The British Heart Foundation are doing our job now.

[StevieP]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4413144.stm

[Nadine]

Yay! It makes a change for them to do something decent, about time too.

[firejuggler]

Those food stats are shocking kids not knowing what comes from what, what has gone wrong in the last 17 years since I left school it is scary.

[cedarblue]

Those food stats are shocking kids not knowing what comes from what, what has gone wrong in the last 17 years since I left school it is scary.

in the jamies school dinners progs, he held up some veg, something like rhubarb and kids suggested it might be celery, potatoes, onions....

[Kevster]

Wow, a step in the right direction. More prevention less cure.

[Nadine]

It does make you wonder what many parents bother to teach their children about food. It's bad enough to not know anything about the nutritional value of foodstuffs but to not even know what stuff is called or in some cases whether it's a plant or animal is astounding.

[Pilaf]

Pffft... you're actually surprised? I've suspected for a long time that a lot of people are ignorant about a lot of things, and this only supports my views.

By the way..if they were really "doing their jobs" they'd already be promoting a vegan diet as the ONLY acceptably heart healthy lifestyle. Medicine has a long way to go, ethically. Doctors care only about money..they're capitalists of the worst sort. They want to fill people with pills to cover the symptoms of chronic diseases which, more often than not, are caused by poor dietary choices. It falls on doctors AND common citizens to be more informed about nutrition.

[Karma]

Speak for yourselves in the US. I'm a vegan UK based junior doctor and, having just taken a year out at my own expense to study public health, epidemiology, nutrition and it's role in chronic disease etc. I now have holes in my shoes... (and now it's winter and my feet are too wide for the shoes from the vegetarian shoe shop which are quite pricey anyway... but that's another thread, sorry).

I note that the BHF aren't actually telling people not to eat meat, just not to eat gristle! So they aren't doing 'our jobs for us'.

One thing we learnt about is the difference between hypothesis generating and hypothesis confirming research. A lot of the research implicating meat and dairy per se (as opposed to too much saturated fat or whatever) is international comparisons between rates of disease, which is suggestive but not conclusive enough to base international nutritional guidelines on which have huge political and economic implications....I have been reading the dairy thread and thinking about this. Would love to get my teeth into some solid epidemiological research on, for example the link between dairy and osteoporosis, but who would fund it? There are huge biases in the research being done, because the questions being asked are only those with some opportunity of financial reward. So there's research being done by the pharmaceutical companies, the food industry, etc. but we live in an age when recommendations can only be based on hard evidence which will live up to professional scrutiny. I met some fascinating, intelligent 'professionals' during my course, but like the recent struggles over smoking in public places demonstrate, even facts don't always swing the balance away from the interests of big business just like that. But they do help. And without them there isn't a hope of winning over the doctors or the politicians etc. etc.

On another thread there was an 18 year old talking about what to do with her life and contemplating activism. I think she should think about this. Get trained, get informed, get inside and learn to talk with the big guys. The thing is, vegans have an important and valuable point, but as long as it is pitched as alternative, it will never get into the mainstream, and it will never make any real difference if it doesn't.

Happy for any feedback on this. I'm just forming my own thoughts as I write. Especially I would be interested to hear about any ongoing research in this area that I don't know about yet!

[Mr Flibble]

On another thread there was an 18 year old talking about what to do with her life and contemplating activism. I think she should think about this. Get trained, get informed, get inside and learn to talk with the big guys.

I couldn't agree more, however I've known people in the past who've used this as an excuse not to do activism - putting it off till an arbituary point in the future.

I've never met a student (undergrad or post grad) in my life who can claim they have no time (less than 10 minutes a week to write a letter) for activism and unless their circumstances exceptional, it sounds like a poor excuse to me to claim studying as their reason for not participating. When I was a student I spent between 10-25% of my time studying maximum.

[Karma]

True. Can do both

[eclectic_one]

A lot of the research implicating meat and dairy per se (as opposed to too much saturated fat or whatever) is international comparisons between rates of disease, which is suggestive but not conclusive enough to base international nutritional guidelines on which have huge political and economic implications!

You're right, but some research studies that have been done are mentioned in the book The China Study. Campbell actually did some direct research, at least on the link between cancer and dairy/animal protein. (He also talks about the international comparisons, as well as differences in the same "gene pool" once they move to more Western cultures. In addition, he discusses how much power the entrenched institutions--pharmaceutical companies, the dairy/meat/sugar industries, etc--have on nutritional guidelines regardless of the supporting evidence that already exists. Have you read it?

[Kevster]

Is this new?

'Diet could prevent 2.5m cancer deaths

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 18 November 2005
Almost 2.5 million cancer deaths worldwide could be prevented if people changed their diet and behaviour, doctors say.

Nine factors account for more than a third of the seven million cancer deaths a year which could be avoided. Reducing smoking and alcohol and eating more fruit and vegetables are the most important factors but little effort is going into promoting their life-saving effects, researchers say in the Lancet medical journal.'

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...icle327764.ece

[Karma]

You can see the original article at www.thelancet.com (you have to register but anyone can) xx

[eclectic_one]

Is this new?

'Diet could prevent 2.5m cancer deaths

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 18 November 2005
Almost 2.5 million cancer deaths worldwide could be prevented if people changed their diet and behaviour, doctors say.

Nine factors account for more than a third of the seven million cancer deaths a year which could be avoided. Reducing smoking and alcohol and eating more fruit and vegetables are the most important factors but little effort is going into promoting their life-saving effects, researchers say in the Lancet medical journal.'

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...icle327764.ece

Sorry if I insinuated that Dr. Campbell is the first to make the connection, I just thought you didn't think there were studies (other than cultural comparisons) that proved a link between animal protein and any disease. One reason I really enjoyed the book is he not only mentions numerous studies (not all done by him) which prove links between animal protein and MANY diseases, he also points out why the general public (at least in the U.S.) seems oblivious to these findings and how studies are too narrow (i.e., as you mentioned earlier, only studying how fat and fiber or some single nutrient relates to disease).

[Karma]

Are you talking to me now or to Kevster?

Will definately try and get hold of the China study at some point, but a bit lacking in time and money just now (trying to revise for big exam at the mo ), and have a long list of books waiting to be read already....

Tried to read this Lancet paper this afternoon... It made my brain ache and I'm not sure it says anything new. It's a kind of summary of a lot of information from lots of previous studies, which may help people to take notice I suppose??

It says (among other things) that low fruit and veg intake is estimated to have caused 5% of all deaths from cancer worldwide in 2001. So the conclusion to be drawn from this is that we should be eating more fruit and veg. No surprises there then.

I've still only had one apple so far today. The bigger question now is not what should we be doing, but why, when we know what is good for us, don't most of us do it (most visitors to this site excepted, of course!)?

Also, like a lot of the fashionable nutrition advice these days, it says eat more fruit and veg, but doesn't comment on what people should be eating less of. If you eat more fruit and veg, you have to compensate for it by eating less animal produce. But which is it that causes cancer? Or both? Nutrition is a complicated business

[eclectic_one]

Also, like a lot of the fashionable nutrition advice these days, it says eat more fruit and veg, but doesn't comment on what people should be eating less of. If you eat more fruit and veg, you have to compensate for it by eating less animal produce. But which is it that causes cancer? Or both? Nutrition is a complicated business

I agree that it can be frustrating to see that many nutritionists might give part of the picture and not the whole picture. That is, that it would be best to cut out certain products, not just add "good" food. From some of the psychological studies I've read (that's what my degrees are in, social sciences), people often don't do what's good for them because they don't really think of the long-term cummulative effects of what they're doing. Even if you point out to them what the effects are long-term, they tend to think in less lengthy results and the short-term high/good outweighs thoughts of long-term evils. (That's part of the reason smokers don't quit, young smokers know that a lot of the extreme negatives--such as cancer--mainly manifest themselves many years down the road.) Also, we tend to rationalize what we want to do (such as when my dad says, "I can eat cholesterol-laden foods because high cholesterol is just genetic, what I eat has nothing to do with it"). And what's worse is there's problably some "expert" out there with a theory and, sometimes, iffy research that strengthens such rationalizations (like my dad says he heard a theory that if you stop eating cholesterol, your body will actually make more to get you back to your genetic cholesterol level AND he also brings up the study that eggs are good for you, even after I discovered and told him that the studies saying that were funded by the egg industry).

[eclectic_one]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...icle327764.ece

I looked at the article (guess I'm too lazy to wade through the original paper) and I think it greatly underestimates the impact of diet on health. They mention the impact of obesity, which may be related to diet, as a seperate "cause" of cancer. Now obviously there are vegans who are obese, but from other studies (i.e., the framingham study) there is less vegan/vegetarian obesity than omnivore/carnivore obesity.

Another aspect that Dr. Campbell discusses: the impact of diet is MUCH stronger if the studies eliminate animal products rather than just adding fruits, vegetables, fiber, or some other nutrient, while this study seems to only look at adding rather than subtracting food stuffs as sources of cancer. He points out that many studies just add some "miracle" solution (i.e., vitamin E or fiber supplements), then they find little or no change in the chance of cancer/heart disease/diabetes/etc and claim that "it makes little difference." One study he mentions is the Nurse's health study (done here in the U.S.) that showed little impact of fiber on colon cancer. He points out that the study participants ALL had a more carnivorous diet than the average American woman, so just eating more fiber on top of all the animal protein would do little to help, but the doctors in charge of the study said the study showed that fiber doesn't really reduce colon cancer risk! [Scientific reductionism at its worst!]

[Karma]

In my epidemiology textbook there is this graph which shows a clear correlation between meat consumption and bowel cancer for lots of different countries (i.e. countries with the highest meat consumption also have the highest rates of bowel cancer), but apparently you can't say from that that meat causes bowel cancer. It might be that lack of fibre causes bowel cancer and if you eat more meat you also eat less fibre. Or it could be that it's all the vegetarians getting bowel cancer because they aren't eating any meat, and maybe there are more vegetarians in countries with high overall meat consumptions (like as a reaction or protest or something) but they are a small sub-group of the population (it doesn't say that in my book, that's just my interpretation of what they mean when they say you can't tell from those kinds of studies whether it is the same people who eat all the meat who are getting bowel cancer...)

So that's how scientists can rationalise just about anything away, by saying you can't draw any conclusions from that! I think scientists are people too, a bit like your dad.... if they don't like something probably it can be played down or not published or found enough fault in that it ends up being ignored. Or they just don't do the studies in the first place.

I'd love to look into this more... I find it fascinating, but sorry to ramble on!

[eclectic_one]

In my epidemiology textbook there is this graph which shows a clear correlation between meat consumption and bowel cancer for lots of different countries (i.e. countries with the highest meat consumption also have the highest rates of bowel cancer), but apparently you can't say from that that meat causes bowel cancer. It might be that lack of fibre causes bowel cancer and if you eat more meat you also eat less fibre. Or it could be that it's all the vegetarians getting bowel cancer because they aren't eating any meat, and maybe there are more vegetarians in countries with high overall meat consumptions (like as a reaction or protest or something) but they are a small sub-group of the population (it doesn't say that in my book, that's just my interpretation of what they mean when they say you can't tell from those kinds of studies whether it is the same people who eat all the meat who are getting bowel cancer...)

So that's how scientists can rationalise just about anything away, by saying you can't draw any conclusions from that! I think scientists are people too, a bit like your dad.... if they don't like something probably it can be played down or not published or found enough fault in that it ends up being ignored. Or they just don't do the studies in the first place.

I'd love to look into this more... I find it fascinating, but sorry to ramble on!

I guess I'm rambling on too then...isn't rambling fun

As far as that goes, I think some studies (like the aforementioned Nurses' study) shows that fiber is not the whole story, as the nurses with higher fiber content in their diet did not show a strong reduction in colon cancer rates. However, as I already mentioned, these women did eat LOTS of meat, dairy, eggs, etc. What upsets me is that the "establishment" takes that as proof against diet reducing cancer rates, but they can't see what Dr. Campbell points out--that animal protein is at least a part of the problem! But I think you have hit on something...scientists have their own biases (I know I'm biased in my view to some extent, though I TRY to be critically open-minded) and may intentionally or even unintentionally find the results they expect by their research design (i.e., not comparing vegans to ovo-lacto vegetarians and omnivores), how they "define" variables (i.e., saying dairy helps you lose weight but only counting milk/yogurt/etc directly and inidividually eaten and ignoring dairy in foods--like pizza or cream in soup as one dairy industry funded study did), etc. You're also right that some scientists are so "rabid" that they tend to ignore correlational studies, even if the correlation is almost 100%!

[Karma]

Oh, don't get me started on cream in soup... I mean why?

What's all this about dairy and weight loss... must be an American thing?

It's so unfair... the food industry can take the tinyest bit of rubbish 'evidence' and twist it around and spin it to the world, but if those seeking to chllenge the status quo of big business want to quote evidence it had better be cast iron, or it will be ripped to shreds.....

[eclectic_one]

What's all this about dairy and weight loss... must be an American thing?

It's so unfair... the food industry can take the tinyest bit of rubbish 'evidence' and twist it around and spin it to the world, but if those seeking to chllenge the status quo of big business want to quote evidence it had better be cast iron, or it will be ripped to shreds.....

Yes, it's an American thing The dairy industry took a study they funded and claim that by eating three servings of low-fat dairy a day, you could lose more weight than just using a low-fat diet. The problems with the study are myriad, but of course they don't mention any of the "problems" in their ads. A good site for info on how the vegan diet is the best for health (though admittedly they're probably "biased") is http://www.pcrm.org This group is suing to try to get the ads removed because of how false they are.

[eclectic_one]

Seems like this thread has become a "why veganism isn't taken seriously by the scientific community" thread