'Good' Carbs To the Rescue
Another major paper, The Washington Times, expounds upon new research that demonstrates the benefits of a plant-based diet. It does include a caution from the vice president of health care and education for the ADA that the most recent study, from the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine (which pursues animal-friendly medical research and advocates a plant-based diet), is relatively small at 99 subjects (split between the ADA diet and a low-fat vegan diet), and that further research needs to be done to see how this can be expanded to a larger population on an ongoing basis.
The study did find that a vegan diet is more effective than the ADA's standard dietary advice in lowering weight, though both had an effect on cholesterol and blood sugar. I imagine when the study is published Thursday in the journal Diabetes Care, we'll find that PCRM's vegan diet was even more effective in those two areas, though the 4 month trial doesn't really give subjects enough time to see the long-term effects of those diets.
In the long-run, I've noticed amazing effects on my own cholesterol. It was kind of exciting seeing my doctor's expression when he looked at my results: an LDL/HDL ratio of 1.24 (HDL/"good": 57 mg/dl, LDL/"bad": 78 mg/dl), with a total cholesterol of 138. Triglycerides were a mere 53 mg/dl.
For the sake of reference, the current American College of Cardiology (ACC) recommendations call for:
HDL cholesterol > 45: men (> 55: women)
LDL cholesterol < 90
Total cholesterol < 150
Triglycerides < 150
Like many people who have adopted an entirely plant-based diet, some of the study's subjects found the adjustment challenging, but ultimately well worth it:
Learning to go vegan takes effort, time and some sacrifice, however. Vance Warren, 36, a retired District police officer, learned this while participating in the study.For many, including myself, eliminating cheese from the table was the hardest, but I agree that I don't miss it now, either. These days it's all I can do to bring myself to eat an order of onion rings and barbecue sauce when I'm feeling particularly inclined toward greasy food.
"I know the difference between a Morton's steak and a tofu steak," says Warren, who lost more than 70 pounds during the study and reduced the medication he must take to control his blood sugar. "It's like the difference between a Mercedes and a Toyota. The hardest thing for me was giving up the chicken wings . . . but I really don't miss them now."
Tags: plant-based | diet | veganism | Dean Ornish | PCRM
Posted by Eric @ 10:45 PM | Permalink|
4 comments
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4 Comments:
a vegan diet is theoretically okay since I'm lactose intolerant and can't stand eggs and like tofu even less.
The problem is, every time I've tried a vegetarian, complex carbohydrate diet, my weight has gone up, I am more hungry than on any other diet, and my triglycerides go up.
I find I do best on high-quality meats, fruit, and the minimum grains/beans I can get away with.
FYI, if you look at your teeth, the teeth are the teeth of an omnivore (eater of meat and grains) and that's what our biology is built to handle. carnivore or vegetarian diets are outside of our natural range.
(anonymous only because I have no desire for yet another account.)
Doesn't mean you can't post your name at the end...
At any rate, the point of an omnivorous diet is that one can get by with a variety of different foods, which is biologically a very adaptive orientation. However, it is quite clear scientifically that a healthy vegetarian or near-vegetarian diet is one of the healthiest modern diets we can consume.
As for your health problems, I'm not privy to your medical records, your nutritional and dietary intake, and so on, but your results sound uncommon (quite the reverse), and may be the result of poor planning.
You grew up eating a meat-based diet, and had years to learn how it's done. Successfully going veg isn't just a matter of taking the meat out of your diet and hoping for the best, but rather an entirely new way of looking at food, so it's important to learn healthy vegetarian cooking pay attention to proper nutrition, like you hopefully did when you were younger, until it's second nature.
You're welcome to try to teach me something I don't know, but you're going to have to go deeper than "your teeth are the teeth of an omnivore." At least you know better than to suggest we're carnivores. I can't even begin talking to those people until they do some real research.
as for adding my name, quite right, (name here's Eric as well)
omnivore means you need a mixture of plant and animal foods. That's what our teeth, preliminary digestive system (salivary), stomach, intestinal etc.. I will try to get some specific references on the the digestive system, enzymes etc. from a friend who is in Oxford educated Ph.D. in animal physiology. Hope that will be enough of an expert for you. :-)
I've been paying attention for the past 30 years and virtually all of the this-diet-is-good studies have come from suspect sources on both sides the fence. So I will view this particular study also great suspicion as well as the doctors for veganism study that the upcoming.
I practiced a vegetarian diet as best I could. I ate whole grains, beans and rice, lettuce based salads, all in proportion supposedly providing a balanced diet. In all, rather a boring diet. Most of the vegetarian recipes I've encountered (including those from dedicated vegans) compensate for the limited palette by adding a pretty ghastly mixture of spices.
as for my health, yes, I am pretty anomalous. I went to a triglycerides clinic and the high triglycerides prompted me to try the vegetarian diet. I went from something like 425 to 650 in a matter of weeks. When I added meat back into the diet, my triglycerides went back to the low four hundreds. When I tried an Atkins style diet, my triglycerides went down under 200. But the Atkins style diet is also pretty repulsive even for a dedicated omnivore like myself so that was unsustainable.
a diversion; I've noticed that the spices used in vegetarian cooking are extremely sharp and don't mellow the same way they do when cooked with animal fats. There is definitely a different chemistry with vegetarian cooking and so far, it really doesn't taste good yet.
this issue of spice use is different from the what the palette is accustomed to. There's clearly a different, harsher spice flavor profile with vegetarian cooking. (And believe me, I know my cooking spices.)
my suspicion is that the reason for the spices in vegetarian cooking is the same as cooking meats. Spices were used to preserve food as well as cover up the flavor of food that is slightly spoiled. This implies that in vegetarian cooking spices are used to cover up what would normally be unpalatable.
For an example of how animal fats and proteins modify spice flavor, try cooking Chinese five spice into a ground beef or chicken mixture. Then try the same five spice in a grain mixture. In the grain mixture, the five spice will be much sharper and harsher and have a very unpleasant aftertaste. In contrast, when cooked in beef or chicken, five spice mellows, the sharpness goes away but the essential flavors remain as a pleasant complement to the flavors of the meat.
I discovered this aspect of spices by using five spice in a hamburger and also flavoring steamed sweet potatoes. Side by side, the difference was amazing.
another example is the difference between vegetarian chili and meat based chili. Again the cumin and chilies are a much sharper part of the flavor spectrum. And for some reason vegetarian chili seems to cause more heartburn to the point where my wife refuses to eat it.
a few examples of the food chemistry not being right:
fake cheese. been eating it for years because of lactose intolerance. Flavor wise, a small bit of cheese in a sandwich or salad is wonderful. But not wonderful enough to compensate for the side effects of lactaid.
fake cheese, has some of the mouth feel but has a heavy soy like aftertaste which is quite unpleasant unless it is buried under the flavors of other foods and then, what's the point. Additionally, fake cheese has a very narrow flavor range especially in contrast to all of the wonderful things that bugs and milk can do to each other.
fake ice cream: Way too sweet, soy aftertaste, barely acceptable mouth feel.
soy milk/rice milk: whoever invented these fake milks should be staked out on and anthill and covered in them. Horribly sweet, horrible after taste. Absolutely no redeeming qualities. seven up has less sugar than your typical rice or soy milk or at the very least, less ghastly sweet. and parents worry about the children eating too much refined sugar when they feed them rice syrup dissolved in water.
Tofu: can never say enough bad things about tofu. it has a weird mixture of absolute no taste and absolutely hideous aftertaste.
Advocates claim it picks up the flavor of the spices around it but if you have any discrimination in your taste buds, you will clearly see that it doesn't. the spices stay on the outside and don't penetrate the inside. you can't chew it and you don't want to swallow it whole.
I believe tofu is potentially is the biggest dividing line between vegetarianism and everyone else. If we can eliminate tofu and these other products listed above from the world, maybe more people would adopt vegetarianism. (seriously)
Man, that was a long comment. I can't respond to it all, but you do prove the point that people are different.
I don't mind soymilk or tofu at all, though it did take me time to get used to certain "vegetarian" foods when I quit eating animal products "cold turkey." There's not a chance I'd try your experiment, because I will never eat meat again. There's no point.
As for eating a healthy veg diet without soy products, it can be done, as many soy allergic vegetarians have found. I enjoy the convenience of it, and will continue to eat tofu when it's the best option available to me, and will continue to use soy creamer in my coffee (until I finally give that habit up). I have been thinking about switching my soymilk to almond or rice milk for cereal, but I lean toward oatmeal and other breakfasts anyway. And, again, a little soy is not a problem.
Finally, w/r/t the omnivore thing, you may have missed where I agreed we are omnivorous, but I maintain that a plant-based diet is healthier than a meat-based diet. All modern studies, regardless of their funding, appear to point toward this as a fact.
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