Risks of ischaemic heart disease and stroke in meat eaters, fish eaters, and vegetarians over 18 years of follow-up

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This has recently been published: https://www.bmj.com/content/366/bmj.l4897

Huel advertises itself as vegan, so can we get any comments from the Huel team?

Should Huel start adding pieces of dried meat into the powder to lower the risk of hemorrhagic stroke? (answer: probably not, the increase in risk of heart disease would be larger than the decrease in risk of stroke)

I feel like Huel should capitalize on it whenever this sort of news gets in the media - to show that most vegetarians and vegans have poorly planned diets and Huel would be a great alternative to them.

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most vegetarians and vegans have poorly planned diets

Really? I’m neither, but I do question how you can quantify the accuracy of that statement.

Yes, I stand behind the accuracy of that statement. Most vegans and vegetarians have very poor diets. Doctors/dieticians/scientists worry about vegan intake of protein, vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium, iron, omegas, choline, etc. based on real world examples of what most vegans eat and how most vegans look like and behave. If it was easy, it would not be covered in media all the time.

It is rare for them to hit the RDAs every single day, without going over the limit of some micronutrients, without overconsuming sugar, while still eating a good amount of protein and sufficient fats. Look at their nutrition tracking profiles.

The only way for them to do that would be to consume Huel or some other similar complete food. No other diet than complete foods is able to fit these criteria.

Additionally, there is a massive rise of vegans that eat processed foods, with added sugar, too much salt, too much saturated fat (which is especially bad in combination with sugar). Many new plant-based companies and products are showing up, demonstrating profitability of these products, which correlates to increased consumption of these products.

The few vegans who eat a properly planned whole-food plant-based diet is miniscule. Those of them that manage it usually call themselves plant-based and not vegan because eat that diet for the health benefits (which means they properly studied up on their diet) and not for ethical reasons.

I know many omnivorous who eat tons of junk food, literally the worst people at planning dieys ever.

My statement was only about vegetarians and vegans. Just because vegetarians and vegans have poor diets does not mean that omnivores have good diets.

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I was vegan for 6 years and was the healthiest I’ve ever been.
My diet was
Breakfast: whole porridge oats, almonds, raisins, cacao, pea protein, flaxseeds

Lunch: mung Dahl, brown basmati rice or quinoa, butternut squash and carrots, and lots of mixed steamed vegetables. Dahl cooked with coconut oil and coconut meat

Dinner: variable but often included avocado and olive oil for good quality fats, protein as beans, pulses or tempei, slow release carbs from various gluten free grains, green veggies

I also took probiotics, and multi vitamins and minerals every day

I certainly wasn’t unique in my way of eating amongst my vegan friends

I very rarely consumed any sugar or any processed foods at all

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My observations from working in both mental health and adult inpatient clinical settings are that people who identify as any omnivore, pescitarian, vegetarian and vegan all have varying degrees of health issues brought on by many combined lifestyle factors including diet. It is very rare that diet alone is the sole cause of physical ill health or mental ill health. As per many clinical guidelines diets should be balanced but also account for individual health differences. I have nursed malnourished people who identify as having many different dietary needs.

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Anyone who is vegan has mental health issues. Mmm…bacon!

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you beet my to it

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I would tend to agree. The health complications tend to arise when a person’s health deteriorates and they are unaware of poor health until a hospital admiasion; in either case of physical or mental health one would find after various and numerous blood tests a deficit of some vitamin or other. This may be made worse by an unbalanced diet not necessary a typical diet type. I agree that people who willingly make a change do tend to research more that choice. I also have observed that there is a scoio-economic and health education factor involved in a reduced meat or meat free diet. I suppose that most people engaging in this dietary change would be termed as neo-liberal. I wish to make it clear this is my observational experience rather than objectivity or an evidence based approach.

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I don’t think that’s the right term. Neoliberals are free market capitalists. In my experience most veggies and vegans are left wing, which makes sense as socialism and environmentalism often go hand in hand.

xea0h

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Yeah, this is spot on. This is the demographic most often observed on this forum too in my experience, hence the brigading that occurs when someone posts a question or statement that goes against the grind. Those people are often shouted down, subject to thread hijacking or straight up abuse.

I’m only here for the convenient gym nutrition rather than the planet etc, so can spot it fairly easily.

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Nope. As you said the risk of vegetarians developing heart disease is lower, which is much more common than hemorrhagic stroke. What it points towards with these contrasting results is that there’s more to health and disease risk than someone’s diet. E.g. genetics (a big one a lot of people forget about). That’s why I’d take these sort of studies with a pinch of salt.

Even when factors just as age and sex are accounted for (like in this study) questions still arise whether the calculations that adjusted for these factors can truly adjust for everything - the answer is unlikely.

I’m going to have to disagree on this one. Just looking at the study you have provided there is no significant difference in the % of protein consumed between the 3 diets. Vegetarians and vegans also had a higher average intake of fruit, veg, legumes, fibre and a lower intake of sat fat and sodium.

However, the standard deviations are large so there’s massive differences within each dietary group. Which is what I go back to time and again it’s much more about diet quality than labelling what you eat as low carb, ominvore, vegan etc.

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You need to watch that; too much salt etc…

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The state of the planet, you may wanna be looking further afield for a decent gym. Maybe Uranus?

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:man_shrugging:t2::man_shrugging:t2::man_shrugging:t2: