Are Vegetarians Healthier than Omnivores? A Soho Forum Debate

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Published 2019-05-29
Watch journalist Nina Teicholz face off against David L. Katz, MD, the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, at an event in New York City.
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There is little or no rigorous evidence that vegetarian/vegan diets are healthier than diets that include meat, eggs, and dairy.

That was the topic of a public debated hosted by the Soho Forum in New York City on May 13, 2019. It featured Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, and David Katz, the founding director of Yale University's Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. Soho Forum director Gene Epstein moderated.

It was an Oxford-style debate, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, and the side that gains the most ground is victorious. Katz prevailed in the debate by convincing 13 percent of audience members to change their minds.

Arguing for the affirmative was Nina Teicholz, whose 2014 book, The Big Fat Surprise, challenged the conventional wisdom on dietary fat. Teicholz's writing has also been published in The BMJ, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Independent, The New Yorker, and The Los Angeles Times among others. Teicholz is the Executive Director of The Nutrition Coalition, a non-profit group that promotes evidence-based nutrition policy.

Reason's Alexis Garcia interviewed Teicholz in 2018.    • How Big Government Backed Bad Science...  

David L. Katz, MD argued for the negative. He's the founding director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, which practices community and alternative medicine, and is founder/president of the True Health Initiative, a non-profit organization established to promote a healthy diet and lifestyle. The holder of five U.S. patents, Katz has authored roughly 200 peer-reviewed publications and 16 books to date, including textbooks in both nutrition and preventive medicine.

The Soho Forum, which is sponsored by the Reason Foundation, is a monthly debate series at the SubCulture Theater in Manhattan's East Village.

Music: "Modum" by Kai Engle is licensed under a CC-BY creative commons license.

Produced by Todd Krainin.

All Comments (21)
  • The best way to decide the winner, is to try both diets.. I eat fatty meat, i feel good, strong and full. I eat vegetables (Specifically green) and fruit, i feel bloating pain, cramps, I'm hungry have to eat all the time. Based on my own experience, Nina made me better, Kartz made me fart.. Nina won!!!
  • @chrisbr1969
    I’ve been carnivore for 2 years and it was the best decision I ever made regarding my health. I’ll never go back to eating any other way.
  • @milabulic
    If eating meat/dairy is so bad, then why, after switching from whole grain fresh veg and no processed food, to low carb high fat ketogenic diet, did my health improve? 58 y/o female...allergies-gone. Arthritis-gone. Non alcoholic fatty liver disease-gone. Type II diabetes-gone. Sleep better. Energy better. Running 6 miles a day. So, I wasn't eating crap before the switch and the changes occurred after.
  • @scooby1971
    Dr Katz: almost all drug research is industry funded. And therein lies one of the biggest problems in medicine today.
  • @DarthCarnivore
    I'm four years too late, but Nina rocked this. Her performance aged well.
  • @julia9557
    His oxygen comparison for the anti nutrient question is absolutely ridiculous. We have NO OTHER CHOICE but to breathe oxygen to survive. We DO have other choices than eating nothing but plants foods for nutrients 🤦‍♀️ very basic stuff. How did this dude even get a doctors degree? He literally ended off the answer with “who gives a damn?!” What the hell kind of answer is that?!
  • @avarmauk
    I used to be vegetarian, but now I’m Presbyterian
  • @toni4729
    I've been a carnivore now for thirty-two years. I don't have to take supplements or extra vitamins. I'm now seventy-two and healthy.
  • I just looked this up. The Lyon study was only done in France. This study was seriously flawed as well. The control group's initial dietary intake was not measured, only assumed. Approximately half of the control group was not present during the final assessment either.
  • @paulomorais0
    We need more debates like this. We definitely need more Ninas to expose the lies we have been fed by the big corpos and earth worshipers.
  • @rubygreta1
    I'm reading comments here that Teicholz appearance has deteriorated over the last few years, and she is haggard. Are you all insane? The woman is 54 years old and looks great for someone who is 54.
  • @VoltaireRex
    IMO, when Katz in his conclusion raised the environmental impact argument, which he agreed to not bring up as part of this debate, he should have been disqualified. Not allowing Teicholz any opportunity to respond to that claim was unfair, and raising arguments they'd agreed to leave out indicates Katz's dishonesty as I see it.
  • @doneddy2204
    The guy seems to ramble without identifying fact. The girl seemed to clearly Identify holes in the guys argument. She wins
  • When you show up to a public debate, you have already agreed to the proposition. To stand up there and whine about it is like the undergraduate who didn’t read the syllabus, then tries to wheedle extra points on the exam because she ‘tried really hard’. Katz is defending the affirmative position that science shows veganism/vegetarianism to be a superior diet. His bullshit statement that Teicholz has to ‘prove there is no evidence’ is shifting the burden of proof. She has already put forward the statements from major dietary guideline committees, whose members are known to be veggie-friendly but who could find no high quality scientific data comparable to traditional meaty diets. Katz loses the debate automatically if he can’t show quality evidence. This is a debate on the science, not on which diet makes Katz happy. And, he’s an asshole, which makes him a loser as a human as well as a scientific fraud.
  • @rodchung173
    Katz behaved poorly throughout . Even at the end he was ready to avoid shaking hands if possible, but Nina made it impossible for him. She certainly came across better. He had no class.
  • What we are eating in these modern times which we didn't 100 years ago are: chemical additives as in preservatives, plastics, pesticides, hybrid concentration of glutens in bread. Obviously it isn't a vegan verses meat issue here, its whole food versus - tainted foods (which includes tainted meats)
  • @shanghaiffgg
    I’ve been listen to Katz for 10 minutes and all he has done is condescendingly parse the resolution 😅😅
  • @kpag3030
    Dude spent his first 10 minutes complaining about being at a “disadvantage” and saying absolutely nothing. He’s going on and on and on. Nothing nothing nothing.
  • @r4ndomboy
    Katz conflicts of interest are pretty damning, I don't understand how anyone can take him seriously.