Feat @Dr. Matthew Nagra, ND Sometimes before diving deeper into the science, you have to pause and examine the reasoning that somebody is operating from. When asked why it is supposedly “terrible” for someone to avoid red meat, fish, and seafood, the response was “you’re missing some of the most nutrient rich and highly absorbed protein sources.” Even if that claim was true, it does not follow that avoiding those foods means you cannot obtain all essential nutrients. That would only follow if those foods uniquely contained essential nutrients, which is not the case. Then after ignoring the research already presented, the defense offered for plant based diets being suboptimal is a social media survey of carnivore dieters riddled with limitations…and those limitations are not even the main reason bringing up the study is problematic. Even if the study were the best study in the world, it still would not address the claim. A study on carnivore dieters cannot inform whether plant based diets are suboptimal because it does not study plant based diets at all. Even if carnivore diets were found to be healthy, that still would not logically imply that plant based diets cannot be healthy. Both could be. That is like showing a study demonstrating vegan diets are extremely healthy as evidence that non vegan diets cannot be healthy. A reductio was also given to show that “humans have consumed it for a long time” is not sufficient grounds for something being healthy, which was misunderstood as equating meat with dirty water when the point was testing the reasoning, not the substances. And finally, my criticism of the blanket demonization of ultra processed foods was interpreted as defending all ultra processed foods, which is another error. Rejecting the claim that all members of a category are bad does not logically entail that none of them are bad. Let this be a reminder to always pay attention to the structure of what people are saying online. Non sequiturs and errors in reasoning can very easily go unnoticed. Learning some basic formal logic can go a long way in helping you spot these mistakes! -Danny #vegan #nutrition #protein #plantbased #meat - @danny_ishay