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In the many forums I have visited on general health, people make claims that meat eaters age faster than vegans. They constantly bring up Jay Leto (a raw vegan) as proof that vegans don't age as quickly. Stefanson himself noted that Eskimo woman aged prematurely, many of them looked 60 when in reality they were only 40, and he claimed that many young Eskimo girls already looked like mature woman. Why would this be so? Wouldn't a healthy diet create a healthy exterior?

This study showed that a diet higher in saturated fat is good for the skin: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20085665

While this study here concluded that a higher intake of vitamin c and linoleic acid were beneficial to the skin: http://forum.lef.org/default.aspx?f=40&m=66894

Any ideas?

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Nope......it's reversed. And I will show that in my writings. – The Quilt May 15 2011 at 14:28
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the traditional Eskimo lifestyle was pretty intense, at least compared to us. I would think living near the equator would just be more healthy in all regards. – Mark V May 15 2011 at 15:35
On second thought, Eskimos possibly consumed more fish which likely meant more PUFA's and in turn more oxidative damage to the skin? – ROB May 15 2011 at 15:41
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Indeed, Eskimos cook with seal oil, that's terrible. Also they have genetically high metabolism. Very high protein diets might cause premature aging (although Dr. K will put that to the test) but even if higher protein means more aging (I'm not seeing it in Sisson and Devany) it doesn't follow that "meat eaters" age faster. This is typical vegan inability to think in anything other than false dichotomies. Why not a moderate amount of animal products? The Japanese elders who eat the most seem to live the longest ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/… – Stabby May 15 2011 at 16:44
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Stabby you are going to love where I am taking you. – The Quilt May 15 2011 at 22:52
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Given that vegetarians diets leave one more susceptible to AGEs, I would expect the opposite. See for example: Plasma levels of advanced glycation end products in healthy, long-term vegetarians and subjects on a western mixed diet , and Advanced glycation end products and nutrition. You can't decide based on the health of one guy, that's for certain.

I'm not familiar with claims that Inuit girls matured early.

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You get an upgrade vote! – The Quilt May 15 2011 at 14:28
Very nice links. – Phoenix May 15 2011 at 15:08
Interesting links. It seems that fructose is much more prone to glycation than glucose and could therefore be the reason many vegetarians have higher AGE's. – ROB May 15 2011 at 15:45
and ALE's are eeven worse than AGE's......and vegans get more of them too......6 to 10 to one more infact. – The Quilt May 15 2011 at 22:53
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Much of the land area of the Inuits is an ARCTIC DESERT.(Typical yearly precipitation when I went there in 92 was about 5 inches/yr total.) I lived with coastal area Inuits for 10 years. You are talking about climate that is pretty much inarguably the harshest in the world and it is VERY DRY and VERY COLD and also VERY WINDY, much of the time. Inuits were also originally, and not many generations ago, nomadic, moving with the movement of the animals they hunted for clothing, for skin for umiaqs (kayaks,)for food, of course, as well as parts of sod houses and oil for seal oil lamps, etc. It has only been relatively recently that they formed villages and even then, still moved around for caribou hunting and fishing in the spring/ summer. As another writer mentioned, it was a very outside life and this included women. And all of this movement was largely on foot. Over time, yes, there were dog sleds. But even then, this would often involve multiplemembers of a family group with some (obviously babies and small children and Elders as able) riding and others walking veeeeeery long distances.

Remember that in the high arctic you have 3 months of 24 hour sun, which for the majority of that time is high noon sunlight. And it is still cold by anyone's standards who is not an arctic dweller. Also, on and off, HIGH winds are ever present. So, imagine hours of outside work and travel in 30 or more below, with a windchill that might =120 below. (I have experieced this many, many times.) AND, add in the severe dryness.

The other thing I would wonder about is the fact that the mainstay of food among coastal inuit, unaliq (cooked bowhead whale skin and fat) and maktak (raw skin and fat) are very, very heating to the body. I can attest to this on experiece. Eat a pile of either at a sitting (which is hard not to do if you like it alot!) and if you live a modern life, even in the arctic, and are inside, you'll literlly begin to feel like you are burning up. It is no myth that it HEATS YOU up, lol! Also, dwellings tend to be overheated now, and sod houses are likely to have been somewhat overheated then, when able. The point of all this is that hydration may have been quite suboptimal at times and again, if you haven't experieced, you really can't imagine the effects of this climate on your skin, even when you are appropriaely covered outside. And at times, some degree of facial frostbite would have just been part of the territory, as it is today sometimes, especially during protracted periods of hunting caribout or bowhead. When the people get a whale, processing and "sharing out" that whale is a non-stop process untill it is DONE. No one sleep, no one stops, untill it is done.

There is also the fact that when you are continually living life with the need to hunt all of your own food, it is inevitable that there will be times when food is scarce or absent. Anthro/archaeo bone studies have shown that indeed, extended periods of lack of food are observable in bones of the inuit. Starvation and periods of very suboptimal nutrition due to food scarcity don't do much for your skin or any other part of your body, lol! And remember that the energy expenditure in this environment was far greater, due to the described conditons, than in other "kinder" environs in which people faced food scarcity at times.

An example might be the southern regions of AK as compared to the high arctic regions. Totally different environs.

And nevermind that a vegan could never survive in the arctic because they could not have fed themselves! AND, the sheer amount of what they would have had to have tried to feed themselves to try to survive hours and hours of walking in blowing winds @ 30 below is just unthinkable. There's only one answer: they would have been dead. Survival, in my opinion, even with a pile of vegetales as the singular food would have equaled one thing: DEATH. (And I can get some pretty humorous mental pictures as well, of this...like a sled being pulled , sans dogs, which was not uncommon either, with, ah, piles of "thirty bananas" on it, lol!)

Here's the blog of a friend who had been an anthropologist for many years in Barrow. Some may find it interesting.

http://iceandtime.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/last-sunset-until-august/

Here is also the blog of an Inupiaq wowman who is an artist and lives a total subsistence lifestye on the Brooks Range in the village of Anaktuvuk Pass (translated means: Place where caribou poop;) The work "anak" = "feces" or poop in inupiat.

http://www.salmonberryblood.blogspot.com/

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very interesting, thanks! – xue Aug 16 2011 at 12:12
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Plus, eskimo's pretty much live thier entire life outside, their skin's exposed to sun, wind, cold, storms. I can imagine they look older, but that doesn't really mean anything.

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my first thought when Eskimos were mentioned... Cold and dry climates will wreak havoc on the skin. – lalabomba May 16 2011 at 3:55
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I'm curious what is meant by "meat eater." Someone living off of Burger King could fit in a "meat eater" group, while a person who has made a conscious decision to eat what they consider healthier (the veg*an) probably doesn't eat fast food, smoke, drink too much, and being health conscious probably exercises and gets healthy amounts of sun.

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right- they're probably just comparing a vegan with someone living on the SAD. Though, in fairness, paleos often do something similar- compare paleo with vegans eating lots of crap. – Nico May 15 2011 at 22:20
This is true. There is just too many variables. – ROB May 16 2011 at 1:32
Nico - which brings up an excellent point: there are plenty of unhealthy foods in the Veg*an world, like vegan cupcakes, vegan sugar, vegan flour. Those things aren't part of the Paleo diet, and that's the key. – Fred B May 17 2011 at 1:07
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Based on Stefansson, Wolfgang Lutz wrote in "Life without Bread" that some Eskimos reached 100 years of age before contact to western civilization. Lutz himself was low carb from 45 years of age and ate 400-600 grams of meat a day, he lived to be 97.

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I think its one of those non-science claims that the veggie seem to like so much. Let's say people age faster, because over coffee or on an internet forum that will totally sound true. But here in reality, how do we gauge something like how fast someone "ages?" Last I knew, the only test of someone's age was how long they had been on earth, so that seems rather diet independent.

So yeah, I would like to see the tests and the results that support that people age less on veggies. But it all sounds like stupid marketing nonsense to me.

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Telomere length would be a way to gauge aging. – mari May 16 2011 at 18:19
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It is not that vegans and vegetarians live longer than non-vegans and non-vegetarians, they just LOOK OLDER!

Vegan and vegetarian diets are NOT healthy and do NOT provide the nutriments that humans require. This is especially true for children, and a number of vegans have been charged with some type of neglect, or even murder, after feeding and killing their children a vegan diet.

Many, if not all, vegans will see their teeth get massive cavities and/or fall out after about 20 years on the vegan diet - veganism simply does NOT provide the nutrients that the human body requires.

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Every living person ages at precisely the same rate as every other living person, save for incidences of time travel like in Flight of the Navigator.

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Aging is an active and individual process. Biology doesn't work like math, it works like biology. – elduderino Feb 13 at 15:11
yeah this wrong -1 – jake Feb 15 at 1:10
my answer is true and correct, with no exceptions. but those who know me would know that I am being sarcastic here. – Jack Kronk Feb 15 at 18:40
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Thanks for all the great answers... I've had similar questions and everyone seems to have opinion but no facts. Thanks for the help everyone!

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I have no science on the matter or any proof or anything at all to back this up, just from what I've seen in real life.

From where I come from, there's a lot of vegetarians/vegans, and to be honest most of them look really frail and sickly, and got sick ALL the time. They were either really skinnyfat or overweight, but would always push their diet on others. I've never met a vegan who wasn't always hungry or tired. But that's just from my experience.

Now, most of these vegans/vegetarians I know eat pretty unhealthy. They think "well as long as its not meat its all good" and eat cakes, cookies, and all that stuff and don't have a balanced diet. While I was trying to lose weight one of my vegetarian (vegan? not sure what she was at the time) friend's mom said "oh you can eat as much as you want as long as its not meat". I was like -_- lol!

And those fake meat products? wtf? next person to claim those are healthy is going to get slapped. -_-

So I've never really met a vegan/vegetarian who even eats healthy, but that's just MY experience, so...

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Once again guilty by association, This has nothing to do with meat really as it is to do with carbs, meat is not the bad guy, not even saturated fats, it is in fact sugars and starches.

You see most vegetarians eat a high amount of carbs. In my quest to go paleo, I eat a substantial amount of saturated fats - this is now my new energy, I am constantly in Ketosis. I have literally less than 50-100 grams of sugars (glucose) in my diet daily. and I avoid fructose like the plague (most of the time :) )

Anyway.

It has been shown that substantially removing carbs from the diet, slows down the aging process and extends life substantially. Do a web search for "Longevity and Aging in Humans" watch the video. I am not crazy, I am just correct :)

Also watch "sugar the bitter truth" - this is a gem of a find, also this research video is the basis of me using sat fats in my diet.

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What nonsense some of these writers have to say.

I haven't eaten meat for 4 decades and I can tell you I look much younger than others my age who do eat meat, and I have fantastic cheekbones. I choose beauty over eating meat any day and how anyone can eat a dead animal is beyond me.

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nobody cares. go away – nada Feb 13 at 11:00
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I agree. I stick to eating living animals -- much more paleo. – CD Feb 13 at 12:55
Happy to hear about those cheekbones, and that you're as annoyed of us as we are of you. Is it true that vegans are skinny Juggalos? – thhq Feb 13 at 16:06

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