Four Weeks of a Vegan Diet Alter Signs of Inflammation and Aging

xyst

Living to 100 is overrated anyways. As if this planet will even be worth living on if climate change continues to go unchecked. Or if humanity will even exist after the inevitable mass extinction event

tomkat0789

Reminds me that I need to study the impacts of a vegan diet in the science literature to understand how aggressively I should be pursuing it. The times I’ve lived on a near vegan diet, I feel quietly better in lots of little unexpected ways. Happy to chase books or links if people have them lying around.

rrjjww

"Alter" is an interesting word choice

farhanhubble

Both pure vegan and pure meat camps claim to have scientific evidence that it works, which make me question if change is what the body responds to. From personal experience, eating less often and fasting does seem to improve things like brain fog, indigestion etc.

thriving_earthw

We need to collectively evolve as a species past intensive industrial animal confinement. To think, we can be more compassionate and don't need to sacrifice our health, and may in fact be able to live healthier!

bell-cot

> the participants were randomly assigned to two groups: 24 followed a vegan diet for four weeks, while 24 followed a diet particularly high in meat. This may be correct technique for a small-n, short-duration study. But don't expect the results to be applicable to typical non-vegans.

tpoacher

Highly misleading title. They make you really dig up linked paywalled papers before you see any methods to see what people actually ate. The methods say people were allocated to vegan versus "high meat consumption" foods, with participants free to choose their diets. The only restriction was you had to "try" to increase intake if losing weight, and "try" to decrease intake if gaining weight. (i.e. only isocaloric per basal rate, not across the board). Then the linked studies hint heavily that the vegan group tended towards less protein but more fibre, and roughly equal carbs (fat is not mentioned!!). Which at the very least shows the diets were not "equivalent bar for meat", let alone for "moderate" (i.e. potentially healthy) amounts of meat. So they're not comparing "healthy wholefood vegan vs healthy wholefood meat diets". They're comparing availability and behavioural tendencies towards dietary choices when aiming for a short term vegan diet versus when aiming for a short term diet characterised by excessive amounts of meat. I honestly don't get why they do studies like this. It's a waste of time for everyone involved. It's almost like they're only after a headline extolling veganism, rather than actually useful comparisons that could lead to real, actionable dietary insights. Really, if anything, a supported conclusion here could even be that meat diets are likely healthier given sufficient fibre supplementation.