose levels are lower than they actually are), it also produces the very-low-density cholesterol?

Just stop peddling your ignorance.

Well, look at yourself!

Quote from: JimmyTheCrab

This is a particularly unreadable thread.

Well, my guess is that you haven't been in discussions about veganism before, to be trained to follow them.

Quote from: Shifter

In the absence of carbohydrates and abundance of protein your body can turn some of the amino acids from protein into glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis

You realize that, when your liver converts protein into glucose (usually because of fructose from sugar or honey tricking it into thinking the glucose levels are lower than they actually are), it also produces the very-low-density cholesterol?

Quote from: Shifter

Just stop peddling your ignorance.

Well, look at yourself!

Again, you can live without carbs. Not protein.

And I said BALANCE. Obviously eating way more protein than you need is unhealthy. Duh!

Again, you can live without carbs.

Maybe. If possible, it's certainly very risky. What to replace the carbs with? Protein? A diet too high in protein leads to kidney failure, there have been quite a few documented cases of people whose main food was rabbit meat (very high in protein) for an extended period of time, and they all either died of kidney failure or changed their diets. Fat? Well, I've read some anecdotes of people who started drinking a cup of olive oil a day (thinking it's healthy) and soon died of heart attack.

Quote from: Shifter

Again, you can live without carbs.

Maybe. If possible, it's certainly very risky. What to replace the carbs with? Protein? A diet too high in protein leads to kidney failure, there have been quite a few documented cases of people whose main food was rabbit meat (very high in protein) for an extended period of time, and they all either died of kidney failure or changed their diets. Fat? Well, I've read some anecdotes of people who started drinking a cup of olive oil a day (thinking it's healthy) and soon died of heart attack.

It's not a maybe and it is possible. If you had to choose whether to actively avoid as much as possible the macro of carbs or protein in your diet, any sane person would ditch carbs. You can get your glucose through protein if you really needed it (but if you eat enough fat you can still get away with using ketones for fuel). You can survive on 0g carbs per day. You would waste away on 0g protein per day.

Ketogenic diets has very limited if any carbs in the diet. Of course you get stupid uneducated people that have no idea what they are doing and end up constipated and lethargic due to lack of fibre and electrolytes found in many carb rich foods

There is no one diet that will be the healthiest one for every person on the planet. Everyone is unique, has different goals, has different access to foods, different levels of affordability etc. You cant simply say that everyone would be better off as vegan. And you can still eat shitty foods as a vegan.

But again, one must seek a balance. Vegans dont. And only 20th-21st century tech actually allows them to 'cheat' their way to good health while being vegan. I'm not just talking about technology. I'm talking about access to foods

I enjoy Japanese Natto and can go to the shops and buy several months supply of it. But do you think my grandparents could have access to this delicious food? Do you think the Aborigines of Australia centuries ago could have enjoyed a vegan lifestyle? Many crops are unsuited to a persons locale. You have access to the entire worlds food production every day of the year because you are alive today.