Don't call me a Vegan: Trying to improve my health

Sorry, won't get me to buy into it. There are SO many things that are suspected to cause cancer. Many are clearly known, many others are suspected/thought/theorized/tin foil hatted. Humans have been carnivores since evolution and the human body is incredibly adept at processing meat. Now, how the meat is cooked, processed, consumed, etc...may very well have a role in whether or not it's cancer causing or even distally related.

Going strictly vega...uh...non-meat eating/associating/whatever...has its' own set of issues. Why do you think it is that they often have to take all kinds of supplements, so they get vital nutrients they miss by not eating meat?

Eating fried chicken is not something I would consider healthy meat eating. Nor are bratz and the like. That is much more likely a cause of poor health. Clean cuts of meat, such as boneless skinless chicken, certain fish (which I hate), lean cuts of beef/pork, aren't bad for you. In fact, they're extraordinarily healthy.

I wish you all the luck in the world, but don't think it's the right answer to healthy living.

Polar expeditions died because of deficiencies caused by lack of eating meat, so replace the Taurine and B12 and other stuff somehow. Good luck.

Oh, and Randy Pobst is vegan IIRC, and that's a pretty good ad for it!

RX Reven' wrote: In reply to KyAllroad: I imagine primitive people didn’t get cancer because they got berk’d by a wooly mammoth first.

I imagine it has more to do with them not using solvents and chemicals in everyday life. The industrial revolution is what causes cancer. It's not just what's in the meat you eat... it's what's in what the meat you eat, eats and is injected with and breathes. It's in the Twinkie and the bag the Twinkie comes in. It's in the exhaust and the soap and the toothpaste and the fruit.

We are the cancer.

Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway.

I'll cook some extra kielbasa in your honor tonight.

Good luck with the change though.

Interesting. I'm following along.

I've been cutting back a lot on beef/pork. I do eat chicken, eggs, turkey, and milk. My reasoning for cutting back is environmental factors. I've been avoiding processed meats for a lot longer, but mainly due to insane sodium.

I cannot stand the taste of some vegetables though :(. I'm trying to develop a taste for them, but it isn't working.

Huckleberry wrote:

RX Reven' wrote: In reply to KyAllroad: I imagine primitive people didn’t get cancer because they got berk’d by a wooly mammoth first.

I imagine it has more to do with them not using solvents and chemicals in everyday life. The industrial revolution is what causes cancer. It's not just what's in the meat you eat... it's what's in what the meat you eat, eats and is injected with and breathes. It's in the Twinkie and the bag the Twinkie comes in. It's in the exhaust and the soap and the toothpaste and the fruit. We are the cancer.

Hi Huckleberry,

I generally agree…we’re exposing ourselves to a myriad of compounds that weren’t present during our evolutionary development and so it’s reasonable to suspect that many of them are toxic to us.

However, given that the life expectancy of early hominids was thirty some odd years and very few present day humans develop cancer by that age, I don’t think early hominids offer a viable indication that our modern environmental causes cancer.

Essentially, I share your suspicions about the environment but I don’t think early hominids are relevant.

Klayfish wrote: Sorry, won't get me to buy into it. There are SO many things that are suspected to cause cancer. Many are clearly known, many others are suspected/thought/theorized/tin foil hatted. Humans have been carnivores since evolution

Actually, humans have been omnivores when meat was available, which wasn't often until the last 100-300 years. Like I said, the evidence is leaning towards animal products contributing to cancer. I'm high cancer risk already, so I'm choosing to [try] to eliminate it. And lets not forget that we learn, we're frequently wrong, and these are grand generalizations, we have to take large populations. I'm sure I can find a 100 year old pack a day smoker for 80 years with perfect lungs.

Klayfish wrote: Going strictly vega...uh...non-meat eating/associating/whatever...has its' own set of issues. Why do you think it is that they often have to take all kinds of supplements, so they get vital nutrients they miss by not eating meat?

The only one is B12. And even there, with a healthy gut fauna, its been shown that humans can and do produce it 12 years after last having meat.

The whole goal here is balance. When we say meat causes cancer, it stems from eating almost no fruits and vegetables. It's not the meat alone.
It's adding in the veggies and finding which ones you like and how you like them that is a challenge. I had a green salad last weekend with red cabbage and sliced raw brussel sprouts. It was wonderfully yummy! Five years a go I would have said 'no thanks'.

I eat some of the fake 'veggie based' meat occasionally. I used to eat it more, but that too is highly processed.

How do you know a vegan is on your message board?

Good work making a change, but do you have citations of all these conclusive studies?

Huckleberry wrote:

slowride wrote: I had a girlfriend once who claimed to be a vegan. Then one day she called me up at work and told me she was eating a steak. She was cray.

I thought this was going to be a " but swallows" answer.

She's a new age girl

Huckleberry wrote:

RX Reven' wrote: In reply to KyAllroad: I imagine primitive people didn’t get cancer because they got berk’d by a wooly mammoth first.

I imagine it has more to do with them not using solvents and chemicals in everyday life. The industrial revolution is what causes cancer. It's not just what's in the meat you eat... it's what's in what the meat you eat, eats and is injected with and breathes. It's in the Twinkie and the bag the Twinkie comes in. It's in the exhaust and the soap and the toothpaste and the fruit. We are the cancer.

Nah, RX Reven is right. The main reason that cancer is such a big deal today is that people aren't dying of dysentery, typhoid, plague, or miscellaneous injury infections etc in their 20s and 30s. Modern medicine (starting with an understanding of sanitation) has taken all the low-hanging fruit off the tree and what's left are the really hard problems. If you live long enough, you'll get cancer, it's pretty much inherent to the way cells work.

Regarding nutrients from meat, taurine is not an essential amino acid to humans, we can synthesize it from other nutrients. It is an essential amino acid for cats, which is one reason why you really should give them cat food, rather than people food scraps.

As for the "Vegan" label, to me that implies a moral standard, rather than a dietary one. Vegans typically decline to buy cars with leather seats, or to wear things like wool, fur coats, or leather jackets. Some vegans don't eat honey because it's produced by bees, even though taking that honey doesn't hurt the bees any way.

This is a great idea. Not only will you be eating healthier, but you'll be reducing your impact on the planet as a whole. Meat farming is one of the biggest contributors to global climate change. I made the switch myself a few years ago but, like you, I'm not totally "off". I still occasionally eat meat. I love fried chicken, tacos pastor, lamb, shawarma, and sausage/pepper pizza. But these become a treat and I find myself enjoying them eve more because of the limits I've place on myself ( weird how the brain works). It's very very hard at first, not only because you "want it", but because it's that much extra effort to think about what you're eating. But by and large, this is a good thing. Now I find myself craving veggies more and more. I also lost about thirty pounds and, once I did start working out again, found that I had much more stamina. Anyway, hippie ramble over. Enjoy your new lifestyle.

We're Lacto-Vegetarian. That is, we eat plants, dairy and no eggs. You don't need protein. You make proteins. You need the amino acids that make proteins so you can make them yourself.

Corn and beans have all the amino acids to make proteins, for example.

Osterkraut wrote: How do you know a vegan is on your message board? Good work making a change, but do you have citations of all these conclusive studies?

Poultry workers have significantly increased risk of dying from penile cancer, thought to be due to exposure to oncogenic (cancer-causing) chicken viruses

Red meat is bad (frown)

To reduce cancer risks for meat eaters, boil your meat (but frying and grilling tastes so much better) Part I
Part II
Part III

Inflammatory Meat Molecule Neu5Gc can cause arthritis (I know, cancer, but still)

A high-protein diet during middle age makes you nearly twice as likely to die and four times more likely to die of cancer, but moderate protein intake is good for you after 65

Remember, these are all just single studies. I'm sure that it is easy to dispute everything I say (see below). Look at the data on the whole, which is what my wife and I are doing.
Vegetarians have lower incidence of cancer than non-vegetarians, but a higher incidence of colo-rectal cancers

And I'm not vegan yet. I won't ever be. I'm just striving to be that way for 90% or more of my diet.

In reply to mtn:

The last link is the first one I read and kindly provided the full text. I don't know how you can say this:

Mtn said: But the research is in. Apparently it has been in since the 1920’s or so. Animal products—and not just red meat, or processed meat—cause cancer. They cause heart disease, cancer, hypertension, cancer, gout, cancer, higher cholesterol, cancer, and cancer.

When a study you claim to have read say this: "Comparing vegetarians with nonvegetarians, the risk of colorectal cancer was significantly higher among vegetarians (IRR: 1.49; 95% CI: 1.09, 2.03), whereas the risk of the other cancer sites examined did not differ significantly between vegetarians and nonvegetarians. The risk of all malignant neoplasms was nonsignificantly lower in vegetarians than in nonvegetarians (IRR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.83, 1.04)."

"The risk of all malignant neoplasms was lower among fish eaters (0.83; 95% CI: 0.71, 0.96) and vegetarians (0.89; 95% CI: 0.80, 1.00) than among meat eaters, although the latter result was not statistically significant (P = 0.052).

The rest of the full text has similar results.

Hell your first link doesn't even involve eating the chickens...

From your second link: "Unprocessed red meat consumption was not significantly associated with all-cause mortality"

Third link was behind a pay wall. Fourth link doesn't connect anything with human mortality. Fifth? Paywall.

You do you, man, but don't claim there's conclusive science on your side.

As I pointed out, the last link was an example of the argument against it.

The first one matters because penis cancer.

mtn wrote: As I pointed out, the last link was an example of the argument against it. The first one matters because penis cancer.

See my additional comments.

The first link they aren't eating the damn things. "But but but my donger" is a weak argument. Unless you're in the poultry processing business.

Now I understand why my wife keeps nagging me to get a job at a poultry facility.

I have been making strides to add more fruit and veggies to my diet so that it is more balanced, cause I'm never gonna give up meat. Got a great deal on a kickass blender on craigslist, damn thing has 3hp. That's 1/4 of the power of my riding mower. Now I can yell "POWER!!!!" while I make my smoothies.
If animals cause cancer then I am a goner anyway, being an animal and all. I ain't gonna try to live forever, that's gonna get expensive.

Good god, penis cancer?!?! I always knew chickens were the devil's bird.

I found a great recipe in bon appetite for pasta with blanched kale that is sauteed in olive oil with garlic and red pepper flakes and sprinkled with romano cheese. Cook the pasta in water you blanch kale in, cheap and easy and nutritious.

Not for me, but good luck with the lifestyle change! If you can stick with it, I think you'll feel empowered and like you're controlling what you can in regards to health.

Personally, I'm going to fight cancer by reducing processed foods, cutting back on refined carbs (since Cancer growth is fueled by sugar), and eating a balanced diet of fruits and veggies loaded with cancer-fighting antioxidants, as well as meat that is raised entirely by my family, or the Amish guys down the road.

I've been doing the vegetarian thing for a little while now. I've just added Soylent to my diet.

You know the USDA's daily recommended values for a 2000 calorie diet? A serving of Soylent is 1/5 of that. I've offset some bad eating with Soylent for breakfast and afternoon snack on most days. Cacao tastes like a Chocolate Soldier, Nectar tastes like Froot Loop milk, Coffiest tastes like a good iced latte, and original tastes kinda like milk and kinda like the kreme filling in an Oreo.

As far as real food is concerned, I do eat fake meats sparingly. I like edamame and tofu, but my favorite is seitan. It's essentially gluten, so that's not for your gluten sensitive folks. My main protein source is probably beans.

My blood work went awesome after making the change. Cholesterol is way down. BP is down. All of the various little measures are back in line. I feel pretty darn good too.