Today alone, there were several articles promoting unethical and non-vegan eating, and misleading information. A picture of a dead chicken was displayed, along with a 2 foot tall chocolate cake.
I have noticed Yahoo news demonizes carbohydrates and sugar, confusing people about fruit and plant based eating. One article ("Sugar vs Salt") concluded that salt was healthier on your heart than sugar. I have the link to the article below. The other article was directed towards fueling peoples' ideology that people cannot maintain being vegan long term.
Here are links to the articles:
Most Vegetarians Lapse within one year
Replies
THis paleo primal and antisugar thing is propagated into the world by the powers that be in similar ways as they propagate "new" age ideology into the world.
For what it's worth, I did great on paleo and followed it for a long time with excellent results. One of the reasons I like it is that it cuts out processed foods. While I don't think all processed foods are bad, especially in moderation, the problem is that we have addictive personalities and, in America at least, we have a huge obesity problem, which means that it's like shooting fish in a barrel...throw some salt & MSG and we can't stop eating it! I've seen a lot of people make huge health gains by switching from SAD to Paleo.
The difficult part is making the next leap to a plant-based diet. Not necessarily raw, but even when I was doing a meat-based bodybuilding diet, I tried to do a 2:1 veggie to meat ratio just because it felt better than eating a huge quantity of meat. But a lot of people have high barriers to including more veggies in their diet, whether it's because they don't think it will make them full, or haven't been exposed to how good fruits & veggies can taste. Just look at bananas...most people don't even eat them ripe! They eat them yellow, without spots, and then wonder why they get stopped up, or they eat a bunch of fruit after eating a cooked meal & then feel like garbage because it digests so quickly on top of the cooked food.
Food is a funny thing. It mostly boils down to what habits you're willing to adopt. We live in a world where we have 24/7 access to everything...sure, buying strawberries in the wintertime is expensive, but it's not like it's $50 per container, it's just double - $6 instead of $3. It's an amazing time to be alive, and with all of the access we have to health information & better foods, you'd think that more people would take advantage of what's available! But I think it's also important to recognize that most people have to change incrementally...even if it's something simple like adding a green smoothie into their morning, that's a good step in the right direction. So I wouldn't say paleo is bad or anti-refined-sugar is bad, it's more of a good step for people who aren't ready to embrace a fully raw or plant-based diet.
i was doing great on a standard dutch junk diet and later on paleo.. doesn't mean it's healthy and doesn't mean it's great either.. by the way meat is processed food, it's food processed into to something else.. meat.
They often contradict themselves with lists of mindless drivel about what amounts to be healthy according to - as Swon put it 'writers who have no idea' and are just producing 'content' with no real substance.
Part of it is, there is no one path to health. For example, fruitarian doesn't work for my wife because she has allergies to a lot of fruits & nuts. But she can still enjoy good health eating other things! We're designed to run on a variety of fuels in a variety of combinations; we know some that are bad for us (smoking, heavy drinking, trans-fats, lots of refined sugar with no fiber & high fat), but we also know that different diets can product different good results - high-fat diets for ultramarathoners, HCRV for high energy, and so on. But there's a lot of baloney out there, between vested interests, different paths to health, and even ignorance. Some of them are just clickbait titles. Take it with a grain of salt (or dulse...;).
Without jumping into a deeper discussion, I was just as healthy on meat & salt, as I was on vegan, as I am on fruitarian (by all measurable metrics - weight, bodyfat, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.). Combinations of foods is what makes or breaks a diet. High carb & high sugar diets are VERY bad if you are consuming a lot of trans-fats, refined flours & sugars, corn syrups, etc. On the flip side, high carb & high sugar diets are very good if you're consuming a low-fat, high-fiber raw fruit & plant-based diet. I come from a background of hypoglycemia & had to be careful about eating sugars without protein-loading first (or else my energy would tank), especially on a meat-based diet, whereas with fruit, I can chow down on dates, oranges, etc. all day with zero issues, which is pretty amazing since from a cursory POV, that type of diet should kill me - but the combination of fat/sugar/carb/fiber levels is what makes it work. I had two pounds of dayri dates for dinner & I'm doing absolutely fine!
Just depends on the combinations you eat. Yahoo's target audience is your typical American on the SAD diet, so what they're saying fits in with what the majority of their readers are willing to entertain as dietary advice - if your diet doesn't consist of a whole-foods, plant-based diet, then you definitely need to keep an eye on your salt, and even moreso your sugar intake. Plus, I'd imagine that many of the writers have no clue about the health benefits of alternative diets like HCRV. I went 30+ years without knowing what "fruitarian" was, despite being into "health" for a good 10 of those years, so it's not like it's a well-known or highly-advertised dietary lifestyle - they're probably just not aware of what it is & haven't delved too deeply into the realistic inner workings of the lifestyle.
One thing that is important to note is that what they're suggesting is correct...based on that type of diet. We have an awful lot of data on what types of diets will kill you faster. Forks over Knives covered that a bit with both post-heart-problems treatment doctors who switched into preventative food-based "medicine". We've built a billion-dollar industry around all kinds of magic pills that will make up for poor dietary choices. So in light of that information, I wouldn't call it misleading...it fits given the parameters of who the writers are writing for. Most people have a very low amount of real nutritional knowledge, and very few people want to change what they eat, so stuff like 811 is kind of sitting out there waiting for people who are searching for it, you know?
I do think veganism is gaining traction. Previously, most of the vegans I personally knew were skinny, pale, and generally not healthy-looking, but we all know the difference of what a HCRV body looks like vs. other types of vegan or vegan-ish diets. People lump all plant-based diets into one category, which is not correct because there are so many different diets. That's like lumping all omnivore diets into one, when our medical history says that fish & poultry will bring you better long-term results than daily red meat consumption. These days, you see people on plant-based diets doing ultramarathons, Ironmans, MMA, and a huge variety of other sports with great results, so it's starting to build up a better public reputation now that public figures are doing it "right" (ish).