Quote :

"risk of developing Type I diabetes is strongly correlated with the consumption of cow's milk by infants."

You shouldn't be giving cow milk to infants in the fist place.

1/25/2011 9:05:33 PM

I'll just leave this on the table.

http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/

1/26/2011 7:04:29 AM

^^ this

^ she writes well and she's cute...so i'll assume she's right



[Edited on January 26, 2011 at 7:52 AM. Reason : also, she called campbell the fuck out]

1/26/2011 7:50:50 AM

Quote :

"http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/"

I find this a meaningful contribution to my knowledge. However, some parts of this critique are... frustrating.

In the detailed analysis she goes into many factors very specifically, and this is a little bit of where she looses me. The critical claims to debunk include an overall correlation between animal protein intake and all chronic diseases, with cholesterol perhaps being the most important intermediary between the two. This is a big picture. The fundamental perspective that both The China Study author and the blogger agree about is that isolating individual actors and their effect on an individual disease is a flawed approach and that the entire system as a whole needs to be considered.

She easy enough debunks a direct correlation between plant protein and cholesterol, but leaves me with this painfully unsatisfying statement.

Quote :

"Nor is the link between animal food consumption and cholesterol levels always as strong as Campbell implies. For instance, despite eating such massive amounts of animal foods, Tuoli county had the same average cholesterol level as the near-vegan Shanyang county, and a had a slightly lower cholesterol than another near-vegan county called Taixing. (Both Shanyang and Taixing consumed less than 1 gram of animal protein per day, on average.) Clearly, the relationship between animal food consumption and blood cholesterol isn’t always linear, and other factors play a role in raising or lowering levels."

I'm like... and... and...

The entire point of the data from the study is that it shows
a) vastly different lifestyle and diet patterns between populations and
b) vastly different incidence of all the interested diseases

Her analysis fails the goal of providing any model that explains the outputs (health as measured by an array of metrics) with the inputs (lifestyle and diet). I feel like if she was actually pressed to provide explanation for the differences between the regions, she would come up with mostly a redressed version of what the original China Study conclusions were. But maybe I'm wrong about this, and she would instead leave us with "it's complicated", and that it can't be ascertained from the data. This would be disheartening to be sure, since the entire point was that this was the most complete and useful data we have.

1/26/2011 12:42:14 PM

i was under the impression that "it's complicated" IS her point and her main reason for being frustrated with campbell's research

she can demonstrate how, in this case, cause and effect is tenuous at best...i think her beef with campbell (hah!) is that he took spotty data and realized he could make some money from it

the data isn't false, of course, but it seems a bit too simplistic for his "concrete" findings to be anything but a suggestion

the problem with nutrition in regards to a person's diet is that there are so many uncontrolled (or unrecognized) factors that play into it...campbell (and those who subscribe to his opinion) put far too much stock in the results of this one study, but he's making (at least a little) bank off it

1/26/2011 1:02:41 PM

Quote :

"i was under the impression that "it's complicated" IS her point and her main reason for being frustrated with campbell's research"

this

(combined with the fact that he claims it's basically clear that "animal products kill you")

Quote :

"This would be disheartening to be sure, since the entire point was that this was the most complete and useful data we have."

it's an epidemiological study. you can't expect to glean definitive conclusions from it.

[Edited on January 26, 2011 at 2:57 PM. Reason : afsd]

1/26/2011 2:56:24 PM

uhhh you need meat. there are certain nutrients you cannot obtain from any plant source. humans DEFINITELY did not originally evolve on a 'meatless' diet.

1/26/2011 3:59:09 PM

This is pretty cool (and scary/shocking for vegetarians):

http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/01/06/vegetarians-and-heart-disease

Here is what's important:

Quote :

"Of course, this isn’t the first study to poke holes the claim that meat-avoiders have special protection against heart disease. A 2005 study conducted in China rounded up some long-term vegetarians (6 to 40 years of meatlessness)—including many religious vegetarians—and compared their heart disease markers against an omnivorous control group. Apart from eating less saturated fat, protein, and cholesterol, the vegetarians had nutrient intakes similar to those of their omni friends. The surprising results? The vegetarians had significantly thicker arterial walls (p<0.0001), reduced flow-mediated dilation (a predictor of cardiovascular events) (p<0.0001), higher blood pressure (p<0.05), and higher triglycerides (p<0.05) than the omnivores. (According to the paper, the raised blood pressure might be related to some popular high-sodium vegetarian foods such as processed protein food substitutes, fake oyster sauce, and tomato paste.) In the researchers’ multivariate statistical models, vegetarianism had the strongest association with both artery thickness and diminished flow-mediated dilation out of all the variables documented—including age, gender, and triglyceride levels. As might be expected, the vegetarians also had lower B12 levels and higher homocysteine than the control group—but even after adjusting for these, vegetarianism remained strongly linked with less-healthy hearts. The researchers concluded with this: In summary, contrary to common belief, vegetarians, at least in the Chinese, might have accelerated atherosclerosis and abnormal arterial endothelial function, compared with omnivore control subjects. The increased risk could only be partially explained by their higher blood pressure, triglyceride, homocysteine, and lower vitamin B12 concentrations. A little alarming, no? My guess is that these vegetarians got such a lousy report card because they didn’t make all the positive health changes most Western vegetarians make when they forgo flesh—but rather, replaced meat with processed foods, ate more carbohydrates and polyunsaturated plant fats, and failed to get enough B12 (resulting in higher homocysteine). This is what happens when you simply pluck meat out of your diet and fill the void with plant-based substitutes: the Healthy Vegetarian image becomes a lot less rosy. No doubt some vegetarians would dismiss this study because the participants “did vegetarianism wrong” by not supplementing B12, not eating enough fruit and vegetables, consuming too much salt, and failing to provide daily offerings to the Arugula God. But if that’s the case, one could argue that all the meat eaters in the studies supporting vegetarianism just “did omnivorism wrong” for similar reasons. This is a good study because neither the vegetarians nor the omnivores seemed particularly health conscious. It’s rare that we get a level playing field like that."

[Edited on January 26, 2011 at 4:51 PM. Reason : ]

1/26/2011 4:43:16 PM

Quote :

"uhhh you need meat."

100% incorrect

Quote :

"there are certain nutrients you cannot obtain from any plant source."

true, but irrelevant

Quote :

"humans DEFINITELY did not originally evolve on a 'meatless' diet."

considering the species as a whole, this is 100% correct

1/26/2011 9:36:06 PM

Quote :

"i buy the organic valley stuff, i don't drink enough milk to mind the price and having grown up with milk from the grandparents dairy i can't stand the taste of the normal stuff. i used to buy maple view but i think their milk has hormones and antibiotics and i try to stay away from that. "

all milk has hormones in it. it is natural. if you are talking about the use of rBST, i don't know if maple view uses it, but not many dairies do anymore. besides that, it has been proven that there is no difference in the levels of BST in milk from cows given the shots and those not given them. (it is a naturally occurring hormone.)

NO MILK HAS ANTIBIOTICS IN IT.
none. zilch. zero. The FDA has a zero tolerance for antibiotic residues in milk. Every single tank of milk from a farm has a sample taken before it is loaded on the truck to go the processing plant. Once at the plant, the truck is sampled before it can be unloaded. If that truckload has antibiotics in it, it is never unloaded at the plant and isn't used. Not only that, but the farmer whose sample is positive for antibiotics has to purchase the entire truckload.

As far as using antibiotics in the herd of cows, I sure hope they do. If an animal is sick, antibiotics can make them better. I mean that's just basic animal welfare.

Quote :

"You shouldn't be giving cow milk to infants in the fist place."

Exactly. This is one of the reasons that the sale of raw milk is illegal in a lot of states, because people are dumb. If you have a functioning immune system, raw milk isn't going to hurt you. But, babies shouldn't drink raw milk and neither should pregnant women or somebody with AIDS.

[Edited on January 27, 2011 at 5:06 PM. Reason : durr]

1/27/2011 5:04:47 PM

Quote :

"Exactly. This is one of the reasons that the sale of raw milk is illegal in a lot of states, because people are dumb. If you have a functioning immune system, raw milk isn't going to hurt you. But, babies shouldn't drink raw milk and neither should pregnant women or somebody with AIDS."

In which case, grownup trying to obtain raw milk is completely reasonable. I know the government feels like they have to protect stupid people from themselves. Doesn't mean I'm not spiteful and bitter about it.

What age is it considered safe to begin drinking milk?

1/27/2011 10:45:21 PM

^^ they only test for 4 or 5 antibiotics, its not a full screening, the industry is fighting the more in depth tests because they add time.

1/27/2011 11:38:30 PM

Quote :

"What age is it considered safe to begin drinking milk?"

21. i like the idea that you can go to war before you're allowed to drink milk

1/28/2011 6:52:53 AM

We let our young adults die for our nation before they can have a glass of milk

1/28/2011 9:52:51 AM

^^^^ Most doctors recommend waiting until the baby is at least a year old before introducing cow's milk.

Quote :

"NO MILK HAS ANTIBIOTICS IN IT. none. zilch. zero. The FDA has a zero tolerance for antibiotic residues in milk."

Even if true (like rbrthwrd said, they're not testing for every one used on the farm), my concern is more on what the overuse of antibiotics on farms is doing to the environment as a whole. Of course if an animal is sick with a bacterial infection, antibiotics can be good. But often in industrial farming antibiotics are being used too much, whether from the conditions the animals are kept in or misuse of the drugs.

Same reasoning why I don't use anti-bacterial soap and shit. I don't need to be contributing to the creation of super bugs.

1/28/2011 10:01:12 AM