Dr. Shawn Baker on the dietary fiber myth

I was vegetarian and felt amazing and now I eat meat and my life sucks... so there's that

YMMV wrote:

Shawn held/holds the heavyweight 100m record of 13.4 sec from 2017. I don't follow rowing, and couldn't find a link with the records, so I don't know if Jeffrey broke this record. It appears the two are the top rowers in this category.

M50+ Heavyweight? This reminds me of Matt MF London's 6'0", 240 lb 400m "world record" or whatever he was claiming. Add on enough modifiers and we can all be record holders.

Hell, I'm pretty fat and slow at this point, but I just might be the 800m WR holder in the 33 and a half-year-old 210 lb weight class.

The standard American diet is 70% from plant sources. Meat is under 15% of the total calories. Most of the fat is from seed oils, especially soy. Since the beginning of the obesity epidemic in the '70s, beef consumption has dropped by over 40%, while oil consumption is up 350%. Soy oil consumption is up 600%.

The American obesity and health epidemic is fueled by plant sources, not meat. The Innuit and Massai have thrived in environmentally extreme conditions for millenia. Not a single vegan culture has existed for even a generation. The highest life expectancy in the world is a large urbanized population- Hong Kong. They also have the highest per capita meat consumption. The fact of the matter is that humans require meat and animal products for long-term health.

Here is an example of what steak and eggs for one's adult life span looks like at 72:

YMMV wrote:

Note: Dr. Baker, who eats an all-meat diet, recently broke the world rowing ergometer record for 50+ year olds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_TkbUXFrw

After four months on a "meat first" diet, I can confirm that my gut health is as perfect as I can ever imagine. Six decades of plant-based eating with high fiber was an unending drama of gut issues.

Just an FYI, an "N" of one is pretty much worthless. There are people that smoked till they were in their 90's, never got lung cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc. Does that mean that smoking is healthy? Hardly. Nor does it in this case mean that a high percentage of the population could go on a diet like that and not succumb to the diseases that most people succumb to when eating that way. He's only in his 50's. His prognosis is not good for the next 10 to 15 years, unless he's one of those people that genetically, he's lucky genetically. Which isn't common.

Anti-vaxers like meat. All of these idiot counter culture people should keep to themselves. We have studied cultures that live the longest and found that they eat a plant based diet with some high quality protein and no processed food. Those are the facts. Fruits and vegetables are where we get most of our vitamins and minerals.

https://draxe.com/blue-zones/

I agree that vegetable oil and highly processed carbs (i.e. added refined sugar) are quite unhealthy...and heavily consumed by most Americans. Thats why we promote a "whole food plant based diet"....whole grains, whole fruits and veggies. But your diet info on the standard American diet? You don't think that dairy/meat/eggs makes up more than 15% of the total calories for the standard American diet (it usually hovers around 35-35% fat)? Most Americans eat way too much protein IMO as well. I'm really doubting your grasp of what the average American eats and where their calories come from.... As far as "high carb vegetarians" doing well simply look at Blue Zone cultures: Okinawans, Loma Linda, CA etc. . Vegetarians and other high carb eaters have thrived for generations and centuries. This is nothing new in the past few decades (unlike Atkins). The Maasai and Inuits are quite unhealthy long term when looking at their populations as a whole. This is simply a fact. They did/do what they have to survive in very harsh climates (like many did over human evolution hundreds and thousands of years ago).....but that doesn't mean it is a good diet for longevity and ideal health for most people in most places at this day and age. I mean in desperate situations people had to resort to cannibalism order to survive. There is also the environmental concerns of efficient food production... Finally, I will leave you with this funny video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNVsSEsf4pM

Most of these fad diets are just too extreme. Thinking logically, the best diet is going to be one that's as unprocessed as possible, with good quality fresh ingredients and a variety of items.

The fear of meat as the highest quality source of nutrition is palpable in the same repetitive trolls on the topic: Sage, OldSMTCSLOB and Tyrone AnoReXXXing. Dogmatic thinking acts out of fear, innovative thinking acts out of curiosity and desire to improve.

I took up whole-food vegetarianism in 1973 in order to improve. My life declined slowly but steadily for a decade and a half before my health go so bad I had to return to (some) meat in order to stay out of a hospital (I had been to the ER enough times by age 30, and wasn't able to run after age 22 due to chronic injuries). Still I remained high-carb, high-plant based as most runners are for another few decades until it was clear my health had continued on a slower, but still serious decline. Only in the last ten, and especially the last four years of increasingly "meat-first" diet has my training, my sleep, my bloodwork, my health, my energy and my overall happiness been at the level that I feel all of us should experience as a baseline. People like Zack Bitter, Jeff Browning, Shawn Baker, Ted Naiman, Tim Noakes, Mark Cucuzzella and many others offer excellent examples of those who have continued to evolve and overcome challenges in this area to thrive and indeed triumph over the efforts of those stuck in the old dogma which has brought mainly disease and misery. Kudos to the lucky outliers who can thrive on high carbs past the age of 50, there probably are a few, although there are even more who have retired or dropped dead too early despite lifelong dedication as runners.

Vegans look sick.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=-5kBIURW1_A

Is sage approaching end stage Veganism?

https://youtu.be/EfMhBWP11dU

track chick wrote:

Most of these fad diets are just too extreme. Thinking logically, the best diet is going to be one that's as unprocessed as possible, with good quality fresh ingredients and a variety of items.

This sounds reasonable, but for many people who "eat clean" in this way, their health deteriorates after their late 40s especially after age 60. I have many friends in their 50s and 60s who are disciplined (not fat) and try to be active but persist in their conventionally "healthy" plant-based, higher-carb diets, and continue to experience increasing disability and cognitive decline. It is quite sad, really. They eschewed the sedentary ways of their parents, but are in many ways in worse shape at the same ages.

Fortunately, most younger people in their 20s and 30s have at least heard of alternatives such as keto and carnivore, and healthy varied-intensity training, so now have those options where before there were none widely known. I have hope that these younger cohorts will be able to realize and recognize the reality that we have been lied to for over 50 years when it comes to optimizing health and nutrition. Of course a few such as Sage who have made it their religion will die by their anti-meat flag rather than admit they may be off-track.

The ironic thing is that you say I am "religious" about my diet, but you are not? Seems like a double standard you think? Are "keto/paleo/low carb" people also not cultish/passionate about their diet like vegans/vegetarians? I'm sorry you had so many health problems in your 20s-40s...but again an "n=1" experiment is a horrible study and not proof of anything. You like to list out individuals as "proof", but I'm listing whole populations (that have actually lived for a long time for generations) that have thrived on a high carb, low fat diet (plant based).

I wonder how much of dietary success is simply genetics and luck of the draw with avoiding illness and injuries. Mental disposition, ambition, and life satisfaction certainly has to come into play as well.

You have guys that eat Keto and sing of its praises and look like super humans and then you have Sage Canaday who could get hammered on Vegan beer and outrun me on my best day. People on different diets live til 80 and look great and feel great and sometimes people who eat "perfectly" die of a heart attack or cancer before 60.

Spinach is roughly 50% protein. Plant based diets are not high carb. If you load up on vegetables and add a bit of high quality protein, your diet will be low carb. Meat eaters don’t want to admit that carbs come from from grains, primarily wheat in the us and from all of the added sugars in processed foods.

Generally whole plant foods is my bias, but in nature you have to get to the food before you can eat it, so I think running/walking is more important than what is hunted/gathered. Plus diversity is strength, people vary a lot. We live longer, I have doubts about lots of meat for longevity. Ecologically, with the huge human population, we should be eating less meat, I guess I am hypocritical here. Doctors don’t have to train in nutrition & if the OP is referencing a PhD in Nutrition that would be weird; nutritionists advocate for variety. Studies I’ve seen show our ancestors are far more fiber than us (not always willingly, but that created us).

15% is the percentage of actual meat and fish consumed. DAiry and eggs are a bit over 15%. The rest is plant-derived.

My N=1 that you disparage so easily is shared by thousands, who have had no voice until the internet. I could post well over 100 video testimonials of ex-vegans, all published just in the last year, but I won't because they mostly tell the same story as mine. Many or even most have gone 80-100% carnivore to repair the damage done by years of malnutrition on exclusively plant-based diets. Maybe they will heal enough to incorporate selected plant foods, as I have done very carefully. The fact is that plants do not want us to eat them and fight back through chemistry, including antinutrients that bind nutrients and make them non-bio-available. Spinach for instance has lots of iron on paper, but it is bound by oxalates and is an unhealthy food as a result, unless you want kidney stones and gut issues.

The entire diet, pharma and food industry is driven by profit and the status quo. It rivals "national defense" as a fear-based driver of extracting money from consumers and taxpayers. Plants can be leveraged massively for profit and cropped on a scale unimaginable for livestock,The perfect setup for corporate domination. This while producing health consequences that have turned "health care" into a massive machine of slow death, fully medicated and automated cradle to grave. Inflammation = profit, and the driver of inflammation is plant-based carbs and oils, neither of which is a dietary requirement, only a vehicle for malnutrition.

Dietary "science' as a result is a farce, based on bogus surveys and epidemiology with a myriad of confounding factors. "Blue zones" are a myth promoted to sell books, a diet and an ideology. Our diet was animal-centered for two million years, and it wasn't until the plow was invented in historical times that the environment started being wrecked and human nutrition began to decline. Fortunately, some of us are able to expand our thinking and experience to match our genetic inheritance. Until you have tried the full spectrum of eating, you will never be fully qualified to comment on a diet which is helping thousands. Your qualification to comment on carnivory is about as relevant as your advice on how to succeed at the 100m dash at a high level. You can quote all the crap "science" and stats you want, but you are still deeply uninformed.

Bro, I ate all meat for a while and couldn’t get a chubby. Added in some veggies and now I’m ‘Bonerrific’ if you know what I mean. Therefore can’t personally recommend all meat to any red-blooded male.

In fact no one should ever try it, based on my irrefutable experience.

No that is not correct. The science is not unanimous. There are many scientists who tell us that refined carbohydrates are responsible for coronary artery disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes.

You do understand that flour is treated by your body the same was that white sugar is, yes? Insulin spike/blood sugar spike then crash. Then storage of all that refined carbs as fat.

You do know that the vast majority of first world people watch television for a few hours after working then eating dinner and what do they do? Snack on convenience foods most of which are made with refined carbohydrates.....crash....go to be for the night....

The natives are the most obese and the most diabetic. Type 2 is man-made.

What do the natives eat? Cheaply available foods, soda, chips, popcorn, candy, candy bars, breads, cakes, cookies, pastas, etc etc etc.

Have you heard of the Seven nation Study by Dr. Ancel Keys? That bogus study in the 1950s perpetuated the lie that meat causes coronary artery disease. It apparently doesn't and has never proven to. But in combination with refined carbs in volume it will.

Check out Dr. Phinney, Volek and others....(Youtube).