"Natural" (plant-based) Health Solutions

Or let me put it this way. Eating according to your guidelines should be a good way to eat, and most of your advice is part of the plant-based idea anyway. If everybody avoided processed foods we'd no doubt all be healthier. But the research that is being done on nutrition has been showing increasingly that health improves when plants are the main part of the diet, and especially when the diet is completely plant-based. It's just a fact.

If you cherry pick the literature you'll find whatever it is you want to hear - including every fashion-based wacko diet that there's ever been. That's not the way to do research Faith.What you need to do is find the consensus over time. Not only is there a clear concesus on the balanced approach to diet, there's also an awful lot of evidence that obsessing over what we eat is harmful. Diets make us fat; some are positively harmful. Don't smoke, drink moderately, excercise a little and eat a balanced diet of fresh veg, meat, fish in reasonable quantities, don't eat much processed food and you're going to be doing all you need to do.

You say "we" but this kind of practise is far from universal. Meat farming in Europe for instance uses less intensive methods than those typical in the USA. This is less an argument for avoiding meat and more of an argument for eating better meat. Of course that is going to be more expensive, but such is life. Perhaps your point would be better made by actually presenting these studies. Is that a fact? Or is it just a claim you heard on a TV show? Do you have a link to this study? You do realise that everyone already eats a predominately plant-based diet, right? I mean, it's meat and two veg, not veg and two meat. This advice is so basic as to be a banal observation. Every dietitian in the world will tell you to eat a diet primarily based on fruit and veg. It's nutrition 101.Pushing the notion of "plant-based" is ridiculously vague to the point of being meaningless. If I ate nothing but fries, I would have a 100% plant-based diet and my diet would be terrible. It's more complex than that. For example, Omega-3 is harder to source in a vegan diet. Unless you're good at managing your diet you may well find it easier to keep some meat, fish and dairy in your diet to cover those bases.I don't disagree with the notion that processed foods are bad for us or that diets should be mostly plant-based. I guess I'm just surprised at your apparent astonishment. This is all completely mainstream, obvious, ubiquitous nutritional advice that any doctor or dietitian would give you.Mutate and Survive

What I don't understand is the hostility that is such a regular feature of any discussion here of any topic that's somewhat off the beaten path. I'm not stupid, I know what the standard diet is so I wouldn't be pushing something that is really just the standard recommended diet under a different name. The plates I see illustrating the basics of what I'm talking about have as many as ten to twelve different vegetables on them, both cooked and raw. A big salad may have twenty different ingredients. Even a bowl of oatmeal is often finished off with a fruit, ground flaxseeds, other seeds and nuts and nondairy milk. Morning smoothies are made with everything from greens and fruits to fruits with almond milk and that sort of thing. Some add protein powder, I put powdered Vitamin C in mine.There are at least a dozen different systems with similar protocols though there are also differences between them so that one food may be considered essential on one diet though forbidden on another. You have to read the reasoning involved and decide for yourself, but again, overall the whole plant-based arena is in agreement on the basics.Beans are a big part of most of them, and mixed greens, lots of both of those. Blueberries and strawberries are high on the list of antioxidant fruits on all of them, nuts of all kinds are used whole or ground or to make nut milks and butters, I only know of one system that says nuts should be avoided.I saw the statistic on the Seventh Day Adventists in a recent video I watched at Netflix, maybe the one called "Food Choices" or possibly "In Defense of Food." I gave the statistic in an earlier post too: vegetarian Adventists live a certain number of years longer than nonvegetarian Advantists and all Adventists even more years longer than nonAdventists. I've given the titles of lots of such films at Netflix and You Tube in this thread, plus talks given by different experts in the field. Most of them are good at giving the sources of research they mention.A juice aficionado called Joe Cross has had his film up on You Tube for a long time, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" -- it's now on Netflix -- in which he chronicles his switch to vegetable juices and plant-based eating in general over a sixty-day period of nothing but juices, losing a lot of weight but also losing a skin disease and dropping a lot of medications. He now emphasizes the plant foods but also does eat some meat.Of course he's an extreme because he was seriously overweight and miserable with his various ailments, but many of these diets are aimed at people who are sick and want to get well. And the emphasis in all these presentation is in fact overcoming various diseases, so if you are healthy you can ignore all this, just stay with whatever is working. I've been accumulating ailments over the last few years which is my main incentive for making changes to my diet.Besides "Food Choices" and "In Defense of Food" and "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead" I've also seen "Forks over Knives," "What the Health" and talks galore from such diet gurus as doctors Joel Fuhrman and John McDougall and Michael Greger and Dean Ornish and lots of others. There are many TED talks by nutrition experts.Dr. Anthony Lim who works with John McDougall gives an overview of a plant-based diet HERE and his emphasis is on curing diseases.However, despite the basic emphasis on diet as medicine it's been pretty dramatic to see how many competitive athletes have switched to plant foods and claim greater strength and stamina.And then there is Annette Larkins who simply started a garden in her yard in Florida a few decades ago and started eating mostly what she grows there, raw, and became famous for maintaining her youth and energy, so far into her seventies. HERE's a short interview with her.I've tried to be clear that what is meant by a plant-based diet is a WHOLE FOODS plant-based diet, or like eating out of your garden, avoiding all processed foods and fast foods like fries. Lim says it is possible to be "vegan" and eat nothing but unhealthy foods like those, so think fresh grown whole foods.Yes I know it's a lot to ask to watch and read so much but in my experience it isn't isolated studies that have been influencing me, it's exposing myself to a whole range of ideas and information in this arena, and if all you want is a few studies to discuss I'm not really interested. Studies are presented in almost all the talks and videos I've seen anyway. I might eventually post some of those when I can, but meanwhile, if you object to what I'm saying, so be it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There's a huge amount of money to be made promoting fad diets; you'll find anything you want to believe out there. This is exactly the wrong approach to take. You're doing what you do with everything here - picking out stuff that matches your beliefs. It's all a scam Faith, all the weird and wacky stuff about diets is just snake oil. If you're really lucky it won't harm you. Stick to mainstream advice, the rest is junk promotion.

Well, that's just wrong. I had none of my current views on food when I started paying attention to all this. And as for making money, why not make it teaching good nutrition as much as anything else a person does. Seems to me you're the biased one. You wouldn't have these objections if the subject was something you favor.

Of course you didn't have the views, otherwise why look? You were looking for something magical. Exactly, *exactly* like you did for your fundy beliefs. Because there's a huge number of people from PR motivated celebrities to plain criminals making money off the gullible. I wouldn't have objections if what you were talking about was based on substantial, medical research - not celbrity crank food fads. Get your information from decent sources not youtubes and fanatics.

I'll try to explain what you are calling hostility. I don't believe you will accept the explanation, but...What you are encounter is not hostility. It is a natural and justified reluctance by others to latch onto yet another supposed fad despite the fact that you yourself have done so. The fact is that much of the information about food and health that is out there, whether it is from gurus or scientists, does not seem to be all that great. There really is no particular reason to latch onto any diet at all.Yet you do that constantly. This is not the first set of stuff you've come here passionate about, and it is also unlikely to be the last. The reaction you are getting is the same reaction anyone who posts this kind of stuff would get. For example, Percy and I went round and round about weight loss diets a while back over pretty much the same kinds of issues.As Tangle suggests, there are all kinds of folks out there hawking one thing or another. People seem to form their opinions about them in the same flawed way the form their opinions about everything else.Beyond those points, there is this. We have over a decade of observation about the way you form opinions. As a result, in addition to the usual skepticism, you are going to get a bit of additional push back. You've already told us how this particular diet fits into your religious beliefs. Once you've done that, we might just as well be arguing about the history of the Grand Canyon when we offer even the slightest bit of reluctance. No, you are not stupid. Noone is making that accusation.

You don't know one thing about how I've come by my beliefs even though I've described them so many times. Who do you guys think you are that you can tell other people why they think as they do? Why do such discussions always become ad hominem accusations anyway? Hey I'm very sure you are an atheist because you want to be, not because you are actually persuaded, and that you believe a healthy diet of vegetables is "snake oil" because you're crazy. What other explanation could there be?I was NOT looking for God when I finally became a Christian, and I was in fact not leaning toward vegan or vegetarianism at all when I got into all the plant-based stuff either, I was pretty much committed to Atkins style eating which is far from this though I did need a solution to the carb problem. In fact I only really turned the corner into this style of eating about six months ago when I reconnected with an old friend (not a Christian) who turned out to be into it. She recommended some of the films I've posted here and I got convinced that way.In both cases I came across information that started to turn me in a new direction for me, the way most of us learn anything.Get off the stupid ad hominems. If you want to eat meat, eat meat, I'm not telling you not to. I'm not even totally opposed to eating meat. But I am ticked off at people who dismiss my views out of hand and who refuse to consider that their own standard way of eating might be flawed.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Steel cut oatmeal with a big spoonful of ground flax, some almond nut butter, some blueberries. Yum. Some people add a mashed ripe banana for sweetness, and soy milk or almond milk. I don't need either myself.A plate of chopped greens: spinach, chard and kale, with ground flaxseeds, black beans, mashed potatoes on top. Olive oil and lemon juice dressing on all of it. Yum.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Neither veganism nor vegetarianism is a fad, NN, and the principles all this information is based on are pretty sound. But I'm sure it will evolve somewhat over time, different systems may merge and so on. But as long as the facts are true, that the nutritional content of the foods identified as those we should be eating remains true, there is no reason to consider this a fad, all that will remain true and useful for our diets.And I think the information out there IS pretty great and reliable. You would unfortunately have to watch some of those films though.Nothing I've been so passionate about has been a fad, has it? I'm still as passionate about my view of the Grand Canyon as ever for instance.Somebody said God made us omnivorous and I pointed out that the Biblical God did not and you use that as an excuse to dismiss what I'm saying?Oh well.

Sigh. I knew you would not get it. You are the least introspective person I encounter on a regular basis. I should not have bothered.

Whatever you say Faith. Just make sure that whatever fad you're following this week provides the standard set of stuff you actually need to live.

It's not hostility, it is - as NoNukes pointed out - simply scepticism. I think you are making big claims in extremely vague terms and on the basis of thin evidence. Didn't say you were Faith. Please stop taking things so personally. I didn't intend to imply that. I just think that you are being rather loose in your terminology. The term "plant-based" is meaningless. All diets are plant based.A lot of the advice you're advocating boils down to "Eat more fruit, veg and whole grains. Eat less processed foods, meat and dairy.", which is about the least surprising advice ever. I don't see any specific evidence being presented here for anything that goes beyond that. Which is a pretty strong indicator that they are all equally faddish. This really is exactly what we would expect to see if all these diets were pseudo-science. Right. But you haven't actually seen the study. You haven't read it and don't have a link to it. For all you know it could be the most accurate study in scientific history or a worthless piece of junk. But, whatever, right? Therein lies the problem. Was this guy's health improved by the innate healing power of a plant-based diet? Or was it just that his previous diet was awful? Given only an anecdote in a youtube video, we can't say. I continue to be perplexed by your apparent enthusiasm for worthless anecdotes.Mutate and Survive

Joe Cross is a juicing guru himself these days, this is no anecdote, it is the story of his reversal of his obesity and ill health which he documented in the film "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead." Yes his diet was totally lousy before, so I guess you could argue that he'd have benefited from any dietary change for the better. I think his obvious glowing health shows more than that myself but his solution was extreme by most people's standards so I'll give you that.I had been rather loose in discussing these things but I thought I'd also said enough over many posts to tighten it up some and I don't think you read any of that.In any case, here's some more specific information about improving health with a plant-based diet, specifically diabetes and heart disease, from Anthony Lim's talk. He discusses the improvement of other diseases in the talk but this part gives some information about studies that were done.Sorry, I seem to be getting technologically stupider by the day. I can't even figure out how to get this thing to embed, let alone identify the places on the counter where I want you to start. So here's the URL and for the first study of one patient with a number of symptoms reported by doctors start at 25:38, for a study of 18 patients with severe heart disease followed for 12 years, start at 31: An Introduction to a Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet - a presentation by Dr. Lim ABE: And here's a Wikipedia discussion of the Seventh Day Adventist Studies. I'm sure you can find the actual research in the References section.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.