Argh, the simple truth is that religious fanatics are religious fanatics. It doesn’t matter whether they’re AGW freaks, bible-thumpers, vegetarian/vegans, or Gandhi for that matter. What makes them religious fanatics is that they have a belief and will selectively edit info to fit their preconceived notions.
Probably the most important class I ever took was a seminar in philosophy of biology I took just for the hell of it. Changed my life. I’ve always been a philosophical guy, but it was there I learned about why science is done the way it is done. The human mind is pretty much built to jump to conclusions (such as ‘that roar must mean a lion is nearby, time to run up a tree!’). In life-or-death situations it pays to be able to react quickly with fair accuracy rather than react slowly with perfect accuracy. The human mind…all minds really…is also built to hold onto a conclusion. Like your dog that insists on barking everytime it hears a doorbell on TV, even though its very senses tell it that the sound is not coming from the door area.
Science is ultimately a framework designed to prevent us from jumping to conclusions. It’s designed to prevent our flawed brains from preventing us from seeing the truth. Which is why traditionally epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) was a fundamental part of a scientist’s education, until the rise of government-funded granting bodies. Which in that inimitable way of bureaucracies everywhere, came to value strongly-worded conclusions and statistics more than it did the actual basis for them.
And in the case of medicine, the importance of epistemology NEVER existed. Yall might remember my article ‘What your doctor doesn’t know about weightlifting’. The working title was actually ‘Why doctors are stupid’. Doctors love to jump to conclusions and hold onto them without ever bothering to think about the basis for them. That goes for nutritionists too.
And it shows in Ornish’s patheticity. You would think that if a doc is going to pontificate on the right diet for humans, they would have spent some time studying our evolutionary history to get an idea of the environment we existed in. You’d be wrong. I have yet to meet another doc with formal education in human evolution. It’s pretty horrifying.
As others have mentioned, our bodies are not equipped to deal with plant-source protein well. Studies have actually shown that raw food vegans’ bodies almost literally rot from within. Heck, I come from the only vegetarian culture in history, and even we understood the importance of animal-source protein. That’s the whole historical basis for the deification of the cow for crying out loud. But not the chicken, which is odd, because eggs are the other main source of protein in our diets.
And it also shows when Ornish links protein to saturated fats. A trip down google-scholar shows that this is almost entirely due to the grain-fed meats we are used to. Grains are bad. They have bad fats and make you make bad fat. Grains are the real enemy.
As for osteoporosis, somehow I seriously doubt that the type of people who eat high protein diets (lifters and other athletes) are going to have that problem. The bone-growth stimulus from weight training far outweighs the bone-loss effect of alkalinized diet. I see a lot of old people. It’s rarely the high-protein, heavy-lifting, highly active old people that are stooped so far down they look at their toes. That’s the sedentary carb-loving group.
As for longevity, anyone into old time strongman? A LOT of those old farts lived into their 80s and were active the whole time. If someone gave me the choice between being 80 and still being highly active and strong as sin like Ed Zercher, Otto Arco, Charles Atlas, or George Hackenschmidt, or living into my 90s as a decrepit, demented, old person in a wheelchair, well I’ll pick the former.
