I just looked at that video. It is a highly selective and edited video that like so many of the so-caled scientific tests proves nothing except how much time the editor had on his hands. I am learning through intensive reading and research to look at all sides of the story and how to evaluate the "evidence". It takes a lot work, time and money but if I want the whole story, all sides, it is necessary.

Loser Mam

All my comments on the video were removed today. Many others were removed as well. In fact, there's 8 pages of removed comments. Also, I just tried to post a comment about that but I got this instead: "You have been blocked by the owner of this video." So be warned, don't waste your time.

OK, so I watched this video and see it as pure vegan propaganda.
Lee is right, the comparisons are not fairly done at all. But why would we expect it to be fair?

I wish that I was a better educator.....I do try to offer my experiences none the less.

Keep trashing it here then....he can't block you here!

The only consolation I have is that before headveg removed my comments, he had to read them so now he knows that somebody out there knows exactly what he's all about. The truth will out.

I just reported his video as mass advertising.

Wow. That says a lot. I will never understand people who try to squelch any criticism or discussion.

Don't even dignify it with a comment. It has nothing to do with the type of reasoned, evidence-based discussion that needs to take place to resolve the issues the developed world has with nutrition and health, and it was never MEANT to. This video was created by someone who had one thought in their minds; "Watch what this'll do to all the LC crazies!"

No one who watches this video and decides to go vegan to lose weight is going to succeed in doing anything but compounding their already unhealthy state. Furthermore, if this video is how you make decisions on your health, then you are in the group of people who will be the LAST to turn to a real-foods, fat-and-protein based lifestyle, because what will finally make the decision for you, decades from now, is when marketing messages bow to the, also decades from now, reversed government healthcare advice coming as a result of the, ALSO possibly decades from now, bottom-up movement by real people learning to feed themselves differently.

This video has no more cultural significance than a video arguing over who would win in a fight between superman and batman, and should be treated as such by intelligent people.

The superman video would probably be more intelligently argued, though.

And superman would win.

There are three things that inevitably lead to weight gain in low-carbers--booze, overindulgence and frankenfoods. The Drs. Eades readily admit that the first thing they do when they sense a little gain is to drop the booze. Dana Carpender has made a career out of coming up with low-carb versions of everything but recently confessed that she had to clean up her diet because she was gaining. Before he stopped updating his menu blog because he hated people criticizing it Jimmy Moore seemed to live on pizza toppings, spaghetti squash and Atkins bars and couldn't understand why he was gaining.

Obsesity is indeed a disease of insulin abundance, but it's also a disease of malnutrition. Low-carb crap is still crap and calories do still count for many of us, and we have to eat very cleanly in order for our bodies to heal and the weight to come off--and the first has to happen before the second.

As for vegans, I know a few and none of them are doing it for health reasons, but to save the planet. Okay.

I completely disagree. I was pretty surprised when I stumbled upon the video, mainly because I was just saying to my husband a couple of weeks ago that I had noticed that all the big names in the lowfat vegan diet world seemed to be in pretty good shape and rather thin, and a lot of the lowcarb luminaries aren't in such great shape. I started looking into it after seeing pictures from the last low carb cruise. (I read a lot of lowcarb blogs.) I'm neither a vegan nor an "lc crazy". I'm just a normal person trying to make sense of it all. And I don't see why this has to be the antithesis of "reasoned, evidence-based discussion." They say the proof is in the pudding. I don't see the harm in asking why there is such a difference in results.

Nice propaganda. What do you expect from a youtube user called HeadVeg? Many of the people in the video callously labeled 'FAT' weren't even shown in more than a head shot or in a pose which clearly revealed them to be overweight.

Just because the vegan mouthpieces pictured were thin means nothing because they may not have had a weight problem before they became vegan. I have a close friend who is also in his 50's who has the metabolism of a horse and looks like a Greek god but eats like a starving teenager. Just because it works for him doesn't mean the rest of us should emulate him. I haven't personally seen the people you have on your fat list but I doubt based on recent pictures of them I've seen that they are actually fat.

Of course the person who made the video had an agenda. But it's still worth noting the difference. Yes, the style of the video is heavy-handed and silly, and not to my taste. But I can't disagree with what I'm seeing, especially since, as I noted in a previous post, I had just recently been discussing this very subject with my husband. The vegans look a hell of a lot better - healthier, not just thinner.



True. I googled them a found some better pics that clearly reveal thick middles and double chins.



True. The may not have had a weight problem. Then again, they all look very good for their age, which tells me that their diet definitely isn't hurting them any.



Every person I listed has written about their weight regain, and a couple of them have pics from the last low carb cruise to prove it.

I think that's the point of this thread though, is to discuss why the video isn't really the "proof in the pudding" that it claims to be.

I think this has been said before, but it needs reiterating -- the comparison is particularly unfair simply because many people who go low-fat vegan don't do it because they're fat. They do it for health reasons, or for moral reasons, or ethical, or whatever. A great many were already lean to begin with, and are likely the type of person predisposed to being lean. A great many people who go low-carb do so because they are overweight, and are predisposed to being overweight.

So. In one camp we have vegans promoting their agenda, and using their thinness -- to which they are naturally predisposed -- as proof. In the other camp, we have low-carbers, who have found success through low-carbing and so want to share their agenda, but who are naturally predisposed to being overweight, and for whom even the slightest deviance from their diet causes them to gain again.

I don't see that as a fair comparison. As someone else said, a much fairer comparison would be to pit vegans against the paleo community, many of whom chose paleo for health/lifestyle reasons, not because they were fat. For example, look at Mark Sisson , Robb Wolf (a student of Cordain's -- I notice they slagged Cordain in that video but not Wolf!), Chris Kresser , Dallas and Melissa from Whole9, Erwan Le Corre (MovNat, but for this argument he's paleo), Jamie from ThatPaleo Guy, and so on. (I picked them at random from memory. If you want more examples of paleo gurus, feel free to ask.)

Now if you compared low-fat vegans to these incredibly healthy, fit, and dare I say it ripped-and-sexy individuals, there would be no comparison. The low-fat vegans are all skinny-fat. The paleo gurus, on the other hand, are robust and brimming with health. For all intents and purposes, they are eating low-carb diets -- not LC per se, but much lower carb than the SAD, and they eschew the same processed crap LC eschews, and embrace fat in the same way LC embraces fat. The difference between paleo and LC is in the minor details, not in the overall viewpoint.

But the vegan propaganda would never do such a comparison, because it would show them to look bad, as well it should. Instead, they will pick on the LC gurus -- those who were metabolically challenged to begin with and thus who will always have a harder time of it -- because they are much easier pickings.

ETA: I dunno if this is relevant, but I felt that I should also edit to add that Robb Wolf and his team are currently working with Reno city council, implementing a paleo lifestyle change for policemen and firefighters at risk of heart disease, and that it is working remarkably well. So well that the local casinos are planning to adopt the program. In other words, paleo works so well that it is saving lives and money in a big way that councils can appreciate. Show me a city council that's using vegan to save lives!
Source: http://robbwolf.com/2012/04/16/pale...isk-assessment/
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/20...ase-prevention/

The little story about Atkins was a lie. Maybe they all were.....

An even better advertisement would be, having been fat and lost weight. How many low-carb people started out with a starchy plant-based diet based on the thinness of those diet sellers, and it didn't work, and THEN they went to low carb?
Hm, I would say, if you're telling people how to lose weight, you should probably have have been fat and lost weight.

There was Wolfgang Lutz who died recently in his 90s and looked great. The famous Jack Lalanne who for years was definitely not plant-based. Compare skin tone and vitality with people like Art DeVany and Nora Getgoudas.

If that little You Tube had compared Mark Sisson, Art Devany, Nora Gedgaudas, it would have looked much different.

I saw McDougall on TV once. He had wasted musculature and an insulin tummy. Just like Sisson describes the consequences of a certain kind of plant-based diet on "My Escape from Vegan Island."