cobra2411

Um... Yeah, I think it's more proof that the state believes it owns the children. Take a look at the recent cases, one in the US and one in the UK of parents questioning medical services and having their children taken and forcibly treated. In the UK the parents wanted what they thought was a better treatment and was one that wasn't available to them. So they traveled to another country to receive the care and Interpol was sent after them for "kidnapping" their own child... While I don't know what they test for, I'm going to assume that it's their way of making sure there is at least some state indoctrination involved. I'm thinking about parents who unschool and may have a child that doesn't learn to read until much later. I know someone who's daughter was about 12 before she learned to read but within 6-8 weeks she was at peer level and has since went past her peers. She loves to read now and has immersed herself in books. If the state tested her at 11 years old they would have found her to be illiterate and probably would have kidnapped her.

I don't know what CSU costs, but lets assume 30k/yr. Despite what's advertised, most colleges take 5-6 years to complete, not 4. They like to offer prerequisites out of order to make it all but impossible to actually schedule your classes to complete your degree in 4 years. So 30k times 6 years is 180k. Debt service on 180k is going to be around $1,000/mo. You can not escape that. So no matter what you need to make $1,000 plus enough for basic food and shelter. Put another way, that's about $6/hr full time just to pay your student loans. Now, as an entrepreneur myself I can tell you that you're not always successful. There have been times when I've had to work 3 jobs to recover from a failed business attempt and only have about 5 hrs sleep a night for almost a year and a half. Having to pay an extra $6/hr would have killed me. College has become a giant scam where there are only a few degrees left that really make any sense financially. Sure you can make more per hour, but what if you start work and now have 6 years experience? With a degree just starting out will you earn at least $6 more than someone with 6 years experience? I started out in the computer field and did well till the dot com bubble burst. Recovered, then moved into flipping houses till that burst. I saw that one coming and prepared but the market hasn't really recovered and I've moved into HVAC and that's been working out great. You learn to think differently when you're the boss. For example, I think in terms of systems, I have a system to my advertising, a system for my service calls, a system for my installs, etc. I figure them out and make them repeatable so I can train someone else to do them. When I expand I simply replace myself in that position with someone else which frees up time to work on the other systems. I can then continue to replace and duplicate myself and my systems and grow the business. That's the difference between a business owner and someone who's self employed. Self employed people usually think only they can do it best and they never learn to hand things off. That's ok, but it's limiting. In the computer field it was essential I learned to hand things off, but with the HVAC I could simply go on forever working everything myself and make a nice living. Although, once I stop working I stop earning and if I replace myself I can still make money supervising someone with less physical work. I would say if you don't know what you want to do then absolutely drop out of college. It's gotten so expensive that there is no point wasting your money trying to figure out what you want to do. If you figure out what you want and you need a college degree then you can go back. There's lots that can be done without a degree and the trades are an excellent field to get into. Electrical, plumbing and HVAC are IMO some of the best. You can get a job now, making good money and you learn on the job. Within 5-6 years you'll be in a position to go on your own if you choose and in many cases that starts part time on weekends and nights working for investors and doing side jobs. You'll have no debt that you can't escape if you decide to go on your own and it doesn't work out and you can almost always find work. There are other certificate and apprentice type fields where you can learn as you earn and also have the ability once fully trained to go on your own, but they're not the only fields that you can go into business for yourself. I know someone who did house cleaning part time that when laid off made it her full time job and it's been working out great. And whatever you do, don't go to college just because your mom wants you do. Do it because you want to and you feel it will benefit you in your life. College isn't "the answer" anymore... EDIT: Now that I've had some coffee, I noticed my numbers are a bit off. First, CSU is a little over $10k per year with books and fees, so about $62-63k for 6 years. Also, at current rates 180k would be around $2k/mo not $1k. $60k is around $700/mo or about $4/hr full time before taxes. Call it $5/hr with taxes and ask yourself if your degree will pay more than $5/hr more than someone with 6 years experience. And lastly, I'm not saying college is always a bad idea, just that it's not the simple slam dunk idea it was 20 or 30 years ago. It's too damn expensive and there's no escape if your wrong. What's worse is you pay no matter what if they're wrong or if they mislead you... How many college grads work at Starbucks?

The 17 out of 18 causes of death was initiated by another poster in support of the argument that meat kills. I focused on heart disease because there is the most data but I also have touched on cancer. Those combined add up to around 50% of all causes of death. My standards for proving meat is a cause of mortality is pretty simple; show a statistically significant reduction in cardiovascular disease markers, specifically changes in the LDL/HLD ratio, HDL/Triglyceride ratio, LDL type a / LDL type b ratio and/or reduction in inflammation. I have shown with countless studies, including the Times article, in which these improve while eating high fat diets while limiting carbs. Note I said limit, mainly paleo / atkins people eliminate starches, grains and sugars but eat fruits and vegetables. I have said before, and I'll say again, I will not discuss the moral or environmental aspects of this. Those are separate arguments that have nothing to do with the dietary benefits or damages associated with a particular diet. When I have some time this weekend I'll look at the studies / articles you've listed, but I've already refuted Colin Campbell and the China study in my previous posts.

First, let me repeat myself in case it was missed. If you have a moral objection to eating meat then don't. Also, I'm not saying that a plant based diet is unhealthy. Sure, there are some issues like nutritional deficiencies, but I believe properly done a plant based diet can be very healthy. I also believe that properly done a meat based diet can be very healthy. I have shown evidence of this, refuted claims made by others and asked for one specific thing; proof that it's meat alone. No list of things to prove, just one item: Provide credible, measurable, peer-reviewable, scientific evidence showing that meat, and only meat is the cause of 17 out of 18 leading causes of death. Show a comparison between health conscience vegetarians and health conscience non-vegetarians showing a scientifically significant decrease in mortality in vegetarians. Show me a study of vegetarians vs low carb dieters. Show me something that successfully deals with the confounding issues. I'm not even asking for hard fast proof, simply show to the best of your ability that meat alone has a statistically significant rise in mortality while dealing with the confounding issues that can also cause a rise in mortality when eating a meat based diet. The seventh day adventist study had some hope, but it's a comparison of roughly the same diet with and without meat. High carbohydrate, high fat diets will kill you. It's not the meat, it's the combination of the meat and the highly insulinogenic foods. Eating highly insulinogenic foods while on a low-fat plant based diet doesn't seem to cause the damage that it does when you add meat and saturated fats. I already posted a study showing there is not a significant difference in mortality between health conscience meat and plant eaters. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html?_r=2 "People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows." "By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity. While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat." Isn't the heart a muscle? "Nonetheless, those on the low-carbohydrate diet ultimately did so well that they managed to lower their Framingham risk scores, which calculate the likelihood of a heart attack within the next 10 years. The low-fat group on average had no improvement in their scores." "Eating refined carbohydrates tends to raise the overall number of LDL particles and shift them toward the small, dense variety, which contributes to atherosclerosis." I vaguely remember someone saying something about getting the crap processed, refined foods out of your diet. Oh, yeah, that was me... "The average person may not pay much attention to the federal dietary guidelines, but their influence can be seen, for example, in school lunch programs, which is why many schools forbid whole milk but serve their students fat-free chocolate milk loaded with sugar, Dr. Mozaffarian said." We have a problem in this country (USA), and possibly elsewhere, where we take correlation, however weak it maybe, and run with it as proven fact that it's causative. Margarine and trans fats anyone? Why is it still sold when we know the risks of transfats, Omega-6 and inflammation and their influence on heart disease? We've been pushing the low fat agenda for 30 years and the obesity rate has skyrocketed. When will we accept that we were wrong and when will the government and it's My Plate nonsense apologize for what they've done? I'm not holding my breath. A plant based diet works great when properly done and I'm sure there are lots of people on this thread that are doing it right and have researched the in's and out's of it. A meat based diet low in insulinogenic foods also works great. The key is adopting a diet that you can stick to. I can't stick to a plant only diet.

I don't know that I had any great "wake up" moments. Most were small, but one of the earliest that I can remember was reading Peter McWilliam's book "Ain't nobody's business if you do". It's a book on the absurdity of consensual crimes - drugs, prostitution, etc. I remember thinking it was such a simple concept - what consenting people do is between them; I couldn't understand how something so simple could get so corrupted. I still can't. Take the case of the UK boy being treated for brain cancer. His parents wanted a different treatment and sought it out; yet the state enforced the will of the doctor over the parents. There are people who would argue that the state absolutely has that right in this case - "The boy is sick and needs care!" I usually ask to what end the state has the power - if you break your leg and the state determines you need it amputated can they just cart you off at gunpoint if you refuse because you'd rather have a cast? The answer is usually that I'm being absurd because there is no logical way for them to answer. They want their way when it suits them and they enjoy the power of the states guns behind them. The idea that the state will turn against them is foreign to them. Sometimes I wish I didn't have a wakeup moment when I look around and see the level of apathy that exists. It comes out that Apple has a way to spy on users of iPhones and that it bypasses any security you place on the phone and it was hidden. I didn't see any stories following that of people trading in their phones the next day... Nope, they just shrug their shoulders and keep right on going.

Statistical math trickery. There is a difference of little more than 8 people per thousand or 0.9% as stated in the report. In other words you'd have to treat 125 people to make a difference in one. Given that overall cholesterol is not a predictor in CVD and given there are little if any benefit to those without a history of CVD I can't see taking it simply because your overall cholesterol number is high. Get your HDL/LDL ratio in line and triglycerides in line and you'll do more IMO for your health than taking a pill. The biggest change is getting sugar and refined carbohydrates out of your diet. "The number of strokes prevented per 1000 patients treated for 5 years in patients with CHD is 9 for statins, compared with 17.3 for antiplatelet agents. Statins have not yet been shown to reduce stroke risk in the typical general population without known CHD" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19159124 "Physician awareness of statin Adverse Effects (AEs) is reportedly low even for the AEs most widely reported by patients. " Side effects include; Cognitive loss Neuropathy Anemia Acidosis Frequent fevers Cataracts Sexual dysfunction Increase cancer risk Immune system suppression Rhabdomyolsis Pancreatic dysfunction Liver dysfunction Given that the benefit is 1 in 125 only for those with a history of CVD; given the possible side effects I can't see how they are prescribed for anyone without a history of CVD. As for sedentary behavior and obesity there is a great correlation, but correlation doesn't equal causation. I'm simply being critical of the statement that sedentary behavior causes obesity. People who exercise typically are health conscience; which lends itself to the correlation between active people and a lack of obesity. However, one can be sedentary without being obese or being at risk of being obese.

I have not seen any evidence that statins do anything for stroke prevention and the only people who may benefit are those who have had a cardiac event. All other support is weak at best. The side effects usually outweigh the benefits for most people, especially women. Total cholesterol is unimportant, what's important is the amount of dense ldl as well as the ldl:hdl ratio. As far as sedentary lifestyles are concerned, just because obese people are usually sedentary doesn't mean it causes obesity. I sat on my ass and lost 35lbs or so just by changing my diet. There are benefits to exercise, but lack of exercise doesn't cause obesity.

Gotta pay to leave the land of the free... The irony is too much... Here's a thought, can I simply renounce my citizenship and become an "undocumented alien"? Seems like it would be beneficial even with the rate hike given the benefits they receive without having the tax burden...

I did miss the link you posted. I'll have to look into it. As for the Masai the Muran are the warrior class and from 14-40 or so they eat meat, milk and blood and are free of CVD. They are free to eat a western diet however and there's your confounder. I'm sure I'll be accused of cherry picking though. I've listed many studies published in reputable journals, but I guess reputable journals are full of false propaganda about eating meat. I too have grown tired of this, I've said my peace and whoever reads this thread can make up their own mind. I guess we finally agree on something.

I already explained that I was asking for the studies to point out that they don't exist. This is starting to feel like a discussion with a religious person when you explain that science and logic have shown god doesn't exist and their response is "God doesn't want to be found". How much data is needed to raise the possibility that the theory is wrong? I thought I did a pretty good job of explaining that there are unaccounted confounders that are likely skewing the data to make meat eating look unhealthy. I've repeatedly argued that sugar is almost certainly the problem. I've argued that vegetarians by their nature are health conscience and that for a true comparison to be made you'd have to look at health conscience meat eaters. I showed a study comparing heath conscience meat and non-meat eaters and it shows the mortality differences disappear. I show multiple studies on ketogenic diets and low carb showing that they improve cardiovascular disease markers as well as studies showing ketogenic diets effects on cancer. I even posted studies showing where diet-lipid researchers are questioning the theory. But that's all erroneous conflicting data points. How many studies before you'll accept the possibility that a meat based diet can be healthy? I'm not asking you to abandon being a vegetarian and I'm not trying to say one is better than the other, only that eating meat isn't the killer that some vegetarians make it out to be. Will all the evidence I present be flawed in some way?

The thread starts out ok with people asking about vegetarianism. Then someone posts how eating meat is deadly. I refute that and offer plenty of contradictory studies as well as evidence that at least some of the listed sources are flawed in some way; McDougal, Campbell, the egg study, etc. My position isn't that eating meat has been proven to be the healthiest way to eat, but rather that it's not settled science that it's unhealthy. Yet I have to prove myself? The science is not settled one way or the other and all indications are that sugar, et. al. is to blame, not meat. I've asked for studies that show meat is directly the cause because I know they don't exist. Please go re-read my posts and you'll see why I consider the "authorities" to be incorrect.

The worst part of this is that it already exists. All cell phones have an ESN, a unique serial number. A simple database with blacklisted ESN's that all the carriers use to stop phones from connecting to the cell towers would achieve this. It's been around for a long time but there's money to be made selling insurance and new phones. Hence no profit motive for the carriers to blacklist phones. And... Since Joe 6 Pack needs his latest iPhone and he puts up with this crap it's what we have. It easily would have been done if people simply cancelled their service unless it was implemented. The fact that they cry to daddy government and don't stand up for themselves is telling and IMO discouraging...

Then there is Israel... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8960090 Israel has one of the highest dietary polyunsaturated/saturated fat ratios in the world ... Despite such national habits, there is paradoxically a high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and obesity-all diseases that are associated with hyperinsulinemia (HI) and insulin resistance (IR), and grouped together as the insulin resistance syndrome or syndrome X. There is also an increased cancer incidence and mortality rate, especially in women, compared with western countries. But saturated fat is bad for you and will give you heart disease. It's not meat. Metabolic syndrome, aka syndrome X is the most likely, logical cause for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes (type 2), obesity, and cancer. What likely causes metabolic syndrome to develop? Repeated abuse of highly insulinogenic foods, mainly the processed and refined foods, but I don't believe it's limited to just those. Earlier I posted how grains are seeds and seeds have developed defense mechanisms that can cause problems for humans. That is a possible explanation of gluten sensitivity, celiacs disease, leaky gut syndrome, etc. That may also play a roll in the development of metabolic syndrome. Just as some people are allergic to shell fish or peanuts, some are allergic to wheat and gluten and it would explain why two people can eat the same diet and have differing reactions to it. So if metabolic syndrome is a cause of these diseases, what's the solution? Well, restricting glucose would reduce the need for the body to produce insulin thereby managing or possibly reversing the condition. How do we restrict glucose? Lose the carbohydrates. I've already posted studies where LC diets improve insulin resistance and LF diets make it worse. A vegetarian diet may reduce weight, but it won't do anything for insulin resistance because it can't. It's glucose based and therefor will continue to trigger an insulin response in the body. http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/14/4/963.full "Both vegetarians and nonvegetarian health-conscious persons in this study have reduced mortality compared with the general population." It's easy to show that meat is bad for you when you make no attempt to find health-conscious meat eaters for your study; like the paleo crowd... But, as soon as you do look for low carb eaters or other health-conscience meat eaters the difference in mortality rates disappears... But eating meat causes 17 out of 18 leading causes of death... Vegetarians are by their nature health conscience and most of the observational studies build two categories - Vegetarian and Non-Vegetarian which includes people who don't give a crap about what they eat. All those studies show is that people who care about their health and eat in some health-conscience way live longer and have less disease.

Please show me the controlled studies that show meat, and only meat is the issue. Or at least show studies that deal with the confounding data of high fat, high carb diets vs low carb diets to eliminate the problems that highly insulinogenic foods cause. I have asked for this information before and I have posted studies on ketogenic diets and their positive effects on health. http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1133027 "The low-fat “diet–heart hypothesis” has been controversial for nearly 100 years. The low-fat–high-carbohydrate diet ... may well have played an unintended role in the current epidemics of obesity, lipid abnormalities, type II diabetes, and metabolic syndromes. This diet can no longer be defended by appeal to the authority of prestigious medical organizations or by rejecting clinical experience and a growing medical literature suggesting that the much-maligned low-carbohydrate–high-protein diet may have a salutary effect on the epidemics in question." How about the Spanish Paradox? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7754987 Heart disease deaths in Spain from 1966-1990 dropped by 25% for men and by 34% in women. Between 1964 and 1991; Bread consumption fell by 55% Rice consumption fell by 35% Potato consumption fell by 53%. Beef consumption went up 96% Pork consumption went up by 382% Poultry consumption went up by 312% Full-cream milk consumption went up by 73% But eating meat causes heart disease right? How about the Massi? 66% of their calories are derived from animal fat with an estimated average daily cholesterol intake was from 600 to 2,000 mg per person. Surely their arteries were clogged with cholesterol and they died from heart attacks right? Opps, doctors found that their blood cholesterol levels were extremely low, and autopsies of deceased Masai found almost no evidence of arterial plaques. As I've said before, I'm betting my life on this literally. I've already seen a huge improvement in my health and a great reduction in markers for CVD. Eating meat isn't the problem.

Based on what I've learned so far there are two types of LDL or "bad" cholesterol. The LDL-a which is a large and fluffy, non-harmful type and the LDL-b which is a small, dense type that can get lodged in arterial walls more easily. The overall amount of cholesterol is not nearly as important as the ratios found within. Someone could have a cholesterol of 300, with a high ratio of LDL-a vs LDL-b and high HDL and be very healthy whereas a person with an overall cholesterol of 150 and a high ratio of LDL-b and low HDL would be unhealthy. From what I've seen in studies about fat and satiety, they do poorly in dealing with the many confounders. A person person eating a lower carb paleo type diet is going to have a much different satiety response than someone eating cookies and cake. Any study that lumps both of those into the same "high fat" category is going to show a weak or no correlation in fat intake and satiety. A study with more cookies and cake people will likely show that eating fat makes you hungry. But it's not the fat that does it. Our bodies have adapted over many years to run perfectly fine on a glucose based diet or a lipid based diet. When you deprive your body of glucose your insulin levels decline and your glucagon levels rise. The increase in glucagon triggers the body to use up stored glucose; which only lasts 1-3 days, then to use fat and protein to make glucose. The gluconeogenesis process results in a byproduct of ketones which can be used by many parts of the body as a substitute for glucose. After 1-3 weeks the vast majority of the body will run directly on fat. One of the primary ketones is linked to a satiety signal in the brain. Someone on a high carb diet, particularly one high on the glycemic load index, would have much higher insulin levels than the low carb paleo dieter. Insulin is a fat storage hormone and with high levels the body would resist using it's stored fat and instead issue a hunger signal when the energy from digestion ceases. The higher the average level of insulin, the more pronounced this would be as the insulin levels would have to decay enough for the body to start releasing glucose stores and release fat for energy. Insulin resistance makes this even worse and causes people who are IR to continually eat and to store fat. Fat intake to an insulin resistant person eating a high glycemic load of carbs would likely do zero for satiety. We do have the ability to ferment fibrous vegetables in our digestive tract which releases short chain fatty acids - aka saturated fats. While we don't have the ability to extract a large portion of our fat this way it can account for up to 15% of our fat intake. Any diet that includes fibrous vegetables would have a higher digested amount of fat than what would be indicated on the nutritional label.

Perhaps you missed the side conversation between myself and Richard_V. I had originally stated that some people find it easier to adopt a meat based low carb diet vs a plant based diet and would have a much greater chance of success. I maintain that removing the sugar from your diet is important and that both plant and meat based diets can be healthy. I then added my personal story that I could not stick to a plant based diet, but was able to stick to a meat based diet. Richard then asked where I was having trouble, presumably to share his knowledge about plant based diet, which I appreciate. What you quoted was my response and taken out of context it doesn't mean anything to the debate. So... In summary I offer this. Plant and meat based diets can be both healthy and unhealthy depending on what is included in the diet. It's almost a certainty that sugar and other processed and refined carbohydrates that digest with the same effect as sugar are the culprits behind most of the reasons for death. I offer that obesity is a symptom of the bodies difficulty dealing with sugary foods and that the other health problems discussed; cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, etc, are also all due to eating sugary foods and offer the vast amount of anecdotal and formal research on people who have adopted either a plant or meat based diet that eliminated sugar have seen tremendous improvements in their health. In short, both meat and plant based diets are healthy as long as you get the sugar and refined foods out of your diet.

Basically the whole not eating meat part of it... Seriously, I really enjoy a good piece of meat. It fills me up; usually I only eat twice a day and that's very convenient for me. I do go through phases where I do eat a plant based diet for a time, but then I'm back to eating meat.

I can accept that. I'm just trying to point out, in all my posts, that eating meat doesn't automatically make your diet unhealthy. If a plant diet works for you, great. It doesn't work for me.

Yes, and I've shown that the "eggs are as bad as smoking" people are on the payroll of big pharma. Their study was an observational study which did not account for other nutritional causes of high cholesterol or if that cholesterol was even bad. Yet it's parroted as "eggs raise cholesterol which causes heart disease" when it's impossible for such a study to show that. Of course though fear mongering people will run to their doctor to get some lipitor to lower their cholesterol. There's a strong chance that lipitor can cause type 2 diabetes... Isn't that just convenient. My response was because I felt you were using the "big money" argument to show how the meat industry "influences" their data without accepting that any "big money" source wouldn't do the same thing for their interest or that smaller money, like one of my favorite persons, Dr McDougall wouldn't "influence" the data they collect to support their own agenda.

Gotta side with the vegetarians here - inclusion of that one isolated case is really poor form and it's much more likely it was simple abuse and neglect. Juice and soy milk? Do you really think that vegans only eat juice and soy milk? My concerns with feeding a child a vegan diet is that the diet is so restrictive and we have evolved as omnivorous who do best with a diversified diet. I'm insulin resistant and therefor must restrict the amount of sugar or other foods that digest similarly to sugar - basically I eat on the low side of the glycimic load index, but I do eat lots of veggies along with copious amounts of meat. My concerns with a developing child on a vegan diet are nutritional deficiencies. They can be managed sure, but adding some animal products to the diet takes care of that pretty easy. I feel as though parents are forcing their beliefs onto their children. http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/176565 92% of vegans who didn't supplement had low serum vitamin B12 levels whereas only 20% of vegetarians who still ate milk and eggs were deficient. http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/17657359 Suggests that a higher protein intake, particularly from animal sources, better maintains muscle mass in older women. I.e. lack of protein, lack of muscle... http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/17657359 Here's one for the men, eating a meat based diet resulted in more fat free mass and skeletal muscle. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8207518 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691485/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14600563 Here's a three-fer... Creatine, most commonly found in animal products, helps with muscle and brain functions and vegans are typically deficient. http://natural-health.ethos.ag/cataracts-wang.pdf http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00726-010-0749-2 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10951108 Carnosine, found only in animal products has been shown to have an anti-aging effect. It's a free-radical scavenger that reduces oxidation stress and extends and rejuvenates. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18305382 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11083485 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947 Decosahexaenoic Acid... Say that three times fast. DHA is a form of Omega 3 that is only found in animal products and is far supirior to ALA, an Omega-3 found in plant based foods. Video is unavailable to us not living in the UK... But I agree with your synopsis - there are no controlled studies that show that meat is bad for you, just as there are no controlled studies that show vegetarianism is the cure... Lots of observational studies parroted as gospel as though the mysteries of life had been revealed and that meat was all that was bad in the world... And therein lies the problem. Vegetarians lump all non-vegetarians into the same bucket - Meat Eaters. But... There are a few sub-classifications that exist, mainly the amount of sugar that's eaten. Meat eaters need to be split into at least two groups - those that avoid dietary glucose and those that don't. Sugar, in my educated opinion, is the problem. Sure, there are people who handle sugar fine, but there are those of us that don't and I suspect many if not all of the obese people in the world are in that category. One of the things we need to do is stop looking at Obesity as the cause of illness and instead look at is as a symptom of an underlying cause. If you do that then Insulin Resistance pops up as a very likely cause for obesity. Insulin as I've previously said is a storage hormone and if you're insulin resistant your body is going to need to produce more insulin than normal to get the desired effect. With all that insulin present your body is going to readily store all available energy as fat and be very resistant about giving it up. So you eat your cereal for breakfast and it gets turned into fat. After digesting, 2-3 hours later, you're hungry again because your body can't get to it's fat stores for the energy it needs as there's still a bunch of insulin hanging around. So you eat a mid morning snack... Wash, rinse and repeat till your fat as a cow and saturated fat gets the blame. Of course if you eat saturated fat along with surgar then you're sending that directly to fat stores, no question about it. Just packing it away, meal after meal, never to be used again because your body is always in storage mode. Normal bodies alternate between storage and use mode. Your fat cells are like your wallet and when you eat that's like going to the ATM to fill your wallet. Insulin is like duck tape around your wallet that you have to fight to remove to get money out. It simply gets easier and more convenient to keep going to the ATM more often. As I said before, most vegetarians and vegans don't adopt Twinkies and Ho-Ho's as a staple in their diet and instead eat lots of vegetables; which I've never argued are unhealthy to eat. There are some though, like Steve Jobs, who go to the absurd and eat a fruit based diet, which is high in sugar. Jobs as you may know died of pancreatic cancer. Hmm... The pancreas is responsible for insulin production, which would have needed to work overtime with a fruit based diet and cancer feeds on surgar... Probably no coincidence there. And you don't think Big Pharma with their anti-diabetes market of over 35 Billion and their lipid market of over 10 billion in 2012 aren't going to do that same thing?!?!?!? And who was that post about denialism directed to again? I'm glad to see that the video posted didn't resort so such lowbrow tactics like appeals to emotion, oh wait, they did. The meat industry is destroying the world? How about big agriculture? Their fertilizers run off into streams, rivers, etc and cause algae blooms that suffocate and wipe out huge amounts of fish. The environmental finger can be pointed both ways. As for torturing and murdering animals, that's an APA discussion and has already been discussed here. I am not going to get dragged into environmental or moral arguments over eating meat because they are distractions. This thread has devolved into a battle by the vegetarians to label animal products as the devil and plant based foods as the salvation when it's not that simple. They rely on cherry picked observational data as gospel truth while attacking anyone who refutes their information. Show me the controlled studies that meat, and meat alone is the cause of the 17 out of 18 leading causes of death. I'm betting that nobody can.

Again with the logical falicies... Ad hominem, this time with a straw-man. "Those exhibiting denialism don't do this, just like creationism nuts don't actually deal with evolutionary theory." You do understand that you have never offered any rational or logical evidence that us meat eaters are the ones suffering from denialism. In fact, based on what you quoted I could have simply said "so are you" in response, but I'm trying to have a logical, rational debate about the benefits of different diets; all in the quest for better knowledge of what makes a healthy diet and what doesn't. More straw-man arguments where I'm grasping at straws and you've presented solid, sound and unquestionable theories. 1: the "evidence" that have been presented on the vegetarian side has all been causation derived from correlation. They're all observational studies - show me studies that have controlled variables. I listed a meta-analysis study, which is a study of studies that looked into low carb diets. Sure, still observational, but much more controlled in terms of showing meat as a friend or foe. It's a hell of a lot better than simply lumping all meat eaters together as all the same. My assertion is that plants and meat are healthy to eat and it's sugar along with any carbohydrates that digest with similar effect as eating refined sugar. The counterpoint offered is that a plant based diet is the only healthy way to eat - eating meat with or without carbs is harmful. Please correct me if I'm wrong here. I have offered evidence and I will offer more. These are controlled, randomized trials that look at weight loss and cardiovascular risk factors. A Randomized Trial of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet for Obesity http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022207 63 individuals were randomized to either a low-fat diet group, or a low-carb diet group. The low-fat group was calorie restricted. There was more weight loss in the low-carb group, significant at 3 and 6 months, but not 12. The low-carb group had greater improvements in blood triglycerides and HDL, but other biomarkers were similar between groups. A Low-Carbohydrate as Compared with a Low-Fat Diet in Severe Obesity http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022637 132 individuals with severe obesity (mean BMI of 43) were randomized to either a low-fat or a low-carb diet. Many of the subjects had metabolic syndrome or type II diabetes. The low-fat dieters were calorie restricted. Triglycerides went down by 38 mg/dL in the LC group, compared to 7 mg/dL in the LF group. Insulin sensitivity improved on LC, got slightly worse on LF. Fasting blood glucose levels went down by 26 mg/dL in the LC group, only 5 mg/dL in the LF group. Insulin levels went down by 27% in the LC group, but increased slightly in the LF group. Effects of a low-carbohydrate diet on weight loss and cardiovascular risk factor in overweight adolescents http://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(02)40206-5/abstract 30 overweight adolescents were randomized to two groups, a low-carb diet group and a low-fat diet group. The low-carb group lost 9.9 kg (21.8 lbs), while the low-fat group lost 4.1 kg (9 lbs). The difference was statistically significant. There were no adverse effects on the lipid profiles of participants in either group. A Randomized Trial Comparing a Very Low Carbohydrate Diet and a Calorie-Restricted Low Fat Diet on Body Weight and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Healthy Women http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2002-021480 53 healthy but obese females were randomized to either a low-fat diet, or a low-carb diet. Low-fat group was calorie restricted. The women in the low-carb group lost an average og 8.5 kg (18.7 lbs), while the low-fat group lost an average of 3.9 kg (8.6 lbs). Based on these data, a very low carbohydrate diet is more effective than a low fat diet for short-term weight loss and, over 6 months, is not associated with deleterious effects on important cardiovascular risk factors in healthy women. The National Cholesterol Education Program Diet vs a Diet Lower in Carbohydrates and Higher in Protein and Monounsaturated Fat http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=217514 60 overweight individuals were randomized to a low-carb diet high in monounsaturated fat, or a low-fat diet based on the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP). Both groups were calorie restricted. The low-carb group lost 1.8 times as much weight, 13.6lbs vs 7.5lbs and saw improvements in LDL particle size, greater reduction in triglycerides (-42 vs -15). A Low-Carbohydrate, Ketogenic Diet versus a Low-Fat Diet To Treat Obesity and Hyperlipidemia http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=717451 120 overweight individuals with elevated blood lipids were randomized to a low-carb or a low-fat diet. The low-fat group was calorie restricted. The low-carb group lost 20.7lbs vs 10.6lbs with improvements in triglycerides and HDL cholesterol. Comparison of energy-restricted very low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets on weight loss and body composition in overweight men and women http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC538279/ 28 overweight individuals on a low fat or low carb diet, both calorie restricted. The LC group lost significantly more weight; particularly the men. Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN Diets for Change in Weight and Related Risk Factors Among Overweight Premenopausal Women http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=205916 311 overweight/obese premenopausal women were randomized to 4 diets: A low-carb Atkins diet, a low-fat vegetarian Ornish diet, the Zone diet and the LEARN diet. Zone and LEARN were calorie restricted. In this study, premenopausal overweight and obese women assigned to follow the Atkins diet, which had the lowest carbohydrate intake, lost more weight and experienced more favorable overall metabolic effects at 12 months than women assigned to follow the Zone, Ornish, or LEARN diets. The effect of a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet versus a low-glycemic index diet on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes mellitus http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633336/ 84 individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes were randomized to a low-carb, ketogenic diet or a calorie restricted low-glycemic diet. HDL improved by 5.6 mg/dL in the LC group. No improvement in the LF group. The LC group saw a reduction in A1c by 1.5% vs 0.5% and a reduction or elimination of diabetic medications in 95% vs 62% of dieters. Do the vegetarians sill hold out that eating meat conclusively causes heart disease?

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick... Can you get any more logical fallacies in there? Lets see, both in the actual quote and by simply posting the quote as your retort I can see; Ad Hominem, Begging the question, confirmation bias, false dichotomy, false authority, red herring, poisoning the well, appeal to authority... The assertion is made that meat damages the body and cholesterol and heart disease are one illness mentioned. The only solution is a plant based diet - all meat is bad. When a counter point is offered; both with reports and with anecdotal data showing that you at best have a correlation and it's pretty weak - you don't have causation we're simply in denial? I know you've listed studies; I've refuted them because there is a strong conflict of interest due to the authors receiving money from big pharma for continuing to take that stance. That makes your quoted response even better... Us denialists are driven by greed... Not like the researchers on the payroll of big pharma though... Post studies that show meat is the problem and not sugar... Oh, like above?

I've been here for a while, but I'm not sure I've officially said hello, but I'm David and I hail from the wonderful tax sub-farm known as Pennsylvania. I'm currently moving from the Broomall Delaware County are to the Parkesburg Chester County area. Now, onto my name because I'm not sure what people interpret "Cobra" as, but it's simply a car. Well, specifically my 93 Mustang Cobra which is a numbered limited production - you guessed it, number 2,411 out of 4.997 made that year. I was the first car I bought on my own and I still have it. I've used the Cobra2411 handle since about 97, but now it's mostly associated with spam...

ROFL! Back in my declaration of sovereignty days I tried to add "without prejudice UCC 1-308" to my license. The hilarity that ensued was epic and a real eye opener. The DMV employee, who was rather rotund and very opinionated, raised her voice as she said "Sir, this is a LEGAL document; you just can't sign it any way you like, do you understand what a LEGAL document is?" She liked to stress the work legal as she spoke as if it was some magical elixir of power. I continued that I understood it was a legal document and that I had not only a right but a duty to make it known that I was reserving all my rights though the use of the LEGAL phrase "without prejudice" and I even was citing the UCC code for that; namely 1-308. I later tried to simply add U.D. at the end to indicate I signed under duress and she quipped back "Oh so what? You're a doctor now?" She continued to be loud and abusive to get me to conform. There was no answer other than to do what she said. None. I guess I'm going to have to become a pastafarian...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/548019 "The effect of ketone bodies on the growth, in culture, of transformed lymphoblasts (Raji cells) was investigated. Cell growth was inhibited and this effect was reversible, non-toxic, and proportional to the concentration of D-beta-hydroxybutyrate up to 20mM. The total glucose utilisation and the total lactate production were reduced in proportion to the inhibition of cell proliferation. D-beta-hydroxybutyrate was not metabolised by the cells. Other glycolytic inhibitors and chemical analogues of D-beta-hydroxybutyrate either did not inhibit or proved to be too toxic for cell growth. D-beta-hydroxybutyrate also inhibited the growth of rabbit kidney (RK13), HeLa, mouse melanoma (B16), fibroblast and trypsin-dispersed human thyroid and beef testis cells. Moreover, in vivo dietary-induced ketosis reduced the number of B16 melanoma deposits in the lungs of C57BL/6 mice by two-thirds. The significance of these results in the clinical management of cancer cachexia is discussed." Looks like Dr McDougall's "illness" (ketosis) inhibits cancer growth... But meat is bad for you... http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0899-9007/PIIS0899900712001864.pdf Here's a study where 10 cancer patients were put on ketogenic diets and half of them remained stable and one went into remission. Those with the lowest insulin and highest ketone levels did the best. But meat is bad for you... Elevated blood sugar and insulin levels, high circulating IGF-1, are all risk factors for cancer. They also lead to arterial irritation which the body responds to with LDL cholesterol. Continued arterial irritation leads to plaque buildup as the body doesn't have time to heal and remove the existing LDL before new particles are applied. I'm only focusing on heart disease and cancer here because they account for almost 50% of all causes of death. Now, if only we knew what causes elevated blood sugar and insulin levels; maybe we could find a way to adjust peoples diets to reduce two of the leading causes of death. It's got to be meat. Meat lovers hate science, twist statistics for their own gain and simply lie because they don't want to accept the truth. The simple and inescapable fact here is that carbohydrates are to blame, not meat. Now, it's obviously not all carbohydrates, grains and starches in my opinion are the worst offenders and particularly those that are refined and processed as they digest more readily into glucose in the bloodstream. What happens when you spike your levels of glucose? Yup, the body responds with insulin. Over time your body becomes insulin resistant and you need more and more of it. You either create a state where your body reaches the limit of insulin your pancreas can produce or you damage your pancreas and it can't produce as much or any insulin. Type 2 diabetes. Of course we give people more insulin rather than change their diet because it's more profitable to sell them a lifetime supply of insulin to manage their disease. If we could finally accept that it's the highly insulinogenic foods that cause diabetes, heart disease, etc we could offer two avenues for people to take - 1: adopt a vegetarian diet and get the crap food out of your diet or 2: adopt a ketogenic diet and get the crap food out of your diet. Maybe if we did that we'd actually cure people. The anti-diabetes market was 35 billion dollars in 2012 and is estimated to go to over 50 billion by 2017. The lipid industry is over 10 billion. I'm guessing they probably wouldn't want people to be actually cured. They probably would offer nice research grants to anyone who could show things like how cholesterol is bad for you. I'm sure all doctors are ethical and no one would twist or otherwise cherry pick research for their own gain though... Now onto my story, four years ago I was hospitalized with stage 2 hypertension. I was poked, prodded, scanned and examined and in the end I was told that I was simply one of the 95% of people that had high blood pressure with no known reason and would have to simply live with it. I was given a handful of medications to take everyday and had to learn to deal with the side effects. Becoming suicidal was a fun one to deal with... I was repeatedly told there was nothing I could do except medicate myself. I could not stick to a vegetarian diet as it felt alien to me - probably how most vegetarians would feel if they were told to start eating copious amounts of meat. I was 313 lbs when I went into the hospital and after only a couple months of trying to eat low fat I was up to 327 lbs. I was told that it was a side effect of the medication and I would have to deal with it and I could expect to continue gaining weight if I didn't count calories and eat a low fat diet. I had developed gout as well; although the doctors didn't want to pin that one on side effects. I found Gary Taubes book and it literally changed my life as I started to understand nutrition. Sure, I could nit-pick and find flaws with his book, but I now had a better understanding of nutrition than my doctors. I decided to go on a ketogenic diet as I loved meat and having a side of sausage with my steak sounded like heaven. My doctor told me I was going to kill myself and emphatically told me not to do it. I had just had my annual blood-work done and I suggested I return in 3 months for more blood-work while I tried the diet. His exact words were "I don't think you can do irreparable harm in 3 months". That was his "blessing" if you call it that. Three months later I walked into his office weighing 277 lbs and all my blood-work was improved. I was on the verge of needing cholesterol medicine before and my doctor predicted that he would be writing a prescription for lipitor when I returned. Instead my cholesterol went down by 20 points, my triglycerides were normal and my HDL improved. I had suffered from non-alcoholic fatty liver and while I can't remember if it was reversed in the three months, it is now. There was at least a marked improvement after three months. I went on to get off all medication and get my weight into the 250's where I stalled out. I'm 6'2" and large framed and muscular so I don't look 250. I posted a before and after picture above and I'm about 255 in the after picture. Probably 310-315 in the before. I'm guessing my "normal" almost 40yo weight would be around 220 give or take. I've eased up on my carb restrictions and have been eating grains and starches up till last week. After only a few days I'm back in ketosis and I have improved energy and my typical morning aches and pains have disappeared. The only reasons I added grains and starches back in is because 1: they're so common and 2: I'm addicted to them. It's a hard story for me to tell because it was such a low time in my life. It came a little after my father had passed and I was still dealing with my manipulative and controlling mother. However, given the direction of this thread I've decided to share so you know where I'm coming from. I'm literally betting my life on what I'm doing and so far I've had excellent results and have reversed a lot of damage that I've done. Hell, even my eyesight improved as I went from -4.25 to -3.75. I've seen the improvements first hand and have talked to many other people with similar stories. I've posted research studies that show the same thing. I'm living what I peach. I'm far from being a meat eater that doesn't want to see the truth that meat is killing me. BTW, in that first three months my typical breakfast was bacon and eggs with the eggs cooked in the bacon grease. And my cholesterol improved. So much for eating fat makes you fat and eating cholesterol raises cholesterol. And it wasn't just an egg a day... I still eat bacon and eggs cooked in the bacon grease, just not as much as I did initially.