Tag Archives: Jeff Nelson

Judge Rules on Final Makeup of McDonald\’s Settlement

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Cook County Circuit Judge Richard Siebel ruled in late May that 24 groups would divide a $10 million McDonald\’s settlement. The settlement was agreed to by McDonald\’s to settle lawsuits that it used a beef extract for the flavoring in its french fries after telling consumers that the french fries were vegetarian.

In April, Siebel removed The National Ramah Commission, Arya Pratinidhi Sabha America, and The Department of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from the original list of 26 groups due to conflicts of interest with each of those groups. In his final ruling Siebel added the Hillel Jewish campus organization to the settlement.

McDona\’ds attorney Peter Hecker was pleased with the ruling, but Jeff Nelson and other opponents of the settlement were left steaming mad. Nelson and others are angered that some of the settlement monies will go to groups that are not sufficiently vegetarian.

In a commentary on the decision, Nelson wrote,

As part of the settlement McDonald\’s issued an apology and promised to donate $6 million to \”vegetarian organizations\” that are \”dedicat[ed]\” to the \”values\” of
\”vegetarianism.\” Instead, working in league with plaintiff attorneys who were supposed to represent vegetarians, McDonald\’s made recommendations that much of the settlement money should go to non-vegetarian groups, or to groups which are in fact hostile to vegetarianism.

In documents filed last week in the case, McDonald\’s and plaintiff attorneys argued to the court that many vegetarians \”eat fish and fowl.\” They argued that for the purpose of giving away settlement money, a \”vegetarian organization\” could be an organization that promotes meat and has a longstanding financial relationship with McDonald\’s, so long as that organization promised to use settlement money to \”benefit vegetarians.\”

. . .

Many in the vegetarian community are outraged that McDonald\’s (in league with plaintiff lawyers, who seem to be more eager to collect huge legal fees than properly represent their clients) has succeeded in duping the judge into believing non-veg groups are veg ones.

Of course Nelson conveniently forgets that many animal rights groups lump meat eaters in along with true vegetarians when it fits their propaganda purposes. PETA, for example, routinely maintains that there are about 10 million vegetarians in the United States. That figure is based on a poll conducted by Time Magazine. The problem, of course, is that 6 million of those \”vegetarians\” in fact had eaten meat, poultry or seafood in the previous 24 hours.

Other groups often included much higher inflated figures that also included \”vegetarians\” who are really meat eaters. So if PETA and others are willing to include meat eaters in their classification of vegetarians, why shouldn\’t a Circuit Court Judge do so as well?

Nelson concludes his article, however, by suggesting that further litigation is in the offing, writing that, \”It seems likely that vegetarians concerned about justice will appeal this verdict, and at a minimum make a final effort to stop McDonald\’s from once again defrauding the vegetarian community.\”

Hey, don\’t let us stop you from enriching your lawyers.

Sources:

Ten groups to split settlement. Associated Press, May 2003.

McDonald\’s Case: Final Chapter? Jeff Nelson, VegSource.Com, May 22, 2003.

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Dispute Over McDonald\’s Lawsuit Settlement Gains Momentum

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The dispute over how to spend $6 million McDonald\’s agreed to pay to non-profit vegetarian organizations gained steam and national coverage with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals weighing in against a proposed award to a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill researcher.

Those opposed to the current settlement have petitioned the court to reject the current disbursement plans. For its part, McDonald\’s has filed briefs with the court overseeing the settlement that attacks the characterizes the animal rights groups leading the charge against the proposed settlement as \”zealous radicals.\”

Much of the national media coverage focused on opposition to UNC nutrition researcher Steve Zeisel. Here\’s how Jeff Nelson of VegSource.Com sums up the case against Zeisel,

VRG [Vegetarian Resource Group] submitted the only declaration in support of the proposal, even endorsing the money earmarked to go to the anti-vegetarian animal researcher at University of North Carolina — a researcher who seeks to prove his personal hypothesis that the vegan diet is very unsafe for pregnant women who need to eat eggs when pregnant in order to get sufficient choline.

PETA\’s Hannah Schein told the Associated Press that,

The money is supposed to be earmarked for vegetarian groups. He doesn\’t represent a vegetarian gruop. If anything, he recommends that pregnant women not be vegetarian.

What exactly are Nelson and PETA afraid that Zeisel might find?

Zeisel wants to use the money he would receive to study whether or not pregnant vegetarian women receive enough choline.

Choline is a vitamin-like substance that is crucial in the body\’s production of an important nerve messenger chemical. In 1998 the National Academy of Sciences? Institute of Medicine recommended choline be recognized as a crucial human nutrient.

Choline is found mainly in eggs, meat and milk, so it would hardly be surprising to find choline deficiency in pregnant vegetarian and vegan women. You\’d think that VegSource.Com and PETA would want such a study (especially since adequate choline can probably be obtained from vegan sources). As Zeisel told the Associated Press,

Pregnancy is a time that women have to be careful about their diet and be sure they are well-balanced. This is not a time to be a careless vegetarian. If we\’re going to learn something about the science of this, you need to go to the places that can do the science.

Of course neither PETA nor VegSource.Com have ever been particularly careful about vetting their statements to ensure scientific accuracy. Much better to simply push the ideology and hope nobody notices the man behind the curtain.

Sources:

McDonald\’s Attacks Vegetarian Leaders. Jeff Nelson, VegSource.Com, January 6, 2003.

Grant for UNC researcher riles animal activists. Associated Press, January 10, 2003.

Lawyer hits McD on suit settlement process. Sandra Guy, Chicago Sun-Times, January 10, 2003.

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Jeff Nelson Attacks McDonald\’s Lawsuit Settlement

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This summer McDonald\’s decided to settle a class action lawsuit brought against it by vegetarians upset that the fast food chain had claimed its french fries were free of animal products when, in fact, the flavoring added to the fries used a small amount of a beef byproduct.

The lawsuit was started by Seattle attorney Harish Bharti, but when the settlement was announced Bharti complained loudly about how it was being developed. Although the judge order the plaintiffs attorneys to work with McDonald\’s to craft a settlement proposal that the court could consider, Bharti complained that the other plaintiff\’s lawyers were working on just such a settlement. Bharti was angry that groups he wanted to receive settlement money were excluded from the settlement.

Now Jeff Nelson is attacking the proposed settlements on similar grounds and going after the Vegetarian Resource Group and the North American Vegetarian Society charging them with \”sleeping with the enemy\” because both groups are likely to receive substantial sums as a result of the settlement (VegSource itself is ineligible since it is not a nonprofit).

Nelson writes,

What most vegetarians don\’t know is that the settlement is more offensive than McDonald\’s original deception of its vegetarian customers — because McDonald\’s is attempting to steer millions of dollars of the settlement monies to animal researchers and anti-vegetarian organizations by simply calling them \”vegetarian organizations.\”

. . .

Most vegetarians are also unaware that a few vegetarian organizations like the Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) and the North American Vegetarian Society (NAVS) have acted out of such extreme self-interest that they are aiding and abetting the attorneys who are perpetrating this outrage. Why would they do that? Because these few organizations — with McDonald\’s blessing — stand to receive millions of dollars from McDonald\’s themselves. They are upset that anyone is now rocking the boat and might endanger their hopes to become enriched.

Nelson\’s anger comes on the heels of the attorneys in the case releasing a proposed list of the groups who will receive the $10 million. The breakdown for the $6 million earmarked for vegetarian groups looks like this,

Group
Proposed Award
Vegetarian Resource Group
$1,400,000
North American Vegetarian Society
$1,000,000
Tufts University
$800,000
Preventative Medicine Research Institute
$500,000
American Dietetic Association Foundation
$500,000
The American Vegan Society
$500,000
Sound Vision Foundation
$350,000
UNC, Chapel Hill, Dept. of Nutrition
$250,000
Vegetarian Vision, Inc.
$250,000
Loma Linda University
$250,000
IFANCA
$150,000
Muslim Consumer Group for Food Products
$50,000

Nelson\’s wrath is directed squarely at NAVS. According to Nelson, the settlement agreement required an announcement to be placed in NAVS\’ magazine, Vegetarian Voice, announcing the settlement and explaining how vegetarian groups could apply to receive settlement money. According to Nelson, NAVS director Brian Graff admitted that the announcement had never been placed in Vegetarian Voice due to \”deadline problems.\” Nelson writes,

As already noted, Brian Graff of NAVS kept to himself the information about how to apply for monies. This is more than unethical; it dishonestly takes advantage of privileged — \”insider\” — information. He had a responsibility to the class of plaintiffs to share this information, but his failure to disseminate it widely made it very difficult, if not impossible, for many vegetarian organizations to apply. McDonald\’s now proposes to reward this behavior by giving him $1 million.

Oddly enough, Nelson then follows that up by trying to claiming that \”NAVS is an organization with a very small membership that represents a miniscule proportion of the nation\’s vegetarians. In addition to a magazine of limited circulation that is published irregularly . . . \” which seems to undercut his claims of how essential an ad in Vegetarian Voice was.

Nelson is also unhappy that both NAVS and the Vegan Resource Group will substantially benefit from the settlement even though both groups were opposed to the filing of the lawsuit in the first place. He accuses VRG of being in bed with McDonald\’s,

It also has a close relationship with McDonald\’s, promoting their products, and VRG has the same public stance on \”natural flavors\” for which McDonald\’s was sued — namely, erring on the side of declaring products \”vegetarian\” when they know that \”natural flavors\” might mean they contain animal products. . .

In their magazine, VRG also disparaged the lawsuit and people who sue fast food chains, asserting in their editorial that such lawsuits do harm to the vegetarian cause. Additionally, VRG aided McDonald\’s in 1997 after McDonald\’s informed them the fries had beef product in them, and VRG did not inform the public for several months.

The rest of Nelson\’s complaints largely boil down to Nelson disliking a particular group and so arguing it shouldn\’t receive any funding. For example, Loma Linda University is slated to receive $250,000 which it plans to use to expand circulation of its Vegetarian Nutrition and Health newsletter as well a develop a web site with vegetarian nutrition information. Nelson complains,

Just how Loma Linda plans to \”expand circulation\” of a newsletter using $250,000 is not stated. But this lawsuit was not filed so that some university could reap a windfall for a newsletter which they already charged people to subscribe to.

Nelson is also unhappy that Tufts University is slated to receive $800,000. Tufts Nutrition Department evaluates nutrition information and criticizes individuals and groups it finds wanting. Nelson, therefore, accuses them of being anti-vegetarian because they\’ve pointed out some of the more nutty claims of John McDougall.

Nelson also doesn\’t want to see The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, receive $250,000 for a study of pregnant vegan women. Nelson thinks UNC professor Stephen Zeisel doesn\’t know what he\’s talking about, and he\’s got proof — animal research contradicts Zeisel. Nelson writes (emphasis added),

Zeisel has been quoted in multiple publications stating he believes that vegan women should go off the vegan diet when pregnant, and eat eggs, drink milk and perhaps eat beef liver. Those are foods rich in choline, and Zeisel knows from his lab experiments that when you remove chlorine from the diet of rats, the rats produce babies with birth defects.

That\’s right folks, even Jeff Nelson now apparently recognizes the importance of animal research in evaluating the dietary requirements of human beings.

Finally, Nelson complains that the three Muslim groups included — the Muslim Consumer Group for Food Products, IFANCA, and Sound Vision Foundation — are not really vegetarian since they include information about the humane slaughter of animals (halal). But earlier in his essay Nelson claims there are 16 million vegetarians in the United States. The only way there are 16 million vegetarians is if you include those \”vegetarians\” who tell pollsters that they occasionally eat meat. Here Nelson is trying to have his tofu and eat it to, using one definition of vegetarian when it suits his purposes and another definition when it doesn\’t (shocking coming from Nelson — not!)

Source:

Sleeping with the enemy. Jeff Nelson, VegSource.Com, December 11, 2002.

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VegSource.Com About Face

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Last week I noted that VegSource.Com was promoting its upcoming \”Vegetarian Super Stars!\” weekend with the claim that it would teach people how to \”Make yourself heart attack proof\” (see this article for more details.)

VegSource.Com has now altered the text to read as follows,

Maybe instead of banning me from his site, Jeff Nelson should hire me to find all of the errors and unjustified claims on VegSource.Com. Oops, that\’s right — there are still only 24 hours in a day. Not nearly enough time.

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Make Sure You Get a Money Back Guarantee from VegSource

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When Jeff Nelson and the rest of the folks at VegSource.Com split with Robert Cohen, they claimed it was because (among other things) Cohen had a habit of exaggerating his claims which would ultimately undermine the vegan argument. As opposed, of course, to those reasonable, level-headed folks at VegSource who make such non-sensationalist claims as this:

That\’s right folks, step right up and drink the magic vegan elixir and make yourself heart attack proof. Yeah, that Jeff Nelson sure has a lot of integrity.

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Vegitan\’s Unite!

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Over at VegSource.com, the debate among the \”I\’m more vegan than you are\” crowd has become so intense that Jeff and Sabrina Nelson saw fit to try to coin a new term — vegitan. According to the Nelsons,

A vegan diet is always a vegitan diet, but a vegitan diet may not always be vegan, because a vegitan diet may or may not include honey.

Just when watching these folks debate back and forth over eating honey was getting so fascinating, the Nelsons go and try to change the terms of the debate. The new terminology is also supposed to be free of the political implications that supposedly come with \”vegan\”,

The key is that the word \”vegitan\” in and of itself connotes no political, ideological or philosophical ideals. It\’s simply a word that describes a diet.

. . . Vegitan simply refers to what you eat, and does not signify any \”whys\” which may motivate someone to eat meat.\”

And why would anyone possibly want to escape the political implications of \”vegan\”? Again, according to the Nelsons,

In our years of experience with running the largest and most popular vegetarian/vegan website in the world, we have seen some in the vegan community who resent another person calling herself \”vegan\” when she eats a \”vegan diet\” but does not embrace all the values, philosophies and precepts of veganism.

Vegans who are vocally intolerant of the dietary choices of others? Say it ain\’t so, Jeff and Sabrina. That\’s just really hard for this writer to image.

With the creation of the word \”vegitan,\” vegans no longer need be uncomfortable as such individuals can now refer to their \”vegitan diet\” and be totally clear what they mean.

Oh yeah, they really cleared that up. That will certainly placate the vegan food police.

Source:

Introducing the Vegitan Diet. Jeff and Sabrina Nelson, VegSource.Com, July 29, 2002.

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Jeff Nelson Just Can\’t Stop Lying

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Normally I don\’t write about the few conflicts I have with animal rights activists here, but Jeff Nelson and VegSource.Com offer such a case study of animal rights group think that this time I\’m making an exception.

Back on July 12 I posted an article about on ongoing debate over at an Animal Rights 2002 Memory board hosted by VegSource.Com (see http://www.animalrights.net/articles/2002/000244.html for the details of that).

Anytime animal rights activists disagree in public, somebody chimes in that this is just helping their enemies, and at least one person pointed out my article. On July 14, Adam Weissman posted the entire text of the article in a post called \”An Article About this Discussion Board by an Animal Rights Foe.\”

Another activist responded to that by attacking my web site. In order to prove a point, I posted a reply noting that the main difference between AnimalRights.Net and VegSource.Com is I don\’t spend most of my day banning people who disagree with me. In fact I give free reign to animal rights activists who want to come to the site and criticize me. I\’ve always felt that allowing such unfettered communication, regardless of how uncomfortable or heated it may get, is the best way to ensure that my claims are as strong and accurate as possible.

Of course within an hour or two, Nelson deleted my post and banned the computer I was using from even accessing his site. This is what VegSource.Com\’s tagline that \”All Are Welcome\” really means.

Nelson followed that up with \”Note regarding banning and post removals from this board in which he writes,

VegSource provides this board to FARM for their use. VegSource moderators do not remove posts from this board and don\’t have the password to do so, nor do I remove posts from this board (with one exception having to do with a disreputable anti-animal rights site attempting to get traffic from us, a site which is supposed to be blocked from our full site).

That is as hilarious as it is pathetic. Apparently some VegSource.Com visitors actually fall for this lame explanation that I am \”attempting to get traffic from\” VegSource.Com. Yeah, that\’s right, Adam Weissman and I are such buddies that he\’s now doing my marketing for me by posting my articles to VegSource.Com.

The reality is that Jeff Nelson doesn\’t want anyone linking to or discussing any of the articles I\’ve written pointing out that he is just as factually challenged as his current nemesis Robert Cohen (see http://www.animalrights.net/faq/people/pro_ar/jeff_nelson.html for a rundown). VegSource.Com promotes the worst sort of groupthink by not only banning its critics but even animal rights activists who disagree in some way with VegSource.Com\’s agenda.

The funny thing is that I rarely visit VegSource.Com — there are too many ads and it is impossible to find anything there with the convoluted web design. Still, it\’s gratifying to know that little old me is apparently public enemy number one in Nelson\’s book.

And just a note to people who do post to VegSource.Com. Do you really think it is just a good idea to let Nelson publicly display your IP addresses? I have run across some boneheaded practices at web sites before, but this takes the cake. I\’ve seen posts, for example, where people clearly posted from work or at universities where the IP address and the name would make it extremely easy to track down the people posting.

This sort of information is collected by every web server — only Nelson is stupid enough to make it publicly available to anyone who happens across his site.

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Jeff Nelson vs. Robert Cohen: A Battle of Wits Between Disarmed Opponents

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A few months ago Jeff Nelson of VegSource.Com and Robert Cohen, the anti-dairy activist who calls himself the Not Milk Man, had a public falling out which led Nelson to abruptly cease hosting Cohen\’s web site. This month VegSource traded barbs online over who was more dishonest/deceitful. The answer, of course, is both of them.

Nelson tries to sell visitors to his site a bill of goods as slick and deceitful as any nonsense put out by Cohen. According to an essay posted to the VegSource.Com web site, Beware of Robert Cohen aka the NotMilk Man, Nelson and company have long knew that Cohen was full of it and have a duty to warn people away from Cohen,

No matter what reason brings a person to vegetarianism, ethics play a role. We do it because it\’s the right thing to do for our health, our environment, or the animals we use for food.

. . .

Honesty and integrity — a respect for truth — has motivated numerous top vegetarian and vegan experts, scientists, MDs, authors and activists to arrive at the same conclusion: Robert Cohen is a fraud.

Cohen, who sometimes calls himself the \”notmilk man,\” is abusive and dishonest. He also has a propensity for fabricating scientific data which has time and again been shown to be not only worthless, but potentially dangerous.

. . .

VegSource has run numerous articles over time documenting Cohen\’s unscrupulous excesses.

Oh yeah, the VegSource crowd have been really diligent about Cohen.

Jeff Nelson was so concerned about Cohen\’s lies, that until February 2002, VegSource hosted Cohen\’s web site, NotMilk.Com.

Nelson knew all along that Cohen was a fraud which is why Nelson invited to VegSource.Com\’s Sept. 2001 E-Vent. Nelson addressed that E-Vent on Sept. 28, 2001 mentioning the speakers who would be featured, including this bit about Cohen,

Robert Cohen? WeÂ’ve got your case of White Wave Chocolate Silk out in the van. It was delivered this morning by a group of slaves. But seriously, weÂ’re thrilled to have Robert here, this is the first time IÂ’ve ever met him in person, and IÂ’m really looking forward to his talk tomorrow.

Nelson was just thrilled to have Cohen there.

Of course, Nelson has a newfound integrity and truth telling, so what was the first thing VegSource did after the falling out with Cohen? Why, with the sort of integrity we\’ve come to expect from the animal rights movement, VegSource removed from its web site incriminating evidence of its prior support for Cohen.

This VegSource.Com web page is a full of photos from that 2001 E-vent at which Cohen was a speaker. The odd thing is if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, the last image is that of John Robbins. That\’s odd, because back when it was first created, the page ended with three pictures of Robert Cohen speaking along with complimentary text.

You can see for yourself the Google cached version of the page, but in case that goes away, here is how the page looked earlier this year:


Batting in the
clean-up position was the NotMilkMan himself — Robert Cohen.

Jeff\’s mom described
Rob as a \”great speaker\” — and Jeff\’s mom is always right!

Said Jeff and Sabrina: \”I think Rob Cohen just got us off dairy!\”
:-)

I\’m surprised Jeff and Sabrina let Jeff\’s mom (not to mention others in attendance) get taken in by such a fraud. And if they knew Cohen was prone to citing faulty studies, distorting evidence and, apparently, outright lying, why did they find his talk so convincing?

The issue here is not whether or not Cohen was a fraud — that was obvious years ago to anyone who cared to actually look at the nonsense he was spewing. The problem with Cohen was that his nonsense was suddenly turned against people within the animal rights movement.

For example, on March 26, 2002, Nelson wrote an article about what he thinks is Cohen\’s unfair attacks on White Wave, which makes Silk soy milk. Nelson claims that,

This charge is only the most recent in a long line of failed attempts by Cohen to damage White Wave. We\’ve already responded to some of Cohen\’s earlier attacks on White Wave with the article, \”Does Silk Bilk?\” At the time I wrote that article (September of 2001) and when I spoke to Cohen before publishing it, he told me he was making it his personal mission to try to \”destroy\” White Wave. He said the company had not been personally respectful to him. When I pointed out that he had made a number of unfair and untrue statements in his articles on White Wave, he told me he didn\’t care whether his criticisms of the company were accurate or not, because any attack was justified because they were a \”bad company.\”

But look at the kid glove treatment Cohen got for unjustified attacks on White Wave:

1. Nelson\’s September 2001 article does not even mention Robert Cohen by name.

2. Nelson\’s article was written on Sept. 18, 2001 — more than a week before VegSource.Com had Cohen speak and sang his praises.

Ah, integrity at work.

Although Nelson apparently wants to recast VegSource.Com as willing to expose falsehoods within the animal rights movement, in fact VegSource.Com has actively nurtured a \”hear no evil\” policy in its discussion boards. VegSource.Com now claims that,

We have people who come onto our discussion board from time to time and state confidently that vegetarianism is a religion (we correct them).

In fact what VegSource.Com routinely done is delete posts and ban users of anyone who criticizes the animal rights movement, regardless of merit. Last June, for example, I wrote an article pointing out that VegSource.Com was using a faked photograph to illustrate a medical research story. I posted the URL on the VegSource.Com discussion group. Not only was all of the discussion about this deleted, but the discussion group was configured to reject any articles that linked to AnimalRights.Net (see VegSource \”Censorship\”).

VegSource.Com extolling its own integrity is a bit like Cohen recommending a good ice cream store.

As for Cohen, what can I say about Cohen. The guy is a nut case. But he\’s a nut case who the animal rights movement welcomed into the fold for years despite his blatant distortions and inaccuracies. That it took Nelson until February 2002 to criticize Cohen says volumes about the alleged integrity of the animal rights movement.

Sources:

Beware of Robert Cohen aka the NotMilkMan. VegSource.Com, June 20, 2002.

The Notmilk Newsletter. Robert Cohen, June 22, 2002.

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Jeff Nelson Finally Gets Something Right

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I did not think I\’d ever find any sort of common ground with VegSource.Com\’s Jeff Nelson, but then I stumbled across an article he wrote early last year that forced me to change my mind.

Nelson goes on and on about how many gallons of water it takes to produce a pound of beef (he claims 2,500 gallons; cattlemen claim 441 gallons) when he finally has some insight saying,

So what\’s the beef with beef, when it comes to water?

Simply put: it\’s wasteful and irresponsible to squander our precious resources on a luxury item like meat.

Hmmm… meat a luxury? Turning to my dictionary I find luxury defined as \”sumptuous living or equipment : great ease or comfort : rich surroundings.\” That definitely describes meat.

Is it really irresponsible to use so much water to produce such luxurious beef? Don\’t we, after millions of years of evolution, finally deserve to bask in such luxuries? If Nelson wants to deprive himself of life\’s pleasures that is his business, but I think I\’ll still occasionally partake of a sumptuous, luxurious steak.

BTW, just as an example of how separated from reality Nelson is, he goes on about all the water used in producing beef and then adds,

How, as a vegetarian, do you feel about paying astronomical water rates when your lifestyle choices mean you\’re likely consuming a fraction of the water each month that your meat-eating friends are guzzling each day?

I would like to know where in the United States Nelson is that he is paying \”astronomical water rates.\” The major problem with water in the United States is that it is almost always subsidized by federal, state and local officials and is far too cheap (because the subsidized price discourages conservation efforts). Regardless, water is hardly allocated in any sort of functioning market, so the idea that the amount of water that cattlemen use drives up the price of water is absurd.

(To get an idea of just how low the price of water is, the average price for water in the United State is just over 52 centers per cubic meter, or about one cent for every five gallons used.)

Source:

How much water to make one pound of beef? Jeff Nelson, VegSource.Com, March 1, 2001.

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Jeff Nelson is Either \”Stupid or Intellectually Dishonest\”

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A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota made headlines this week because it found that teenagers who were vegetarians were actually less healthy than teenager who were meat eaters. Jeff Nelson of VegSource.Com wrote a reply arguing that this claim was contradicted by very data collected by the researchers and that, therefore, \”the researchers conducting the study are either stupid or intellectually dishonest.\” As usual, though, it is Nelson who is village idiot.

Nelson complains that the researchers relied on self-identified vegetarians who do not meet his definition of what a vegetarian is. Nelson write,

A mere 78 of the 215 \”vegetarians\” reported on in the study are actually vegetarians. Looking at the data of actual vegetarian kids against the rest of the group, there are little or no statistically significant differences in most categories, except that the vegetarian kids score better than the non-veg kids in a few — the opposite of what the researchers are trying to argue with the data.

Not surprisingly, given VegSource.Com\’s track record, this is mostly a lie. The study did include 215 teenagers who self-described themselves as vegetarians. Of those 215 teenagers, researchers divided them into two groups: 78 restricted vegetarians, which included vegans and lacto- and lacto-ovo vegetarians); and 137 semi-vegetarians, who self-describe themselves as vegetarians but also indicated they ate chicken or fish.

Where Nelson outright lies, however, is in his claim that \”there are little or no statistically significant differences in most categories.\” In fact, the semi-vegetarians were more likely to engage in both healthy and unhealthy behaviors. But the research also found that the restricted vegetarian teenagers were twice as likely to be at risk for being overweight (and with a 95% confidence interval which is typically the bar set for statistical significance).

It is a little absurd for Nelson to whine that some of the \”vegetarians\” were still eating fish or chicken, since as the researchers note, people who move from meat eating to vegetarianism are likely to go through a transitional period where they gradually give up meat,

It may also be that semi-vegetarianism, for some, is the first step toward a more stable, restricted vegetarianism, and that once the transition is made or the vegetarianism is maintained for over 2 years, there might be fewer health-compromising weight control behaviors exhibited.

Nelson\’s attack on the research is also a bit odd considering that the researchers are anything but hostile to vegetarianism. They do suggest that one approach might be to intervene with adolescent females who are using vegetarianism as an unhealthy weight loss technique, but they also add that,

Another approach may be to consider the choice of vegetarianism as an opportunity, and recruit adolescents to programs focussing on how to become a healthy vegetarian. Since adult vegetarians appear to be leaner and healthier than their nonvegetarian counterparts, learning how to become a \”healthy\” adolescent vegetarian may be one avenue for long-term and healthful changes in dietary patterns for adolescents.

Apparently, that\’s Nelson\’s idea of dishonest research. Pretty typical for VegSource.Com.

Source:

Characteristics of vegetarian adolescents in a multiethnic urban population. Cheryl L. Perry, Maureen T. Mcguire, Dianne Neumark-Sztainer and Mary Story, Journal of Adolescent Health, December 2001.

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