I've eaten high protein most of my life... I'm past retirement age, bp is 120/70, resting rate is 60, blood oxygen is 98%, I can walk miles for fun... what I don't eat is the junk food/drink... What kind of a cannibalizing culture sells horrible addicting foods to itself? I won't participate in that.. Hamburgers, yes, not junk food in my book, wow, a Wendy's Double Stack with a free helping of extra pickle, lettuce, tomato, etc... what a treat for a buck and a quarter! If I had a major illness I'd go on an all veggie diet. [If I was diagnosed as terminal I'd get a custom Harley chopper but that's a whole 'nuther discussion] Vegetarian diets are more curative than sustaining unless one wants to spend a fortune in a Health Foods store.. Anthropologists have looked at the entire world trying to find an area where all the nutrition can be gotten without eating meat and they have never found such a place... anybody that wants to argue with the entire field of anthropologists and my life experience sucks wind...
Do you have a reference/link for this? I've read basically her entire site and never saw anything of this sort. She did say she had trouble maintaining her weight on vegan and got dental problems, but nothing about mental illness or anorexia. Harriet Hall, MD, of Science-Based Medicine agrees that Campbell is in error: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6092
The physicians I mentioned who promote a whole foods plant-based diet sell books and DVDs documenting their studies and instructing people how to adopt a whole foods plant-based diet. They include instructions on how to shop and read labels, how to cook a variety of foods, and how to handle eating at restaurants and friends' homes. They do not sell nutritional supplements because these are unnecessary. They don't promote the use of medication. They're physicians committed to curing and preventing chronic illness. Dr. McDougall provides his entire program on his web site for free if you can't afford a couple books or have no library nearby. When I was diagnosed with cancer after more than 3 years on a high protein low carb diet, I discovered all this research about the WFPBD and I emailed John McDougall from his web site with some questions. He responded personally within an hour and didn't tell me to buy his book that addressed all my questions. He attached PDFs of all seven chapters from the book that applied to my situation. So what is he trying to sell? If you've read The China Study, you'll realize right away why there are critiques of it. Firstly, we will never be able to perform a causative study on humans demonstrating what the lab studies leading into Cornell's epidemiological study proved. Why? Because I don't believe there are any countries in the world that would allow humans to be given powerful carcinogens like aflatoxin in the doses given the lab animals in those studies, then have the group of study participants divvy up into high and low animal protein groups, and high and low plant protein groups and see if tumor promotion and cancer growth results at the astonishing levels that occurred in the lab animal studies. Secondly, there are huge powerful for-profit industries that depend on us eating meat, dairy and junk food laden diets. Cornell's massive epidemiological study in China demonstrated a powerful correlation between diet and cancer (as well as other serious chronic illnesses). Correlation is not causation. The epidemiological study did, however, back up the animal studies which proved causation in a huge way, almost like turning a switch on and off. I have several friends and acquaintances who experienced the same on/off switch effect when switching from standard American diets/Mediterranean diets/high protein low carb diets/Paleolithic diets to the WFPBD and back again. A few had type II diabetes, which vanished on the WFPBD, returned when they went off the diet, and vanished again when they went back on the diet. Same for three people I know with severe allergies and three with arthritis. One also had chronic psoriasis and had tried everything for it; it was gone within a month of adopting the diet. Everyone I know who switched to the WFPBD experienced a drop in cholesterol levels to 160 or lower, which is significant because no one in the decades-long Framingham Heart Study with cholesterol below 150 has had a heart attack. The problem with those whose income is derived from selling books or supplements is that they include a lot of anecdotal evidence to back up what they want to make you believe. Anecdotal evidence is me telling you what I just did about my friends. Maybe I'm just making it up. Clinical studies published in peer-reviewed journals carry a bit more weight. Remember Barry Sears Zone Diet book? He stated that his diet helped Ironman star athlete Dave Scott win the Gatorade Ironman Triathlon at age forty because of the Zone Diet. It was a fabrication. Dave Scott: "That's the biggest false statement ever. I've never read Sears' book. I've never tried Sears' diet. It's been awful having to refute this for the past five years. I called and let a message for Sears and sent him an e-mail, and he never replied." During the period in which Dave Scott won all six of his Hawaiian triathlons he followed a strict vegetarian (vegan) diet. Do your due diligence and be healthy, or live (and die) with the consequences. Here are just a few studies or links to studies published in journals. http://www.heartattackproof.com/articles.htm http://www.pmri.org/research.html#articles http://www.pmri.org/research.html#abstracts http://www.pcrm.org/health/clinres/index.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16873779 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12936955 Ornish, D., et al. Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary heart disease? The Lifestyle Heart Trial. Lancet (21 Jul. 1990) 336(8708):129-33. Ornish, D., Scherwitz, L. W., Doody, R. S., Kesten, D., McLanahan, S. M.; Brown, S. E.; et al. Effects of stress management training and dietary changes in treating ischemic heart disease. JAMA (1983) 249: 54. Ornish, D., Scherwitz, L. W., Billings, J. H., Brown, S. E., Gould, K. L., Merritt, T. A., et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. JAMA (1983) 280: 2001. Sumner, Michael D.; Weidner, Gerdi; Merritt-Worden, Terri; Studley, Joli; Ornish, Dean. Adherence to a multicomponent lifestyle modification program. Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation (Sep./Oct. 2005) 25(5):291. Ornish, Dean. High-fiber diet and colorectal adenomas. New England Journal of Medicine (7 Sep. 2000) 343(10):736-738. Ornish, Dean, Brown, Shirley Elizabeth, Kottke, Bruce A., Shea, Steven, Barth, Jacques D., Bryan, Gregory K., Hokanson, John E., Austin, Melissa A., Ginsberg, Henry N., Tall, Alan R., Deckelbaum, Richard J., Hunninghake, Donald B., Criqui, Michael H., Heiss, Gerardo, Sox, Harold C. Treatment of and screening for hyperlipidemia. New England Journal of Medicine (7 Oct.1993) 329(15):1124-1128. Gould, K. Lance, Ornish, Dean MD, Scherwitz, Larry, Brown, Shirley, Edens, R. Patterson, Hess, Mary Jane, Mullani, Nizar, Bolomey, Leonard, Dobbs, Frank, Armstrong, William T., Merritt, Terri, Ports, Thomas, Sparler, Stephen, Billings, James. Changes in myocardial perfusion abnormalities by positron emission tomography after long-term, intense risk factor modification. JAMA (20 Sep. 1995) 274(11):894-901. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/8/1777.full Teuscher, T. Absence of diabetes in a rural West African population with a high carbohydrate/cassava diet. Lancet 1:765, 1987
Your vegan "experts" are selling their wares in some form or shape are they not? Go to their websites is there anything for sale? Where are your TEN clinical studies proving a plant food diet (ie, vegan diet) reverses heart disease (i'm asking nothing more than you have asked isn't that correct?) Just line them up, forget the oped.
what i find fascinating in this cornucopia of food advice is.......people selectively provide their "facts" based on personal experience......no that there is anything wrong with that.....just an observation.
My personal experience came about as a result of my extensive research in which I extracted the facts and tossed aside the subjective opinions, unqualified bloggers and supplement-pumpers. I did what the scientific evidence told me was the high probability thing to do to restore my health. For some reason it worked and became my personal experience.
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-are-the-inuit-healthy.html http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-do-primitive-peoples-really-live-longer.html
Maybe you just didn't see it? NoDoji's first link references 7 clinical studies on vegan diets reversing heart disease and the post you are quoting contains at least 5 studies on the same topic. The data is pretty striking, should you chose to read it.
The principal fault that legitimate critics of The China Study find is in the exaggerated conclusions. Have a look at what Harriet Hall has to say about it: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=385 http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6092 And if you are going to question Hall's legitimacy or credentials, then be sure to look here first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_A._Hall http://www.skepdoc.info/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?author=7 As for your reference to refined carbs and sugars towards the end of your post, that's just a strawwoman argument, and you know it.
i gave up red meat,dairy, salt, flower ect a couple of years ago and went to a plant based diet. works for me. took off pounds and increased energy levels.