I've seen the decline in Italy of young people going out in the evening to meet new people. They are all buffed with splendid livers, but barely get laid, and spend most of their time playing monopoli and drinking tea.
This is often false. Many people following this way of eating are still sick, weak, and often skinny fat.
I was one of them. Of course this is going to be better than a McDonald diet, but it does a terrible job at fixing problems for people with any kind of metabolic problems.
Younger persons don't have the knowledge and wisdom to assess what previous generations did. Their own thoughts sounds more like pre-conceived, propaganda driven, ready made sentences. (I know because I have been there and only know realize how dumb and manipulable I was, and probably still are. At least now I can see it).
As time passes the environment, morals and the goals of a population can change drastically, and its behavior is attuned by those variables.
Anyone born in the boomer generation would probably have behaved exactly like them, for the good and the bad.
The professors in that article might be speaking like that, making amend to the young, but deep inside every generation thinks to be smarter than the previous and the successive ones.
You are supposing that recipes were passed down through books which is totally false.
They were passed down in families and communities and were based to what was available at the time.
Meat is more prevalent in recipes coming from regions where it was more available. Some other places have instead a fish based diet.
In any way animal based food has always been preferred by every culture that didn't avoid it for religious reasons.
Most cultures who have a plant based diet come from a recent past of extreme poverty and food deprivation.
EDIT: Of course as soon as meat got available, recipes that were before only affordable by a small circle, got picked up by a larger share of the population.
When speaking about Sardinia they keep saying that their diet was mostly vegetarian:
"The classic Sardinian diet is plant based, consisting of whole-grain bread, beans, garden vegetables, and fruits. Meat is largely reserved for Sundays and special occasions. Sardinians drink wine moderately."
Truth is that the Shepherds (the centenaries are mostly found in this group) were actually eating more animal protein and fat compared to the rest of the population.
They can keep lying to most people just because you can't understand Italian but whenever people from those towns are interviewed they always repeat that they were not vegetarians.
Here a quick translation from this yt video:
Graziano who got to 102
got asked if he got to 102yo
because he had always followed a
mediterranean diet.
He asked what's that?
It means that you always ate vegetables.
Vegetables are bad for you, I
ate the grass of 100 sheeps because
I ate the sheeps. And indeed
he only ate meat, meaning that this whole
alimentation thing should be checked again.
Wait, when people (mainly Americans) say "Mediterranean diet" do they think it's mainly a vegetarian one? That would be so wrong in so many levels, I am from a coastal really Mediterranean city and we def eat meat and fish (both traditionally and currently).
The main differences I'd say from growing up with local food compared now with other international food is the extra use of olive oil (vs other oils or butter), that normally in our food it's easier to tell where the ingredients came from vs some other more processed diets, extra bread/wheat use, and that even when we eat meat, it's not a "meat fest" like American bbq, it's normally accompanied with other food. And of course the use of local ingredients, which is particular to our diet but I'd guess most "regional diets" have this in common (with their particular ingredients).
> Wait, when people (mainly Americans) say "Mediterranean diet" do they think it's mainly a vegetarian one?
No. They think it's less meat-heavy than the typical American diet. (Or less of a "meat fest," I guess you could say.)
From the Mayo Clinic[0]:
"Plant-based foods, such as whole grains, vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices, are the foundation of the diet. Olive oil is the main source of added fat.
"Fish, seafood, dairy and poultry are included in moderation. Red meat and sweets are eaten only occasionally."
That makes more sense, coca-cola until very, very recently (my generation is still a bit mixed about it) was considered a "kids' drink", not something adults would drink because it's too sweet.
I can't quickly find the paper but I recall having read something along the following lines: there were several areas in Greece where people consumed meat and cheese heavily but the life expectancy was decent. A subsequent investigation showed that the villagers had a very common SNP (mutation) which reduced the efficiency of LDLR (essentially making their bodies ingest less of the "bad" cholesterol into the bloodstream). And the theory went that since these populations had the same diet for centuries, everybody who was not very adapted to it sort of died out / was outcompeted in a Darwinian way by folks who had this genetic adaptation. So yes, a Sardinian villager may live to 102 eating solely mutton; it doesn't mean that the outcome would be as good if you took a random sample of Californians (for instance) and had them use the same diet.
Standard Darwinian competition wouldn't matter here - people generally finish breeding (ages <35) long before they have trouble from cholesterol (ages 40+) or other minor dietary issues.
You could consider in the same way as the explanation for altruism - that families and communities who can rely on helpful old people to raise the children perform better and out-compete families/communities without that resource.
We should also consider that any dietary pressure will have only existed for at most a few thousands of years which, in evolutionary terms, 1000 generations perhaps, is basically nothing.
That is not true. One of the many factors that make human tribes competitive is grandparents. Grandparents can help in many ways especially with child rearing and retain knowledge not available to younger people. Having more healthier and longer lived grandparents enhances the relative fitness of those of breeding age. There is a similar effect with homosexuals tending to contribute to tribal fitness thus enhancing reproductive fitness of the tribe.
>> similar effect with homosexuals tending to contribute to tribal fitness thus enhancing reproductive fitness of the tribe.
If they want to reproduce, don't they have to search outside their tribe for a sperm/egg donor and possibly surrogate? So at least 50% or more of their reproductive health comes from outside the tribe?
I'm talking about behaviors and you are talking about desires. These are very different contexts.
Attempts to characterize behavior show homosexuals more commonly staying with parents and supporting relatives. The usual explanation for this is that they are not interested or able to compete in the usual mating and paring rituals. It isn't that they want to reproduce so much as they want to contribute to the tribe and in doing so result in the reproductive capacity of the entire tribe being increased.
Not yet. My ex is a geneticist who studies the evolutionary basis of aging and this is one of the hypotheses for human longevity being what it is, but there isn't hard proof so far.
> people generally finish breeding (ages <35) long before they have trouble from cholesterol (ages 40+) or other minor dietary issues
You’re speaking to modern times. Rebeccu, for instance, is a gorgeous town abandoned by Sardinians in the 14th century because of famine. Furthermore, the children of a famished mother are less likely to survive to reproductive age, and a family whose elderly died of famine will be less stable than one with multi-generational structures in place. These prenatal, neonatal and group selection dynamics bias the dice.
You don’t need famine; a wealthy societal elder is better positioned to marry his or her children and grandchildren into situations where they will have more children and their children will be better provided for. An elder male could continue reproducing by finding additional mates. There is good evidence that male genetic diversity is much lower than we would expect if most of our ancestors were monogamous.
Bugs might reproduce primarily constrained by their LDL uptake but humans are far more complex.
1000 generations is plenty of time for a new mutation to potentially achieve fixation in a relatively contained, small-ish (in human terms) population.
This hypothesis is still part of some anti-meat propaganda. They start from the idea that red meat is bad, and then they retroactively try to adjust their "science" with creative solutions.
Research done in Italy about the Sardinians showed that the people who got to live longer where specifically the shepherds. They had a very peculiar life style which brought them to get much more exercise and to eat more animal sourced foods.
The remaining townfolks had a more "average" lifespan even though they shared the same genes.
You joke, but it has been going on for a while: The Global Influence of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on Diet (https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/251/htm). And obviously as mentioned by another the processed food industry etc.
I'm half joking, but the lobbying power and subsidies meat and dairy industries command is a complete other ballgame than vegetable farmers and plant-based food companies.
Funny the agenda-laden downvotes I'm receiving as well, despite ample evidence. Only an artifact of folks perceiving a conspiratorial political bias before considering the damage the WEF is in fact doing to the world by installing unelected "young leaders" into any nation or corporation it can get its dirty hands on, determining policy and international direction without the consent of the governed, much less, not nearly enough consent if any exists at all, outside of the political elite who already endorse them for their obvious financial gain.
To expand upon this, Cholesterol is wrapped in lipoprotein, and pathogenesis is caused by malfunction of lipoproteins due to proximal oxidative and inflammatory effects upon them.
I agree with ApoB being the marker for CVD risk. What I'm disagreeing with is the statement that pathogenesis is caused by inflammation and/or oxidization; instead I'd say it's the number of particles that's the primary cause, with the rest of the mechanism following.
My bet as someone who has traveler to Sardinia often is that this is much less about meat consumption and rather more about stressors like lifestyle, quality of air, water etc.
Even if the people ate meat there at the same proportion as a modern city dweller did: no hormones, probably orders of magnitude less toxins, traces of pharmaceuticals etc.
A lifestyle that doesn't know many sources of anxiety or stress and includes daily physical activity (walking instead of driving for a start) and an air quality opposite that of any big city just remove a lot of sources of what mostly kills people that could live longer otherwise.
Heart disease, cancer, stroke and (possibly) Alzheimer's disease.
The Mediterranean diet also means you can strike diabetes off the list.
Recently there was a study on here that said the sun is good for you. And its effects were underrated.it threw a shadow over big pharma because 1 in very many gets skin cancer.
I think how "good" prolonged exposure to direct sunlight is might vary wildly between demographics. I'm of Viking extraction (pale as a ghost). I quite literally get sunburn indoors if I'm not careful, no exaggeration. I can't see that being good in the long-term, especially when my aunt had melanoma.
Following WWII, my gruncle lived in Africa as his skin grafts wouldn't take in the British climate. He was like a patchwork quilt of grafts following his plane being shot down. Most white expats in Africa got nose cancer from the sun eventually. He moved back eventually, but had stayed out of the sun and never got nose cancer.
I am pasty white and used to burn very, very easily. Sunscreen every day, burned if I walked in the sun half an hour. When we changed our diets to vaguely keto, I stopped burning. It is super, super weird. YMMV, this is not advice, etc. I offer it only as a fellow "the sun looked at me wrong and I got burned" traveler.
I've spent a bit of time in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia. I agree with what you're saying, but I bet the locals eat less meat and better quality meat than the average American. They're also active and outside a lot.
I can tell when I'm eating American beef because it stinks. As in there's literally a hint of feces in the smell and flavor. Pork also has an indescribably foul taste. I was born and raised in America and avoided mammal meat quite a bit because I couldn't stand the foulness. It wasn't until I moved out of the country that I realized beef and pork don't have to taste awful.
I can still tell immediately when I'm eating an imported piece of US beef. People I know who've traveled to American and find out that I'm American often mention the foulness of US meat whenever the topic of US food comes up (without me mentioning it).
Some people probably don't notice it or they're so acclimated to it that it tastes good. But when I see "finest US beef" on a menu, I'm ordering local chicken. And definitely not US chicken since that stuff is pumped full of saline and "flavor enhancers" to the point it looks like a breast implant.
I strongly doubt that. I am in Europe right now the meat is the exact same quality if not slightly worse than what I am used to in America barring fast food.
In the UK at least virtually every town has the option to buy locally farmed possibly organic meat direct from the farm which is almost always fantastic. It might cost twice as much as supermarket meat (which is also ok at times), but at least you have a choice. UK / Europe also have several small private butcher shops in each town some of which give great quality and can provide exactly what you want, suggest cuts and recipes, same goes for fruit and veg - often cheaper than supermarkets. I didn't see much of these kind of options in the US.
Yeah, nah. Once I saw the sacks of red powder to dye the meat in the back room, I was out when it comes to UK butchers. Jesus Christ. And I quote, "you have to dye it or you'd never sell any, it can be all sorts of colours, including green".
I agree, I've been all over Europe and never saw any significant difference in the quality of raw meat and poultry. I do know there is a lot of misinformation about US meats over there though, like the "chlorinated chicken" nonsense you hear all the time from the brits which is thinly veiled protectionist propaganda by the domestic meat industries (who have no problem importing their poultry from Brazil!).
Yes, meat consumption in the USA is huge. But I think the greatest difference between the 2 countries is our distrust towards food processing.
Italy is a country very resilient to innovations which can be sometimes a sin, but some other times a blessing.
But we are losing that too. When I was a kid mcDonalds could barely survive here. Nowadays new ones are popping everywhere, and young people completely lost this culture we had about genuine foods.
I never tried any American meat, but I grew up in Sardinian and worked in UK and Lithuania. Quality of meat in Sardinia is vastly superior to the UK one but also more expensive, also we in Sardinia is almost impossible to find dry aged meat, I didn't knew aged meat existed until I did go out of the island ( we have Salami etc..., I'm talking about an aged steak ).
Because all high-quality scientific evidence points to eating less meat making a big difference, and there being no evidence that different quality meat makes any significant difference whatsoever.
As someone raised in India I didn't get the American dislike for organ meats. I love the liver, the tongue, the brain, and pretty much all the parts of the animal in their various forms. Most American meat preparations taste bland and uniform with really minor variations.
What are you considering as "American meat preparations" though? It's not all salt/pepper/butter/lemon here. Not even considering immigrant cuisines (which is doing a disservice because that's our entire thing, like ) there are hundreds of local meat preparation styles from southern barbecue variations to cajun food to native tex-mex and southwest styles and beyond.
Every once in a while, there's a news interview with a 100-year-old who swears that their secret to a long life was to drink enough whiskey to take the edge off all the cigarettes. I can't help but think that all these individual anecdotes are little more than confirmation bias.
People from the anglosphere comes with their own idea of health, which is for the most part originated by their past religious idea of purity more than rock solid science.
Many of them can't accept studies which prove that a good life can sometimes also come out from what they view as a "sinful" behavior.
Old Italians never saw meat eating and alcohol consumption as a negative aspect of life and enjoyed it just because it was part of their culture.
And, against all these calvinist principles, they still enjoyed a pretty long life.
The meat is bad for you propaganda.
Cannot believe people buying that.
It is known for millennia that a varied diet including vegs fruits and yes meat and fish is healthier then skipping any of those.
But somehow now when overpopulation makes our hunger for meat less convenient it becomes suddenly unhealthy.
Of course I understand that the antibiotic and and heavy metal infested meat and fish we eat is way less healthy then the meat our ancestors would eat.
If you live in 1500 north europe and your diet in winter is mostly grain in the last months, then a bit of meat and dairy is very important for not getting nutrient deficient.
If you live in modern day north europe the typical meat and dairy you get is heavily polluted and often processed. You can get veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts, legumes, mushrooms all year round. You can be fully nutrient complete based on the and skip the toxins in meat and dairy (and i forgot fish, especially sea fish is usually very toxic with mercury nowadays).
The gold standard tool is cronometer.com; try to make a diet there with only plant/fungi source and you probably only lack some b12 (which we used to get from drinking untreated surface water).
Saying we need animal products is simply not backed up by science. You are commenting on a book that has shown that some of the healthiest+longlived groups of people on the planet are vegan or near-vegan (okinawa and the adventists in calif).
What you sprout is unfounded "meat is needed for a balanced diet" propaganda. The plant based diet is backed by lots of research.
While for some people a plant base diet might well be good if well constructed and supplemented this is not always true on a population level.
The average person isn't drs Greger disciple and will not wake up early in the morning to be measuring his foods to be sure that his intakes are following the RDAs.
Combine that with the fact that nutrients from vegetables are not as easily accessible by our bodies, meaning that for some people with digestion problems it could cause dangerous deficiencies.
And last but not least, yes meat can be contaminated or polluted, so you should be very careful when choosing your cuts. But the same can be said about vegs and fruits I'm afraid:
"European citizens have been exposed to a
dramatic rise in the frequency and intensity of
residues of the most toxic pesticides on fruits
and vegetables sold in the EU. This report
and its primary conclusion contradict official
claims that toxic pesticides use is declining
and that food residue levels are under
control. This report also exposes a complete
failure by Member States and the European
Commission to implement EU Regulation and
protect consumers. "
> While for some people a plant base diet might well be good if well constructed and supplemented this is not always true on a population level.
The majority of meat eaters also have vitamin and micronutrient deficiencies, I don't think plant based diets are the issue here but general culture. Bread and salt have iodine added, but when B12 gets added to plant milks it's suddenly "supplemented". No, most diets have vitamins supplemented, and most western people are having sub optimal diets.
What meat eaters? If we are talking about health conscious people the ones eating meat will always have an advantage compared to people who eliminates food groups.
If you are comparing a health conscious vegan to the average fast food freak then yes, I can agree with you.
Still, the deficiencies caused by meat avoidance are usually more dangerous with worse consequences.
The Blue Zones book shows that people in all times where able to eat healthy. You are commenting on a post about this book.
Toxins are bad. But all research has shown that persistent toxins are much more common in animal products than in plant foods. In some German research they found glyphosate concentrations were lowest in vegetarians and vegans.
I'm not aware of those studies so I can't judge. What meat are you talking about? From which country? Was it cheap supermarket meat or locally sourced from a trusted butcher?
I hope all of those questions are taken into consideration when judging which foods we should avoid.
But still I don't buy this whole meat avoidance stunt. Most studies show only small effects linked to meat avoidance which can be usually be well explained by the fact that vegetarians are usually health conscious people:
The problem with the evidence and research around the "plant based diet" is that there is an ulterior motive for most of the research (legitimate ethical concerns around meat eating) which taints a lot of the data.
For example, Dan Buettner (the author of Blue Zones) suggests that Okinawans eat a 98% plant based diet which is...I won't say "fraudulent" because I think it's possible it's an honest mistake but it's definitely not "correct" at all. It's based off of some sketchy anecdotal accounts of WWII starvation diets where the only ate potatoes. Western centenarian researchers and health gurus repeated that factoid a bunch and it became "the okinawan diet is basically a potato-heavy vegan diet" in some twisted game of telephone.
In actuality both modern and ancient Okinawans have the highest meat consumption in Japan. Lard is the go-to frying oil even for vegetable dishes. The largest proportion of calories come from animal products. The Okinawan diet is a high fat, high carb, moderately high meat diet whose main "secret" is conscious portion restriction (the local "eat until you are 80% full" mantra). They do eat plenty of fish too, just not as much as the mainlanders (the idea that the okinawan diet is low in fish is crazy because the okinawans have a super unique and proud local history of fishing and seafood foraging traditions).
You can get veggies, fruits, seeds, nuts, legumes, mushrooms all year round
Idk about production methods, but am forced to eat vegetables due to a medical condition. First concern, it is still not healthy after half a year and few consultants. Second, all highly available fruits and vegetables are so identical piece-wise that their semi-synthetic origin isn’t even a question to me, please correct me if I’m wrong. I think that access to really healthy/natural vegetables is as expensive and nontrivial as to healthy meat. I even know where I can get healthy meat in bulk (village economies), but have no idea where to start with plants.
for meat it is different, usuallu people do not like to eat it without applying technology (heating (baking), salting, spicing with plant products, saucing with plant products) to it.
we do not actually like meat in its raw form, or when we have to manually strip it from animal bones.
I am sorry but your comment is ridiculous. You're commenting on article that represents part of "lots of research" and it just shows to be propagandistically skewed.
Correlation is not science. It has its place in science but it's pretty limited tool. Sardinian research shows the longest living people there are meat eaters.
Why did I say your comment is ridiculous, because it simply is for anyone who has basic understanding of macro and micro nutrients and their presence in food. Especially amino acids. Plant based diet may work only if you are an office worker with minimum activity and access to synthetic vitamins.
Majority of pro-vegan drives are ideologically charged or have business intent behind them.
Why wouldn't people buy it? It's put forth by reputable science whereas the "meat is good for you" position is mostly preached by the jordan petersons of this world. At least I have better things to allocate my energies than figure out whether obvious charlatans are actually correct.
There are MULTIPLE factors involved in getting to a population that is high in centenarians. Diet is only one factor and finding some meat-eating-only shepherds in such a population doesn't prove THAT MUCH unless, I guess, someone simply wants to confirm that a fad-diet "can work" for some folks (while ignoring other factors like physical activity, stress, and lifestyle).
"People from the anglosphere comes with their own idea of health, which is for the most part originated by their past religious idea of purity more than rock solid science.
Many of them can't accept studies which prove that a good life can sometimes also come out from what they view as a "sinful" behavior.
Old Italians never saw meat eating and alcohol consumption as a negative aspect of life and enjoyed it just because it was part of their culture.
And, against all these calvinist principles, they still enjoyed a pretty long life."
Thanks, I have admit that imagining an early 1900 shepherd "following a fad diet" made me laugh.
Seems to me that this kind of article always comes to the conclusion that the best / healthiest / longest lived / etc. diet is one that the authors feel is virtuous in some way. It might just be coincidence but it's an odd one if so.
I'm Sardinian and I can confirm we are the opposite of vegetarian, big majority of typical Sardinian dishes are meat based, the most famous of them being "Porceddu" that is simply slow cooked on open fire baby big.
In the mountain areas is typical to eat sheep and on the costal area is typical to eat fish
This is a running theme for Blue Zones and centenarian research data, just a bunch of really blatant falsehoods packaged as trendy diet advice (e.g. suggesting that the Okinawan diet is low in meat, which is based on some weird game of telephone around discussions of WWII starvation diets, when in reality the Okinawans get a large proportion of their calories from lard and have the highest meat consumption in Japan). I wouldn't quite call it a "scam" but I would call it extremely misleading.
Centenarians are really a special group. My doctors assure me, independently, that even though applied nutrition science is in general very poor once you are past any basic nutrient deficiencies, that a plant based diet is overwhelmingly correlated with better health outcomes. Perhaps not vegetarian, but definitely limiting animal products.
Most doctors unfortunately have zero education when it comes to nutritional science. I recommend listening to actual leading edge nutritional researchers before forming a strong opinion. A good source is the “low carb down under” channel on YouTube.
Is a dude and his company hawking a bunch of books and a diet/lifestyle plan really related to "trust in the media"? I don't tend to think of self-help salespeople and reporters, journalists, or even TV talking heads in the same way, though maybe more related to the latter, I suppose.
By the way, I am also under the impression that he doesn't mention that Okinawans eat, on average, way more Spam than their less Blue-Zoney(R) counterparts.
Also they could be eating local, fresh ingredients without the processed preservative-filled junk food and sugary drinks we get on demand for $1 in the western world on every street corner.
Combine this article with the other one about contamination of fruits and vegetables in Europe and we have a pretty bad picture of the situation:
European citizens have been exposed to a
dramatic rise in the frequency and intensity of
residues of the most toxic pesticides on fruits
and vegetables sold in the EU. This report
and its primary conclusion contradict official
claims that toxic pesticides use is declining
and that food residue levels are under
control. This report also exposes a complete
failure by Member States and the European
Commission to implement EU Regulation and
protect consumers.
For anyone interested: When removing the dialogue audio channel from Twin Peaks episodes, it is nice to discover the rich tapestry of sound design hidden underneath. Listen to the sounds extracts these layers for you personal enjoyment.
