"Okay, I googled it and came up with links that say scientists don't know what causes visceral fat so I guess you know more than the consensus. "

Or you haven't googled the right sites.

I'm not going to chase down the actual article I read, because its been moved, but here is the general site http://www.ncl.ac.uk/magres/research/diabetes/reversal/#publicinformation

However, it is not rocket science.

When you eat excess fat, it is already fat, so you have fat absorbed into the bloodstream form the food, and where does it go to be stored? The liver? Nope. It gets stored in the adipose tissue (the flab).

When you eat excess sugar (ALL CARBS ARE SUGAR when they are metabolized - makes no difference whether you eat pure glucose, corn starch, or pasta to what it ends up as) - when you eat excess carbs (=sugar), you do not have sugar storage organs in your body. Or rather, you have, (glycogen), but their capacity is very small. When I say EXCESS carbs, I mean in excess of that which can be stored as glycogen. This extra sugar is stored how? As fat.

But here is the crucial point: This conversion from carbs to fat occurs in the liver. And because it happens in the liver, your liver becomes fatty and functions more poorly.

The Newcastle paper I read mentioned that of the sugar converted to fat, 1/3 stays in the liver, 1/3 spills over into other organs like the pancreas, making them fatty also (and shutting down insulin production), and the remaining 1/3 makes it through to the flab.

Fat in the diet goes to the flab (olive oil and lard alike), carbs in the diet go to the liver and THEN to the flab... but only after fattening your liver first.

My own sneaky suspicion about why High-fructose Corn Syrup is bad, is because I think that Fructose is a signal from fall fruits that winter is on the way, and it triggers the body to lay down fat stores. But thats another conversation.

You skipped one of my points: Lard versus shortening. Shortening IS trans fats. It doesnt contain trans fats, it IS trans fats. There are no raw meat trans fats. But many vegetarian products are filled with hydrogenated fats of all kinds. Why? Because saturated fats store better. So when you dont eat animal saturated fats, you get substituted with plant-based saturated fats. Because these are few and far between, plant fats are hydrogenated, forming trans fats. So IN TERMS OF TRANS FATS, an animal-based diet is better than a plant-based diet because the animal-based diet isnt rich in trans fats.

Now you can get around this, by researching your food thoroughly. But if you think that a box of chocolate chip cookies (made with plant fat instead of butter) is better for you, calorie for calorie, than a stick of butter - think again.

If you are starving, both will get converted to energy for immediate use. But the cookies will have trans fats, and the butter will not.

But if you are eating more than you use (as most people do), then the stick of butter goes to your flab, while the carbs go 1/3 to your liver, 1/3 to your other organs, and 1/3 to the flab.

"So assuming even if your study was accurate and that carbs were worse in that sense, the answer is simple. Exercise more. Better than consuming toxic flesh and dairy."

It is a simple answer, but you would be surprised how hard it is to exercise more in practice. Given that meat and dairy are NOT toxic - as is clear by the fact that I'm still alive - your choice is to sweat it out at the gym or eat fat rather than carbs.

You want to sweat off your veggieburger at the gym? Go right ahead. I'd rather just eat the hamburger, throw away the bun and its empty and harmful carbs, and, because the fat and meat satiate me, I can easily do without the bun.

Now lets look more closely at the bun. Carbs as we know are just sugar. Chains of sugar molecules. Eating 10g of flour is essentially the same as eating 10g of sugar.

Sugar is the most addictive substance we know, right up there with cocaine, possibly even higher. Being addicted to sugar is dangerous. After eating your vegan burger bun, your blood sugar spikes, you get a rush, and then your levels rebound, and you get a crash. This is why a carb-heavy meal makes you sleep about 2 hours after. Then you get into an addiction cycle, grabbing more carbs to counteract the crash in your blood levels, and so on. You become a sugar addict, going from one nutrient-free fix to another.

Fat is not addictive. Unless, of course, its combined with carbs, like a fried donut. Nobody gets addicted to eating sticks of butter. Yes, you can just eat one.

Now you can run around waving your anti-meat religion in the breeze and shouting "toxic" all you like. But a diet containing meat does not have to be harmful in the least.

Based on these ideas, when I found I was borderline diabetic, I cut cheap carbs from my diet and brought my calories down to 800 per day for a couple of months. Without the sugar addiction to feed, that was surprisingly easy. My blood numbers went from bad to fantastic very quickly.

As I gradually increased my caloric intake back to 1800, my numbers remained good, despite the fact that I was now eating a relatively high-fat diet.

The "diet" I'm on now is to eat as much as I like of what I like, with the exception that I generally do not eat anything with flour, grains, potatoes, rice. No "white" foods.

What that means in practice is that I eat the same amount of meat as I used to, but instead of veg and a starch, I now have a triple serving of veg. And yes, sauteed in oil if need be, or topped with butter.

I will occasionally eat cheap starch - pearl barley in soups, even pizza (thin crust) or (small amounts of) pasta - but the days of chugging white foods are over. My blood numbers are still good, even as my weight has gone partway back up.

So we can agree that eating vegetables - not flour, rice, potato - is good for you,

But meat is NOT toxic. My triglycerides are way low, and my cholesterol ratio is good.

What was the toxic component in my diet was cheap carbs.

Can you eat a vegetarian diet excluding pasta, rice, etc? Sure you can. But WILL you? Can you compensate by sweating for hours at the gym? Less than you might think. An hours exercise burns off an awfully small amount of calories. But theoretically? Sure you can. But you could just skip the extra carbs on your plate.

Now I realize you are a militant vegetarian, so none of this will make sense to you. You only know that "meat is toxic", even though its composed of amino acids and fats, just like say, chickpeas swimming in hydrogenated fat.

The reality is that yes, some vegetarians are healthier than some meat-eaters - but I can tell you that I live with a "vegetarian" who doesn't eat vegetables, and he is on a very unhealthy diet. Its all processed stuff. Breaded mozzarella sticks, veggie burgers in bread buns, cookies, chips, and all the rest, even Soylent. Very vegetarian, but very unhealthy.

By contrast, I eat meat, and as many vegetables as I can cram on my plate. Today, fennel from the garden, sauteed in olive oil with onion and frozen bell pepper strips, with some home-made chilli pepper sauce.

Once a month I might have a pasta or a pizza dish - light on the carbs.

For the rest, I get more than enough carbs from the greens smoothies I make fresh from the garden, the salads, the kale, the onion, the apples, the lemon juice (garden again), even (Atkins would shudder) carrots and occasional beetroot.

The issue is NOT meat versus veg.

The issue is high-carb versus low-carb.

You can eat a healthy meat-based diet, or a healthy plant-based diet, so long as you dont binge on the no-nutrient carbs.

When you see meat diets compared with plant-based diets, you need to see what's being eaten.

Is it meat and potatoes versus a diet heavy in fiber? In that case, plant wins.

But if its meat and non-starchy veg versus the standard American diet as amended for the vegetarian (curly fries, donuts, chips, cookies) - then the meat diet will win.

The problem is the white foods - not the red ones, and for the reasons I outlined, and with the personal success I have seen in my own blood numbers simply by cutting out carbs. (Although I'm not Nazi about it).