[Closed] Has anyone gone "plant-based"?

you’re not contributing anything useful

I am. I'm pointing out bullshit, which is very useful.

Or learn not to take everything literally, you could quite easily also read that as being on a statistical basis.

Statistically, "all" means 100%. "Don't take everything literally" is classic troll talk. If I can't take your words literally, I have no way of knowing what you are trying to say. Why should I take anything you say seriously?

He is suggesting that we can resolve all our current health problems by going plant-based

the author has NEVER claimed that.

The OP claims to have read the book and said, "He is suggesting that we can resolve all our current health problems by going plant-based." If the book doesn't say that, either the OP didn't actually read it, or is just making shit up. Now we have, "Don't take things literally." Classic troll behaviour.

Like 10g of protein from say lentils is not exactly equivalent to 10g from say an egg or bit of fish.

There are a lot of proteins (BCAA's) you (apparently, I'm quoting received wisdom here) can't get from veg in sufficient quantities yes.

@Jon-Taylor help me understand how you know if these:

The sweep of plant-based products

actually help you achieve:

We were making the change not so much for health, or cost, mostly for sustainability.

Because mass produced crops, often on the other side of the world, highly processed in essentially a chemical factory feels to me like it might be green washing rather than truly more sustainable. I’ve never found it difficult to eat a balanced tasty diet, without needing to categorically exclude food substances and by knowing what goes in my food and how it is prepared have a reasonably understanding of its wider impact.

Are the commercial providers of this stuff responding to latent market demand or stimulating media attention to drive market interest.

So to be clear your issue is that you disagree with a straw man, reductio ad absurdum interpretation of a statement on the internet that no one else on the thread agrees with?

Chill out and eat a bacon sandwich, you'll feel better for it.

Your one person crusade to save us from quackery isn't needed.

Because mass produced crops, often on the other side of the world, highly processed in essentially a chemical factory feels to me like it might be green washing rather than truly more sustainable. I’ve never found it difficult to eat a balanced tasty diet, without needing to categorically exclude food substances and by knowing what goes in my food and how it is prepared have a reasonably understanding of its wider impact.

Are the commercial providers of this stuff responding to latent market demand or stimulating media attention to drive market interest.

On Johns behalf, I'll point out your preposition hinges on several massive fallacies.

1) That somehow one persons vegetables come from the other side of the world and an others don't.

2) If you're referring to tofu as "highly processed in essentially a chemical factory" I should point out that 70% of world soya production goes into animal feeds. ~1/3 of the soya and soya products imported into the UK goes directly into animal feeds although the exact figure is likely higher as that doesn't include farmers buying the raw product and using it as feed rather than buying an animal feed containing soya.

3) I've not eaten any tofu.

4) Bulk transport of dried pulses has a very low carbon footprint, definitely compared to imported meat, and probably even compared to domestic transport of livestock and meat products.

Still trolling, I see.

There are a lot of proteins (BCAA’s) you (apparently, I’m quoting received wisdom here) can’t get from veg in sufficient quantities yes.

Of course, that could be bollocks

Turns out the non trolling half of this thread is actually useful!

Let's examine this statement (since it has caused so much rage):

"He is suggesting that we can resolve all our current health problems by going plant-based."

In hindsight, I probably should have changed the word all for most. But I wasn't expecting every single word to be taken so literally (nobody does, it's how we communicate, get over it).

Let's have a look at what he says can be prevented:

* heart disease
* lung disease
* brain diseases
* digestive cancers
* infections
* diabetes
* high blood pressure
* liver diseases
* blood cancers
* kidney disease
* breast cancer
* suicidal depression
* prostrate cancer
* Parkinson's disease
* Iatrogenic causes

Hopefully this explains why I said "all our current health problems", it seems pretty close to me and most normal people would except my sentence without being such a muppet.

To satisfy the pedants you should also change the word prevented to "achieve a statistically significant reduction in the likelihood of developing the following diseases by reducing your exposure to some of the factors associated with an increased likelihood of developing those diseases".

highly processed in essentially a chemical factory

Turns out the non trolling half of this thread is actually useful!

The Game CHangers film has been debunked so many times.

https://www.biolayne.com/articles/research/the-game-changers-review-a-scientific-analysis/

https://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/a29067926/the-game-changers-movie-fact-check/

if you haven’t seen it, The Game Changers on Netflix is worth a watch.

I'll make a point to watch it without the OH present, she get's annoyed at my anger about bad science reporting and abuse of statistics.

But I wasn’t expecting every single word to be taken so literally (nobody does, it’s how we communicate, get over it).

Let’s have a look at what he says can be prevented:

Scientific research is based on words being clearly defined and taken literally. If you want to say that your claims are supported by research, you need to be precise about what you say. Eating a healthy diet will improve overall health, no argument there. It will not literally prevent all those ailments. It might reduce their occurrence, but they will still occur.

Modest quantities of meat and fish are part of a healthy diet, along with fruit and vegetables. Pasta is made from plants, but just eating bowls and bowls of pasta is not a healthy diet. Neither is potatoes fried in vegetable oil. The simplistic idea that just eating plants will prevent illness is really terrible advice.

I eat fully vegan 5 days a week.

Scientific research is based on words being clearly defined and taken literally.

It's a bike forum, not Nature.

The Game CHangers film has been debunked so many times.

To be fair that debunking is no better.

Without even watching the 'documentary' it's a fair assumption that it probably uses some emotive language and cherry picked statistics to make it's point. In the same way a documentary about ISIS doesn't focus on team building. But that debunking is just as bad. Yes an increase of 17% is only 1% when you're talking about something that only affects 5% of the population, still sucks if you're that 1%. It then goes on to question the validity of small studies. Which is fair enough, they don't necessarily have a big enough sample size to mitigate individuals variability. But the same argument works both ways, what if the outcome of the small study was actually masked by those factors working against it?

The Game CHangers film has been debunked so many times.

It’s a bike forum, not Nature.

Then don't spout bollox and claim that it's supported by scientific research.

what if the outcome of the small study was actually masked by those factors working against it?

Then you can't draw any conclusions. The researchers are responsible for presenting evidence that supports their conclusions. You can't just make shit up and say that it could be correct, but you don't really know because your sample size is too small.

if it gets people thinking more carefully/critically about their diet (like it did for me) then that’s a good thing, right?

Oh, totally. And Goebbels did us all a favour by encouraging critical thinking.

Then don’t spout bollox and claim that it’s supported by scientific research.

That's going to make the "What tyres?" threads a bit difficult isn't it?

Then you can’t draw any conclusions. The researchers are responsible for presenting evidence that supports their conclusions. You can’t just make shit up and say that it could be correct, but you don’t really know because your sample size is too small.

You've pretty much summed up how any scientific study works though.

Have a hypothesis.

Test it, usually in a very small sample size because you have little or no funding for it, and publish the results. Then if they look promising you can apply for funding to do some further work on it with a sample size of hundreds of people, double blinds, placebos, the whole shebang.

Unfortunately in the real world most final year students writing their dissertations are lucky if the budget runs to three figures, and post grad's aren't much better.

Oh, totally. And Goebbels did us all a favour by encouraging critical thinking.

Bingo / Goodwin

The game changers movie has an agenda, you don’t make a movie without believing in what you talking about right? Equally quite a few of the people debunking the movie have an agenda either through business or product support. To expect either side to be impartial is idiotic

Unfortunately in the real world most final year students writing their dissertations are lucky if the budget runs to three figures, and post grad’s aren’t much better.

Do they get published in Nature?

Do they get published in Nature?

Nope, I'm not sure what your point is.

Do you have any small scale studies you can quote to show that your point is true. After all if what you're saying is correct there must be hundreds of these studies making the point either way. Surely you can find one (or better yet hundreds, one could be a fluke by your own point).

Google isn't helping me.

https://www.google.com/search?q=meat+eating+reduces+cancer+risk

Nope, I’m not sure what your point is.

The point is that small scale studies without sufficient sample sizes to find conclusive results are unlikely to be published in respectable journals. Grad students are really just doing practice runs to learn the methodology, so small sample sizes are common, but their findings are generally not publishable.

Now that online publishing costs virtually nothing, anyone can start a "research journal" and put dodgy research online. Then it gets picked up by journalists or quacks looking to cherry-pick data to support whatever garbage they are spouting, so it looks like it's "science", but the findings are really just artifacts of poor methodology at best. At worst, they are outright fraud. People see a book with "Science" on the front and pages and pages of citations in the back and don't realize that it's just junk.

It’s a bike forum

Yep me and the wife switched 2 years ago. Before and after I was getting coaching and didn't notice anything different performance wise. Watched all the documentaries...you can argue both ways but I personally felt the plant based felt right (gut feeling). My mtb coach was and still is plant based and races world cup level. I find there is a problem with being one or the other. I have a friend that's predominantly plant based but if hes out, special occasion, friend round etc he eats what he likes. Saying that I had a full turkey dinner round at my mums this Christmas. I feel some sensibly is needed. The only justification I could muster up was personal taste and after lots of reading I couldn't justify that. But I was no crazy carnivor anyway and I've always tried to eat healthy. I learned pretty quickly it's a toxic subject so I try to keep it to my self and never get into conversations when people ask because they always get heated ime.

I quite like the term plant based to describe myself, I've not eaten meat or fish for 35 years and dairy went very soon after. For a long time I'd say I was vegan, when I checked the ingredients of everything I ate. However a change of job meant travelling all over the world working very unsocial and often long hours and having to eat usually in the hotels I'd be working at or at local restaurants with the rest of the crew. Trying back then do that and be vegan was pretty much impossible. So since then I've been what I'd called plant based, everything is vegetarian but if I'm eating out I'm not going to worry if something isn't wholly vegan. I don't buy  dairy products but  I will occasionally eat them when out or at someone else's house.

The great thing about this vegan movement though is that you can go out to eat now and not every veggie option is something unimaganitive with cheese.

Who really knows on the health claims but since 1985 I know I've had less than 5 days off work sick. It might of been 0 if I'd stuck to meat and I could drop dead tomorrow but I feel good and that'll do.

Oh, I dont think meat is bad...but imo its worrying that animal products are in almost everything.

Like alcohol isn't all that bad but if there was a little in everything you drank there could be a problem.

It's the sheer quantity imo.

But this is only my opinion based on my limited level of ignorance.

If I'm away with work or in company I just go veggie as that's no problem at all in a social context

The great thing about this vegan movement though is that you can go out to eat now and not every veggie option is something unimaganitive with cheese.

This, lots.

I'm not vegan, but I can't eat cheese. For the longest time when eating out the vegetarian option* would 99.9% of the time be cheese based. In the rare occasions where it wasn't, it'd be primarily mushroom-centric and I'm not a huge fan of mushrooms. It's been getting better slowly over the years but the recent rise in vegan popularity - praise be to Greggs realising they can make some money from it - has meant that non-cheesy vegetarian food has shot up in availability. It's a breath of fresh air to be able to wander into a fast food place (or a proper restaurant even) and order something other than fries.

(* - and one dish without meat on the entire menu is not an "option," it's "take it or leave it." Don't get me started.)

@scruff

the green roasting tin, Does it include gluten in every recipe?

I can't think of many (any?) meals from the book that include anything containing gluten as a core component. Lots of them will "serve with flatbread and yogurt" or something but it's easy enough to work around. Some use bulgar wheat, some use couscous or polenta, could be substituted.

Just to give an idea of the change Cougar I recall being in Seville and talking to the waitress in a restaurant and she was telling me that they didn't have a word for vegan in Spanish and that she sometimes felt like she was the only vegetarian in Spain. At the end of last year I was eating out in Barcelona and was asked do you want the vegan version of one of the veggie options. They actually had 2 or 3 vegan options. OK so they haven't come up with their own word yet but I think that brought home the change that's occurred

I also like plant based because it's actually sustainable for people without curtailing their lives. That means people stick with it and the more that do that the more vegan things become the norm. Not least because the food industry has a lot of by-products from meat production and the dairy industry that it quite rightly wants to utilise. As that supply diminishes so non animal alternatives will become  more commonly used as by products will no longer be the cheapest option.

Past nine months been 99% plant based. Mixture of reasons - environmental, a part of the wider plan to reduce my cholesterol (don't want meds) and seeing if improves overall fitness.

I now feel fitter, stronger and healthier. Cholesterol down to high end of normal range too. For me, I've found I've had a far more balanced, nutrient dense diet now I'm plant based. I'm making the effort to eat different grains and pulses every week.

Gonna be sticking to it for good.