Why Did These Authors Lie About The Vegan Diet? by chef jem Blog entry

Blog: Chef Jemichel ~ The Chef-Doctor
by chef jem

Why Did These Authors Lie About The Vegan Diet?

Chef Jem's letter to Dr. Barbara Hendel re: "Water & Salt The Essence of Life"

Date: 5/13/2012 4:54:26 AM ( 12 y ) ... viewed 2621 times

To my knowledge, there is no objective, long-term study that exists that shows vegan diets meet all the nutritional requirements that is needed by most people. Such a study would have to include the nutritional requirements of young mothers (and cover all the clinical observations, starting from before conception and continuing beyond a year after the mother has finished nursing her baby) as well as that of her children and continuing through their child-bearing years. That is because, as far as I know, there is no society in existence who has been on a strict vegan diet! In order for a group of people to show their vegan diet is successful they would have to document their good health over at least two generations. None of that exists! That's why I found a statement in the book: "Water & Salt The Essence of Life" about "a research study of 8,000 people who choose the vegan diet" to be very interesting to me! Enough so that I did an online search and then I made an even more interesting discovery as I state in the following letter to Swanson Health Products.

Greetings!

I have "Water & Salt The Essence of Life" that I have purchased from Swanson Health Products as of 3/03/12. (I can give more details on that order if need be.) On page 41 the book says: "A research study of 8,000 people who choose the vegan diet, which abstains from all animal protein, like milk, meat, fish, and egg, has shown that they had sufficient vitamin B12, ..."

I was very interested in reviewing that study, however the study is not cited in the book! I did an online search. Although I have not seen the study as of yet I did find what I believe to be a reliable reference to that study: http://www.naturalnews.com/021346.html

However, The article at Natural News tells a different story when it says: "Catherine Gale from the University of Southampton led the research team that studied more than 8,000 men and women. ... 366 participants who said they were vegetarian included vegans -- who eat no animal products, such as meat, dairy products, and eggs -- and people who called themselves vegetarians despite eating fish and chicken. The research team headed by Gale also stated that it was not clear how long participants had been vegetarians ..." It appears that the book has misrepresented the facts of this study since not all 8,000 actually had "choose the vegan diet". I am not at all happy about discovering this apparent misrepresentation! The book makes other dietary statements that I have found misrepresenting the facts.

I'd like to communicate this to the authors. Can you forward this to the publishers?

Thank you for considering my request.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Cordially,
without prejudice
and without the "United States"
By Chef Jem

Update May 13, 2012 -

I just sent the following response to a customer care message in reply to what I had sent above.:

I am not certain that my core issue (that I had identified in my message) has been acknowledged by your company.
To summarize that: the book that your company shipped me appears to have made at least one misrepresentation of fact. Although this may not qualify as a real "crime" it is something that I believe needs correction. I realize that your company was not involved in any way with the publishing of this book and is only responsible for its distribution. However, I do believe that your company should be fully informed about my discovery. In any case it is my intention to fully inform your company about the misrepresentation of facts published in the book (as I have identified). Most importantly I'd like to have an acknowledgement from the company to directly assure me that they know I have found (what appears to be) a substantial error in this book and that I believe it deserves to be corrected.

You have suggested that I "contact the Himalayan Living Salt Customer Service department". If you are thinking in terms of "the study" then please clarify that. However, I was not necessarily requesting information or referrals about the study. I am primarily intending to communicate the discovery that I made in the book that I believe is a grievous publishing error that needs to be corrected. Is it possible that your company doesn't want to acknowledge the error? Is there anyone in your company who can at least look at "Why Vegans have no Deficiencies" on page 41? In the meanwhile I am willing to find additional sources referring to the study to add further verification to why I consider this "a grievous publishing error".

In any case please refer me to a manager in customer care or to another superior in your company. I think this issue goes beyond the scope of everyday concerns being addressed by customer care.

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May 18, 2012
I now have a copy of the study that was published in the British Medical Journal December 15, 2006:
http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/399204/field_highwire_article_pdf/0/bm...

It says:
"Participants 8170 men and women aged 30 years participating in the 1970 British cohort study, a national birth cohort.
Main outcome measures Self-reported vegetarianism and type
of diet followed.
Results 366 (4.5%) participants said they were vegetarian,
although 123 (33.6%) admitted eating fish or chicken."

And again under
"Results" it said:
"In total 366 (4.5%) of 8170 participants of the 1970 British cohort study with IQ scores at age 10 years said they were vegetarian: nine (2.5%) were vegan and 123 (33.6%) stated they were vegetarian but reported consuming fish or chicken." That's Nine vegans out of 8,170! This was not "A research study of 8,000 people who choose the vegan diet"! Or are they talking about another study? That's the first legitimate question I'd like to ask Dr. Barbara Hendel, What study are you referring to? The one I found is:
"IQ in childhood and vegetarianism in adulthood: 1970 British cohort study" - Catharine R Gale, Ian J Deary, Ingrid Schoon, G David Batty. Is this the same study?

Dr. Hendel and Peter Ferreira have said: "A research study of 8,000 people who choose the vegan diet, which abstains from all animal protein, like milk, meat, fish, and egg, has shown that they had sufficient vitamin B12, ...".

If Dr. Hendel and Peter Ferreira are referring to the same study as I have found then they should correct their error. The error is not simply a "typo"! This is a major falsified claim of vegan sufficiency that intended to deceive the public by referring to a published health study and deliberately and very grossly distorted the facts!

The study says: "... we had no information from the 30 year follow-up on how long our participants had
been vegetarian.
Evidence from a subset of 3795 participants (46.5%) who had taken part in a previous follow-up of the cohort when they were aged 16 years suggests that most of those who
were vegetarian at age 30 had chosen that type of diet as adolescents or young adults, some years after their IQ was measured: among these 3795 participants, only 32% of those who were vegetarian at age 30 were already vegetarian at age 16, and of those already vegetarian at age 16 95% had become vegetarian between the ages of 11 and 16."

I started this blog by saying: "To my knowledge, there is no objective, long-term study that exists that shows vegan diets meet all the nutritional requirements that is needed by most people." These authors some how claim that a certain study has validated vegan sufficiency but that study simply does not exist!

I also sad: "... as far as I know, there is no society in existence that has a strict vegan diet!" If there was such a society then that would be the ultimate validation of the vegan diet however, where on earth are those people? Nine people out of a group of of 8,170 participants do not constitute a society.

Maybe a worthy question about this is: What is the minimum number of people required to constitute a society? Or: Which of the societies that Weston A. Price studied had the smallest number of people? I can tell you right now that it wasn't nine people! In fact Dr. Price was somewhat disappointed that he did not find any vegan societies. And he had searched over the course of a decade!

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Update, August1, 2012 -
Attempted to reconnect with the British Medical Journal to follow-up on my correspondences with one of the editors there, however I have not received a reply in a couple weeks. I think I'll make another attempt.

Another misrepresentation of data to pretend a validation of veganism is courtesy of T. Colin Campbell. "Campbell’s cancer research and the results of the China-Cornell-Oxford Project, are victims of selection bias, cherry picking, and woefully misrepresented data.":
http://www.westonaprice.org/vegetarianism-and-plant-foods/the-china-study-myth