Dr. Georgia Ede - 'EAT-Lancet's Plant-Based Planet: Food in the (Mis)Anthropocene'

good morning oh nice so this presentation grew out of a critique I wrote for Psychology Today of the Atlanta report which came out in January of this year and it's essentially a document which seeks to control the way all of us eat so but before we get started just to disclose which I think everyone in invest in nutrition should disclose their biases and conflicts of interest I have no financial conflicts of interest but a girl can dream I am not funded by the meat industry even though I am convinced by the science that meat seafood and poultry belong in a healthy diet so this report 47 pages is entitled food in the Anthropocene the Atlantic Commission on healthy diets so its lead author was Professor Walter Willett of Harvard School of Public Health and it envisions a great food transformation which seeks to feed a growing global population a diet a healthy diet that will do minimal damage to the planet so that's what we all want we all want that this is really really important for us to understand this document but before we can do that we have to first understand what is eat what is lancet and what in the world is the Anthropocene so it is a non-profit startup dedicated to transforming our global food system through sound science impatient disruption and two novel partnerships The Lancet is one of the world's oldest and most respected medical journals and it commissioned this report the Anthropocene if you ask me is a pretentious word laid out as an unwelcome NAT basically to say don't bother trying to understand what's in this report you won't understand it let us just explain it to you will tell you what to do but if like me you didn't know what this word meant this is the definition the current geological age viewed as period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment so what does eat Lancet propose we do about this predicament in which we may have some negative impacts on impact on our environment this is their great food transformation and its cornerstone is the minimization of or complete elimination of all animal foods in this diet it's it's okay to eat zero grams of all animal foods if you wish but if you do choose to include some animal foods in your diet you may have up to three ounces combined of all animal foods so meat seafood poultry etc and when it comes to red meat in particular you are allowed 7 grams per day or 1/4 of an ounce so according to you Lance if you eat more than two of these bad boys you've shaved years off your life so after this Proclamation was issued there was a worldwide media blitz and articles are still being published every single day and most of these articles essentially echo the main message of the report without scrutinizing its contents and that's a real mistake because this report is not your average nutrition study to be debunked this is actually a grand master plan for to control the way all the Earthlings eat so a quote the scale of change to the food system is unlikely to be successful if left to the individual or the whim of consumer choice and they intend to use every lever of power available to them to implement their their their mission quote by contrast hard policy interventions include laws fiscal measures subsidies and penalties trade configuration and other economic and structural measures so so that's what impatient disruption means to them so regardless of whether or not you eat meat or whether your low-carb high-carb a document this authoritarian really deserves our attention so if you just look at the cover of the report or just read the media headlines you will be left with this impression that meat is a dangerous dangerous for the environment dangerous for our health but if you dare to open this report what you actually find is an airtight case for me as an essential component of a healthy diet surprise so one of the foundations of eat lancet is supposed to be sound science so what kind of science did the Commission use well there are lots of different types of evidence to choose from and and they did use various kinds most scientists would say that experimental evidence were you're actually changing someone's diet and then seeing what happens that that may be a better type of evidence than epidemiological evidence which Rob just a beautiful job of describing and you know so most people think that randomized controlled trials or RCTs are a superior form of evidence to some other types of evidence now RCTs have their problems too they're not perfect don't know study is perfect but the the Atlantic Commission is biased heavily towards epidemiological studies and epidemiological studies are not experiments they do not change foods and find out what happens instead they administer these food frequency questionnaire Zoar FF cues to people and they gather the answers and then they look for patterns in the answers to try to guess what types of foods cause what types of diseases now these types of studies have been increasingly discredited by very reputable scientists but yet they still form the lion share of nutrition studies that we see in the headlines and they this particular methodology as it applies to nutrition was essentially invented by professor Walter Willett the lead author of this report so these food frequency questionnaire deserve to be exposed so here is an actual question from an actual food frequency questionnaire over the past twelve months how often did you drink milk as a beverage not in coffee not in cereal pleasing food chocolate milk and hot chocolate so you can choose you know once a month or less two or three times a day five six times a week and then what kind of milk did you usually drink you have to remember what percent so how many of you could answer this question easily most people can't remember what they act they ate they ate three days ago let alone 12 months ago and notice what's missing here you're not allowed to say I don't know I don't remember or you're not allowed to say I gave up milk in dairy in August or you know you're not allowed to say you've got to be kidding me so these are the kinds of excuse me these are the kinds of studies these are the kinds of data your answers become the data your guesses your wild guess has become the data that these scientific studies are based on and furthermore you know this particular food frequency questionnaire contains 66 questions and some of them will contain a few more than that but the typical modern diet contains thousands of ingredients it's really impossible to imagine being able to construct a questionnaire capable of capturing that kind of complexity so I would argue not that some epi studies give weak results or the associations aren't strong enough or this or that there's no data to begin with these studies should not be used to form public policy they can be used to generate hypotheses guesses when they're very well-constructed guesses about which foods might cause which diseases and then those need to be tested in clinical trials but you know one of the other things that happens with you know looking at scientific studies is we ignore all of the other kinds of evidence available and and this is where I spend a lot of my time as reading about other types of science to try to figure out what's going on because you can't rely on epidemiology and so the vast majority of the time the hypotheses the guesses that people who use this kind of methodology the guesses that they come up with fly in the face of biology and find things of every other type of evidence available this is why I think nutrition epidemiology is really mythology because when when they actually get around to testing these guesses in clinical trials they're wrong more than 80 percent of the time so you would actually be better off flipping a coin to guess which foods cause which diseases does that sound scientific to you so you know we are going to have to crack open this report and look and see what's inside and I think you'll you know we need to look at the different ways some examples in their own words of how the authors could twist Pro meat science into anti meat recommendations this would be a lot of fun so what do they think about protein well there were some nutrition epidemiological studies that found that red meat increased the risk of death when those studies were conducted in the US and when they were conducted in Europe but the EPI studies from Asia found that red meat especially pork did not increase the risk of death so what do you do when your favorite methodology comes out with two different answers well you dismiss the answer you don't like and you say huh maybe the risk didn't show up in Asians because they had visits literally what they said they haven't been rich long enough to afford meat for long enough for the risk to show up yet so you know not true very interesting now they have an entire section in the report dedicated to red meat and they blame it for everything from heart disease stroke type 2 diabetes obesity cancer and early death and they list 16 references in this section and every single one is an epidemiological study but meanwhile in sub-saharan Africa the real world quote growing children often do not obtain adequate nutrients from plant source foods alone promotion of animal source foods for children including livestock products can improve dietary quality micronutrient intake nutrient status and overall health that's a quote from the report so red meat in on Planet Epidemiology is an apocalypse on a plate how do they come up with these specific numbers seven grams of this and 31 grams of that well they acknowledge that there's some wiggle room there they say we have a high level of scientific certainty about the overall direction and magnitude of the association's although considerable uncertainty exists around detailed quantifications quote since consumption of poultry has been associated with better health outcomes then has red meat we have concluded that the optimum consumption of poultry zero grams per day to about 58 grams per day it's the illusion of precision they actually have no idea what they're talking about so they're conflicted about poultry what do they think about eggs well to their credit they think eggs are nutritious quote eggs are a widely available source of high quality protein and other essential nutrients needed to support rapid growth in large prospective epi studies high consumption of eggs up to one a day has has not been associated with increased risk of heart disease except in people with diabetes however in low-income countries replacing calories from a staple starchy food with an egg and substantially improve the nutritional quality of a child's diet and reduce stunting randomized control trial so how much eggs do they recommend we've used an intake of eggs at about 113 grams per day or about one and a half eggs per week for the reference diet but a higher intake might be beneficial for low-income populations with poor dietary quality why recommend one-and-a-half eggs per week when your own epidemiological studies say that up to seven eggs per week is fine and if you're worried about the people with diabetes why not just say except in people with diabetes and that might actually make sense except for these six randomized control trials showing specifically that eggs in people with diabetes are perfectly safe now this did not make it somehow into the report maybe they didn't have enough room to include it I don't know so what are they they're not really fans of red meat poultry eggs how do they feel about protein in general protein quality reflects amino acid composition and animal sources of protein are of higher quality than most plant sources I completely agree high-quality protein is particularly important for growth of infants and young children and possibly in older people losing muscle mass in your life however a mix of amino acids that maximally stimulate cell replication and growth might not be optimal throughout most of adult life because rapid cell replication can increase cancer risk translation complete proteins are good because they're they're healthy and essential and only animal proteins are complete and plant most plant proteins are incomplete so complete proteins are good but complete proteins are bad because they cause cancer and you know I've heard every anti meat argument there is every every every meat causes cancer argument there is but I've never heard this one so I wanted to know where they got that information there was a single source cited and it was this paper which is has it's a paper about the cell mutation theory of cancer that mutations cause cancer and in that report the words protein amino acid and meat show up a grand total of zero times this paper is not about protein of any kind meaty or otherwise causing cancer so the the commissioners to their credit repeatedly acknowledged that animal foods are inferior sources of nutrients compared to plant was that it's harder to get your nutrients from a plant-based diet in pregnant women they say inclusion of some animal source foods and maternal diets as widely considered important for fetal growth increased iron requirement especially during third trimester evidence suggests that balanced vegetarian diets can support healthy fetal development with the caveat that strict vegan diets require supplements of b12 and in adolescent women young girls teenagers Allison girls are at risk of iron deficiency because of rapid growth combined with menstrual losses menstrual losses have sometimes been a rationale for increased consumption of red meat but multivitamin or multi mineral preparation provide an alternative it is less expensive without the adverse consequences of high red meat intake now if you really believe that red meat you know is is dangerous has adverse consequences which is only true on Planet epidemiology why not recommend to these young women a different type of animal food like oysters or chicken liver or duck so in changing to their diet the Commission claims that the adequacy of most micronutrients increases including several essential ones iron zinc folate vitamin A as well as calcium the only exception is vitamin b12 that is low in animal-based diets supplementation of fortification with b12 and possibly b2 might be necessary in some circumstances so this statement really downplays the nutrient deficiency risks of plant-based diets not only do the iron zinc and vitamin A come in the wrong forms in plant foods and they're harder for us to use but you know the plant-based diets are missing other nutrients as well vitamin k2 the the right the wrong the correct form of omega-3s so I think that they don't really understand that you have to also look at bioavailability and not just just because a food contains a nutrient does not mean necessarily that you can access it well so but you know essentially they're just saying their argument is yes we know that maybe our diets are less you know less good at giving you nutrients but just just take supplements but in this vitamin b12 is a major issue it's really I think our best argument for explaining to anybody why we can say for sure that our ancestors all of them ate animal foods because at least until the 1950s when b12 supplements were invented you just couldn't have survived on a diet without animal foods prior to that time so what did they think about that well the essential ones they liked omega-3s are essential fish has a high content of omega-3 fatty acids which have many essential roles adequate intakes or a for neurodevelopment eating more than two servings of fish per week or taking fish oil supplements during pregnancy associated with improved child cognitive performance so Omega threes good plant sources of alpha linoleic acid sorry linolenic acid ala can provide an alternative to omega-3 fatty acids but the quantity required is not clear well the reason for that is this elephant in the room is that all omega-3s are not created equal you have in plants and animals you have an omega-3 called ala but the kinds of omega-3s our bodies need are epa and DHA and it's very very difficult for us to convert ala into the epa and DHA our bodies need in some studies as low as 0% so what they're basically saying in their recommendations is this is this is their final but about 28 grams per day or one ounce of fish can provide essential omega-3 fatty acids therefore we have used this intake for the reference diet we also suggest a range of 0 to 100 grams per day because high intakes are associated with excellent health it's just you can't make this up so basically that's how they feel about essential fatty acids how do they feel about all the other types of fat including saturated fat well evidence from prospective cohort Pepi studies and randomized trials the Women's Health Initiative has not suggested a benefit of reducing total fat intake translation that's fine eat as much as you want but wait that would mean saturated fat is fine too oh we can't well you can't have that let's let's do something here epidemiological evidence supports a substantial reduced risk of cardiovascular disease by replacing saturated fat with unsaturated vegetable oils especially those high in poo FFA's that include omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids now just a minute this is an epidemiological study nobody replaced anything with anything this was not an experiment this replacement of saturated fat with unstrap trick only happened in their imagination so they go on to require that everybody have at least one and a half tablespoons up to six tablespoons of unsaturated oil per day divided equally between olive soy canola sunflower and peanut so essentially the majority of your fat intake should come from highly processed industrially produced oils very high in pro inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids and containing the wrong form of omega-3s how about carbohydrates their favorite macronutrient so to their credit they do acknowledge the insulin resistance exists in controlled feeding studies high carbohydrate intake increases blood triglyceride concentrations reduces HDL the so-called good cholesterol and increases blood pressure especially in people with insulin resistance in a large controlled feeding trial replacing carbohydrate isocaloric ly with protein reduced blood pressure and blood lipid concentrations so that was actually the Omni heart trial which used a 50-50 mix of plant and animal protein and they lowered the carbohydrate in the diet from fifty eight percent to forty eight percent of calories per day the the Commission then goes on to simply ignore concerns about carbohydrate it recommends a very high carbohydrate to diet and thanks to dr. Zoe Hart comb for this information three hundred and thirty grams of carb per day on average is what they recommend fifty one percent of calories they really don't say what you should do if you have insulin resistance so just don't worry about it you know and and that they say that this diet is appropriate its intended for all healthy people over the age of two but the promise most of us aren't healthy anymore in a recent study I mean this is true all over the world in a recent study it's been estimated that only one in eight Americans are metabolically healthy now so this diet this high carbohydrate diet is dangerous for the vast majority of us on there while they never come right out and say this there's a drum bein in the background as you're reading it that that the the less animal foods you eat the better the more plants you eat the better and it's even okay just to completely remove all animal foods for your diet but the problem is throughout the report they acknowledge that their diet is insufficient for pregnant women for babies for growing children for for teenage women for aging adults for the malnourished and the impoverished and it's inappropriate for everybody with insulin resistance so and everybody else has to supplement so they're basically saying that their diet is insufficient or inappropriate for everyone . so then why is it that so many people continued more and more it's becoming more more popular more people are adopting plant-based diets every day that's the that's it's it's really interesting and so that's why you know I welcome to what I'm calling the myths Anthropocene the misanthropic scene is the era of of species self-hatred you know we feel bad we feel guilty we think that we're damaging the planet with every every Fork of food where we're taking in because we we think it's bad for animals we think it's bad for the planet and we I understand that this emotional argument so the question is you know I'm convinced that their nutritional recommendations are not based on anything worthwhile in fact may be dangerous but what about the sustainability argument now I am not qualified in any way shape or form to comment on sustainability so I'll just show you a couple of really quick things this is thanks to dr. Frank Mittal owner of UC Davis for pointing this out to me in this section of the report this is just one strip of that this comes from Table six in the report and bear with me here for a second across the top you see all the different types of environmental outcomes that they were looking at and then down there on the left you see three different diets the BAU diet or business as usual there recommended reference their average intake a diet that they're recommending their reference diet and then a vegan diet on the bottom so you can and you know read is bad for the environment yellows a little better in green is the best so you can see way over on the left under greenhouse gases the the vegan diet they are projecting would be better for the planet based on all kinds of really complicated things so I didn't know how to assess this but um dr. MIT loner did did take a look at the end and I want to show you one more thing that's the entire table right there modified so you can see really focus on things so as they made I should go down this table it's the same strip but just each time they're making the production and waste management measures more and more strict to try to try to really get try to really improve the environment so as you see as you go down the table most of these blocks are still a solid color which means except over in the left hand corner left hand side really most of these environmental outcomes except for in house gases do not improve under even a vegan diet so dr. Mittal owner wrote to Atlanta to inquire about how the greenhouse gas emissions were calculated and he received this remarkable reply from the science director of Atlanta quote the meat consumption limits proposed by the Commission were not set due to environmental considerations but were solely in light of health recommendations thus is not the diet to reduce climate change but the diet to reduce the risk of premature mortality due to dietary related health causes so if by their own acknowledgment this diet is not the one that's intended to help the planet and by our hopeful hopefully hopefully we agree that it's not better for health what is it really about so the sustainability issue I want to call your attention I didn't realize that policy really is that Diana Rodgers will be here in the audience please consult her for her point of view Nicolette Hahn diamonds excellent book dr. Frank Mittal owner at UC Davis Peter Bowser said who's here a forage agronomist and Erica homer who's also here she's sustainability advisor with many many years of experience so please seek out different points of view on this topic so again if it's not it's not for people and the planet who is this report really for well remember those novel partnerships we talked about in January a couple of years of 2017 eat coal launched fresh food reform for sustainability health a global partnership of many corporations about 32 now and you'll notice that about two-thirds of these companies produce things like fertilizers pesticides processed foods flavorings and additives so you can make of that what you will so you know I think it's really important for us to question authority you know the eat lawn Lancet report is a well-orchestrated rallying cry to adopt a dangerously deficient planetary diet under the guise of compassion and responsibility and health and it has what it takes to succeed it has a unified appealing message it has vast resources powerful institutions and corporations behind it and a seemingly virtuous benevolent agenda which Ward's off criticism whereas we people who believe in using nutrition science to guide public health recommendations those of us in this community the low company as well as other public health minded communities around the world we have diverse messages we don't have centralized funding we have independent voices and we have a seemingly risky controversial message which draws criticism so you know there are many problems here I feel that eat Lancet is trying to capitalize on fear guilt mis-education and our addiction to processed foods vegan diets come with serious risks they require incredibly careful planning they make people dependent on experts supplements and fortified foods which by their nature must be processed because you can't Ford by a whole-food so this plan is disempowering whereas those who profit from you know those who profit from nutrition miss education don't want you to know is that nutrition is really simple it's really simple you eat whole foods whole plants and animals avoid everything else you know tweak for your food sensitivities try low-carb for insulin resistance or other strategies it's really it's really that simple and I think that what we need to do you know we're kind of a we're kind of a herd of cats you know we're kind of a ragtag fugitive fleet and I really hope that we can find a way to to coordinate our efforts better because you know even though I ate meat I care about animals I care about the planet I care about fellow human beings I care about health you know and I just think that you know feedlots and industrial crop production they're not good for animals they're not good for the planet they're certainly not good for us there just has to be another way forward so thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Low Carb Down Under

Views: 91,720

Rating: 4.8718381 out of 5

Keywords: Low Carb Down Under, LCDU, www.lowcarbdownunder.com.au, Low Carb Denver 2019, #LowCarbDenver, EAT-Lancet, Plant Based, WFPBD, Vegan Diet, Ketogenic Diet, LCHF, Walter Willett, The Great Food Transformation, Georgia Ede, DiagnosisDiet.com, Impatient Disruption, Food Frequency Questionnaires, Public Policy, Vegetarian Diet

Id: NknJ2vBuGqM

Length: 30min 31sec (1831 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/kylerzee]

GEORGIA EDE IS MY QUEEN

[u/Sirius2006]

One of the worlds foremost English language food educators. (Along with Dr Zsofia Clemens).

[u/vincentninja68]

For those who can't be bothered to watch the lecture, its based on this article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/201901/eat-lancets-plant-based-planet-10-things-you-need-know