McDonalds and sugary cereal advertisers are widely viewed as harmful if not evil for the way they confuse the epistemic environment in order to make money and others’ expense. Calling something “no worse than fast food and sugary cereal advertisers” is an enormous moral and epistemic insult to it.
I absolutely agree. McDonalds and the other demons of the Western Diet cause much more harm, both in absolute terms and per capita. That was really my point; within the class of ‘health misinformation and disinformation that causes harm’, furphies about vegan nutrition are a comparatively minor problem.
This sounds like you’re saying “I won’t prescribe B12 until my patient gives up oreos” or even “I won’t prescribe B12 until everyone gives up oreos”, which would be an awful way to treat people. Even if you’re right that oreos represent a larger problem, taking B12 pills is useful in its own right, and easier than giving up oreos[1].
I assume you don’t mean that. You probably mean “I don’t think Elizabeth/anyone should spend time on veganism’s problems, when metabolic issues are doing so much more aggregate harm.” But tractability applies even more on a population level. People aren’t eating oreos out of ignorance: they know they’re bad. They eat them because taste is winning out over health.
It’s impossible for a blog post to fix “oreos taste good” or “people care more about taste than health”. But it’s pretty easy theoretically possible for a blog post to fix ignorance of the benefits of some tests and supplements. When I see similarly tractable opportunities to help omnivores, I take them.
Hell, I found a (vegan) cure for oreos tasting good (n=1). Finding it took years of self-experimentation (where the iron post took a few days, for more certainly). AFAIK no one else has tried it, because it takes consistent effort over several months to see an effect on weight[2].
So no, I am not going to let McDonalds shitty advertising hold up alerting people to problems with simple diagnoses with simple solutions
It also costs $5-$10/day, but I know people jumping through a lot of hoops to get semaglutide, so I’m pretty sure the issue here is the delay and uncertainty.
This sounds like you’re saying “I won’t prescribe B12 until my patient gives up oreos” or even “I won’t prescribe B12 until everyone gives up oreos”, which would be an awful way to treat people.[1]
[...]
You probably mean “I don’t think Elizabeth/anyone should spend time on veganism’s problems, when metabolic issues are doing so much more aggregate harm.”
I wouldn’t say either of these things. A quick and easy treatment like B12 replacement is not mutually exclusive with a long-term and difficult treatment like diet modification. (This is not an abstract question for me; prescribing a statin and counselling on lifestyle changes are both things I do several times a week, and of the two, the script is orders of magnitude easier for both me and the patient, but we’ll usually do both in parallel when treating dyslipidaemia.)
As I said earlier in the thread, I’m all in favour of you or anybody else spending time on making people aware of the risk of nutrient deficiencies associated with veganism and what to do about them. (Again, this is not an abstract issue to me; I routinely discuss, screen for, and treat nutrient deficiencies with vegan and vegetarian patients.) I do recognise that you’ve had some bad experiences doing this, which is unfair.
McDonalds and sugary cereal advertisers are widely viewed as harmful if not evil for the way they confuse the epistemic environment in order to make money and others’ expense. Calling something “no worse than fast food and sugary cereal advertisers” is an enormous moral and epistemic insult to it.
I absolutely agree. McDonalds and the other demons of the Western Diet cause much more harm, both in absolute terms and per capita. That was really my point; within the class of ‘health misinformation and disinformation that causes harm’, furphies about vegan nutrition are a comparatively minor problem.
This sounds like you’re saying “I won’t prescribe B12 until my patient gives up oreos” or even “I won’t prescribe B12 until everyone gives up oreos”, which would be an awful way to treat people. Even if you’re right that oreos represent a larger problem, taking B12 pills is useful in its own right, and easier than giving up oreos[1].
I assume you don’t mean that. You probably mean “I don’t think Elizabeth/anyone should spend time on veganism’s problems, when metabolic issues are doing so much more aggregate harm.” But tractability applies even more on a population level. People aren’t eating oreos out of ignorance: they know they’re bad. They eat them because taste is winning out over health.
It’s impossible for a blog post to fix “oreos taste good” or “people care more about taste than health”. But it’s
pretty easytheoretically possible for a blog post to fix ignorance of the benefits of some tests and supplements. When I see similarly tractable opportunities to help omnivores, I take them.Hell, I found a (vegan) cure for oreos tasting good (n=1). Finding it took years of self-experimentation (where the iron post took a few days, for more certainly). AFAIK no one else has tried it, because it takes consistent effort over several months to see an effect on weight[2].
So no, I am not going to let McDonalds shitty advertising hold up alerting people to problems with simple diagnoses with simple solutions
Especially by the time someone is in the doctor’s office for oreo-related problems. The people who find oreos easy to give up have already done so.
It also costs $5-$10/day, but I know people jumping through a lot of hoops to get semaglutide, so I’m pretty sure the issue here is the delay and uncertainty.
I wouldn’t say either of these things. A quick and easy treatment like B12 replacement is not mutually exclusive with a long-term and difficult treatment like diet modification. (This is not an abstract question for me; prescribing a statin and counselling on lifestyle changes are both things I do several times a week, and of the two, the script is orders of magnitude easier for both me and the patient, but we’ll usually do both in parallel when treating dyslipidaemia.)
As I said earlier in the thread, I’m all in favour of you or anybody else spending time on making people aware of the risk of nutrient deficiencies associated with veganism and what to do about them. (Again, this is not an abstract issue to me; I routinely discuss, screen for, and treat nutrient deficiencies with vegan and vegetarian patients.) I do recognise that you’ve had some bad experiences doing this, which is unfair.
I’m not sure if you chose this example intentionally, but for what it’s worth: Oreos are vegan.