Metabolical: The Lure and the Lies of Processed Food, Nutrition, and Modern Medicine

by Robert H. Lustig

And now we have a new controversy—vegan vs. keto (Chapter 14). Movies like What the Health (2017) and The Game Changers (2018) argue that animal products kill people. Vegan proponents argue that meat is killing people and the planet. Are these arguments based in science? It seems like everyone, from the Lancet Commission to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is advocating a plant-based diet for both our health and for the environment. If this were the easy answer, India, which in large part eschews beef, would be healthier. But its diabetes rate is 8.8 percent and growing—the rate in the US is 9.4 percent. By the same token Argentina and New Zealand, which both eat double the meat per capita that the US does, would be fat and sick—but their heart disease, diabetes, and cancer burden are lower than ours.