http://www.sciencedaily.com/release...50630121807.htm



My friends have three sons in their twenties. The oldest was until recently mostly vegan, with occasional fish. The slimmest of the three. But all of them are fairly lean. Also the least muscle mass of the three. I want to know how best to lose fat, not weight.

Word.

Scale weight is not the be-all/end-all of health. (Repeat this until you believe it!!) Every vegan I've ever met has been either overweight or skinny-fat. The male vegans had b!tcht!ts gynecomastia. How are all the other health markers of those vegans long term? 74 weeks ain't long enough. I'm sure I could survive a year-and-a-half of any diet. I survived 25 years of crap without getting fat until I took hormonal birth control, but I was a mess after age 12. But hey, I was slim, therefore healthy?

I wish this vegan-is-healthy-and-will-make-you-skinny myth would just die already. I respect the spiritual beliefs of vegans. If you think it's wrong to consume another animal, I respect that. Just stop trying to prove that it's superior in terms of health. There's no shovel in the world big enough for that.

It's a never-ending argument fueled by the attempt to attain ethical superiority, none of which has anything to do with health. I, too, respect their beliefs, but this food "movement" has received convenient camouflage from the SAD and its many associated health issues, making other WsOE look better in relative comparison. Agree that I'd like to see the day when rigorous trials can be conducted comparing LCHF, vegetarian, vegan, and the latest incarnation of SAD for a longer period focusing on overall health rather than the traditional focus on effectiveness at simply dropping weight. Not sure this is possible considering costs and duration required. Some of us have our own answers, but we're not even close to a consensus among those who have the authority to make "official" dietary recommendations.

For comparison: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=456041

I want to see Huang's list.

Interesting thread. My next-door neighbor is vegan. I began watching very closely as this woman and her children have gained weight consistently for the past few years and I found that interesting because I had the misconception that all vegan/vegetarians were thin, frail-looking creatures. As I spent more time around her, it became very clear the problem. There are bags of candy and chips all over her house. This woman and her chubby children graze all day long on chips and candy. BUT they hold the high ground because they are vegan.

IMO Being vegan is an unhealthy way to live.

We have the teeth of an omnivore, the digestive system of an omnivore and the enzymes of an omnivore. It just makes sense that we should be omnivores.

Vegetarian animals have no cutting teeth, just ripping and grinding teeth - we have both.

Veg animals have either multiple stomachs, extremely long digestive tracts, or they eat their own feces because digesting plant matter and getting the nutrients out of it is not easy. I have one stomach, a moderate digestive tract, and I'm not about to eat feces.

BTW, the only vegetarians are true vegans. After all, which green plant produced that egg? cheese? fish????

As mammals, we naturally start off drinking milk. So we start life as a carnivore unless we are fed artificial formula. Milk is an animal product, not a vegetable product. I've never seen a green plant grow a human breast, but if you leave it to the GMO scientists and give them enough time, it might happen in the future

There is a lot of veggie propaganda out there. It's like a religion and they are always looking for new converts. I don't know if they all feel superior or not, but it seems the majority want you to join the fold.

If they want to compromise their health to ease the guilt of eating animals, it's OK with me, but I'm not joining them.

BTW, I think that although we take the lives of the cows, pigs, fowl, etc., we also give them life. How may steers do you think would be living on the planet if we didn't eat them? Probably close to zero. So we give them a safe life on the range and then blam, they don't know what hit them. I get to eat protein with iron and B12 that my body can assimilate, and I thank them for the sustenance and I say "Your welcome" for bringing them into the world to have a life in the first place.

BTW, we have some vegan friends who have never-ever tried to convert us, nor have we tried to convert them. When we go out to eat, we find places that can accommodate both of our diets. They are simply picky eaters, they don't eat animal products, and we are picky eaters, we don't eat high glycemic foods. They have seen the weight I loss and say "good for you". That's the way it should be.

Back on topic.

To lose weight as a vegan, you have to really watch what you eat. It's possible, but all the vegans I've known have been overweight and have aged prematurely.

Bob

Bob

Aw, come on. Where's your sense of adventure?

I see Neal Barnard's name quite often in the studies that are cited. Barnard is not an unbiased researcher.

http://link.springer.com/article/10...1606-015-3390-7

I have seen skinny vegans, however there doesn't appear to be much muscle anywhere. Just my observation. Wonder what it's doing to the brain as well? Scary!

I know some skinny vegans; no obvious muscle, but wiry & strong. I suspect it's genetic as my husband & son are the same & they are not anywhere near vegan!

Alas, if humans are going to eat, they're going to be responsible for the death of other creatures, either the larger animals they eat for food, or the countless smaller animals killed and injured in the fields and at the storage facilities, so that people can eat grains and legumes. One isn't necessarily more "ethical" than the other, but I get tired of the vegan/animal rights folks trying to run everybody else's lives based on what is in fact a false premise.

I was a skinny vegan (wiry and strong) for 10 years during my 30s. I also took up exercise during that time, jogging, aerobics. Eventually that w.o.e. wasn't sustainable for me. I didn't understand food-combining enough to get the necessary amino acids and proteins. So my nails became paper thin and all the grains (OMG, so many grains!) caused a skin rash that I have only in recent years cured by eliminating grains entirely. I think it was having a 30-year-old metabolism and being very active that kept me skinny as a vegan DESPITE all those grains. What else could possibly explain it?

I'm betting my life on a primal diet, as natural and unprocessed as possible, being healthier, better for weight loss, and more sustainable over decades than a vegan diet, or any other.

In nature, if it weren't for the meat eating creatures, the herbivores would literally eat themselves out of house and home. The limiting factor for them would be starvation.

The omnivores and carnivores are part of the balance.

Think of the Galapagos Marine Iguana. With no predators they stripped their island clean of their plant food centuries ago. Then they started eating seaweed to keep from starving.

The next problem was as their numbers increased, all the easy, close to shore seaweed was soon devoured.

Now they have to dive in the cold water as deep as they can for as long as they can hold a breath, take a bite, and get back to the surface before they drown. Since they are cold blooded, then they have to lie on a hot rock to warm their body temperature so they don't die from being too cold.

Their population is now limited by the Iguanas who either can't hold their breath long enough to get deep enough for a bite (then starve to death) or can't warm their body temperature enough to survive the next bite (then die of hypothermia). It's not a good life, it's a daily struggle to get a minimal amount of food, just enough to make it to the next day, which might be any particular Iguana's last because he/she just couldn't get enough food that day.

A world without predators would not be a nice place for a planet of nothing but herbivores. As romantic as the notion of no meat eating might be, in practice at first it would lead to a world of always hungry, tortured animals with the survivors being those who could exist on the least amount of food.

Eventually the planet would be stripped of all green and all the herbivores left would starve to death.

So when I eat that bacon or grass-fed burger, I'm doing the herbivores a favor.

Bob

Bob-a-rama, interesting stuff about the iguanas.

I found that whole iguana process fascinating. Thanks.