NutritionFacts.org

“If you paid any attention to what he was saying, you would know he has the citations go quickly because he explicitly states that you can either pause the video and read them or you can let the video flow for a general understanding.”

Go to the first video and try to pause on the references. You can’t.

“I never said that people who don’t have credentials should not be discussing nutrition, this is what YOU implied! Stop putting words in my mouth!”

You said:

“You have no credentials yourself to advocate such a diet, stop being hypocritical.”

Perhaps I misunderstood you. The point is he is wrong for trying to suggest that since Dr. Cordain doesn’t have the credentials, what he is saying is not valid. That is an ad hominem argument.

What about my challenge?

“Hi Frederick, I will come at your challenge from a different perspective. How we come to our beliefs and practices is complex. The most cited reference is Kuhn’s Structure of the Revolution where he talks about scientific studies gradually accumulating until there is a “paradigm shift” to a new model. Having practiced adult medicine for over 30 years with the last 5 focusing on adding nutrition and exercise prescriptions to my practice and spending the last 4 years giving educational talks to physicians and lay persons I have come to the belief that a properly done whole foods plant based diet with supplemental B12 is the best diet to avoid many of the chronic diseases afflicting us.”

Hi Dr. Dons –

As I mentioned earlier and in several posts here and at Dr. McDougall’s site (to which I received no response), when you take a person off of a typical Western diet and place them on a vegan diet, their health will improve. But their health does NOT improve BECAUSE of the plants, it improves mainly because you have removed the carcinogens and junk foods which damage their health.

If you fasted the typical American for three days giving them plenty of fresh water, their health would also improve. But this does not mean no food is better than some food. So I have no doubt that a vegan diet is, in the short term *better* than a Western fake food diet. But I must point out that having to give your patients B supplements is a tell tale sign of a diet deficient in meats. A healthful diet should require no supplements.

“Beyond my professional experience I have also had the personal experience of going from SAD to Vegetarian to now 5+ years plant based. All the studies that I have seen seem to support my beliefs and the ones that I have reviewed that support meat eating are flawed or narrowly focused.”

Can you be more specific? Flawed how?

And how do you explain cultures who eat a lot of meat (like the Inuit) who experience extremely good health? How do you explain my family and I and the many who eat as we do who enjoy stellar health?

“When you introduce change to a complex system you need to measure all outputs otherwise you run the risk of helping one measure and harming others. In complex systems you get the best results by not violating system design. We are designed as herbivores.”

This is entirely untrue. We are clearly omnivorous. Stop supplementing your patients with B vitamins and see what happens to them.

“The fact that we can function as omnivores doesn’t change our design.”

No it dictates our design.

“I will comment on diabetes since alot of your posts seem to rest on the misconception that the cause of diabetes is carbohydrates.”

That is a strawman argument. I never once said that. My point and argument is that if you are a diabetic, the go to diest should be low carbohydrate, high fat not low fat high carbohydrate since diabetes is a condition of carbohydrate intolerence. Carbohydrates do not cause type II diabetes. No one ever developed type II diabetes by eating mainly animal matter and some plant matter.

“It is true that type 2 diabetes is a glucose processing problem but the “upstream” cause is the fats in the diet( both animal and plant fats).”

Please provide the evidence of this and then explain why a high fat, low carb diet always reverses type II diabetes. If what you say is true, a high fat diet would always worsen the condition. It never does.

“They interfere with insulin and turn of the genes that run the mitochondria that burn glucose.”

This is no true.

“This is supported by the fact that Dr. Barnard’s study showed that a low fat plant based diet was superior to the ADA diet in controlling HgbA1C and reducing medications.”

Again, the ADA diet allows for too much total refined carbohydrates which cause quickly elevated blood glucose levels. Fat does not affect blood glucose at all. And you’re forgetting that a high fat, low carb diets always defeats a low fat, vegan diet for blood glucose control. Again I ask you or anyone to produce a single study that indicates that a low fat, high carb/starch diet is superior for controlling diabetes when compared to a high fat, low carb diet. Just one please.

“He doesn’t cite the number of diabetics who were cured(off medication with normal glucoses). In the last two years of my practice using Dr. Barnard’s approach I had 15 diabetic patients “cure” themselves.”

If they were eating a SAD diet before, I have no doubt this is true. This still does not indicate that it is the best approach which is what I am arguing.

“More recently I had the opportunity to take care of a patient at the McDougall clinic who came in on two hypoglycemic agents with a fasting blood sugar of 159. I took him off his meds and he went on an 8 day low fat starch based diet. At the end of 8 days his sugar was 129.”

Had you put him on a high fat, no starch diet his blood sugars would have been much better than that. Again, this is my entire point. You’re a doctor – it is your responsibility to do what IS best for the patient not what you believe is best.

“(He also was taken off his BP meds and left with a lower BP than when he came into the program, he also stopped his TUMS as his reflux was gone).”

This is due to the cessation of his high refined carb diet.

“He continued the diet on return to home and 4 months later his sugar was 100. Six months later he stopped home testing as his fasting sugars were in the low 80′s. As of last month his weight is down 70#. He is off all medications including his statin for cholesterol. I know that individual antedotal stories don’t “prove” anything but it is experiences like this that cement my beliefs.”

Again, a high fat, low starch diet would have seen these same benefits and even better much sooner.

“I provide four studies for your review:Sparks et al, Diabetes, 52(2002): Fat in diet down regulates the genes that produce mitochondria.”

I’ll look at this but the fact is that high fat diets proliferate mitochondria.

“Petersen et al, NEJM, 350(2004): Fat in diet increases insulin resistance within cells. Goff et al, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 59(2005): Vegan diet shows reduced intracellular fat and decreased insulin resistance. Anderson, JW & Ward, KD, High-carbohydrate, high-fiber diets for insulin-treated men with diabetes mellitus, Am J Clin Nutr, 32,Nov 1979, p 2312-2321. I also would invite you to view my presentation to the San Francisco Vegetarian Society at http://www.archive.org/details/sfvs_2010_11_13_Don_Forrester.

I’ll look these over but again whenever you take someone off of a SAD diet and their health improves, you must take into account this as a confounding variable. If I quit smoking and start chewing gum and my lungs improve, it isn’t the gum that is making my lungs healthier. Because you are biased in favor of a vegan diet, you view the results of these studies with rose colored glasses. We need to look at the studies that compare high fat, low carb to low fat high carb and see what fares better for diabetics. At this time the data suggest that the “winner” is high fat, low carb.

“I would be interested in your comments and would be glad to furnish references. My final comment is that the science is constantly changing so it is important to keep up… you never no when you will reach the “tipping point” to a new belief system.”

This is true.

“I doubt if I met your challenge but hopefully you found some of my comments and information interesting. Best wishes for continuing health.”

Well the challenge was to provide a study that indicates that a low fat, high starch diet is superior to a high fat, low carb diet for the treatment of diabetes. This challenge has yet to be met by you, Dr. Greger, Dr. McDougall or anyone. Happy holidays!

And yet another thing Dr. Jon – how do you reconcile our absolute requirement for B12, not in plant foods, with your “belief” we’re herbivores?

And I’m sure you must know the recent work done by geneticist Dr. Cynthia Kenyon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Kenyon

It is very fascinating work.

I await the data which indicates that a low fat, high starch, ad libitum diet is superior to high fat, low starch/carb diets for the treatment of diabetes.

Anyone?