Jay Feldman’s and Mike Fave’s hit-piece videos.

A couple of people have shared these videos with me and asked me to comment on them.

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6VYDLD6xdU”

“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAslLuARWpo”

I watched these videos, and my first thought is that I wouldn’t bother wasting my time responding to them. I’ve learned a long time ago that it’s rather pointless debating with people who have already made up their minds on something. Especially so when they have a strong financial interest in not changing their minds.  Secondly, I sure don’t have the free time on my hands for this.  But I now think a response is needed. Hopefully there’s value in this for other people. Sorry, I really can’t afford to waste too much time on replying to all of their issues. So, I’ll just address what I think are most of their top items.

Please note that I don’t take any of Jay and Mike’s comments personally. I consider their videos to be more of a “hit-piece” on the low vitamin A theory, and not on myself.  Also, they are completely entitled to their views, and I always welcome critical feedback. If nothing else, their views help give me more insight into how other people might view this topic.  However, Mike does come across as being rather smug, if not a bit arrogant. That might be somewhat okay if he was correct in his analysis, but he’s not. Also, I think we always need to be especially careful when listening to people with that kind of attitude.

Jay and Mike start out by lamenting the current situation on the Ray Peat forum, and that it’s morphing into a low vA diet forum.  They also talk about apparent censorship happening over there.  Well, I have no influence on what’s going on over on the Ray Peat forum, and don’t care what’s said there. I don’t follow the Ray Peat forum. I’ve never participated in it. I’ve never been a member of it. I do know that about about four years ago there was a long raging debate (~900 pages) regarding my low vitamin A theory. I only read a bit of it. I feel that Jay and Mike’s videos are somewhat of an extension of that long running debate.

Regarding the censorship, I’m in total agreement with Jay and Mike on that point. In addition to being completely opposed to censorship I believe we need to be as open and honest as possible when sharing both our successes and our failures. There’s no censorship on my forum. All views are welcome here. Nasty comments and personal attacks are naturally not welcome.

It’s taking too long to see results

Mike and Jay comment that it’s taking too long for people to see results using a low vA diet.

Well, yes sorry, it can take a long time, but please take up that long timeframe issue with God. I’ve also stated many times that this is not a quick and easy fix. This fact is well documented in the literature too. 

See: The acute and chronic toxic effects of vitamin-A.

More importantly, it’s also documented that the damage caused by vitamin A toxicity is often permanent.  I’m hoping that’s not always accurate. But, in some cases it probably is.

Next, there are many people now participating in this project, of all ages, and all coming from a wide spectrum of dietary, and health backgrounds. Therefore, with everyone on a different starting point it is impossible for there to be a standard timeframe in which most will experience significant results.

However, on the other hand, given the realistic time frames involved here you better start somewhere. More importantly, one of the key themes of my eBooks was to warn people about the serious risk of getting into a state of chronic vitamin A toxicity in the first place. This is definitely a case where “an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.”

On the flip side, AFAIK there have been a lot of people who had followed Ray Peat’s protocols for a decade or more and have seen no results. 

That’s not at all to say that things always go wonderfully on the low vitamin A diet either. No, they do not. We obviously still have a long way to go in making the process more reliable and predictable.  I’ve talked about this in many of my blog posts and in most of my interviews, including this recent one.

https://unbekoming.substack.com/p/vitamin-a-toxicity

More importantly, if the low vitamin A diet is taking too long for people to see results, how long does it take for people to see results using the Ray Peat protocols?  My understanding is that a lot of people have seen no meaningful results even after 10 years.  I just so happen to know one of these poor souls. Her health has not improved one bit over the last 10 years, rather it has only gotten significantly worse. 

And isn’t this the real reason the Ray Peat forum is morphing into a low vA diet forum? Setting aside all the arguments and debates, doesn’t it come down to the real-world results people are experiencing?

Analysis of the 1925 Wolbach and Howe study

Regarding their analysis of the 1925 Wolbach and Howe study they also make some mistakes. For example, claiming that the alcohol was used to wash the retinol out of the casein and thus washed it away. No, my understanding of the purpose of the alcohol and the subsequent heating was to sterilize the food pellets. 

They also claim I don’t provide enough supporting evidence for my assertion that some of the vitamin A in the milk casein is converted to retinoic acid.  That’s true just based on what’s in my P4P eBook that I wrote 10 years ago. However, I did do a very important follow-up blog post adding the needed evidence to, I think, completely close the case on it. The work from T. Colin Campbell on the incredible toxicity casein is also very important to help close the case on it.

The Early Rat Studies and Casein

Maybe they’ve not read that?  

Anyways, in addition to my updated blog post on the topic, here’s a bit of chemistry regarding the process of heating casein in alcohol in the presence of ferric lactate (Fe3+) (from the salt mixture used in the diet). The conversion of retinol to retinoic acid just requires oxidation of the alcohol group to a carboxylic acid group.

So, with just retinol and ferric lactate (Fe3+), heated in an oven with exposure to air, there is indeed going to be at least some retinoic acid produced. The alcohol would wash the retinol out from the casein, but since the alcohol was boiled off, not drained off, the retinol would remain. Retinol is generally not degraded by heat.

Here’s the breakdown of the reaction sequence:

1. Given reagents:
   • Retinol (vitamin A alcohol)
   • Ferric lactate (Fe3+)
   • Heat (from the oven)
   • Oxygen (from air exposure)
2. Potential reaction pathway:
   a) Initial oxidation: Retinol (alcohol) => Retinal (aldehyde) This step could be catalyzed by Fe3+ acting as an oxidizing agent.
   b) Further oxidation: Retinal (aldehyde) => Retinoic acid (carboxylic acid) This step could be driven by further oxidation from Fe3+ and/or oxygen from the air.
3. Factors supporting the reaction:
   • Prolonged heating provides energy for the reactions.
   • Fe3+ can act as an oxidizing agent.
   • Exposure to air provides additional oxygen, which can contribute to oxidation.
   • The extended time (say 24 hours) allows for slow reactions to progress.

So, I think that we have both the hard science and most importantly the real-world evidence. The bottom line is that something killed these animals, and there’s a very, very short list of possibilities. It surely wasn’t a so-called deficiency. 

Mike takes exception with my statement(s) of something along the lines of:

“It should have been obvious to everyone”

Of course, the “everyone” in these statements referred to everyone involved with these experiments.  And, obviously, there’s no way the average person on the street could possibly have any knowledge on this topic.

And, yes, anyone’s grandmother could have told Wolbach and Howe that they had gotten it completely wrong. That’s because what they claimed to have observed has never, ever happened in the natural world. Not in the 100 years before 1925, and it has not happened in the 100 years since.

But if Jay and Mike are still doubting it here’s all they need to do: Repeat the experiment with a few pet rats and eye-witness the results. 

Extrapolating the lethal dose in a rat to a human.

In his second video Mike goes through a bit of a complex (and questionable) extrapolation from the lethal dose used in the rat and pig studies to determine the equivalent lethal dose in humans.  However, I think there are some really big issues with that. Firstly, he does not need to do the mathematical extrapolation as the lethal dose of vitamin A in humans has already been published.

The second huge issue with this extrapolation is, well just that, he’s dealing with the lethal dose. Meaning that’s the dose that will cause so much almost immediate tissue and organ destruction that it causes death. We are generally not at all concerned here with the lethal dose because almost nobody gets anywhere close to it. 

Based on Mike’s extrapolation he conflates the extreme lethal dose as being the only real concern. Saying that you’d need to eat an enormous amount of eggs or liver to get to that dose.  Somewhat implying that you are only at risk if you are nearing these extreme doses. He says that if people are in and around the RDA then they’ll be fine. Therefore, he’s somehow (and conveniently) clearly missed the entire thesis behind my two eBooks. He’s also basically adopting the position of the old axiom of “The dose makes the poison”.

Well, sure, I agree that if you are taking say half the lethal dose over a few days or weeks it might not immediately kill you. But, it is definitely going to very seriously harm you. And, harm you in a way that can take decades to recover from, if ever.  This is an absolute fact proven tens of thousands of times over by the unfortunate people who have taken accutane (and at a small fraction of the lethal dose too).

But here’s a news flash guys: the  axiom of “The dose makes the poison” is completely untrue. A poison is always a poison, and regardless of the dose. The dose only dictates the severity of the harm and damage it causes. Sure, I  agree that there’s a small risk of harm in and around the RDA over the short term for a lot of people.  However, even in the short term, what’s well established in the literature is that for pregnant women there’s a serious risk of birth defects and stillbirths at just 2-3x the RDA.

The other point that Mike glosses over in these studies that I’ve referenced is that so called “vitamin A” is actually killing these animals. It doesn’t just “make them sick” as he states a few times, no, it often kills them. And it kills the infant child in the case I referenced that he discusses.  In another case report it kills a young boy (~ 4 yo) who was eating chicken liver pate.  Clearly, this boy wasn’t eating the massive doses that Mike claims are needed to harm you. So, no, it isn’t just massive doses that’s making people sick, sometimes even moderate doses are killing people too.  

So, here we have a so-called “vitamin” causing death.  How can anyone not see a major problem with that? I guess they might not if their income depends on them not seeing it. If Mike and Jay want to risk their lives on it, fine, go ahead, but please don’t encourage others to follow you over that cliff. Anyways, the entire point I was making in referencing these studies was to show just how toxic so-called vitamin A can be.  Additionally, the focus of my eBooks was not at all about acute (or lethal dose) vitamin A toxicity. I really don’t care about acute vA toxicity much. Sure, it can and does happen, and it can be really bad when it does, but it is quite a rare event. Conversely, the entire focus of the eBooks was on subclinical chronic toxicity; and that’s a completely different animal.  Now, in that context, and much more importantly, what we are seeing in the real world is that far, far less than the lethal dose causing serious harm (and ultimately even death as well).

Let’s try to put it into perspective. Here’s a graph of for ~ 2 years of consumption of roughly the RDA for an adult.  There’s not much to see here really, it’s just for context.

Chart 1:

Here’s the same graph (with the same daily doses) but with a few spikes (~acute toxicity size). It’s definitely not enough to kill an adult, but probably enough to cause serious harm.  To paraphrase Mike, he’s saying that you’d need to do something like this (or a lot crazier) to be at risk. And, I generally agree with that assessment (but, it also depends on a bunch of other factors).

In this chart I’ve used spike doses of 200,000 IUs (60x RDA), I could have used 2,000,000 IUs. It doesn’t really matter much, it’s just to illustrate the point.

Chart 2:

Clearly, Mike, and I hope almost everyone else, is accepting that the volume (area under the triangle) of that spike in the dose is a cause for concern.  But, what he’s failing to appreciate is TIME. He’s not thinking like a mathematician or a geologist does.  Now, let’s look at the same data again, but showing the chronic accumulative dose.

Chart 3:

Seeing that, I’m like who cares about that spiked dose in chart 2. Whereas, I care a whole lot more about that accumulated volume on the right side of chart 3.

But, I needed to play a bit of an old card trick in presenting these charts.  The y-axis scale is different in chart 3, it goes to 1,800,000 IUs and not just to 200,000 IUs as in chart 1 & 2.  This is needed so as to not cut off most of the chart 3 data. 

Secondly, these charts show just ~ 2 years of daily consumption.  Now, let’s look at this again using the same scale on all three charts, and extend the timescale out to just ~ 5 years.

Chart 1:

Chart 2:

Chart 3:

Most people should be asking: Hey, where’s the data in charts 1 and 2? And, Where’s that spiked dose in chart 2?  Oh, it’s still there, is it just not visible on the needed scale to present the magnitude of accumulated volume. 

Not to over emphasize the point, but let’s use this annotated image below to put it into perspective:

So, that spiked dose of acute vA toxicity dose Mike’s analysis has focused on is really a trivial micro blip in the big scheme of things. (Until, later in life when it isn’t.)  

Also, keep in mind that the accumulated 6,300,000 IUs in chart 3 is only after 5 years. But, like I’ve stated many, many times, I’m not even concerned about just 5 years of accumulation, I’m concerned about 20, 30, and 50+ years of accumulation. I’m almost exclusively concerned about and focused on long term chronic toxicity. And, yes, of course, I know that we don’t bioaccumulate all of what we consume.  

The other question a lot of people are probably asking is: Why hasn’t that equivalent accumulated mega-dose on the right side of chart 3 not already killed us? Well, if you consumed it over a period of say a few days or weeks it surely would kill you. But, your liver (and other adipose tissues) has been diligently and very quickly stashing it away and saving you from its harm. However, over time the liver is going to progressively become more and more saturated, overwhelmed and diseased. 

Now, when that happens you are in much bigger trouble. That once somewhat moderate spike dose of say ~ 200,000 IU might still not kill you, but it is definitely going to cause you far more very serious harm. Except, once again, I’m not concerned about the acute dose. No, what I’m concerned about is what was once a trivial say ~ 3000 IU RDA type dose is also now a huge problem. And it is now a huge problem for each and every day going forward. That’s because a saturated, distressed and diseased liver can no longer efficiently and quickly capture and scrub that daily intake of vA out of circulation.

In my eBooks I described this as the overflow scenario. Anthony Mawson has described it in many of his papers as excess retinyl ester spillage. Garrett Smith has described it as Toxic Bile Theory.  We’re all really describing the same thing.  

The critically important points here are:

1. What’s considered to be a “safe” dose for one person is most certainly not safe for everyone.
2. The so-called “safe” dose is changing and declining with time.
3. Time (think decades) is the hugely important factor.

Let’s further analyze Mike’s assertion that you need to consume an insane amount of eggs or liver before you get into a toxic state and get sick. While that may be true for some people, let’s test that theory with some real world analysis.

The Carnivore diet is a fantastic natural experiment to use. That’s because it is almost the ultimate elimination diet; often (but not always) reduced down to one food: meat.

Coincidentally, if it’s mostly based on red muscle meat then the carnivore diet is also an extremely low vA diet as well.

Additionally, most people taking on the carnivore diet have not been aware of the low vA aspect to this diet. So, there’s little or no placebo effect factor involved.

A few years ago the carnivore diet was somewhat hijacked by a few high profile liver promoting nut jobs (and scammers), such as the “liver king”. Of course, this was done completely for greed and profit motives. The result of that liver-eating cult mentality has led to two distinct camps being formed within the Carnivore diet community. One camp sticks to the muscle meats (and maybe with some eggs and dairy), but refuses to consume the vulgar and disgusting stinking liver.  

The other camp unfortunately bought into the message of the cult leaders and regularly consumed liver. But, for most of them, I’m pretty sure they didn’t consume anywhere near the massive amounts that Mike claims are always needed to cause harm.

So, we have this ideal (not perfect, but close enough) natural experiment with two extremes  

Carnivore muscle meat	Carnivore + liver
Ultra-low Vitamin A	Very-high Vitamin A

The other very important point is that there are very few other confounding factors are between these two groups. In other words, the primary difference between these two groups is their vitamin A consumption.

So now, what are the real world outcomes of this experiment?  Here’s my take on it. Generally speaking the folks in the carnivore muscle meat group appear to do really well, if not great (not always, but very often).

Whereas, for many of the poor folks in the carnivore + liver group the results have been a disaster for their health. Quite a few of these folks have reported their results here on the forum. Probably about 20 others have contacted me directly by email. One person reported rectal bleeding and needed to be admitted to hospital.

Paola Dziwetzki has collected another list of people who got sick while eating liver on her twitter wall: https://x.com/thepowerofozone/status/1745181109468410347 

She also has a collection of one star reviews of various desiccated liver pills: https://x.com/thepowerofozone/status/1746949242050981921 

BTW, here’s her collection of documented cases of people getting sick after the consumption of various types of livers, taken from medical literature: https://x.com/thepowerofozone/status/1763900259334275555

Garrett Smith has also shared a number of case reports of people’s disastrous results with the carnivore+liver diet.  And the case reports just keep coming in; here’s another posted on the forum this past week:

Hey all,
I have been following a Vit A low diet for 2 months now. Before I started, I overdosed with liver and vitamin A supplements. That got me a huge variety of symptoms with some of them being bone pain, food intolerances, increased sensitivity to light and joint pain.

Thanks to Judy Cho’s brave and heroic work many people got the warning early enough to save themselves from far more serious harm.

Reality Check

Anyways, sorry Mike, but your claims are not aligning with reality. There’s something obviously and seriously wrong with your assumptions and your calculations based upon them.

The clear message for Jay and Mike from real world results is: No, people don’t need to consume massive amounts of liver (and or eggs) to be harmed by vitamin A.  It can and does happen at much smaller doses.  

The super important take-away here is that it depends on the person, the original state of health of that person, combined with a ton of other factors. Additionally, and more importantly, it hugely depends on time. Yes, it is just a matter of time before it catches up to almost everyone.

Next, I want to emphasize that it’s clearly not just the slow accumulation of stored vA that’s the only concern and risk. Rather, it is also the slow accumulation of more and more cellular damage slowly progressing over time that’s manifesting itself in the disease condition.  Think in terms of what we all see in the real world with the more common chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, dementia, etc. These diseases don’t just spring up overnight. Rather, they are all diseases of tissue destruction that progressively accumulates over decades.

Fear mongering

One of the other claims from Mike is that my book is fear mongering.  Well, no, it is not. That’s the very last thing I wanted it to do. Rather, it’s completely the opposite of that. It is about giving people hope. In the long run it should also be a very, very good news story for a lot of people as well.

What we’ve all been told is that the chronic diseases just come out of the blue, are generally lifelong, progressive, there are no cures, and ultimately often terminal too.  Now that’s fear mongering!

But, once we understand that the chronic diseases do not just come out of the blue, and they are almost always caused, then there is indeed hope. Of course, me just claiming that there’s hope on the horizon in and of itself shouldn’t offer much hope.  There’s every reason for people to be very skeptical of what I say.  As I’ve stated many times, people should not just listen to what I’m saying and take it on face value. They need to apply their own critical thinking to it. However, most importantly people need to judge this theory based on what happens in the real world. Ultimately, the final word on this theory is not at all what I say, or what Jay and Mike might say, or what anyone else says, rather it is the real world results.

And we are indeed seeing results. People are recovering their health, albeit often very slowly, and with a lot of varying degrees of success.  But it is happening!

Obviously, we are still a long way from determining the best and most reliable strategy for recovering. But, the super important message here is that there is hope. And, it is not some BS  false hope that so many others in the health space are pushing.

So, in a nutshell, here’s the major argument against Jay and Mike’s take-down videos. After ~ 10 years of a lot of people following Ray Peat’s recommendations, it has almost never worked. Whereas, the low vA diet is working. So, let’s just set aside all the academic type arguments and debates and judge things by the results we see happening in the real world.

Except, what Jay and Mike are trying to tell you: is: “Oh no, don’t believe your own lying eyes, believe us”.  Well, nope, sorry guys, what’s happening in nature gets the last call on it.

Once again, there are still some very big problems with the low vA diet that need to get sorted out. There are still far too few really good success stories. It is nowhere near as predictable and reliable as I think it needs to be.  But, I’m not at all saying that the base theory is wrong. No, the base theory is slowly proving out to be absolutely correct. The way I look at it is that we have just gotten started on it and still have a lot of discovery and learning to do.

Grant’s book does not prove the case

Somehow Jay and Mike have failed to appreciate that my book was never intended to prove the case. Rather the entire goal of that book was simply to make the case compelling enough to encourage people to join in on this project, test the theory and share their results. It has succeeded in doing that.

Now, as far as conclusively proving the case, well I think it is just a matter of more time.  It is happening, albeit slowly.  What will it take to make it conclusive? I don’t know, but my guess is another 10 years and probably more than 10,000 success stories. There are many people who don’t want this project to succeed, so there will always be the cynics and naysayers. Except, here’s the thing, I’ve never really cared much at all about what people say. I care about what people do and what’s happening in the real world.

Let’s get past this, and move on

Mike states that once he’s sufficiently taken down this theory we can get past it and move on. 

My question to Mike is: Move on to what?

More failed protocols that have never yielded meaningful results?  More pills, more supplements that very rarely help and often cause more harm? More liver? More cod liver oil? More “health coaching” based on flawed and failed theories? Move onto more pharmaceuticals that have a 100 year long record of colossal failures?

Seriously Mike, move on to exactly what? What’s your better plan? What evidence do you have that it’s going to actually work for people? 

Nope, sorry, I think you’re too late. The train has already left the Ray Peat station, and smart people are already moving on down the line. Smart people know that if we want to recover from chronic disease, we absolutely need to understand the root cause of it. Without removing the root cause, all the pills, protocols etc are completely useless.

A Grand Conspiracy Theory

Mike makes the claim that in “Poisoning for Profits” I was promoting a grand conspiracy theory that some evil forces are trying to poison the world.

Well, no, that’s not at all true either. I actually make exactly the opposite statement on page 177 in Chapter 8 Vitamin-A supplementation and Worldwide Infertility Rates.

“Now, do I believe that this is a deliberate reincarnation of the Nazi’s global sterilization agenda? No, I do not. Not for one minute. What I firmly believe is that the very foundation and basis for this problem lies in botched science.”

The origin for that “Poisoning for Profits” title of my eBook was multifold. Partly it was based on my observations regarding accutane. It was also partly based on my observation on the cover-up of the vA palmitate cancer causation study. But mostly it was based on my realization that most chronic disease is caused by chronic poisonings. With that, then my understanding that virtually all pharmaceuticals prescribed for chronic diseases are completely useless. Except, more often than not, they are not only completely useless, but often highly toxic and just cause more disease. Thus, they are simply “Poisoning for Profit”.

However, in fairness to Mike, I’ve updated my views since I made that statement in Chapter 8 back in 2014.  Yes, I now do believe there is a high probability that humanity is being deliberately poisoned.