Steve Leckie's Bookmarks tagged vegetarian →  View Popular

Ornish and other critics say the study doesn’t answer concerns about the Atkins diet — whether consistently eating all that fatty food leads to long-term health problems.

The researchers found that none of the health measures was worse for women on the Atkins plan, but said potential long-term problems could not be identified in so short a study.

They all have vastly different distributions of carbs, proteins and fats.”

“What matters are the calories in your food.”

But critics argue that the study — to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association — isn’t a fair comparison because by the end, few women were following any of the diets strictly, although those in the Atkins group came closest.

The research “had a good concept and incredibly pathetic execution,” Zone diet creator Barry Sears told The Associated Press.

“It’s a lot easier to follow a diet that tells you to eat bacon and brie than to eat predominantly fruits and vegetables,” added Ornish.

We are still vegetarian and always will be (Ms. Fallon's assertion that vegetarians are atttempting to take heavan by storm is indicative of her many biases). However, using information from this book, we learned the importance of saturated fats, animal source proteins, lower carb food choices, the benefit of fermented foods, and the "conspiracy" of soy.

All of these things have profoundly affected the way we live and feel. There are several health complaints we had that have disappeared completely simply through the above mentioned changes. Things like mucous (throat and nose), bloating, lethargy, skin irritation, joint pain etc.

OK, so what's contradictory? We're supposed to eat organic this-and-that, use sea salt, stay away from deadly rice cakes... but we should drink raw milk, because Pasteurization is bad. Just find a good farmer to get it from so you don't get brucellosis. There are reasons why most (if not all) agriculture agencies in the US and Canada warn against drinking raw milk: e. coli, salmonella, campylobacter, and other nasty bugs that can make you very sick. Even the EU, which is looking positively at raw milk in cheese, has a problem with drinking the stuff.

Then there's water. It's bad too. Don't bother trying to find out if the water supply in YOUR community has a problem, water is just not good. So what should you drink if you're thirsty after a hot day working on the Collective? Why a tall glass of a lacto-fermented beverage. Yum!

The authors want to return to a Neverland of old America, where men worked in the fields and came home to eat organ meats like brains, livers, and kidneys with gusto; there was no refrigeration and people ate pickled and fermented produce; and people cooked with goose fat instead of corn oil (another toxin).

The recipes will break your pocketbook if they don't kill you first.

the presentation she uses is so confusing, and worse, loaded with pseudo-science and poor reasoning, that I don't feel I can take too many of her assertions on faith.

The main thrust of her theory seems to be two-fold - first that pure, natural animal products are a normal part of the human diet and second that any kind of non-traditional food processing (any factory foods) are bad. OK, I can go with that. I know many people would disagree with the first part of her theory, and even if you do agree, it's REALLY hard to find pure pasture-fed animal products, even here in the Midwest. When you can find them, they are so expensive.

Not that I could even try to hit everything she covers in her book, but here are a few specific things that gave me pause -

- she says vegetarians 'Because grains and pulses [that's beans for us Americans] eaten alone cannot supply complete amino acids, vegetarians must take care to balance the two at every meal.' I didn't think ANYONE still believed that.

- she refers often to the nutritional work of a Dr. Weston Price. He's a dentist. OK, that doesn't necessarily mean he DOESN'T know much about nutrition (and keep in mind I wouldn't automatically assume any medical doctor knows anything about nutrition either), but it doesn't mean he DOES know anything either, yet she's clearly using his title of Dr. to try to give his words more weight.