Planetary health diet

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oldbeyond
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by oldbeyond »

There is a lot of variation in individual studies, but if you look at meta-analyses, most of it seems to simply be noise. There are a few consistent findings, like processed meat being correlated with bowel cancer, but most things are not clear-cut. People of course love to find the one study that supports their view, ignoring the 99 others not bearing it out :roll:

If you’re not eating the junk everybody agrees we should not be eating, I’d focus on the other aspects of health - exercise, sleep, stress, community etc. Likely that’s a more efficient use of your time.

IlliniDave
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:17 am
@IlliniDave:

You can have my share of meat in exchange for your share of sugar.
Deal. :D Now I'm up to a 2oz/day allotment.

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Lemur
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by Lemur »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Thu Jan 24, 2019 12:39 pm
The planetary health diet does allow for small amounts of meat and modest amounts of dairy. Is more needed than this for efficient muscle regeneration, etc?

Most food humans currently eat has been greatly modified through generations of breeding towards that purpose, so modifications brought about my final processing aren't necessarily any more likely to be unhealthy. For instance, a Honey Crisp apple is going to be appealing to many creatures for the same reasons it is appealing to us, so it is often sprayed with toxins to reduce access. If it is then processed with sugar and put in a jar, this is in aid of further reducing waste/rot. Salt and sugar are both preservatives because they put osmotic pressure on microbes.

I only mention these realities, because the diet people might need to follow to potentially survive 10 billion strong may differ from the diet people may need to follow if this plan fails.
Here are the ratios as I understand it from a book I read called "The Protein Book" by Lyle Mcdonald as well as other nutrition articles. For general life purposes, aiming for 0.60 grams per pound of lean body mass is sufficient for health. For example, a 150lb male with 15% body fat has roughly 127.5 pounds of lean body mass (which includes bone, skeletal muscle, organ, ligaments, etc.). Basically anything that is not fat tissue. Take 127.5 pounds and multiply by 0.60 to get 76.5 grams of protein needed daily to sustain health. For a myriad of reasons, woman require slightly less protein (say 0.50 - 0.55 grams) because of a different hormonal environment than a male. Additionally, I read a BBC article once that the 0.60 ratio should be increased for the elderly to slow down natural muscle atrophy in old age. Makes sense to me.

For athletic purposes, this ratio increases to 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass to support muscle protein synthesis for recovery. So the male above should eat 127.5 grams of protein - tougher to do with veggies but still possible with whey, dairy, and legumes.

If this same athlete is pushing the physical limits and/or trying to cut bodyfat, protein need to increase up to 1.5 grams per pound of lean body mass while simultaneously bringing down calories. Caloric deficit diets naturally induce more muscle protein breakdown so in regards to protein intake, it has to increase to support recovery. Very tough to do with veggies at 1.5 gram ratios but much easier with lean meats that are nearly 100% protein.

As such the body's metabolism is in a constant state of muscle synthesis and muscle breakdown (breakdown obviously increases at night when one is technically fasting and protein synthesis increases greatly after exercise WITH the consumption of a meal). Ketosis diets (opening up a whole new can of worms here...) actually will decrease muscle protein breakdown because the body can rely more on ketones for energy rather than breaking down muscle glycogen (carb stores) and amino acids in proteins. Ketosis itself is not necessary to achieve body composition goals but can help some people with natural insulin resistance; i.e. people who tend to put on fat easy.

Net protein balance (NPB) = Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS) - Muscle Protein Breakdown (MBS). If you eat quality protein (enough protein to be specific) and exercise, muscle will gain overtime. Bones will get stronger...ligaments will strengthen. Perhaps even neurons in the brain fire better; a lot of exercise has mental health benefits as well.

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Bankai
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by Bankai »

Lemur wrote:
Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:23 am
2.) This article... https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... GRZ21HI6rU

"Our study has shown that Austrian adults who consume a vegetarian diet are less healthy (in terms of cancer, allergies, and mental health disorders), have a lower quality of life, and also require more medical treatment. Therefore, a continued strong public health program for Austria is required in order to reduce the health risk due to nutritional factors. Moreover, our results emphasize the necessity of further studies in Austria, for a more in-depth analysis of the health effects of different dietary habits."..
I was scratching my head a lot while skimming this study. The same authors published another analysis of the same dataset with completely opposite conclusion. From comments:

The same data-source (Austrian Health Interview Survey AT-HIS 2006/07) was analyzed from the same authors, but resulting in the very antithesis of this study: http://link.springer.com/...

In the other study, published in February 2014, Nathalie T. Burkert and the other authors concluded:
"Our results show that a vegetarian diet is associated with a better health-related behavior, a lower BMI, and a higher SES. Subjects eating a carnivorous diet less rich in meat self-report poorer health, a higher number of chronic conditions, an enhanced vascular risk, as well as lower quality of life."

To my understanding of serious scientific, if someone get results A and !A regarding to the same data-source, then there seems to be something wrong with the methods. Under that conditions it seems very unclear (or even more than that to me), if the results can have a value at all.


Other comments are also well worth a read.

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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by theanimal »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:38 am

*The Animal can keep eating the moose meat he hunts.
I will do so gladly. :D

I eat meat pretty much every day. Maybe 5% of that is non wild or not sourced from someone I know.


My question is whether or not such a diet is even practical in terms of land available to farm. My recollection is that all current land that offers good soil and growing potential is already put to use for other things. Granted, I realize something like 50% of all food is wasted. But assuming humans are going to human, how would such a diet be practical if there is no means to grow additional grains/vegetables etc?

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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by jacob »

@theanimal - Uh, which diet? In the US, 61% of the farmed acreage is used for livestock feeder crops (alfalfa, soy, and corn). If humans eat less animals, this land can be used for growing vegetables or afforestation. It's a lot more efficient (60-800%+)(*) to feed humans directly than to grow plants to feed domesticated [or industrialized] animals which then feed humans with either dairy or meat.

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

Wild animals are another matter and not relevant to most humans because there are so few left so few humans get to eat them. Compared to humans (36% of mammalian biomass) and their livestock (60%), there aren't many wild ones left (4%). Similarly, poultry outweighs wild birds by a factor three.

If this was a sustainable situation (which it is not), it implies we could fit 21 billion people on the planet w/o having to expand the amount of arable land insofar we got rid of all the livestock.

Conversely, given the numbers, it's harder to go the other way and add more meat eating to the global diet. In general, you can go in and strongly correlate the body weight in a given country or area or time period with the average number of calories eating. As daily calories go, so does the average human's weight. If the total number of calories can not be increased much further, then feeding more to cows means feeding less to humans (by a factor ~5, say, depending on the FCR number) according to the laws of the market and various distribution barriers. This then depends on whether the person feeding the cow can outbid the other 5 humans for the calories. That this is the case today is also why global hunger hasn't been solved.

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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by theanimal »

@Jacob-

Thanks. I was referencing the planetary health diet.

I'm well aware only a small minority can eat wild meat. I had the mistaken understanding that the increase in human food under such a plan was more than what was available (including conversion of livestock feed).

BRUTE
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by BRUTE »

Bankai wrote:
Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:41 am
Yes, yes. And fiber causes cancer. Yes, we know.
yes. butt cancer.
7Wannabe5 wrote: The planetary health diet does allow for small amounts of meat and modest amounts of dairy. Is more needed than this for efficient muscle regeneration, etc?
"is more needed" is not the question brute asks himself. "why wouldn't brute eat meat if he can" is the question.

iopsi
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by iopsi »

BRUTE wrote:
Wed Jan 23, 2019 10:10 pm
so while brute is OK with humans eating vegan because they think it will save the planet (brute does not think this). but it would be great if there was no conflation with the effects on health.
So you don't believe that a plant-based diet is more sustainable? It's much more energy efficent so i don't see how that can't be true.
I mean you might believe that climate change isn't a big threat, but it's not just about CO2. It is also about how much land is used for farming instead of leaving it to nature, which causes mass extinction, land erosion and similar effects.

Regarding health, according to research additional dietary cholesterol contributes to atherosclerosis, and animal products have cholesterol while plants do not. So there is that.
We could say that any animal product is too much if dietary cholesterol is a direct cause of atherosclerosis.

Also if i remember correctly in the adventist study vegetarians and vegans lived the longest lives with less cronic diseases than those who ate meat regularly.

That's on top of my head and right now i dont have the time to search and link the research, i might do it later.

There is also the ethical aspect btw. Since we can have complete nutrition without killing animals, we promote unnecessary suffering by eating them. How can you justify unnecessary suffering?



@Lemur

It is true that leucine seems to increase MPS, but i'm not conviced that plant proteins are insufficient to gain muscle. Volume, mechanical tension, caloric intake and overall protein intake are still the major factors by far.
There are elite lifters that are vegan or vegetarians.

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Bankai
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by Bankai »

BRUTE wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:04 am
yes. butt cancer.
Care to share brute's sources for this absurd claim?

BRUTE
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by BRUTE »

Bankai wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 6:15 am
Care to share brute's sources for this absurd claim?
sounds like a ton of work. the book Fiber Menace would be a start for those interested. btw, brute is not interested in ad hominems against the book or its author.

BRUTE
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by BRUTE »

iopsi wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:47 am
So you don't believe that a plant-based diet is more sustainable? It's much more energy efficent so i don't see how that can't be true.
I mean you might believe that climate change isn't a big threat, but it's not just about CO2. It is also about how much land is used for farming instead of leaving it to nature, which causes mass extinction, land erosion and similar effects.
the majority of plant calories currently consumed come from industrial monoculture of genetically engineered crops like wheat and corn. that is just as bad for the environment as factory farming. brute isn't in love with factory farming as currently practiced, but that business model is not inherent in eating animal products, just as eating plants doesn't necessarily mean destroying the rainforest and local species - it just currently is.

cattle and many other animals can graze on grass where little crops would grow, so they don't necessarily compete for the same land.
iopsi wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:47 am
Regarding health, according to research additional dietary cholesterol contributes to atherosclerosis, and animal products have cholesterol while plants do not. So there is that.
We could say that any animal product is too much if dietary cholesterol is a direct cause of atherosclerosis.
luckily, the dietary cholesterol -> heart disease hypothesis has been debunked in the last century. dietary cholesterol is actually very good for the body, as it is involved in the metabolism of many nutrients and hormones. dietary cholesterol intake is not the cause of disease. instead, refined vegetable oil and fructose intake are.
iopsi wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:47 am
Also if i remember correctly in the adventist study vegetarians and vegans lived the longest lives with less cronic diseases than those who ate meat regularly.
brute isn't familiar with that particular study, but has read the Blue Zones, which studies the longest-living humans on the planet. he believes 7th day adventists were among the groups studied.

the book is very inconclusive on dietary advice. clearly none of the studied populations eat a ton of junk food and chain smoke, but many of them eat meat regularly. the book tries to draw some "moderate vegetarianism" conclusion, but given the narrative in the preceding pages, it felt very far fetched to brute. much more important seemed the focus on community and purpose late in life.

typically, vegetarians/vegans are healthier than humans eating the SAD. when compared to humans eating e.g. Paleo or Keto, brute has not seen such evidence.
iopsi wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:47 am
There is also the ethical aspect btw. Since we can have complete nutrition without killing animals, we promote unnecessary suffering by eating them. How can you justify unnecessary suffering?
brute supposes he doesn't care about unnecessary suffering in the abstract sense.
iopsi wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 3:47 am
There are elite lifters that are vegan or vegetarians.
but it is the exception.

tonyedgecombe
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by tonyedgecombe »

BRUTE wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:49 pm
btw, brute is not interested in ad hominems against the book or its author.
No, but other people might be interested in his lack of credentials or the pseudoscience in his book:

https://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/02/09/ko ... on-part-1/

iopsi
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by iopsi »

@BRUTE

Gonna get back at you as soon as i can.

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Bankai
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by Bankai »

BRUTE wrote:
Fri Jan 25, 2019 11:49 pm
the book Fiber Menace
The book is available for free on author's website for anyone interested. Here are my thoughts:

1) The book has no bibliography; nowhere does it state what his credentials are (on his website he claims to have a pharmacy degree from an unspecified Soviet university, but the hyperlink provided conveniently doesn't work).

2) The chapter against colon cancer not only cherry picks only a few studies out of thousands conducted on the subject. It goes farther than that and instead of actual, quotes press relations and comments to those studies to create controversy. It then jouxtaposes those press comments with health organisations' recommendations to increase fiber intake as beneficial and concludes that since it's known for years that fiber is controversial, health organisations must promote it due to taking money from fiber producers. Note that this is exactly the same strategy as used by tobacco industry and climate deniers, i.e. cherry pick outliers & create controversy by opposing them to actual, mainstream research.

3) The author then cites 5 studies:

Study no.1 - This study found no evidence of a protective effect of fiber on colorectal cancer. However, as pointed in multiple letters to editors published along with it, it had multiple methodological limitations, i.e. was based purely on self-reporting.

Study no. 2 - This is not a fiber study but overall carbohydrate consumption study, hence not relevant.

Study no. 3 - No evidence of high-fiber diet in preventing colon cancer. The study classified 18g per day as "high". Considering current recommendations are ~30g per day, and humans and their ancestors used to consume ~150g per day, no wonder there was no relationship if you compare low with low.

Study no. 4 - Supplementation with fiber as ispaghula husk (3.5g a day) may have an adverse effect. Based on a very small sample size of 198 patients with previous colorectal adenoma.

Study no. 5 - Again, no protective effect of fiber supplement.

Based on these 5 studies, or rather the fourth study alone, the author concludes:
As you can plainly see from these top-notch studies by mainstream researchers and institutions [sic!], fiber not only doesn’t offer any protection from colorectal cancer, but potentially elevates the risks.
Therefore the claim that fiber causes cancer is based on 1 study where fiber supplementation was provided to 198 patients with previous incidents of colorectal adenoma. Just wow. If this is not a blatantly obvious example of confirmation bias, I don't know what is.

The author then cherry picks 5 countries to show that meat consumption has no effect on colon cancer. This, again, is a blatant example of confirmation bias. Tables of countries by colon cancer occurrences & meat consumption are readily available, i.e. here,here or here and anyone can put them together and the see the obvious relationship.

I haven't read equally unscientific and biased "source" in quite some time and I'm honestly puzzled how can anyone treat it seriously. Calling it pseudoscience would be a compliment.


In the meantime, in the actual science:

International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies processed meat as group 1 carcinogen. This is the same category as arsenic, asbestos, plutonium or mustard gas, to name a few.

*"This category is used when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. Exceptionally, an agent (mixture) may be placed in this category when evidence of carcinogenicity in humans is less than sufficient but there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals and strong evidence in exposed humans that the agent (mixture) acts through a relevant mechanism of carcinogenicity."

https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/ ... r240_E.pdf


The most recent (Sep 2018) meta-analysis on dietary fiber and colon cancer concluded:

"In conclusion, the results of this systematic review and meta-analysis present strong and consistent evidence that dietary fiber is associated with reduced risks of both proximal colon and distal colon cancers, and that the association between dietary fiber intake and risk of colon cancer does not differ by cancer subsite."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6133424/

Fiber has also a protective effect on other types of cancers, i.e. ovarian and breast:

"In summary, this meta-analysis concluded that the highest category of dietary fiber intake could significantly reduce the risk of ovarian cancer compared with the lowest fiber intake, suggesting that the consumption of dietary fiber could prevent the development of ovarian cancer."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6166337/

"In this meta-analysis of prospective studies, there was an inverse association between dietary fiber intake and breast cancer risk."

https://academic.oup.com/annonc/article ... 394/170112

Is brute ready to change his belief based on the above?

BRUTE
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by BRUTE »

Bankai wrote:
Sat Jan 26, 2019 11:08 am
Is brute ready to change his belief based on the above?
brute should have clarified: he is not interested in attacks on the book because he has not read it.

BRUTE
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by BRUTE »

bigato wrote:
Sat Jan 26, 2019 11:17 am
There's currently no genetically engineered wheat being commercially grown [1]

- meat production requires way more water than vegetables [2]
- factory farming tipically uses grains from industrial monoculture, roughly 5 to 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef [3]

Even if we compare grass feed, free ranging animals to industrial monoculture, the space required to produce meat is much higher than vegetables. Overall, animals are just inefficient converters of food [4]. Other than that, a lot of other environmental impacts from the production of animal products are way higher than vegetable production [5].
1.brute isn't actually against genetic engineering, so it's easy to give that one up

2.brute has read about the water consumption numbers and they seemed complete bogus. they seemed very disingenuous and brute is not ready to buy this claim.

3.factory farming does typically use monoculture grains - but that's not inherent in meat. just as it isn't inherent in eating plants. brute would prefer if most or all meat destined for consumption were grass (or whatever the natural diet of the animal is) fed.

4.the space thing is much more subtle than that. first, animals and vegetables are competing for different things in land. second, it's not like there's no land left. third, "vegetables" don't provide nearly enough energy to feed humans. starch and sugar do. feeding the world population with tomatoes and carrots is not feasible. animals convert indigestible (by humans) fiber into fatty acids, thereby enabling humans to use energy they otherwise wouldn't have been able to use.

lumping in "efficient" plants like corn and wheat with "healthy" plants like spinach and carrots is disingenuous. healthy plants are inefficient. efficient plants are the causes of metabolic syndrome (obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease).

Freedom_2018
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by Freedom_2018 »

Instead of worrying about a diet for the entire planet, wouldn't it make sense to figure out a 'personal health diet' since it is more actionable?

It is easy to experiment with various diet protocols and determine which one works better for oneself.

Probably more interesting if forum members declared their eating and exercise protocols along with their key blood numbers (cholesterol total hdl ldl lipids etc). I try and eat low carb with very infrequent exercise unfortunately due to a lot of traveling. I have previously posted my numbers on here.

BRUTE
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by BRUTE »

bigato wrote:
Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:53 am
The way to attenuate this is to trust the proper scientific process as a source of actionable knowledget-we-believe
the problem with this is that the science will not be in on time. there is no null hypothesis in life - humans have to eat something. so if the science will definitely, positively find the perfect diet for brute in 2050, brute will be dead because he ate the wrong diet while waiting for the science.

and science, while it might arrive at the correct conclusion eventually, often takes very bad detours for generations. it is a process done by humans and, as brute likes to iterate, humans are extremely fallible.

the science was certain for 30 years that fat was bad and carbs were harmless. then science found out it had been completely wrong, and had killed millions of humans who had been following that advice, increasing the rates of metabolic disease for a whole generation.

so, in a sense, "science" is not currently good enough. it might get there in the future, and certainly there are very interesting findings and sub-problems that are well understood, but if the question is "how to prevent metabolic disease in humans", the answer is currently "science doesn't know".

Kriegsspiel
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Re: Planetary health diet

Post by Kriegsspiel »

This is like a bad version of a Prisoner's Game, butwhere the cooperate-cooperate scenario doesn't really have a really good payoff. I'd rather defect, eat meat, and feel awesome.
Last edited by Kriegsspiel on Sun Jan 27, 2019 8:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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