Zoë has a PhD in public health nutrition. She struggles to find anything that is being taught in 'conventional' nutritional worlds that is true or evidence based. Hence why she spent 2008-10 writing The Obesity Epidemic - 135,000 words blowing apart: the misapplication of thermodynamics to dieting; the notion that 1lb = 3,500 calories, let alone that a deficit of 3,500 calories will lead to a weight loss of 1lb; the Seven Countries Study and the subsequent change in our diet advice, which has caused the obesity epidemic; the role of exercise in obesity and much more.
generated summary
Definitions and question
- Veganism excludes meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, leaving grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, and plant oils.[1]
- Plant-based language is softer than vegan language, while some research definitions include people who occasionally eat meat or fish within vegetarian categories.[2][3][4]
- About 20 years as a vegetarian, including a vegan period, ended with rejection of the nutritional, animal, and planetary cases for veganism.
Nutrition and evidence
- Randomized trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses are at the top of the evidence hierarchy.[5][6]
- A PubMed search for vegan-diet meta-analyses produced 28 results, with three remaining after removal of mismatched designs, diets, and surrogate-marker analyses.[7]
- The mental-health meta-analysis linked vegetarian or vegan diets with higher depression risk and lower anxiety scores, which is not an endorsement of the diets.[8]
- The bone meta-analysis found lower femoral-neck and lumbar-spine bone mineral density in vegetarians and vegans, with higher fracture rates in vegans.[9]
- The type 2 diabetes meta-analysis found better glycemic control with low-carbohydrate, low-glycemic-index, Mediterranean, and high-protein diets, not vegetarian, vegan, or high-fiber diets.[10]
- The Ornish trial combined a low-fat vegetarian diet with smoking cessation, stress management, aerobic exercise, and psychosocial support, so its coronary improvement cannot be assigned to the diet.[11]
- The Game Changers erection experiment used three men over two nights, comparing a meat burrito with a plant burrito.[12]
- The Daily Dozen calculation supplied about 1,364 calories, nearly 70% carbohydrate, 16% fat, and 17% protein, with multiple vitamins, minerals, and animal-form nutrients absent or below the selected targets.[14]
- A healthy diet supplies essential nutrients without supplementation; a vegan diet requires supplementation and is therefore not healthy.[13][14]
Animals and food production
- Cattle, pigs, sheep, hens, and domestic cats would not exist in a vegan food system because livestock and carnivorous pets depend on animal agriculture.
- The Vegetarian Myth links crop production to unavoidable animal deaths: even protecting a lettuce requires excluding or killing slugs.[15]
- One cow was calculated to provide more than 600,000 calories and feed one person for a year, while the same calories would require about 228 chickens.[16][17][18]
- Fischer and Lamey's field-death paper is used with an estimate of seven billion animal deaths annually on harvested U.S. cropland, alongside about 40 million cattle and nine billion chickens killed for food.[19]
- Confining chickens and cattle in sheds or concrete systems is wrong, and removing grazing ruminants is also wrong because they belong on grassland.
Soil and climate
- Grazing ruminants host microflora, return material to the land, and rejuvenate topsoil; soil-free greenhouse production removes that relationship and requires added carbon dioxide.[20]
- Rotational systems such as Polyface Farm alternate animals, crops, and rest, while plant-only cultivation continually takes from soil without returning animal fertility.
- Local food comes from the surrounding land and water: cattle, sheep, dairy, fish, eggs, and seasonal vegetables, not distant imported produce.
- Humans also generate methane, including methane measured in flatus, so methane production is not unique to cattle.[21]
- Atmospheric methane is about 1.8 parts per million; the calculations reduce agriculture's share to about 0.44 and enteric fermentation to about 0.3 parts per million.[22][23][24]
Institutions and conclusion
- The EAT-Lancet diet permits zero animal food while allocating roughly 110 to 120 calories to table sugar.[25]
- FReSH includes agribusiness, chemical, technology, consultancy, processed-food, retail, pharmaceutical, insect-production, and other large corporate interests.[26]
- Veganism is rejected because removing livestock threatens topsoil and local food production, then transfers control of food to corporations whose incentive is commercial, not health.
References
- [01:24] Food Groups — https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2015/05/food-groups/
- [02:49] Plant based diet propaganda — https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2019/08/plant-based-diet-propaganda/
- [02:49] Plant based diet propaganda – Part 2 — https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2019/09/plant-based-diet-propaganda-part-2/
- [03:20] Vegetarian diets: what do we know of their effects on common chronic diseases? — https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2009.26736K
- [05:50] The Levels of Evidence and Their Role in Evidence-Based Medicine — https://doi.org/10.1097/PRS.0b013e318219c171
- [06:09] Primary, Secondary, and Meta-Analysis of Research — https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X005010003
- [06:53] PubMed search: vegan diet, meta-analysis filter — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=vegan+diet&filter=pubt.meta-analysis&size=50
- [07:31] Vegetarianism and veganism compared with mental health and cognitive outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis — https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuaa030
- [07:58] Veganism, vegetarianism, bone mineral density, and fracture risk: a systematic review and meta-analysis — https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nuy045
- [08:33] Systematic review and meta-analysis of different dietary approaches to the management of type 2 diabetes — https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.112.042457
- [09:45] Intensive Lifestyle Changes for Reversal of Coronary Heart Disease — https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.280.23.2001
- [10:53] The Game Changers — https://www.netflix.com/title/81157840
- [11:59] National Food Strategy – call for evidence — https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2019/10/national-food-strategy-call-for-evidence/
- [13:17] Food to help you live longer — https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2018/01/food-to-help-you-live-longer/
- [17:29] The Vegetarian Myth – Lierre Keith — https://www.zoeharcombe.com/2011/08/the-vegetarian-myth-lierre-keith/
- [19:12] How Many Pounds of Meat Can We Expect From a Beef Animal? — https://beef.unl.edu/beefwatch/2020/how-many-pounds-meat-can-we-expect-beef-animal
- [19:18] Beef nutrition data used for the calorie calculation — https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beef-products/3669/2
- [19:42] Raw Whole Chicken nutrition data — https://www.nutritionix.com/food/raw-whole-chicken
- [20:05] Field Deaths in Plant Agriculture — https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9733-8
- [22:49] Thanet Earth — https://www.thanetearth.com/
- [25:34] Investigation of normal flatus production in healthy volunteers — https://doi.org/10.1136/gut.32.6.665
- [26:50] Climate Change Indicators: Atmospheric Concentrations of Greenhouse Gases — https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-atmospheric-concentrations-greenhouse-gases
- [26:55] Methane Tracker 2020 — https://www.iea.org/reports/methane-tracker-2020
- [27:03] FAOSTAT Emissions Totals — https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/GT/visualize
- [28:42] Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems — https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31788-4
- [29:01] Food Reform for Sustainability and Health — https://eatforum.org/initiatives/fresh/
GPT-5.6 Thinking - high - 2026-07-12 - 2026-07-12
Like anything to support your statements would be appreciated. I think you think nutritional yeast is far more expensive than it actually is. Also I'm not saying everyone has to be completely plant based. Once again there's a very strong argument to make for insect based protein sources and lab grown meat, particularly once the technology matures.
I said "cheaper than beer" homebrew beer costs on the order of $Au0.30 per half litre, you produce about a kilogram of excess yeast in a 60L batch
And yet India's economic vegans cannot afford vitamin B12
I'm not saying it's expensive, I'm saying they are incredibly poor. I think we'd even have trouble feeding them enough insect sourced protein
Lab grown meat is so far proving hard, preventing infection being the most difficult point. Meanwhile an actual cow needs feedstock of grass (as opposed to a factory) has its own immune system, drinks from streams not town water
I can't see any advantage of lab meat aside from it having no brain, but no one cares about killing things with brains - there was a recent mouse plague in Australia and stronger poisons were authorised
There were no audible complaints about the billion extra deaths, only about what part of those poisons would make it into the wheat supply
Insect based protein is very cheap to produce. Producing a pound of edible insects requires about 12 times less feed than producing the same amount of beef, and a fraction of the water. 100g of beef sirloin provides about 19-26g of protein, while 100g of crickets yields about 8-25g depending on the species and processing. Insects are cold-blooded so they don't waste energy maintaining a high body temperature. Insects can convert 2 kg of feed into 1 kg of insect mass, whereas cattle require about 8 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of body weight gain.
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Now to counterpoint, it's a developing market so outside of areas where this is already common it's a specialty item currently. Now if a country actually had an issue with feeding and limited resources then crickets, mealworms, and grasshoppers would be a much more environmentally friendly and efficient way to source non-plant protein.
Now as for B12 you'll get about 1.2ug/$1 with beef sold around $9.25 per lb and you'll get 21.4ug/$1 with nutritional yeast sold at $18 per lb. Fundamentally the B12 in beef is produced by bacteria in the cows stomach. Similarly the B12 in nutritional yeast is produced from Pseudomonas denitrificans or Propionibacterium freudenreichii). So in essence one could just cut the middlemen out of both and get B12 directly from B12 producing bacteria where the cost of 1ug is about $0.0000015 or $0.0.0000018 to get the same amount one could get per $1 from beef priced at $9.25 per pound.
As for lab grown meat, the technology will mature. It'll be a very important technology for humanity if we ever decide to build permanent space colonies or more likely to happen sooner, the biosphere collapses due to humanities mismanagement of the environment.
Insects have too little fat
Sure, there are many sources of fat. People naturally and normally eat more than one food item. We're not beating thermodynamics anytime soon. Anytime there's a conversion of energy from one form into another there is a loss and when we're speaking about growing animals to eat such as cows it's a substantial loss of around 90%, that is only around 10% of the energy in the feed gets converted into beef we eat. So instead of growing food to feed people we are growing food to feed animals to feed people and outside of circumstances such as recovering waste energy in land used for cows or livestock that isn't displacing natural habitat (like cutting down Brazilian rainforest) we will be at a loss. It's not anyone's fault, it's just physics.
If you don't consider nutrient bioavailability. I don't blame you because it's the mainstream feel-good opinion, but the position you espouse is highly reductionist and frankly ridiculous. The higher up the food chain you go, the more efficient you get per unit of nutrition because you're leveraging the work done in the prior steps of the chain.
Put simply, you can eat all grass you like as a human being and not get any nutrition, while someone eating some fatty beef to satiety will get all the nutrition they need.
But do you know what? Dr Harcombe addresses all of this in her video, much more eloquently than I can. Please, if you want to continue posting in this community, do us a courtesy and watch the video that is the subject of discussion.
I get what you're trying to say but it's not physically possible to get something for nothing. Cows aren't breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Also I'm not saying people would eat grass, typically the food we grow for livestock isn't meant for human consumption. That same field can produce other food or be left to nature because we wouldn't need it to begin with. Once again if it's otherwise waste energy in a location that isn't displacing wildlife then it's an absolute win as far as energy capture. I think that's the idea you're trying to get at.
The gap in bioavailability is much smaller than the gap in energy loss. You're not going to get something for nothing aka it's a net loss. It'll be an increase of 10% to 20% in bioavailability but you have to pay a 90% (97% in the case of beef) loss to get that 20%. Once again there's a very strong argument for insect based protein which nearly mitigates all the issues and drops this loss substantially to almost 50% while providing the same bioavailability. Also ultimately lab grown meat once the technology matures will likely be as if not more efficient than current traditional plant farming and less environmentally destructive than livestock and likely current farming.
This is untrue. I am replying for the sake of others in this conversation, because Zephyr is no longer allowed to post in this community after multiple attempts to get him to watch the video that we're supposed to be discussing.
Here're a handful of comparisons for bioavailability across animal sourced foods (ASF) and plant sourced foods (PSF).
Additionally there are essential fatty acids and amino acids required for growth, development and health. DHA and EPA are only found in fish and some sea vegetables. There are also unique bioactive compounds only available in ASF: creatine, anserine, taurine, cysteamine, 4-hydroxypoline, carnosine, and many others. None are bioavailable from PSFs.
"It's raining soup and we're short on buckets" to quote sci fi on the subject of solar energy
Cows eat stored sunlight, I don't give a shit how much energy it takes to make a kilo of meat when the energy comes from grass
Only a few that are healthy, with ruminant fat being the leader by far
I wish the environment and non-human organisms shared your opinion. If it's waste energy capture in a location that isn't displacing wildlife then yes it's a total win. If for instance we're destroying an ecosystem to clear land for cattle it's not so amazing. I'll give the example of the mass deforestation of the amazon for cattle.
You ought to watch the "magic pill" documentary posted today or yesterday to this community. It includes a section on what plants need to grow
You're not going to beat thermodynamics. I understand mono crops and GMOs are problematic. It's never been my argument that plant food production is problem free. The majority of crops grown in the US are for livestock. Many more people could be fed with the same land usage or land usage could be drastically decreased. We're simply not going to get something for free, there's no way to get more energy out than you put in, much less after converting it.
this can't be true
Have you seen the amount of wild land cleared for grain? Maybe turn the great plains of America back into grazing land for ungulates?
Humans clear land for agriculture. Always have. The only solution is fewer people, but religious extremists are restricting birth control and America is happy for those to be in charge
It's physics, livestock require more energy than plants. To produce the same food calories of crops people eat in the form of meat you would need more land than the crops themselves. At minimum you would need more crops than what we grow now and more land for more livestock. The majority of our crops now are grown to feed livestock. If we weren't eating meat we could drastically reduce our resource usage to feed people. It's almost like the food equivalent of the rocket equation aka more fuel means more mass means you need more fuel which means more mass and so on. Although that's not a perfect analogy but you get the idea.
Physics is simply not going to give you something for free. Cows aren't breaking thermodynamics anytime soon. Simply put we could feed far more people with the same land usage or reduce our land usage by over half if we weren't eating meat.
@jet@hackertalks.com please ban this idiot
Ed don't bother, I'll do it
good call....
Zephyr - 13 hours, 11 comments, 1500 words written... and still hasn't even glanced at the post content, clearly bad faith