Veganism: the Health Benefits are Underwhelming.
04 October 2020 [link youtube]
Some people exaggerate the health benefits of a vegan diet; more important than pointing out the particular exaggerations is the question of what motivates the various extremes positions engaged in the debate. Could there be a sort of wish-fulfilling fantasy on the part of some "plant based" advocates that the evidence from the health sciences could be SO OVERWHELMING that we wouldn't need to have an ethical, ecological and political movement at all? #vegan #vegans #veganism
Youtube Automatic Transcription
what you see on screen now is an example
of research into the health outcomes of a vegan diet and i say outcomes not benefits for a reason new research that vegans would like to ignore not all of the findings about the health benefits of a vegan diet are positive and not all of them are impressive and how you respond to news of this kind will reveal a great deal about not only why you're vegan now but also what your assumptions are about the future of the movement what many many people want to believe is that the health benefits of a vegan diet are so positive are so impressive are so overwhelming that we won't need to go through a democratic process of convincing people motivating people and ultimately passing legislation to make the transition to being a much more plant-based society or shall we say a society at least dominated by vegan values it's very easy to give into this fantasy that the damage done to your health by eating meat drinking dairy and so on the damage done to your health will be proven to be so extreme that this will motivate a rapid transformation of our society from bottom to top without that kind of democratic process without even really the kind of process of persuasion and conversion that would accompany the rise of a new religion in the history of the world and let's face it what we're doing here in veganism it's much more it's much more closely comparable to the rise of a new religion than it is comparable to say the discovery that cigarettes cause cancer but let's let's just pause for one moment about the supposedly overwhelming findings about uh the health effects of cigarettes you know jeremy irons still smokes cigarettes handsome actor jeremy irons has smoked cigarettes his whole life long he is still smoking cigarettes now more than 70 years old and he's still playing roles in which he takes his shirt off he shows his bare chest on camera anyone can look at jeremy irons and say hey it's possible to smoke cigarettes and lead a long reasonably healthy happy life it's possible to smoke cigarettes and be hot be attractive and let's face it when most people talk about health that's really what they care about is being attractive to other human beings but they really care about our aesthetics not the measurements of internal medicine it's actually incredibly difficult to motivate people to quit smoking even though the health findings for the difference between being a smoker and a non-smoker are overwhelming they are astonishing the positive difference you can make in your life by quitting smoking and quitting alcohol is astounding and yet that transformation of our society hasn't happened the reality is that the evidence for the health benefits of a vegan diet it's not astounding it's not impressive that way the discoveries of modern medical science are not going to do our work for us whether you think of the future the vegan movement more in terms of the pursuit of political change or as an ethical movement that really in some ways resembles a religion because you're asking people to make a commitment to doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do and i'd point out that you know the health problems caused by meat and dairy they actually can't be ascribed to honey they can't be ascribed to wearing a wool sweater right the ethical argument for veganism and the ecological argument for veganism it always has gone far beyond the health argument and it always will so how you respond to bad news of this kind will reflect or reveal what your underlying assumptions about veganism are this stands on a spectrum over on the far left end of the spectrum that you see on screen here is the misconception that veganism is worse for your health that it's an ethical decision but a personal sacrifice closer to the middle of the spectrum there's a small minority of persons like myself who make the argument that it is possible to be a healthy vegan therefore we have to deal with the ethical and ecological problems seriously a recent video uploaded to my channel that is in chinese but has subtitles in english this is the core of the argument is to say look in ancient times in medieval times people did not know what was healthy and what wasn't people really lived with the misconception that they stopped eating meat or stopped drinking dairy products they might die now we don't have that misconception we know for a fact that it's possible to be healthy as a vegan and that mere possibility profoundly changes the significance of the ecological and ethical problems we now have to ask as i say there in chinese so it is that an ethical problem becomes a political movement another step to the right is the reasonable supposition that veganism is healthier but only slightly so the health benefits you will experience will most likely be barely perceptible and not particularly inspirational if you have two brothers in the same family and one's vegan and the other is not and they have similar lifestyle choices in terms of going to the gym and what have you you're not going to be looking at an astounding inspirational difference between the two yes you can run some blood tests and find some measurable difference between these two identical twins but that is not going to inspire the transformation of western civilization that's not going to inspire the kind of cultural change that a vegan like myself sees as profoundly rooted in an ethical change in taking responsibility for making the world a better place doing your small part but the discourse about veganism in the year 2020 is dominated by fringe voices on the right hand side of this spectrum as i've drawn it it's dominated by people like dr greger and maddie limberner who are claiming again and again that veganism is so much healthier that it's going to inspire a revolution that there's going to be some kind of rapid social change without us doing the hard work without us having to convince people that this is the right thing to do and then motivate them just to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do look again here at the the text i've got on screen yes the difference was equivalent to 10 fewer cases of ischemic heart disease in vegetarians um wow wow even if this difference were comparable quantitatively to the improvement you can make in your health by quitting cigarettes the improvement you can make in your health by quitting alcohol or the improvement you can make in your health by quitting cocaine fentanyl and heroin please stop to think about how little power those mirror facts of medical science have to transform our society and now start thinking seriously about what it is you can do what it is you have to do really to transform our society [Music] if you want to know more positively about what i think the approach to vegan activism should be if you want to know more about what i think about the past present and future of the vegan movement there is a playlists section of the channel more than five years of videos are organized there under various headings a good one to click on is the short list on veganism only 22 videos on that list so far a whole lot to take in after i make a video of this kind i tend to get a whole lot of questions the answer to which is yup i've already made a video on it and to be fair a whole lot of people don't even realize that there is a playlists section a playlist tab that you can click on here on this youtube channel [Music]
of research into the health outcomes of a vegan diet and i say outcomes not benefits for a reason new research that vegans would like to ignore not all of the findings about the health benefits of a vegan diet are positive and not all of them are impressive and how you respond to news of this kind will reveal a great deal about not only why you're vegan now but also what your assumptions are about the future of the movement what many many people want to believe is that the health benefits of a vegan diet are so positive are so impressive are so overwhelming that we won't need to go through a democratic process of convincing people motivating people and ultimately passing legislation to make the transition to being a much more plant-based society or shall we say a society at least dominated by vegan values it's very easy to give into this fantasy that the damage done to your health by eating meat drinking dairy and so on the damage done to your health will be proven to be so extreme that this will motivate a rapid transformation of our society from bottom to top without that kind of democratic process without even really the kind of process of persuasion and conversion that would accompany the rise of a new religion in the history of the world and let's face it what we're doing here in veganism it's much more it's much more closely comparable to the rise of a new religion than it is comparable to say the discovery that cigarettes cause cancer but let's let's just pause for one moment about the supposedly overwhelming findings about uh the health effects of cigarettes you know jeremy irons still smokes cigarettes handsome actor jeremy irons has smoked cigarettes his whole life long he is still smoking cigarettes now more than 70 years old and he's still playing roles in which he takes his shirt off he shows his bare chest on camera anyone can look at jeremy irons and say hey it's possible to smoke cigarettes and lead a long reasonably healthy happy life it's possible to smoke cigarettes and be hot be attractive and let's face it when most people talk about health that's really what they care about is being attractive to other human beings but they really care about our aesthetics not the measurements of internal medicine it's actually incredibly difficult to motivate people to quit smoking even though the health findings for the difference between being a smoker and a non-smoker are overwhelming they are astonishing the positive difference you can make in your life by quitting smoking and quitting alcohol is astounding and yet that transformation of our society hasn't happened the reality is that the evidence for the health benefits of a vegan diet it's not astounding it's not impressive that way the discoveries of modern medical science are not going to do our work for us whether you think of the future the vegan movement more in terms of the pursuit of political change or as an ethical movement that really in some ways resembles a religion because you're asking people to make a commitment to doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do and i'd point out that you know the health problems caused by meat and dairy they actually can't be ascribed to honey they can't be ascribed to wearing a wool sweater right the ethical argument for veganism and the ecological argument for veganism it always has gone far beyond the health argument and it always will so how you respond to bad news of this kind will reflect or reveal what your underlying assumptions about veganism are this stands on a spectrum over on the far left end of the spectrum that you see on screen here is the misconception that veganism is worse for your health that it's an ethical decision but a personal sacrifice closer to the middle of the spectrum there's a small minority of persons like myself who make the argument that it is possible to be a healthy vegan therefore we have to deal with the ethical and ecological problems seriously a recent video uploaded to my channel that is in chinese but has subtitles in english this is the core of the argument is to say look in ancient times in medieval times people did not know what was healthy and what wasn't people really lived with the misconception that they stopped eating meat or stopped drinking dairy products they might die now we don't have that misconception we know for a fact that it's possible to be healthy as a vegan and that mere possibility profoundly changes the significance of the ecological and ethical problems we now have to ask as i say there in chinese so it is that an ethical problem becomes a political movement another step to the right is the reasonable supposition that veganism is healthier but only slightly so the health benefits you will experience will most likely be barely perceptible and not particularly inspirational if you have two brothers in the same family and one's vegan and the other is not and they have similar lifestyle choices in terms of going to the gym and what have you you're not going to be looking at an astounding inspirational difference between the two yes you can run some blood tests and find some measurable difference between these two identical twins but that is not going to inspire the transformation of western civilization that's not going to inspire the kind of cultural change that a vegan like myself sees as profoundly rooted in an ethical change in taking responsibility for making the world a better place doing your small part but the discourse about veganism in the year 2020 is dominated by fringe voices on the right hand side of this spectrum as i've drawn it it's dominated by people like dr greger and maddie limberner who are claiming again and again that veganism is so much healthier that it's going to inspire a revolution that there's going to be some kind of rapid social change without us doing the hard work without us having to convince people that this is the right thing to do and then motivate them just to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do look again here at the the text i've got on screen yes the difference was equivalent to 10 fewer cases of ischemic heart disease in vegetarians um wow wow even if this difference were comparable quantitatively to the improvement you can make in your health by quitting cigarettes the improvement you can make in your health by quitting alcohol or the improvement you can make in your health by quitting cocaine fentanyl and heroin please stop to think about how little power those mirror facts of medical science have to transform our society and now start thinking seriously about what it is you can do what it is you have to do really to transform our society [Music] if you want to know more positively about what i think the approach to vegan activism should be if you want to know more about what i think about the past present and future of the vegan movement there is a playlists section of the channel more than five years of videos are organized there under various headings a good one to click on is the short list on veganism only 22 videos on that list so far a whole lot to take in after i make a video of this kind i tend to get a whole lot of questions the answer to which is yup i've already made a video on it and to be fair a whole lot of people don't even realize that there is a playlists section a playlist tab that you can click on here on this youtube channel [Music]