Ok Satya, you’ll get what you want: a response.

“The trouble is this diet has been shown by rigorous science to be very dangerous to your health.”

By whom? The only actual study on meat eaters was the Stephansson study from the 1930s which showed that eating an all meat diet was not detrimental to one’s health. You do that funny little trick when you make it seem like it’s on me to disprove “the facts” of nutrition as if you know them. Thus you get just to cite “studies.” I did a carnivorous diet for 90 days, and my health did not deteriorate, and almost every single one of my bio-markers were in the healthy range. According to the type of logic you espouse in your response I should be dead or have heart disease or diabetes or cancer.

“But studies have shown that most people who lose weight on these kinds of diets, gain it back again fairly quickly.”

What studies? If you were to go back to the way you were eating before you would obviously gain back much of the weight, how is that negative against my writing? You don’t need studies to prove the obvious like that. You again use this trick that completely misses the point: the way I was eating before (standard American diet) was not conducive to losing weight, so I changed it. I would not go back to the way I was eating before, and I don’t think anyone who is actually serious about long-term weight loss would either. The fact that many people do not want to make a lifestyle change in the way they eat does not mean that diets do not work, simply that most people are unwilling to make lasting lifestyle changes.

“Animal protein stimulates the release of IGF-1, which increases all tumor growth, and the saturated fat in animal foods is still overwhelmingly linked to heart disease, as well as diabetes, despite the very sketchy studies he promotes here.”

I will give you that I do not have any idea the impact of IGF-1 long term on this diet and what that would do for cancer growth. However, meat causing diabetes is absurd and wrong. You are wrong and using your methods that means everything you say is incorrect and should not be believed. The facts of the situation make it impossible for me to have diabetes, how can that not be more clear? My A1c was at 5.2, and my blood insulin levels were at 3.2, both of which are extremely low. How do I have diabetes if by every lab marker we use to determine the disease is low? I want you to explain to me using biological principals how that can be?

“Oxidative stress is linked with practically all known diseases, and the vast majority of anti-oxidants are found in plant foods. Similarly, inflammation is a major component of disease, and animal flesh is among the most inflammatory substances, while plants offer the most anti-inflammatories.”

Proof? My c-reactive protein, a measure of systematic inflammation, was incredibly low at .71. How do I have systematic inflammation from eating only meet if that level is so low? How is animal flesh inflammatory but processed plant foods are not? Even when processed foods contain the highest levels of omega-6 which is linked to many diseases? See what I did there? I tried to link two separate things together to discredit you, just as you have done to me.

“Why not compare humans to our closest relatives who are mostly plant eaters, instead of ruminants?”

Ok, the other primates are hind-gut fermenters, and we are not. Our intestines are not capable of handling fibrous plant material the same way a gorilla is. Also consider that the vast majority of plants are inedible to humans, with many being downright poisonous. How is it that the few plants we can eat have all been selectively bred to be easier to digest? If you look at how commercial agriculture has changed the composition of vegetables and plants, many are indistinguishable from how they originally looked 200 years ago and what type of nutrients they had in them.

Animal protein and the nutrients contained in animal tissue contain the highest nutrient density of any food item in the world; there is no debating this. These nutrients are more readily absorbed by the body. See what I did here? I just made a matter-of-fact statement as you have done in your response, appealing to some base level understanding of biology in order to discredit you.

You cite a website that is run by a vegan and one that is pure vegan propaganda. Please tell me how I can be suffering from inflammation and diabetes if all of my bio-markers in those areas are incredibly low? You can’t, and no study or RCT can explain that either. Get off your moral high horse.

“And a final note — ethics and ecological impact are crucial in our choices. To brush them aside is irresponsible. Luckily, what is kindest to all beings, and most ecologically harmonious, is also healthiest — so no compromise is needed!”

Taking a subtle dig at me for not wanting to get into the ethical impact is weak. You are also trying to point out that it is somehow inherently better if the world just ate mono-cropped soy and corn hybrids that suck out all of the nutrients out of the ground and destroy the topsoil. Ruminants are a critical part of the ecosystem, and they help sequester carbon into the ground. You can stand on your vegan moral high ground all you want, but that does not make you some superior being.

Instead of wanting an open discussion you have simply resorted to an argument based on vegan propaganda. You are no better than the palo people that you seek to discredit. How about you just put your money where your mouth is: get a blood test now and get one after 90 days of an all meat diet and compare all of these markers of health that you believe to be important.

Then you can go ahead and post your findings on Medium.