"People only eat meat for pleasure" - we have all seen some version of this chestnut thrown about in conversations
The people who make this type of assumption about other peoples mental state and emotions are really telling on themselves.
Carnivores (zero-carb) don't get hedonistic pleasure from eating meat. In fact, like people doing a ketogenic diet, the food noise goes away. This is very important so I need to repeat it: THE FOOD NOISE GOES AWAY. If you don't know what this means - it's probably because you haven't yet experienced the absolute calm that comes from deep ketosis. Almost everyone stumbles through their day thinking about food, what to eat next, what they want, what they could have, etc... All of this goes away. All of it.
Carnivores do get hungry, but its not a voracious beast that blisses out on each bite like a cat discovering catnip, and the only way to stop is to fight your latent hedonism.
The "meat for pleasure" rhetorical device is making it some moral issue, but it reflects on the speaker's personal cravings... since they are missing essential nutrients (I assume) they can only think of meat in terms of pleasurable
It's applying the carb addicted mindset of hedonistic pleasure with every meal. Oh one more cookie, two more, well just this box. That is the pleasure cycle. I can see someone who has only lived in this cycle projecting it onto zero carb carnivore, but it's not accurate at all.
When I'm clean carnivore I've never looked at meat and thought - ohh yeah this is going to be pleasurable... I'm just hungry and I know this food will solve the hunger, and it will taste good. No lust, no cravings, no "pleasure", and I can skip the meal no problems as well. It's like living on the furthest edge of "I could eat". And when you get full, that's it, very satisfied, you don't want anymore. No "i'm being bad, just another steak".
I mean it's a bit different in the fact that I literally die if I don't breathe air or drink water. You wouldn't literally die if you didn't eat meat
https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-5-1
No shit the kid died. Same thing would happen if they fed them a diet comprising entirely of blended up animal bones. A vegetarian diet can be healthy at all stages of life, as long as you aren't homicidally stupid about it.
Guess what the new position statement doesn't say?
Anyway, meat isn't for pleasure, thats what we should focus on. Yes, you can be healthy on many eating patterns, but regardless of any of that - it doesn't make eating meat a "for pleasure" activity.
It doesn't say that vegetarian diets aren't suitable for infants, it just focuses specifically on adults.
If only there were so incredibly many more resources I could link to.
Oh well, c'est la vis.
So we've established that eating meat is something you do because you want to, not because you have to. If only there was another way to put that...
What it doesn't say is "A vegan diet can be healthy at all stages of life" Which is what you are trying to say.
Regardless, EAT IN ANYWAY THAT YOU LIKE - it doesn't bother me. This post is about meat not being a hedonistic pleasure.
You misrepresent our positions, which I find distressing. Parents concerned about metabolic health would not feed their child blended up animal bones.
This is also a misrepresentation. What we value over the lives of animals is our health. I'm more than happy to also say that I also value the health of other people and not just myself over the lives of animals.
Comfort isn't the primary concern, although poor health is also at the same time uncomfortable. When you use the word "comfort" instead of "health", you imply that we are not willing to give up enjoyment or put up with discomfort. That is an uncharitable view of people on zero carb.
As others have mentioned we've arrived on this diet after trying everything else. I was personally plant-based for half a decade. Hopefully this helps you with understanding our position as a vegan.
If you don't mind sharing, what health issues did you face on an omnivore and a plant based diet?
I had fatty liver, which my doctor discovered during a regular checkup. I've always been pretty diligent about staying in good health, adhering strictly to all conventional wisdom, so as you might imagine it came as a bit of a shock. At this point I'd been plant based for about 5 years and ran / swam on alternating days, every day.
That was the only formal diagnosis but looking back I had every symptom of metabolic syndrome: a large waist, high triglyceride level, low HDL, hypertension, and high fasting blood glucose. I didn't know it then but I was pre-diabetic. My doctor told me I needed lifestyle changes but I was already following all his advice, and didn't drink nor smoke. He was stumped.
I started reading about fatty liver and found a video about sugar, by Dr Robert Lustig. That's what got me started. I cut out refined carbs and started reading about metabolic health as much as I could. I still do. I wore a continuous glucose monitor and found that my resting blood glucose was in the pre-diabetic range. Carbohydrates would spike it above 210 mg/dl.
I continued reading and incorporating what I learned into how I ate, very slowly and carefully, and landed on zero carb after another 4 years. The improvements have been nothing short of remarkable, every marker of prediabetes is gone, and my weight is normal.
I have a really nice physique now so all that running and swimming must've helped.
That's a great journey thanks for sharing.
Plant based is so broad that even a diet of fried food, coke, and donuts would fall under it. I'm shocked that your doctor didn't ask you to cut refined carbs.
🥳
He did. All conventional wisdom, so no sugary food was the first thing. What he didn't mention and what really had an effect was when I stopped eating rice, bread, pasta, potatoes, and fruits at every meal.
That's all thanks to the CGM.
If you want to see a bunch of personal testimonials check out:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzcoPGdDRiPiWZYV4_EkzPQ
And
https://whycarnivore.com/
Many of the people had already tried plant based before going to the more extreme zero carb
No fuckin shit. What I described was technically a carnivore diet in the same way that the diet Jet referenced was technically vegan. It's almost like I was intentionally pointing out the fact that this outlier doesn't represent the diet as a whole.
Blending up animal bones isn't technically a carnivore diet. I'm afraid you once again misunderstand what this approach to nutrition is about.
The proper diet for human nutrition consists of a sufficient amount of protein (2g/kg of lean body mass) and then eating fat to satiety. Animal bones do contain some protein but not in sufficiently bio-available amounts, so it would surely cause a deficiency. The marrow is a good source of fat and nutrition, so I can recommend eating that, but it's critical that we eat a sufficient amount of protein from meat.
All nutrition should be minimally processed and maximally bioavailable, which is why animal-sources are ideal.