That’s unfortunately not a useful thought experiment; you understand that from where we’re coming from it’s the same as saying “if you could be just as healthy ingesting poisons would you ingest poisons?”
Plants all contain toxins, and there isn’t any requirement for them in our diet, so why even think about it? There is no way that we can be as healthy eating plant matter.
A plant toxin is a poison made by a plant. They’re generally defense chemicals that plants make to protect themselves. I think that much is obvious, so you’re perhaps trying to get at “the dose makes the poison.” Toxicity depends on dose, but again, since there are no essential nutrients that you can only get from plants, why eat them at all considering that they all contain various doses of these chemicals that we don’t fully understand? Who defines what the safe dose of each alkaloid or terpene is, and on what basis? What about long term chronic exposure?
I’m more getting at that toxins are a scary sounding word pseudoscientists use incorrectly to get you into homeopathy. Like saying something is “full of chemicals” as if it was a defacto bad thing. Toxin doesn’t mean “bad to humans”
We’ve been eating plants for as long as we’ve been eating meat so we’ve got the same experience and understanding. 40,000 years of trial and error and evolution, I’m just not worried about “toxins” as a whole.
And I don’t pay attention to health influencers. I was comparing your comment to something a health influencer would say.
It’s a good thing zero-carb isn’t homeopathy, then. If said thing is perhaps a container for chemicals, then it being full of chemicals would be a good thing, since it would be fulfilling its function. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
“Toxin” does in fact mean “bad to humans,” by definition. And no, we haven’t, agriculture is only about 10,000 years old. You are of course free to ingest as many toxins as you feel comfortable with, that’s entirely your decision.
Btw, I’d like to gently remind you of Rules 1, 2, and 4 in this community. Consider this a light warning.
It is the dose. Ionising radiation breaks DNA that won’t make your cells stronger, it’ll make them dead.
Boiling, baking, fermenting can detoxify some poisons from some plants, but we appear to be able to survive for 120 years, so what’s limiting that by 40 years since we invented agriculture?
Have you seen the video about the carnivore since teenage woman running a cattle farm? She moves and looks like a healthy person in her 40s, but she was 82 when the video was made. I’ll edit this with a link when I find the video
Yea I agree. It’s the dose, context and recovery. (I have written more in my other replies along with the example of exercise)
woman in her 80s that looks and moves like someone in their 40s
It’s definitely possible. I have seen many who climb boulders (simple ones not bouldering sport level), carry heavy loads up and down the mountains everyday well into their 80s and 90s.
They also look much younger and leaner. All on a mostly plant based diet. Whole grains, nuts, fungi, and legumes.
so what’s limiting that by 40 years since we invented agriculture?
I think too much food, lack of exercise, pollution etc. The plants from modern agriculture have less nutrients and we eat very few varieties. Refined sugars and ultraprocessing of food is also up there.
Still, why eat plants? Cooking and fermenting may neutralize some amount of some of these toxins (which, and by how much?), but how much exactly is safe?
I’m not against taking plants for medicinal effects if necessary, but otherwise I think I’ll leave my cells alone since I don’t know if any intervention I can do will result in a quantifiable improvement over baseline. And why find out? We can just avoid it all.
Personally, I’d prefer demonstration that any processed foods are safe before they are sold for public consumption. For some unfathomable reason, our society doesn’t require this.
I’m actually arguing that the phytochemicals are probably good with hormesis being one of the mechanisms.
Observational studies with millions of people and over decades have shown plant based diets are good. Epidemiology proved the harms of many industrial chemicals, smoking and the benefits of exercise etc.
I know carnivores reject epidemiology. But I personally find it convincing. (Along with the health benefits I have experienced)
Interestingly I found some studies even in obligate carnivores like cats which when they go vegan have longer lifespan and healthspan.
Hormesis is heavily debated. But just in general, I’m not a fan of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” What doesn’t kill you generally makes you very sick.
Epidemiology didn’t prove smoking causes cancer, btw. It cannot. But the study in question that I presume you’re referring to, Doll and Hill’s, had a very significant relative risk finding:
It showed a 45 fold increase for men smoking more than 35 cigarettes a day. In comparison, our favourite study of colorectal cancer by IARC had a RR of 1.18. In the same figures, that’s a RR of 45 for smoking vs RR of 1.18 for processed meat. In percentages, that is 4500% vs 18%. And yet this is the most significant epidemiology that we have for studies in nutrition.
An interesting aside is that Austin Bradford Hill, the Hill in “Doll and Hill”, is also the person responsible for the Bradford Hill criteria . Generally, anything interesting worth investigating should have a RR of > 2. I don’t reject epidemiology, btw, I think it’s a good way to generate a hypothesis. But it cannot prove causality and isn’t science on its own.
You are free to draw your own conclusions, of course.
I would rather animals die to feed me than for me be as unhealthy as I was when I ate plants.
If you could be just as healthy eating plants would you be plant based instead?
That’s unfortunately not a useful thought experiment; you understand that from where we’re coming from it’s the same as saying “if you could be just as healthy ingesting poisons would you ingest poisons?”
Plants all contain toxins, and there isn’t any requirement for them in our diet, so why even think about it? There is no way that we can be as healthy eating plant matter.
Define toxin. That’s a term I see get thrown around a LOT by “health influencers”
A plant toxin is a poison made by a plant. They’re generally defense chemicals that plants make to protect themselves. I think that much is obvious, so you’re perhaps trying to get at “the dose makes the poison.” Toxicity depends on dose, but again, since there are no essential nutrients that you can only get from plants, why eat them at all considering that they all contain various doses of these chemicals that we don’t fully understand? Who defines what the safe dose of each alkaloid or terpene is, and on what basis? What about long term chronic exposure?
For your reference here is a list of plant toxins. The list is not complete, and it contains both false positives and false negatives, since we learn more about these chemicals every day. https://www.agroscope.admin.ch/en/toxic-plants-phytotoxin-tppt-database
Also as a side note, I’d pay “health influencers” no heed if I were you.
I’m more getting at that toxins are a scary sounding word pseudoscientists use incorrectly to get you into homeopathy. Like saying something is “full of chemicals” as if it was a defacto bad thing. Toxin doesn’t mean “bad to humans”
We’ve been eating plants for as long as we’ve been eating meat so we’ve got the same experience and understanding. 40,000 years of trial and error and evolution, I’m just not worried about “toxins” as a whole.
And I don’t pay attention to health influencers. I was comparing your comment to something a health influencer would say.
It’s a good thing zero-carb isn’t homeopathy, then. If said thing is perhaps a container for chemicals, then it being full of chemicals would be a good thing, since it would be fulfilling its function. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
“Toxin” does in fact mean “bad to humans,” by definition. And no, we haven’t, agriculture is only about 10,000 years old. You are of course free to ingest as many toxins as you feel comfortable with, that’s entirely your decision.
Btw, I’d like to gently remind you of Rules 1, 2, and 4 in this community. Consider this a light warning.
You think we started eating plants during the dawn of agriculture?
We started eating plants enough to cause caries (tooth damage) after agriculture. The dose changed.
Interestingly, it’s not just the dose that makes the poison, the conditions in which you consume it too.
Many poisons even ionizing radiation can make your cells stronger and live longer through hormesis.
So you have to demonstrate that plant based foods after they are processed by cooking or fermenting are harmful to humans due to these toxins.
It is the dose. Ionising radiation breaks DNA that won’t make your cells stronger, it’ll make them dead.
Boiling, baking, fermenting can detoxify some poisons from some plants, but we appear to be able to survive for 120 years, so what’s limiting that by 40 years since we invented agriculture?
Have you seen the video about the carnivore since teenage woman running a cattle farm? She moves and looks like a healthy person in her 40s, but she was 82 when the video was made. I’ll edit this with a link when I find the video
Not the one I was thinking of but https://youtu.be/kxMLto084Pc Not this one either https://youtu.be/mnWdsEzx8F0 but probably the same person
@silly_goose@lemmy.today updated with some links. I couldn’t find the exact one I was looking for
Yea I agree. It’s the dose, context and recovery. (I have written more in my other replies along with the example of exercise)
It’s definitely possible. I have seen many who climb boulders (simple ones not bouldering sport level), carry heavy loads up and down the mountains everyday well into their 80s and 90s.
They also look much younger and leaner. All on a mostly plant based diet. Whole grains, nuts, fungi, and legumes.
I think too much food, lack of exercise, pollution etc. The plants from modern agriculture have less nutrients and we eat very few varieties. Refined sugars and ultraprocessing of food is also up there.
Still, why eat plants? Cooking and fermenting may neutralize some amount of some of these toxins (which, and by how much?), but how much exactly is safe?
I’m not against taking plants for medicinal effects if necessary, but otherwise I think I’ll leave my cells alone since I don’t know if any intervention I can do will result in a quantifiable improvement over baseline. And why find out? We can just avoid it all.
Personally, I’d prefer demonstration that any processed foods are safe before they are sold for public consumption. For some unfathomable reason, our society doesn’t require this.
I’m actually arguing that the phytochemicals are probably good with hormesis being one of the mechanisms.
Observational studies with millions of people and over decades have shown plant based diets are good. Epidemiology proved the harms of many industrial chemicals, smoking and the benefits of exercise etc.
I know carnivores reject epidemiology. But I personally find it convincing. (Along with the health benefits I have experienced)
Interestingly I found some studies even in obligate carnivores like cats which when they go vegan have longer lifespan and healthspan.
Hormesis is heavily debated. But just in general, I’m not a fan of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” What doesn’t kill you generally makes you very sick.
Epidemiology didn’t prove smoking causes cancer, btw. It cannot. But the study in question that I presume you’re referring to, Doll and Hill’s, had a very significant relative risk finding:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5298160/#%3A~%3Atext=And+what+did%2Cincreased+by+∼50%25.
It showed a 45 fold increase for men smoking more than 35 cigarettes a day. In comparison, our favourite study of colorectal cancer by IARC had a RR of 1.18. In the same figures, that’s a RR of 45 for smoking vs RR of 1.18 for processed meat. In percentages, that is 4500% vs 18%. And yet this is the most significant epidemiology that we have for studies in nutrition.
An interesting aside is that Austin Bradford Hill, the Hill in “Doll and Hill”, is also the person responsible for the Bradford Hill criteria . Generally, anything interesting worth investigating should have a RR of > 2. I don’t reject epidemiology, btw, I think it’s a good way to generate a hypothesis. But it cannot prove causality and isn’t science on its own.
You are free to draw your own conclusions, of course.
Maybe. I don’t see my plant tolerant friends willing to try just meat. It takes a lot to make you try an unusual diet
fair enough. There are many still who switched diets both ways.
I asked because you sounded like you would like to be plant based for moral reasons but your body doesn’t tolerate it.
I wouldn’t go plant based for environmental reasons - I feel that it is a lie to distract us from industry in general which is responsible
The world has always been full of animals and didn’t suffer global warming until we started burning fossil fuels
Sure, the people who are trying to optimize their health would use any tool to optimize their health if you demonstrate its optimal.
What kind of demonstration would convince you of that?
It was the demonstration of this diet in the book The Fat of the Land that the diet was safe long term that convinced me
And wow were the health improvements good when I changed to this
I would want to see interventions, hard outcomes, real data without confounders, strong signal far greater then low hazard ratio epidemiology.
i.e. i want to see this - https://doi.org/10.1016/C2019-0-03604-7