Thanks for your comment and clarifying, I appreciate the effort, I realise it is difficult to converse about these things whilst retaining respect and sanity.
This RCT came to mind not because it meets all your criteria, but because I thought it was relevant (especially non-monetary costs, i.e. quality of life) to the criteria you set out, modulo multiple months rather than years. It also I think alleviates some concerns about unfeasibility you think vegan diets.
“ideal study is a longitudinal RCT where diet is randomly assigned, cost (across all dimensions, not just money) is held constant, and participants are studied over multiple years to track cumulative effects.”
I didn’t mean to suggest this study implies that a WFPB diet is healthier than (for example) WFPB+(Fish 2/week). I don’t think that sort of question is resolvable on the current evidence either way.
I am sorry I was not clearer about what the video links were saying—I didn’t mean to imply about high meat vs vegan etc. I linked the first one to signpost a scientist who does tightly controlled experimentals setups (perhaps too tersely) but not specifically on WFPB vs WFPB+(Fish 2/week).
The next 3 were about epidemiological evidence that reducing meat consumption follows a strong dose response relationship. While we can’t rule out there could be an uptick in negative outcomes at eliminating, agnosticism seems like the right call.
I don’t take the war as reason to blanket trust nutrition research (or blanket doubt) either, but to be suspicious of conclusions that favour industry and look to a few well done studies and well-respected researchers that have stood the test of time.
Thank you for writing this and if it’s any help, your article is what prompted me to eventually find Plant Chompers and soften to your position to my current agnosticism about the optimality of WFPB vs WFPB+(Fish 2/week). While I do have concerns about some of your baselines assumptions (see initial comment), I think it’s admirable to spend hours on each paper. You might find it beneficial to reach out to Chris Macaskill and collaborate on this projects with him—I suspect he’s got much more time and knowledge than me!
For the sake of my time, this should hopefully be my last comment on this post. Apologies for misleading or inconveniencing you in any way.
Thank you, I really appreciate everything you said here. I respect your desire to bow out and hope it is okay for me to say a few things.
I think “meat seems dose-dependently bad, and it would be weird if that reversed at low levels” is one of the strongest arguments I’ve heard. I have a bunch of specifics I’d want to follow up on, but I think the argument is both well-formed and has considerable evidence behind it.
Thanks for your comment and clarifying, I appreciate the effort, I realise it is difficult to converse about these things whilst retaining respect and sanity.
This RCT came to mind not because it meets all your criteria, but because I thought it was relevant (especially non-monetary costs, i.e. quality of life) to the criteria you set out, modulo multiple months rather than years. It also I think alleviates some concerns about unfeasibility you think vegan diets.
“ideal study is a longitudinal RCT where diet is randomly assigned, cost (across all dimensions, not just money) is held constant, and participants are studied over multiple years to track cumulative effects.”
I didn’t mean to suggest this study implies that a WFPB diet is healthier than (for example) WFPB+(Fish 2/week). I don’t think that sort of question is resolvable on the current evidence either way.
I am sorry I was not clearer about what the video links were saying—I didn’t mean to imply about high meat vs vegan etc. I linked the first one to signpost a scientist who does tightly controlled experimentals setups (perhaps too tersely) but not specifically on WFPB vs WFPB+(Fish 2/week).
The next 3 were about epidemiological evidence that reducing meat consumption follows a strong dose response relationship. While we can’t rule out there could be an uptick in negative outcomes at eliminating, agnosticism seems like the right call.
I don’t take the war as reason to blanket trust nutrition research (or blanket doubt) either, but to be suspicious of conclusions that favour industry and look to a few well done studies and well-respected researchers that have stood the test of time.
Thank you for writing this and if it’s any help, your article is what prompted me to eventually find Plant Chompers and soften to your position to my current agnosticism about the optimality of WFPB vs WFPB+(Fish 2/week). While I do have concerns about some of your baselines assumptions (see initial comment), I think it’s admirable to spend hours on each paper. You might find it beneficial to reach out to Chris Macaskill and collaborate on this projects with him—I suspect he’s got much more time and knowledge than me!
For the sake of my time, this should hopefully be my last comment on this post. Apologies for misleading or inconveniencing you in any way.
Thank you, I really appreciate everything you said here. I respect your desire to bow out and hope it is okay for me to say a few things.
I think “meat seems dose-dependently bad, and it would be weird if that reversed at low levels” is one of the strongest arguments I’ve heard. I have a bunch of specifics I’d want to follow up on, but I think the argument is both well-formed and has considerable evidence behind it.