[weavie]

I will be asking her what they are teaching her over the week.

I am struggling to find any coherent solid information about what the EAT-Lancet diet actually is, or why it is bad. It looks like a load of politically motivated mumbo jumbo! Would you be able to summarise?

[sridca]

It is a vegan-inspired/ anti-meat diet (similar to Canada's New Food Guide), backed by the processed food industry, but with plenty of issues which are neatly summarized by Georgia Ede here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...

[jules-jules]

From the linked article:

"2. Red meat causes heart disease, diabetes, cancer... and spontaneous combustion

The section of the report dedicated to protein blames red meat for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, obesity, cancer, and early death. It contains 16 references, and every single one is an epidemiological study. The World Health Organization report tying red meat to colon cancer was also mentioned, and that report is almost entirely based on epidemiology as well. [Read my full analysis of the WHO report here.] The truth is that there is no human clinical trial evidence tying red meat to any health problem. I certainly haven’t found any — and if there were, I think this Commission surely would have mentioned it."

Are we supposed to take this seriously?

[sridca]

Do you have anything valuable to say in response to that?

[jules-jules]

Sorry, but this article is junk science, at best.

Who is this curious voice in the field of nutritional science that singlehandedly dismisses decades of epidemiological science on nutrition and diet putting her at odds with virtually the entire scientific field, such as Harvard, (e.g., Framingham Study, Harvard Nurses study and the L-Carnitine Study), Oxford (dozens of longitudinal studies, such as the Epic Oxford Study led by Professor Tim Keys) as well as the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environmental Program, Lancet of course and many, many others.

”I became interested in nutrition after discovering a new way of eating that completely reversed a number of perplexing health problems I had developed in my early 40′s, including Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and IBS. This experience led me on a quest to understand why the unorthodox diet that restored my own health is so different from the low-fat, high-fiber, plant-based diet we are taught is healthy. It turns out that nutrition is not rocket science; if you understand how food works, it all makes sense.”

From the author's biography. Sounds solid.

[sridca]

> Sorry, but this article is junk science, at best.

Au contraire it exposes the junk sciences (including epidemiology to establish causation) used by EAT-Lancet to further their agenda.

> Who is this curious voice [...] From the author's biography. Sounds solid.

Instead of fervently trying to discredit the author, and then proceed to name-drop to buttress your borrowed beliefs, try to focus on what she actually says.

> epidemiological science [...] virtually the entire scientific field [... name-dropping snipped ...]

Nutrition epidemiology studies are not scientific experiments; they are wildly inaccurate, questionnaire-based guesses (hypotheses) about the possible connections between foods and diseases. This approach has been widely criticized as scientifically invalid [see here(1) and here(2)], yet continues to be used by influential researchers at prestigious institutions.

Even if you think epidemiological methods are sound, at best they can only generate hypotheses that then need to be tested in clinical trials. Instead, these hypotheses are often prematurely trumpeted to the public as implicit fact in the form of media headlines, dietary guidelines, and well-placed commission reports like this one.

Tragically, more than 80%(3) of these guesses are later proved wrong in clinical trials. With a failure rate this high, nutrition epidemiologists would be better off flipping a coin to decide which foods cause human disease.

(1) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2018.00105... (2) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2698337 (3) https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...

[weavie]

Thanks. I would tweak that diet slightly. Drop the whole grains by an order of magnitude, up the vegetables as much as possible, and increase the lard/tallow to make up the rest. I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here. How much is 15 calories of beef? About a spooful?

[sridca]

> I do agree that we probably eat more meat that we should, but it does look like they are swinging the other way here.

Meat is actually nutritious and healthy. You can read the details in the following link: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods/

(I personally am on the carnivore diet).

[weavie]

Personally, I try to eat as wide a variety of foods as possible (that includes cheesecake!) I don't find just limiting myself to meat, or just to vegetables, or indeed just to cheesecake to be appealing.

[sridca]

I do it to cure (99%) a chronic condition (and it remains to be seen whether my gut will heal enough to allow old foods back). If I had a choice, I'd be eating a meat-based diet with rice and ice cream!