
Ask HN: Plant-Based Diet? - doctoroctogon
I just watched The Game Changers which praises the benefits of a plant based diet and claims a significant amount of scientific consensus around its health benefits. What’s the healthiest proportion of meat in a diet? Majority&#x2F;minimal&#x2F;0 calories?
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hannob
I don't know that movie, but there is no such consensus.

What I take from people who know this stuff better than I do: There's
reasonably good evidence that a diet should have a large amount of vegetables
and fruit. There's controversial evidence that red meat is particularly bad.

 _However_ the big issue with meat in the diet is not health, it's climate.
It's pretty clear that on average meat has a much higher carbon footprint than
plant-based food, while some forms (particularly beef) stand out as
particularly bad.

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aosaigh
Your last point is important. I feel like we need new terminology.
“Sustainability inspired diet” or something catchier.

I’ve been a vegetarian/flexitarian over the last three years, with the
decision being entirely climate-related as opposed to welfare-related
(although this is important in its own right). When people enquire it always
feels like I have to explain the decision and that I don’t necessarily align
with more extreme viewpoints, for example veganism

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wdroz
I'm following a Keto diet where I eat meat 2 times a day.

I'm dissatisfied with the state of the science behind the impact of meat on
both health and climate. If you search papers/studies on this, you'll find
diverging answers.

Pros plant-based people have the movie "The game changers", Pros meat-based
people have the movie "The magic pill". You can find a lot of articles that
praise/criticize both movies.

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Japhy_Ryder
I highly doubt there's any credible article advocating for meat.

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tuesday20
I am a vegetarian and I don’t have much idea about how much meat one should
have, health wise.

What is very clear is that eating meat has a massive bad influence on the
environment.

Majority of crops grown are for animals not humans. These animals then become
hamburgers and such. The amount of energy it takes to kill, process,
transport, refrigerate etc is mind boggling. Not to mention pollution.

For this reason alone, it would make sense to eat less meat, if not quit.

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helph67
There's lots of research based evidence that the Mediterranean diet can result
in a healthy, long life. [https://neurosciencenews.com/aging-blood-cognition-
nutrients...](https://neurosciencenews.com/aging-blood-cognition-
nutrients-10385/)
[https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/t...](https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/telomeres,-trauma,-and-
mindfulness/11769140)

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seanwilson
If there's no strong evidence of a large effect one way or the other and
everyone has their own anecdotes pointing in different directions, is it
really worth worrying about? If you can say anything, it's that humans are
highly adaptable to many different diets like no meat, high meat, low carb,
high carb etc.

Reducing meat is one of the biggest ways to reduce your own personal carbon
footprint and reduce animal suffering. Those two reasons are good enough.

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meiraleal
About the "carbon foot-print" of meat, that is far from conclusive. Most of
the crops are NOT raised to feed cattle. What goes to cattle is the waste
after these crops are processed, mainly to remove the vegetable oil, starch
and some proteins from soy and corn for human consumption, mainly for: fast-
foods, candies, fake food (milk, burgers, etc), tofu, soy sauce.

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jmnicolas
After looking at it for a while, I came to the conclusion that most (emphasis
on 'most'. The problem is to know which one is) dietetic science is junk and
that we're more in religious territory than anything else.

So if I was you, I would do whatever feels reasonable (maybe meat 2 times a
week, drastically reduced amount of processed foods, particularly sugar etc).

IMHO in diets like in politics the danger is always in the extremes. I
wouldn't go full vegan but I wouldn't eat meat 3 times a day either.

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deepaksurti
>> IMHO in diets like in politics the danger is always in the extremes

Not just politics and diets, in almost every sphere of life extremes tend to
be dangerous.

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gus_massa
> _significant amount of scientific consensus_

This is a very weird expression. Is there consensus or not? Always ask for
evidence, not appeal to authority.

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kleer001
What is meant by meat?

Eggs? Milk? Fish?

Mostly it comes down to essential vitamins like B-12 that are all up in the
meat biz.

There are cultures that have been vegetarian for millennia. Ref parts of
India.

