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Originally Posted by Raev [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I skimmed some of this and it seems like a gigantic mess. Campbell claims that Minger isn't including enough potential confounding factors. Minger claims that Campbell doesn't bother with confounding factors when the data proves his point, and that he has never tied consumption of animal products to actual disease (only to things that are correlated with disease, like cholesterol). Esselstyn's article that you linked seems to mostly assume its conclusion to me.

Personally I have mostly abandoned the inductive approach to health. Things are simply so, so complicated. For example, there was a big study done that heart disease was much lower in the Mediterranean countries, and the authors suggested eating fish and olive oil. Well, it turns out that most of those people were Greek Orthodox, which contains an aggressive intermittent fasting program. Or China, for example, is a massive hotbed of industrial pollution. It wouldn't surprise me if the people in the cities were richer, eating more meat, and also exposed to more industrial chemicals. Or you have some cultures that are simply more stressful (Japan/USA) than others (South America/Western Europe). Or you may have (god forbid) nonlinear effects that aren't easily modeled no matter how many cofounders you add. And then of course we have to concern ourselves with the composition of the gut microbiome, which is tremendously important. So again, I just find the whole thing to be a gigantic mess.

Since I am not confident in inductive approaches, I proceed deductively. I'm most confident in Paleolithic foods like potatoes, grass fed meats, wild caught fish, organ meats, bone broth, vegetables, free range eggs, and small quantities of nuts. I'm moderately confident in traditionally prepared Neolithic foods like fermented raw milk products, soy sauce, sauerkraut, sprouted heirloom wheat, and white rice. And I'm least confident in Industrial foods that are heavily refined (sugar, corn syrup, vegetable oils), hybridized (fruit, wheat), or put animals in unhealthy environments (confinement beef, farm raised salmon, supermarket eggs, confinement dairy).

Anyway, I realize this is a bit of a dodge, but in the end I just feel that this kind of thing is too difficult to measure empirically to have really solid conclusions.

Some of what you mention is discussed further in the China Study. Those are serious questions.

I personally think one shouldn't discount either since science goes both ways, but understand the complexity factor.

Just to simplify it to a study that's much easier to talk about, the below study was conducted by Esselstyn and colleagues on reversing Heart Disease (which is incredibly hard to do historically; it's hard enough to just stop it, let alone reverse it). The diet is outlined in the study, plant-based, no added oils. There were 177 adherent (21 non-adherent) participants who had Cardiovascular Disease. Only one adherent patient had a cardiovascular event related to nutritional intervention after amending their diet. Out of the 21 non-adherents, 13 had cardiovascular events. You can see the PET scans show an increased bloodflow in adherents:

http://dresselstyn.com/JFP_06307_Article1.pdf

1/177 versus 13/21 are some crazy numbers.