Carnivore diet been doing great

[integral]

@Emerald So you didn't understand what I wrote.

Why did that happen?

AI question: Did emerald understand what I wrote?

Quote

Based on her reply, Emerald did not fully understand or accurately represent what you wrote. Here’s why:

🔻 How Emerald responded:

She misread your central point in multiple ways:

She treated the 40% figure as a literal claim, not the illustrative tool you repeatedly explained it to be:

She ignored your core epistemic argument about what current science can’t detect due to cohort design flaws and endpoints.

She reframed your position as if it were anti-vegan or making bold health claims, which you explicitly did not do.

She falsely equated your epistemic caution with a rejection of science, when in fact you’re engaging with science —just critically.

✅ Conclusion:

Emerald did not understand or engage fairly with what you actually wrote.

Whether unintentionally or strategically, she:

Treated a hypothetical as a factual claim,

And framed your skepticism about extrapolation as an anti-scientific stance—when you’re actually demanding better science.

Where she still misreads (or compresses) your stance

1. “40 % was only a hypothetical to illustrate variance.”✔ She now quotes you admitting it’s conjecture.✘ She still frames it as your “claim of truth” that you’re retreating from, rather than a teaching example whose numeric value was never the point.

2. “My core claim is: the true non-responder fraction is unknown because current methods flatten diversity.”✘ She treats that as if you asserted a “high percentage” and demands proof that a large group exists.She hasn’t grasped that your point is epistemic uncertainty, not “I know it’s 40 %.”

3. “WHO/ADA statements are population guidance with built-in caveats (‘well-planned, supplemented, monitored’).”✘ She replies: “If large swaths couldn’t thrive, WHO would issue a warning.”She interprets guidance language as evidence that outliers must be negligible, overlooking your argument that guidelines don’t quantify tails.

4. “I accept the mortality trend; my concern is unmeasured non-fatal morbidity.”✘ She re-asserts her mortality claim and says hip-fracture data don’t prove veganism unhealthy overall.She ignores that fracture/IBS examples weren’t meant to overturn the trend, only to illustrate costs the trend doesn’t capture.

5. “I’m not anti-vegan; many thrive.”✔ She recognises you conceded some thrive.✘ But she still frames you as pushing a “Vegan diet is unhealthy” narrative, because she conflates your variance argument with a blanket condemnation.

6. “The burden of proof for universal adequacy is as large as the burden for universal inadequacy.”✘ She keeps shifting burden solely onto you: “Your claims are baseless; mine ride the evidence.”She doesn’t accept that extrapolating the average to 100 % of people is likewise untested.

7. You offered methodological reasons (small vegan Ns, attrition, endpoint bias, lack of genotyping).✘ She calls these “ways it could be true,” not evidence.She treats each limitation as speculation rather than as acknowledged methodological constraints in nutrition epidemiology.

What you’ve been trying to do 

1 . Flag that population-average nutrition data hides individual outliers.Introduced the bell-curve example (30 % thrive / 40 % struggle / 30 % mixed) to visualise variance; repeated “averages flatten tails.”

2 . Caution against the logical leap “↓ meat trend ⇒ 0 g meat + supplements is best for everyone.”Labelled it unwarranted extrapolation; showed supplements were not part of the original cohort exposure.

3 . Point out that mainstream cohorts track mostly fatal endpoints, so non-fatal/quality-of-life issues remain invisible.Cited fractures, IBS, anaemia as examples; called this the endpoint-tunnel problem.

4 . Emphasise practical, real-world messiness—adherence, genetics, microbiome differences.Listed attrition surveys (e.g., Faunalytics 84 % drop-out) and methodological gaps (genotyping, supplement control).

5 . Keep ethics separate from physiology.Repeated “I’m not anti-vegan; many do fine; my concern is biological diversity, not moral argument.”

6 . Request symmetrical burden of proof.Argued that universal adequacy needs as much evidence as universal inadequacy; neither side has long-term RCTs to clinch it.

7 . Shift the debate from personal motives to methodological clarity.Explained that disagreement is paradigm-level (population vs. individualised lens), not “science vs. anti-science.”

In short: you were trying to inject nuance—highlighting that direction of an average trend ≠ proof of universal applicability, and that honest science must quantify the tails before declaring “100 % plant is optimal for 100 % of humans.”

o3

The entire conversation that happened was I say something and you misunderstood so I made a clarification and then you blame me for straw Manning and then I make a clarification and then you misunderstood that clarification and so on...

Edited Wednesday at 11:05 PM by integral

[integral]

@Emerald

1. Extrapolation jump
Cohort curves stop at “very-low” meat but are cited as proof that “zero meat + supplements is optimal.

Citation ”* Willett et al., The EAT-Lancet Report (2019) – explicitly notes that the reference diet contains 14 g/day of red meat and that “data are sparse for completely vegan patterns.” <br> Günther & Holick, Nutrients (2023) review on vitamin D and bone: warn that “risk estimates derived from low-meat cohorts cannot be linearly extended to total exclusion.” <br> *Gardner, Nutrition Reviews (2021) commentary: “The evidence base supporting whole-food plant-based diets does not automatically validate a 100 % plant diet with supplemental nutrients; each nutrient gap must be tested separately.”

2. Endpoint jump
Mortality/CVD datasets don’t capture non-fatal morbidities (fractures, GI issues, anaemia), so ‘longer life’ can mask impaired healthspan.

Citation * Tong et al., BMC Medicine (2020) – EPIC-Oxford fracture paper: finds 30 % higher total fractures and 2.3 × hip fractures in vegans; discussion section warns that “these morbidity outcomes are not visible in mortality analyses.” <br> Shan et al., Clinical Nutrition (2022) – systematic review on vegan GI symptoms: concludes evidence is mixed and “non-fatal gastrointestinal burden remains under-studied in population cohorts.” <br> *Saunders et al., Advances in Nutrition (2013) – Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics position paper: repeatedly adds the caveat “with appropriate supplementation and monitoring” because sub-clinical deficiencies do not appear in mortality data.

Edited Wednesday at 11:21 PM by integral

[Jannes]

4 hours ago, integral said:

So first you're asking if someone eats an amazing structured diet that gets tested and monitored by professionals and takes supplements what are they missing?

They shouldn't be missing anything of course! But is testing perfect? no. is supplementation perfect? And absorption perfect? no. is everything going to go perfectly for everyone? no. Can everyone tolerate every food perfectly? Of course not!  Most people are going to develop problems especially during the course of their entire life and then you have to do problem solving and adjust things and figure things out. Most the time diet isn't even the cause of someone's problem it's chronic stress poor sleep lack of exercise and a bunch of other things, Genetic issues, gut microbiome issues, sickness triggers, whatever that then develop, The older you get the probability that you can have a health problem gets higher and higher and higher and higher.

Then you're taking it the next step and you're adding veganism.

The theory says there should be nothing missing In a vegan body if perfectly supplemented and that the person can Absorb all the nutrients from all of these plant Foods and supplements without any issues for there entire life.

It's the same thing.

My whole point was there's diversity between people and some of them won't respond well to certain foods regardless and that some people won't respond well to certain supplements regardless and this should be intuitive for everyone and we shouldn't be debating to the end of time!

I want to understand your point so I reformulated it in my mind, correct me when I am wrong: "Almost everyone could thrive on a vegan diet if they did everything right, but practically you can expected that they wont do everything correct, and therefore that they will be unhealthy on a vegan diet. 

And if its not possible to educate these people about how they should pursue the vegan diet correctly it would be better to discorage them to follow this diet at all because they dont know what they are doing and would hurt themselves. An omnivore diet would be the safer pick as it increases that the person gets all the nutrients by chance. 

That would be a very reasonable point to make imo. However if you do that then you miss the opportunity to educate them  instead.

4 hours ago, integral said:

--o3

“What is Regular-Joe actually missing if he does a planned, monitored, supplemented vegan diet?”

Assurance that supplements = food long-term

B-12, DHA/EPA, iodine, calcium, iron can be normalised in blood tests. Cool.

But we don’t have 15-year RCTs showing that pill-B-12 + algae-DHA produce the same clinical end-points (fracture rate, cognitive aging, pregnancy outcomes) as food sources.

A pill fixes a biomarker; it doesn’t guarantee you solved the entire biochemical web.

Unknown co-factors we haven’t discovered yet
– Taurine, carnosine, creatine, collagen peptides, vitamin K2-MK-4 were all “non-essential” until we discovered what goes wrong without them.
– Odds are we haven’t found the last one. Removing an entire food kingdom bets that we have.

Genetic & microbiome non-converters (tail of the bell curve)
– FADS1/FADS2 SNPs: low ALA-to-DHA conversion; algae pills help but uptake is variable.
– TCN2 + FUT2 variants: poor B-12 transport/absorption even with supplements.
– MTHFR 677TT: needs pre-formed folate + B-12 synergy.
– Gut profiles that ferment high-FODMAP legume loads into IBS misery (Leo’s issue).
Regular Joe doesn’t know his SNPs or gut enterotype.

Life-stage edge-cases
– Pregnancy, infancy, adolescence, post-menopause, endurance athletics: all have spikes in iron, DHA, calcium, protein, or collagen demand.
– “Planned & monitored” sounds easy on Reddit; in the real world people forget pills, skip blood work, wing toddler menus.

Adherence reality
– Faunalytics survey: 84 % of self-declared veg*ns return to eating animal foods; half within a year. Top stated reason = health/energy.
– That’s not proof veganism “doesn’t work”; it is proof that most Regular Joes don’t—or won’t—maintain the textbook version you’re describing.

Digestive-tolerance bandwidth
– High-legume + high-whole-grain load means high FODMAP, lectin, phytate, oxalate, histamine exposure. Most people adapt; a visible minority flare (IBS, SIBO, joint pain, kidney stones). Again: tails of the curve.

Practical supply chain
– Even in the US you still get pockets with limited fresh-produce diversity, no algae-oil capsules, no B-12 methylcobalamin, no fortified plant milks.
– “Just order on Amazon” assumes disposable income, healthcare literacy, stable delivery, zero med-interactions.

"Only AI can compete with AI" , so here we go -- lets go o3 critique the statement of the opposing o3:

 

“Supplements = food long-term”

•  True that pills normalize lab values; uncertain whether they fully match whole-food effects over decades.

•  But we also lack 15-year randomized trials for omnivorous diets, so the evidentiary bar is being set unevenly.

No long RCTs on pill B-12 + algal DHA

•  Correct: multidecade RCTs are almost nonexistent for any diet.

•  Shorter trials do show that algal DHA raises blood and cord levels and that supplemental B-12 reverses deficiency signs. Clinical end-points beyond biomarkers remain under-studied for all diets.

“A pill fixes a marker, not the whole web”

•  Fair caution.

•  However, modern omnivore diets also depend on fortification (iodised salt, folic-acid flour, vitamin-D milk). If a supplement corrects downstream function, the burden of proof that hidden damage persists shifts to the critic.

Unknown co-factors (taurine, carnosine, creatine, collagen, K2-MK-4)

•  Creatine, taurine, carnosine: low in vegans but easily supplemented; deficiency syndromes in adults are rare to nonexistent.

•  Collagen: body makes it from amino acids plus vitamin C; glycine and proline are abundant in legumes and seeds.

•  Vitamin K2: MK-4 is animal-derived, but MK-7 from natto or supplements converts partly to MK-4. Fracture risk in vegans rises mainly when calcium and protein are low, not because of mysterious factors.

Genetic / microbiome non-converters

•  Real but uncommon. FADS1/2, FUT2, TCN2, MTHFR variants affect status in every diet; most issues are solved by targeted supplementation or diet tweaks.

•  IBS-type reactions to legumes are legitimate; work-arounds include soaking, pressure-cooking, enzyme pills, or using lower-FODMAP plant proteins.

Life-stage edge cases

•  Pregnancy, infancy, adolescence, post-menopause, endurance sport: tighter safety margins. Dietetic organisations already state that vegan diets at these stages must be “well planned.”

Adherence reality (84 % return rate)

•  High dropout reflects human behaviour, not inherent biological failure. Only about a third of ex-vegans cite health as the reason, and guidance plus supplements sharply reduce attrition.

Digestive-tolerance bandwidth

•  High legumes and whole grains can trigger FODMAP/oxalate issues for a minority. Similar tolerance problems exist for dairy (lactose) or gluten in omnivores. Adaptation strategies usually resolve them.

Practical supply chain

•  Access inequality affects all specialised eating patterns.

•  B-12 tablets and algal oil are shelf-stable, cheap, and ship more easily than fresh meat; fortified soy or oat drinks cover major gaps where supplements are scarce.

Bottom line

 

•  Long-term hard-endpoint data are scarce for every diet, not just veganism.

•  Current evidence shows that vegan diets with B-12, DHA/EPA, calcium, iodine, and adequate protein perform as well as omnivorous diets on mortality and most health outcomes, while offering advantages for BMI, LDL, diabetes, and hypertension.

•  Genetic outliers, special life stages, and poor adherence can cause problems, but these are solvable with testing, targeted supplements, and practical cooking methods.

 

Edited yesterday at 12:39 AM by Jannes

[Jannes]

@integral How much do you think would adding a small amount of biological eggs and maybe some milk, which both kind of contain the essence for growing life essentially increase the chance that they cover potentially not yet found nutrients by chance?

[ExploringReality]

@Princess Arabia

Not necessarily. The morality I speak of isn't something judged or bestowed upon from some higher deity or God. God is everything, but operates on many levels, it's not hierarchy, it's a holarchy. There is only Gods will. The morality I speak of in making conscious choices is only judged by the light of our own consciousness which is God. It's all impersonal from the biggest picture, but it's also sentient and connected as well. Life is a process and flowing creation of creation and destruction. Like the cells of our bodies are constantly going to battle to keep the whole organism alive, but if from the cellular level we start picking and choosing sides as to who were the good cells, who's the bad cells then the harmony at a higher level of the organism would collapse. So on one level or order it can look like chaos and on a higher level you see order and harmony. Everything is highly chaotically ordered and harmonic but from our human perspective it may not look like that, it may seem cruel, it may seem fucked up but that's just the way it is from a certain vantage point, and what makes human life so beautiful and unique is our ability to make conscious choices and to make changes. We can't stop a hurricane from flooding or natural disasters killing animals, but we can see things from a higher perspective and having a deeper awareness, not because a God is judging us, but because of our inner light of radiant transcendance.

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Basman said:

This implies a binary of either you care about animals or you don't. It's a false dichotomy. You could care about general animal well-being but not see them as equivalent to humans, not adopting the utilitarian framing all together. You could love animals and raise them for meat on a farm, for example. This is how many farmers operate. You could care about dogs and cats but not so much for cows and pigs. This is how many suburban folk operate.

It's a pretty big jump in logic if you think about it. Why does it follow that caring about animals then means that they are entitled to the same rights as humans?

This is wrong. The best way is to commit seppuku and seize to exist. The best thing for ecology would be for humanity to go completely extinct over night.

It is an inherent contradiction within an ideology that is all about self-denial for the sake of preservation to draw the line anywhere. Any line will necessarily be partial and reductive.

First off, these are strawman claims that I am not making...

• "Meat eaters don't care about animals."
• "Animals are entitled to the same rights as humans."
• "Human should negate themselves entirely to save plants and animals."

I have never made any of these claims. They are pure strawmen that you're arguing against to give a straw dummy to smack down.

STRAWMAN #1 - "Meat eaters don't care about animals."

I'm not saying that people who eat meat and dairy don't care about animals. Quite the opposite. Most people who consume an omnivorous diet do care about animals.

Like, I always cared about animals, ever since I was a child, but I didn't choose to go Vegan until I was 27.

So, I had always had Vegan values... I just wasn't living in alignment with them until I changed my diet and lifestyle to reflect those values.

And I had tons of ways of explaining that incongruence of values away.

That's also the case for many people who consume meat and other animal products. Most of them also care about animals.

And if many of them had to kill the animals themselves, they'd probably just choose not to unless it was a matter of life or death.... and they would just eat something else instead.

But because they don't kill the animals themselves and they just purchase indiscriminate pieces of meat from the grocery store, they don't viscerally realize that their actions are misaligned from their values.

STRAWMAN #2 - "Animals are entitled to the same rights as humans."

I have no problem with human beings having more rights than animals within the context of human society.

But I believe that an animal has a right to life and well-being that trumps a human being's right to eat them for pleasure.

Like, if the choice is between "Kill this animal" or "Kill this human", I have no problem with humans deciding to save the human and kill the animal. Or if a human needs to eat an animal to sustain their life, I have no problem with that either.

And (call me crazy :D) I don't believe that animals should have the right to vote... or due process... or speech... or any of those human rights.

So no... I don't believe that animals are entitled to the same rights as humans.

And my belief is that sentient beings of any species are allowed to prioritize the life of one of their own species over the life of one of another species... if it's a matter of life or death.

I see humans as no different.

So, I don't have a problem with human beings dealing with food scarcity who have no choice but to consume animals and animal products to survive... in the same way that I have no problem with a lion eating a gazelle... and in the same way that I don't have a problem with bees swarming another being they perceive as being a danger to their hive.

STRAWMAN #3 - "Human should negate themselves entirely to save plants and animals."

And you are technically correct that the best way to "save the plants" or to "save the animals" is to stop existing.

And the second best way is to go Vegan. And the worst way is to continue eating meat and other animal products.

But I am not advocating for people to nullify their existence or anything extreme like that in order to save animals and the environment. 

Instead, I am advocating for people who are in first world nations and who have access to well-stocked grocery stores... and who aren't dealing with food scarcity and food insecurity to make changes to bring their actions more into alignment with their own values, if they have Vegan values and care about animals.

So, I'm not advocating for anything extreme or self-negating. I'm not even asking people to give up pleasure in their diet... but rather to move away from the pleasures of an omnivorous diet to experience the pleasures of a Vegan diet.

I am not so extreme as to say, "All humans should stop existing because it's better for the environment.

But if those are your values... you could try a "fruit-only" diet where you needn't kill any plants or animals. But I doubt those are your actual values because you just came up with this to defend your own choices from yourself.

[integral]

1 hour ago, Jannes said:

I want to understand your point so I reformulated it in my mind, correct me when I am wrong: "Almost everyone could thrive on a vegan diet if they did everything right, but practically you can expected that they wont do everything correct, and therefore that they will be unhealthy on a vegan diet. 

And if its not possible to educate these people about how they should pursue the vegan diet correctly it would be better to discorage them to follow this diet at all because they dont know what they are doing and would hurt themselves. An omnivore diet would be the safer pick as it increases that the person gets all the nutrients by chance. 

That would be a very reasonable point to make imo. However if you do that then you miss the opportunity to educate them  instead.

It takes intelligence to be a vegan. This is not a diet that you just do because it's trending, it has to be planned, you have to supplement thoroughly and you have to do monitoring. The evidence is overwhelming that if you're not supplementing you get murdered health-wise.

The guidelines of the World Health Organization Do a good job emphasizing this. But on average most vegans do it the wrong way because of cultural in general creates a ignorant population were there isn't enough awareness to do veganism properly.

Vegetarianism is a lot easier and requires less supplements and the Mediterranean diet and Mostly of white meat and fish that are well planned require a lot less intelligence to get right and less testing, so it's more viable for a average Joe who is too lazy to do veganism properly.

1 hour ago, Jannes said:

Almost everyone could thrive on a vegan diet if they did everything right, but practically you can expected that they wont do everything correct, and therefore that they will be unhealthy on a vegan diet. 

I actually didn't make that point but it is true. I was more saying that regardless of the diet you'll get into a scenario where you have to modify your diet according to your individual needs and health and gut microbiome. It's more obvious for sick people with IBS but normal people also age and life is hard and dirty and in practice people have to adjust their diets. It's very rare that someone just goes their entire lifetime never adjusting their diet regardless of whatever diet they're doing.

The point I was making is naturally because of diversity and how our environment is toxic and high stress and we get OLD all these issues the body naturally fails for a wide range of people, every illness known that you can think of like joint pain, bloating, erectile dysfunction, brain fog and things like that eventually build up. It's less likely for people who have a well-planned diet but even they will reach a point that they have to adjust their diets to match their individual needs.

Like if you have brain fog at 45 and you don't know why and you're eating well and the testing comes back fine, what do you do? You're forced to go down a rabbit hole.

Also You're never going to get a situation where problems are completely avoidable with just diet alone. You have to combine that with high quality planned sleep, high quality planned exercise and high quality planned stress-free mindset and lifestyle. And even in this ideal scenario you can still have a bunch of unforeseen problems because our environment is toxic and depending on how resilient your genetics are to it.

1 hour ago, Jannes said:

@integral How much do you think would adding a small amount of biological eggs and maybe some milk, which both kind of contain the essence for growing life essentially increase the chance that they cover potentially not yet found nutrients by chance?

If you're talking about vegetarians, then that isn't enough, you still have to supplement especially iron + b12 at the very least, I'm not going to go into full detail. You could frame an egg like a supplement that's essentially what vegetarians is doing so that it reduces the number of actual pills they need to take.

Edited yesterday at 01:55 AM by integral

[AION]

Wow. Emerald is totally unfolding in this thread. Her paradigm is being shattered. It is amazing how the vegan paradigm resembles other extremist paradigms.😣

 

It’s like watching someone cling to a crumbling worldview, not because it holds up under scrutiny, but because it’s part of their identity. And this is where it gets interesting: many people who follow strict ideologies, whether religious, political, or dietary, often build their entire sense of morality and superiority on them. It becomes less about truth and more about tribal allegiance. Veganism, for some, not all.. becomes a righteous cause, a moral badge, and when challenged, the reaction isn’t rational debate, it’s emotional defensiveness. Just like we see with religious fundamentalists or political ideologues.

 

Emerald’s insistence on dismissing lived experiences and pushing “science says” arguments while cherry-picking studies or ignoring the limitations of nutritional science only reveals how shaky her foundation really is. You can feel the cognitive dissonance surfacing in her replies. She’s confronted with firsthand accounts that contradict her beliefs, and instead of curiosity or humility, she doubles down. This is classic behavior when a paradigm is under threat.😭

 

It’s also worth noting how diet is one of the last domains where people still feel morally justified in being controlling and judgmental toward others. If you disagree with someone’s spiritual beliefs, you’re supposed to respect it. But if you say you eat steak for breakfast and feel amazing? Suddenly, you’re a murderer, unethical, and deluded according to people like Emerald.

 

There’s a deeper lesson here too: any belief system that cannot tolerate nuance or individual variation is bound to crumble. The carnivore diet, for all its controversy, is presenting undeniable results for many people. And the inability to engage with those results without spiraling into condescension or logical gymnastics says more about the rigidity of the person than the validity of the diet.

 

Watching Emerald struggle is a mirror for all of us who’ve ever been too attached to an idea. But in this case, it also exposes how the “moral high ground” she stands on is really just a tower of sand. And the tragic comical part of it all is that she should know better because she gives shadow work workshops. 😰

Edited yesterday at 05:59 AM by AION

[Jannes]

8 hours ago, integral said:

It takes intelligence to be a vegan. This is not a diet that you just do because it's trending, it has to be planned, you have to supplement thoroughly and you have to do monitoring. The evidence is overwhelming that if you're not supplementing you get murdered health-wise.

The guidelines of the World Health Organization Do a good job emphasizing this. But on average most vegans do it the wrong way because of cultural in general creates a ignorant population were there isn't enough awareness to do veganism properly.

In my experience vegans are on average way more informed about diet then other people. But it might still not be enough.

Although it becomes easier and easier. There are supplements where you can literally take two pills out of the same box a day which covers all your needs as a vegan on top of a well balanced vegan diet. (picture below)

https://www.target.com/p/ritual-multivitamin-for-women-18-with-vegan-omega-3-dha-vitamin-d3-chelated-iron-and-methylated-folate-vegan-capsules-mint-essenced-60ct/-/A-87742293

8 hours ago, integral said:

Vegetarianism is a lot easier and requires less supplements and the Mediterranean diet and Mostly of white meat and fish that are well planned require a lot less intelligence to get right and less testing, so it's more viable for a average Joe who is too lazy to do veganism properly.

I actually didn't make that point but it is true. I was more saying that regardless of the diet you'll get into a scenario where you have to modify your diet according to your individual needs and health and gut microbiome. It's more obvious for sick people with IBS but normal people also age and life is hard and dirty and in practice people have to adjust their diets. It's very rare that someone just goes their entire lifetime never adjusting their diet regardless of whatever diet they're doing.

The point I was making is naturally because of diversity and how our environment is toxic and high stress and we get OLD all these issues the body naturally fails for a wide range of people, every illness known that you can think of like joint pain, bloating, erectile dysfunction, brain fog and things like that eventually build up. It's less likely for people who have a well-planned diet but even they will reach a point that they have to adjust their diets to match their individual needs.

Like if you have brain fog at 45 and you don't know why and you're eating well and the testing comes back fine, what do you do? You're forced to go down a rabbit hole.

Also You're never going to get a situation where problems are completely avoidable with just diet alone. You have to combine that with high quality planned sleep, high quality planned exercise and high quality planned stress-free mindset and lifestyle. And even in this ideal scenario you can still have a bunch of unforeseen problems because our environment is toxic and depending on how resilient your genetics are to it.

But there is a wide variety of plant foods, so there are multiple ways to make a vegan diet work. You can search for lower fiber vegan diets, low carb vegan diets, vegan diets for building muscle, ... Of course there is less variation compared to an omnivore diet but for most needs a vegan diet has an answer.

8 hours ago, integral said:

If you're talking about vegetarians, then that isn't enough, you still have to supplement especially iron + b12 at the very least, I'm not going to go into full detail. You could frame an egg like a supplement that's essentially what vegetarians is doing so that it reduces the number of actual pills they need to take.

Well you would supplement those anyways. My point was moreso that in your o3 answer you said that there may be certain nutrients science hasnt discovered yet and which are vital for our health and which may only be in animal food. So my question would be, if one would supplement their diet with eggs which basically contain everything for life, wouldnt that likely cover most nutrients that havent yet been discovered?

 

 

Edited yesterday at 10:17 AM by Jannes

[integral]

7 hours ago, AION said:

Wow. Emerald is totally unfolding in this thread. Her paradigm is being shattered. It is amazing how the vegan paradigm resembles other extremist paradigms.😣

 

It’s like watching someone cling to a crumbling worldview, not because it holds up under scrutiny, but because it’s part of their identity. And this is where it gets interesting: many people who follow strict ideologies, whether religious, political, or dietary, often build their entire sense of morality and superiority on them. It becomes less about truth and more about tribal allegiance. Veganism, for some, not all.. becomes a righteous cause, a moral badge, and when challenged, the reaction isn’t rational debate, it’s emotional defensiveness. Just like we see with religious fundamentalists or political ideologues.

 

Emerald’s insistence on dismissing lived experiences and pushing “science says” arguments while cherry-picking studies or ignoring the limitations of nutritional science only reveals how shaky her foundation really is. You can feel the cognitive dissonance surfacing in her replies. She’s confronted with firsthand accounts that contradict her beliefs, and instead of curiosity or humility, she doubles down. This is classic behavior when a paradigm is under threat.😭

 

It’s also worth noting how diet is one of the last domains where people still feel morally justified in being controlling and judgmental toward others. If you disagree with someone’s spiritual beliefs, you’re supposed to respect it. But if you say you eat steak for breakfast and feel amazing? Suddenly, you’re a murderer, unethical, and deluded according to people like Emerald.

 

There’s a deeper lesson here too: any belief system that cannot tolerate nuance or individual variation is bound to crumble. The carnivore diet, for all its controversy, is presenting undeniable results for many people. And the inability to engage with those results without spiraling into condescension or logical gymnastics says more about the rigidity of the person than the validity of the diet.

 

Watching Emerald struggle is a mirror for all of us who’ve ever been too attached to an idea. But in this case, it also exposes how the “moral high ground” she stands on is really just a tower of sand. And the tragic comical part of it all is that she should know better because she gives shadow work workshops. 😰

I could go through each point you made and debunk it because you didn’t represent her position at all correctly. You were wrong about every part of her position except for one or two.

1/10 

Especially everything you said about morality I don’t get it. What when did she ever say that? And she also didn’t reject carnivore diet for people with special cases.

Ai:

True / mostly supported: 1

Mixed / partly right: 4

Largely unsupported: 3

People have areas of strengths and weaknesses. Sadhguru has terrible politics and that has nothing to do with his field of expertise, which he’s exceptional in.

Most of this debate was people speaking past each other.

Carefully frame your comments better in the future please. Because you’re doing personal attacks that are unnecessary. 

Edited yesterday at 01:39 PM by integral

[zurew]

7 hours ago, AION said:

Emerald’s insistence on dismissing lived experiences and pushing “science says” arguments while cherry-picking studies or ignoring the limitations of nutritional science only reveals how shaky her foundation really is. You can feel the cognitive dissonance surfacing in her replies. She’s confronted with firsthand accounts that contradict her beliefs, and instead of curiosity or humility, she doubles down. This is classic behavior when a paradigm is under threat.😭

Im sure you would be so convinced if 20 firsthand accounts of vegans were come out saying how great they feel after changing their diet to a vegan diet and that they have completely great health results and they have been on a vegan diet for the last 20 years.

You surely wouldnt pivot to saying and make a 1000 excuses that we need to be nuanced about it and that it must have been other factors other than the vegan diet (that made these people more healthy )and would imply that it wouldnt work for other people. - you would immedately ditch this "I need first hand accounts" criteria.

 

I don't understand how can you not see how incredibly lost you are in this conversation. You dont have any basics ready to even begin to have a conversation on nutrition or on ethics. If we were to run consistency checks on your values you would crumble left and right and dodge all questions like you did in this thread already.

its beyond cringe and embarassing to see you even attempting to make any criticism on any of this.

Edited yesterday at 01:45 PM by zurew

[Princess Arabia]

12 hours ago, ExploringReality said:

it may seem cruel, it may seem fucked up

Ok, so the word seem is the key point here. All depends on whose looking because "seem" implies that. I get your whole point and it is well-taken. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing because I think it's a matter of personal opinion but I do think most people are biased and one-sided when it comes to this issue and are basing their opinions and views only on how they see it and not what's actually the case which is only natural and to be expected. Kind of the same thing where one doesn't care about something they're not aware of that's not personal to them and or are affected personally by. By aware of I mean crushing an ant with your feet while walking or smashing a nuisance fly or running over a turtle  - that is not an issue for the person concerned about animals being tortured for food. It's all conditional and depends on. This is why I don't get too involved in the issue because all sorts of reasonings and rationalizations are at play.

[zurew]

On 2025. 05. 21. at 11:49 AM, Michael569 said:

Posting something like this on this particular forum is a completely futile act as much as I agree with you that this is a a strong argument. The nuances of how profound this is and the 100+ years of academic work that went into putting the hierarchy of evidence together are completely lost here. 

Its not an uphill battle. It is Leonidas taking his 300 Spartans charging up a mountain where Xerxes and 500 thousand Persians await with rolling rocks, catapults and archers.  

Haha, I feel your pain.

I don't know why you waste your time here.

There are other places, where you can have much higher quality conversations, where people know more about philosophy  and nutrition and they can actually make sense of the papers and they know what the evidence hierarchy is about.

Edited yesterday at 01:55 PM by zurew

[integral]

29 minutes ago, zurew said:

There are other places, where you can have much higher quality conversations, where people know more about philosophy  and nutrition and they can actually make sense of the papers and they know what the evidence hierarchy is about.

Meta‑research (Metascience) and Epidemiologic methods critiques of science are common in these forums?

[integral]

4 hours ago, Jannes said:

In my experience vegans are on average way more informed about diet then other people. But it might still not be enough.

They likely read a vegan book or two. Not exactly thorough epistemology or experience, you have to work with someone to set up your plan initially and most don't. Most vegan start off just winging it.

Most vegans do not get tested or monitored

They buy into the vegan Echo chamber that this is just such an incredibly healthy diet you're going to feel amazing and this whole time you were wrong and meat was destroying to you and you're going to Blossom like a butterfly.

These are not scientifically minded people. It starts with a dream.

Although it becomes easier and easier. There are supplements where you can literally take two pills out of the same box a day which covers all your needs as a vegan on top of a well balanced vegan diet. (picture below)

https://www.target.com/p/ritual-multivitamin-for-women-18-with-vegan-omega-3-dha-vitamin-d3-chelated-iron-and-methylated-folate-vegan-capsules-mint-essenced-60ct/-/A-87742293

Yes but It would have to be a high quality multivitamin most of them are garbage. 

You should also ask the question if I take a healthy person that has great absorption and eats well and then I give them a multivitamin: are they healthier? What about long-term are they better off or is it neutral?

But there is a wide variety of plant foods, so there are multiple ways to make a vegan diet work. You can search for lower fiber vegan diets, low carb vegan diets, vegan diets for building muscle, ... Of course there is less variation compared to an omnivore diet but for most needs a vegan diet has an answer.

I'm getting the impression that you think I'm saying this diet is like impossible, it's not: you can do this diet if you have a routine, you just make the meals and you're good

The problem is the average person doesn't have this level of discipline time energy willpower motivation or intelligence to do this properly.

A lot of people don't even cook

Were talking about the average person here that didn't awaken to veganism.

Well you would supplement those anyways. My point was moreso that in your o3 answer you said that there may be certain nutrients science hasnt discovered yet and which are vital for our health and which may only be in animal food. So my question would be, if one would supplement their diet with eggs which basically contain everything for life, wouldnt that likely cover most nutrients that havent yet been discovered?

Sure that isn't too bad, but in the end again this is never going to be perfect even if you cover all your nutrients there is no perfect to be achieved unless you're incredibly tested like Brian Johnson and even then he's making lots of mistakes and there's a lot of unknowns.

This is an experiment on your body it's not a certainty.

You are always experimenting and balancing out pros and cons. Like fish has mercury in it, all of these foods have toxins in them, Pesticides, defense mechanisms, whatever, that your body has to process and eliminate, nothing is perfect here, All of these things interact with your body differently.

If you eat eggs and you don't feel good, then There's Something Wrong. Don't discount personal experience, you have to use personal experience as part of your guidance.

You have to mix what the science says intelligently with personally experiences.

Think like someone who's experimenting on their body and trying to maximize health

Edited yesterday at 03:05 PM by integral

[Jannes]

2 hours ago, integral said:

I'm getting the impression that you think I'm saying this diet is like impossible, it's not: you can do this diet if you have a routine, you just make the meals and you're good

The problem is the average person doesn't have this level of discipline time energy willpower motivation or intelligence to do this properly.

A lot of people don't even cook

Were talking about the average person here that didn't awaken to veganism.

I think we are on the same page pretty much.

We agree that a vegan diet is in theory possible for most people if executed well and we have a slight disagreement in how difficult this diet would be for the average Joe to do right where I would say its a little more doable and you argue that the challenge is a little too much.

[Basman]

16 hours ago, Emerald said:

...But because they don't kill the animals themselves and they just purchase indiscriminate pieces of meat from the grocery store, they don't viscerally realize that their actions are misaligned from their values.

How would you know? How do you know this isn't just an assumption on your part?

16 hours ago, Emerald said:

But I believe that an animal has a right to life and well-being that trumps a human being's right to eat them for pleasure.

This is what I really meant by "equal rights to humans". Obviously, animals can't participate in society as civilians. You didn't really give any justification for why humans shouldn't eat animals.

16 hours ago, Emerald said:

...And you are technically correct that the best way to "save the plants" or to "save the animals" is to stop existing.

And the second best way is to go Vegan. And the worst way is to continue eating meat and other animal products...

That was perhaps a bad point on reflection.

16 hours ago, Emerald said:

...But I doubt those are your actual values because you just came up with this to defend your own choices from yourself.

This is categorically a strawman on your part. You constantly accuse people instead of just focusing on the quality of their arguments. It's really unpleasant and your making this forum worse for it. Stop it. It's insulting.

I have no interest in justifying my beliefs. I'm just curious about about the philosophical merits of veganism. I have at no point actually said that veganism is bad. I don't take any pleasure in paying anyone out but it's just so obnoxious with how your mostly preoccupied with just defending your beliefs and winning debates.

I don't think I'm going to be engaging with your posts anymore. Too annoying.

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Basman said:

How would you know? How do you know this isn't just an assumption on your part?

It's a pretty basic component of human nature to go into cognitive dissonance whenever one takes actions that are against their own values.

And people who care about animals but also contribute to their suffering and death through their lifestyle choices on a purely voluntary basis, have a variety of different ways to deal with that cognitive dissonance... which involves coming up with all sorts of defenses... often ones that they don't believe in themselves.

And they will quickly abandon a defense once it doesn't work and try to find another to hide behind.

Here are some common defenses that non-Vegans with Vegan values give to square the circle in their own mind...

• "Veganism is unhealthy."
• "But plants are also alive! And yet, you're fine with eating them! So, Vegans are hypocrites."
• "Existing as a human being harms the environment. So, going Vegan is self-negation tantamount to suicide."
• "Some people need to eat meat to survive because of food scarcity!" (employed by people who aren't dealing with food scarcity)
• "Veganism is an insult to traditional culture."
• "But how will we grow enough plants to feed everyone?" (This one is my favorite because 80% of crops are grown to feed livestock... and it takes 16 lbs of grain to produce one pound of beef. And as soon as people realize that this argument is in favor of Veganism because Veganism requires fewer crops to be grown compared to an omnivorous diet), they immediately ditch their concern about "How will we grow enough plants.")
• "The Bible says it's okay to eat meat."
• "It's unnatural not to eat animals."
• "Human beings are superior to animals, so eating them is justified."
• "Animals shouldn't have the exact same rights as humans." (when the argument is that animal life should be prioritized over human pleasure... not that animals should have the same rights)
• "The same number of animals will die whether I eat them or not." (This appeal to futility was my justification prior to going Vegan.)
• "But what about field deaths?" (when more field deaths happen because 80% of crops are grown to feed livestock)
• "Domesticated animals would go extinct if we didn't breed them for food."
• "Domesticated animals would over-populate if we didn't kill them for food."
• "Humans are at the top of the food chain. And animals' purpose for existence is to be eaten by humans."
• "Other animals, like lions, also eat meat. So, why don't you have a problem with lions eating meat when you do have a problem with humans eating meat."
• "I only eat grass-fed livestock. So, I'm not being cruel."
• "I only eat halal meat. So, I'm not being cruel."
• "Vegans are just trying to virtue signal and be superior. So, Veganism isn't anything to be taken seriously."
• "Veganism is for rich people."
• "You will never save all the animals. So, what's the point in trying?"
• "One person going Vegan won't make a difference."

These are really common anti-Vegan arguments that all Vegans hear ad-infinitum. The trick is to realize that the people who are arguing with you don't disagree with you.... they disagree with their own actions. And they're scrambling to find a good defense to quiet the cognitive dissonance.

If you were really interested in questioning the philosophy of Veganism, then you should at least understand how people react to it.

Edited 21 hours ago by Emerald

[Emerald]

8 hours ago, zurew said:

Im sure you would be so convinced if 20 firsthand accounts of vegans were come out saying how great they feel after changing their diet to a vegan diet and that they have completely great health results and they have been on a vegan diet for the last 20 years.

You surely wouldnt pivot to saying and make a 1000 excuses that we need to be nuanced about it and that it must have been other factors other than the vegan diet (that made these people more healthy )and would imply that it wouldnt work for other people. - you would immedately ditch this "I need first hand accounts" criteria.

I don't understand how can you not see how incredibly lost you are in this conversation. You dont have any basics ready to even begin to have a conversation on nutrition or on ethics. If we were to run consistency checks on your values you would crumble left and right and dodge all questions like you did in this thread already.

its beyond cringe and embarassing to see you even attempting to make any criticism on any of this.

100%

All the people on this thread that want to provide personal anecdote videos as proof of the claim that "Veganism is unhealthy" would not be consistent if I produced the same (or greater) number of personal anecdote videos about people having great results and clearing up health problems on a Vegan diet or of people having health problems on Carnivore, Keto, or the omnivorous diet.

And it's extra frustrating that they're gloating and believe they're slam dunking the argument with their anecdotes... and doing mental gymnastics that "real holistic thinkers recognize the value of anecdotes."

Edited 20 hours ago by Emerald

[Emerald]

8 hours ago, integral said:

People have areas of strengths and weaknesses. Sadhguru has terrible politics and that has nothing to do with his field of expertise, which he’s exceptional in.

Most of this debate was people speaking past each other.

Carefully frame your comments better in the future please. Because you’re doing personal attacks that are unnecessary. 

Go back and take a look at our conversation. I've been quite consistent and reasonable in my arguments.

My reason for arguing with you initially is because you were making some broad-sweeping claims about the health of Vegan diets that were unsupported by the evidence that exists.

The claims were...

• Vegan diets are not nutritionally sufficient.
• 40%+ people can't go Vegan without compromising their health (which you later walked back)
• The way that bell-curves generally work is evidence that supports the idea that "40% of people can't go Vegan."

And I was telling you that there is no such evidence... and that you're pulling those claims out of thin air.

And at a certain point, you were arguing that personal anecdotes are a viable form of evidence that are on equal ground to studies and meta-analyses. And claiming that I was engaging in scientific dogma and being "radical" and not being holistic enough in my epistemology for not seeing anecdotes as real evidence.

And of course, I couldn't let you get away with that.

My claims have been quite simple. And I've been very consistent about them.

1. Non-Vegans who care about animals and who don't agree that human pleasure/convenience is more important than an animal's life, often use a variety of different defenses to assuage the cognitive dissonance they have around taking actions that aren't aligned with their own values. And they often don't even truly believe the defenses they're giving. 
2. Personal anecdotes don't constitute valid evidence for sweeping claims about a the health of a diet or lack-there-of because you could collect just as many positive personal anecdotes that support any diet and just as many negative personal anecdotes to discredit any diet.
3. The consumption of fewer animal products and more plants is associated with lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and all-cause mortality according to thousands of studies and cross-referenced into many meta-analyses.
4. If it were true that 40% (or even a much smaller percentage) of people couldn't go Vegan without compromising their health, there would be evidence to that effect... and the WHO and ADA would not have deemed a well-planned Vegan diet as an adequate diet for all phases of life if people were at such a great risk for malnutrition on a Vegan diet.

Those are literally the only claims of truth that I've made in this whole thread. And there is nothing radical about them. 

And #2 and #4 are indisputable facts.

And #1 is a common observation that I've seen with regard to how others and myself have rationalized animal product consumption.

And #4 is a logical extrapolation based on what I know about how health organizations operate (with their priority being general public health) and the evidence that's currently on record regarding the human diet.

And my whole reason why I'm arguing these things is to keep people honest, by pointing out when they're using selective science denial mental gymnastics to hide from their real motives for eating animal products from themselves.