Anarchism on YouTube is Turning against Veganism

[teo123]

Hey, guys!
So, ReasonTV, one of the most popular anarcho-capitalist channels on YouTube has relatively recently made a video that can be seen as being addressed against veganism/vegetarianism. You can see it here:
https://youtu.be/kEc-x7jrvMQ
I've known about that video for quite a while now, but I've watched it only yesterday, because Optima ISP is going to give me Internet at home in a few days, so I guess I can waste cellular Internet on that kind of stuff. I am in Osijek now, you can get 4G signal here, so it's possible to watch videos over cellular network here.
I usually like ReasonTV videos, but I think they've gotten things wildly wrong here.
So, it's primarily stating that the general recommendation, supposedly given to us by the government, that we should avoid saturated fat, is not based on good science, because supposedly it is only supported by epidemiological studies, and not by controlled studies, and that it's only supported by a few epidemiological studies in 1950s. The most obviously wrong thing with this statement is that, well, the idea that saturated fat cause heart disease dates back to the second half of the 19th century, and is supported by quite a few studies done back then. Also, what I think is very important to understand is that improperly done controlled studies are worth far less than properly done epidemiological studies. The controlled studies done in 1950s, as Michael Greger says, and earlier studies generally controlled to include both people with low cholesterol and people with high blood cholesterol. Since those modern studies that video is referencing don't do that, their conclusions are quite a bit irrelevant, and, in fact, they shouldn't have even passed the peer-review. They are either done by people who are very ignorant (hopefully) or by people who want to make ignorant people doubt well-accepted nutritional science.
It also claims that the recommendation to eat more vegetables is not science-based, which is an even more extraordinary assertion, because, as far as I know, there haven't been any studies to contradict the notion that Vitamin K, primarily found in vegetables, protects against heart-disease.
It also claims we eat less animal food than we did in the early 20th century, because it was supposedly cheaper to buy animal products than fruits and vegetables, and that's, if you ask me, a very weird assertion. Especially considering that in the 1930s in Croatia it was often stated that the reason poor people are more likely to get TBC is because they eat less meat, so they were supposedly more likely to be deficient in Vitamin D (total nonsense, of course, but it's evidence that poor people in the 20th century didn't consume a lot of animal products).
It also uses the fact that heart disease haven't significantly decreased as we supposedly eat less meat and eat more fruits and vegetables as evidence that meat and lack of vegetables in diets isn't to blame for heart-disease, and that's, if you ask me, an anti-vaxxer level nonsense. It ignores that people in the 20th century simply died of other illnesses that can be cured today before they lived long enough to get heart-disease.
It also claims much of the research in nutritional science is politically motivated. Such statements are extraordinarily dubious, and you can see this kind of claims in every pseudoscience. First of all, why would mainstream nutrition be politically motivated not to support the government policies of subsidizing the meat industry? It makes even less sense than the claims that global warming theory is politically motivated. At least with global warming theory, you can see the incentives on both sides of the story. But that's not the case with the claim that saturated fat cause heart disease, yet alone with the claim that vitamin K protects from heart-disease (which they also seem to imply is false). You see this statement in linguistics all the time: those who support the Nostratic Hypothesis usually don't even respond to the arguments made by the opposition, they usually simply claim their ideas are not accepted because linguists are supposedly influenced by right-wing politics, and the Nostratic Hypothesis was supposedly first proposed by the Soviet linguists (in reality, almost identical ideas date back to the 19th century, and always fail to meet the burden of proof). But this is worse than the Nostratic Hypothesis, this is tantamount to the claim that the existence of the Indo-European language family is accepted only because linguists supposedly like the idea of colonialism.
In short, I think ReasonTV is low in information about nutritional science, and is full of misinformation about it.
It's so unfortunate that video has so much more likes than dislikes.

[brimstoneSalad]

Wow, what a strange and disappointing video. You covered the issues pretty well.

There's also this issue of people dismissing evidence that doesn't meet a certain standard that's not possible in nutrition research -- we can't gather people together, lock them up for decades, and make them eat certain diets. We can do that with rats, and have, but these people throw out animal studies too because they don't like the conclusions. Observational studies and mechanistic evidence can work well together to come to very strong and reliable conclusions. When that agrees with studies on our closest relatives as well? That's very strong concordance of evidence.

Yeah, nutrition science is softer than physics. But just because it's not of the same hardness level doesn't mean experts should be dismissed. If it *disagreed* with physics somewhere then sure, but I don't see any conflict between nutrition science and physics. Calories in vs. calories out is very hard science and agrees perfectly with physics. Other aspects of weight loss and disease prevention, on the other hand, physics doesn't have much to say about. No reason we shouldn't trust experts in nutrition science who are very clear about the role of saturated fat and heart disease and the importance of eating vegetables.

[teo123]

Wow, what a strange and disappointing video. You covered the issues pretty well.

There's also this issue of people dismissing evidence that doesn't meet a certain standard that's not possible in nutrition research -- we can't gather people together, lock them up for decades, and make them eat certain diets. We can do that with rats, and have, but these people throw out animal studies too because they don't like the conclusions. Observational studies and mechanistic evidence can work well together to come to very strong and reliable conclusions. When that agrees with studies on our closest relatives as well? That's very strong concordance of evidence.

Yeah, nutrition science is softer than physics. But just because it's not of the same hardness level doesn't mean experts should be dismissed. If it *disagreed* with physics somewhere then sure, but I don't see any conflict between nutrition science and physics. Calories in vs. calories out is very hard science and agrees perfectly with physics. Other aspects of weight loss and disease prevention, on the other hand, physics doesn't have much to say about. No reason we shouldn't trust experts in nutrition science who are very clear about the role of saturated fat and heart disease and the importance of eating vegetables.

I think that people who use nutritional science to argue against veganism aren't actually holding nutritional science to a impossibly high standard, I think they are holding it to a double standard. They are denying that saturated fats lead to heart disease because of some studies failing to confirm that... but they will accept the notion that animal omega-3-acids protect against heart disease, despite there being, AFAIK, no study that confirms that. It's somewhat similar to Flat-Earthism, the Earth being round is not accepted despite mountains of evidence (ships disappearing bottom first...), but the Universal Acceleration, which supposedly accelerates the light upwards, is accepted without evidence.

And, maybe I am wrong, but I think this whole discussion about saturated fats leading to cardiovascular disease is somewhat of a red-herring. I mean, even if saturated fats didn't lead to heart disease, vegan diet would probably still be the healthiest diet. For example, cow's milk contains high amounts of calcium, but contains little Vitamin K. The same is true, although to a smaller extent, for eggs. Calcium without Vitamin K is worse than useless: it doesn't go into your bones, it goes either into your kidneys or into the cholesterol in your blood, and causes it to calcify. So, indeed, even if saturated fats didn't matter, milk and eggs would still be causing atherosclerosis, right?

[teo123]

I don't know if you've seen it, @brimstoneSalad, I've posted a video about vegetarianism on YouTube. As of now, in the comment section, I've gotten two negative comments and one relatively neutral comment. Do you have some comments about it? I've responded to some of your previous comments about what would be the content of that video here.

I've also started a thread about the saturated fat "controversy" on another forum.

[brimstoneSalad]

The role of calcium consumption in heart disease is very speculative, and probably not a thing as AFAIK it only looks like a thing because of the failure to control for saturated fat.
However, you are right that IF saturated fat isn't causing it, then there's a probably pretty strong correlation to calcium consumption without any obvious confounding variables.

The presence of calcium IN blockages isn't necessarily very meaningful. Calcium reacts with lipids to form insoluble compounds, but we wouldn't really expect calcium ions to be a limiting factor in the reaction, they're absorbed and released to control the overall amount in the blood anyway so any large deviations wouldn't be normal.

We'll see if anything more comes out on it, but it would be kind of surprising.

[teo123]

The role of calcium consumption in heart disease is very speculative, and probably not a thing as AFAIK it only looks like a thing because of the failure to control for saturated fat.

Then how come do studies show that calcium supplements increase the rate of heart disease?

In men supplemental calcium intake was associated with an elevated risk of CVD death (RR>1000 vs. 0 mg/day =1.20, 95% CI: 1.05–1.36), more specifically with heart disease death (RR=1.19, 95% CI: 1.03–1.37),

Croatian media were recently reporting about a study funded by the Croatian Ministry of Health which found similar, but even more dramatical results.
https://net.hr/magazin/zdravlje/dodaci- ... ogu-ubiti/

[brimstoneSalad]

The role of calcium consumption in heart disease is very speculative, and probably not a thing as AFAIK it only looks like a thing because of the failure to control for saturated fat.

Then how come do studies show that calcium supplements increase the rate of heart disease?

In men supplemental calcium intake was associated with an elevated risk of CVD death (RR>1000 vs. 0 mg/day =1.20, 95% CI: 1.05–1.36), more specifically with heart disease death (RR=1.19, 95% CI: 1.03–1.37),

Some studies have seen associations. Interestingly, in that one there was no association in women or with dietary consumption, and there were many factors they were unable to control for. Given the difficult to explain outcome it's hard to believe there's not something else going on there.

They did find that the association only held true for smokers, which could be an indication:

In the subgroup analyses, smoking status was a significant effect modifier, with the adverse effect of supplement calcium only observed among smokers. Smoking can cause a wide range of detrimental effects on the cardiovascular system, and act synergistically with other risk factors to substantially increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases 30.

It's possible that something is chemically happening with something from the cigarettes and the calcium, but there's no solid theory there.

The point is, we don't really know what's going on there, but when results like that are so weird with no obvious explanation a simple causal relationship is unlikely.
We do know enough to say don't smoke, though, regardless of calcium supplementation.

Croatian media were recently reporting about a study funded by the Croatian Ministry of Health which found similar, but even more dramatical results.
https://net.hr/magazin/zdravlje/dodaci- ... ogu-ubiti/

That doesn't sound very credible. The conclusions are far too certain and dramatic, and it seems like they're claiming to have gotten this information from something other people haven't found such correlations in.
I'd need to read the actual study, which they don't seem to link to... which makes it even less credible.
If you can find it I'll take a look.

[teo123]

The role of calcium consumption in heart disease is very speculative, and probably not a thing as AFAIK it only looks like a thing because of the failure to control for saturated fat.

Then how come do studies show that calcium supplements increase the rate of heart disease?

In men supplemental calcium intake was associated with an elevated risk of CVD death (RR>1000 vs. 0 mg/day =1.20, 95% CI: 1.05–1.36), more specifically with heart disease death (RR=1.19, 95% CI: 1.03–1.37),

Some studies have seen associations. Interestingly, in that one there was no association in women or with dietary consumption, and there were many factors they were unable to control for. Given the difficult to explain outcome it's hard to believe there's not something else going on there.

They did find that the association only held true for smokers, which could be an indication:

In the subgroup analyses, smoking status was a significant effect modifier, with the adverse effect of supplement calcium only observed among smokers. Smoking can cause a wide range of detrimental effects on the cardiovascular system, and act synergistically with other risk factors to substantially increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases 30.

It's possible that something is chemically happening with something from the cigarettes and the calcium, but there's no solid theory there.

The point is, we don't really know what's going on there, but when results like that are so weird with no obvious explanation a simple causal relationship is unlikely.
We do know enough to say don't smoke, though, regardless of calcium supplementation.

Croatian media were recently reporting about a study funded by the Croatian Ministry of Health which found similar, but even more dramatical results.
https://net.hr/magazin/zdravlje/dodaci- ... ogu-ubiti/

That doesn't sound very credible. The conclusions are far too certain and dramatic, and it seems like they're claiming to have gotten this information from something other people haven't found such correlations in.
I'd need to read the actual study, which they don't seem to link to... which makes it even less credible.
If you can find it I'll take a look.

And why do you think it's that drinking milk increases the risk of heart-disease? Saturated fat obviously plays a minor role: replacing full-fat milk with low-fat milk doesn't significantly reduce the risk of heart disease.
I've always assumed net.hr was a credible and objective news-portal. Primarily because the other major Croatian news portal, index.hr, criticizes the government much more, and I've somehow always assumed that's a sign it's less credible. Though, when I think about it now, that doesn't seem like a reasonable assumption.

[brimstoneSalad]

And why do you think it's that drinking milk increases the risk of heart-disease? Saturated fat obviously plays a minor role: replacing full-fat milk with low-fat milk doesn't significantly reduce the risk of heart disease.

Low-fat milk (2%) is still pretty high in saturated fat. You're likely not seeing amazing returns in that replacement. People who eat more fat from once source are also probably eating less from another, so I'm wondering what kinds of controls are going on there.
Drinking milk compared to drinking what? Water? And not replacing it? Unlikely.

I'd need to read the studies you're talking about.

Even skim milk is a relatively high calorie sugary beverage. And even skim milk contains dietary cholesterol, which may have more of an effect than endogenously produced cholesterol due to oxidation or other chemical changes. There we know that consuming a large amount isn't much worse than consuming a small amount. Having 1/5th the cholesterol may just not matter in terms of effect since you're probably not absorbing so much of the extra.

It's like the evil comparison to B-12. Eating a lot more doesn't mean you're absorbing a lot more. So a glass of skim milk may be about the same as a glass of whole milk in terms of the burden of oxidized cholesterol it puts on your body. Only a glass of soy milk (or other plant milk) would actually be better.

It's a complex topic of ongoing research, though.

[teo123]

And why do you think it's that drinking milk increases the risk of heart-disease? Saturated fat obviously plays a minor role: replacing full-fat milk with low-fat milk doesn't significantly reduce the risk of heart disease.

Low-fat milk (2%) is still pretty high in saturated fat. You're likely not seeing amazing returns in that replacement. People who eat more fat from once source are also probably eating less from another, so I'm wondering what kinds of controls are going on there.
Drinking milk compared to drinking what? Water? And not replacing it? Unlikely.

I'd need to read the studies you're talking about.

Even skim milk is a relatively high calorie sugary beverage. And even skim milk contains dietary cholesterol, which may have more of an effect than endogenously produced cholesterol due to oxidation or other chemical changes. There we know that consuming a large amount isn't much worse than consuming a small amount. Having 1/5th the cholesterol may just not matter in terms of effect since you're probably not absorbing so much of the extra.

It's like the evil comparison to B-12. Eating a lot more doesn't mean you're absorbing a lot more. So a glass of skim milk may be about the same as a glass of whole milk in terms of the burden of oxidized cholesterol it puts on your body. Only a glass of soy milk (or other plant milk) would actually be better.

It's a complex topic of ongoing research, though.

So, you think articles like this are complete nonsense? Why?
https://www.dairynutrition.ca/scientifi ... f-evidence