Philip Boucher-Hayes returns with the programme dedicated to looking after the body. I would like to start off saying this show was in my view a shambles, misleading and biased against vegans, do not take Philips experience as typical of a person who switched from a standard typical processed food diet in Ireland to what should have been a well-planned vegan diet with the aid of a dietitian. Somehow they managed to invalidate the whole experiment by underfeeding by about 600 calories per day.This can easily happen if you dont realise that a plant-based diet is a  less calorie dense than a typical meat and dairy-based diet so you will have to eat a bigger volume of food than you normally would eat.  30 seconds into the program it suggests that a vegan diet is a fad diet this is not the case, One of the UK’s longest-standing organisations that represent dietetics and nutrition, the British Dietetic Association, has affirmed that a well-planned vegan diet can “support healthy living in people of all ages” The NHS (National Health Service, UK) gives guidelines on vegan diets, saying: “With good planning and an understanding of what makes up a healthy, balanced vegan diet, you can get all the nutrients your body needs”.  (See: link). It is the position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics that appropriately planned vegetarian, including vegan, diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. These diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.   (See: link). The  – the world’s largest organisation of food and nutrition professionals – has endorsed the vegan diet, saying that the diet is suitable for everyone. 50 seconds into the programme well know writer John McKenna says that for his generation meat protein was the centre of the meal.This may well be the case now but when you look up the history of Ireland you find that meat was rarely eaten by the majority of people look at this most interesting site which has Approximately 740,000 pages  of folklore and local tradition  which were compiled by pupils from 5,000 primary schools in the Irish Free State between 1937 and 1939. the schools collection from reading this you can see that the previous generations did not eat much meat. Meat was very seldom used. Bacon was also little used. They had a great feast on Easter Sunday. Some people did not get any eggs until Easter came and then they had a great feast that day. The meals in those days, were made up of potatoes, and sour milk, and salt, or sometimes stira-bout. Bread was rarely eaten in those days, because the people could not afford to buy it. Meat in those days was a luxury, and was rarely used. But fish was not so dear, and salt fish was often used. ButchButchers meat was unknown On Xmas Day and New Year's Day, the people used to have tea for breakfast and Supper and meat for dinner and on the twelth Day they used to get the fragments. Then they used to start lamenting because they wouldn't have tea or meat for the rest of the year and they used to say :- An dha lá deag is mó creach ceat Nodlag. Meat only was eaten by the rich people. These people killed their cattle and ate their flesh. They used to eat the flesh of some wild animals.  56 seconds into the programme we are shown two ageing hippies with tents on their back and a comment was made that being a vegan until recently was a pretty lonely path to take and shortly after 2 guys are asked about a vegan diet and it is described as horrible  at 2min 20 seconds Aveen Bannon warns us about the dangers of not getting enough protein on a vegan diet , this myth has been dealt with so many times, if it is such a problem then most people would know of at least one misguided vegan who ended up in hospital suffering for protein deficiency, the facts are that diseases caused by protein deficiency are not a problem however diseases of excess protein are a huge problem. Now regarding Philips worry about protein deficiency from eating a plant-based diet I will quote some information on this from Dr John McDougall Since plants are made up of structurally sound cells with enzymes and hormones, they are by nature rich sources of proteins. In fact, so rich are plants that they can meet the protein needs of the earth’s largest animals: elephants, hippopotamuses, giraffes, and cows. You would be correct to deduce that the protein needs of relatively small humans can easily be met by plants. Our greatest time of growth—thus, the time of our greatest need for protein—is during our first 2 years of life—we double in size. At this vigorous developmental stage, our ideal food is human milk, which is 5% protein.Compare this need to food choices that should be made as adults—when we are not growing. Rice is 8% protein, corn 11%, oatmeal 15%, and beans 27%.8 Thus protein deficiency is impossible when calorie needs are met by eating unprocessed starches and vegetables. The healthy active lives of hundreds of millions of people labouring in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America on diets with less than half the amount of protein eaten by Americans and Europeans prove that the popular understanding of our protein needs is seriously flawed. https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2017nl/jul/simple.htm Consuming animal flesh does add more protein to your body, however, this excess is unnecessary because protein deficiency is unknown, and in today’s world, diseases of protein excess (like osteoporosis, kidney stones, kidney and liver damage) are universal among my patients. And yes, consuming mammalian milk does add more calcium to the diet, but this is also superfluous because calcium deficiency is unknown and milk is a leading cause of heart disease, obesity, and inflammatory arthritis. The above information leaves me in very little doubt that the only supplements a person needs on a whole food plant-based diet are B12 and vitamin D if you are not getting it from the sun. Philip was worried about the fact that the vegan milk he was drinking had 7 times less protein than cows milk, perhaps he should be more worried about the fact that cows milk is for calves and has 2.5 times more protein per calorie than mothers breast milk and is full of saturated fat If he is going to consume milk basied on its % protein then he should consume rats milk as it has 10 times the protein of mothers milk and it’s no coincidence that calves grow at 2 times the rate of babies and rats grow at 10 times or more the rate of babies. Each species has its own correct diet and while bovines share 80 percent of their genes with humans; cows are less similar to humans than rodents (humans and rodents belong to the clade of Supraprimates) so perhaps rats milk may be better in some ways that cows milk. Then we have Darina Allen talking about the beginning of the vegetarian health food craze and how the staff in these shops were always cranky and she figured they needed a good stake to stop them been cranky. Then we have the presenter talking about how chefs hate vegans as they wish them to cook without the things that make food delicious while in fact it is plants that make the meat taste delicious. Meat eaters need to flavour the meats especially chicken with plants ( garlic, pepper, curry, chillies ,mixed spices ,sugar, lemon, tomato sauce , gherkins, etc) to make the meat more palatable so as to trick the brain into thinking we are eating plants. McDonalds, Subway , or Burger kings fast food would not be as tasty if you did not add plants and salt to make the meat taste less like meat and more like plants.Cats or dogs dont need their food flavoured with plants to make it palatable. Then Philip tries to make the point that the ethical reasons for not eating meat does not happen in Ireland but concedes elsewhere that there is a problem with pigs and avoids the fact that all the animals all have to be killed. At the 10 minute mark Philip incorrectly dismisses the point as wrong that the WHO has said that processed meat is carcinogenic and shuts down the topic in a skilful way and moves the conversation on, the fact is that the WHO said processed meat is classified as Group1carcinogenic to humans. Which means that there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans. In other words, there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer.  Shortly after dismissing the point that processed meats are a group 1 carcinogenic, Philip talks about cooking the same cancer causing processed meat in the form of sausages and feeding this group 1 carcinogenic food to his kids and he found that he had so much craving for the sausages that he had to leave the room cause he would have started to fight with his kids to take them from them, this is, of course, a reminder as to how addictive processed food can be when it is formulated by food scientist whose job it is to design the food so as it can trigger the same "pleasure centres" in the brain that drive people to drug addiction , this addiction results in higher sales and he is giving this same food to his kids, in truth such foods should be labelled like cigarettes as a group 1 carcinogenic which does cause cancer. Then an anthropologist is wheeled out who says there is evidence we have been eating meat for over 2 million years.There is no consensus among anthropologists as to how much meat we ate. But the meat was and is not our best source of food, we have not evolved nor god did not design us as efficient hunters. We don't have the sense of smell true hunters have to detect prey, nor do we have the speed to outrun most prey ,however we do have the brains to set traps for animals and even then we don't have the teeth or the claws to rip the skin off an animal when we trap it. Our taste buds don't like the taste of meat unless we cook it and add plants to flavour it. Our stomachs acid is weaker than animals that eat meat and also our intestines are much more suited to digest plants rather than animals and lighting a fire in wet and windy conditions cant have been easy. At one point in the program a deer and a duck are killed and this anthropologist is shown cutting open the duck with a flint its is quite gory and Philip get involved in the preparation of the animal food getting his hands covered in blood it was good to see this shown on TV so as the public can see where animal food comes from. I did find it strange the Philip who was been fully vegan for the month seemed to enjoy playing the caveman cutting open a freshly killed duck with a piece of flint. For me it was hard to look at.I did note that the method and act of killing the animals was not discussed or shown on TV ,it rarely is shown on TV. Philip then says he felt that he was doing his health some serious damage and he is weak and depressed then he went back to Aveen to get a report some before and after measurements, Aveen reports a loss of “a good 2 Kg of muscle “ however the report on the screen shows a 1.9Kg loss rather than “a good 2 Kg” going from 65Kg to 63.1Kg . Reading from the report that was visible on the screen Philips weight went from 86.6Kg to 81.6Kg, however, the weight loss of 5Kg is never quantified on the show I had to stop the film and read off the values. The fat mass fell from 18.2Kg to 15.2Kg .The % body fat fell from 21.0% to 18.6% so the healthy loss of fat is glossed over and the loss of 5Kg on the vegan diet glossed over. In one interview aired before the program Philip says "What we did when I did the Vegan diet, as we did in all the other fad diets that I had done previously, was that I went for a raft of check-ups. They took so much blood out of me that I was like a pin cushion. I had various scans for my bone density and my muscle disposition and so on so that we would have a really reliable 'before and after'. "We were able to monitor, in minute detail, what happened to me and a lot happened to me in a very short space of time." "I'm not some dietary or biological freak - I'm pretty much an everyman. So if it's happening to me, it's happening to anybody else who tries to take on this diet."  There are no mention of his cholesterol or any blood results been mentioned in the program what happened to the results? Was his blood pressure measured before and after and during the diet , these are two things that you would expect to improve with a whole plant food diet. Was he monitored during the 4 week period by a doctor and if not why not? And if he was why was the results not published. Aveen also pointed out that the food intake was over 600 calories short every day this appears to have been Aveen responsibility to ensure that Philip was asked to consume the right amount of food, she also blamed his tiredness on a lack of B12 and vitamin D , why were these levels not checked as a matter of health and safety before an employee of RTE was asked to embark on this diet. Philip also claimed on the Ray Darcy show that he lost 3% of his bone density while on the programme Aveen said he lost 2% of his bone mass. The scales used to do the checking is only consistent under ideal conditions and a 2% error is within the margin of error see more on this topic below. Also the Tanita range of body fat monitors are not as accurate as the DEXA which I would like to point out thanks to the excellent work of the University of Washington osteoporosis specialist, Dr. Susan Ott, we now know that the common bone density test is rather imprecise and large changes in density are needed to assure that bone loss is indeed occurring, much less significant in nature. A thoughtful scientist, Dr. Ott had 300 patients get two bone density measurements: one when they came into the room, and the second after walking around the room for a while. With this simple experiment, she showed that repeat measurements on the same day may show as much as 7% difference in bone mineral density. Breaking down the data she found that while a 4-6% change in bone mineral density indicates a “probably change” it takes more than a 6% change to fully guarantee a statistically significant change in bone density. The Better Bones perspective on bone density testing: Bone density testing can be useful, especially when spaced over many years, but small changes are not significant. Tanitas website also give warnings on how inaccuracy can creep in.  : How accurate and reliable are Tanita's Body Fat Monitor/Scales? A: Independent research at several major universities (including Columbia University in New York City) has confirmed that in clinical settings, the Tanita Body Fat Monitor is accurate within +/- 5 percentage of the institutional standard of body composition analysis--Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA). It should be made clear that there is only one method of calculating body composition that is close to 100% accurate, and that is an autopsy. Tanita believes its method to be the most convenient and accessible to accurately predict body composition. Tanita's Body Fat Monitor Series results are repeatable to within +/- 1 percent variation when used under consistent conditions. Hydration fluctuations which may result from alcohol or food consumption, sleep, intense exercise, medication or pre-menstruation.

• A very full bladder.

• Severe calluses on heels or soles of feet (about 1/400 people tested).

• Unclean foot pads may interfere with conductivity.

•  The Tanita Body Fat Monitor/Scales use state of the art technology, BIA (Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis). This method of body fat analysis is very accurate and easy to use; however, changes in hydration levels can affect readings. If your body is dehydrated, you will likely experience a higher than normal reading. If you are over-hydrated, you could experience a slightly lower reading. To obtain the greatest accuracy and repeatability from our product, Tanita suggests the following protocol.

• Take readings at least 3 hours after rising, eating a large meal, or exercising.

• Take readings once a week at the same time of day under the same conditions. (Note: Taking readings more than once per week is not beneficial since body fat does not change from day to day.)

• Average your readings for the month.

• Compare averages from month to month.

So perhaps all the fuss about a drastic change in bone density may be a false alarm. Have a look at these videos about  how much protein we need

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The Full CNN video called “The last heart attack  ”  J. Morris Hicks – The 4Leaf Solution  The Edge – Eat to Beat Cancer and the Importance of Cancer Prevention  Bill Clinton: Fan of Caldwell Esselstyn Jr MD  James Cameron On The Vegan Solution  John McDougall, MD — The Ultimate Diet Therapy  Dr. John McDougall: Pregnancy and Children  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC185fvVQTQ John McDougall MD discusses what dairy products have going for them. They are a great source of nutrition — for getting fat and growing tumors ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC185fvVQTQ 5 Reasons to stop drinking MILK [warning graphic]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z04QX7zyt-8&list=PLfwAZJk9JCq1UwDBuCIQ79J7R9fNdpAz4