Notes Continued

This large and well-established body of research suggests that for individuals who maintain a strong group identity or affinity, meat consumption or avoidance may represent a significant ethical, intellectual, emotional, behavioral, social and/or spiritual investment that extends well-beyond a simple dietary choice. As such, many individuals (e.g., Paleo and “meat-only” dieters, vegans, vegetarians, Seventh Day Adventists) will be pre-disposed to report significantly higher levels of physical and psychological health to avoid cognitive dissonance and remain consistent with self- and/or group-appraisals.

The 5 carnivores on lemmy are not exactly exerting much social pressure on me. FWIW I am outcome based, and if you demonstrate a better way to get my desired outcomes I'll try it.

critics argue that pseudo-quantification (i.e., the transformation of reported foods and beverages into estimates of nutrient and caloric intake) created a fictional discourse on diet-disease relations

!!! THIS SO MUCH THIS. You can't magic a AB comparison if you don't have data on A or B... The ketogenic Diet RATIO used in a paper on people who didn't have any ketones... just makes me mad. You can't define away your problems.

This latter argument is based on the fact that ∼65% of self-reported dietary data have been shown to be physiologically implausible [i.e., respondents cannot survive on the amount of foods and beverages reported

heh

Given that when compared to the general population, individuals who follow a vegetarian diet tend to be more health-conscious, more physically active, more highly educated, consume less alcohol, be nonsmokers and have higher socio-economic status, it is essential for future studies to include detailed information on participants’ health and behavioral histories and current characteristics.

Being so clear about confounders might be counter productive to the "purpose" of the paper.

an interesting future direction would be to examine if meat consumption per se has psychological benefits. For example, there is evidence that a significant number of vegans and vegetarians return to meat consumption over time and that former vegetarians and vegans in the U.S. outnumber current meat-abstainers

That would indeed be a interesting direction of study. The metabolic mind group is doing research on ketogenic benefits to mental health, but not explicitly based on meat (but almost always with healthy well formulated ketogenic diets which have a significant meat component)

one research question that can be answered empirically is whether it is the nutritional properties of meat (as measured via serum biochemical analyses), the reduced social burden or stigma associated with omnivory, or other physiologic or social factors that drive the transition from meat-abstainer back to meat-consumer.

That would be a curious study, but I'm less interesting in why someone changes and more about the effects of the change itself.

our study does not support avoiding meat consumption for overall psychological health benefits.