Denise Minger reviews "Forks Over Knives" page

[bwhit]

“Forks Over Knives”: Is the Science Legit? (A Review and Critique) « Raw Food SOS: Troubleshooting on the Raw Food Diet

Worth the read for sure.

[Catherine]

thanks for that! My obnoxious vegetarian boss was just crowing about this stupid movie the other day. Now i don't have to watch it! I didn't make it all thru the review, but i did scan the comments & saw a familiar avatar from Stabsville.

[bwhit]

It's worth making it through when you have the time. The most easily refuted of all anti-meat arguments is the lumping of meat eating in with the SAD. As if a doughnut is the same as a Twinkie. The false choice comparing vegan eating and the SAD, I think there is another way.

[Catherine]

i don't really care anymore to try to convince anyone. Really. I've told all the people i care to about cutting grains, sugar, weird veg oil. If my improved cycling performance & obvious weightloss (i never ever thought i could get back to sub 120lbs) isn't enough to convince the people around me, i really don't care what they think. More vegans = more meat for me.

[bwhit]

Me too. But the logic fails are interesting to me.

[Stabby]

thanks for that! My obnoxious vegetarian boss was just crowing about this stupid movie the other day. Now i don't have to watch it! I didn't make it all thru the review, but i did scan the comments & saw a familiar avatar from Stabsville.

That's me! *stab stab*

I dunno what to say about these "plant-based" doctors and their views other than I respectfully disagree and do not think the logic of their argumentation is sound. Denise really says it all in all of her posts. Some of us have a higher standard for evidence than others, and some are hell-bent upon proving a certain conclusion. Some of these vegan docs will try to support their opinions with statistical correlations, when other statistical correlations contradict them - cherry picking. Like lookey here, there are some studies showing an association between red meat and colerectal cancer, and some folks have taken these as proof that you should eat a vegetarian diet, but there are new studies that show an inverse association with certain cooking techniques like baking. Meat consumption and cooking practices and t... [Eur J Clin Nutr. 2011] - PubMed - NCBI This is also in Australia which means it is grass-fed meat. Now of course I'm not going to be a knave and say that this is evidence that red meat protects against colerectal cancer, of course there are also controlled trials where a group eating a high meat diet had less DNA damage than the vegetarian group Effect of processed and red meat on endogenous nitrosation and DNA damage, and there are plausible biochemical mechanisms by which it could That Paleo Guy: Carnosine, Colons, and Cancer Anticarcinogens from fried ground beef: heat-... [Carcinogenesis. 1987] - PubMed - NCBI

And yet every one of these vegan docs will say "meat completely fucking causes colerectal cancer, this is proven, no arguing" and stick their fingers in their ears. It is a hypothesis and it -probably- isn't right, so what's with the crusade?

If somebody tells me that I need to eat a "plant-based" diet for health, I will simply inform them that what they are proposing is a hypothesis that is argued for by people who already act as though it is the absolute truth, and selectively present evidence of poor quality without logical rigor. They equivocate between types of meat, cooking techniques, and commit the correlation=causation fallacy, while ignoring contradictory evidence.

Of course most people don't know what that means! Nutrition is the science that people treat like orthodox religion, sigh. Oh well, at least we have Denise.

[MadelynMc]

I tried to watch the movie, for fairness sake, but I couldn't get past the part in the beginning where they vilified "refined, processed, and animal-based foods." One of these things is not like the other.