Peer Ederer's Arguments against Vegetarianism

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.

Well, I think an informed person would choose to avoid protein as much as possible, simply because it's very hard not to get as much protein as human body needs (around 1% of energy in human milk comes from protein, many times less than cow's milk). I seriously doubt anybody has died from a lack of protein, all plants and all meat and all mushrooms contain protein. What one can get problems from is getting enough protein, but not getting all the essential amino-acids. That's what happens if you only eat one food, such as only wheat or only muscle meat. That won't happen if you only get your protein from soy or something like that (which happens to contain all the essential amino-acids).

Ketogenic diets has very limited if any carbs in the diet.

And, what do you think, is it true that ketogenic diets (AKA, the low-carb, low-protein, high-fat diets) help against epilepsy? To me, this sounds a lot like alternative medicine claims. I mean, claiming that coconuts, if taken in large quantities, somehow help with epilepsy is only one step more scientific than claiming they don't cause heart disease and diabetes. Claiming coconuts (or, for that sake, butter) don't cause heart disease and diabetes is obviously wildly against accepted facts of nutritional science. Claiming coconuts somehow help with epilepsy isn't as wildly incoherent with science, but it isn't coherent with it either. I mean, how could it possibly work? Hypoglicemia doesn't help against epilepsy, anti-diabetic drugs don't work against epilepsy. Ketones don't have anti-convulsant properties, drugs that make the liver produce more ketones have no effect against epilepsy. To me it seems like somebody who values science-based medicine won't try to treat epilepsy with coconuts. And I think most doctors would agree with that, doctors generally prescribe diets only when proven methods appear ineffective, if even then. As for evidence-based medicine, it's hard to tell. High-quality evidence for diets treating some disease is usually dificoult or impossible to acquire, because you usually can't do double-blind studies. Furthermore, I don't really trust the evidence there, there is an obvious financial incentive to make people think coconuts help against epilepsy: coconuts are expensive and widely viewed as unhealthy, so studies can easily be biased by those who produce coconuts.

There is no one diet that will be the healthiest one for every person on the planet.

Maybe. But probably the only way we can scientifically study that is, well, to assume some diets are better than others for the vast majority of people. Similarly, the only way we can scientifically study languages is to assume that all languages have approximately equal expressive power and that phonosemantics doesn't exist. If you assume phonosemantics exists, sound correspondences don't prove languages are related. Also, the only way to study computer science is to assume computers actually do what you tell them.

It's hard to discuss those things with people who openly don't value science, such as the Flat-Earthers.

Quote from: Shifter

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.

Well, I think an informed person would choose to avoid protein as much as possible, simply because it's very hard not to get as much protein as human body needs (around 1% of energy in human milk comes from protein, many times less than cow's milk). I seriously doubt anybody has died from a lack of protein, all plants and all meat and all mushrooms contain protein. What one can get problems from is getting enough protein, but not getting all the essential amino-acids. That's what happens if you only eat one food, such as only wheat or only muscle meat. That won't happen if you only get your protein from soy or something like that (which happens to contain all the essential amino-acids).

Quote from: Shifter

Ketogenic diets has very limited if any carbs in the diet.

And, what do you think, is it true that ketogenic diets (AKA, the low-carb, low-protein, high-fat diets) help against epilepsy? To me, this sounds a lot like alternative medicine claims. I mean, claiming that coconuts, if taken in large quantities, somehow help with epilepsy is only one step more scientific than claiming they don't cause heart disease and diabetes. Claiming coconuts (or, for that sake, butter) don't cause heart disease and diabetes is obviously wildly against accepted facts of nutritional science. Claiming coconuts somehow help with epilepsy isn't as wildly incoherent with science, but it isn't coherent with it either. I mean, how could it possibly work? Hypoglicemia doesn't help against epilepsy, anti-diabetic drugs don't work against epilepsy. Ketones don't have anti-convulsant properties, drugs that make the liver produce more ketones have no effect against epilepsy. To me it seems like somebody who values science-based medicine won't try to treat epilepsy with coconuts. And I think most doctors would agree with that, doctors generally prescribe diets only when proven methods appear ineffective, if even then. As for evidence-based medicine, it's hard to tell. High-quality evidence for diets treating some disease is usually dificoult or impossible to acquire, because you usually can't do double-blind studies. Furthermore, I don't really trust the evidence there, there is an obvious financial incentive to make people think coconuts help against epilepsy: coconuts are expensive and widely viewed as unhealthy, so studies can easily be biased by those who produce coconuts.

Quote from: Shifter

There is no one diet that will be the healthiest one for every person on the planet.

Maybe. But probably the only way we can scientifically study that is, well, to assume some diets are better than others for the vast majority of people. Similarly, the only way we can scientifically study languages is to assume that all languages have approximately equal expressive power and that phonosemantics doesn't exist. If you assume phonosemantics exists, sound correspondences don't prove languages are related. Also, the only way to study computer science is to assume computers actually do what you tell them.

It's hard to discuss those things with people who openly don't value science, such as the Flat-Earthers.

You missed the point. If you had to completely avoid one macro, Carbs or Protein (hypothetical)- you would die if you didn't consume a single gram of protein a day given enough time. Your muscles will atrophy and you will starve to death. How do you think your body makes your hair? Nails? The insulin to break down sugars? The honestly hundreds of thousands of other proteins that make you work. Stop thinking of protein as some enemy to health. You wont die if you dont eat carbs (although you wont be very healthy without fibre - most dieters dont consider insoluble fibre to count as carbs though)

I dont know why are you going on about coconuts. Check out https://www.ruled.me/ if you want to see some pretty cool keto recipes.

Keto is not high fat, low protein, low carb. It's roughly 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbs. So the amount of protein % is similar to even a healthy vegan diet. Depending on your requirements (eg bodybuilding) It goes up from there

Now you're going on about phonosemantics? It should be obvious that people all over the world have different lifestyles and thus different needs for what they need from a diet. A laborer will need more protein than the architect. Everyone's genetics are just that little bit different. Some people can tolerate certain foods others cant. That's just how it is. You cant give a 1 diet fits all approach to humanity

Vegans rely heavily on soy. Do you recommend soy to those that have allergies to it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soy_allergy

So it's not a maybe. There is definitely not 1 diet that can be the best choice for all the human population because we have differing needs and requirements. Different tolerances to food. Allergies etc.

It's hard to discuss anything with people that have decided to just disagree for disagreeing sake. Or vegans

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

Science is just starting to look at the health effects of a long term carnivore only diet with the current Harvard study. Obviously living on grass only is impossible because we can't digest it but how is an organism with a primarily carnivore type digestive system obviously unable to eat a carnivore diet? We are omnivores and from what I have seen people who have an unhealthy diet absolutely thrive on a plant based diet for about a year (then go downhill after that) so why not a carnivore diet? For someone on an unhealthy diet eating quality meat should make us thrive for at least a year. If anecdotes of people claiming to be long term carnivores are correct it looks like a lifetime of good health.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

Everything points to the situation being otherwise.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

Sesame seeds may well be the only things comparable to milk but cereals were generally described as high.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

To be honest I would have thought it an honest mistake. As this is a public discussion I will give the background so people know what we are talking about. In a discussion Peterson referred to Nietzsche's book The Will to Power and made the comment you pretty much quoted. In the 1800s Nietzsche wrote:

Socialism — -as the logical conclusion of the tyranny of the least and the dumbest, i.e., those who are superficial, envious, and three-quarters actors — is indeed entailed by “modern ideas” and their latent anarchism; but in the tepid air of democratic well-being the capacity to reach conclusions, or to finish, weakens. One follows — but one no longer sees what follows. Therefore socialism is on the whole a hopeless and sour affair; and nothing offers a more amusing spectacle than the contrast between the poisonous and desperate faces cut by today’s socialists — and to what wretched and pinched feelings their style bears witness! — and the harmless lambs’ happiness of their hopes and desiderata. Nevertheless, <b>in many places in Europe they may yet bring off occasional coups and attacks: there will be deep “rumblings” in the stomach of the next century</b>, and the Paris commune, which has its apologists and advocates in Germany, too, was perhaps no more than a minor indigestion compared to what is coming. But there will always be too many who have possessions for socialism to signify more than an attack of sickness — and those who have possessions are of one mind on one article of faith: “one must possess something in order to be something.” But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I should add, “one must want to have more than one has in order to become more.” For this is the doctrine preached by life itself to all that has life: the morality of development. To have and to want to have more — growth, in one word — that is life itself. In the doctrine of socialism there is hidden, rather badly, a “will to negate life”; the human beings or races that think up such a doctrine must be bungled. Indeed, I should wish that a few great experiments might prove that in a socialist society life negates itself, cuts off its own roots … demonstratio ad absurdum would not strike me as undesirable, even if it were gained and paid for with a <b><I>tremendous expenditure of human lives.</b></I>

Nietzsche has a unique writing style that is heavy going. After reading a whole book of his like that I can’t see why a person, who is aware of all the lives lost in socialist regimes in the century after Nietzsche was writing, could not conflate that with Nietzsche’s words about the tremendous expenditure of human lives if socialism took off in the century after he was writing (although to me Nietzsche seems cynical about it ever doing so and seems to want socialism tried so that the resulting loss of life shows how bad it is). If Peterson did it in some academic treatise I would agree with you but not in a conversation. But you are entitled to your opinion. Neither of us can read Peterson’s mind. Do you have a more compelling example of him lieing about philosophy?

Quote from: Onlooker

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).

No I don't realise that. Maybe it varies between countries but in Australia the the The Pasture fed Cattle Assurance System (PCAS) standard for grass-fed beef requires cattle to have access to graze open pasture their entire life; have not been fed separated grain or grain by-products at any point in their life (although their diet can be supplemented with things such as hay and roughage); have not been confined for the purposes of intensive feeding for production; be fully traceable for their entire life; and be guaranteed to eat well.

As I said in Australia 97% of cattle are grass fed.

Quote from: Onlooker

It’s an important source of dietary protein

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

Entirely possible. You could even eat too much protein overall as a vegan. The point is that if you are missing enough of the essential amino acid lysine then your dietary protein is deficient.

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.

I note your subsequent discussion with others on that and agree with what others have said and will only add that fat coverts even more easily to carbohydrate than protein (indeed it is another way our body stores energy) and meat often also contains fat.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

I acknowledge the complications but do all vegans have kale? Plus milk would give them things that would complement the vegan diet eg. B12 whereas, other than calcium, Kale replicates nutrients they already get in other plant based foods.

I think you have the cooking thing largely back to front. Who told you that? We cook vegetables to break down the cell walls to release the nutrients. We cook meat to kill bacteria and because it tastes better. Inuits traditionally ate all meat raw in an environment where vegetation wasn't as accessible as our's. Cooking does make meat more nutritious in some ways and less in others and makes it less work to chew but it is unnecessary. Many people even have a preference for rare meat which is essentially raw.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

He is the Professor Director of Global Academy Agriculture and Food Security at the University of Edinburgh so maybe he isn't the expert in nutrition. Food security in his title might suggest he is the 'go to guy' for things like land use. As you argue in relation to colon cancer if the study is weak then someone like that probably wouldn't rely upon it. However I'd want to take a closer look rather than relying on vegan criticism.

But, with all due respect, your lack of knowledge of something as basic as protein being broken down (displayed in your recent debate with others) doesn't seem to qualify you to assess who is or who isn't an expert on nutrition.

Quote from: Onlooker

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:

I didn't know that and I looked into it. You are mainly correct albeit using a rather extreme situation in your photo. National standards tend to give space requirements and access to the outside as determining free range status. However the outside access can be minimal and some producers abuse it. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I now have found an app which can let me check whether free range eggs really are free range eggs and don't end up get something that I didn't want to pay for. Much appreciated. I have probably been ripped off in the past.

Quote from: Onlooker

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?

A homeopath relying on some placebo effect can be contrasted with land that is barren which changes to lush green land. I have watched You Tube examples of Savory's work and the results of applying his technique to farms (one independent and another very recently where the intervention was based on his ideas). People can kid themselves about how well they are but barren land is barren land and land covered in vegetation is land covered in vegetation. IMHO these are chalk and cheese.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

That probably explains why the idea of overgrazing is a modern phenomenon. It went from movement due to natural predation to farmers moving them due to seasonal variation in poisonous vegetation and only recently became a situation where overgrazing was possible.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

The alternative is poorly treated cattle or humans suffering unwellness. Don't be so pessimistic. People are very innovative. I could add that we also have IT that helps as well.

Quote from: Onlooker

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?

If it can be made it can be unmade. I am not a chemist so I can't be specific.

Quote from: Onlooker

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.

Perhaps. Or maybe they are relying upon the WHO.... just like world governments when WHO told them that COVID-19 didn't have human to human transmission (the month after receiving evidence to the contrary) and then that stopping world travel was unnecessary and would stigmatise China. WHO claims there is a link and until 5 minutes ago you would think they were the fountain of knowledge to rely upon. (Actually I googled the issue but didn't get too far in finding out the research underpinning however a cancer body that made the claim referred to WHO so that is what gave me the idea).

Quote from: Onlooker

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."

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

As MNaeSWolf correctly noted a while ago:

epidemiological studies, like all studies, need to be read with careful skepticism, a good paper however always lists its own short comings. A meta analysis, generally can get around these if it is well done. And when you do a meta analysis on hundreds of epidemiological studies, you get close to something you can start taking very seriously. So dont throw the baby out with the bath water.
However, I agree with your general sentiment, epidemiological studies should be read with a lot of skepticism. Especially when you read "we contacted 1000 participants over social media", cause that is just rubbish and I have read enough of those.

In this case a meta analysis of a large number of epidemiological studies by an army of researchers is involved and shouldn’t be dismissed too lightly.

BTW for trivia sake the carnivore diet might prove very sexy to aging people given the anecdotal claims that it reverses grey hair:



Finally in your critique of Peter Ederer you dismissed his claim that satellite detection of methane shows that it is from leaking natural gas not cattle by saying that scientists have a consensus that their estimates that the second largest cause of methane in the atmosphere is cattle farts and even considering Ederer's claim would be as much a waste of time as looking into flat earth arguments. You said that anyone who knows anything about climate science knows you couldn't detect methane from a satellite. I couldn't help noticing this Scientific American article(/url].

you would die if you didn't consume a single gram of protein a day given enough time

Yes, but what would you eat to completely avoid protein? Any real attempt to avoid protein won't lead to you getting less than 1% (which is probably as much as human body needs) of your energy from protein.
Similarly, any read attempt to eat as little methionine as possible is not going to result in eating too little of it, because methionine is present in, as far as I know, all living things. The START codon in your (and, AFAIK, of every living organism) RNA is the code for methionine, so it's present in every protein whose molecule hasn't been cut.

Stop thinking of protein as some enemy to health.

This is almost like saying: Stop thinking of salt as some enemy to health. Without any chloride or sodium, you will die. We are eating way more salt than human body needs, so much so that it's harmful, and the consumption of salt needs to reduce.

You wont die if you dont eat carbs

Most likely, you will, sooner or later, because of kidney failure or heart attack.

It's roughly 70% fat, 25% protein and 5% carbs.

That's the Atkins diet, not the keto diet. Keto diet restricts both protein and carbs, Atkins diet restricts only the carbs. Protein can be converted to glucose, fat can't. And the fact that the studies generally show that the keto diets and Atkins diets are about as effective at treating epilepsy strongly suggests that both of them are nothing but expensive placebos.

A laborer will need more protein than the architect.

Why exactly?

Vegans rely heavily on soy.

Well, quite a few vegans (as well as many other people) avoid soy because of the estrogen-like compounds in it supposedly causing breast cancer. I don't think that's true, if there were any true to that, we would expect that cow's milk causes breast cancer even more strongly, but there isn't much evidence of that.

So it's not a maybe.

I thought you were trying to say Maybe a low-carb diet would be good for some people, but not for others.

It's hard to discuss anything with people that have decided to just disagree for disagreeing sake.

You mean, the Flat-Earthers like you?

Science is just starting to look at the health effects of a long term carnivore only diet with the current Harvard study.

I've looked it up on the Internet, the only thing close to it that I've found was a study at Harvard showing low-fat diet isn't effective at weight loss.

Obviously living on grass only is impossible because we can't digest it but how is an organism with a primarily carnivore type digestive system obviously unable to eat a carnivore diet?

Just to name one thing, vitamin C. Carnivores (as well as most herbivorous and omnivorous mammals) can produce it in their liver, we can't.
I honestly don't understand how can somebody think we have a primarily carnivore type digestive system. How it is then that red meat causes heart disease, diabets and cancer in humans? How it is that we are able to eat carrots, onions, and many other plants that are poisonous even to most herbivores? Carrots are actually poisonous to rabbits, and many people don't know that and kill their pet rabbit by making it eat carrots.

Everything points to the situation being otherwise.

A significant percentage of protein in maize is methionine, that doesn't mean you are likely to get too much methionine from eating maize. Maize doesn't contain that much protein. It contains around 7 times less protein per 100 grams than soy does (and protein in soy is low in methionine and high in lysine).

To be honest I would have thought it an honest mistake.

It's not just that. He is totally misrepresenting what Nietzsche thought about politics. Nietzsche wasn't supporting capitalism. Even LearnLiberty is honest enough to admit that fact:

When it comes to matters of capitalism and freedom, Nietzsche was inconsistent.

Maybe it varies between countries but in Australia

Oh, please don't bring up this tired old It's only like that in America. gotcha.

As I said in Australia 97% of cattle are grass fed.

Nothing like that is said in the article you linked to, as far as I can see.

fat coverts even more easily to carbohydrate than protein

Oh, learn the basic biochemistry, you are being insulting.

Inuits traditionally ate all meat raw

Nope, that's a myth. And Inuits get insulted when you call them "Eskimo", because "Eskimo" means "eater of raw meat".

However I'd want to take a closer look rather than relying on vegan criticism.

What's the point of "taking acloser look"? Taking a closer look at the Flat-Earth Theory is likely to get you further away from the truth, rather than closer to the truth.

your lack of knowledge of something as basic as protein being broken down

What are you talking about?

I now have found an app which can let me check whether free range eggs really are free range eggs and don't end up get something that I didn't want to pay for.

And how do you know it's reliable? I mean, don't you think this is basing yourself on wrong principles? You trusted the companies who claim to certificate the "free-range" meat. Now you know they aren't doing much at all. So, you are now just adding another layer of checking which you have no reason to think is reliable.

A homeopath relying on some placebo effect can be contrasted with land that is barren which changes to lush green land.

Well, I think it's the same. You never know what would have happened if the cows weren't let to graze on that land. Maybe it would get greener even if there were no cows there.

That probably explains why the idea of overgrazing is a modern phenomenon.

Or, more likely, because there are way more cows today, for there are many more people and the meat per capita consumption has drastically increased. And especially milk per capita consumption, it was next to zero a millennium ago because, well, most of the adults were lactose-intolerant.

Or maybe they are relying upon the WHO

And what incentive might WHO have to lie about that? I don't see it as a very politicized issue. If anything, the incentive is to claim something like red-meat (behind which there is a billion-dollar industry) is harmless. I also see no particular reason to think there was any cover-up about COVID, any more than I see any reason to think George Bush organized 9/11 or that Mile Dedakovic secretly gave the weapons the president Franjo Tudman sent him to the illegal army organized by Zeljko Raznatovic to make the Vukovar Massacre heapen.

I couldn't help noticing this Scientific American article.

Nonsense articles get published from time to time and they sometimes receive journalist attention. In linguistics, the claims about Nostratic hypothesis get published sometimes and receive journalist attention, even though it's obvious very few linguists thinks they are right. Sometimes even less legit claims get published, such as that Burushaski is Indo-European (no less).
OK, fine, maybe it's possible to detect methane from satelite data, if you are detecting a very large part of the spectrum and are doing complicated calculations (nothing of that is necessary to detect CO2). Do you have any reason to think most scientists agree the results Peer Ederer cited are remotely right? I see every reason to think they aren't, like the fact that they don't detect the undersea methanogenic bacteria in the Bermuda Triangle. Peer Ederer tries to make it look like the red spots there are correlated with natural gas production, but they aren't (the United States is the biggest producer of natural gas in the world, yet there are no red spots there).
Look, if you get experimental results which you can't interpret, it's most often because you did the experiment wrong. When I got the result that MergeSort implemented in my programming language is somehow faster than QuickSort even when the array is randomly-shuffled, the problem was that I've implemented QuickSort vastly suboptimally (with three loops instead of one), rather than all the computer science wrong.

A laborer will need more protein than the architect.

As an architect I strongly disagree. I gym 4-6 times a week, I need my protein.

Quote from: Shifter

A laborer will need more protein than the architect.

As an architect I strongly disagree. I gym 4-6 times a week, I need my protein.

Well, basic needs of a profession given an otherwise sedentary life outside of work. You are also a body builder / fitness fan therefore on that you need the protein. Fair enough.

A labourer doing his job will expend more protein then you doing yours. What you do outside of work is up to you and thus as I have said, everyone's needs, everyone's desires and goals are all different. To say that there is one magical diet that encompasses everyone's needs is stupid

An extreme example is Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson vs an office worker. An office worker does not need the protein intake of The Rock to do their job, whereas The Rock needs it to maintain his bulk which he needed as a WWE super star and now actor. He wont be worth the millions of dollars as a fat lardo or skinny arse rake

“Mmmmmoooooooooommmm we need more protein powder!”

“Mmmmmoooooooooommmm we need more protein powder!”

Cookies and cream is my favourite flavour protein powder. 

Well, basic needs of a profession given an otherwise sedentary life outside of work. You are also a body builder / fitness fan therefore on that you need the protein. Fair enough.

A labourer doing his job will expend more protein then you doing yours. What you do outside of work is up to you and thus as I have said, everyone's needs, everyone's desires and goals are all different. To say that there is one magical diet that encompasses everyone's needs is stupid

An extreme example is Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson vs an office worker. An office worker does not need the protein intake of The Rock to do their job, whereas The Rock needs it to maintain his bulk which he needed as a WWE super star and now actor. He wont be worth the millions of dollars as a fat lardo or skinny arse rake

Of course I was joking. Muscle needs more protein, especially if you are making more of it. I have a shake that I make from whey protein, raw oats and fruit. It does the job, and without it I get super skinny.

Soylent Green is Protein Powder!

Quote from: Shifter

It's hard to discuss anything with people that have decided to just disagree for disagreeing sake.

You mean, the Flat-Earthers like you?

No he means that it is hard to discuss anything with people who have decided to disagree for disagreeing sake. I note that at the bottom of your post you are reconsidering the methane issue which is promising but you hadn’t done that when he typed this. Maybe you will eat properly yet.

Quote from: Onlooker

Science is just starting to look at the health effects of a long term carnivore only diet with the current Harvard study.

I've looked it up on the Internet, the only thing close to it that I've found was a study at Harvard showing low-fat diet isn't effective at weight loss.

Do you have some way of looking up current studies that haven’t been published?

Quote from: Onlooker

Obviously living on grass only is impossible because we can't digest it but how is an organism with a primarily carnivore type digestive system obviously unable to eat a carnivore diet?

Just to name one thing, vitamin C. Carnivores (as well as most herbivorous and omnivorous mammals) can produce it in their liver, we can't.

Well like I said we hardly need Vitamin C to make carnitine on a carnivore diet with lots of red meat (because it has carnitine in it) and uric acid seems to replace the other functions of ascorbic acid for us (it gets higher if we go carnivore). Otherwise people on a carnivore diet would be dropping off with scurvy.
I am not aware of any herbivorous species lacking the enzyme to produce Vitamin C who don’t need Vitamin C in their diet. For example cavy rodents who are very herbivorous also don’t produce Vitamin C but need to get it from their diet.
By contrast the enzyme to produce Vitamin C is absent in a number of carnivorous species who don’t need to eat Vitamin C. Among the Corvoidea, the enzyme is absent in carnivorous/insectivorous shrikes (Lanius spp.; Ali and Ripley 1972a), insectivorous Common Ioras (Aegithina tiphia) and Scarlet Minivets (Pericrocotus fiammeus; Ali and Ripley 1972b), and frugivorous Black-hooded Orioles (Oriolus xanthornus; Ali and Ripley 1972a). These are all strict carnivores. For some reason that page is weird and seems to expire if you go there directly. To get it you need to click on the link Can Passerines Synthesise Vitamin C and go to page 515.

I honestly don't understand how can somebody think we have a primarily carnivore type digestive system. How it is then that red meat causes heart disease, diabets and cancer in humans? How it is that we are able to eat carrots, onions, and many other plants that are poisonous even to most herbivores? Carrots are actually poisonous to rabbits, and many people don't know that and kill their pet rabbit by making it eat carrots.

Huh!? Dogs can healthily eat carrots (unless of course they choke on a large chunk). Likewise cats are pure carnivores and there is no reason to give them vegetables but carrots aren’t poisonous to them. Are you saying they are not carnivores? You present these low hanging fruits as a smoking bullet so often (like that kangaroo thing) that I can’t help wondering if you are taking vegan propaganda aimed at vegans and naïve kids with no general knowledge (ie potential vegan recruits) seriously thinking it will be convincing to people generally.

You say red meat causes those things but you have cited a compound found in plant based foods (high in cereals) as causing heart disease and diabetes so what is your point? As regards cancer the evidence seems weak and the risk increase low.

Quote from: Onlooker

Everything points to the situation being otherwise.

A significant percentage of protein in maize is methionine, that doesn't mean you are likely to get too much methionine from eating maize. Maize doesn't contain that much protein. It contains around 7 times less protein per 100 grams than soy does (and protein in soy is low in methionine and high in lysine).

I don’t believe those sources have been saying a significant percentage of the protein in the cereals. I am pretty sure they said that cereals are high in methionine.

Quote from: Onlooker

To be honest I would have thought it an honest mistake.

It's not just that. He is totally misrepresenting what Nietzsche thought about politics. Nietzsche wasn't supporting capitalism. Even LearnLiberty is honest enough to admit that fact:

Quote from: https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/was-nietzsche-libertarian/

When it comes to matters of capitalism and freedom, Nietzsche was inconsistent.

Can you please be more specific? What did he say about Nietzsche and capitalism? I know what Peterson said about socialism but not anything about capitalism.

Quote from: Onlooker

Maybe it varies between countries but in Australia

Oh, please don't bring up this tired old It's only like that in America. gotcha.

I didn’t comment on America. I am saying I don’t know generally but I know for certain in one country.

Quote from: Onlooker

As I said in Australia 97% of cattle are grass fed.

Nothing like that is said in the article you linked to, as far as I can see.

Correct I didn’t cite that reference for that statistic. It was to show that grass fed cattle are legally required to have access to pasture their whole life rather than getting some hay as you suggested. I had discussed the 97% in an earlier post and mentioned it as an after thought.
In other words what I was trying to communicate was the new fact which I cited and referenced in response to your claim being the serious regulation of grass fed beef and then reverted to the context that it is 97% of cattle. The two things together are an inconvenient truth for vegans who want to make it look like all cattle are oppressively factory farmed and it is inhumane to eat beef

Quote from: Onlooker

fat coverts even more easily to carbohydrate than protein

Oh, learn the basic biochemistry, you are being insulting.

? But I have. It is called gluconeogenesis.

Quote from: Onlooker

Inuits traditionally ate all meat raw

Nope, that's a myth. And Inuits get insulted when you call them "Eskimo", because "Eskimo" means "eater of raw meat".

I thought the etymology went something like this:
•   Algonquin tribe of Ojibwa language: Ayas̆kimew - “A person who laces a snow shoe”.
•   French: borrowed from Algonquin and made into a french word, Esquimaux.
•   English: simplified from either French or Algonquin, Eskimo
You are into linguistics so you should know but if so why does the Alaskan Native Language Centre give other information?

Quote from: Onlooker

However I'd want to take a closer look rather than relying on vegan criticism.

What's the point of "taking acloser look"? Taking a closer look at the Flat-Earth Theory is likely to get you further away from the truth, rather than closer to the truth.

People in glass houses…

Quote from: Onlooker

your lack of knowledge of something as basic as protein being broken down

What are you talking about?

I am referring to your debate with Shifter et al where you didn’t think protein could be used for energy and I am sure you commented somewhere in this long thread that being a carnivore would cause mental health issues because the brain uses carbohydrates as energy and you don’t get it in meat whereas protein and fat can not only be broken down to carbohydrates but I’m pretty sure the brain can use ketones as well.

Quote from: Onlooker

I now have found an app which can let me check whether free range eggs really are free range eggs and don't end up get something that I didn't want to pay for.

And how do you know it's reliable? I mean, don't you think this is basing yourself on wrong principles? You trusted the companies who claim to certificate the "free-range" meat. Now you know they aren't doing much at all. So, you are now just adding another layer of checking which you have no reason to think is reliable.

It is put out by an independent watchdog who seem to feel strongly about it.

Quote from: Onlooker

A homeopath relying on some placebo effect can be contrasted with land that is barren which changes to lush green land.

Well, I think it's the same. You never know what would have happened if the cows weren't let to graze on that land. Maybe it would get greener even if there were no cows there.

Purely coincidental in other words … every time it gets replicated.

Quote from: Onlooker

That probably explains why the idea of overgrazing is a modern phenomenon.

Or, more likely, because there are way more cows today, for there are many more people and the meat per capita consumption has drastically increased. And especially milk per capita consumption, it was next to zero a millennium ago because, well, most of the adults were lactose-intolerant.

I think you will find that they worked around it back then by eating cheese. That still required the cows – just a different use for the milk. Sure more cows today but they had less at that time than when herbivores were roaming the plains.

Quote from: Onlooker

Or maybe they are relying upon the WHO

And what incentive might WHO have to lie about that? I don't see it as a very politicized issue. If anything, the incentive is to claim something like red-meat (behind which there is a billion-dollar industry) is harmless. I also see no particular reason to think there was any cover-up about COVID, any more than I see any reason to think George Bush organized 9/11 or that Mile Dedakovic secretly gave the weapons the president Franjo Tudman sent him to the illegal army organized by Zeljko Raznatovic to make the Vukovar Massacre heapen.

Holy hell you are political!
So I don’t have any reason to think that WHO lied or engaged in a ‘cover up’. My comment was based on WHO’s carnival of errors with regard to COVID-19 eg. having the information that it was spread human to human but consistently claiming for a month or more after it was known that it wasn’t occurring. Similarly the way the called on countries to continue air travel for precious weeks “due to the stigma it would create” if it was banned eg. 9 January, 2020.
I have no reason to think there is any conspiracy. But what they did and didn’t do things that got an awful lot of people killed and countries had looked to them for leadership with regard to potential pandemics. Presumably responding to that America has suspended funding on 8 April, 2020.
Based on their recent mishaps I was simply saying that they might not be the ‘go to’ people for health advice at the moment. I am not saying there is some conspiracy relating to politics and red meat (somehow).

Quote from: Onlooker

I couldn't help noticing this Scientific American article.

Nonsense articles get published from time to time and they sometimes receive journalist attention. In linguistics, the claims about Nostratic hypothesis get published sometimes and receive journalist attention, even though it's obvious very few linguists thinks they are right. Sometimes even less legit claims get published, such as that Burushaski is Indo-European (no less).

Yes but the BBC, while large and well known, are a general news outlet who seek interest rather than accuracy and Sci News is a publication that I have never heard of with a few staff - mainly freelance writers with no obvious qualifications.
By contrast the Scientific American started in 1845 and has gained an international reputation for evidence based publication on scientific topics. It has received awards for its excellence including the 2011 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. They don’t want to be publishing nonsense articles.

OK, fine, maybe it's possible to detect methane from satelite data, if you are detecting a very large part of the spectrum and are doing complicated calculations (nothing of that is necessary to detect CO2). Do you have any reason to think most scientists agree the results Peer Ederer cited are remotely right? I see every reason to think they aren't, like the fact that they don't detect the undersea methanogenic bacteria in the Bermuda Triangle. Peer Ederer tries to make it look like the red spots there are correlated with natural gas production, but they aren't (the United States is the biggest producer of natural gas in the world, yet there are no red spots there).
Look, if you get experimental results which you can't interpret, it's most often because you did the experiment wrong. When I got the result that MergeSort implemented in my programming language is somehow faster than QuickSort even when the array is randomly-shuffled, the problem was that I've implemented QuickSort vastly suboptimally (with three loops instead of one), rather than all the computer science wrong.

No I don’t have reason to think scientists agree with him but simply noticed the methane detection because you said in the video it could be done. I am very new to it but I have seen similar satellite photos that don’t indicate large methane emissions from cattle. That said if the information he is giving is accurate then they will be forced to agree with him and revise their cow farting estimates if that gets refuted by direct evidence.

But you need to decide which stick you are going to hit him with. Is he trying to make something look different to the way it is or are the results hard to interpret because the experiment is wrong? Anyhow I think you are doing a lot better than in your video where you just said that direct measurement that conflicts with your beliefs is not worth considering and any climate scientist knows that you can’t measure methane in the atmosphere. To be honest when I watched the video that was what stood out as not looking good.

Do you have some way of looking up current studies that haven’t been published?

How did you come to know that study is currently done at Harvard?

Otherwise people on a carnivore diet would be dropping off with scurvy.

Which is exactly what we see. Sailors in the past were very susceptible to scurvy, because their diet was mostly fish.

the enzyme is absent in carnivorous/insectivorous shrikes

And maybe that's because some insects contain large amounts of vitamin C?

Some species of edible insects contain a reasonable amount of minerals (K, Na, Ca, Cu, Fe, Zn, Mn and P) as well as vitamins such as B group vitamins, vitamins A, D, E, K, and C.

Look, the obvious fact is that if one doesn't get vitamin C, sooner or later he dies from scurvy. Cats whose liver stops producing vitamin C die from scurvy. My biology textbook tells me it's estimated that around 10% of cats die that way. It's a well-known thing that, in the past, sailors were very prone to scurvy because their diet was full of fish but very poor in fruits and vegetables. Denying that just makes you sound silly. It's even sillier than denying that human beings need to intake vitamin B12 through diet.
BTW, your link is broken, I get "Your session has timed out. Please go back to the article page and click the PDF link again.".

Are you saying they are not carnivores?

Well, dogs are obviously omnivores. They like eating sweet stuff. They can also be fed a plant-based diet without problems.
Cats are carnivores. They can't taste sweet. Male cats suffer from bladder issues if fed a plant-based diet, because they can't synthesize taurine. I don't know of any study of what happens if cats eat carrots. Obviously, they are far less immune to sugar than humans are, now, I don't know if they are more immune than rabbits are.
Obviously, the statements such as "We have a primarily carnivore-type digestive system." are soft-science statements at best, because digestive system is not a good predictor of which diet animal consumes. The best predictor by far is intelligence of the animal, animals that are more intelligent tend to eat more meat (because animals that aren't intelligent can't hunt). Even that is not a perfect predictor, because there are some very striking exceptions (elephants).

I am pretty sure they said that cereals are high in methionine.

Look up what food is high in methionine.

I know what Peterson said about socialism but not anything about capitalism.

Well, to be honest, I haven't studied it either. I've always assumed Jordan Peterson is a right-winger. Though, at least in Croatia, vegetarianism is considered a far-right movement, and Jordan Peterson obviously isn't one.

I am saying I don’t know generally but I know for certain in one country.

How can you know that with reasonable certainty? Chances are, most Americans are also convinced that animals eaten for food are treated humanely. Are you an Australian? If so, how come you don't know how to spell "lying", spelling it "lieing", and how come do you make grammar mistakes all the time? It seems like you are not a native speaker of English.

It is called gluconeogenesis.

Gluconeogenesis is when protein is converted to glucose. And not even all protein can be converted to glucose, only certain amino-acids can be. The way our cells are capable of surviving short-term without glucose is that, well, cells can derive energy not only from glucose, they can also derive energy from ketones. Deriving energy from ketones is evolutionary much older (because you don't need mitochondria for that), but it's way less efficient. And converting protein to glucose in humans today usually happens because it's triggered by fructose (principial source of which are sugar and honey), rather than some actual lack of glucose in blood, and not without horrible side-effects (raising the VLDL).

You are into linguistics so you should know but if so why does the Alaskan Native Language Centre give other information?

I haven't really studied Native American languages. Regardless, it doesn't matter where that name actually comes from, what matters is what Inuits think it means and why they are offended by it.

I’m pretty sure the brain can use ketones as well.

Yes, but not as efficiently. It's well-documented.

Purely coincidental in other words … every time it gets replicated.

If all the science is against the theory on which it's based on, then the best explanation is that it's coincidental.

Sure more cows today but they had less at that time than when herbivores were roaming the plains.

Why do you exactly think there are fewer wild ruminants today than there were thousand years ago? Sounds more like the leftist green tyranny propaganda than science to me.

But what they did and didn’t do things that got an awful lot of people killed and countries had looked to them for leadership with regard to potential pandemics.

And, based on what they knew, almost everybody would do the same. Where would we be if we issued lockdowns on every rumour about a potential pandemic? That would completely destroy the world's economy.

By contrast the Scientific American started in 1845 and has gained an international reputation for evidence based publication on scientific topics.

To be honest, I've never heard of Scientific American before. I am mostly reading Croatian-language media, rather than English-language media.

I have seen similar satellite photos that don’t indicate large methane emissions from cattle.

Does any of those images correctly recognize that the main source of methane in the atmosphere are the undersea methanogenic bacteria? That is, do they show "red spots" in areas where those are concentrated, such as the Bermuda Triangle? If not, then we are forced to conclude they are wildly inaccurate.

direct measurement that conflicts with your beliefs

I didn't say that, I said measurements that obviously contradict the mainstream science aren't worth considering as something to base policies on. Measurements of the methane sources that don't show the under-sea methanogenic bacteria are the biggest source obviously contradict the mainstream science.

Quote from: Onlooker

Do you have some way of looking up current studies that haven’t been published?

How did you come to know that study is currently done at Harvard?

On a You Tube Dr Shawn Baker was calling for all viewers on an exclusively carnivore diet for 6 months or more to put their hand up as a potential participant in the "meat only group". He obviously believes that if the issue is studied a carnivore diet will prove to be the healthiest and wants Harvard to achieve the largest possible sample so that the results can be the strongest possible for the nature of the study.

]

Quote from: Onlooker

Otherwise people on a carnivore diet would be dropping off with scurvy.

Which is exactly what we see. Sailors in the past were very susceptible to scurvy, because their diet was mostly fish.

I always thought that their diet was mainly biscuit. Looking into it though … it was mainly beer and bread. They had pork twice a week and beef twice a week but not a lot of fish interestingly.

Quote from: Onlooker

the enzyme is absent in carnivorous/insectivorous shrikes

And maybe that's because some insects contain large amounts of vitamin C?

Quote from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352364616300013?__cf_chl_captcha_tk__=f86c26f590ba970794a046525cf01fcbf2ac3a19-1588076975-0-AUzQQKwN85q81iOjv7YAbrJfOcHGKF1Eq6LdUhxwNLnZej_Bopdv90UycG6Uu3_m1Nao8Zt7V5EQtniJ-nRQCpaUjGHWE9-NO0NZYcRlN8rlLMTBW3ermgRifv4_DmHTTxzXMCvASc3YztYkz9PrYPEXn_A-JxaOl5YeOi36VwTPbcnWeT_NS-WAHQ7ZRSZ6SAnXOEi-wfktkJcyq2ryvOzmdCYCdspHO-XxWMjfYeJnF24jiVQBI2elTfyp1a0cnu7sAancakoIpin2hhXgX5mTvPEMXPPBAYde2ndLwDpjbEPhigxH_33ihvJaExurMwp0RUv9PFUCQAbAxZK_zq5nqlhQsZ1sIDskb2E8qSK8bawenDp62q8OBcknYpXG3sKwhhucaICGzOq8Vlqdt3xr2SHNpVIFSyvquFLk2buTZsR2kmdPS0KLEJyig7mstLmWUgnE0oR4Qj8gmw6n5JoF1PwV6lG1Ry0EU-5cNXQ6G9l7YBcq9HNG5je0ZoA1SKQ1zNBUxV0iINeHfqV-6GUhgBn4Uy8uOcFmcK6OLUwBRYLBn2iP1szVHbvAkAujfw

Some species of edible insects contain a reasonable amount of minerals (K, Na, Ca, Cu, Fe, Zn, Mn and P) as well as vitamins such as B group vitamins, vitamins A, D, E, K, and C.

However their content is seasonal and dependent on the feed.

Look, the obvious fact is that if one doesn't get vitamin C, sooner or later he dies from scurvy. Cats whose liver stops producing vitamin C die from scurvy. My biology textbook tells me it's estimated that around 10% of cats die that way.

One way or another people are fine on a carnivore diet even though we don't produce Vitamin C. Those on a carnivore diet don't seem to decline in health after about a year like so many on a vegan diet seem to.

It's a well-known thing that, in the past, sailors were very prone to scurvy because their diet was full of fish but very poor in fruits and vegetables. Denying that just makes you sound silly. It's even sillier than denying that human beings need to intake vitamin B12 through diet.

Oops! I guess I must have made myself sound silly again as I denied the fish bit. I acknowledge that their diet was poor in fruit and vegetables and that fruit (eg. limes) was one option that stopped the scurvy if that helps.

The best predictor by far is intelligence of the animal, animals that are more intelligent tend to eat more meat (because animals that aren't intelligent can't hunt). Even that is not a perfect predictor, because there are some very striking exceptions (elephants).

Interesting you should say that as I have noticed that. Nature can be unkind but sometimes it is also kind in that the animals designed to be eaten as a nutritional intermediary between plants and carnivores/omnivores also tend to be stupid. Your theory makes a lot of sense. They say exceptions prove the rule. It is hard to dichotomise perfectly by group when ranking their intellectual prowess. Some people try to go with vertebrate/invertebrate but obviously octopuses are unusually smart and regular fish who are vertebrates have been shown to not even feel pain.

Quote from: Onlooker

I am pretty sure they said that cereals are high in methionine.

Look up what food is high in methionine.

LOL I know what you mean but don't forget cereals.

Quote from: Onlooker

I know what Peterson said about socialism but not anything about capitalism.

Well, to be honest, I haven't studied it either. I've always assumed Jordan Peterson is a right-winger. Though, at least in Croatia, vegetarianism is considered a far-right movement, and Jordan Peterson obviously isn't one.

From what he said he was involved in a left wing group when he was younger but his views evolved like the pages of The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. The book goes from apparently arguing that Marxism seemed like a fair option to portraying it as unworkable. He claims that he has moved from left to neither right nor left.

Quote from: Onlooker

It is called gluconeogenesis.

Gluconeogenesis is when protein is converted to glucose. And not even all protein can be converted to glucose, only certain amino-acids can be. The way our cells are capable of surviving short-term without glucose is that, well, cells can derive energy not only from glucose, they can also derive energy from ketones. Deriving energy from ketones is evolutionary much older (because you don't need mitochondria for that), but it's way less efficient. And converting protein to glucose in humans today usually happens because it's triggered by fructose (principial source of which are sugar and honey), rather than some actual lack of glucose in blood, and not without horrible side-effects (raising the VLDL).

I guess the value depends on your priorities.

Why don't you think that fatty acids are one of the things that can be broken down with gluconeogenesis?

Quote from: Onlooker

You are into linguistics so you should know but if so why does the Alaskan Native Language Centre give other information?

I haven't really studied Native American languages. Regardless, it doesn't matter where that name actually comes from, what matters is what Inuits think it means and why they are offended by it.

The offence was not because of being accused of eating raw meat in a situation where they didn't eat raw meat and were offended at the false accusation. It seems uncontroversial that they did eat raw meat. They always say it themselves. They might have believed that it meant "eaters of raw meat" but were offended for other reasons.

It is also complicated as Canadian Inuits are offended by it but Alaskan Inuits aren't and Alaskan Yupik are offended by being called Inuit as it is like calling a French person Italian just because they come from Europe. Even though offence has been taken by Inuits in some places indications are that they took offence when they thought a foreign name was being imposed on them or that the description was being used to portray them as uncivilized.

You may be wrong about the Inuits but maybe you have something about Vitamin C. Maybe we are fine on a carnivore diet but we need to eat Vitamin C if one Inuit lady is correct when she said: "Traditional Inuit practices like freezing meat and fish and frequently eating them raw, she notes, conserve vitamin C, which is easily cooked off and lost in food processing." Maybe we got our Vitamin C from meat and that explains why people eating a meat only diet long term don't drop off from scurvy.

This video makes that claim when explaining the carnivore diet (and includes some old footage relating to the Inuit diet):

Quote from: Onlooker

Purely coincidental in other words … every time it gets replicated.

If all the science is against the theory on which it's based on, then the best explanation is that it's coincidental.

What science do you have in mind? I thought overgrazing was being observed and people just hadn't worked out the qualification that Savory introduced.
 

Quote from: Onlooker

Sure more cows today but they had less at that time than when herbivores were roaming the plains.

Why do you exactly think there are fewer wild ruminants today than there were thousand years ago? Sounds more like the leftist green tyranny propaganda than science to me.

After you said that I couldn’t help noticing that the url of this article about our killing off the megafauna ends with “left” 😉. I suspect there are fewer but even if not they were a lot larger so the farts must have been pretty huge.

Quote from: Onlooker

But what they did and didn’t do things that got an awful lot of people killed and countries had looked to them for leadership with regard to potential pandemics.

And, based on what they knew, almost everybody would do the same. Where would we be if we issued lockdowns on every rumour about a potential pandemic? That would completely destroy the world's economy.

I acknowledge the difficulties but they still handled it very poorly.

Quote from: Onlooker

By contrast the Scientific American started in 1845 and has gained an international reputation for evidence based publication on scientific topics.

To be honest, I've never heard of Scientific American before. I am mostly reading Croatian-language media, rather than English-language media.

Understand.

Quote from: Onlooker

I have seen similar satellite photos that don’t indicate large methane emissions from cattle.

Does any of those images correctly recognize that the main source of methane in the atmosphere are the undersea methanogenic bacteria? That is, do they show "red spots" in areas where those are concentrated, such as the Bermuda Triangle? If not, then we are forced to conclude they are wildly inaccurate.

If the technology is correct we might be forced to revise what we think we know about those places if they prove not to be the methane producers we thought they were. Science evolves. It is about enquiry and learning. You seem to think it is dogma and consensus. The Big Bang originally got that name as a pejorative dismissal as scientists knew that the Universe always existed and didn’t immediately accept the then new theory (the fact that a Catholic Priest scientist formulated the theory and it sounded like an “In the beginning…” probably didn’t help). Then of course evidence like redshifts of galaxies and cosmic background radiation made it widely accepted.

Quote from: Onlooker

direct measurement that conflicts with your beliefs

I didn't say that, I said measurements that obviously contradict the mainstream science aren't worth considering as something to base policies on. Measurements of the methane sources that don't show the under-sea methanogenic bacteria are the biggest source obviously contradict the mainstream science.

No need to change policies just yet. We just need to be aware of the potential change in science that may occur with better measurement and not get too locked to in a position that doesn’t consider it.

Finally I really hope that you realise that we are omnivores who lean toward the carnivore end and change your diet. But if you don't change then at least supplement since the vegan diet is so unhealthy in the long term. You are studying and taking a cerebral path in life. The last thing you need is to have your brain damaged. Feel free to eat meat but if you don't the following video might give you some ideas about supplementation given that you are what you eat. You can eat meat and be an animal or you can eat vegetables and end up …

Sorry for not responding for a while, the university is very demanding.

On a You Tube Dr Shawn Baker was calling for all viewers on an exclusively carnivore diet for 6 months or more to put their hand up as a potential participant in the "meat only group".

And you trust what this guy has to say? If somebody claims all the nutritional science is wrong, I wouldn't trust a word of their mouth.

Looking into it though ... it was mainly beer and bread.

It almost certainly varied through centuries. In the 18th century, it was common knowledge that scurvy was caused by a lack of vitamin C and could be prevented via eating cabbage. Regardless, before 18th century, they ate almost no vitamin C and that's why they were prone to scurvy.

However their content is seasonal and dependent on the feed.

What does that have to do with anything? You claimed it's possible for one to survive without Vitamin C, and that some insectivorous birds not having enzymes for producing Vitamin C in their liver proves that. The fact that some insects contain Vitamin C severely undermines that claim.

One way or another people are fine on a carnivore diet even though we don't produce Vitamin C.

First of all, how do you know they aren't lying about their dietary habits? Second, how do you know there isn't some survivorship bias going on? Many people claim to have survived without taking any Vitamin B12. And what's actually going on (apart from people lying) is that some people experience the symptoms of B12 deficiency (hallucinations...) even though their B12 levels in blood are in low normal regions, and some experience the symptoms only when the levels are close to zero. I see no reason to think it's different with Vitamin C. Some people may not experience the symptoms even though their levels of vitamin C are spectacularly low, and you only hear from them. But, chances are, if you don't intake vitamin C, you will experience symptoms rather soon.

Those on a carnivore diet don't seem to decline in health

Again, many of them are probably lying. And there can also be some survivorship bias going on. Do you hear from those who tried a carnivore diet and had to abandon it?

like so many on a vegan diet seem to.

Hey, listen, there are obviously many vegan diets, some of them will not be healthy. If somebody buys into the nonsense that a diet primarily based on coconuts somehow prevents Alzheimer's Disease, they are going to decline in health despite being vegan. Similar arguments are often brought up in computer science: Object-oriented programming doesn't always help. Quite a few programs are made illegible by the over-use of classes. Well, nobody claims it would do a miracle and that mindlessly adding classes and objects would somehow make code better. They will make the program shorter, more divisible and more legible if used properly.

I guess I must have made myself sound silly again as I denied the fish bit.

Look, the claim that human beings need to get vitamin C is supported by very science, and denying that makes you sound silly.

Nature can be unkind but sometimes it is also kind in that the animals designed to be eaten as a nutritional intermediary between plants and carnivores/omnivores also tend to be stupid.

I am not sure what you mean. Almost all animals get more intelligent over time, that's what evolution does. OK, maybe not for koala bears, but even that is questionable. I think that's what's going on is that being more intelligent makes animals eat meat, rather than the other way around. An animal that eats some meat doesn't need to spend all their day eating grass just not to starve to death. And before human beings invented cooking... well, they could hardly eat any meat before that.

I know what you mean but don't forget cereals.

I am not sure what you mean. Look, nobody is denying that many commonly eaten grains, especially wheat, are a poor source of protein and contain only low-quality protein (containing significantly more methionine than lysine). Nobody is denying that lysine deficiency is a major problem in the world today. But so is getting too much methionine, primarily caused by, well, milk. The best source of protein for humans is probably soy.

From what he said he was involved in a left wing group when he was younger but his views evolved like the pages of The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell.

Jordan Peterson claims to be pro-capitalism here:

I guess the value depends on your priorities.

Please don't bring up this nonsense about coconuts preventing the Alzheimer's Disease, or any of its variations, OK?

Why don't you think that fatty acids are one of the things that can be broken down with gluconeogenesis?

Because I've read so in my biology textbook, and in many other places? I've read somewhere that some plants can, if they can't do photosynthesis for some reason, convert long-chain fatty acids into cellulose. I am quite sure no organism can convert them into glucose to gain energy (notice it wouldn't be useful for bacteria, since they lack mitochondria), and I am almost certain human body can't do that.

The offence was not because of being accused of eating raw meat in a situation where they didn't eat raw meat and were offended at the false accusation.

Well, both my geography textbook and my English language textbook claim otherwise.
And the soft science statements like that one are a rather popular way to push nonsense. This and that tribe ate a vegan diet before being westernized. Or, equivalently, This and that tribe ate raw meat before getting westernized. Such claims are almost impossible to evaluate.

Maybe we got our Vitamin C from meat and that explains why people eating a meat only diet long term don't drop off from scurvy.

Well, the Inuits did eat the wild fruits, so that's probably where they got the vast majority of their Vitamin C from. Other than that, yeah, liver contains a small amount of Vitamin C. Maybe that's enough for some people (it probably is not), but no reasonable person would risk getting all his Vitamin C from that.

I think you will find that they worked around it back then by eating cheese.

When did it become a widespread knowledge that cheese could be eaten? My guess is that it was around 200 CE. Proto-Indo-European didn't have a word for cheese. Proto-Germanic also didn't, it borrowed it from Latin. So did Proto-Celtic.
The interesting thing is that people think those traditional foods are very ancient, when the linguistics tells us otherwise. Proto-Indo-European also, for instance, didn't have a word for bread (presumably Proto-Indo-Europeans didn't know about wheat). And neither did Proto-Semitic. Both Akkadian and Hittite borrowed the word for bread from Sumerian, ninda.

What science do you have in mind? I thought overgrazing was being observed and people just hadn't worked out the qualification that Savory introduced.

To be honest, I am not really interested in it. After all, Savory's ideas, no matter how bad they are for other parts of the environment, at least don't cause super-bacteria.

After you said that I couldn't help noticing that the url of this article about our killing off the megafauna ends with left.

My perception is that most of the supposed environmental problems are massively overblown. Like I've said, there are probably more polar bears no than there were 50 years ago, because an increase in the temperature of around half a degree Celsius pleases them, rather than hurts them. And the deforestation is also mostly made up. There are probably more trees today than there were a hundred years ago. Except for the super-bacteria, I think the dangers of super-bacteria are massively underestimated, partly because exactly the same policies that make cows emit less methane also make us more susceptible to super-bacteria.

I acknowledge the difficulties but they still handled it very poorly.

I am not convinced WHO is doing too little, in fact, I think those lockdowns recommended by WHO is doing too much. Money is life in this case. Treating patients who suffer from COVID takes expensive equipment. And lockdowns destroy the economies. Croatia gets around 25% of its GDP from tourism. And lockdowns will significantly hurt our economy, which already isn't going too well. It's quite possible more people will die because of the economic damages (not being able to afford expensive treatments) caused by lockdowns than how many people will be saved by the lockdowns.

We just need to be aware of the potential change in science that may occur with better measurement and not get too locked to in a position that doesn't consider it.

Yes, but assigning the probability of science changing about that of 100%, or even 50%, is wrong. You can't give the same, yet alone more, credibility to the "newest research" as to mainstream science. The "newest research" is almost always wrong. It's about as credible as I would be if I were claiming to have discovered that, on a RAM machine, MergeSort is faster than QuickSort is for randomly shuffled arrays, and that much of computer science is wrong.

Quote from: Onlooker

On a You Tube Dr Shawn Baker was calling for all viewers on an exclusively carnivore diet for 6 months or more to put their hand up as a potential participant in the "meat only group".

And you trust what this guy has to say? If somebody claims all the nutritional science is wrong, I wouldn't trust a word of their mouth.

You mean like the stuff about not having a balanced diet with the fruit, vegetables and lean meat or fish? How do you feel about vegan claims?
I don’t know why he would want people to sign up for a study that doesn’t exist. Plus in spite of his own results on a carnivore diet he always says that people should be able to choose the diet that works for them.

Quote from: Onlooker

Looking into it though ... it was mainly beer and bread.

It almost certainly varied through centuries. In the 18th century, it was common knowledge that scurvy was caused by a lack of vitamin C and could be prevented via eating cabbage. Regardless, before 18th century, they ate almost no vitamin C and that's why they were prone to scurvy.

It would have varied among people and groups and time and cabbages and citrus.

Quote from: Onlooker

However their content is seasonal and dependent on the feed.

What does that have to do with anything? You claimed it's possible for one to survive without Vitamin C, and that some insectivorous birds not having enzymes for producing Vitamin C in their liver proves that. The fact that some insects contain Vitamin C severely undermines that claim.

I was highlighting that, although they might get it from their prey as some insects have Vitamin C at least some of the time it is not conclusive given that the vitamin content depends on what the insects are eating and is seasonal.

However I am definitely re-evaluating whether the issue is that eating carnivore means you don’t need Vitamin C (noting that there are a lot of reasons that you would need less) when the explanation could just as easily that you get enough Vitamin C on a carnivore diet.

The issue might not be that carnivores are thriving without Vitamin C but that (like possibly the carnivore birds) they are getting sufficient in their diet. The theory of the Inuit lady about getting Vitamin C from the raw meat they eat and the explanations as to why we don’t need as much Vitamin C if we have a carnivore diet in that video with the picture of beef (and of course other things like not needing Vitamin C to produce Carnitine if you get a lot in your diet which they didn’t raise) support that theory.

Quote from: Onlooker

One way or another people are fine on a carnivore diet even though we don't produce Vitamin C.

First of all, how do you know they aren't lying about their dietary habits? Second, how do you know there isn't some survivorship bias going on? Many people claim to have survived without taking any Vitamin B12. And what's actually going on (apart from people lying) is that some people experience the symptoms of B12 deficiency (hallucinations...) even though their B12 levels in blood are in low normal regions, and some experience the symptoms only when the levels are close to zero. I see no reason to think it's different with Vitamin C. Some people may not experience the symptoms even though their levels of vitamin C are spectacularly low, and you only hear from them. But, chances are, if you don't intake vitamin C, you will experience symptoms rather soon.

….or people on meat only are getting enough Vitamin C from the meat.

Quote from: Onlooker

Those on a carnivore diet don't seem to decline in health

Again, many of them are probably lying. And there can also be some survivorship bias going on. Do you hear from those who tried a carnivore diet and had to abandon it?

No. It might be because there are more high profile vegans around but it always seem to be the vegans who abandon the diet for health reasons. Maybe this lady who claims that meat nourishes and plant materials cleanse might be on to something.

Quote from: Onlooker

like so many on a vegan diet seem to.

Hey, listen, there are obviously many vegan diets, some of them will not be healthy. If somebody buys into the nonsense that a diet primarily based on coconuts somehow prevents Alzheimer's Disease, they are going to decline in health despite being vegan. Similar arguments are often brought up in computer science: Object-oriented programming doesn't always help. Quite a few programs are made illegible by the over-use of classes. Well, nobody claims it would do a miracle and that mindlessly adding classes and objects would somehow make code better. They will make the program shorter, more divisible and more legible if used properly.

True but how often have you heard ex-vegans going to pains to explain how they tried to eat healthily but their health still fell apart (or, as a current vegan, would you prefer me to use the vegan terminology “detox” instead of "health still fell apart")?

Quote from: Onlooker

I guess I must have made myself sound silly again as I denied the fish bit.

Look, the claim that human beings need to get vitamin C is supported by very science, and denying that makes you sound silly.

My original claim was that we can meat alone and you said we can’t because we need Vitamin C. I was aware that there are a lot of reasons why you need less Vitamin C on a carnivore diet and assumed that there is no Vitamin C in meat so we must not need any. However based on the lower need and the availability of Vitamin C in meat I am shifting toward the view that it isn’t that we don’t’ need it but rather that we get sufficient on a carnivore diet.
On an omnivore diet we do need a significant amount of Vitamin C on a regular basis. However people have assumed that we can’t survive on a carnivore diet so it isn’t accounted for in determining RDAs.

Quote from: Onlooker

Nature can be unkind but sometimes it is also kind in that the animals designed to be eaten as a nutritional intermediary between plants and carnivores/omnivores also tend to be stupid.

I am not sure what you mean. Almost all animals get more intelligent over time, that's what evolution does. OK, maybe not for koala bears, but even that is questionable. I think that's what's going on is that being more intelligent makes animals eat meat, rather than the other way around. An animal that eats some meat doesn't need to spend all their day eating grass just not to starve to death. And before human beings invented cooking... well, they could hardly eat any meat before that.

True – except for the delusion that we need to eat cooked meat.  You still have the cooking thing largely back to front but I know within your religion people make that claim because they want those on a plant based diet and potential recruits to think that a human digestive system is more like a cow than a lion rather than the reality. That is just the usual vegan misinformation. We cook vegetables to break down the cell walls to release the nutrients. We cook meat to kill bacteria and because it tastes better. Cooking does make meat more nutritious in some ways and less in others and makes it less work to chew but it is unnecessary. Since having this discussion and realising how much we are designed to have meat I have started having meat only meals a lot of the time and sacrifice the taste and ease of chewing to have rare cooked more nutritious meat. I have it rare rather than raw to kill any bacteria on it.

Quote from: Onlooker

I know what you mean but don't forget cereals.

I am not sure what you mean. Look, nobody is denying that many commonly eaten grains, especially wheat, are a poor source of protein and contain only low-quality protein (containing significantly more methionine than lysine). Nobody is denying that lysine deficiency is a major problem in the world today. But so is getting too much methionine, primarily caused by, well, milk. The best source of protein for humans is probably soy.

Can I just clarify? You said "I've read about soy possibly causing breast cancer because of containing compounds similar to estrogen". Do you disagree with what you have read and think it is good to eat soy?

Quote from: Onlooker

I guess the value depends on your priorities.

Please don't bring up this nonsense about coconuts preventing the Alzheimer's Disease, or any of its variations, OK?

I didn’t I just cited that study that supports a popular theory at the moment that carbohydrates are damaging for our brains even though glucose can be used to fuel it.

Quote from: Onlooker

The offence was not because of being accused of eating raw meat in a situation where they didn't eat raw meat and were offended at the false accusation.

Well, both my geography textbook and my English language textbook claim otherwise.
And the soft science statements like that one are a rather popular way to push nonsense. This and that tribe ate a vegan diet before being westernized. Or, equivalently, This and that tribe ate raw meat before getting westernized. Such claims are almost impossible to evaluate.

We can agree to disagree perhaps but I prefer the opinion of Inuits on this topic and the old footage about the guy who lived with Inuits in that You Tube about carnivore diets than something written in modern times by a Croatian text book writer.

Quote from: Onlooker

Maybe we got our Vitamin C from meat and that explains why people eating a meat only diet long term don't drop off from scurvy.

Well, the Inuits did eat the wild fruits, so that's probably where they got the vast majority of their Vitamin C from. Other than that, yeah, liver contains a small amount of Vitamin C. Maybe that's enough for some people (it probably is not), but no reasonable person would risk getting all his Vitamin C from that.

I haven’t been there but have read that 'back in the days' it would be hard to source fruit in an Alaskan winter.

Quote from: Onlooker

I think you will find that they worked around it back then by eating cheese.

When did it become a widespread knowledge that cheese could be eaten? My guess is that it was around 200 CE. Proto-Indo-European didn't have a word for cheese. Proto-Germanic also didn't, it borrowed it from Latin. So did Proto-Celtic.
The interesting thing is that people think those traditional foods are very ancient, when the linguistics tells us otherwise. Proto-Indo-European also, for instance, didn't have a word for bread (presumably Proto-Indo-Europeans didn't know about wheat). And neither did Proto-Semitic. Both Akkadian and Hittite borrowed the word for bread from Sumerian, ninda.

Many believe that cheese making is 7, 000 years old.

Quote from: Onlooker

After you said that I couldn't help noticing that the url of this article about our killing off the megafauna ends with left.

My perception is that most of the supposed environmental problems are massively overblown. Like I've said, there are probably more polar bears no than there were 50 years ago, because an increase in the temperature of around half a degree Celsius pleases them, rather than hurts them. And the deforestation is also mostly made up. There are probably more trees today than there were a hundred years ago. Except for the super-bacteria, I think the dangers of super-bacteria are massively underestimated, partly because exactly the same policies that make cows emit less methane also make us more susceptible to super-bacteria.

Yes I think that we are better off avoiding those policies for that reason and of course for animal welfare. I suspect that the accepted estimates of methane contribution will prove incorrect but time will tell. And of course grazing animals are very positive for the environment if they move around by promoting good soil and lush vegetation which acts as a carbon sink.

Quote from: Onlooker

I acknowledge the difficulties but they still handled it very poorly.

I am not convinced WHO is doing too little, in fact, I think those lockdowns recommended by WHO is doing too much. Money is life in this case. Treating patients who suffer from COVID takes expensive equipment. And lockdowns destroy the economies. Croatia gets around 25% of its GDP from tourism. And lockdowns will significantly hurt our economy, which already isn't going too well. It's quite possible more people will die because of the economic damages (not being able to afford expensive treatments) caused by lockdowns than how many people will be saved by the lockdowns.

I wouldn’t disagree with that. Once they took action it might have gone too far. It was the delay in taking effective action in terms of acknowledging person to person transmission or supporting travel bans that look like the ‘too little too late’.

Quote from: Onlooker

We just need to be aware of the potential change in science that may occur with better measurement and not get too locked to in a position that doesn't consider it.

Yes, but assigning the probability of science changing about that of 100%, or even 50%, is wrong. You can't give the same, yet alone more, credibility to the "newest research" as to mainstream science. The "newest research" is almost always wrong. It's about as credible as I would be if I were claiming to have discovered that, on a RAM machine, MergeSort is faster than QuickSort is for randomly shuffled arrays, and that much of computer science is wrong.

No need to assign a probability either. Just saying that now that direct measurement is possible there is no guarantee that estimates will prove valid so no need to get locked into a view of how things are until we get the information.

Sorry I haven't responded for so long, the university is very demanding.

You mean like the stuff about not having a balanced diet with the fruit, vegetables and lean meat or fish?

I mean the actual hard science facts from nutritional science, like that sugar and saturated fat cause diabetes and heart disease, or that human beings need vitamin B12 or vitamin C to survive.

How do you feel about vegan claims?

This is a very broad category. But if somebody who is a vegan is clearly contradicting nutritional science, such as Neal Barnard claiming "sugar does not cause diabetes", I have little choice but to dismiss their claims.

I don’t know why he would want people to sign up for a study that doesn’t exist.

Because he is relying on his viewers not investigating his claims, maybe?

Plus in spite of his own results on a carnivore diet he always says that people should be able to choose the diet that works for them.

I am not sure that's a good principle. To make an informed decision of what diet will work for you, well, you need to spend a lot of time researching nutritional science. You need to research it for years to get a basic perspective on that (because there is so much written about it by non-experts who, of course, get things wildly wrong). By that logic, people should choose whether or not they take vaccines.

of course other things like not needing Vitamin C to produce Carnitine if you get a lot in your diet which they didn’t raise

Look, I don't get how claims like that don't trigger your nonsense detectors. What's the difference between saying that and claiming the bacteria in our long intestine will produce enough B12 if we eat a vegan diet? Those are obviously over-the-top ad-hoc hypotheses.

or people on meat only are getting enough Vitamin C from the meat.

Or maybe our bodies can actually convert the B12 stored in aloevera plant into the form of B12 we need, in spite of all the nutritionists agreeing it can't. Again, I don't understand how statements like that don't trigger your nonsense detectors. Does anything trigger it?

It might be because there are more high profile vegans around but it always seem to be the vegans who abandon the diet for health reasons.

Well, I once abandoned the vegan diet because of constantly feeling tired, and I fell on nonsense that it's probably caused by taking too much ALA and too little DHA and that eating fish would miraculously help me. So I started eating fish. I was eating fish almost every day for months... and it didn't help. So I continued with a vegan diet.

Maybe this lady who claims that meat nourishes and plant materials cleanse might be on to something.

Look, if you have something specific from that video you want me to respond to, quote it here. I don't have time to watch 45-minutes long video which I see no reason to think contains useful information. I will not watch it for the same reason I will not watch "What the Health", the documentary by Neal Barnard in which he claims sugar doesn't cause diabetes.
From what I've seen in the comment section, it appears to be a video about the tired-old-gotcha how micro-nutrients are a lot better absorbed from meat and milk than from plants. Well, I see no reason to think that's the case. It's well-known that rabbit meat takes more vitamins to digest than what it gives. And you know about the problem with calcium from milk, it gets absorbed... into the bloodstream, and not into the bones. I suppose it also brings up that nonsense about how iron is more easily absorbed from meat than from vegetables, when, in fact, the iron compounds found in red meat are probably responsible for red meat causing colon cancer. Why else would the intake of red meat be linked to cancer, but fish won't be?

True but how often have you heard ex-vegans going to pains to explain how they tried to eat healthily but their health still fell apart

Well, to be honest, not very often.

would you prefer me to use the vegan terminology “detox” instead of "health still fell apart"

Never heard of somebody advocating a vegan diet using the term "detox".

I was aware that there are a lot of reasons why you need less Vitamin C on a carnivore diet

Again, I find it hard to believe claims like that don't trigger your nonsense detectors. Do you also believe that, if you don't eat meat, your body can somehow more easily convert ALA to DHA?

True – except for the delusion that we need to eat cooked meat.

Why is that a delusion? The vast majority of people would accept that eating raw meat is a bad idea, both because it's unsafe and hard to digest.
And if we are naturally carnivores, how it is that we don't feel the need to run after a mouse and slaughter it with our teeth as we see it running? A cat or a dog obviously feels that need, even when it isn't hungry. That's also the argument I used there.

You said "I've read about soy possibly causing breast cancer because of containing compounds similar to estrogen".

And I said I disagree with that because, if that were true, we would also expect milk (containing far more estrogen-like compounds) to cause breast cancer, which it doesn't appear to.

I didn’t I just cited that study that supports a popular theory at the moment that carbohydrates are damaging for our brains even though glucose can be used to fuel it.

How is that a popular theory? The popular opinion is that ketosis is damaging to the brain, ask any nutritionist, or doctor, or anybody from a remotely related field.

We can agree to disagree perhaps but I prefer the opinion of Inuits on this topic and the old footage about the guy who lived with Inuits in that You Tube about carnivore diets than something written in modern times by a Croatian text book writer.

Somebody who is propagating a carnivore diet obviously has an agenda, a textbook author probably doesn't.

Many believe that cheese making is 7, 000 years old.

Well, I don't really understand the argument that has been made in that article. But, yeah, it's possible (if not probable) that cheese was discovered and then forgotten many times in human history. The same is probably true for writing. Writing was probably invented by the Vinča culture and then fell into oblivion for thousands of years until again introduced into Europe by the Minoan culture. There is rather convincing evidence that the Vinča symbols were a form of logo-syllabic writing, the pots contained symbols that were squeezed on the left side but wide on the right side, why would somebody do that if he wasn't trying to write down a sentence while writing right-to-left? Of course, the only way to know for certain is to decypher it, and that's very unlikely (other than plausible guesses such as that the sign with the zig-zag line in a square means "river", just like similar symbols in Hieroglyphic or Oracle Bone writing). There is also the idea that some cave drawings were actually an alphabetic script (in which each symbol stood for one sound, like the Latin alphabet), but I find that claim rather implausible.

And of course grazing animals are very positive for the environment if they move around by promoting good soil and lush vegetation which acts as a carbon sink.

Well, obviously, that's not what usually happens. Usually if people try to have a lot of pasture-raised cows, they end up being poorly managed overgrazing.

It was the delay in taking effective action in terms of acknowledging person to person transmission or supporting travel bans

Well, like I've said, acknowledging person-to-person transmission before it's been proven risks destroying economies for no good reason.

Just saying that now that direct measurement is possible there is no guarantee that estimates will prove valid so no need to get locked into a view of how things are until we get the information.

And you don't think climate scientists are aware of those "direct measurements"? I think this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. We know more than we have ever known, yet we feel less and less confident that the mainstream science is correct, instead of feeling more and more confident.

Sorry I haven't responded for so long, the university is very demanding.

No need to apologise everyone is busy.

Quote from: Onlooker

You mean like the stuff about not having a balanced diet with the fruit, vegetables and lean meat or fish?

I mean the actual hard science facts from nutritional science, like that sugar and saturated fat cause diabetes and heart disease, or that human beings need vitamin B12 or vitamin C to survive.

Of the examples the only thing (noting he also doesn't advocate a balanced diet with meat, dairy, vegetables and grains) he doesn't take a normative view on is saturated fat. While I don't fully know what to make of it I am aware that people on carnivore diets seem to get raised cholesterol levels but de-calcification of their arteries. His argument is that cholesterol isn't so bad when inflammation is reduced on a meat only diet and that other risk factors such as calcification, high blood pressure, lack of exercise, smoking, high triglycerides etc. need to be considered to assess whether or not high cholesterol is a problem.

Quote from: Onlooker

How do you feel about vegan claims?

This is a very broad category. But if somebody who is a vegan is clearly contradicting nutritional science, such as Neal Barnard claiming "sugar does not cause diabetes", I have little choice but to dismiss their claims.

We have common ground there.

Quote from: Onlooker

I don’t know why he would want people to sign up for a study that doesn’t exist.

Because he is relying on his viewers not investigating his claims, maybe?

Or maybe he believes that a fully carnivore diet is healthier and he wants some supporting data now that it is being researched for the first time since 1930.

Quote from: Onlooker

Plus in spite of his own results on a carnivore diet he always says that people should be able to choose the diet that works for them.

I am not sure that's a good principle. To make an informed decision of what diet will work for you, well, you need to spend a lot of time researching nutritional science. You need to research it for years to get a basic perspective on that (because there is so much written about it by non-experts who, of course, get things wildly wrong). By that logic, people should choose whether or not they take vaccines.

Perhaps but he is obviously not treating nutrition as a religion so that leans towards credibility with regard to his claim he is a carnivore.

Quote from: Onlooker

of course other things like not needing Vitamin C to produce Carnitine if you get a lot in your diet which they didn’t raise

Look, I don't get how claims like that don't trigger your nonsense detectors. What's the difference between saying that and claiming the bacteria in our long intestine will produce enough B12 if we eat a vegan diet? Those are obviously over-the-top ad-hoc hypotheses.

As regards Vitamin C producing Carnitine or the fact that there is Carnitine in meat that is easy to show.

As regards the general thing not triggering I guess it is because of all the vegans making over the top claims about how a plant based diet really has enough B12 but we just wash our food too much so they need to supplement compared to Inuits or Jordan Peterson or Dr Baker who have a meat only diet and thrive.

Quote from: Onlooker

or people on meat only are getting enough Vitamin C from the meat.

Or maybe our bodies can actually convert the B12 stored in aloevera plant into the form of B12 we need, in spite of all the nutritionists agreeing it can't. Again, I don't understand how statements like that don't trigger your nonsense detectors. Does anything trigger it?

Suppose that all the people currently on a carnivore diet including the 'celebrity' carnivores like Peterson and Baker were making it up. How do you explain Inuits and people who have lived with them?

Quote from: Onlooker

It might be because there are more high profile vegans around but it always seem to be the vegans who abandon the diet for health reasons.

Well, I once abandoned the vegan diet because of constantly feeling tired, and I fell on nonsense that it's probably caused by taking too much ALA and too little DHA and that eating fish would miraculously help me. So I started eating fish. I was eating fish almost every day for months... and it didn't help. So I continued with a vegan diet.

Did you get blood tests done? Otherwise I would be surprised you didn't try beef for the extremely bio-available iron. Can you please explain the theory you were working on?

Quote from: Onlooker

Maybe this lady who claims that meat nourishes and plant materials cleanse might be on to something.

Look, if you have something specific from that video you want me to respond to, quote it here. I don't have time to watch 45-minutes long video which I see no reason to think contains useful information. I will not watch it for the same reason I will not watch "What the Health", the documentary by Neal Barnard in which he claims sugar doesn't cause diabetes.

It gives her journey as a vegan and what she learned from it. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life popping pills or gambling on your genetics it could rescue your future health.

From what I've seen in the comment section, it appears to be a video about the tired-old-gotcha how micro-nutrients are a lot better absorbed from meat and milk than from plants. Well, I see no reason to think that's the case. It's well-known that rabbit meat takes more vitamins to digest than what it gives. And you know about the problem with calcium from milk, it gets absorbed... into the bloodstream, and not into the bones. I suppose it also brings up that nonsense about how iron is more easily absorbed from meat than from vegetables, when, in fact, the iron compounds found in red meat are probably responsible for red meat causing colon cancer. Why else would the intake of red meat be linked to cancer, but fish won't be?

The founder of the Seventh Day Adventists did prophesise that red meat causes cancer. Given that SDAs seem to corner the market on research of plant based versus meat based diets and given that the man who coined the term "evidence based medicine" has criticised that supposed linkage for not being evidence based there might be a connection there. As regards calcium not being absorbed into the bones that does trigger my nonsense detectors considering babies eat only milk at the beginning of their life and their bones grow rapidly.

Quote from: Onlooker

I was aware that there are a lot of reasons why you need less Vitamin C on a carnivore diet

Again, I find it hard to believe claims like that don't trigger your nonsense detectors. Do you also believe that, if you don't eat meat, your body can somehow more easily convert ALA to DHA?

It is no secret that one of the main functions of Vitamin C in the body is producing carnitine. It is no secret that beef contains carnitine. Why would my nonsense detectors be triggered to think that something you are getting from your food doesn't need to be made by your body? It seems logical.

Quote from: Onlooker

True – except for the delusion that we need to eat cooked meat.

Why is that a delusion? The vast majority of people would accept that eating raw meat is a bad idea, both because it's unsafe and hard to digest.

It is a delusion because some people are thriving on eating only raw meat. Some carnivores believe that raw meat is the most natural. While I recognise that many believe we started our meat eating as scavengers due to the very low Ph of our stomachs and that offers some protection against bacteria in food I don't personally advocate eating raw meat (cf. seared meat) due to concerns about safety. Nevertheless those people seem to thrive just like the Inuits used to. As I have said I have been essentially eating raw meat recently and even from just upping the meat intake I can see what carnivores mean when they say their energy is more stable. I also believe that it give a visible benefit to health and well being and am secretly hoping (and suspect) that when the COVID-19 thing blows over people who I didn't see in the interim will comment that I am looking a lot healthier.

And if we are naturally carnivores, how it is that we don't feel the need to run after a mouse and slaughter it with our teeth as we see it running? A cat or a dog obviously feels that need, even when it isn't hungry. That's also the argument I used there.

We never did catch our prey that way. (Although there is a You Tuber called Sveridge who is like a vegan activist except he is carnivore and I can imagine him doing that. He got arrested for eating a squirrel outside a vegan festival.)

While we might have originally got our brain development from scavenging as indicated by the very low Ph of our stomachs, since we got going with meat eating our weapon was our brain and, prior to farming, we caught prey with weapons and traps.

Quote from: Onlooker

You said "I've read about soy possibly causing breast cancer because of containing compounds similar to estrogen".

And I said I disagree with that because, if that were true, we would also expect milk (containing far more estrogen-like compounds) to cause breast cancer, which it doesn't appear to.

Thanks for clarifying. I thought that soy had phyto-estrogens and milk real estrogen. There could be a difference.

Quote from: Onlooker

I didn’t I just cited that study that supports a popular theory at the moment that carbohydrates are damaging for our brains even though glucose can be used to fuel it.

How is that a popular theory? The popular opinion is that ketosis is damaging to the brain, ask any nutritionist, or doctor, or anybody from a remotely related field.

I guess Dr Google is running against the grain. I googled "ketosis and the brain" and it all looked pretty positive.

Quote from: Onlooker

We can agree to disagree perhaps but I prefer the opinion of Inuits on this topic and the old footage about the guy who lived with Inuits in that You Tube about carnivore diets than something written in modern times by a Croatian text book writer.

Somebody who is propagating a carnivore diet obviously has an agenda, a textbook author probably doesn't.

It wasn't so much propagating as just eating it to survive.

Quote from: Onlooker

Many believe that cheese making is 7, 000 years old.

Well, I don't really understand the argument that has been made in that article. But, yeah, it's possible (if not probable) that cheese was discovered and then forgotten many times in human history. The same is probably true for writing. Writing was probably invented by the Vinča culture and then fell into oblivion for thousands of years until again introduced into Europe by the Minoan culture. There is rather convincing evidence that the Vinča symbols were a form of logo-syllabic writing, the pots contained symbols that were squeezed on the left side but wide on the right side, why would somebody do that if he wasn't trying to write down a sentence while writing right-to-left? Of course, the only way to know for certain is to decypher it, and that's very unlikely (other than plausible guesses such as that the sign with the zig-zag line in a square means "river", just like similar symbols in Hieroglyphic or Oracle Bone writing). There is also the idea that some cave drawings were actually an alphabetic script (in which each symbol stood for one sound, like the Latin alphabet), but I find that claim rather implausible.

Why do you think it was discontinued?

Quote from: Onlooker

And of course grazing animals are very positive for the environment if they move around by promoting good soil and lush vegetation which acts as a carbon sink.

Well, obviously, that's not what usually happens. Usually if people try to have a lot of pasture-raised cows, they end up being poorly managed overgrazing.

True but people using Alan Savory's approach don't.

Quote from: Onlooker

It was the delay in taking effective action in terms of acknowledging person to person transmission or supporting travel bans

Well, like I've said, acknowledging person-to-person transmission before it's been proven risks destroying economies for no good reason.

Taiwan had proved it. They didn't acknowledge it until China did.

Quote from: Onlooker

Just saying that now that direct measurement is possible there is no guarantee that estimates will prove valid so no need to get locked into a view of how things are until we get the information.

And you don't think climate scientists are aware of those "direct measurements"? I think this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. We know more than we have ever known, yet we feel less and less confident that the mainstream science is correct, instead of feeling more and more confident.

Time will tell.

I note that we both consider factory farming to be cruel and you have strong concerns about the effect it can have on super bacteria. I am more in favour of grass fed cattle and can see environmental benefits based on the results of the Savory approach. However you cite the greenhouse gas implications.

Do your concerns derive from the 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation study "Livestock's Long Shadow" which found that livestock contribute 18% of the word's greenhouse gas emissions and concluded that livestock do more environmental harm than all modes of transport combined?

If so how do you feel about the report's senior author Henning Steinfeld's subsequent comments?


I am wondering if you would support grass fed beef it the concerns are resolved.

Vegetarians should be free to kill plants and eat them. Non vegetarians should be free to eat meat. Peer Ederer can pound sand. I'm not tryna tell him what he can eat!

when inflammation is reduced on a meat only diet

What? Why would inflamation be reduced on a meat-only diet? If anything, inflamations should be more common and more long-lasting, since body needs vitamin C to fight the inflamation.

calcification

But since meat-based diet is lower in vitamin K, calcification should be more common on a meat-based diet.

treating nutrition as a religion

Well, it would probably be much better if people were treating science more like a religion, rather than being skeptical of it. Anti-vaccination movement, for instance, definitely doesn't treat science as a religion.

As regards Vitamin C producing Carnitine or the fact that there is Carnitine in meat that is easy to show.

Look, one of the main differences between science and nonsense is mathematics. How much carnitine is actually absorbed from meat? Is it really enough to meet the bodily needs on a meat-based diet? Even if so, what percentage of vitamin C is used by kidneys in making carnitine? I mean, this argument only applies if the vast majority of vitamin C was used that way, and if very little vitamin C is used for ossein and collagen (protein found in bones and skin) production, and if very little vitamin C is used by the immune system. Do you have some mathematics that shows that?

how a plant based diet really has enough B12 but we just wash our food too much

But if that's not true, where do rabbits and horses get their B12 from? Not all herbivores are ruminants that can absorb significant amounts of B12 from the bacteria in their bowels. As far as I understand it, most mammals, including humans, have those bacteria in their bowels, but a significant amount of B12 is absorbed only in the duodenum, and those bacteria start acting after the food leaves duodenum. However, in ruminants, what happens is that food goes back and forth in their bowels and the last part of their stomach, so they can indeed absorb a significant amount of the vitamins the bacteria in their bowels produce. But not all herbivores are like that.

How do you explain Inuits

What's there to explain? They eat a diet high in meat and they, as expected, have very high rates of atherosclerosis.

Did you get blood tests done?

Later, I did. A less precise blood test suggested I had thyroid problems, but a more sensitive test showed everything was fine.

Otherwise I would be surprised you didn't try beef for the extremely bio-available iron.

Well, anaemia being caused by lack of iron is exceedingly rare. Furthermore, it's, as far as I know, well-accepted that heme-iron causes colon cancer.

the man who coined the term "evidence based medicine" has criticised that supposed linkage for not being evidence

I am not aware of that. As far as I know, this is accepted not only by organizations like PETA, but also by WHO and other organizations completely unrelated to veganism.

calcium not being absorbed into the bones

But human milk contains far more vitamin K than cow's milk does and it also contains less calcium. Cows have bacteria in their stomachs that can synthesize vitamin K.

We never did catch our prey that way.

Sorry, I thought the narrative was that the reason human beings have high stamina is that we evolved hunting animals to exhaustion.

I thought that soy had phyto-estrogens and milk real estrogen. There could be a difference.

Isn't that an ad-hoc hypothesis now?

I googled "ketosis and the brain" and it all looked pretty positive.

And why it is then that nearly all doctors and nutritionists recommend people to eat breakfast? It's that, if you don't eat breakfast, you risk your brain running into ketosis and malfunctioning.

It wasn't so much propagating as just eating it to survive.

I mean, those people propagating low-carb diets by saying Inuits were eating raw meat. They obviously have an agenda, while my textbook authors (claiming Inuits get offended by the name meaning "those that eat raw meat") probably don't.

Why do you think it was discontinued?

Why else would the word for "cheese" be borrowed from Latin in both Proto-Germanic and Proto-Celtic? If they continuously ate cheese, we would expect there to be native word for cheese in their languages.

Taiwan had proved it. They didn't acknowledge it until China did.

I don't know what you're talking about. China doesn't exactly have a huge role in the UN, the UN often accuses China of abusing human rights (and based on the evidence I've seen, they are usually wrong).

Do your concerns derive from the 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation study "Livestock's Long Shadow" which found that livestock contribute 18% of the word's greenhouse gas emissions and concluded that livestock do more environmental harm than all modes of transport combined?
If so how do you feel about the report's senior author Henning Steinfeld's subsequent comments?

To be honest, I haven't heard of either of those.

I've posted a blog-post responding to common arguments made by those who advocate low-carb diets.

I've posted a blog-post responding to common arguments made by those who advocate low-carb diets.

You should paragraph better. Put a space between each one. Your blog looks like a wall of text that's not enjoyable to read.

I've posted a blog-post responding to common arguments made by those who advocate low-carb diets.

You said here

Tell me, where would you get vitamin C on a ketogenic diet? From supplements, right?

Clearly shows your lack of knowledge and research undertaken on ketogenic diets

Educate yourself before you imply nonsense in an 'essay'

Your flippant remark  about keto diets being full of avocados and coconuts also does your credibility in the field a disservice.


If you want to see what a good keto diet looks like, go here

https://www.ruled.me/keto-recipes/

Nothing 'non keto' about broccoli - which has a very high amount of Vitamin C

You can eat terribly on a keto diet and you can eat well. Same goes for vegan. But dont kid yourself. You can only eat well as a vegan thanks to a globalised world where all foods, no matter the season are within reach and technology.

Nothing 'non keto' about broccoli - which has a very high amount of Vitamin C

You can eat terribly on a keto diet and you can eat well. Same goes for vegan. But dont kid yourself. You can only eat well as a vegan thanks to a globalised world where all foods, no matter the season are within reach and technology.

I have to agree, eating healthy no matter what you call yourself is going to be good for you.

People want simple solutions.  Eat this one thing forever.  Avoid that one thing forever.

But if anything comes close to the "always avoid" it would be carbs. Especially refined sugar, but really, most people eat WAY too many carbs in all forms. It's all bad for you.

Quote from: FlatAssembler on May 28, 2020, 05:16:49 AM

I've posted a blog-post responding to common arguments made by those who advocate low-carb diets.

You said here

Quote

Tell me, where would you get vitamin C on a ketogenic diet? From supplements, right?

Clearly shows your lack of knowledge and research undertaken on ketogenic diets

Educate yourself before you imply nonsense in an 'essay'

Your flippant remark  about keto diets being full of avocados and coconuts also does your credibility in the field a disservice.


If you want to see what a good keto diet looks like, go here

https://www.ruled.me/keto-recipes/

Nothing 'non keto' about broccoli - which has a very high amount of Vitamin C

You can eat terribly on a keto diet and you can eat well. Same goes for vegan. But dont kid yourself. You can only eat well as a vegan thanks to a globalised world where all foods, no matter the season are within reach and technology.

You realize broccoli contains about as much starch as oranges do? So, if keto diet avoids oranges, then it should also avoid broccoli.

Quote from: Shifter on May 28, 2020, 07:14:18 AM

Quote from: FlatAssembler on May 28, 2020, 05:16:49 AM

I've posted a blog-post responding to common arguments made by those who advocate low-carb diets.

You said here

Quote

Tell me, where would you get vitamin C on a ketogenic diet? From supplements, right?

Clearly shows your lack of knowledge and research undertaken on ketogenic diets

Educate yourself before you imply nonsense in an 'essay'

Your flippant remark  about keto diets being full of avocados and coconuts also does your credibility in the field a disservice.


If you want to see what a good keto diet looks like, go here

https://www.ruled.me/keto-recipes/

Nothing 'non keto' about broccoli - which has a very high amount of Vitamin C

You can eat terribly on a keto diet and you can eat well. Same goes for vegan. But dont kid yourself. You can only eat well as a vegan thanks to a globalised world where all foods, no matter the season are within reach and technology.

You realize broccoli contains about as much starch as oranges do? So, if keto diet avoids oranges, then it should also avoid broccoli.

Sigh. Keto is low carb not no carb

Broccoli really doesn't have that much in a typical serving size

Also, insoluble fibre is usually not counted towards your total 'carb' intake

https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/g26553021/best-keto-friendly-vegetables/

Regarding broccoli, it has approximately 2 grams of net carbs per 1/2 cup. How many cups of broccoli do you usually eat?

Please stop posting about keto diets. Your ignorance on the topic is astounding

Also your 'essay' is crap. Essays should always cite your references. And all your quotes should be cited by who and where you sourced them and all your statements I would title your 'essay' as 'My ill informed and ignorant opinion'.

Speaking of citing references if you are going to say that a serve of broccoli has the same amount of carbs as an orange then please provide us with the info because frankly its rubbish

Here are plenty of fruits you can have that are 'keto friendly'. Plenty of vitamin C in lots of them too
https://www.everydayhealth.com/ketogenic-diet/diet/best-fruits-eat-on-keto-diet/

Also 1 medium orange could have about 12g carbs. Still fine on keto if you ask me.

it has approximately 2 grams of net carbs

Broccoli contains about 2% sugar. But, according to the proponents of the keto diets, starch is also somehow bad, not just sugar.

Quote from: Shifter

it has approximately 2 grams of net carbs

Broccoli contains about 2% sugar. But, according to the proponents of the keto diets, starch is also somehow bad, not just sugar.

Sigh, you continue to advertise your ignorance. Sugar isn't shunned in keto diets. It is just limited. Moreover, no one, even keto fans think natural sugars found in fruits and vegetables are bad for you. They just limit the intake in favour of foods with higher fat and protein. It's all about the macros.

The only sugar that would be shunned is processed junk food. Nutritionally deficient and pointless. When I was on a keto diet for example, I didn't shun plain greek yoghurt because it has sugar in it. I did however shun flavoured yoghurts with added sugars.

I think you need to research the topic more and actually speak to people who do the diets because frankly, you come across as ignorant and have no idea what your talking about.

The take away you need to learn is that keto dieters have a whole plethora of fruits and vegetables to eat from. Carbs are limited, not shunned. NET carbs is what to look for (so if something has 10g carbs but 5g is insoluble fibre, then only 5g of carbs is counted).

The other take away is that you can eat very well on a keto diet or very terribly. The same is true of any diet, including vegan

About the only thing I think keto dieters need to be careful about is their intake of fibre and electrolytes. That's pretty much it. Although things like potassium is one thing that almost everyone, every day doesn't get the RDI of (unless they really like potatoes)

Sigh, you continue to advertise your ignorance.

The word "ignorance" implies that there is something that can be known about keto diets. But saying starch is harmful is clearly against mainstream science (unless maybe in some types of epilepsy, and even that is highly disputable), so there isn't something to know about that.

Moreover, no one, even keto fans think natural sugars found in fruits and vegetables are bad for you.

But the fact is that they do say stuff like that. They do say that we shouldn't eat apples or bananas.

Quote from: Shifter

Sigh, you continue to advertise your ignorance.

The word "ignorance" implies that there is something that can be known about keto diets. But saying starch is harmful is clearly against mainstream science (unless maybe in some types of epilepsy, and even that is highly disputable), so there isn't something to know about that.

Quote from: Shifter

Moreover, no one, even keto fans think natural sugars found in fruits and vegetables are bad for you.

But the fact is that they do say stuff like that. They do say that we shouldn't eat apples or bananas.

It's not bad for you. But too much is 'bad' for your objective of staying in 'keto'

Like, if you eat 3 bananas for breakfast, you can stay in keto as long as you don't each much else. The nutrition in bananas is not so critical they can't be found elsewhere in a lower carb food

Also do you honestly go around cherry picking random things people say about something on the internet then use it to back up your clearly biased argument?

Just because person 'x' says something about a diet, doesn't mean that persons is the spokesman and his word is gospel

You know, I feel like discussing such things with Flat-Earthers is such a waste of time. The obvious truth is that poorly planned low-carb diets massively increase the risk of vitamin C deficiency and magnesium deficiency. That's partly why scurvy has increased in recent years: foods that people used to get vitamin C from are now being demonized. If veganism is to be blamed for vitamin B12 deficiency in the developed world, then it's completely fair to blame the low-carb craze for the rise in scurvy.