tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post1619480077628566944..comments2024-02-12T05:30:13.488-05:00Comments on Fanatic Cook: Low-Fat Vegan Diet Outperforms Conventional ADA Diabetes DietBixhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-79196009948709406002012-12-19T08:40:16.828-05:002012-12-19T08:40:16.828-05:00For differences between groups check the P values ...For differences between groups check the P values in Table 1. You will see they are statistically similar.<br /><br />All studies have demographic differences among groups. Randomization is employed to lessen the effect of differences. Making unscientific assumptions about differences among individuals and groups to support your view is confirmation bias. And you make a lot of assumptions here...<br /><br />- You say "women are on average lighter." Yet you say the group with more women in it had higher BMIs.<br /><br />- You say retirees have more time (?) and less stress (?). It could also be said retirees have more physical and mental disabilities, less income, less mobility, less social support. You could say that. But without data you don't know. Nor do you know how any of these assumptions interact with the intervention.<br /><br />- You suggest that "any intervention will have less success in obese people." Whether this is true or not, there was no statistically significant difference in BMI between groups in this study.<br /><br />If you have justifiable concerns about the validity of this study, it would be honorable of you to raise them with the authors, editors, and publishers.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-937738490008188212012-12-18T20:07:05.484-05:002012-12-18T20:07:05.484-05:00Bix, did my comment on this post about a day ago g...Bix, did my comment on this post about a day ago get through? It hasn't appeared and isn't so easy to reconstruct.K.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-27015643456032705852012-12-17T19:17:48.867-05:002012-12-17T19:17:48.867-05:00Bix, I would have preferred it if the two groups w...Bix, I would have preferred it if the two groups were demographically similar. They are not. <br /><br />For example, the vegan group was 55% female, the ADA group 66%. One can reasonably ask whether there are gender differences affecting the results. Also, women are on average lighter, so half the weight loss may actually correspond to a less marked difference in percentage weight loss.<br /><br />31% of the vegan group were retired, but only 8% of the ADA group. Are retirees, with more time and less stress, better able to comply with a diet?<br /><br />For me, perhaps the biggest difference that makes it hard to compare the groups directly was their BMIs. The vegan group mean was 33.9, while the ADA group mean was 35.9. Furthermore, 30 (61%) of the vegan group was obese, compared with 43 (86%) of the ADA group.<br />That's almost 1 1/2 times the number of obese people in the ADA group. It may be that any intervention will have less success in obese people.<br /><br />Of course, the reason for all these differences was that the participants were assigned randomly to the diets. As far as I can see, no analyses of subgroups was carried out.<br /><br />Actually, something else troubles me much more about this study. I'll leave that for a separate comment.K.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-39090359596780193992012-12-16T07:07:41.857-05:002012-12-16T07:07:41.857-05:00Fiber here is a subclass of carbohydrate. If it w...Fiber here is a subclass of carbohydrate. If it was not part of "carbohydrate" they would have had to note that, which they didn't.<br /><br />There are many types of fiber - cellulose and lignin, resistant starch and resistant dextrins, inulin, waxes and gums, chitins, pectins, beta-glucans, sugar alcohols, oligosaccharides.<br /><br />Even what you call "starchy carbohydrates" can contain "fiber," that is, indigestible carbohydrate, e.g. resistant starch. The degree of digestion depends upon the individual, their disease state, other foods eaten, and the chemical make-up of the carbohydrate when eaten, which can, for example, change to become more resistant to digestion when it is heated then cooled. For example, hot pasta right out of the pot has more available carbohydrate than that same pasta which has been cooled. Cooled pasta and potatoes have more resistant starch and less available carb for digestion. I guess the same pasta would then have fewer calories. This is a problem with food tables that list calories, let alone the variability of the food source.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-72721350404228301002012-12-16T02:58:44.918-05:002012-12-16T02:58:44.918-05:00Not sure what is meant by "fiber" on the...Not sure what is meant by "fiber" on the graph. Carbs include starches and fiber, so what is included in "fiber"? Or are you intending "carbohydrates" to mean "starchy carbohydrates"?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-85528010103759937642012-09-27T10:11:13.562-04:002012-09-27T10:11:13.562-04:00This is so weird how people, people who are read i...This is so weird how people, people who are read in the field, think eating eggs and dairy is more ethical than eating meat.<br /><br />From the post you linked, Mel:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/17/is-veganism-good-for-everyone/meat-is-brain-food" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/17/is-veganism-good-for-everyone/meat-is-brain-food</a><br /><br />Drew Ramsey (assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University) said:<br /><br /><i>"Those with ethical objections to killing animals can meet all their animal-nutrient needs with dairy products from grass-fed cows, organic eggs from cage-free chickens and occasional servings of mussels or oysters."</i><br /><br />Yet Peter Singer and Jim Mason, in <i>The Way We Eat</i> say that consuming dairy products may be one of the most unethical actions we perform, whether the milk is organic, grass-fed, etc. or not:<br /><br /><a href="http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2011/01/ethics-of-dairy-consumption.html" rel="nofollow">The Ethics of Dairy Consumption</a><br /><br />Eggs aren't much better, in that we, literally, I'm sorry to say, toss male chicks into a grinder or plastic bag.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-37192073822070349232012-09-27T07:22:24.369-04:002012-09-27T07:22:24.369-04:00I'll never forget how astonished I was to see ...I'll never forget how astonished I was to see a deer eat a baby bird:<br /><br /><a href="http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2011/05/deer-eats-bird.html" rel="nofollow">http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2011/05/deer-eats-bird.html</a>Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-19467755061002736592012-09-27T07:21:19.247-04:002012-09-27T07:21:19.247-04:00That Fish & Wildlife Service diet of the grizz...That Fish & Wildlife Service diet of the grizzly, before the adaptable part, sounds mighty fine indeed. I eat like a grizzly! Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-53894507478670027402012-09-26T18:37:49.456-04:002012-09-26T18:37:49.456-04:00Here's a Fish & Wildlife Service summary o...Here's a Fish & Wildlife Service summary of what grizzlies eat. I can't imagine where Patton got his image of grizzlies. ". Scavengers by nature, grizzlies spend most of their waking hours searching for food. Forbs, roots, tubers,<br />grasses, berries and other vegetation, and insects comprise most of the bear’s diet. But grizzlies are very adaptable,<br />finding and subsisting on a variety of foods if necessary. The grizzly diet can include small rodents, fish, carrion, and<br />even garbage and human food if it is easily available."Angela and Melindahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01595787896658046091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-35879011924188946212012-09-26T18:30:59.140-04:002012-09-26T18:30:59.140-04:00The Brian Patton essay was interesting in that whi...The Brian Patton essay was interesting in that while cats are obligate carnivores, ursines (e.g., grizzly bears) and canines are omnivores, eating quite a bit of vegetative material as well as meat. Dogs can also be healthy as vegetarians. But if we follow Patton's logic, then our closest relatives should also be vegan, but they are not. Jane Goodall was the first person to observe chimpanzee meat-eating, and now there's some evidence provided by Goodall (not proven yet, but suggestive) that gorillas and bonobos also eat vertebrates like monkeys and antelope. So Patton's argument doesn't hold up.Angela and Melindahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01595787896658046091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-67824611553963589882012-09-26T14:27:23.616-04:002012-09-26T14:27:23.616-04:00I like this that Erika Kendall said:
"The mo...I like this that Erika Kendall said:<br /><br /><i>"The more that we research and discuss meat, the easier it becomes for us to be wary of its origins and nutritional value.<br />...<br />In a rush to give consumers value, food producers have jeopardized the quality of most meat out there."</i>Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-15984893113135379792012-09-26T13:14:24.244-04:002012-09-26T13:14:24.244-04:00Just came across this in today's Times: http:...Just came across this in today's Times: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/17/is-veganism-good-for-everyone/?ref=diningAngela and Melindahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01595787896658046091noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-69953764446618347752010-07-27T08:19:58.861-04:002010-07-27T08:19:58.861-04:00Blogger doesn't let me edit comments, Steve. ...Blogger doesn't let me edit comments, Steve. Although you may be able to delete and repost it.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-28090464485259835002010-07-27T07:39:24.648-04:002010-07-27T07:39:24.648-04:00My use of "age" above should have been &...My use of "age" above should have been "ate." Could you fix it, Bix? Thanks.<br /><br />-SteveSteve Parker, M.D.http://diabeticmediterraneandiet.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-12506979887838233272010-07-25T22:01:52.685-04:002010-07-25T22:01:52.685-04:00The vegan diet was also easier for participants to...The vegan diet was also easier for participants to follow. I'm guessing the vegans age relatively low-glycemic-index, which would help with glucose control.<br /><br />I wish the researchers had made it easier to compare baseline hemoglobin A1c levels of the two groups. It appears the vegan group baseline was 8.1% versus 7.9% in the other group.<br /><br /><br />-SteveSteve Parker, M.D.http://diabeticmediterraneandiet.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-79339768014980979712010-07-25T08:09:40.889-04:002010-07-25T08:09:40.889-04:00A difficulty in reducing carbohydrate in your diet...A difficulty in reducing carbohydrate in your diet, if that is your goal, is that by default it increases the amounts of fat and protein you eat. For low income people, that invariably means consuming more cheap meat. Many environmental pollutants (pesticides, endocrine disrupters) are soluble in fat, and appear in larger quantities in the fat of animals, especially those animals fed cheap, contaminated fodder, a practice one might see on a confined animal feeding operation, that is, a factory farm.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-34914606605137124792010-07-25T08:08:20.262-04:002010-07-25T08:08:20.262-04:00I saw that too, bee, the "60–70% carbohydrate...I saw that too, bee, the "60–70% carbohydrate and monounsaturated fats." I suppose if you excluded mono fat, olive oil, you could get to the higher carb range.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-33262759928754922062010-07-23T23:53:45.623-04:002010-07-23T23:53:45.623-04:00interesting. however what i find intriguing is tha...interesting. however what i find intriguing is that the people on the "diabetic diet" were allowed 60-70% carbs. <br /><br />i'm a vegan who's trying to increase my protein intake and this comparison is very interesting.beehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18128812845273224940noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8472697.post-72465415760114166032010-07-22T17:28:27.628-04:002010-07-22T17:28:27.628-04:00Barnard's work is telling. I don't think ...Barnard's work is telling. I don't think you need to eat 100% vegan to achieve these benefits though. Notice his vegan group still averaged 24mg/day cholesterol. Only animals make cholesterol, so his vegan group wasn't 100%. They were eating almost double their fat goal too. And those were amounts they let be known ... they were likely higher. Still had better HbA1c's. <br /><br />I thought to revisit this study since I saw he extended his analysis of these groups and published a 74-week run-down recently. A year and a half later and the vegan group was still trending better.Bixhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06263963508785739508noreply@blogger.com