Discussion: Plant Foods and Animal Foods

Dr. Walter Willett and Dr. David Katz lead a discussion with some of the world's leading nutrition scientists, to acknowledge what we know and what we don't know about healthy eating patterns.
Recorded at the Oldways Finding Common Ground conference in Boston on November 17, 2015.
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[@VHelander]

Amazing panel sad so little time.

[@hunteriffy]

Walter Willett is best one on that stage lol. I think I trust him the most

[@vidurkapur1]

Absolutely. He's the least biased, and his research and conclusions demonstrate that there's an element of truth in what everyone is saying, but that a mostly or fully plant-based diet filled with fruit, vegetables, whole grains, legumes/pulses/beans, nuts and mono and polyunsaturated fats as found in olive oil is the best.

[@michaels4255]

Oncologist T. Colin Campbell, in the center, is the oldest man in the room, and clearly as sharp as ever. He must be doing something right. On his left is his scientific ally Neal Barnard, in his late 60's at this conference, but he looks 10 or 15 years younger. Campbell and Barnard are also the leanest guys in the room. Everyone else has a "spare tire."

[@dannicholas6791]

lol Neil can never stop fidgeting

[@golaoi]

Campbell is not an oncologist. He's not a doctor for starters.

[@ronnie3440]

@@golaoi But he has done a lot of laboratory and clinical studies, much more that a lot of doctors, that is why he is sitting there with the other doctors, despite he is not a MD.

[@golaoi]

@@ronnie3440 He has Ronnie and most of his conclusions are incorrect. His China Study has been dissected by various people. Denise Minger for one.

[@ronnie3440]

@@golaoi A blogger...

[@michaels4255]

Walter Willett refers to "many, many studies" but does not point out that all those studies suffer from restriction of range, that is, they are all studies of people following some version of the "standard American diet," so they miss what happens in the relatively few Americans who follow a culturally atypical diet. By way of analogy, let us say some study found that health outcomes for 4 pack a day smokers were not dramatically different from 3 pack a day smokers, would you therefore conclude that tobacco smoking makes very little difference to people's health? The fact that heart attacks are almost non-existent in people with total serum cholesterol below 140 indicates the existence of a threshold effect, and while this might be readily apparent in research on Chinese peasants (which Dr. Campbell participated in during the 1970's) with very low average cholesterol levels, it is hard to detect in studies of Americans with average cholesterol of 200 or more and very few if any research subjects who eat like peasants.

[@gyovini]

Any relation between cholesterol and high sugar consumption?

[@vidurkapur1]

Yes. High consumption of refined carbohydrates such as white sugar and white bread increases risk of heart disease through higher LDL cholesterol as much as saturated fat does.

[@MrTallandrew]

Soledad Rios nope only goes up if you eat animals

[@gyovini]

Thanks for the response! Well, I eat meat once a year and don't eat bread or white sugar, only a tiny serving of Stevia with morning tea due to autoimmune condition which I follow in a very strict way not using bread or bad carbs. So I got off the saturated coconut milk and stopped using so many avocados a week that I had with the coco milk plus use Diatomaceous Earth that helps me bring cholesterol down so far from 350 to 328 in a month's time with 2 teaspoons on a raw smoothie daily.

[@roligue]

The message I get from this is that animal products are not health food and the the higher the intake the worse your health at later stages in life