I recently posted a video interview with Dr Zoë Harcombe called “How nutritious are vegetables really?”
A lot of the information Zoë shared was news to me and I knew it would it get a big reaction from people. Specially from vegans and vegetarians. We’ve all been brought up to believe that there is nothing on earth more nutritious than a vegetable. But Zoë showed this is not supported in the data. As she keeps saying, this is not her opinion but simply the given nutrients in each food type. The simple facts.
Animal produce has way more nutrients than fruit and vegetables
I can honestly say I had no idea and was just as shocked as everyone else. There were a few points in particular that Zoë made that got people hot under the collar.
Dairy and olive oil got people really riled up
In the video below, I sit down with Zoë to talk through these these points in further detail.
We also talk about the production of milk and besides it’s high nutritional content, there’s also the question of the cruelty in removing newborn calves from their mothers. Zoë talks about how she gets all her dairy from a local farm in Wales where the calves are left with their mothers. This is an important factor for me and I know will be for many of you, so I’ve had a trawl of the internet to try and find some more farms that produce milk in a humane way. I found quite a few but they were all far from London where I live. I suggest you do the same and find one near you.
The only one I found for London (and I’m sure there must be more) was Daylesford Organic Farm. They’re in the Cotswolds but have shops in London and also do home deliveries. Their milk is organic and the calves are kept with their others for the first 5 days (I know, I wish it was longer too) but are then fed with their mother’s milk for the next few months.
Here’s the link to the farm in Wales that Zoë uses:
Since first writing this article, I have been contacted by one of my readers who has kindly supplied a link to a directory giving information on ethical dairies around the country. Here it is:
After filming our video, Zoë contacted me with some further information about olive oil. There is supposedly a hugely fraudulent industry whereby even oils marked as extra virgin are, in fact, diluted with less healthy oils. Here is a link to some of the story:
In the video Zoë mentions ORAC which is a guide to the nutrition found in foods. There are quite a few sites for this but Zoë has supplied this one with the nutritional value of olive oil. You can do some research and check out the value of all the foods she mentions.
People also asked me about fibre, antioxidants and polyphenols and we didn’t get to it in the video. I have therefore asked Zoë to give me the information on these here.
She has sent me a link to a lecture that she gave on fibre and I can honestly say this blew me away even more than her revelations on vegetables. Hold on to your seats:
Here is Zoë’s response about antioxidants and polyphenols:
“You wouldn’t eat meat to get antioxidants and polyphenols – you eat meat to get what you actually need – essential fats, complete protein, vitamins and minerals.
The talk of antioxidants and polyphenols is part of the pro plant narrative. Because plants can’t compete for the nutrients that we actually need (essential fats, complete protein, vitamins and minerals), the talk focuses on other stuff that plants deliver (better than animal foods) like antioxidants and polyphenols. It just changes the goal posts to justify eating plants. You won’t lose your eye sight if you don’t consume polyphenols – you will if you don’t get retinol – as happened to me when I was vegetarian.
The plant narrative also doesn’t mention stuff in plants that can impair absorption of nutrients that we need. Oxalates in green leafy vegetables, tea, beans, nuts, beets—can bind to calcium and prevent it from being absorbed. Phytates (phytic acid) in whole grains, seeds, legumes, some nuts—can decrease the absorption of iron, zinc, magnesium, and calcium.
Antioxidants and polyphenols aren’t necessary if you’re getting the nutrients from meat.”
This is a lot to take in as it’s VERY different from what most of us have been led to believe in the last few decades.
Now find out what Zoë has to say this time around in our new video, as she answers your questions.
Comments 7
I found your article very interesting. In recent years we’ve been led to believe a diet full of fruit and veg was healthy. And that meat was full of fat.
Author
It’s now firmly been established that the information on fat from the last few decades was incorrect. Zoe shows us there is still so much to learn.
Zoe Harcombe is clearly a dangerous fraud – and you can fact check her claims to easily prove so, I will give some examples.
When she says “Animal produce has way more nutrients than fruit and vegetables” this is profoundly wrong. She will give examples based on the weight of food, e.g. compare 100g of beef with 100g of broccoli. However, in nutritional science, this is an illogical comparison as intake of food should obviously be compared on a calorie-to-calorie basis. Look up the nutritional content of spinach, for example, and compare with beef or chicken or dairy per calorie consumed. You will see that the nutritional content is in a different stratosphere to that in common animal foods. Animal foods that can compare nutritionally on a calorie-to-calorie basis are limited to internal organs, which of course are hugely unpopular.
Also, her comments about fibre are dangerously in the category of pseudoscience and completely outside of contemporaneous medical evidence. How can you check this? Go to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website and search the studies around fibre and read the conclusions. Higher intake of fibre in diets is overwhelmingly associated to better health outcomes, and lower intake worse outcomes. You really have got to be deluded to argue against this. Or have a profit-making agenda. The likes of the NIH are important sources because they are independently funded institutes without the bias and conflicts that exist in many of the studies funded by the industries themselves trying to justify their own products. The study by Marion Nestle showed that industry funded studied are between 4 and 8 times more likely to show positive results to the food group studied than independent studies, which of course means that they severely lack credibility.
The only ‘experts’ who outright dismiss epidemiology, like Zoe, are those whose agendas are completely undermined by it, like Zoe’s. Epidemiology is extremely important in nutritional science because understanding of medical science evolves all the time – we don’t know why bad health outcomes happen all of the time. The vast collection of epidemiology, which translates to studies of the health outcomes of hundreds of millions of people around the world, time and time again tells us that the more fruit and vegetables we fit in our diets, the better our health outcomes. Again, research the conclusions of some of the biggest studies yourself: Harvard Veterans study, Harvard health professionals study, Harvard Nurses study, Oxford EPIC study, Oxford Biobank study, Adventists Study 1&2, The China Study etc. etc.
Zoe Harcombe’s work (who is very much a novice when you consider her background) is completely devoid of consensus contemporaneous medical evidence, and, for example by dismissing the vital importance of a diet rich in antioxidants, as well as her other ‘flat-earth’ views puts the health and lives of people at risk. That’s the sad reality of this person.
Author
As Zoë specifically deals in facts, data and figures, and has a first in maths from Cambridge as well as a PhD in public health and nutrition, I hardly think you can call her a fraud or dealing in pseudoscience. As she points out in the interview, none of this is her opinion but what the data shows. Facts are facts.
Hello Glynis, I just found this post from a link in Zoe’s newsletter and I wanted to let you know about this website which is a directory of all the cow-calf dairies in the UK that truly keep the calves with the cows until weaned, not just the first 5 days:
https://www.cowcalfdairies.co.uk/
Hello Glynis, I just wanted to share with you and your readers where you can find ethical milk and other dairy products from cows that keep and raise their calves to a natural weaning age of around 6 months. See the directory on this website: https://www.cowcalfdairies.co.uk/ there are some dairies on there that also courier nationwide for those in cities with no local access to a cow-calf dairy.
Author
Christine thank you! I will now add this to the article so everyone can see it.