Vegan Debate Take-aways: Kresser, Kahn

There was great debate on Joe Rogan’s show on the topic of vegan diet.

Before you stop reading this post thinking it does not apply to you because you are not a vegan, it does 😉 So read along.

CONSIDER: Joe Rogan is a proponent of high-fat diets and has biased opinions towards the other types of eating patterns.

His content also focuses on controversy and topics that spike interests, which means that the topics are steered towards extremes.

If you are short on time or simply want to know the outcomes of the debate, scroll down 🙂

Below, I am linking to the video of the debate. It is quite long and so I created a time stamps for all the topics that were discussed. You can find them below the video. It should also be found on Youtube as pinned comment on top 😉

As always, take these points from the debate with a grain of salt. As it was a debate, there was a limited space for arguments and counter-arguments.

3:00
SAD (Standard American Diet) sucks and vegan is superior to SAD , if supplemented. vit.D , EPA/DHA, zinc, iron.
7:36
Four main mechanisms why animal products are harmful – saturated fat, Cholesterol, TMAO, methionine

20:00
Saturated fat has nothing to do with a diet preferences. You can design a high-saturated fat diet that is vegan, carnivore, omnivore…
Saturated fat does not cause heart disease. The problem is that the studies were checking for effect of saturated fat on cholesterol, not on heart disease.
29:15
Cholesterol. In studies, they added cholesterol on a diet that already has cholesterol. Our bodies naturally regulate how much cholesterol we make based on the diet. Simply having cholesterol in the blood does not automatically mean it gets to the arteries! There is no controlled study that would control for cholesterol (check https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJM199711203372102?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

33:18
TMAO from eggs and meat. Fish raises it the most but they are not the reason behind Heart Disease (maybe because of other nutritents like OMEGA3 could counter-act the effects of TMAO).

40:01
Methionine accelerates ageing by activating M-TOR pathway. In the end, the total mortality rate is not higher in non-vegans.

46:00
Observational studies of vegans living longer have many co-founding factors. Migrational studies the same. There is also a factor of the healthy user bias. Not a single study that controls for healthy user bias shows benefit of vegan diet on longevity and total mortality rate.
48:45
Cancer – 18% increase in the risk of cancer in meat eating individuals
52:00
Cancer associations with animal proteins

52:30 the association of animal foods and cancer is nulified when ingested with plant-foods. (Inclusion of plant foods is more important that exclusion of animal products). Cruciferous vegetables and spices seem to have protective effects. Attenuate oxidation of heme-iron.

59:00
Whole foods vs supplements. why vegan diet can be potentially dangerous because of undiscovered micro-nutrients and ultra-trace minerals

1:04:00
Carnivore diet – oxalates, anti-nutrients and potential factors that people can have negative effects to
1:09:00
People self-select their diets and to stay on a diet. if that does not work for them, they change. OUR NUTRITIONAL NEEDS CHANGE

THE TAKE HOME MESSAGE: 

• Eat a variety of foods to reduce the chance of micronutrient and macronutrient deficiencies. We don’t know what has not been discovered yet. Vegans often argue that food is a packaged deal and therefore it is better to avoid all the animal produce that can be full of hormones and such. This is however a double-edged sword. Considering we don’t know everything about nutrition and our nutritional needs AND ultra-trace minerals, our diet should be focused on getting a wide variety of different high-quality foods.
• DON’T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET – this point makes me re-consider my own dietary approach (together with Dr. Fuhrman’s supplement recommendations)