What did you think the soy is grown for? Tofu? No, it’s for cattle feed. Are you sure you have a PhD in environmental biology?…

“A return to grass fed meat in the United States would have enormous environmental benefits.”

Well, it might have for the rain forests of Brazil, but there’s not nearly enough grassland available in the USA to feed 100 million heads of cattle. Remember, this is not 1700’s – at the age of bison there were very few humans using the land.

“If we don’t start working to combat meat myths and pseudoscientific greenie crapola, we really could find ourselves in some pretty dire straits in a decade or two.”

You might start by acquiring some basic knowledge of the effects of meat production yourself. One thing you seem to forget is that meat production is a global problem. Erosion of grassland is affecting all countries where cattle grazing is common. Amazon rain forest is destroyed to grow soy for cattle feed. Meat consumption is on the rise in many parts of the world, although already the current cattle production is unsustainable in many places. For example, per capita consumption of meat in China is currently less than 100 pounds, while in the USA it’s 276 pounds (144 pounds in 1950). Despite the relatively low consumption, Chinese producers aren’t anymore able to meet the current consumption, and meat import is growing. You may try to imagine what will happen in the future, when consumption there grows (if the trend can’t be turned) by an amount that’s two times the total current consumption of the USA.

Would you be willing to agree that his experiences while wintering on the Hudson Bay amounted to an “observational study” which generated a number of Null Hypotheses, including long term “lo carb” is injurious, and scurvy will result from lack of vegetables or fruit, while the period at Bellevue and after, was a “crossover design” study, albeit on a sample size of two, (Steffansson and Anderson switched from “ordinary diet” to the Inuit Diet) which provided no supporting evidence for the Hypotheses? I was interested in the observation of “pure protein” poisoning resulting from a few days of eating little or no fat with animal protein.

I’m glad thatyou keep flying the flag of proper metabolic science, so that the health of diabetics, the overweight, those with the prospect of longevity reducing condition may be promoted using the results of tested measurement rather than the “observations” of Congressional Sub-Commitees and the Surgeon-General.

I also imagine that Viljalmur Steffansson would be delighted that “fish oils” are now promoted as a healthy food supplement. It would in keeping with his experiences on the Hudson Bay.

My own foods are beef, fish, eggs, chicken, cheese, olive oil, nuts, tomato, onions, yoghurt milk and coffee. My supplement is “cod liver oil. When asked, I call my way of eating: home cooked good food, otherwise “lo carb” or ketogenic.
Thank you for your good work.

Desmond
Msc Stats (40 years ago)

Re: Stefansson. Observing is different than an observational study. But both are useful for generating hypotheses that can be tested with randomized, controlled trials.

I think you’ve got it.

No problem. You’re more than welcome.

She has tried low carb several times, and liked it — until she got sick. Every single time, her immune system would crash. Bronchitis, sinusitis, tonsilitis, strep throat, etc.: she’d always get some kind of infection. She doesn’t remember what plan she was doing, sadly, and I don’t that she was taking more than a multivitamin. Do you have any ideas of what she could do to try low carb again without making herself sick? I’d really appreciate some suggestions, though I know you can’t diagnose, etc.; it’s hard to find a doctor who really understands low carb. I’d like to tell her something more specific than “try all the supplements listed in PP.”

Any ideas?

I have no ideas. I’ve treated at least 10,000 patients with low-carb diets, and I’ve never had one report this kind of history. Since the immune system is primarily a system that relies on protein and good quality fats for optimum function, it is difficult to fathom how one’s immune system “would crash” when given plenty of these. Perhaps your sister really doesn’t want to go on low-carb and is using this as an excuse. Or perhaps these problems were simply coincidental, i.e., she was going to get strep throat, sinusitis, etc. anyway, and it just happened to coincide with her starting the diet.

I once had a patient who was 17 years old who was about 280 pounds. Her parents brought her to my office insisting that she go on ‘my’ diet. I laid it all out for her and she seemed enthusiastic. But later her mother called and told me that her daughter got ill whenever she tried to do the diet so she (the daughter) was going to try something else. Two years later, the daughter came back weighting well over 300 pounds. She had decided (instead of her mother deciding for her) that she wanted to lose the weight. I asked her why she wanted to do low-carb again if it made her sick the first time around. She told me that she told her mother that to get her mother off her back. She (my patient) then proceeded to lose – on a low-carb diet – to 135 pounds without a hitch. I used her as one of the poster children for how effective a low-carb diet is for weight loss in lectures I gave.