Vegetarian diet cuts heart disease risk 32%

Diet threads are so funny, some says vegan, someone else says Atkins (also known as the bacon diet), then we throw in the caveman diet. It's all so confusing to read.

My only diet advice is avoid eating any meal that starts by talking into a clown's mouth. That seems to help a lot.
 
nddons said:
Or colon cancer. I don't get how it doesn't do you damage.
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Well... Atkins addressed those sort of questions in great detail in several of his books, which were promptly condemned as hogwash by the nutritional industry establishment, who also condemned Atkins as everything short of the human personification of Satan himself. They predicted that all manner of illnesses and early deaths would befall those who followed Atkins' advice. Just wait and see, they said. The long-term studies will prove it.

The problem is that when the long-terms studies started coming in, they seemed to bear out Atkins' positions. At the very least, there is no evidence of the kinds of problems that Atkins' critics predicted when they were publicly condemning him as a "murderer." So they scratch their heads and try to find reasons why the empirical data simply must be wrong, because the one possibility that they simply can't accept is that maybe Atkins was right all along.

My opinion is also based on empirical observation, though not as scientific as some would like. I have observed very old Italian men playing briscola on the street while eating veal parmigiana sandwiches, smoking cigarettes, and drinking wine out of the bottle; while their fathers watched from upstairs windows.

I have observed my grandmother living well into her 80's, and other relatives living past 100, and not even being able to spell the word "cholesterol" (in either language), much less caring about how much of it they consumed nor its effects upon cardiovascular health.

I have also observed vegetarian and vegan friends who seem to be quite healthy and happy, but I also have observed men my own age and younger who dropped dead on their treadmills while drinking soy milk, subsisting on diets of tofu and bean sprouts, and obsessing about their cholesterol and LDL levels.

So what commonalities have I observed?

The most striking common factor among those who live longer seems to have nothing to do with diet, nor even exercise. It has to do with stress. I don't know a single old person who lived a stressed-out lifestyle. All the very old people I know (or knew) lived very laid-back lifestyles. Things that caused anger or stress were dealt with quickly, using colorful swear words punctuated by exaggerated physical gestures, and then quickly dismissed, often with an almost-ceremonial libation, and forgotten.

The other thing I noticed about the people who lived to be really, really old was that they ate stuff that had been alive very shortly before they ate it. Whether animals or plants, the things they ate were very recognizable as having recently been growing, running, leaping, cackling, crowing, swimming, blooming, fruiting, waving in the wind, or whatever else those things used to do before they became food.

Now, looking at the folks who died young...

The most striking common factor among those who have died young has also been stress. They stressed about everything, including their health, and especially including their diets.

They stressed about proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

They stressed about their cholesterol levels and HDL/LDL ratios.

They stressed about their pulse rates and blood oxygen saturation levels.

Some of them owned more diagnostic equipment than the average cardiologist, and spent almost as much time hooking themselves up to wires when they exercised as they did exercising. Then they would stress about the data the machines spit out.

They understood the Krebs cycle in more intricate detail than 99 percent of physicians, and got stressed when they couldn't "make their doctors understand" something that seemed so clear to them.

They could rattle off the nutritional content of anything from memory. And then stress over it.

In short, they threw their lives into healthy living with the same levels of commitment and energy that had characterized everything else that they'd ever done.

And then they dropped dead.

So...

I can only draw two really clear conclusions from my observations.

One is to avoid stress. I am convinced that stress is the biggest killer in America. More than cholesterol, LDLs, smoking, guns, cars, and everything else put together. I don't know the exact mechanisms by which stress kills, nor do I believe that science fully understands the connection between stress and death. But I know that stress kills.

The other conclusion I draw is that it's healthy to eat stuff that was very recently alive. I don't think it matters very much whether that stuff used to be a plant, a cow, a deer, a rabbit, a pig, a bird, a fish, or almost anything else that's alive. I think a healthy human body can subsist on any or all of these things, and which ones a person chooses doesn't make a whole lot of difference -- unless they stress about it.

So there you have it: -- my philosophy of longevity: Avoid stress, and eat stuff that was very recently alive.

-Rich
 
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RJM62 said:
Well... Atkins addressed those sort of questions in great detail in several of his books, which were promptly condemned as hogwash by the nutritional industry establishment, who also condemned Atkins as everything short of the human personification of Satan himself. They predicted that all manner of illnesses and early deaths would befall those who followed Atkins' advice. Just wait and see, they said. The long-term studies will prove it.

The problem is that when the long-terms studies started coming in, they seemed to bear out Atkins' positions. At the very least, there is no evidence of the kinds of problems that Atkins' critics predicted when they were publicly condemning him as a "murderer." So they scratch their heads and try to find reasons why the empirical data simply must be wrong, because the one possibility that they simply can't accept is that maybe Atkins was right all along.

My opinion is also based on empirical observation, though not as scientific as some would like. I have observed very old Italian men playing briscola on the street while eating veal parmigiana sandwiches, smoking cigarettes, and drinking wine out of the bottle; while their fathers watched from upstairs windows.

I have observed my grandmother living well into her 80's, and other relatives living past 100, and not even being able to spell the word "cholesterol" (in either language), much less caring about how much of it they consumed nor its effects upon cardiovascular health.

I have also observed vegetarian and vegan friends who seem to be quite healthy and happy, but I also have observed men my own age and younger who dropped dead on their treadmills while drinking soy milk, subsisting on diets of tofu and bean sprouts, and obsessing about their cholesterol and LDL levels.

So what commonalities have I observed?

The most striking common factor among those who live longer seems to have nothing to do with diet, nor even exercise. It has to do with stress. I don't know a single old person who lived a stressed-out lifestyle. All the very old people I know (or knew) lived very laid-back lifestyles. Things that caused anger or stress were dealt with quickly, using colorful swear words punctuated by exaggerated physical gestures, and then quickly dismissed, often with an almost-ceremonial libation, and forgotten.

The other thing I noticed about the people who lived to be really, really old was that they ate stuff that had been alive very shortly before they ate it. Whether animals or plants, the things they ate were very recognizable as having recently been growing, running, leaping, cackling, crowing, swimming, blooming, fruiting, waving in the wind, or whatever else those things used to do before they became food.

Now, looking at the folks who died young...

The most striking common factor among those who have died young has also been stress. They stressed about everything, including their health, and especially including their diets.

They stressed about proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

They stressed about their cholesterol levels and HDL/LDL ratios.

They stressed about their pulse rates and blood oxygen saturation levels.

Some of them owned more diagnostic equipment than the average cardiologist, and spent almost as much time hooking themselves up to wires when they exercised as they did exercising. Then they would stress about the data the machines spit out.

They understood the Krebs cycle in more intricate detail than 99 percent of physicians, and got stressed when they couldn't "make their doctors understand" something that seemed so clear to them.

They could rattle off the nutritional content of anything from memory. And then stress over it.

In short, they threw their lives into healthy living with the same levels of commitment and energy that had characterized everything else that they'd ever done.

And then they dropped dead.

So...

I can only draw two really clear conclusions from my observations.

One is to avoid stress. I am convinced that stress is the biggest killer in America. More than cholesterol, LDLs, smoking, guns, cars, and everything else put together. I don't know the exact mechanisms by which stress kills, nor do I believe that science fully understands the connection between stress and death. But I know that stress kills.

The other conclusion I draw is that it's healthy to eat stuff that was very recently alive. I don't think it matters very much whether that stuff used to be a plant, a cow, a deer, a rabbit, a pig, a bird, a fish, or almost anything else that's alive. I think a healthy human body can subsist on any or all of these things, and which ones a person chooses doesn't make a whole lot of difference -- unless they stress about it.

So there you have it: -- my philosophy of longevity: Avoid stress, and eat stuff that was very recently alive.

-Rich
Click to expand...
Rich, have you written any books? If not, you should! I really enjoy reading your posts. And I agree with you about the stress.
 
Shhh don't talk about stress being bad, or our minions might stop working themselves to death.
 
nddons said:
Rich, have you written any books? If not, you should! I really enjoy reading your posts. And I agree with you about the stress.
Click to expand...

+10 on the future "Rich's Guide to Living Long and Healthy by Reducing Stress and Killing Stuff Right Before You Eat It."

I'm putting in my advance order.
 
nddons said:
Rich, have you written any books? If not, you should! I really enjoy reading your posts. And I agree with you about the stress.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I've written a few tech manuals over the years; a few magazine articles; and a few ghost re-writes of scholarly papers, theses, and dissertations written by others; but otherwise, no.

-Rich
 
What's the point of longer life if it's a life you don't enjoy? Perhaps we are too worried about quantity of life versus quality of life. I've tried going meatless before and it made me very very sad for weeks at a time.
 
Pi1otguy said:
What's the point of longer life if it's a life you don't enjoy? Perhaps we are too worried about quantity of life versus quality of life. I've tried going meatless before and it made me very very sad for weeks at a time.
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Your problem. I haven't eaten meat in three decades, and I'm a happy boy. I eat really good food, and want so much of it that I need to go on a diet. I guess it helps to be able to cook, which most people really can't. Meat has sufficient favor to cover up the sins of many poor chefs.
 
steingar said:
Your problem. I haven't eaten meat in three decades, and I'm a happy boy. I eat really good food, and want so much of it that I need to go on a diet. I guess it helps to be able to cook, which most people really can't. Meat has sufficient favor to cover up the sins of many poor chefs.
Click to expand...

More steak for me.
 
steingar said:
Your problem. I haven't eaten meat in three decades, and I'm a happy boy. I eat really good food, and want so much of it that I need to go on a diet. I guess it helps to be able to cook, which most people really can't. Meat has sufficient favor to cover up the sins of many poor chefs.
Click to expand...

Yeah you seem real happy with that whole Dodge loves farmers screw the rest of us rant you went on.
 
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