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Jay Feldman and Mike Fave weighed in on this topic giving a more Peat based analysis of the data being presented on this topic.
My personal opinion on this is that everyone has their own bodies, minds and free will. No one solution will work for everyone, and it is up to the individual to discover and continually learn and evaluate new discoveries and data as they are uncovered.I really don’t see too much about the Low/No Vitamin A diet, outside of the old RPF and a handful of people that are pushing it. It doesn’t have the buzz that paleo, low carb, keto, vegan, or gluten free ever did, and I doubt it ever will. While there is a study that suggested a low vitamin A intervention diet could be useful in certain conditions (and the intervention lasted less than 3 years), and it might be beneficial for some, especially those who used a drug like accutane, I don’t think it’s a good diet for most people, and there is no proof that Vitamin A is a “toxin.”
If you are interested in it, read Grant Generaux’s books, and then check the studies that he based his conclusions on. That way, you can form an informed opinion of your own, and not have to rely on anyone else’s. But in this world of health/nutrition, very few want to do that, and instead seem to want to just piggyback onto the opinion of others.
Mike Fave just did a video where he analyzed the very foundation of Grant Generaux’s book, and showed that the very foundation of Grant’s book is flawed.
Fave lists all his sources here, so you can check his work-
Is Vitamin A Deficiency Real? Debunking of Grant Genereux & The Low Vitamin A Theory
Fave’s conclusions were similar to my own. Since the study that Grant himself sets up as one of the best Vitamin A deficiency studies suggests that humans might be able to go as long as 4-6 years without seeing Vitamin A deficiency symptoms, even on a diet of almost no Vitamin A, this support the idea that either a low/no Vitamin A diet is beneficial as an intervention diet for certain conditions (like the ketogenic diet for epilepsy), and/or that those who see benefits may be from some other variable. Of course, depending on a number of factors, some may show deficiency symptoms much sooner, many in a matter of months.
So far, the only person who has claimed to do a very low A diet longer than 6 years is Generaux himself, and since he is the founder of this theory and is self reporting results, he may be hiding negatives, or may be eating higher amounts of Vitamin A at this point, and not telling anyone. Others heavily promoting the diet are equally suspect, especially if they has a financial motive to promote such a diet.
I just realized another massive foundational flaw in Generaux’s logic.
Generaux claims that the 1925 Wolbach and Howe study shows that the “Vitamin A Deficiency” was actually Vitamin A Toxicity, because Lard and Casein have more Vitamin A than claimed (and still do 100 years later), and that butter protects against Vitamin A toxicity, despite having much higher known levels of Vitamin A (hundreds of times more than the lard and casein together).
Yet, when Generaux constructs his own Vitamin A deficient diet, he takes all the Vitamin A levels straight from traditional databases like the USDA. Why? If you believe those values are wrong for lard and casein, why would you think they are accurate for things like beef and bison fat? Cattle graze on grass, and so are likely to get as much or more Vitamin A precursors than pigs. Why wouldn’t they store Vitamin A in their fat stores like pigs do?
Also, why not at least include butter in your Vitamin A deficient diet? I would think you could include any full fat dairy that hasn’t been fortified with Vitamins (and full fat usually isn’t). By Generaux’s own logic, it protected the rats in the Wolbach and Howe study from the “toxic vitamin A” in both butter AND casein, so isn’t it a massive oversight for anyone striving to protect themselves from Vitamin A toxicity to overlook this Vitamin A Toxicity Prevention Superfood?
When we look at the Peat forum didn’t most people with vit A problems literally just take a load of supplements or eat way too much liver? I remember my parents making liver pate the traditional way and you would eat a tiny bit on a slice of bread each day… Meanwhile people took 100,000+ iu for years and aren’t dead… So is it really that toxic??
Doesn’t Grant look awful? Dark eye circles when you search him up…
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