Anarchism on YouTube is Turning against Veganism
Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 7:43 am
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.
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.