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  #31   ^
Old Sun, Sep-21-14, 05:21
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teaser teaser is offline
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Low carb and paleo paradigms. Okay.

Well... sometimes somebody does low carb, or does paleo, and they don't do as well as they'd hoped. Is it fair game to try to figure out why? Needing carbs for good gut bacteria, proper thyroid function etc, Jaminet's mucin/carb deficiency stuff--I doubt all of these. Not because they've been unproven, more because they pretty much haven't been studied, or have been studied so little that we can't really know what we're looking at in the studies that have been done. I'm not saying I distrust the anecdotal evidence from people who say they do better making this or that adjustment to address whatever discomforts they might find on these diets, just that it's hard to say why they do better, when they do. Added potato, or sweet potato, or rice? Unless you added anything but plain starch or sugar, how can a person know for certain that they were suffering a "glucose deficiency?"

My doubts there aside, it's always fair to hypothesize, when people do have trouble. It's fair to claim your hypothesis might be what's going on, it's fraudulent to say with absolute certainty that it is. It's the same with vegans. It's entirely fair to warn a low carber or paleo dieter that everything might not be a bed of roses, since it isn't, always, and it's fair to warn a vegan dieter, no matter if you happen to know some long-term vegans who did well, that some people don't do as well as they hoped to on that diet.

Quote:
then how can we deny the walking evidence of apparently healthy vegetarians?


On this thread--who has done this? Nobody has questioned their health. That they could be healthy without supplementation or occasional diet cheats has been questioned. With the right metabolism--maybe a person could make do with just vitamin b12 supplements, long-term. Most of the vitamins, like D3, retinol-A, K2, taurine, etc., that can only be found in animals, we can synthesize ourselves, to one degree or another. I'll say again that differences from one person to another in how much they can synthesize of any one "carni-nutrient" might be great enough to explain how one person seems to thrive on a vegan diet, maybe supplemented with only b12, while another person doesn't.
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  #32   ^
Old Mon, Sep-22-14, 16:23
pazia pazia is offline
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These are just stray thoughts about some differences between being a vegetarian and going paleo. On a post on MDA today he mentioned how some vegetarians throw up the first time they eat a steak in a long time -- not necessarily physical, more because they're violating a belief they held for so long that meat is so bad.

And this got me to thinking, isn't there a world of difference in the basis for many going paleo versus being a vegetarian/vegan? The latter is so often based on a belief system that meat is bad for your health/the planet or that eating animals is unethical or inhumane. The vegetarians I know well usually seem very proud of the fact that by not eating meat they're taking a higher path. It usually seems that the belief system precedes the health benefits, and they're motivated to not eat meat or other animal products because they've determined they're bad for people.

But for most here choosing a HFLC diet, whether it's low carb, paleo, or ketogenic, often is done because we have to redeem or preserve our health. It's simply a vital choice to preserve our stability and quality of life. I may think that grains as a food choice cause people problems now, but initially I just realized I had to avoid grains/carbs because they were so harmful to my health.

But is eating a steak harmful to a vegetarian's health? They may believe it is if they subscribe to the notion that animal fat is bad for you. But my guess is that a majority are more aligned with nebulous (and controversial) beliefs about how eating meat is just wrong spiritually and ecologically.

My own bias is that there's more "group-think" involved in vegetarian/vegan choices, and perhaps that those on the LC/paleo path have more depth in our beliefs because so many of us need to repair and maintain our health.

Just some ruminations here. I too know some vegetarians well who are intelligent people I respect, and I'd never try to change their minds or paths. But I think I worry more about how their aura of absolute rightness about their choices threatens my own path on a subtle level. I know what I'm doing is right for ME, they seem to think what they're doing should be right for everyone.
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  #33   ^
Old Thu, Sep-25-14, 13:43
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aj_cohn aj_cohn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by teaser
On this thread--who has done this? Nobody has questioned their health.


The entire reason I started this thread is because I questioned how vegetarians could possibly be healthy, given all the obvious nutritional deficiencies in a vegetarian diet.
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  #34   ^
Old Thu, Sep-25-14, 17:56
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teaser teaser is offline
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But questioning how isn't the same as being skeptical about them being healthy. Unless that's what you originally meant, and I misunderstood.
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  #35   ^
Old Fri, Sep-26-14, 15:14
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aj_cohn aj_cohn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by teaser
But questioning how isn't the same as being skeptical about them being healthy. Unless that's what you originally meant, and I misunderstood.


Questioning = skeptical
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  #36   ^
Old Fri, Sep-26-14, 15:36
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teaser teaser is offline
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I thought we were talking about two types of skeptical. I thought you were saying "Some people are healthy on a vegetarian diet. How is this possible?" Questioning what exactly made them healthy--not whether they were healthy. Language is slippery.
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  #37   ^
Old Sat, Sep-27-14, 06:57
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Whofan Whofan is offline
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I was a vegan for 10 years from my mid-30s to mid-40s. Have now been a low carber for 4 years and lc-paleo for 2 of those.

For most of the 10 vegan years I was lean, athletic (ran every day), happy and productive. On top of the world, really. Then my hair started falling out, a rash appeared on my skin (later diagnosed as granuloma annulare which I now know beyond a doubt was caused by grains), and finally my fingernails became so thin that a manicurist refused to put silk tips on them. So I started eating meat again, went low fat/high carb, got fat but cured everything except the skin rash (because grains remained a major part of my diet).

The point of this post is that I'm seeing a similar pattern after 4 years low carb. Not the same issues, but different ones that make me wonder about how to adapt low carb for optimal health.

With low carb I became lean and athletic again, even though I was by then post-menopausal. Several chronic problems disappeared, including the skin rash, I got a whole new lease on life, happy and productive again. On top of the world, again. But now I'm noticing recurring yeast infections, when I'd never had one before in my life, and a suppressed immune system that's allowing viruses to linger. Once again my hair is losing fullness.

Obviously, what's happening to me might never happen to anyone else. All I'm saying is that individual, optimal nutrition is a very tricky business. Clearly, the answer to why vegetarians can stay alive is as complicated as why healthy lc-paleos can get sick. I'm not quite as smug about lc-paleo as I used to be, that's for sure.

BTW any insights re: yeast infections and immune support greatly appreciated.
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  #38   ^
Old Sat, Sep-27-14, 09:52
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WereBear WereBear is online now
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  • My first point regarding healthy vegetarians and vegans is this: they cheat. Constantly and unequivocally.

A few years back there were incidents where several prominent vegans, chefs and bloggers and advocates, revealed they had to go back to eating animal products for their health. They had done everything "right" with supplementation and protein combining and all the things vegetarians and vegans claim support their health in the face of known evidence of humans needing things like B12 that cannot be obtained from plant sources. I can't link to these sites because they have since been taken down from an absolute avalanche of abuse and death threats.

While these sites were up and the humbled vegans were trying to logically deal with the torment their former tribe members were subjecting them to, they also revealed that many other prominent vegans (they kept names out of it because they were ethical people being honest in the first place) told them that they knew health could not be maintained as vegans. They ate animal products for their health. They just didn't admit it.

Since then, I've realized how many vegetarians (who can eat secondary animal products like milk and cheese and eggs) will tell you to their face that they are vegetarians... even though they cheat. They cheat with seafood, they cheat with eating steaks only in restaurants, they cheat when they eat at their parents or on special occasions like a Fourth of July BBQ.. the list goes on and on. If a discussion occurs, the honest ones will switch to saying they are "mostly vegetarian" because this means they aren't eating meat at every meal, or fish isn't an "animal," or what have you.

So now I'd have to say any vegetarian can, and will, eat eggs and cheese and other animal sources. They don't have to eat it every day to maintain their health. There's a paper out there showing that certain Hindus developed aplastic anemia when they were vegetarians in Great Britain, even though they had long been vegetarians in India. The difference was the food they ate in India had high levels of insect contamination. Without this source of protein and minerals from an animal source... they were dying.

Vegans are either cheaters or they are not well. Mark's Daily Apple is an especially rich anecdotal source of such evidence.
  • My second point regarding healthy vegetarians and vegans is this: their body chemistry differs. Maybe quite a lot.

I spent around nine months as a vegetarian. And I tried really hard, only having eggs and cheese when I thought I'd go crazy without these foods, but no meat or fish of any kind. And I got really sick and gained 40 pounds. This was in less than a year. All while I was being tutored by vegetarians of many years standing, eating exactly how they said they ate.

Since then I've read Denise Minger's Death by Food Pyramid which documents how people can vary widely in their enzyme production patterns. There are specific digestion enzymes which break down plant foods into the body's needed proteins. And I don't seem to have any of them.

This makes it plausible that some people would do fairly well getting a lot of their protein from plant sources. Not optimum, perhaps, but not dangerous, either. While a person like me, forced to try and get their protein from these plant sources, would suffer... and not be believed. Because every time I tried to share my "vegetarian failure" story, every single vegetarian/vegan responds with, "You must not have done it right."

Jiminy Christmas, I didn't eat meat! That's supposed to be all that I need to do in order to be a vegetarian! If there is supplementation and expertise required to eat that way... it's NOT a healthy way to eat!
  • My third point regarding healthy vegetarians and vegans is this: it's not a WOE. It's a religion. And religious people, (quite radically in faith-based religions,) believe what they want to believe.

Earlier in this discussion, someone mentioned how vegetarians and vegans feel incredibly righteous about not eating meat... most of the time, they really aren't doing it for their health, or they can start that way and then feel morally superior about it. So when health problems occur, they ignore them. I've read accounts of raw foodies (formerly Denise Minger -- she almost lost all her teeth) and fruitarians, who are told to regard every single health problem they encounter as proof of "detox." This is a belief system. It's not a prescription for health.

When someone tells me they have been a committed vegan for ten years and they are the picture of health; I do not believe them. Because they are trying to convert me. Veganism is not the only religion that claims it's okay to lie; Mormons and Christans have factions who claim the same.

Just this morning my husband, an lifelong (amateur) medieval historian, brought up the fact that the serfs ate what was essentially a vegan diet. And they worked long hours at hard labor! Except... there were quite a few "feast days" in the Catholic calendar, every month. Where the people got treats like meats and cheese and butter.

The rich people providing the feasts weren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts (though they claimed they were.) They were doing it because harsh experience showed that people couldn't live, and work, on such vegetarian fare. They had to have sources of animal foods.

In conclusion, this forum, and Mark's Daily Apple, and so many other sites, are full of a self-selected population. Health problems drove us here, and lowcarb/Paleo got us out.

Some people can do okay on vegetarianism; IF they have the right enzymes, IF they don't have health challenges, and IF they lie about how much animal food they eat.

I know I'm not one of them. Probably, no one here is that way, either. Because if it ain't broke, nobody feels moved to fix it!
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  #39   ^
Old Sat, Oct-04-14, 09:05
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aj_cohn aj_cohn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WereBear
  • My first point regarding healthy vegetarians and vegans is this: they cheat. Constantly and unequivocally.

...

Some people can do okay on vegetarianism; IF they have the right enzymes, IF they don't have health challenges, and IF they lie about how much animal food they eat.

Thanks for your well-researched comments, which I've come to expect from you.
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  #40   ^
Old Sun, Oct-05-14, 07:03
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WereBear WereBear is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by aj_cohn
Thanks for your well-researched comments, which I've come to expect from you.


Thanks! Knowing your love of links, here's the article where I formulated my own thoughts on veganism:

Why veganism is not the answer
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  #41   ^
Old Sun, Oct-05-14, 10:01
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aj_cohn aj_cohn is offline
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Thanks for the link, WereBear. In general, I avoid arguing with vegetarians and vegans. The strongest part of their philosophy is based on the moral concept of causing the least harm to other sentient beings in order to pursue their own lives. It's really hard to argue about morality and change someone's mind.

I started this thread simply to understand the stated question.
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