MaxDiet Week: Objections
Here are a few objections raised in the comments. Although I’ve answered a few already, I want to put the bulk of them together in one spot.
1. Other things are dangerous too. Why eat healthy if you’re not going to take EVERY precaution?
This is a pretty good question, especially aimed at me because I do tend to do fairly dangerous things occasionally.
The CDC says that the top six causes of death in the US are:
- Heart disease: 652,091
- Cancer: 559,312
- Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
- Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
- Diabetes: 75,119
The things we cut out of the MaxDiet are directly and scientifically proven to be responsible for four out of the six. These make up 59.7% of the deaths in the US every year. If you’re willing to agree that part of the MaxDiet is not smoking, you can bump that up to just over 65%.
Compare that to the 5.4% of deaths that accidents make up. This is a HUGE chunk of causes-of-death that the MaxDiet virtually eliminates. Sure there is still the chance of getting skin cancer or being so stressed that you’ll have a heart attack anyways, but by and large, diet is THE root reason for these causes of death.
And even in cases of potentially getting skin cancer, all of the antioxidants and largely alkaline properties of the food have been proven to fight cancer.
Let me remind you again that this is a quality of life issue as well as a quantity of life issue. Lives not spent in the hospital are better.
I am willing to put considerable effort into diet because of all the possible ways I could die, the industrialized diet is by far the most likely to kill me.
I’d do it even if it was unpleasant. But it’s not. Here’s a graph of my food enjoyment:
As you can see, yes… it does suck to switch. You miss the foods you’re used to eating and everything seems very inconvenient. Foods taste bland. Then after a while you start loving it so much that you’d never consider going back. Normal food seems gross and artificial.
Bottom line - diet is the best way to prevent terminal diseases, and (to me and others I know who have switched) it is more enjoyable once you transition to it.
2. This Source Says that Eating Meat is Good for You!
Food is a very controversial issue, and everyone has an opinion on it. Some of these people are scientists, and some are compelling writers (*cough cough*).
Pick any decision you’ve made and you’ll find someone on the internet or in a book who says it’s wrong. They will always be out there.
However, if you follow the science you’ll see that a diet made up of the ingredients in the MaxDiet consistently proves to be healthiest. This is like the people who claim that there is no global warming. A lot of people believe that and can be very convincing, but scientists are pretty much unanimous.
Of course there are a few studies here and there that show that meat is good for you. This could be due to variance or poor experiment design. The largest and most complete study (among others) shows that it’s definitely bad.
And here’s the thing. I’m not 100% convinced. I’m 100% convinced on flours and sugars, but for meat I’m around 95%. Maybe there is some hidden benefit to meat that we haven’t discovered or something like that. But current research just doesn’t show it. So I go with the science and keep my ear to the ground.
And while we’re on the subject - I’ve never found a study that shows that eating only the items on the MaxDiet is unhealthy. And I’ve looked.
3. All Vegans are Pale and Weak
I actually agree with this somewhat, mainly because most vegans eat TERRIBLE diets. The typical vegan gets rid of meat and replaces it with weird soy / chemical based analogues and even more refined flours.
To be clear - if you’re going to eat like that, you’re better off eating meat.
Meat has many good things in it, but it also has a number of bad things in it that make it suboptimal. Flour and sugar are worse - they are pure nutritional evil.
Besides - let’s compare apples to apples. What does the average meat eater look like?
The MaxDiet is not about being vegan. That’s part of it, and the easiest one word label for it, but it’s about a lot more. That’s why I put all these posts together, rather than just talking about meat.
The average person who switches to the diet looks better than before. That’s been the experience of all of my friends who have tried it, and that’s been my experience. Try it for yourself and see.
4. Vegans don’t get enough protein
First of all, meat protein has been shown, as mentioned earlier, to contribute to all of the leading causes of death in the Western world. So first consider how much good that protein is actually doing you.
Next, realize that everything in the MaxDiet has protein in it (except fruit). Instead of eating meat, which provides a lot of protein, and then eating bread and junk that has virtually none, you eat small amounts of protein in every meal.
You will probably eat less protein on the MaxDiet, but the typical diet today has too much, which can actually cause liver issues. If you want to eat a ton of protein anyway, just stock up on nuts, seeds, and hemp protein (or just ground up hemp seeds).
The End Of MaxDiet Week
I’ve said my piece. It’s a bit disappointing to me that more people aren’t motivated to try it out or at least get the books I recommended and research it more for themselves.
Maybe I haven’t written compellingly, maybe people are too stuck in their ways, maybe it just seems too difficult to switch. I don’t really know.
For what it’s worth, I consider adopting this diet to be one of my very best choices in life. If any of this stuff struck a chord, I’d highly suggest that you try it out for 30-60 days. If you need any help with it, start a thread on the forum and I’ll respond personally.
(4 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
Loading ...
June 12th, 2008 at 6:09 am
The biggest obstacle to jumping in with both feet is preparing meals. I think it is a good idea to eat this way and I am eager to try it for several months as a test, but about 10% of what I currently know how to cook fits the MaxDiet. So I have a lot of work ahead of me.
I’ll put forth the effort, but it will be gradual and I’m afraid many people would just rather not try. Rationalizing is always easier than doing the work.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Hey chill, I’m convinced enough to cut out flour and sugars from my diet. The meats/fish/milk I’ll look into progressively as I get adjusted. I’ve already added more veges and fruits into meals. When I’m back onshore I can get some nuts and beans.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I don’t think the problem is necessarily that you didn’t write convincingly enough. The problem is that 90% of the time people are told to change their diets, it’s in a hostile nature. As such, people’s natural first instinct is to get defensive of their own diets.
You know how vehemently omnivorous I am. I’m pretty compelled to come up with a hybrid Max/MeatDiet now. Not cut out meat completely, but definitely cut it down a sizable amount, and make sure I get very good quality meat.
Your arguments are there to see, it’s just that most people don’t want to open their eyes.
June 13th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
I read Make Her Chase You and then headed to this page a few days ago. After reading the compelling message in your blog and doing some research of my own I’ve decided to go 80% vegetarian!!! I no longer will buy non local meat. Period. If I simply must have meat one day, I will farmers market and get some fresh stream salmon from some local guys, or meat from deer or elk that was hunted. I basically want the ability to eat meat if need be instead of getting sick like when it happens such as with full on vegetarians. Seattle is a great place to be because we have the availability of such things. And a rather large vegan/vegetarian community. Thank you for helping to open my eyes!
June 13th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I’m going to give this a shot. I’ll probably continue to eat eggs and milk because they kick so much ass, but eliminating sugar, meat, and flour from my diet sounds like a great idea.
Tynan: Is there a compelling health reason not to eat things like eggs, sour cream, etc?
June 14th, 2008 at 11:15 am
“Why no officer, just organic hemp … for my diet … yeah that’s it. I just need more protein. No, I swear, I read about it on a blog …
What do you mean, prison?”
Kidding aside, I read The China Study about a year ago, and have almost completely been eating in line with your diet since. I personally love quinoa as an easy to cook staple food. How hard is it to follow your own advice as you travel? Is it harder to eat well in America than other places? I can’t just walk into a gas station here and find anything close to heathly.
June 14th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Tynan,
Great series of posts, you have changed my life, though as the rest of the people here im a little reluctant to cut meat completely. I was wondering though why do you preach an entirely different diet in the skinny snob? isnt the skinny snob unhealthy now according to ur standards posted here?
June 14th, 2008 at 8:32 pm
I wonder how many deaths in the US are alcohol related, like liver problems, drunk driving ‘accidents’ and what not.
June 14th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I totally buy into about 75% of your max diet, and that part is straight along what many of the Crossfit people do and recommend. AKA the zone/paleo diets. I’ve been doing that since December and had incredible results, lost weight, gained muscle (thx Xfit too), allergies/asthma almost entirely disappeared. Feel totally awesome all the time, better than ever before in my life.
I started eating meat again when I swapped into this diet. I used to be a semi-vegetarian (ate some fish and ocasional chicken).
The cutting refined grains, sugar, industrial food in general is spot on, don’t get me wrong that in itself goes a long long way.
Where I disagree is the cut meat and replace with grains and beans. Believe me I did tons of reading into this myself because I wanted to decide for myself if I needed to swap back to meat. I found enough compelling evidence to convince me. Again read some of the Weston Price stuff, there’s quite a lot free on their website.
To sum up: The protein available in beans and nuts is not as readily used by the body, and there are much smaller amounts of it than in meat. To get equal protein from beans/nuts, you have to consume vastly more calories of fat and carbs, which is unbalancing hormonaly. There are also things in meat you’ll never get anywhere else. Most of the same research saying cut the refined grains and sugar also says any grains are nearly as bad. It all has to be processed a certain amount to be digestable, and most of human evolution didn’t involve any.
Also yes industrial meat is disgusting, and almost all the evidence against meat, is based on it. Unhealthy animals with chemically unbalanced meat. I’d rather not eat meat at all than that.
Evidence from hunter-gatherer societies ans the few studies done with people on naturally raised meat shows vastly different results.
But, I discovered, you don’t have to eat industrial meat to eat meat. There’s a growing movement of local pastured farm animals available. It takes a willingness to research and get outside the supermarket, but it is there. For example this is what I finally found as the best answer for me in my area with my busy schedule at the moment: http://www.farmfreshdirect2u.com/.
It probably takes even more effort to procure it than what you’ve been discussing, but really isn’t that hard once you know where to look. So don’t finger point meat eaters as all taking the easy way.
Again don’t take me wrong, I like where you start with your diet for the most part. I just disagree that cutting meat is as healthy or even sustainable as an ideal when you start looking at sustainable farming practices. Which, by the way, produce better vegetables as well due to having animal fertilizer instead of imported chemicals.
One of these days I’ll get around to compiling what I’ve found in something easy to read, but again recommend starting with the Price foundation, or look into “paleo” diet and reading Pollan’s books.
June 14th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
BTW having recently gone on the same sort of journey into learning about diet/food, totally appreciate what you’re talking about and trying to write up to explain to people. It’s like suddenly food becomes something wonderful and worth spending time and money on, and the western industrial diet that gets pushed everywhere is practically criminal when you start learning about it.
Just think you should take it one step further into the sustainably raised animals. Some other countries actualy have much better animal farming practices than the US. I think that’d be an interesting project to look into while travelling.
One of these days I think I’ll start/buy a farm. After I do the Nomad thing for awhile though:)
June 25th, 2008 at 8:14 am
This is the most horrible idea I’ve ever heard. Tyanan, no wonder you look like a person could breathe on you and blow you over. I think your resources are flawed by hippy shit heads.
Most of my family have lived to be in their early to late 80’s (Above normal life expectancy!) while eatting a fuck ton of red meat, working around hazardous shit all day (read lax EPA or no Standards at all), and smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Hell, my grandfather could have probably out lifted you while he was on his death bed. You look horrible, Skeletor! Eat lean meat!
July 12th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Hey,
though I kinda objected to the meat part of your story, I do agree that this diet is a good way of eating. And though I don’t think that I can adept to this diet right now (I’m handling a lot of issues right now and I consider my diet not that bad, except for the large amounts of beer which I’m going to lower). I do have some questions and I’m gonna post them in the forum right now.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
This article is just supreme. Consolidates my own research, views, and experiences and presents them in a concise, readable, fun form. I could not have done better. It’s so great to see others making informed choices to the benefit of their health, and that of the environment. Mad props.