Historically, meat was a shortcut to a fuller diet for proto-humans. Not every human population had access to a full array of vegetables that could procure all amino acids, fat (e.g. better bioavailabilty of omega-3-6-9) and proteins necessary for the development of a higher metabolism. In fact, some think that cooked meat was the greatest accelerator, both because of the changes made to the meat by heating it and for the conservation properties of the heat treatment (basically proto-pasteurization).

Of course, using meat nowadays can be considered wasteful, but what we should do is think how to better exploit the available resources (i.e. the domesticated animals) rather than how to stop using them. For example, we could harvest the methane produced by cows, etc. Instead, vegans want to "liberate" the domesticated animals thus letting them take up valuable real estate with no benefit to us. I mean, where do the vegans think all these animals will live when liberated? At the bottom of the sea? Plus, domesticated animals can only live in the ecosystem that they have been engineered for, meaning they can only live in a human-centered environment. If we would let them go, we would have to re-engineer them for wild life... talk about waste!

A recent study recommends avoiding fatty foods:

It’s not clear why fatty foods [have been found in this study to cause] a short-term decline in cognitive function. One theory is that a high-fat diet can trigger insulin resistance, which means the body becomes less efficient at using the glucose, or blood sugar, so important to brain function.

"Fatty foods appear to have a short-term effect on exercise performance because the body reacts to high fat content in the blood by releasing certain proteins that essentially make the metabolism less efficient.“It’s thought to be a protective mechanism to get rid of excess fat,’’ Dr. Murray said. “But it was making muscles less efficient at using oxygen and fuel to make the energy needed to run.’’ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/fatty-foods-affect-memory-and-exercise/

>> ^rasch187
I would like to see some objective sources for your claims, imstellar.


How much are you paying me for the pleasure of being your personal research assistant?

If you are honestly interested in the validity of any of the claims I made, I'm sure you'll be able to pick out a few terms from what I presented and turn them into a couple Google searches.

Heres a start:

"THE METABOLISM OF TUMORS IN THE BODY. Otto Warbug. Kaiser Wilhelm Institut fur Biologic, 1926"

"On respiratory impairment in cancer cells."

"The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1931"

"My life with the Eskimo: Vilhjalmur Stefansson"

"Oncogenes in Tumor Metabolism, Tumorigenesis, and Apoptosis"

"Saccharine Disease"

"Good Calories Bad Calories"

"Elevated Insulin-like Growth Factor I Receptor Autophosphorylation and Kinase Activity in Human Breast Cancer"

"Potential role of sugar (fructose) in the epidemic of hypertension, obesity and the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease1"

"Increased consumption of refined carbohydrates and the epidemic of type 2 diabetes in the United States: an ecologic assessment"

"Dietary glycemic index, glycemic load, and the risk of breast cancer in an Italian prospective cohort study1"

"A HISTORY OF SUGAR MF.RKETING THROUGH 1974, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE ECONOMICS. STATISTICS, AND COOPERATIVES SERVICE
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIC REPORT NO. 382"

"Glycemic Index and Serum High-Density Lipoprotein
Cholesterol Concentration Among US Adults"

"Relation between a diet with a high glycemic load and plasma concentrations of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein in middle-aged women1"

"Studies on the Metabolism of Eskimos - Journal of Biological Chemistry"

"Dietary protein intake and renal function"

"Advanced glycation end products and the absence of premature
atherosclerosis in glycogen storage disease Ia"

"Chemical Calorimetry. XLV. Prolonged Meat Diets with a study of Kidney function and Ketosis"

"Diabetes Mellitus - Japan 1950-2004"

"Diabetic Mortality rate and the amount of sugar consumed per capital in England and Wales"

"Pounds per sugar per head per year from 1800 to 1960"

"Fasting insulin and incident dementia in an elderly population of Japanese-American men"

"Diabetes mellitus and the risk of dementia "

"Prevalence of the Metabolic Syndrome Among US Adults"

"Cardiovascular Morbidity and Mortality Associated With the Metabolic Syndrome"

"C-Reactive Protein, the Metabolic Syndrome, and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Events "

"Obesity and the Metabolic Syndrome in Children and Adolescents"

"NCEP-defined metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and prevalence of coronary heart disease"

"Coronary-heart-disease risk and impaired glucose tolerance. The Whitehall study."

Average pounds per year of Sugar Consumption
1700: 4 lbs
1800: 18 lbs
1900: 90 lbs
2000: 145 lbs
2009: 156 lbs

Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Dementia, etc. were all virtually nonexistent several hundred years ago. Life expectancy figures you've likely heard where people only lived to be 35, etc. are complete B.S. High infant mortality rates, accidents, and infectious disease dramatically skew the life expectancy downward. Those subsets of the population not affected by these outside factors lived to be in excess of 80-100 years old without any incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes - the so called "diseases of civilization." Here is a table of ages of deaths for a population of Inuit from the Moravian Church in Labrador
and the Russian Church in Alaska, 1822-1836:

Aleuts, Unalaska district
Died ages 1-4 -- 92
Died ages 4-7 -- 17
Died ages 7-15 -- 41
Died ages 15-25 -- 41
Died ages 25-45 -- 103
Died ages 45-55 -- 66
Died ages 55-60 -- 29
Died ages 60-65 -- 22
Died ages 65-70 -- 24
Died ages 70-75 -- 23
Died ages 75-80 -- 11
Died ages 80-90 -- 20
Died ages 90-100 -- 2

People who lived in the jesus damn Artic 200 years ago, had zero access to fruits or vegetables and subsisted on a diet of 100% meat (fish, seals, whales, etc.) for their entire lives. 25% of them lived to be over 60 years old, with some living past 90...in a freaking igloo!

In one study of terminally ill patients, patients who were so close to dying that any treatment (including no treatment) was deemed ethical, an intervention method consisting of the complete removal sugar from their diets (think about what most hospital diets consist of for a second) was introduced. Those patients living past the first week (most were so far gone, they died before the study could even start) had their tumors either regress enough to be surgically treated, or experienced full remission. Patients who were previously given less than a week to live were now cancer-free simply by removing sugar from their diets.

Cancer cells have been shown in many studies ( including this one http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=296896) to have a disproportionally higher number of insulin receptor cells. Cancerous cells are "successful" mutations from an evolutionary perspective in that they lead to massive cell propagation. However, most cancerous cells have no method of internal cell metabolism, and must subsist and grow almost exclusively on energy supplied by blood glucose (hence the elevated receptor count). Essentially, cancerous cells are "parasites." By removing all sources of glucose from the body, and entering a state of ketosis, where acetone bodys supply energy to the cells as opposed to glucose, the cancer cells starve; dying or slowing growth to the point where the body's immune system can sucessfully remove them.

Long story short, you wanna live to be 100, stop drinking so much f*ing soda.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
High-fructose corn syrup and "real sugar" are metabolically identical. HFCS is not worse for you than sugar. It's just calories.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157


Doesn't matter if they're better or worse, HFCS tastes different.

I'm from Australia, and traveling to the US and having the coke over there... yup, it tastes different.

Not worse necessarily, but different.

>> ^FlowersInHisHair:
High-fructose corn syrup and "real sugar" are metabolically identical. HFCS is not worse for you than sugar. It's just calories.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157


maybe metabolically identical, but not moneyshotically identical.

High-fructose corn syrup and "real sugar" are metabolically identical. HFCS is not worse for you than sugar. It's just calories.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157

^
The post I saw said that they are known to form "cyst sacks." I'll see what I can dig up...

Edit: here's a description of the cyst...

http://www.springerlink.com/content/g50476g52883m413/

Edit 2: They can also survive in areas so heavily polluted with organic matter that almost no other species can endure. By forming a protective cyst and lowering its metabolic rate, T. tubifex can survive drought and food shortage. Encystment may also function in dispersal of the worm.

>> ^ReverendTed:
Automatic upvote because I'm a dentist, but there were a couple of things that stuck out.
Wisdom teeth are notorious for their extremely variable morphology, but my first impression was that this was not a human tooth - possibly a canine molar. (That is, a dog's molar, as opposed to an "eye tooth" molar.) I'm not saying it couldn't be human, but it wasn't my first guess.
I also take issue with the oversimplified description of tooth decay etiology. It's not that decay happens because too much bacteria gets "in the tooth", but bacteria metabolize sugar and produce acid, which dissolves the enamel. Specifically, the acid produced allows demineralization of the hydroxyapatite, leading to weakening and collapse of the crystal structure and cavitation. (Thus, a "cavity".)
You could have all the bacteria in the world in and around your teeth, but if you never gave them any "fermentable carbohydrates" (sugars), you'd never get a cavity. Periodontal disease, maybe.
Yes, my version above is a lot more wordy, but it's summarized as "bacteria use sugar to make acid, which dissolves the enamel."


The video should had showed cavitities zoomed in.

Automatic upvote because I'm a dentist, but there were a couple of things that stuck out.

Wisdom teeth are notorious for their extremely variable morphology, but my first impression was that this was not a human tooth - possibly a canine molar. (That is, a dog's molar, as opposed to an "eye tooth" molar.) I'm not saying it couldn't be human, but it wasn't my first guess.

I also take issue with the oversimplified description of tooth decay etiology. It's not that decay happens because too much bacteria gets "in the tooth", but bacteria metabolize sugar and produce acid, which dissolves the enamel. Specifically, the acid produced allows demineralization of the hydroxyapatite, leading to weakening and collapse of the crystal structure and cavitation. (Thus, a "cavity".)

You could have all the bacteria in the world in and around your teeth, but if you never gave them any "fermentable carbohydrates" (sugars), you'd never get a cavity. Periodontal disease, maybe.

Yes, my version above is a lot more wordy, but it's summarized as "bacteria use sugar to make acid, which dissolves the enamel."

Excellent point about the Sarlacc Pit digesting you for 7000 years. Though, even that logic seems weird unless biologically its digestive tract could secrete a preservative to keep your organic flesh and sinew from rotting during that period.

Some of the subtle cosmetic enhancements didn't bother me nearly as much as some of the crappy slapstick he threw in there, especially during the fly through of Mos Eisley and you see some Laurel and Hardy type antics between two robots (couldn't find the clip on YouTube).

Are we nerds?

In reply to this comment by JiggaJonson:
Indeed I have been waiting for the originals in HD for a while. Updates to the originals are teh suck. Being a computer nerd, it's easy for me to spot CGI in film and the original star wars movies (updated) were well done for their time, but they still are lackluster and make me feel like im watching a cartoon.

My worst culprit? The Sarlacc pit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/BaradaandSarlaac.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZhOAV746w (end of this clip)

It's supposed to digest you over a period of 7,000 years, so it was a hole in the ground with a low metabolism, makes sense. The image and video above make it seem like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors (only the LSOH plant seemed real in comparison).


In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I wish he'd release the original trilogy without all the special edition enhancements in HD and be done with it.

Indeed I have been waiting for the originals in HD for a while. Updates to the originals are teh suck. Being a computer nerd, it's easy for me to spot CGI in film and the original star wars movies (updated) were well done for their time, but they still are lackluster and make me feel like im watching a cartoon.

My worst culprit? The Sarlacc pit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/BaradaandSarlaac.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZhOAV746w (end of this clip)

It's supposed to digest you over a period of 7,000 years, so it was a hole in the ground with a low metabolism, makes sense. The image and video above make it seem like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors (only the LSOH plant seemed real in comparison).

Indeed I have been waiting for the originals in HD for a while. Updates to the originals are teh suck. Being a computer nerd, it's easy for me to spot CGI in film and the original star wars movies (updated) were well done for their time, but they still are lackluster and make me feel like im watching a cartoon.

My worst culprit? The Sarlacc pit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/36/BaradaandSarlaac.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZhOAV746w (end of this clip)

It's supposed to digest you over a period of 7,000 years, so it was a hole in the ground with a low metabolism, makes sense. The image and video above make it seem like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors (only the LSOH plant seemed real in comparison).


In reply to this comment by blankfist:
I wish he'd release the original trilogy without all the special edition enhancements in HD and be done with it.

Amanita muscaria contain both the deleriant muscimol and its precursor ibotenic acid (among other things). Drinking the urine of the reindeer (or human) is helpful because a large percentage of the ibotenic acid (85% in humans) is not metabolized into muscimol, and finds it's way into the urine along with a little bit of the muscimol that was metabolized. So, upon drinking the urine, the drinker gets all of the ibotenic acid that their liver can handle and a tiny bonus of muscimol, all without having to eat a whole bunch of gritty, chicken-tasting mushrooms.

>> ^Lieu:
This is why we humans fail so much. "...any evidence I could have gotten to prove death of hypothermia is out the window."
Talk about confirmation bias.
What an idiot. This guy decided long before the autopsy what the cause of death was. The autopsy, the best method by far of establishing unknown death, says uterine toxity from death of kittens? Too bad, there's no changing his mind now. Intuition and cognitive bias "triumphs" yet again. Intuition says cold = hypothermia. How about after any cause of death metabolism stops and the body cools to its surroundings? How about looking at all explanations objectively?
Depressing. Now Joe Average will watch this and think automatically the airline must have "done" something to the cat and pay no attention to the actual vet's diagnosis.



Dude, give it up. you can't prove the cat died of hypothermia, but you also can't prove it didn't, either.

The only thing the guy has to go on is that it was sent to a vet that he doesn't know, who said the most likely cause of death was uterine toxity. Now, many things could've happened there.

We don't know what made the kittens die, maybe it was complications, maybe it had something to do with why the cat froze to death, too.

The ONLY thing's we know about this video, guy sends a healthy pregnant kitty to someone else on a plane. Cat gets put on plane. Cat is dead and frozen (Twice) upon arrival. There's no middle ground there, we have no information on what happened while it was in the cargo hold of the plane, so for all we know, the landing gear didn't fully close and caused a small draft, at that altitude, the temperature would already be incredibly low, not to mention that it's winter.

Now, if it was ME in this situation, and I not only sold a cat to someone for $2500, but one that I'd loved and had for years, I'd probably be pretty pissed off too. And being as the cat was healthy THAT MORNING, the only logical explanation is that something happened to it, more then likely while it was in the planes care. And if they can't prove misconduct on the airlines part, I believe they forfeit any rights to sue for the loss of not only his money, but his pet. So, yeah. I'd want my own autopsy on it, too.