Thanks Cornelis, I agree about the empirical evidence. And indeed, emphasizing Ami and how long it’s been around would have obviated a lot of confusion here.
We seem to disagree about (1) the variance of meat-based retail products versus vegan ones and (2) whether or not the “trial-by-fire” standard is more helpful than just simply the criteria that AAFCO/FDA defines regarding nutritional, toxicity, digestibility, and safety.
(1) Sounds like your priors for the intra-variance of meat-based cat food are lower than the inter-variance between validated meat and vegan cat food. I don’t share these same priors, and the best I can offer is Chapter 6 of After Meat where I explain in detail how I think about nutrition including the fungibility of food. Long story short, I really don’t think there’s anything special nutritionally about meat that can’t be recapitulated elsewhere, but I understand that not everyone has that intuition.
(2) AAFCO updates their standards in light of new evidence. The “trial-by-fire” is baked into their standards. And I suspect if we had similar priors regarding (1), this point may be moot.
But I appreciate your good faith, and I’ll leave it here.
Thanks Cornelis, I agree about the empirical evidence. And indeed, emphasizing Ami and how long it’s been around would have obviated a lot of confusion here.
We seem to disagree about (1) the variance of meat-based retail products versus vegan ones and (2) whether or not the “trial-by-fire” standard is more helpful than just simply the criteria that AAFCO/FDA defines regarding nutritional, toxicity, digestibility, and safety.
(1) Sounds like your priors for the intra-variance of meat-based cat food are lower than the inter-variance between validated meat and vegan cat food. I don’t share these same priors, and the best I can offer is Chapter 6 of After Meat where I explain in detail how I think about nutrition including the fungibility of food. Long story short, I really don’t think there’s anything special nutritionally about meat that can’t be recapitulated elsewhere, but I understand that not everyone has that intuition.
(2) AAFCO updates their standards in light of new evidence. The “trial-by-fire” is baked into their standards. And I suspect if we had similar priors regarding (1), this point may be moot.
But I appreciate your good faith, and I’ll leave it here.