Comment by smaudet
2 days ago
Dairy/Meat are both inflammatory and overconsumption contributes to a whole host of medical disease.
Some protein is obviously desirable, but the ratios, like anything else in chemistry/biology, are paramount.
I don't think the USA has a problem with under consumption of meat and dairy. If anything, it has a long standing overconsumption problem.
The relationship between dairy/meat and inflammation is more nuanced than that. While some studies show associations with inflammatory markers, others find neutral or even anti-inflammatory effects depending on the type (e.g., grass-fed vs grain-fed, fermented vs non-fermented dairy) and individual metabolic context.
You're right that ratios matter enormously, but optimal ratios vary significantly by individual - genetics, activity level, metabolic health, and existing conditions all play roles. The overconsumption concern is valid for processed meats and in the context of sedentary lifestyles with excess calories, but the picture is less clear for whole-food animal proteins in balanced diets.
The real issue might be less about meat/dairy per se and more about displacement of other beneficial foods (fiber, polyphenols, etc) and overall dietary patterns. Many Americans do overconsume calories generally, but some subpopulations (elderly, athletes, those on restricted diets) may actually benefit from more protein.
why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
because we have teeth specifically designed to get meat off bones and animals that don't eat meat and weren't "designed to" don't have teeth designed to clean meat off bones. and that's just one i came up with, off the cuff.
if it's current farming practices that make the meat/dairy bad for us, then fix that. But i don't currently believe there's a greater health benefit to taking a ton of supplements to replace the missing nutrients that meat and dairy give us that you absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck.
> why is meat inflammatory? is it they way it's farmed/raised?
Not all meats are inflammatory. Processed and high temp cooked meats especially red are.
And I don't think we have the answer fully to why, but we know the lesser processed it is the better, and I believe I've seen some things about grass fed and all these more organically/traditional made meats seem to not be as inflammatory.
Also, we evolved during a period where we hunted, so even the idea of farmed meet maybe isn't really part of our evolution. But also, during our hunting evolution, we likely didn't have meat at every meals. Plus if you ever had game meat, it tastes really different and often isn't as good as what we farmed. So we kind of came to farm what tasted the best and was easy to farm, so it might be those meats aren't as good for us.
Also, you can't always assume that the environment we evolved in and the "natural" state is good for us. It wasn't bad enough for us to dwindle in numbers, but our population count was kept much lower than now and our life expectancies were shorter. As long as we made it to a healthy reproduction state evolution doesn't care. So all these inflammatory issues appear starting in your 30s and really become a problem much later in life. It's possible this didn't matter in evolutionary terms.
Lastly, you also have to take into context what else we'd do/eat. If our diets were more balanced than other things we would eat could neutralize some of that inflammation and meat has other vitamins and nutrients that are benefitial, but if someone cuts those other things out of their diet now the inflammation could become a problem.
So it's all more nuanced and complex.
I understand what you're trying to say but you're hedging so hard Benson is suing
Good stuff here. To add to your point: atherosclerosis actually begins development as early as childhood, but you only suffer 40 or 50 years down the line once you're hit with a stroke or a heart attack. Evolution didn't act on this!
I think they mean in the sense of pro-inflammatory. Which it very much is (especially red meat).
Some herbivores too have huge canines[0] for territorial fights. I used to use mine to fight my brother but now I'm settled they only help tearing appart coconut, cowliflower and seitan.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_deer
You can get all the nutrients you need, easily, from a vegan diet, with the exception of B12 (a cheap supplement will cover that).
Also, human ‘canines’ are pretty pathetic. They’ll do the job in getting meat off bones, sure, but are nothing compared with my dog’s teeth – he has proper canines. (He also doesn’t have to prepare and cook meat before tucking in. Humans are actually pretty lame meat eaters even in comparison to other omnivores like dogs, let alone carnivores like lions.)
vitamin D? unless you live within 10 degrees of the equator "the sun" is not a valid answer.
The most available form of vitamin D comes from extracting the oil from sheep's wool/skin using chemicals (soap is a chemical, for the record.) Yes, it is possible to get a much weaker form of D from mushrooms, but not as they arrive, regardless of packaging. they have to be left outside in the sun for at least 8 hours, but ideally "two full days in the sun", cap-side up (facing the sun), and then a standard mushroom will have enough D2 for the average adult, maybe. I don't know the specific conversion from D2 to calciferol or whatever.
And before anyone decides to cite 30ng/ml or whatever as "recommended", i disagree, 90-105ng/ml is more "ideal" and 500IU of vitamin D supplements aren't going to cut it. it's 1 IU per 10 grams of body mass (roughly).
i can do this all day, it's a waste of both of our time. As lovely as vegetarian/veganism is in the abstract, the entire planet cannot be vegan any more than the entire planet can subsist off insects.
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Can you name which EXACT nutrients you "absolutely cannot get from vegan diets without it becoming a monotonous pain in the neck"? A daily multivitamin isn't hard.
That explains the great olympic track record of India.
I think generally people are optimizing for health outcome and longevity, not peak athletic performance at your prime age.
But also, I've seen people often assume vegetarian or vegan diets are "healthy". But many people in India for example will still eat a lot of refined carbs, added sugars, fat heavy deep fried foods, large volumes of ghee or seed oils, etc. And total avoidance of animal products can also mean you have some deficiencies in nutrients that can be hard to obtain otherwise.
A plant-forward diet is more specific, like the Mediterranean diet, which itself isn't at all how your average Mediterranean person eats haha. But it involves no processed foods, no added sugar or excessive sugar, diverse set of nutrients by eating a balance of veggies, legumes, nuts, seeds, meats, dairy, fish, and so on all in appropriate proportions, as well as keeping overall caloric intake relatively low.
It's quite hard to eat that way to be honest haha.