Lol. The funny thing is they are kind of technically right. All refined sugars have some harmful effects like blood sugar spikes and inflammation, but corn syrup only has a slightly higher ratio of fructose to glucose as table sugar does. In small, irregular doses it’s fine to consume. And for athletes it can even be beneficial since refined carbs can replenish glycogen stores rapidly.

Mainly the people who are profiting from anti-carb diet fads - Atkins, keto, paleo, carnivore, etc.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BKOQOP3G1go

If you’re blaming rising obesity on sugar, it shows you’re more susceptible to marketing than you are knowledgeable about the relevant science.

Refined sugar is generally not good, and certainly whole food sources of carbs are much more beneficial than simple sugars - however, sugar is not nearly as much of a demon as popular health influencers make it out to be. Importantly, it also needs to be kept in mind that the “standard american diet” (sad) or standard western diet is one that’s high in animal products, fat (particularly saturated fat), refined carbs; while being low in whole fruits, vegetables, and fiber and phytonutrients in general.

Walter Kempers rice diet is worth learning about. It was a terrible diet - patients could basically only eat white rice, sugar, and fruit. But despite being an absurdly high sugar and high carb diet, a lot of patients saw dramatic improvements in their health, particularly when it came to things like obesity and type 2 diabetes reversal.

https://www.drmcdougall.com/education/information-all/walter-kempner-md-founder-of-the-rice-diet/

Looking forward to getting a Pinetime. It might not be polished, but community support never truly ends.

Every person still buying and consuming animal products paid for this.

Are you referring to plant-based burgers? That would definitely apply to Beyond and Impossible as they add way too much coconut oil, and salt. In other words they’re unhealthy for some of the same reasons animal flesh is unhealthy, although they are still less harmful than their animal counterparts just by lacking the animal proteins.

Some of them are, and it doesn’t take long (maybe a year) on a plant-based lifestyle to start naturally preferring more plant-forward burgers.

I do think the name itself is problematic. To anyone unfamiliar to the ideas, the word hints at something to do with vegetables, and yes that currently plays a role, but it’s not the point. It’s more of an animal rights milieu, and plants are only relevant at this point in time because it’s the least harmful way humans can sustain themselves for now. But that ignores that animal rights go far beyond diet, and that fact tends to get lost during any outreach since all most people are thinking about is the foods they dread to give up.

Compared to the other 90% of our evolutionary history? Not by a longshot.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/flashback-friday-the-problem-with-the-paleo-diet-argument/

Only replying to your last point, and on that I only have to say that perfection is the enemy of greatness. The vegan philosophy is about doing the best we can, within practical limits. I can’t stop myself from breathing or my mere existence causing harm to beings I can’t even see, but doing more feasible actions like abstaining from animal consumption and electing not to purchase or use other animal products has substantial benefits that are felt.

Relatively low if you compare it only to other meats or animal products. So while you can choose animal products that might progress these chronic metabolic diseases slower, you are still advancing them. But there are lots of factors that complicate things. For example the health impacts of animal products also depend on how you cook them, and what you eat them with. Cured meats are unanimously considered one of the worst things you can consume, right up there with smoking. Steamed fish would probably be about the least harmful (except that fish have some of the highest levels of bioaccumulated toxins and heavy metals). Actually, bugs are likely the least harmful, for those who are comfortable with that. Eating a source of fiber mitigates some of the harm from animal products as shown in this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C08mqjMuwyY

Further complicating things is that single nutrients often behave differently depending on context. For example antioxidants other than some of the essential vitamins have never been shown to produce their purported effects outside of laboratory conditions, and some supplemented sources of antioxidants have even been shown to be a little harmful. But when we test the whole foods that contain those antioxidants, we get data like how increasing leafy green consumption has been correlated with a longer life expectancy.

And it’s similar for saturated fats and animal products. In the most established science on the matter you’ll see they don’t just talk about saturated fat alone - the science appears to show a relationship between the ratio of saturated and unsaturated fats consumed, particularly polyunsaturated fats. This book describes that science quite well-

https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/eat-drink-and-be-healthy/

But going back to that nutrients vs whole foods, there might be more than just the fats at play. This piece by Colin Campbell is a bit of a manifesto against nutritional reductionism, and suggests that the animal proteins themselves might play more of a role than we had thought:

https://nutritionstudies.org/is-saturated-fat-really-that-bad/

When you put whole diets to the test, what starts to become most consistent is how the most whole-plant-dominant diets by far achieve the most remarkable results. It’s apparent in the Adventist Health Studies, the Esselstyn Heart Disease Reversal diet, as well as Dean Ornishes full lifestyle intervention program. The latter two claim they can reverse heart disease, which is a controversial claim. More study is needed to prove whether that’s true or false, but regardless it’s still apparent that these fully plant-based dietary interventions do more than any others to restore people to good health.

And it’s a thing where science and personal experience match. If you check out the online whole-food plant-based support communities, you see people routinely report almost miraculous changes to their health and wellbeing in a matter of weeks or even days. It’s the kind of thing that once you experience it fully enough, you don’t want to go back.

https://adventisthealthstudy.org/studies/AHS-2/findings-lifestyle-diet-disease

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/wellness/integrative/esselstyn-program

https://www.ornish.com/

That only informs about your bias, which comes from the sum of knowledge and experience you do have. Historically we know there have been planty of cases of people getting scurvy simply because they did not know better to eat the right foods, and did not appear to crave them either.

Cravings appear to have more to do with pleasure, and alleviating stress.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nutrient-deficiencies-cravings

Humans don’t intrinsically know what to eat to for nutrient deficiencies, that’s a learned behavior based on finding out what the symptoms of a given deficiency are, and learning which foods have the necessary nutrients.

No, they had advance warning that they were the winners. That victory was stolen from them based on rules that were added after the fact.

They were slated to win, close enough.

I was going to post the original wapo article, but then I saw wapo wouldn’t even let me read the whole thing. I don’t knowingly link to articles that are paywalled.

Clearly it doesn’t need luck - it’s already winning awards despite underhanded tricks.

There’s nothing ancient or valuable about a relatively new industry that’s built on lies and unnecessary suffering and death for all.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=roIWg4ntj9k&pp=ygUTZGFpcnkgaW5kdXN0cnkgbGllcw%3D%3D

Technically it can’t be all animal products, since honey is about 98% sugar, and despite the hate campaign currently hitting carbs, sugar is not quite as harmful (in and of itself) as it’s made out to be.

But if we’re referring to all animal products in the sense of meat, dairy, and eggs - those three foods have nutritional properties that are all very similar and they do have some overlap in terms of health issues.

The biggest thing they have in common is being a package deal with high amounts of saturated fat and cholesterol. Heart disease is generally the industrialized world’s number one killer, and all three animal foods initiate the onset and progress the state of heart disease.

Then there are issues that are less settled, like to what degree do these foods cause various cancers?

And then this one is even more in need of further study, but there might be a link between these foods and autoimmune disorders.

https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/meat-bad-you-and-environment

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/processed-meat

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-about-dairy

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/health-concerns-with-eggs