I wonder what RAW would have said of baconism and veganism.

Notice how she uses the terms "animal products" and "processed meat" contrasting those with "plant foods". Trying to cast the former in a bad light?

It's so friggin weird that you brought up Wilson. I just ordered one of his books off ebay and I've had his quotes running through my head the past few days. Weird.

Have you taken into account the environmental impacts of growing animals for food. Almost no one gets local grass fed organic animal, they buy it at the store, which comes from giant factory farms. Bad for the animals, bad for the humans that eat them, and bad for the earth.

Skepticism is a good thing, but it's a false symmetry here. Unilever has literally billions at stake in the public's acceptance of maintaining or increasing animal fat levels in their diet, as does the Dairy Council. It is to be expected that they will protect their market and their investment by providing highly selective data and reports, and that a strong pressure to misrepresent exists.

What is the symmetry with a site promoting veganism? Where is the symmetric pressure where decreases in animal fat consumption results in hundreds of millions or billions, or for that matter any increase in profit for advocates of veganism? This is all the more so when on considers that the production of meat means greater production of vegetable matter per pound of protein produced. And no, I'm not a vegan, or even a vegetarian.

This seems to reflect the false symmetry of "balance" that the press substitutes for judgement, and which provides an opening for any number of ideas, positions and products to usurp public debate that should be focussed on other more pressing, more genuinely controversial issues. Issues that common sense and existing data indicate deserve such consideration. Otherwise you're resigned to Birthers, smoking advocates, global warming skeptics and holocaust deniers pushing genuine debate of real issues off the order paper.

That's a fancy way to reduce the debate to an ad hominem.

I will never understand why people attempt to discredit studies by following the money. It really doesn't matter where the money comes from. Satan himself could fund a study that concludes cigarettes cause cancer. It doesn't matter who paid for it.

A bad study has a bad methodology. Poor controls. When I hear people say, "This study is wrong because X entity I dislike is behind it," in my head that becomes, "This study disagrees with me, but I have nothing meaningful to say against it, so I will resort to limp fallacies," and I conclude that the study is probably correct.

It's worth pointing out that the actual rebuttal has more than just facile ad hominems, but it only notes the limitations of the study. It doesn't disagree with its conclusion.

For one to take the study and promote it as license to eat any quantity of fats would be just as incorrect and irresponsible as it would be to dismiss the study just because a big company was funding it.

//Honestly, I didn't think the findings were all that controversial, and even the rebuttal agrees.

It really doesn't matter where the money comes from.

Of course it does. Scientists whose findings don't please their sponsors stop getting grants. It's quite Darwinian.

Bias should always be taken into account when considering an argument, and nothing creates bias quite like money.

and I never understand why people don't read things much more closely. Saying that the potential bias associated with one group is not equal to the potential bias associated with another is not criticizing the articles in any way. As I understand it, omnivore is making your point. False symmetry should not replace careful judgment. Consideration of the potential for bias is crucial to a careful judgment of anything.

nothing creates bias quite like money.

it's still a moral code for its adherents

Not true. For some, this can be said. For others, it's a health or lifestyle choice that is not fundamentally based in morality.

What is it about food and sexuality topics that brings out the biggest internet arguments and "that which you like is inferior to that which I like" bashing?

(FWIW, I've lived as a vegan, a vegetarian, and an omnivore, and don't consider myself a dietary or moral absolutist.)

Yeah, but you can use money to create bias in other people. Virginia's position may be biased as well, but I was really talking about the possible bias in the study. When she funds a counter-study, you can still hold me to my statement about money creating bias.

I agree, but still think knappa raises a reasonable objection. The folks at vegan.com are operating with a clear, albeit perfectly legitimate, agenda.

Ultimately I think Virginia makes a very sensible argument, along the lines of "don't base your dietary rationale on one meta study, there is plenty of consensus about general dietary trends (mediteranean vs western) to make a properly informed decision".

I did think the way the blog author framed it was a bit pissy though.

Anyway, as a pisco-vegetarian of 12 years who has recently started eating red meat again, I'm off to cook a steak and pop a lipitor.

I was keenly aware that the original "study" was a meta-analysis - the first resort of a denialist.

The fact that is paid for by the dairy industry and a food company just makes it that much more iffy.

Meta analysis is where you don't have to do your own study you just get a bunch of other people's data, weigh it all the same (in the beginning), highlight differences, point out inconsistencies, speculate (!) without support as to the causes of the differences and later really attack the data you don't like. That's right it a study where data is attacked.

Meta analysis rarely prove something, they usually seek to disprove.

Many meta analysis say smoking doesn't case cancer, global warming isn't real, exposure to leaded gasoline doesn't drop IQ points of children, xyz product is in no way related to cancer. They are easy to make and meant to cast doubt.

Go on and keep believing "the study is good" despite who paid for the research.

Who cares man, eggs cooked with bacon grease are delicious!

I'm with knappa, this is just encouraging a dietary jihad. There are simply too many fanatics involved for this to ever be a rational discussion.

Meat is tasty. End of my study.

Mark: it seems to me that saying, "and two, Messina's response was written for a site that promotes veganism", is the equivalent of saying "they would say that, wouldn't they?". The skeptic here is Ms Messina, who is acting to raise questions about the original study.

There's a problem when skepticism becomes a reductio ad absurdum: I am skeptical of the study, but I am skeptical of the skeptic of the study, the skeptics of the skeptic of the study etc.. The value of Ms Messina's assessment would appear to be that she has established credentials in the area of nutrition, and it is reasonable to suspend skepticism of the skeptic if a.) they have little or no demonstrated gain to make from their expressed opinion, and b.) their credentials suggest that they adhere to reasonable standards of professional inquiry, and c.) her statements are consistent with established bodies of knowledge that a similarly knowledgeable individual would have. Since I don't know Ms Messina, and you have drawn attention to her response, I am taking it as a given -- based on what I know of your integrity -- that these things are true. In other words, I don't need to be radically skeptical of everything, since I live in a reasonably ordered society that allows trust to be developed between individuals. I can, based on my prior knowledge of your writing, accept the qualifications of Ms Messina.

Where skepticism is properly applied is to uncover the truth, starting from an assumption that what we are being told is not necessarily true; our degree of skepticism is an index of our estimation of how much effort we are likely to have to make to uncover the truth.

My motivation to obscure invidious facts is proportional to the benefit that I stand to gain. It's reasonable to say that the harder I work to obscure a fact, the harder it will be to reveal it for someone looking into my claim. So if we think someone stands to gain more, we are being reasonable in being more skeptical of their claims than those of someone whose gain is nil or minimal. The radical skepticism of the RAW epigram is a formula for cynicism, particularly in the areas of policy and society. where judgement, and not objective facts only, come into play.

Again, none of this touches on an assessment of the facts in the study by me; only that the relative degree of skepticism applied in a case is proportionate to the degree of disinterestedness of the party making the statement. This requires judgement, and so your little guy/big guy dilemma is obtuse, since it supposes that a hard and fast rule is what I am advocating, which is diametrically opposite of my position. However, as I've tried to show, a radical application of skepticism _is_ a formula for the abandonment of a key form of judgement, forcing us to at all times call into question the statements and motivations of those we rely on to make disinterested judgements, and so making civil life impossible. The Birther claims are an exemplar: to the degree that we abandon judgement based on gain, taking seriously the claims made, and ignore the bonds of trust that civil societies allow, the less tenable that society becomes.

Read Lierre Kieths "The Vegetarian Myth"... and before anyone freaks out, she was a vegan for 20 years.

"Α Western dietary pattern (characterized by high intake of processed meat, red meat, butter, high-fat dairy, eggs, and refined grains) was strongly associated with increased risk."

Dumping all meat together in one bag as V. Messina does has its oversimplifications too. Beef that are corn fed, pumped with antibiotics are way different from grass finished steers. Not in taste so much as in the quality of nutrients in the meat itself. Same thing happens with plants not raised with organic standards (crop rotation, use of manure instead of fertilizers) but instead grown in industrial scale monocultures. These plants are not so nutritious as well.

Mediterranean diet is in no way vegetarian: there's beef, pork, lamb, goat, chicken, fish and game. What changes there is moderation in how often they appear + a balanced vegetable intake. I remember in the old times here in Greece, housewives would boast how many eggs their pies would use and the numbers were dizzying. But what was keeping the balance was a balanced diet of a bit of everything, not complete vegeterianism.

Um, if you google "Unilever margarine", the very first result is a page from their site which says "Unilever is the world's leading margarine manufacturer."

If anything, Unilever's interests would lie in promoting (vegetable oil based) margarine, not animal fat. Indeed big profits are to be made by selling "heart healthy" margarine as sort of medicinal food. That argument at least doesn't stack up for me.

I agree that the connections you cited -- not part of the original citation -- are greater reason for skepticism. But that may not be what is happening.

Increased meat consumption -- resulting from a sense that meat is safer -- imposes large and increasing environmental costs on everyone that don't correspond to a benefit to vegetarians. An argument against public harm doesn't necessarily suggest an expectation of private benefit. The skeptical inference that Ms Messina's argument is made in expectation of benefit has as its premise that if I sell knives, my desire not to be shot corresponds to a preference for being stabbed.

To address the margarine argument: Unilever's interest would be in selling as much product, of as many types, at as great a profit, on terms as favourable to it as possible. Macdonalds is probably one of the biggest single sellers of salads in North America, and perhaps the world. You can't conclude from that that they see their Big Mac sales as cannibalizing their salad sales. I doubt that Macdonalds would conclude that a report suggesting animal fat is dangerous is a good thing because it will sell more salads.

They own another company that produces dairy-based stuff.

robulus: sure, vegan.com has an animal rights stance that has the potential to disrupt factual judgment in a specific case. But the meat industry people and any meat eater has a symmetric anti animal rights, pro animal exploitation stance (or a practical habit that presupposes such a stance) that likewise has the potential to similarly disrupt factual judgment in a specific case. It is very easy to forget that pro animal exploitation ideology is very prevalent in our daily lives, in commercial messages and so on. IN ADDITION TO THAT those parties also have billions of dollars at stake. It would be extremely costly for unilever to "change their product line" and they have great economic interest to not be forced to do such change. So in total there is an assymmetry. Greater bias risk doesn't entail that the study is false of course. It only means that for a complex factual topic like this it is wise to build the case through more studies, especially when the first study has stakeholder funding. My experience is that most vegans do not base their stance on facts about health risks with animal products. The suffering, harm and death for billions of animals is "enough".

I'm so fraking tired of the insinuation that *everyone* who doesn't include meat in their diet does so as some sort of "moral code". Your assumption is ridiculously tired. Some of us just think meat is gross. It's the same kind of food preference that leads some people to vehemently despise mushrooms, papaya or clams, for example. It has absolutely nothing to do with morality or a political agenda.

I won't deny that there are lots of people out there dallying in vegetarianism or veganism for moral or political reasons, but it's a gross over-simplification of the varied reasons why a person may choose not to consume a particular category of food.

if anyone is interested in some more analysis of the saturated fat study, check out http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-saturated-fat-review-article-by-dr.html;
Whole Health Source is written by a fat regulation research with a keen interest in human evolution and diet.
The author also comments on a follow-up study by the same authors, here: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/01/krausss-new-article-on-saturated-fat.html

This huge rollback on the dangerousness of fat is one of the reasons that I remain hopeful that we'll see the same thing happen with "climate change"

http://soulveggie.blogs.com/my_weblog/2009/01/15-reasons-to-avoid-vegetable-oils.html

Some of us just think meat is gross.

I eat meat, but I find bacon repellent. And don't get me started on butter.

I don't think animal fat is bad for us per se, only because we've been cooking and eating it for a long, long time. Problems seem to arise when we have access to a lot of low-quality, genetically and otherwise processed and modified animal fat.

everything is good in moderation. vegans, on the other hand, are total goofs. Being a vegan is a good way to shave years off your life. Sorry but it's true. Eat all the beans and tofu you want, and still you won't get enough of the many different protiens you need. What's the name of the nutrient found in pork that we need?

Tradition rarely equals correctness. I don't think (rape, war, prejudice, et al) is bad per se because we've been doing it for a long, long time. I do however agree with your assertation that genetically modified and processed nature of the product is far more dangerous than the product itself.

RE: 15 reasons to avoid veg. oil. This is so close, yet so far off. The body absolutely needs fat, specifically saturated fat, to synthesize hormones etc., but vegetable oils (other than olive oil) are the worst possible source for these. If you absolutely refuse to eat animal products, then coconut oil is an awesome source of the necessary fats.

Ignoring the little voice in my head that's saying "do not feed the troll", I will accept this as a genuine, though biased or confused, comment.

Metadata is data about data. Obtaining metadata is an essential process in data analysis. A meta-analysis cannot, by definition, obtain primary data. It is an analysis of multiple sets of existing data. Meta-analyses are done wherever existing studies are yielding conflicting or mixed results. Hence the relevance of a meta-analysis here. The role of a meta-analysis is not necessarily to resolve an issue. It may be to point out consistent design flaws in data gathering. It can have other roles.

As with any study, a meta-analysis can have design faults itself e.g. bad decisions about what studies are included or excluded. A meta-analysis could (should, in this instance IMHO) include an analysis of who is funding the studies being meta-analysed.

As with all tools, meta-analysis can be subject to misuse, but it is in itself a neutral tool.

(disclosure: lacto-ovo-vegetarian, with double degree in Medicine and Surgery)

Hi voided. No argument from me there, I took the fact that Unilever has vested interests in the research as read.

My only point is that, while it is fair to criticise knappa's assertion that all vegetarians choose their diet based on a passionately held ethical position, it would be naive to ignore the fact that many vegetarians, especially vegans, do choose their diet based on a strong ethical stance, and accordingly there is good reason to approach a blog article on vegan.com with some expectation of bias.

Like I said, Virginia Messina's comments are the sort of level headed common sense that is very difficult to dispute. And the blog author is slightly dickish.

Going vegan doesn't make you live longer, it just makes it seem longer.