Trans fats killed 50,000 Americans yearly for decades
“Although many countries now restrict their use, trans fats continue to kill an estimated half million people around the world every year. Of course, you know, saturated fat also is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year. But the point is that trans fats and parsnoyl hydrogenated oil killed people for decades before there were any limits on it. The FDA didn't ban until twenty five years after the first solid evidence that it increased the risk of heart disease. And meanwhile, every single one of those years, trans fats were killing an estimated fifty thousand Americans a year.”
“What about substituting soy milk for cow's milk? Based on 17 randomized controlled trials, drinking soy milk instead of cow's milk resulted in significant improvements in blood pressure, in cholesterol, in inflammation, an eight point drop in systolic blood pressure, five point drop in diastolic blood pressure, seven point drop in LDL cholesterol switching to soy, as well as a drop in C reactive proteins, so less inflammation as well. Over a lifetime, that seven point drop in LDL could drop our risk of heart disease by more than ten percent, just making a single dietary swap from cow to soy.”
FDA approved aspartame despite its own scientists' cancer concerns
“Aspartame, right, Nutrisweet, officially recognized as a potential human carcinogen 2023, forty two years after the FDA's own public board of inquiry opposed approval based on it causing brain tumors in animals in the industry's own studies. This included several FDA scientists who didn't think it should be, approved. The FDA commissioner, however, rejected these concerns, approved it anyway before leaving the agency to enjoy a thousand dollar a day consultancy position with the aspartame company's PR firm. And then the FDA actually prevented the National Toxicology Program from doing further cancer testing.”
Replacing all meat with legumes could save 180,000 US lives yearly
“Indeed, if all meat in high income countries were replaced with whole legumes, we could potentially decrease the overall mortality rates by five or six percent. That means saving a hundred and eighty thousand lives in The United States every year. If instead, we replaced meat with processed or ultra processed plants, we'd only save about a hundred and thirty thousand Americans every year, About a four percent drop in overall mortality.”
Ultra-processed food mortality risk is driven by meat and soda
“Bottom line, the major factors contributing to the harmful effects of ultra processed foods and mortality are processed meat, fish, poultry, and soda. So the negative life shortening effects of ultra processed food is really just talking about the negative life shortening effects of ultra processed meat, like burgers, chicken nuggets, and fish sticks.”
Cooked animal foods contain 100x more AGEs than plants
“Canned corn has 20 units of AGEs per serving compared to corn chips at one fifty one, corn pops cereal, three seventy three. Right? Rice only has nine, but rice crackers, two seventy five, and rice crispies has 600. So you might be at the store and see some no salt added rice cracker or some no sugar added puffed rice cereal and be like, oh, great. Right? This is just straight rice. Perfect. One ingredient. Right? But, no, because of the processing, it's not just that one ingredient.”
Diet soda harms despite zero calories due to additives
“Diet soda is the perfect example why a new kind of term like ultra processed can be so useful. Because it has no calories, no fat, no sugar, so no problem. Right? Well, then why is diet soda consumption associated with premature death, stroke, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, leukemia? And most studies controlled for body weight, so it's not just because heavy people heavier people are more likely to drink it.”
85% of ground beef is contaminated with fecal bacteria
“About 85% of ground beef and turkey contaminated with fecal bacteria, and about half of chicken on store shelves, and a third of pork found contaminated with enterococci, which is, used as a marker of fecal contamination in food. But you don't have to cook the crap out of plant based meat because there shouldn't be any crap to begin with. Fecal contamination is not just unseemly, but really a critical public health issue.”
Switching to chicken or fish does not lower cholesterol
“Now, instead of swapping out a burger for a veggie burger, why not just switch to chicken and fish? Because it doesn't work. A meta analysis randomized controlled trials that compared the cholesterol, lowering effects cholesterol effects of beef versus poultry and or fish found no significant difference in terms of LDL. And an updated meta analysis of four times as many studies also found no benefit to switching to chicken and poultry.”
Plant-based meats are 'meat methadone' toward whole foods
“Instead, to offer a stepping stone in the transition away from meat. I I like to think of it as like meat methadone. Right? Or as Professor Gardner put it, right, hoping that plant based meats will be the gateway drug to legumes. Right? This is how the transition to healthier diets is envisioned from the global burden of disease to the global relief of disease as people use plant based and mycoprotein based meats to transition towards a more whole food plant based diet.”
