The segment, which referenced data from documentary What the Health, saw Dr. Robert Lustig, a neuroendocrinologist who advocates for low-carb diets, go head-to-head with Dr. Garth Davis, a bariatric surgeon and physician.

They discuss whether plant-based diets are healthier than animal products, whether meat is really killing us, and if industry-funded studies are just muddying the waters of medical research.

With this exclusive re-upload, watch see these doctors thrash out their arguments.

The post WATCH: Could This Be The Best Nutrition Debate Of All Time? appeared first on Plant Based News.

2021 started with a bang, with a dizzying nearly half a million people signing up for Veganuary. 

Throughout the year, plant-based meat companies forged partnerships with the biggest names in the food industry, like McDonald’s, Subway, and Dominos, to name a few. 

A host of high-profile names spoke out about animal exploitation, including Grammy Award-winner Billie Eilish and Formula 1 champion Lewis Hamilton, who are both vegan.

Corporations shelled out millions of dollars to place behind alternative protein start-ups, and communities around the globe rallied together to help protect the planet from the climate emergency. 

Klaus Mitchell, director of the PBN annual film series and founder of PBN, said the new short film arrived at just the right time. 

He explained: “More people than ever are paying attention to the vegan movement, and VEGAN 2021 highlights why.

“This short film sheds light on the growing awareness of plant-based living, and why picking up the lifestyle is easier, simpler, and more important than ever before.”

Check out Plant Based News’ YouTube channel for more videos like this.

The post WATCH: PBN’s Annual Short Film ‘Vegan 2021’ appeared first on Plant Based News.

It has been propelled into the mainstream by the likes of Joe Rogan – who regularly promotes the diet on his podcast.

But is it healthy? And what does the science say?

What can you eat on the carnivore diet?

Firstly, it’s important to note that definitions of the carnivore diet appear to differ slightly between different sources. Some adherents rely entirely on raw meat, others cook it.

Some followers of the carnivore diet choose to include small amounts of low-lactose dairy products in their meals, as well as eggs. However, many stick to exclusively to chicken, pork, lamb, beef turkey, organ meats.

Tea, coffee, and other drinks made from plants are typically not allowed on the diet. Neither are beans, legumes, starches, fruit, or vegetables.

What do the experts say?

Leading plant-based health expert Dr. Neal Barnard regularly speaks out about the carnivore diet. In an exclusive interview with Plant Based News, he branded the diet ‘even more stupid than keto’.

Dr. Barnard made his comments about the diet with speaking to PBN Klaus Mitchell, in a quickfire-style interview format.

“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, people came up with something even stupider [than low carb diets including Atkins and Keto],” Dr. Barnard said of the carnivore diet.

“These things won’t last, but they come up. They don’t stay popular for very long, and that’s because a low carbohydrate diet eliminates more than half of what you normally eat. 

“Carbohydrates are fruits and starchy vegetables, and starchy grains, and beans – all these things your body is designed for. They are all gone. So if you stop eating so many foods, you’re going to lose weight. But as time goes on, people can’t live with that.

“And it’s lucky they can’t live with [the restriction] because the risk of all the animal products over the long run include heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, among others.

“And they’ve been kind of sneaky with it. It used to be when they did studies on low carbohydrate diets they would more honestly describe when people had adverse reactions, like massively high cholesterol levels. Now they just report averages, so the average cholesterol only went up about 10 points.

“What actually happened was that some dropped because they were losing weight, for others they went through the roof and they’re hiding that from you.”

Is the carnivore diet safe?

Most concerns surrounding the carnivore diet are in relation to lack of vitamins it provides, particularly vitamin C.

In an online interview Cardiologist Dr. Joel Kahn criticised people who ‘cling’ to the carnivore diet ‘as a panacea’.

“The big puzzle is…one of the things that plant-based eaters…get way more than anyone else is Vitamin C, which builds healthy walls, builds healthy immune systems…Vitamin C has so many benefits to the body.

“Where are these people – where every chart says meat has no Vitamin C – getting it? Are they eating raw meat that may contain it? Are they eating organ meat?”

Last year, celebrity singer James Blunt revealed he once got scurvy after adopting a carnivore diet ‘to annoy vegans’.

Scurvy, which is caused by extreme vitamin C deficiency, causes symptoms including bleeding gums, rotting teeth, and fatigue among others.

Is meat healthy?

Most health organizations advocate for low consumption of meat, particularly red meat which The World Health Organization classifies as a Group 2A carcinogen.

This means products such as pork, beef, and lamb ‘probably cause cancer’.

Moreover, the WHO says the strongest evidence for an association with eating red meat is for colorectal cancer. However, there is also evidence of links with pancreatic and prostate cancer.

Heart disease

Diets consisting solely of animal products will most likely be high in saturated fat and cholesterol. Dr. Joel Kahn says excessive amounts of saturated fat ‘conclusively’ cause heart disease.

The cardiologist spoke to Plant Based News‘ Klaus Mitchell about how a new publication sheds light on the debate about dietary saturated fat and cardiovascular health.

The paper, titled Reduction in Saturated Fat Intake for Cardiovascular Disease, was published by the Cochrane Database, which is considered by many to be the most respected research group in the world.

Discussing the paper, Dr. Kahn told Mitchell: “This new super review by the Cochrane Database…looked at 16 of the best studies, 59,000 people, very detailed information about their diet. Some had high saturated fat diets by design of the study. Some had low saturated fat diets – more meat, more butter, more cheese, less meat, less butter, less cheese.

“At the end of the day, they found that within two years, we can enjoy a 21 percent reduction in our risk of heart attack, stroke, of congestive heart failure, dying of heart disease. And if we do more than the average, if we change our diet more than just average, so there’s essentially no meat, butter, cheese, turkey, and pork, we’ll see even bigger results.”

Are humans designed to eat meat?

A popular argument for the carnivore diet is that humans are designed to eat meat. However, a slew of medical professionals have debunked this claim.

Dr. Justine Butler, from Viva!, says: “Carnivores have sharp teeth and claws that help them to rip their prey apart, tearing off chunks of raw meat and ‘wolfing’ them down without the aid of a knife and fork.

“Their acidic stomachs help to digest flesh quickly and their short intestines allow the rapid expulsion of rotting meat remains. 

“Herbivores, such as rabbits, horses, and sheep, chew from side-to-side and have longer intestines to absorb nutrients. Their saliva (and ours) contains amylase, an enzyme that helps digest starchy carbohydrates found in bread, rice, and other whole grains. 

“Carnivores don’t spend as much time chewing nor do they consume many carbohydrates, so there is no need for amylase in their saliva.

“Their strong jaws can only open and shut and are incapable of moving from side to side as ours do.”

The post The Carnivore Diet: Is It Healthy? What Do The Experts Say? appeared first on Plant Based News.

The world’s media has turned its attention to the coronavirus pandemic.

The virus is understood to have originated from a wet market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Since then, it has spread globally, killing around 90,000 people at the time of writing.

But the vast majority of the coverage has failed to examine one crucial fact – the relationship between infectious diseases like the coronavirus and the way we rear and consume animals worldwide.

Coronavirus

This exclusive video, produced and presented by Plant Based News‘ Klaus Mitchell, takes a look at the history of diseases transmitted from animals to humans – and how the way animals are farmed globally creates an environment which makes infectious diseases practically inevitable.

“When any animal is confined in close proximity, with no space to roam, and under immense emotional stress, conditions are ripe for disease,” he says in the video.

“A perfect example is the Spanish flu of 1918. Here, humans were packed together in trenches, malnourished, with the constant stress of combat. Their impaired immunity is likely to have increased the rate of transmission and made the virus highly pathogenic.

“In the same way, livestock are routinely subjected to cramped, confined and unhygienic conditions. Not only does this increase the probability of transmitting a virus, it also raises the prospect of mutations.”

You can find the Plant Based News’ YouTube channel – which features this video alongside many others – here

The post WATCH: What The Media Isn’t Telling You About The Coronavirus appeared first on Plant Based News.

A former keto fan has transformed his health after ditching animal products.

US-based Dan Hancock decided to swap to a whole food plant-based diet after watching sports documentary The Game Changers.

Since changing his diet four months ago, he has lost 63lb, gone from 42 pants size to 34, and seen his blood pressure drop from 150/100 to 115/75.

The Game Changers

“I watched The Game Changers documentary and it completely changed my life,” Hancock told Plant Based News. “Two weeks before watching it, I was doing a ketogenic diet and I was eating a lot of burrito bowls, fajitas, that type of style, with a lot of cheese, seafood, chicken. A lot of sour cream, guacamole, vegetables, and a lot of oil in those.

“What I really liked about The Game Changers, and what really stuck out to me, was that NFL players specifically Tennessee Titan players are transitioning to a plant-based diet, which really opened my mind, as I’m an ex-football player and that’s a real macho sport, and it’s all about protein and eating meat.

“I see these guys are doing this [a plant-based diet] so they can prolong their careers, and play at a higher level, and it opened my eyes. If these guys are doing it, there’s something to it…I was a carnivore. I loved meat, I had it with every meal…If I could change, anybody can change.”

The post From Keto To Plant-Based: ‘Watching The Game Changers Changed My Health’ appeared first on Plant Based News.

Dr. Neal Barnard has branded anti-vegan claims that a vegan diet kills more animals as ‘ridiculous’.

The acclaimed plant-based doctor was asked to shared his view during an interview with London Real‘s Brian Rose.

Vegan diets kill more animals

During the interview, Rose said former vegan Tim Shieff, told him that ‘eating red meat kills one cow and I can survive for six months on that one cow’, contrasting that to vegetables, the production of which he says kills many rodents, insects, and birds.

“That is ridiculous,” said Dr. Barnard. “The cow isn’t ordering room service. The cow is on a feedlot, and the pigs, and the chickens. They are eating soybeans and corn…you go outside a town, and as far as the eye can see are fields of corn. Beautiful. Identical. Genetically engineered.

“And on the other side of the high way – soybeans. Beautiful. Identical. GMO. No human is eating any of that. So if you’re thinking there are mice in the fields and they are all being killed, maybe so. To feed chickens, and to feed pigs, and to feed cows. So when the cow is killed, that cow represents enormous amounts of agriculture that had to go in to get this miserly amount of meat.”

Dead zones

And according to Dr. Barnard, the problems don’t stop there. “To make that cornfield grow, you need fertilizer, you need irrigation, you need pesticides, and all of that washes into the rivers and streams.

“The Missouri River that runs right through the heart of North Dakota picks up all that junk and the fertilizer causes algae to grow, and it ends up in the Mississippi. And as it flushes out below Louisiana and Texas, there is now a dead zone as big as the state of New Jersey from all of the fertilizer and growing algae bloom that died off and killed everything in the water thanks to growing feed crops for animals.”

He said it ‘may be’ that some animals are killed in the process of harvesting crops, but said it’s ‘nothing remotely like raising all of these crops to then feed to animals to get the tiny little bit of meat out of it’.

The post WATCH: Dr. Neal Barnard Debunks Argument That A Vegan Diet Kills More Animals appeared first on Plant Based News.

A top cardiologist has blasted comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan – saying he is funded by meat companies.

Plant-based cardiologist Dr. Joel Kahn, who appeared on Rogan’s podcast last year, made the comments during an exclusive interview with Plant Based News founder Klaus Mitchell.

The pair discussed a range of issues, including upcoming documentary The Game Changers, the keto diet, and why Joe Rogan speaks negatively about veganism so frequently.

Joe Rogan

“I admire Joe Rogan for his energy and his success,” Dr. Kahn told Mitchell. “He looks older than his age. He is funded by meat companies on his podcast; they’re his number one sponsor.

” I mean, you’ve got to look at where the man’s perspective is. And to give him credit, he eats green smoothies for breakfast, he eats vegetables with every meal, he walks a better talk than you might expect from that backlash.

“But it does threaten his audience, or at least his audience expects him to push back. So he’s playing the role that his large platform of largely meat-heavy listeners is going to expect and he did it great because he wants to keep that thing rolling.”

The interview was hosted at PCRM’s Nutrition in Medicine Conference

The post WATCH: Cardiologist Slams Joe Rogan: ‘He’s Funded By Meat Companies’ appeared first on Plant Based News.

Oceans cover a staggering 70 percent of the world’s surface and most life on Earth lives there.

There are more than 33,000 species of fish living in the oceans, but their complex emotional lives are often overlooked and misunderstood.

This new video by Plant Based News, voiced by PBN Co-founder Robbie Lockie, looks at some of the issues facing these fish – and what can be done about them.

The story of fish

“There are more fishes than birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals,” says the video. “We are the village, they are the kingdom.

“And yet we share so much; the same body systems, muscles, nerves, and senses, and the same fibers than transmit pain. We even fall for the same optical illusions. 

“[The ocean has] an abundance and majesty of a world more colorful and diverse than we could ever imagine.”

The problems

But these depths are awash with humanmade problems; plastic has reached the deepest trenches, and the great coral reefs are dying.

Ocean dead zones, where nothing can live, are caused by pollution from farms. Magnificant species exist on the brink of extinction.

“The world’s fishing fleet has doubled in the past 65 years, but they are finding it much harder to catch fish,” says the video. “A fifth of all plastic pollution in the oceans is discarded fishing nets, and as one population of fish crashes, we move onto the next.”

The solution

Fish farms are not the answer; with billions of fish confined in close proximity, they are riddled with disease and, as the video states, ‘live in abject misery’.

“More than a quarter of wild-caught fishes are used to make farmed fish feed. It takes 120 wild-caught fish to raise a single farmed salmon to reach your plate.

“There are solutions; together we will create incredible marine conservation areas with strong regulation, together we’ll refuse to eat farmed fish that causes cruelty and decimates wild fishes, together we’ll inspire fisheries and fishermen into more sustainable food production. Together, we’ll rethink how we treat the most exploited beings on our planet.”

This video, which is available in English, French, German, and Spanish, was created by Plant Based News in collaboration with Compassion in World Farming, as part of its Rethink Fish campaign. You can find out more here

The post WATCH: The SHOCKING Truth About Our Dying Oceans appeared first on Plant Based News.

Weight loss surgeon Dr. Garth Davis revealed why he no longer promotes low carb diets while speaking at the recent 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. 

The Advisory Committee, which is comprised of nationally recognized nutrition and medical researchers, academics, and practitioners, updates the guidelines every five years. It invites experts to speak and share current scientific and medical evidence in nutrition.

Dr. Davis was one of many plant-based medical experts, who spoke about the benefits of plant-based diets, and the possible negative effects of eating low carb. During his speech, Dr. Davis begged the committee to ‘put him out of business’, saying he is ‘tired of cutting people open for obesity and re-arranging their intestines’.

Low carb diets

“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that it’s 2019, and we have a group of very smart people in this room, yet we are asking what we should be eating. It’s absolutely crazy and my patients are confused. They’re confused by the guidelines, they’re confused by the discussions here and they’re confused by bad science.

“So I ask you to look at the science very carefully. Because I did. I wrote a book saying we should be eating protein first and should be on ketosis diets, but you know what happens to these ketosis patients? They end up eventually on my operating room table when they fail this diet over and over again.”

Ketosis diets failing

Dr. Davis says he asked himself why both he and his patients were failing the ketosis diet – leading him to study topic intensively. “You’ve heard people here say that carbs cause diabetes, and yet when you look at the blue zones they eat extremely high carbohydrate diets. 

“When you look at the epic database, fruit dose is associated with a decrease of diabetes. Taking five percent of your saturated fatty acid and changing it to a fruit dose decreases your diabetes risk by 30 percent. People act as if carbs cause insulin resistance – that is not true. 

“Animal protein and animal fat causing untermyer cellular fat causing ceramide toxicity causes insulin resistance. But our patients don’t know that so all they hear is ‘protein-carbs-protein-carbs…they don’t know whether to go low carb or low fat. They are petrified of a banana.

“I ask the committee to get rid of the recommendation for a protein, and rather focus on whole foods. The questions out there are complicated but the answers are simple and I refer to Michael Pollen – ‘eat real foods, mostly plants, not too much’.”

The post Top Doctor Reveals Why He Stopped Promoting Low Carb Diets appeared first on Plant Based News.

A plant-based expert has slammed low-carb ketogenic diets at the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

The Advisory Committee, which is comprised of nationally recognized nutrition and medical researchers, academics, and practitioners, updates the guidelines every few years. It invites experts to speak and share current scientific and medical evidence in nutrition.

Dr. Pam Popper is a naturopath, an internationally recognized expert on nutrition, medicine and health, and the Executive Director of Wellness Forum Health.

In this exclusive Plant Based News video, she spoke to PBN Founder Klaus Mitchell about why she criticized the diet, and how the ketogenic advocates presented to the committee.

Plant-based diet

“The ketogenic people were angry,” revealed Dr. Popper. “I think they are constipated which is why they rant and rave and scream. But they were all talking about short term results.

“If you take a look at high-fat diets, low-carb diets, the measurements short term show that the benefits are there. People lose weight, and their numbers come down.

“But if the only thing we’re going to do is consider short-term benefits, there are a lot of things that cause people to lose weight and have good biomarkers. One is cocaine addiction. I’ve never had a fat cocaine addict in my office, and I’ve never had one cholesterol or high fasting glucose levels.

“Now I’m being facetious of course, but the point is, if the only thing that counts is short term, a lot of things are short term good, but bad in the long term, as it takes a long time for cancer to develop in response to a high-fat diet or high protein diet for example.”

Plant Based News would like to thank Dania, Noah, Emily, and everyone at PCRM to help facilitate this segment.

The post Expert Slams Low Carb Diets At Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee appeared first on Plant Based News.