Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by piva00 832 days ago
Some people also experience remission from not eating meat, I don't think that proves any point except for "people are different and have different needs".

Also for the initial point of humans being facultative carnivores, it doesn't track with our origins from primates.

2 comments

First of all, "not eating meat" often means "stops eating junk food", not that literally removing the ~70 grams of red meat, say, Americans are eating per day.

I've been around the block with diets, after my own health concerns, and, 15 years in, I have not seen any consistency in recovery with a vegan of vegetarian diet, let alone by avoiding red meat.

I have consumed carnivore-diet related content for years at this point, and I have not seen a single person go from carnivore back to plant-centric. Not a single person.

YouTube if awash with anecdotes of people recovering with a carnivore diet, not so much with others. There is something to it. Here's just one channel with such interviews, you don't have to watch any of them, just scroll through the titles: https://www.youtube.com/@zerocarb.

First of all, you are showing me anecdotal evidence, it's great it's worked for you and others but the source you give me is a biased one already.

I've seen people who went from no-meat -> meat and back to no-meat, so it's your anecdotal experience versus mine.

Give me an authoritative source and then we can have a discussion about the science behind it, if not we are just stuck in this discussion that won't lead anywhere, I've just challenged your anecdote, I have not said it's not true for some people, I have not diminished your experience but it's your experience...

> There is something to it.

There might be but I don't want to live in a world where anecdotes count as authoritative source for anything, it's a signal, not a conclusion.

Again, I'm glad for your experience, just don't try to peddle it as enlightenment.

And lastly, there's no way for the whole world to be able to support to eat as much meat as you are proposing, it's simply not possible, so perhaps understanding what mechanism might be behind these anecdotes so the people who can benefit from it have access to their necessities rather than pushing it into as a general truth that won't be sustainable with current technology, it's a disservice to you and others in your situation to push meat-eating as a cure-all for everyone, it is not.

> And lastly, there's no way for the whole world to be able to support to eat as much meat as you are proposing, it's simply not possible, so perhaps understanding what mechanism might be behind these anecdotes so the people who can benefit from it have access to their necessities rather than pushing it into as a general truth that won't be sustainable with current technology, it's a disservice to you and others in your situation to push meat-eating as a cure-all for everyone, it is not.

ok so now I the agenda is clear, I'm discussing health, nothing else, "don't speak truth that's inconvenient"

Yes, I am showing anecdotal evidence, and labelling it a such, what's wrong with it?
Re: "doesn't track", I don't understand how? Humans are not able to ferment plant matter like the big apes, our digestive system is closer to that of a dog. We don't seem optimized for digesting plant matter at all.
You don't need to ferment plants to digest them, we are pretty able to digest plants as seen by all the anecdotes of people living healthily on plant-based diets their whole lives.

It doesn't track that we are not able to live like that. A cat can't, a dog can't, humans can and do.

I said that our preferences was for meat, hence "facultative carnivore". Just like dogs really, and incidentally dog owners who feed their dogs 100% meat will tell you how much healthier they are.
I was wrong about dogs, unlike cats they do not require meat.

So your dog analogy also does not track [0].

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/apr/13/vegan-d...

IIRC cats also don't require meat, or any animal products, but it's more complicated, since they need taurine and hydrolyzed protein.