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Carnivore and Bile Acid Malabsorption
yes this is true. We can forget how it feels when we feel really good.... or maybe we never even felt it.... so we dont know what it feels like.
To exercise in chronic fatigue stated body is really contra productive. It would be better to just rest or do some light yoga or stretching etc.
I asked my wife to evaluate Lori, the 55 year old eating carnivore for 22 years, and my wife said the overhead kitchen lighting in the video makes her look bad. The host, Lillie, has more flattering lighting. Lori is also not wearing makeup, unlike Lillie.
There is a short thread in the comments on the video itself about her appearance. The comments are all over the map:
I´m sorry but she doest look healthy to me at all. Not even for 55.( btw I´m triying the carnivore diet myself ).yust sayin
I think the lighting in the room she’s in and the angle is having a negative effect
She’s not wearing any makeup which most of us are used to seeing….actually most women look rough without makeup….just sayin. She needs some sunshine.
Her skin looks great...especially around her neck. No wrinkles at all. Bad light, no makeup. Maybe was never a beauty to begin with
It's not the makeup, it's the tending to the looks. People can do that without makeup, but without makeup, it's like they don't care and it shows. And I thought it looked like she was wearing a little makeup. Am I wrong?
I see wrinkles
it could be the lighting, but wow no she doesn't look that great on carnivore.
I mean she seems healthy, so that's a plus, but I agree she doesn't look healthy, but a little tired. I don't think that has to do with the diet, but more the flack received from others. If she feels good, that shows. But no, she doesn't look healthy overall. Neither does the one interviewing her, although she is younger to compensate.
your wifeys points are valid of course, but it does not change my intuition about her having some sort of adrenal exhaustion.. toxicity issue.. something is not right. I watched the video again to try figure out why I feel like i do..
and it is also her mimic, how she moves her eyes, her voice. I get wibes of exhaustion.
Quick response about CIRS, which I think I have mentioned elsewhere: two of my family members were diagnosed with it based on symptoms of severe intolerance to mold, plus bloodwork, and followed a modified shoemaker-type protocol (with Dr. Neal Nathen) - charcoal, clay, various supplements, other binders for the grownup sufferer...
This supplements helped only a tiny bit...and then we started a low A diet, 3.5 years ago. 2.5 years ago, we ended up in a summer home rental that was moldy, and there was MAJOR regression for one family member: proving that at that time, at least, a low A diet wasn't enough on its own, just like avoiding mold wasn't enough on its own!
Now, 3.5 years in, the younger family member is MUCH more resilient, and able to be in moldy environments much longer before getting headaches, etc. (not that we try to remain in same - but if invited to a friends house or whatever, usually there is no problem where before there would have been!)
It seems to be a slow process, but definitely this approach (diet) is doing way more than the previous several years of CIRS treatment sans low-A did...
I should probably start again by pointing out the obvious: modern humans are quite different from any other species in that we are completely reliant on tools for survival. We managed to overtake almost every terrestrial niche because of our tool-based adaptability. The earliest tools enabled us to kill and capture all different sizes of animals, and later tools enabled us to cook and cultivate plants that would otherwise have been entirely worthless, or outright toxic, for consumption. The confusion about what constitutes an appropriate diet stems from our extraordinary adaptability.
That being said, when you look at what the human body is capable of digesting in the absence of tools, it becomes abundantly clear where our physiological roots lie. Take away a single tool – fire – and you instantly lose the ability to derive meaningful nutrition from plants (fermentation is generally insufficient), save for the odd fruit or nut that is edible in the wild. Meat is essentially the only source of food that we are capable of digesting without fire, and this is reflected in the most important aspects of our physiology: the stomach acidity of a scavenger (i.e. meat/bone eater), the small intestine of a carnivore, and the rotating shoulder of a projectile thrower (i.e. hunter of large game). It is very costly to maintain the level of acidity in our stomachs, and if it were not essential to human survival there would be strong selection against that trait. There are no omnivores with a stomach acidity as low as ours or anywhere close.
"Humans produce a significant amount of salivary amylase. Carnivores don't eat starch, omnivores do so you are acknowledging that humans are omnivores. Polar bears are descended from omnivores so of course they have those genes but they do not produce significant salivary amylase."
The best functional definition of a carnivorous animal is one capable of maintaining health solely on animal flesh, with the means to obtain that animal flesh, and with no requirements for plant consumption. By this definition, Polar Bears, Brown Bears, and Humans are all carnivores. Polar bears may not consume starch (in their natural environment), but brown bears do and they produce salivary amylase. However, brown bears would happily live on pure animal flesh if they had sufficient access to it, as is the case with humans. Brown bears are classified as facultative carnivores (e.g. https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70169086), so it follows that humans could also be classified as facultative carnivores, based, if nothing else, on the growing number of people who have been living happily on nothing but meat and other animal products for 5-10+ years.
"The human pancreas produces more amylase than protease and lipase."
Correction: on a carbohydrate rich diet low in fat and protein the human pancreas produces more amylase than protease and lipase. It’s completely context dependent. Why would it produce an abundance of amylase in the absence of starch consumption? Show me a study where people on an all-meat diet produce more amylase than protease and lipase…it doesn’t exist.
"Sport is very competitive, if a carnivore diet was optimal most top athletes would already be on it."
@jiri made this fallacious argument before too. The diet that is required to win top level athletic competitions is not necessarily the same as the diet that is best for optimal health, reproduction, and longevity. Ever heard of performance enhancing drugs? Those provide a major athletic advantage but are obviously not part of a healthy lifestyle. If they were allowed to be used regularly, everyone would wind up using them just to keep up with the field. You could think of glucose as a form of performance enhancing drug: it enhances one's performance at the cost of bodily harm...keep using it long enough in large enough quantities and you are likely to wind up with a metabolic disorder (Tim Noakes has something to say about this...).
Additionally, an endurance athlete on a carb-based diet has to refuel during extended exercise…the more extended the exercise, the more refueling required, the more advantage a fat-based diet conveys. Even just 100 years ago, before modern processed carbs like “goo” packets existed, the need to refuel would be prohibitive because you’d have to carry bread or some other dried semi-processed food, and you’d have to carry water to go with it or be sure of a natural water source along the route. Try doing a self-reliant ultramarathon on a carb-based diet without carrying manufactured goo packets or drinking water…the fat-based dieter is going to win every time because they don’t need to refuel and they produce metabolic water from burning fat for energy, reducing their need for water intake. Charles Washington has spoken about running marathons on a carnivore diet without any food or water intake.
Lastly, people in the weightlifting community are winning competitions on carnivore diets, oftentimes specifically avoiding food intake for 12-24 hours before competition, which puts them into the dreaded ketosis, oh no!
"Most cells prefer glucose, ketosis is not the optimal metabolic state. In glycolysis most cells use glucose but fatty acids and ketones are also available."
Glycolysis is the conversion of glucose to energy. Not just most cells, ALL cells performing glycolysis are using glucose because that is what glycolysis is. How can you differentiate between cells “preferring” glucose and the body prioritizing getting excess glucose out of the bloodstream? Reference? And why would glycolysis be preferable when (1) the conversion of glucose to ATP is less efficient than converting fatty acids to ATP, (2) glucose metabolism depletes micronutrients like thiamine faster than fat metabolism, and (3) the human body stores the vast majority of its energy in the form of fat, not glucose/glycogen.
"We are processed cooked food eating omnivores and our dentition matches that."
No, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are tool users that developed means for cooking. We do not require cooking to survive or thrive. Humans can and have happily survived on raw meat. Our dentition and digestive system, in combination with very basic tools like a sharp stone, are sufficient for processing raw meat. What we can’t do is digest raw plant matter efficiently…plant matter is what requires cooking, which is an argument AGAINST your beloved omnivory.
"The evidence points to humans always having sought out sources of sugar and starch in their environment. But even if most humans had low carbohydrate intakes in the last Ice Age it doesn't mean that that is optimal for modern humans and it certainly doesn't mean that a meat only diet is optimal."
What evidence is there prior to agriculture? From what I’ve seen, there’s no good way to quantify plant consumption from the archaeological records. There’s a huge difference between the presence of plant remnants or signs of plant consumption at archaeological sites and the amount of plants that were actually consumed. Just because there was indication of plant consumption doesn’t mean there was meaningful amounts of plant consumption. The presence of plants alone does not indicate they were sought after. Generally, isotope data is the best data we have to go by in terms of quantification of dietary components in the archaeological records, and that data places humans above base-level carnivores…in other words, we appear to have been top tier “hypercarnivores” that ate other carnivores. There is no animal with such an isotope signature that is “omnivorous”. If you haven’t listened to or read Miki Ben-Dor’s work, you might want to go brush up on the topic.
Humans have probably always been experimenting with potential sources of food in their environment, moreso later in evolutionary time when it became more difficult to acquire fat from megafauna and we became more reliant on carbohydrates. We have a unique ability to transmit knowledge across generations and therefore have more incentive to experiment with potential food sources because we can learn from others what was good and what was bad.
"A wolf is a facultative carnivore, humans are omnivores."
Nope, most data indicate that wolves are obligate carnivores (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25415597/#:~:text=Data%20on%20the%20feeding%20ecology,and%20nutrients%20can%20be%20excessive.). Coyotes and foxes are facultative carnivores though, as are humans.
"Millions of humans have lived long healthy lives eating very little meat."
Little meat is not zero meat. In the absence of meat (or modern supplements), humans require other animal products like eggs or dairy. Regardless, a functional carnivore is defined by its ability to live entirely on animal foods, rather than the ability to live on minimal amounts of animal foods while eating plants. Again, domestic cats are obligate carnivores that manage to get by on shitty commercial food diets that contain a bunch of plants, and dogs are facultative carnivores that usually get fed shitty diets full of carbohydrates and manage to survive quite well. They both do much better on fully carnivorous diets though because they are carnivores.
"Inuit are an argument for humans being omnivores because there is evidence that they've made genetic adaptations to their diet such as enhanced gluconeogenesis."
Even if the Inuit do show signs of enhanced gluconeogenesis (I’d want to see some evidence to judge for myself), that would only indicate an enhanced ability to derive energy from protein in the absence of sufficient fat. The most recent humans have been forced to adopt a diet higher in carbohydrates due to a decline in large mammals on the landscape that previously provided plenty of fat for energy. Thus, it’s not surprising that you would find enhanced gluconeogenesis in populations that continued to subsist almost entirely on meat, and enhanced amylase production in populations that adopted agriculture (although more copies of an amylase gene does not equal more amylase production). This still says nothing about what happens when these disparate populations eat a 100% animal diet with sufficient fat. The fact that so many different people coming from different ancestry report thriving on a 100% animal diet with sufficient fat is strong evidence of our common roots as facultative carnivores.
"They also sought out plant foods where ever they were available: animal stomach/intestinal contents, berries, seaweed, roots/tubers and caches of seeds stored by rodents."
Again with the "sought after"...yes, they ate and still eat these things, but that doesn't mean they actively sought them over other sources of food. Do you understand the interplay between energetics, optimal foraging theory, and evolution? If humans derive a greater benefit than detriment from eating something, they are likely going to eat it, no matter how minimal the benefit. In the absence of direct access to animal food, why wouldn't you eat some berries when they are easy to come by if you can derive some (minimal) nutrition from them that outweighs the cost of foraging and digesting them. In the absence of a grocery store guaranteeing food, why wouldn't you consume the entire edible portion of the animal, including the stomach/intestinal contents, if there is a net gain in energy/nutrients (however small). Prey animals can be highly unpredictable, and the caribou that Inuit often hunt are exemplary. If you can't entirely predict prey availability, you are going to eat whatever else is available a lot of the time.
"There isn't evidence they were healthier, more athletic or had more longevity than tribes in the americas living at lower latitudes."
Indigenous groups living elsewhere in North America also relied almost entirely on animal food until Europeans came and fucked everything up, so if they happened to be more capable or longer-lived than the Inuit, that’s no argument against carnivory. Need I remind you that the Inuit have lived relatively long lives in relatively good health in one of the harshest climates on earth?
"Omnivores can have the ability to live on a highly carnivorous diet but it's usually unlikely to be optimal for them."
This statement is based on what? Your uneducated opinion of wildlife biology?
"Of course it matters that no great ape is carnivorous. You argue that omnivorous human diets are sub optimal because of a belief about what we ate historically but want to dismiss the fact that early in our evolution we almost certainly consumed an omnivorous diet for millions of years."
Polar bears are still genetically similar enough to brown bears that they can produce fertile hybrids, yet they are fully carnivorous after diverging from common ancestry only 500,000 years ago. This indicates that large functional changes can occur with minimal changes in genetics over relatively short time frames in higher order mammals. Humans diverged from chimps about 7,000,000 years ago…I’d say that’s more than enough time to have shifted from an omnivorous diet to a carnivorous one regardless of genetic similarity.
On the flipside, humans began widespread agriculture about 10,000 years ago…this is sufficient time to see low level genetic diversification among populations (e.g. a change in the frequency of amylase genes), but nowhere near enough time for human digestive systems and other physiology to have meaningfully shifted away from a pre-agricultural diet of primarily meat. If we manage not to annihilate ourselves in the near future and continue pushing plant-based diets, humans may very well end up evolving back toward an omnivorous physiology, but probably not until several hundred thousand years from now.
"The evidence is that optimal vitamin C intake is higher than that from consuming a meat only diet."
Again, what evidence?! There’s no published evidence of this because there’s only a single journal publication on people adopting a modern carnivore diet and there were no Vitamin C experimental groups in that study. Additionally, in all my time listening to, watching, and reading carnivore anecdotes (I would wager at least 100 times more time spent on that than you), I have yet to see any compelling evidence that people on such a diet benefit from more Vitamin C than what they get in cooked meat.
"Wrong, we thrive on an omnivorous diet."
You wrote that in response to my writing “We are facultative carnivores who need meat and thrive on just meat.” I never said people couldn’t thrive on “omnivorous” diets. Of course many people do, that’s what almost everybody has been eating for the past 10,000 years! However, the fact that many people thrive on an omnivorous diet does not mean that a carnivorous diet is not ideal. And it’s not like an omnivorous diet spares you from disease, lol. The longest-lived populations tend to consume more meat and fewer plants than other populations (see the various debunkings of the Blue Zones study).
"Wrong, maybe these assumptions are your way of trying to make how biased you are less obvious. Imagine placing the burden of proof on those that do not accept a carnivore diet as the only way, the true way, the holy way."
You’ve given every indication that you believe only published literature constitutes valid evidence and that anecdotes mean nothing. When a growing number of people (10,000? 20,000? Difficult to estimate…) anecdotally report improvements on a carnivore diet, and human physiology and comparative anatomy indicate a history of carnivory, and when the only published study of people on carnivore diets indicated heath improvements, THE BURDEN IS ON THOSE THAT DO NOT ACCEPT IT to prove otherwise because they are rejecting the best available evidence in favor of conventional dogma.
"You don't know what I've personally tried. None of this adds to the strength of your argument."
Well, have you tried a carnivore diet? No? LOL I didn’t think so… This is relevant because a person’s individual experience is typically the ultimate arbiter in how they perceive reality. And in this case, because there is virtually no published science on “civilized” modern humans adopting a carnivore diet, the only way you’re going to have any weight in speaking against a carnivore diet is if you’ve tried it yourself or oversee clients that have tried it (as Judy Cho does). Your perception of the carnivore diet appears to be based in a complete lack of experience with the diet and through inappropriate extrapolation/interpretation of whatever anecdotes and published scientific literature you're looking at.
"You're confused and not saying anything here that refutes what I previously wrote. You're not citing her work, you haven't cited anything. All you are doing is making claims about her claims."
Right, I’m the one who’s confused… I clarified what constitutes an appeal to authority and demonstrated how that is not the case here and explained how we are citing Judy Cho’s work (meaning her clinical experience and written and verbal reporting on that experience, which does not have to include explicit quantification of anything). You are aware that “citations” are not limited to referencing peer-reviewed publications, and that someone’s “work” can be qualitative and not quantitative?
Example 1: a “personal communication” is used in instances where someone has not yet officially published a statement, but has agreed to serve as a professional reference for a statement appearing in someone else’s publication. As in: CIRS patients in a practice that focuses on healing via meat-only diets saw better outcomes on meat-only diets than on mixed diets (Judy Cho, pers. comm.).
Example 2: you can cite conference proceedings, which often amount to simply an Abstract of someone’s presentation at a conference. Such an abstract does not have to contain quantitative analyses to serve as a citation. As in: some people are thoroughly deluded about their ability to interpret scientific information (Timmy-the-2th, Proceedings of the International Conference on Dunning-Krugerism in Action).
"You're the one referencing studies and specific people's work here. So Judy Cho's claims are rock solid but science as a whole is so corrupt that we can't even trust basic knowledge on physiology?"
Did I ever say Judy Cho was presenting rock solid science? No. She is providing clinical evidence, which when combined with everything else that’s been published on human physiology and evolution and anthropology, and in consideration of anecdotal evidence of modern carnivore diet successes, supports the logic behind a meat-only diet. By itself, Judy Cho’s claim is nearly the weakest form of evidence you could use. But I haven’t attempted to use her claim as the foundation for any of my arguments, it is ancillary support.
You’re conflating your interpretation of what has been published on human physiology for what is human physiology. Your interpretation has been repeatedly falsified by empirical evidence.
"Do you believe that there is a multi decade conspiracy to convince people that humans produce lots of amylase when they don't? Why are you even here discussing concepts that are scientifically derived if basic physiology can't be trusted?"
I never said people don’t produce amylase or that they don’t eat starch…and you’re accusing me of creating strawman arguments?
"You keep claiming how ignorant I am about science while directly exposing your ignorance about it. You keep writing strawmen about me relying on dietary studies to make my case about humans being omnivores. Please point out where I am relying on dietary studies to make my case?"
You’re right, I am assuming you are relying on dietary and other studies to make your case. Maybe I gave you too much credit and you’re just another Dunning-Kruger YouTube know-it-all parrot stuck on repeat. I forget that people like you know so much more about science than those of us who have actually participated in academia, how silly of me… Maybe you could be so kind as cite your sources of information that are so infallible, be they anecdotes, peer-reviewed publications, or messages from god that came to you in your sleep.
"Don't you think that CIRS is more likely the underlying cause than VA / Oxalate toxicity? You've been detoxing for so long and not much is changing. Maybe it's time to pivot."
The longer my symptoms continue without complete resolution, the more I do wonder if there's something else I'm missing. However, I don't match the CIRS symptom clusters very closely, and my symptoms and dietary history is much more in line with Vitamin A and oxalate toxicity than biotoxins like mold or lyme. I was exposed to ticks in California for brief periods about 15 years ago, but I was very careful to wear long sleeves/pants/gloves, and I checked for ticks after potential exposure and never saw signs of them on me. I also didn't develop any new symptoms outside of my IBS-D until 10 years later, so I think I can rule out ticks (there are no ticks that affect humans in Alaska where I've been living most of my life).
I know I've been exposed to mold in buildings here and there, but I didn't develop any new symptoms around those time periods. My most recent exposure was in an old log cabin, and I had the air tested in there. The results came back negative for basically everything of concern...the guy who did the testing said the outdoor levels of mold in the summer are higher than what was in the cabin. I also did a mycotoxin test with Great Plains Laboratory when I was in that cabin, and it came back negative, although I know Judy Cho has provided examples of clients showing negative on that test but then testing positive for other CIRS biomarkers.
It seems like if you had serious biotoxin accumulation and an inability to clear it, you would be extremely prone to headaches, chemical and perfume sensitivities, and rapid onset of fatigue...things I don't experience. My wife has allergies and periodic asthma issues and I'm pretty sure she's the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" between the two of us...I would expect her to start complaining well before me. I'm pretty scared of getting mold in my house now though...I monitor the humidity levels year-round and try to keep it under 55% relative humidity. Relatively easy to do because I live in a very dry climate, but I've got a dehumidifier and a couple air purifiers as insurance.
I should probably start again by pointing out the obvious: modern humans are quite different from any other species in that we are completely reliant on tools for survival. We managed to overtake almost every terrestrial niche because of our tool-based adaptability. The earliest tools enabled us to kill and capture all different sizes of animals, and later tools enabled us to cook and cultivate plants that would otherwise have been entirely worthless, or outright toxic, for consumption. The confusion about what constitutes an appropriate diet stems from our extraordinary adaptability.
That being said, when you look at what the human body is capable of digesting in the absence of tools, it becomes abundantly clear where our physiological roots lie. Take away a single tool – fire – and you instantly lose the ability to derive meaningful nutrition from plants (fermentation is generally insufficient), save for the odd fruit or nut that is edible in the wild. Meat is essentially the only source of food that we are capable of digesting without fire, and this is reflected in the most important aspects of our physiology: the stomach acidity of a scavenger (i.e. meat/bone eater), the small intestine of a carnivore, and the rotating shoulder of a projectile thrower (i.e. hunter of large game).
Modern humans do not digest raw plant foods well, that says nothing of hominid gut physiology pre fire.
Tool use isn't just pre modern human, it's pre human:
"Chimpanzees are sophisticated tool users with behaviours including cracking nuts with stone tools and fishing for ants or termites with sticks. These chimpanzees not only use these sticks to fish out their meal, but they in fact build their own 'tool kits' to do so, as observed in the Republic of Congo. They first use a smaller stick to break open the termite or ant mound, then use a large stick to make holes in the prey's colony, and then insert a 'fishing probe' into the hole and pull out all the termites or ants that have gathered on the stick."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tool_use_by_animals
Pre human hominids consumed a raw omnivorous diet:
"Studying dental plaque from a 1.2 million year old hominin (early human species), recovered by the Atapuerca Research Team in 2007 in Sima del Elefante in northern Spain, archaeologists extracted microfossils to find the earliest direct evidence of food eaten by early humans.
These microfossils included traces of raw animal tissue, uncooked starch granules indicating consumption of grasses, pollen grains from a species of pine, insect fragments and a possible fragment of a toothpick.
All detected fibres were uncharred, and there was also no evidence showing inhalation of microcharcoal - normally a clear indicator of proximity to fire.
The timing of the earliest use of fire for cooking is hotly contested, with some researchers arguing habitual use started around 1.8 million years ago while others suggest it was as late as 300,000-400,000 years ago."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161214212012.htm
It is very costly to maintain the level of acidity in our stomachs, and if it were not essential to human survival there would be strong selection against that trait. There are no omnivores with a stomach acidity as low as ours or anywhere close.
Why are you ignoring the quantity of stomach acid produced in humans which is far lower than that of carnivores?
The best functional definition of a carnivorous animal is one capable of maintaining health solely on animal flesh, with the means to obtain that animal flesh, and with no requirements for plant consumption. By this definition, Polar Bears, Brown Bears, and Humans are all carnivores. Polar bears may not consume starch (in their natural environment), but brown bears do and they produce salivary amylase. However, brown bears would happily live on pure animal flesh if they had sufficient access to it, as is the case with humans. Brown bears are classified as facultative carnivores (e.g. https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/70169086), so it follows that humans could also be classified as facultative carnivores, based, if nothing else, on the growing number of people who have been living happily on nothing but meat and other animal products for 5-10+ years.
A bear may choose to consume only animal products if given the choice but you've got no evidence that that would be advantageous for a bear health wise and survival and replication wise. Children if given the choice and acting on instinct alone don't choose meat only so you are making a point for humans being omnivores.
The easiest way to show that humans are not facultative carnivores is to look at the number of people that don't thrive on a carnivore diet. If we were facultative carnivores we would naturally choose to eat only meat or mostly meat and most of us would thrive in doing so.
"The human pancreas produces more amylase than protease and lipase."
Correction: on a carbohydrate rich diet low in fat and protein the human pancreas produces more amylase than protease and lipase. It’s completely context dependent. Why would it produce an abundance of amylase in the absence of starch consumption? Show me a study where people on an all-meat diet produce more amylase than protease and lipase…it doesn’t exist.
Almost every human on the planet is choosing to consume an omnivorous diet and is producing more amylase than protease and lipase. The burden of proof is on you to show that that is unnatural. You haven't done that.
"Sport is very competitive, if a carnivore diet was optimal most top athletes would already be on it."
@jiri made this fallacious argument before too. The diet that is required to win top level athletic competitions is not necessarily the same as the diet that is best for optimal health, reproduction, and longevity. Ever heard of performance enhancing drugs? Those provide a major athletic advantage but are obviously not part of a healthy lifestyle. If they were allowed to be used regularly, everyone would wind up using them just to keep up with the field. You could think of glucose as a form of performance enhancing drug: it enhances one's performance at the cost of bodily harm...keep using it long enough in large enough quantities and you are likely to wind up with a metabolic disorder (Tim Noakes has something to say about this...).
Additionally, an endurance athlete on a carb-based diet has to refuel during extended exercise…the more extended the exercise, the more refueling required, the more advantage a fat-based diet conveys. Even just 100 years ago, before modern processed carbs like “goo” packets existed, the need to refuel would be prohibitive because you’d have to carry bread or some other dried semi-processed food, and you’d have to carry water to go with it or be sure of a natural water source along the route. Try doing a self-reliant ultramarathon on a carb-based diet without carrying manufactured goo packets or drinking water…the fat-based dieter is going to win every time because they don’t need to refuel and they produce metabolic water from burning fat for energy, reducing their need for water intake. Charles Washington has spoken about running marathons on a carnivore diet without any food or water intake.
Lastly, people in the weightlifting community are winning competitions on carnivore diets, oftentimes specifically avoiding food intake for 12-24 hours before competition, which puts them into the dreaded ketosis, oh no!
In the paleolithic athletic ability determined survival and replication so it's not fallacious. The best diet for athletes is not necessarily the best diet for health and longevity but that doesn't imply anything about meat only diets. Comparing glucose to a performance enhancing drug, now that is fallacious.
You claim benefits of zero carb for athletic ability after stating that the best diet for athletic ability doesn't say anything about it being suitable for health and longevity..
There are many problems with your marathon argument. Firstly people in the paleolithic didn't run ultra marathons. Athletic ability for hunting and fighting other tribes was usually far more important for survival than the ability to run long distances. Most world champion marathon runners come from specific African tribes where running long distance was selected for, meaning it wasn't strongly selected for everywhere else. Kalahari Bushmen do practice a hunting technique of running down their prey over a long distance but they practice a variety of hunting techniques such as digging up porcupine dens. The Bushmen place great value over honey, they would certainly not choose to eat a meat only diet.
You state that weightlifters are winning competitions on carnivore diets after stating that the best diet for athletic ability doesn't say anything about it being suitable for health and longevity.. World class competitions? What have they won? What about every other sport, especially sports like rugby and wrestling that demand both strength and fitness? This is also fallacious as while I was saying athletes would choose an optimal diet for performance you are stating that specific athletes are winning competitions without knowing anything about those athletes including how they were performing before a carnivore diet.
"Most cells prefer glucose, ketosis is not the optimal metabolic state. In glycolysis most cells use glucose but fatty acids and ketones are also available."
Glycolysis is the conversion of glucose to energy. Not just most cells, ALL cells performing glycolysis are using glucose because that is what glycolysis is. How can you differentiate between cells “preferring” glucose and the body prioritizing getting excess glucose out of the bloodstream? Reference? And why would glycolysis be preferable when (1) the conversion of glucose to ATP is less efficient than converting fatty acids to ATP, (2) glucose metabolism depletes micronutrients like thiamine faster than fat metabolism, and (3) the human body stores the vast majority of its energy in the form of fat, not glucose/glycogen.
Glycolysis as a metabolic state. When one is not in ketosis. When not in ketosis most cells will use glucose, while some prefer fatty acids and ketone bodies.
On a meat only diet energy does not just come from fat metabolism. Many cells cannot even use fatty acids or ketones. Red blood cells, liver cells, certain eye cells and certain brain cells cannot use ketones or fatty acids, they depend on glucose. On a meat only diet the body depends on gluconeogenesis and produces glucose surplus to the requirements of those specific cells. On a meat only diet glycogen replenishment occurs almost entirely from gluconeogenesis. When fasting most brain cells still run on glucose and after months of keto adaption the brain still runs on 25% glucose or more.
Carnivores are much better at gluconeogenesis than us, cats thrive on lean meat, they don't need to eat fat with meat like humans eating a low carb diet do, cats can more easily replete glycogen reserves on a meat only diet. For humans it's far more advantageous in many ways to consume starch to replete glycogen reserves and it provides an advantage over carnivores relying on gluconeogenesis which is a much more inefficient process than obtaining glucose directly from food.
"We are processed cooked food eating omnivores and our dentition matches that."
No, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we are tool users that developed means for cooking. We do not require cooking to survive or thrive. Humans can and have happily survived on raw meat. Our dentition and digestive system, in combination with very basic tools like a sharp stone, are sufficient for processing raw meat. What we can’t do is digest raw plant matter efficiently…plant matter is what requires cooking, which is an argument AGAINST your beloved omnivory.
Most raw food meat only dieters fail to thrive and they end up eating a % of cooked food or abandon the diet altogether. We have been consuming cooked food for hundreds of thousands of years, it makes little sense to deny significant adaptation to it. Most raw wild game meat is tough, carnivores have suitable dentition for tearing it into chunks and swallowing it. We lack that dentition, it makes no sense to argue we are more suited for that than the cooked omnivorous diet we are so very clearly adapted to.
"The evidence points to humans always having sought out sources of sugar and starch in their environment. But even if most humans had low carbohydrate intakes in the last Ice Age it doesn't mean that that is optimal for modern humans and it certainly doesn't mean that a meat only diet is optimal."
What evidence is there prior to agriculture? From what I’ve seen, there’s no good way to quantify plant consumption from the archaeological records. There’s a huge difference between the presence of plant remnants or signs of plant consumption at archaeological sites and the amount of plants that were actually consumed. Just because there was indication of plant consumption doesn’t mean there was meaningful amounts of plant consumption. The presence of plants alone does not indicate they were sought after. Generally, isotope data is the best data we have to go by in terms of quantification of dietary components in the archaeological records, and that data places humans above base-level carnivores…in other words, we appear to have been top tier “hypercarnivores” that ate other carnivores. There is no animal with such an isotope signature that is “omnivorous”. If you haven’t listened to or read Miki Ben-Dor’s work, you might want to go brush up on the topic.
Humans have probably always been experimenting with potential sources of food in their environment, moreso later in evolutionary time when it became more difficult to acquire fat from megafauna and we became more reliant on carbohydrates. We have a unique ability to transmit knowledge across generations and therefore have more incentive to experiment with potential food sources because we can learn from others what was good and what was bad.
Prior to agriculture? Even today there are extant hunter gatherer groups in South America, Africa, Sri Lanka and Indonesia for whom agriculture has never been part of their life. Far more of the world was pre agricultural in the 1800s and anthropologists were able to study these groups.
Prior to Australian colonization "bush bread" was a major source of calories for Aboriginals. Large amounts of wild grain including wild millet were harvested throughout the year and bread was baked up to three times per week. Wildlife was everywhere, aboriginals ate most of it including snakes, lizards and grubs. Seafood including crustaceans and shellfish that could simply be gathered by hand was plentiful on the coast. Yet they still went to great effort to collect wild grain and process it. Like every other hunter gatherer group they raided wild bee hives and dealt with getting stung or falling from heights in order to obtain honey. When macadamia nuts were in season they would camp near the trees and eat mostly macadamia nuts for weeks at a time when they could have been hunting game instead. In times when more animal fat was available than could be consumed they didn't stop gathering plant foods.
When men were hunting megafauna what do you think women were doing? Anyone that didn't hunt was involved in gathering and processing plant foods.
You imply that humans instinctually are satiated if they have enough meat and animal fat in their diet but there's no evidence for this. Any child that just eats what they want to will always choose to eat sweet and starchy foods even if they can eat as much fatty meat as they want to.
"But even if most humans had low carbohydrate intakes in the last Ice Age it doesn't mean that that is optimal for modern humans and it certainly doesn't mean that a meat only diet is optimal." You ignored this point.
"A wolf is a facultative carnivore, humans are omnivores."
Nope, most data indicate that wolves are obligate carnivores (e.g. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25415597/#:~:text=Data%20on%20the%20feeding%20ecology,and%20nutrients%20can%20be%20excessive.). Coyotes and foxes are facultative carnivores though, as are humans.
You're getting hyper specific about terms that don't have well defined boundaries:
"Obligate carnivores are those that rely entirely on animal flesh to obtain their nutrients; examples of obligate carnivores are members of the cat family. Facultative carnivores are those that also eat non-animal food in addition to animal food. Note that there is no clear line that differentiates facultative carnivores from omnivores; dogs would be considered facultative carnivores."
Dogs are facultative carnivores, they descend from wolves, wolves do eat small amounts of plant foods and can get more from them than cats. I'm happy to accept that wolves could be defined as obligate carnivores though.
Humans are clear omnivores.
"Millions of humans have lived long healthy lives eating very little meat."
Little meat is not zero meat. In the absence of meat (or modern supplements), humans require other animal products like eggs or dairy. Regardless, a functional carnivore is defined by its ability to live entirely on animal foods, rather than the ability to live on minimal amounts of animal foods while eating plants. Again, domestic cats are obligate carnivores that manage to get by on shitty commercial food diets that contain a bunch of plants, and dogs are facultative carnivores that usually get fed shitty diets full of carbohydrates and manage to survive quite well. They both do much better on fully carnivorous diets though because they are carnivores.
Omnivory is not defined by whether some animal food is needed or not, some omnivores need animal food some don't.
"Inuit are an argument for humans being omnivores because there is evidence that they've made genetic adaptations to their diet such as enhanced gluconeogenesis."
Even if the Inuit do show signs of enhanced gluconeogenesis (I’d want to see some evidence to judge for myself), that would only indicate an enhanced ability to derive energy from protein in the absence of sufficient fat. The most recent humans have been forced to adopt a diet higher in carbohydrates due to a decline in large mammals on the landscape that previously provided plenty of fat for energy. Thus, it’s not surprising that you would find enhanced gluconeogenesis in populations that continued to subsist almost entirely on meat, and enhanced amylase production in populations that adopted agriculture (although more copies of an amylase gene does not equal more amylase production). This still says nothing about what happens when these disparate populations eat a 100% animal diet with sufficient fat. The fact that so many different people coming from different ancestry report thriving on a 100% animal diet with sufficient fat is strong evidence of our common roots as facultative carnivores.
"Inuit studied in the 1970s were found to have abnormally large livers, presumably to assist in this process. Their urine volumes were also high, a result of additional urea which the body uses to purge waste products from gluconeogenesis."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_cuisine
You're just speculating according to your bias. Also, gluconeogenesis is a vastly more metabolically expensive way to get glucose than just consuming starch.
"They also sought out plant foods where ever they were available: animal stomach/intestinal contents, berries, seaweed, roots/tubers and caches of seeds stored by rodents."
Again with the "sought after"...yes, they ate and still eat these things, but that doesn't mean they actively sought them over other sources of food. Do you understand the interplay between energetics, optimal foraging theory, and evolution? If humans derive a greater benefit than detriment from eating something, they are likely going to eat it, no matter how minimal the benefit. In the absence of direct access to animal food, why wouldn't you eat some berries when they are easy to come by if you can derive some (minimal) nutrition from them that outweighs the cost of foraging and digesting them. In the absence of a grocery store guaranteeing food, why wouldn't you consume the entire edible portion of the animal, including the stomach/intestinal contents, if there is a net gain in energy/nutrients (however small). Prey animals can be highly unpredictable, and the caribou that Inuit often hunt are exemplary. If you can't entirely predict prey availability, you are going to eat whatever else is available a lot of the time.
Again you're ignoring modern instinctual eaters aka children and you're ignoring data on hunter gatherers. People have a sweet tooth, people enjoy different flavours, people choose diets containing a balance of carbs, fat and protein. You're ignoring the fact that hunter gatherers ate certain foods because they understood the health benefits of doing so. You're ignoring the role different members of the tribe played in food acquisition. You're ignoring the fact that hunter gatherers normally had plenty of time and energy to go about getting the foods they were seeking, they had on average large amounts of free time, hunter gatherers were not constantly fighting for survival. You're ignoring things like how food relates to social status and how collecting something like honey or truffles might win the respect of the tribe.
"There isn't evidence they were healthier, more athletic or had more longevity than tribes in the americas living at lower latitudes."
Indigenous groups living elsewhere in North America also relied almost entirely on animal food until Europeans came and fucked everything up, so if they happened to be more capable or longer-lived than the Inuit, that’s no argument against carnivory. Need I remind you that the Inuit have lived relatively long lives in relatively good health in one of the harshest climates on earth?
There were indigenous groups farming corn and beans.. Many groups had a lot of plant foods in their diet. In the north they extracted a lot of maple syrup. None of them were eating a meat only diet. Again, you don't have evidence Inuit were healthier.
"Omnivores can have the ability to live on a highly carnivorous diet but it's usually unlikely to be optimal for them."
This statement is based on what? Your uneducated opinion of wildlife biology?
No, it's based on the fact they are omnivores and not facultative carnivores. Diets that differ from that which an animal is adapted to tend to cause problems, that is the whole crux of your argument about why humans should eat a meat only diet..
"Of course it matters that no great ape is carnivorous. You argue that omnivorous human diets are sub optimal because of a belief about what we ate historically but want to dismiss the fact that early in our evolution we almost certainly consumed an omnivorous diet for millions of years."
Polar bears are still genetically similar enough to brown bears that they can produce fertile hybrids, yet they are fully carnivorous after diverging from common ancestry only 500,000 years ago. This indicates that large functional changes can occur with minimal changes in genetics over relatively short time frames in higher order mammals. Humans diverged from chimps about 7,000,000 years ago…I’d say that’s more than enough time to have shifted from an omnivorous diet to a carnivorous one regardless of genetic similarity.
On the flipside, humans began widespread agriculture about 10,000 years ago…this is sufficient time to see low level genetic diversification among populations (e.g. a change in the frequency of amylase genes), but nowhere near enough time for human digestive systems and other physiology to have meaningfully shifted away from a pre-agricultural diet of primarily meat. If we manage not to annihilate ourselves in the near future and continue pushing plant-based diets, humans may very well end up evolving back toward an omnivorous physiology, but probably not until several hundred thousand years from now.
Bears produce their own vitamin C. Polar bears may still not be perfectly evolved for their diet, the fact their livers are so loaded with vitamin A they kill anything that eats just a piece of them may be a red flag for that. Compared with carnivores like big cats their digestive system has anatomy that has some omnivorous traits.
Humans may be able to partially adapt relatively quickly to different diets including low carbohydrate ones but that doesn't make them optimal.
From the start of the Neolithic on, much of the population may have had insufficient meat in their diet. The upper classes could chose what to eat and they chose an omnivorous diet just as their paleolithic ancestors who were not enslaved chose an omnivorous diet. Given the choice people normally choose a diet that meets their protein requirements with the balance a mix of fat and carbohydrate to provide energy.
Why are you still ignoring that fact that no human group has ever been known to be entirely carnivorous? Even the Inuit? Even nobility throughout history that could eat whatever they wanted? Even children that are given the option of what to eat?
"The evidence is that optimal vitamin C intake is higher than that from consuming a meat only diet."
Again, what evidence?! There’s no published evidence of this because there’s only a single journal publication on people adopting a modern carnivore diet and there were no Vitamin C experimental groups in that study. Additionally, in all my time listening to, watching, and reading carnivore anecdotes (I would wager at least 100 times more time spent on that than you), I have yet to see any compelling evidence that people on such a diet benefit from more Vitamin C than what they get in cooked meat.
What do you think the RDA is based on? The minimum requirement for vitamin C is 10 mg to prevent scurvy but that's not the optimal intake. Inuit ate certain foods high in vitamin C such as whale skin. There have been multiple cases of carnivore dieters getting scurvy. Lack of scurvy does not mean one is getting optimal vitamin C intake.
"Wrong, we thrive on an omnivorous diet."
You wrote that in response to my writing “We are facultative carnivores who need meat and thrive on just meat.” I never said people couldn’t thrive on “omnivorous” diets. Of course many people do, that’s what almost everybody has been eating for the past 10,000 years! However, the fact that many people thrive on an omnivorous diet does not mean that a carnivorous diet is not ideal. And it’s not like an omnivorous diet spares you from disease, lol. The longest-lived populations tend to consume more meat and fewer plants than other populations (see the various debunkings of the Blue Zones study).
Longevity is not associated with a low carbohydrate diet.
We are omnivores.
"Wrong, maybe these assumptions are your way of trying to make how biased you are less obvious. Imagine placing the burden of proof on those that do not accept a carnivore diet as the only way, the true way, the holy way."
You’ve given every indication that you believe only published literature constitutes valid evidence and that anecdotes mean nothing. When a growing number of people (10,000? 20,000? Difficult to estimate…) anecdotally report improvements on a carnivore diet, and human physiology and comparative anatomy indicate a history of carnivory, and when the only published study of people on carnivore diets indicated heath improvements, THE BURDEN IS ON THOSE THAT DO NOT ACCEPT IT to prove otherwise because they are rejecting the best available evidence in favor of conventional dogma.
"You don't know what I've personally tried. None of this adds to the strength of your argument."
Well, have you tried a carnivore diet? No? LOL I didn’t think so… This is relevant because a person’s individual experience is typically the ultimate arbiter in how they perceive reality. And in this case, because there is virtually no published science on “civilized” modern humans adopting a carnivore diet, the only way you’re going to have any weight in speaking against a carnivore diet is if you’ve tried it yourself or oversee clients that have tried it (as Judy Cho does). Your perception of the carnivore diet appears to be based in a complete lack of experience with the diet and through inappropriate extrapolation/interpretation of whatever anecdotes and published scientific literature you're looking at.
"You're confused and not saying anything here that refutes what I previously wrote. You're not citing her work, you haven't cited anything. All you are doing is making claims about her claims."
Right, I’m the one who’s confused… I clarified what constitutes an appeal to authority and demonstrated how that is not the case here and explained how we are citing Judy Cho’s work (meaning her clinical experience and written and verbal reporting on that experience, which does not have to include explicit quantification of anything). You are aware that “citations” are not limited to referencing peer-reviewed publications, and that someone’s “work” can be qualitative and not quantitative?
Example 1: a “personal communication” is used in instances where someone has not yet officially published a statement, but has agreed to serve as a professional reference for a statement appearing in someone else’s publication. As in: CIRS patients in a practice that focuses on healing via meat-only diets saw better outcomes on meat-only diets than on mixed diets (Judy Cho, pers. comm.).
Example 2: you can cite conference proceedings, which often amount to simply an Abstract of someone’s presentation at a conference. Such an abstract does not have to contain quantitative analyses to serve as a citation. As in: some people are thoroughly deluded about their ability to interpret scientific information (Timmy-the-2th, Proceedings of the International Conference on Dunning-Krugerism in Action).
"You're the one referencing studies and specific people's work here. So Judy Cho's claims are rock solid but science as a whole is so corrupt that we can't even trust basic knowledge on physiology?"
Did I ever say Judy Cho was presenting rock solid science? No. She is providing clinical evidence, which when combined with everything else that’s been published on human physiology and evolution and anthropology, and in consideration of anecdotal evidence of modern carnivore diet successes, supports the logic behind a meat-only diet. By itself, Judy Cho’s claim is nearly the weakest form of evidence you could use. But I haven’t attempted to use her claim as the foundation for any of my arguments, it is ancillary support.
You’re conflating your interpretation of what has been published on human physiology for what is human physiology. Your interpretation has been repeatedly falsified by empirical evidence.
"Do you believe that there is a multi decade conspiracy to convince people that humans produce lots of amylase when they don't? Why are you even here discussing concepts that are scientifically derived if basic physiology can't be trusted?"
I never said people don’t produce amylase or that they don’t eat starch…and you’re accusing me of creating strawman arguments?
"You keep claiming how ignorant I am about science while directly exposing your ignorance about it. You keep writing strawmen about me relying on dietary studies to make my case about humans being omnivores. Please point out where I am relying on dietary studies to make my case?"
You’re right, I am assuming you are relying on dietary and other studies to make your case. Maybe I gave you too much credit and you’re just another Dunning-Kruger YouTube know-it-all parrot stuck on repeat. I forget that people like you know so much more about science than those of us who have actually participated in academia, how silly of me… Maybe you could be so kind as cite your sources of information that are so infallible, be they anecdotes, peer-reviewed publications, or messages from god that came to you in your sleep.
Convoluted and confused lies and nonsense. If anyone wishes me to respond to anything specific written here please let me know.
@wavygravygadzooks you will not find single carnivore between top strongman, powerlifters. They all eat insane amounts of carbs as well as proteins. You need fully loaded body with glycogen to have maximum explosive power + water retention helps them as well and the best marathon runners from Africa are eating carbs all day long and of course they eat gels, fruits, energy bars, fruits during the race as well. You can't perform basically in any sport without glycogen in liver/muscles and intake of glucose to the bloodstream during the event. Show me one soccer, hockey, NFL, NBA, cyclist or whatever who is on top pro level and is on carnivore diet.. Don't try argue with Shawn Baker because he has some record on rowing machine lol.. We have no idea what he was eating or taking for that.. Carnivore diet is great. Much better than eating grass or leaves, but even better is to have some nice steak with baked potatoes and some fruit as a dessert..
This debate is clearly never going to end, hardly anybody else is going to read all this stuff, and I’m obviously not going to change your mind, so I’ll supply one last set of replies here and call it good.
-Modern humans do not digest raw plant foods well, that says nothing of hominid gut physiology pre fire.-
Our debate concerns the modern human and whether it can be defined as a facultative carnivore. The physiology of past hominids is only of interest when trying to understand where and when certain traits in modern humans originated. The modern human can easily digest raw meat due to nearly unrivaled stomach acidity. The modern human cannot derive meaningful nutrition from raw plant foods (aside from edible fruit and nuts, which are, and have been, scarce or non-existent in much of human-occupied landscapes since Homo sapiens originated prior to agriculture). There is now sufficient anecdotal evidence alone of modern humans surviving on only raw meat and/or cooked meat to clearly demonstrate that ability exists across ages, sexes, and ancestries. The scientific evidence suggests that we’ve retained this ability over millions of years, that it dates to some of our earliest ancestry after diverging from the chimpanzee lineage, and that this characteristic most likely defined the trajectory of hominids up until modern agriculture. There is no omnivorous animal with such a stomach acidity, most likely because evolutionary fitness is only improved when the cost of maintaining such a level of acidity is overcome in animals that subsist entirely or almost entirely on meat. You’re going to have to address this point head on if you want to keep arguing your position, but it looks like you don’t have a sufficient understanding of evolutionary biology to make sense of this.
-Tool use isn't just pre modern human, it's pre human.-
So what? Birds use tools too. I said humans are unique in our complete dependence on tools for survival, not that we are the only tool users. Yet again you dodged the essential details in my statements and distract from the line of logic I was using. You do this repeatedly below.
-Pre human hominids consumed a raw omnivorous diet.-
Like I said before, I never claimed that humans or pre-humans didn’t eat plants, but that doesn’t make them omnivores. Facultative carnivores do eat plants, that’s why it’s “facultative” carnivory, and that’s why you have to clearly define “carnivore”, “obligate carnivore”, “facultative carnivore”, and “omnivore”. Your entire argument rests on the willing conflation of omnivores with facultative carnivores because you will not clearly state or accept a definition of those classifications.
You’ve also ignored yet again that there is no quantification of plant material in the description of the diet of that hominid from Northern Spain. It only takes a single starch granule to leave traces of starch in the dentition…there is absolutely no quantification of how many starch granules were consumed by that individual, and therefore there is no indication how important starch was to the diet and survival of that individual, let alone the population from which it came or the species as a whole. That individual could have gotten the one and only grain of starch it ever put in its mouth stuck in its teeth; it’s unlikely, but there’s no way to prove otherwise based on the methodology used.
-Why are you ignoring the quantity of stomach acid produced in humans which is far lower than that of carnivores?-
I didn’t ignore anything, the quantity of stomach acid is completely irrelevant. Show me any shred of evidence that the quantity of stomach acid produced by an animal determines its classification as a carnivore, omnivore, or herbivore. The quantity of stomach acid produced is directly related to the volume of the stomach, the size of a meal, and the constitution of that meal. Domestic cats produce lower quantities of stomach acid than lions…does that make them any less of a carnivore? No. This is idiotic, and you have yet again avoided the meat (hehe) of the matter…there is no omnivore with stomach acid as low as ours.
-A bear may choose to consume only animal products if given the choice but you've got no evidence that that would be advantageous for a bear health wise and survival and replication wise.-
If a healthy animal chooses to consume something that is available to it in its natural environment, there is every indication that it will be advantageous for it. That is what instinct is. You keep arguing this yourself when you say that humans choose to eat sweet things when available (which I don’t deny, but which doesn’t prove that humans aren’t facultative carnivores). Additionally, in the absence of empirical evidence, there is still simple and valid logic to support my claim: fatty meat contains all the nutrition a brown bear needs, just like a human, and the bear has the physiology to capture and digest fatty meat, just like a human. It is far far far more efficient for both a bear and a human to assimilate the requisite nutrients from fatty meat than from plant matter.
Brown bears, like humans, do not appear to derive sufficient energy from protein as cats do, so if their natural prey have a ratio of protein:fat that is too high (it often is, particularly with salmon) then they will be forced to eat carbs from berries or roots to shore up their energetic needs, just like humans. Black bears, which tend to include more plant material in their diets than brown bears, have been shown to shift their diets to contain higher amounts of animal food when available, to the point where they are eating essentially the same diet as brown bears. I would wager that both black bears and brown bears would thrive on meat only diets that contained the right ratio of fat to protein, based on the above reasoning.
-Children if given the choice and acting on instinct alone don't choose meat only so you are making a point for humans being omnivores.-
Yet…one…more…time…facultative carnivores opportunistically consume plant material. They have sensory apparatus to steer them towards edible plant material and away from poisonous material because consuming some plant material is an adaptive advantage in the face of meat scarcity. A child experiments with everything around them. They put dirt and boogers and carpet and toys and animal hair in their mouths. Some of them eat metal coins…is that indication that coins are good for them?! Humans derive pleasure from sweet flavors because it reliably indicates energetic value, and outside of our modern zoo-like environment it pays to consume appropriate energy substrates whenever they are available, according to optimal foraging theory or similar concepts of energy economy, because you have no guarantee of your next real meal (i.e. animal product).
-The easiest way to show that humans are not facultative carnivores is to look at the number of people that don't thrive on a carnivore diet.-
Show me a person who doesn’t thrive on some version of a carnivore diet that isn’t either (a) physiologically deranged for any number of reasons, (b) eating organ meats, (c) eating eggs, (d) eating dairy, or (e) eating some other ill-advised combination of things, including long-term imbalances in macronutrient ratios.
-If we were facultative carnivores we would naturally choose to eat only meat or mostly meat and most of us would thrive in doing so.-
Most people who haven’t been brainwashed do include significant amounts of meat when it is available to them and comes in a form that is appetizing to them. Culture and cult-like ideologies like veganism both have extremely powerful influence over the decisions made by individuals who might other behave more rationally by eating the meat their bodies are telling them to eat (Paul Saladino loves to cite the study where vegetarians/vegans were shown pictures of meat and the parts of their brains associated with the desire to eat something showed an abundance of activity, suggesting they wanted to eat the meat). And apparently I have to repeat this yet again…FACULTATIVE CARNIVORES DO EAT PLANT MATERIAL, so when a human eats plant material, that does not indicate that they are not a facultative carnivore.
-Almost every human on the planet is choosing to consume an omnivorous diet and is producing more amylase than protease and lipase. The burden of proof is on you to show that that is unnatural. You haven't done that.-
So, now that I’ve established that the pancreas primarily secretes amylase only when the diet is primarily starch, you divert to repeating a form of the naturalistic fallacy (if something is “natural”, it must be good). Humans are inherently part of a natural system; therefore, everything humans do is “natural”. Thus, even the excess consumption of starch is completely “natural” when it arises organically from a free human’s decision, regardless of any detriment to the human body. I would never argue that even modern levels of starch or other carbohydrate consumption are “unnatural”, but I would argue that they are often sub-optimal and detrimental, with abundant indication of that all around us – exogenous carbohydrates are integral to virtually every chronic disease known to man! Diabetics are dying of “natural” causes – excess carbohydrate consumption. The burden of proof has been met by the millions of people healing from metabolic disease and other disorders (and subsequently thriving) on ketogenic and carnivore diets, you just refuse to accept that proof for some reason.
-In the paleolithic athletic ability determined survival and replication so it's not fallacious.-
Your dipshittery is in plain sight here. In the paleolithic, as in any period in the history of life, evolutionary fitness (of which successful reproduction is the primary component) is entirely determined by genetic persistence. Athletic ability is but one of many variables at play in determining genetic persistence, by way of influencing survival and reproduction. Intelligence and ingenuity are arguably much more important contributors to genetic persistence than athletic ability. Ever heard the idiom “work smarter, not harder”? Efficiency is the name of the game, and evolution is all about optimizing efficiency by balancing tradeoffs. While athletic prowess does not inherently preclude intelligence or ingenuity, these parameters tend to occur in a relatively inverted relationship. Athletic prowess tends to demand more energy via more muscle and physical activity required to achieve it. If you compare a hunter that runs its prey down with a hunter that traps its prey, the trapper tends to be more energetically efficient. Among humans, the trapper strategy requires more knowledge, ingenuity, and precision than the runner strategy. Both can be successful but, all else being equal, the greater efficiency of the trapper’s strategy is going to provide an evolutionary fitness advantage. All else is never really equal though, so ultimately the “brain vs brawn” tradeoff is going to be context dependent. Thus, your blanket statement “In the paleolithic athletic ability determined survival and replication” is unequivocally fallacious.
-Comparing glucose to a performance enhancing drug, now that is fallacious.-
How? Saying so does not make it so. That’s where all of your arguments go wrong…you say them but none of them are actually true. If (1) carbohydrate availability to humans was low in the pre-agricultural landscape in which the majority of our evolutionary adaptations occurred (and it demonstrably was), (2) modern technology has artificially enhanced the ability for any given individual to consume endless quantities of refined carbohydrates without having to do anything to obtain it except click a button on Amazon.com, (3) consumption of refined carbohydrates in quantities not achievable without modern technology results in performance enhancement, and (4) there are detrimental physiological and psychological consequences of such carbohydrate consumption, including formation of addiction...how is that not similar to a performance-enhancing drug?
-You claim benefits of zero carb for athletic ability after stating that the best diet for athletic ability doesn't say anything about it being suitable for health and longevity.-
Good lord you’re a word twister. I didn’t say “the best diet for athletic ability doesn’t say anything about it being suitable for health and longevity”. I said “The diet that is required to win top level athletic competitions is not necessarily the same as the diet that is best for optimal health, reproduction, and longevity.” They are not necessarily one and the same, and in this case they most likely ARE NOT the same.
Completely separate, and in response to your idiotic assertion that MOST athletes would be on a carnivore diet if it were optimal, I pointed out some carnivore athletes are outcompeting others on a mixed diet…in the disciplines in which there is no advantage to be gained by putting yourself on a glucose drip, which is what is required to stay ahead of athletes on a fat-based diet because carb-based athletes are going to deplete their glycogen stores even faster than fat-based athletes due to their being stuck in a carb-dependent metabolism.
Ever heard of “bonking”? I can’t tell you how many times that happened to me when I was competing on a carb-based diet. Yet again, I’m speaking from an abundance of personal experience after winning a variety of cycling and XC ski races: a carb-based athlete requires constant refueling, which would have been entirely prohibitive in modern athletic events (and even moreso in paleolithic times) prior to the advent of things like goo packs and maltodextrin. Tell me, how much experience do you have in athletic competitions using both mixed and keto/carnivore diets? None? I didn’t think so…
-There are many problems with your marathon argument.-
There’s nothing wrong with my argument, but there’s everything wrong your faulty interpretation of my argument.
-Firstly people in the paleolithic didn't run ultra marathons.-
I never said they did! I was responding to your idiotic assertion that a diet required to win (not just compete in, but win) modern athletic events had any real bearing on what constitutes an optimal diet for health, reproduction, and longevity. I was pointing out that a fat-based diet is more than sufficient for athletes not attempting to win “world class championships” in a modern, supported event in which carbohydrates offer a short-term performance advantage (like a drug, such as caffeine), which constitutes the vast majority of athletes on this planet. And I was illustrating an example in which modern humans on a fat-based diet would clearly destroy anyone on a carb-based diet.
People in the paleolithic also were not riding bicycles, lifting weights on a metal bar, cross country skiing, rowing boats, wrestling on padded mats with headgear, punching each other in the face with padded gloves while a referee in a striped shirt officiated with a timer, throwing footballs back and forth between endzones, sprinting around dead-flat manufactured oval tracks in spiked shoes, or doing any of the other modern athletic pursuits that you are using to claim benefits from carbohydrate consumption. Distance running/walking is one of the few modern activities that actually took place in pre-history, particularly as the megafauna diet out and humans were forced to adopt different hunting strategies required for smaller, faster game animals.
-Athletic ability for hunting and fighting other tribes was usually far more important for survival than the ability to run long distances.-
Maybe, but there is still no indication that a carnivore diet doesn’t provide the optimal nutrition for such circumstances. Rugby is a relatively comparable activity and Anthony Chaffee has testified that he and some of his teammates performed much better on a carnivore diet than on a mixed diet.
-Most world champion marathon runners come from specific African tribes where running long distance was selected for, meaning it wasn't strongly selected for everywhere else. Kalahari Bushmen do practice a hunting technique of running down their prey over a long distance but they practice a variety of hunting techniques such as digging up porcupine dens.-
For fuck’s sake, I never said all humans are natural champion marathoners. Even though pretty much every major population on this planet has produced successful long-distance runners, that wasn’t even the point I was making. The point was that any endurance activity (from sitting, to walking, to running, all of which are ancient human practices) is best accomplished on a fat-based metabolism when you don’t have goo packets in your pocket or a support table full of cookies and bagels and drinks every few miles.
Also, see my points above about running hunters vs trapping hunters…different strategies for different contexts. People in northern climates don’t gain an advantage over prey by attempting to run them down like people in Africa because the peak daily temperature is typically insufficient to make the prey overheat in northern climates; thus, there is little selection pressure in some climates to become distance runners for that reason. The Inuit and Yupik peoples certainly aren’t naturally built distance runners, and why would they be when they live in the arctic surrounded by a bunch of ankle-breaking tussocks?
-The Bushmen place great value over honey, they would certainly not choose to eat a meat only diet.-
Opportunism >>> Honey consumption. Facultative carnivores in the wild are opportunists that don’t typically eat just meat when other suitable foods are easily acquired (infrequently and/or in small amounts), but it doesn’t mean eating only meat isn’t optimal for them. Also, how do you know “they would certainly not choose to eat a meat only diet?” You sound pretty sure of yourself without having interviewed any Bushmen over the past several thousand years. Making shit up again are we?
-You state that weightlifters are winning competitions on carnivore diets after stating that the best diet for athletic ability doesn't say anything about it being suitable for health and longevity.. World class competitions? What have they won?-
How many times do I have to say it, I was countering YOUR stupid assertion that “if a carnivore diet was optimal most top athletes would already be on it.” I never made an argument that carnivore diets would be optimal for winning modern, supported competitions, but I did provide an example in which they just might be optimal. It doesn’t have to be “world class” to be a meaningful success. I believe the few anecdotes I’ve heard were discussing regional US competitions, although I’m confident there are plenty of examples from other countries and probably higher levels of competition.
-What about every other sport, especially sports like rugby and wrestling that demand both strength and fitness?-
Anthony Chaffee and Shawn Baker both played rugby! They are the biggest proponents of a strict carnivore diet out there. You walked into your own trap, dumbass…you clearly have hardly listened to anybody speak about their experiences on carnivore if you didn’t know that both Chaffee and Baker were rugby players.
-This is also fallacious as while I was saying athletes would choose an optimal diet for performance you are stating that specific athletes are winning competitions without knowing anything about those athletes including how they were performing before a carnivore diet.-
Ugh…your approach to arguments is to win by confusion and exhaustion. It’s very difficult to argue with an idiot who can’t maintain a line of reasoning. It’s like trying to debunk conspiracy theorists that pull crazy ideas out of their asses at a rate 100x faster than scientists can deconstruct them.
Tell me why we need to know any more or less about what carnivore athletes are doing or eating than mixed diet athletes…your comment makes no fucking sense. If you’re implying there are confounding variables involved in the successes of carnivore athletes, aren’t you forgetting that as many or more confounding variables apply to mixed diet athletes too?!
-Glycolysis as a metabolic state. When one is not in ketosis. When not in ketosis most cells will use glucose, while some prefer fatty acids and ketone bodies.-
Re-read what you just wrote. “When not in ketosis most cells will use glucose.” No shit Sherlock. What other state is there aside from glycolytic or ketotic? Except for active digestion (which should not be the primary state of the body, but winds up predominating on carb-based diets when people are eating 3+ times per day) you are going to either be glycolytic or ketotic. Therefore, if you are not in ketosis, you have to be glycolytic. But the only way your body can remain glycolytic is through the constant intake of carbs. Therefore, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy to say that carbs are the desired fuel source when you are constantly eating carbs! Fucking ridiculous.
When your blood glucose is elevated from eating carbs, the cells that can use glucose are going to use glucose because elevated blood glucose is toxic (unless you’ve also eaten fat along with the carbs, in which case the Randle Cycle is going to come into play and you’re probably going to wind up with a longer period of elevated blood glucose while your liver tries to send any excess glucose into adipose storage). When you don’t have excessive blood glucose but your cells need energy, the ones that can use fatty acids and ketones are going to use fatty acids and ketones without issue BECAUSE YOU HAVE WAY MORE ENERGY STORED AS FAT THAN GLUCOSE/GLYCOGEN. The only time this isn’t the case is when you’ve wrecked your fat cells by consuming a carb-dominated diet for years, or possibly by consuming a bunch of PUFAs.
-On a meat only diet energy does not just come from fat metabolism. Many cells cannot even use fatty acids or ketones. Red blood cells, liver cells, certain eye cells and certain brain cells cannot use ketones or fatty acids, they depend on glucose. On a meat only diet the body depends on gluconeogenesis and produces glucose surplus to the requirements of those specific cells. On a meat only diet glycogen replenishment occurs almost entirely from gluconeogenesis. When fasting most brain cells still run on glucose and after months of keto adaption the brain still runs on 25% glucose or more.-
For once, you said something accurate, and there is absolutely nothing detrimental or suboptimal about this process. It is how the human body is designed to function. The body was NOT designed to take in carbohydrates multiple times every single day. I don’t understand how you can argue that gluconeogenesis is more harmful than spiking your blood glucose multiple times every day of your life with carbs, or dealing with the toxic byproducts of fructose metabolism, when all of the evidence points to elevated blood glucose as THE underlying cause of metabolic disorders that are running rampant across the world. This is the most hilarious aspect of the modern dietary science regime…they find carbohydrates implicated in every chronic disease known to man, and yet they continue to push a carbohydrate-based diet. Imbecilic.
-Carnivores are much better at gluconeogenesis than us, cats thrive on lean meat, they don't need to eat fat with meat like humans eating a low carb diet do, cats can more easily replete glycogen reserves on a meat only diet.-
So fucking what?! WE’RE NOT CATS. We require fatty meat. Cats require raw meat, we can survive on cooked meat. Cats lick their assholes, we wipe ours with tissue. WE’RE NOT CATS.
-For humans it's far more advantageous in many ways to consume starch to replete glycogen reserves and it provides an advantage over carnivores relying on gluconeogenesis which is a much more inefficient process than obtaining glucose directly from food.-
Where is your evidence for this?! You’re making shit up AGAIN. “Far more advantageous in many ways...” HOW? Show me a study that even demonstrates a correlation between increased gluconeogenesis in humans and worse health outcomes. There is without a doubt no study that shows causation.
-Most raw food meat only dieters fail to thrive and they end up eating a % of cooked food or abandon the diet altogether.-
I don’t think there are many records of people eating entirely raw meat diets in the modern era to draw on in the first place, and I know you don’t have good evidence to back up your claim here.
-We have been consuming cooked food for hundreds of thousands of years, it makes little sense to deny significant adaptation to it.-
I never denied adaptation to cooked food! I only pointed out that we have the ability to obtain sufficient nutrition from raw meat alone thanks to our gastric system. Of course there’s a reason people usually cook their food. But you also have to wonder why so many cultures still incorporate different forms of raw meat in their diets.
-Most raw wild game meat is tough, carnivores have suitable dentition for tearing it into chunks and swallowing it. We lack that dentition, it makes no sense to argue we are more suited for that than the cooked omnivorous diet we are so very clearly adapted to.-
Seriously, this same stupid argument AGAIN? Tools tools TOOLS! We don’t need carnassials because we developed sharp-edged stones and metal knives. Go listen to Bill Schindler, his work is easily accessible even for hare brains like yourself.
-Prior to agriculture? Even today there are extant hunter gatherer groups in South America, Africa, Sri Lanka and Indonesia for whom agriculture has never been part of their life. Far more of the world was pre agricultural in the 1800s and anthropologists were able to study these groups.-
Yes! Prior to agriculture. As in, the time period when humans had abundant access to large mammals with a ton of fat on them. As in, the time period before humans were forced to take up carb consumption or go extinct. All of your examples come from a time period when most groups did not have sufficient access to large game and had to figure out how to ingest more carbs or die trying. We didn’t lose our ability to hunt or digest meat since the advent of agriculture, and we only gained minor adaptations to plant consumption during that time period, the VAST majority of which are derived from exogenous tool use…our physiology has hardly changed at all. Why is virtually nobody allergic to meat but tons of people are allergic to all manner of plant compounds? Why do plants cause people so much more gastric distress than meat? Why is the modern carnivore diet still a thing if it was so ill-conceived? Vegans stick to veganism because it’s an ideology. Carnivores stick to carnivore because it makes them feel good.
-Prior to Australian colonization "bush bread" was a major source of calories for Aboriginals. Large amounts of wild grain including wild millet were harvested throughout the year and bread was baked up to three times per week. Wildlife was everywhere, aboriginals ate most of it including snakes, lizards and grubs. Seafood including crustaceans and shellfish that could simply be gathered by hand was plentiful on the coast. Yet they still went to great effort to collect wild grain and process it. Like every other hunter gatherer group they raided wild bee hives and dealt with getting stung or falling from heights in order to obtain honey. When macadamia nuts were in season they would camp near the trees and eat mostly macadamia nuts for weeks at a time when they could have been hunting game instead. In times when more animal fat was available than could be consumed they didn't stop gathering plant foods.-
See above comments.
-When men were hunting megafauna what do you think women were doing?-
Who says women weren’t hunting megafauna too? Dumb and sexist, you’re a real charmer.
-Anyone that didn't hunt was involved in gathering and processing plant foods.-
Maybe. Or child care. Or dwelling maintenance. Or clothing development. Or processing/preserving meat. Why wouldn’t idle humans want to gain some insurance against starvation by gathering plant foods that require minimal energy to collect? Facultative carnivores in the wild eat some plant foods.
-You imply that humans instinctually are satiated if they have enough meat and animal fat in their diet but there's no evidence for this.-
Yes there is! Every person who’s ever eaten a carnivore diet! Which doesn’t include you…maybe you should try it and find out for yourself.
-Any child that just eats what they want to will always choose to eat sweet and starchy foods even if they can eat as much fatty meat as they want to.-
I won’t say there’s zero evidence for this, but I’d like to see what evidence there is. I’ve heard a number of carnivore parents describe how their children thrive on a carnivore diet and they don’t go looking for sweets. I’d like to see whether the desire for sweets/carbs is limited to cultivated and processed foods, or whether this applies to wild plants. I’m pretty sure a satiated kid is not going to want a wild tuber or wild grain, but I could imagine them eating some of the sweeter fruits. This still does not refute my point that humans are facultative carnivores that eat plant foods because, having not evolved in a modern zoo with grocery stores around every corner, they are hardwired to insure against starvation.
-"But even if most humans had low carbohydrate intakes in the last Ice Age it doesn't mean that that is optimal for modern humans and it certainly doesn't mean that a meat only diet is optimal." You ignored this point.-
I didn’t ignore it, I just deemed it unworthy of a response. And still do. There’s nothing I haven’t already written that doesn’t apply to this comment as well.
-You're getting hyper specific about terms that don't have well defined boundaries:
"Obligate carnivores are those that rely entirely on animal flesh to obtain their nutrients; examples of obligate carnivores are members of the cat family. Facultative carnivores are those that also eat non-animal food in addition to animal food. Note that there is no clear line that differentiates facultative carnivores from omnivores; dogs would be considered facultative carnivores."-
I’m not getting hyper specific, I’m using functional and established definitions whereas you had not previously provided a single definition for anything. I don’t see who authored that online text you provided or when it was written, nor are there citations in the text for the statements made. There are, however, other texts that do contain citations and known authors who specify a difference between facultative carnivores and omnivores. Even if there really were no clear distinction between the two, that doesn’t make your argument right and mine wrong: we would either both be right or both be wrong and this debate would be moot. But that’s not the case, there are functional distinctions between facultative carnivores and omnivores.
-Dogs are facultative carnivores, they descend from wolves, wolves do eat small amounts of plant foods and can get more from them than cats. I'm happy to accept that wolves could be defined as obligate carnivores though. Humans are clear omnivores.-
Cats eat grass. They’re obligate carnivores. Wolves are obligate carnivores whether you accept it or not. Humans are facultative carnivores whether you accept it or not.
-Omnivory is not defined by whether some animal food is needed or not, some omnivores need animal food some don't.-
Gooood goddddd man. I never said otherwise! I said carnivores are defined by a dependence on animal foods. And I said humans are dependent on animal foods (if not taking modern supplements). Ergo, humans are carnivores. Were you lobotomized or something?
-You're just speculating according to your bias.-
I laid out a sound logical explanation that is no more speculation than any of the bullshit you’ve been spouting according to your own bias.
-Also, gluconeogenesis is a vastly more metabolically expensive way to get glucose than just consuming starch.-
Is it though? Why don’t you show us the math on that one? Oh, you haven’t done the math? Didn’t think so…
-Again you're ignoring modern instinctual eaters aka children and you're ignoring data on hunter gatherers. People have a sweet tooth, people enjoy different flavours, people choose diets containing a balance of carbs, fat and protein. You're ignoring the fact that hunter gatherers ate certain foods because they understood the health benefits of doing so. You're ignoring the role different members of the tribe played in food acquisition. You're ignoring the fact that hunter gatherers normally had plenty of time and energy to go about getting the foods they were seeking, they had on average large amounts of free time, hunter gatherers were not constantly fighting for survival. You're ignoring things like how food relates to social status and how collecting something like honey or truffles might win the respect of the tribe.-
LOLOLOLOLOL. I’m not ignoring anything, but you’re ignoring that FACULTATIVE CARNIVORES EAT SOME PLANT FOODS. I’ve already addressed the rest of this crap elsewhere.
-There were indigenous groups farming corn and beans.. Many groups had a lot of plant foods in their diet. In the north they extracted a lot of maple syrup. None of them were eating a meat only diet. Again, you don't have evidence Inuit were healthier.-
Post-agriculture! See my other comments.
-"Omnivores can have the ability to live on a highly carnivorous diet but it's usually unlikely to be optimal for them." -This statement is based on what? Your uneducated opinion of wildlife biology-
--No, it's based on the fact they are omnivores and not facultative carnivores. Diets that differ from that which an animal is adapted to tend to cause problems, that is the whole crux of your argument about why humans should eat a meat only diet.--
In some cases, omnivores fall short of being facultative carnivores because they lack the ability to obtain sufficient animal product on which to survive. There are going to be a wide variety of physiologies and digestive capabilities among omnivores, but something like a pig is highly likely to do well on a mostly or entirely cooked meat diet if that diet is provided for it. The body of a mammal contains everything that another mammal needs to be healthy. As long as the digestive system can accommodate the amount of animal product required to meet nutritional needs, there is little reason to expect that some omnivores couldn’t eat a carefully formulated carnivorous diet supplied to them and be just as healthy or healthier than on a mixed diet. That being said, they evolved as omnivores so there’s no inherent reason to expect them to excel on a carnivore diet…I’m not sure why you even made that statement in the first place, because humans are clearly facultative carnivores and it shows in the benefits gleaned after switching from a plant-based diet to a carnivore diet.
-Bears produce their own vitamin C.-
So what? Bears are bears, humans are humans, cats are cats, dogs are dogs, we have very different adaptations to our environments. Rabbits eat their own shit to get more nutrients…does that mean they’re not well adapted to eating plants? I D I O T I C
-Polar bears may still not be perfectly evolved for their diet, the fact their livers are so loaded with vitamin A they kill anything that eats just a piece of them may be a red flag for that.-
They’re well enough adapted that they live for decades in the wild in some of the harshest conditions on earth and don’t die from Vitamin A toxicity all the time, and they manage to kill adult seals that are wicked hard to catch. It is completely naive to say that something is not “perfectly evolved” because the process of adaptive evolution never results in “perfection” as measured by humans. Natural selection can only “mold” a given set of genetic inputs to a given environment by culling genetic lineages. Because the environment is constantly changing, and because the genetic inputs are very limited to being with, the genotypes and resultant phenotypes produced via natural selection will never be a “perfect” match to their environment. Photosynthesis is hardly perfect (it’s highly inefficient), but it’s resulted in virtually all the macroscopic life you see on this planet, and humans have not managed to make it any more efficient despite plenty of efforts to do so.
If you want an example of an animal that is poorly suited to its ecological niche, it’s the giant panda. They are so poorly adapted to their wild diet of shitty vegetation that they have abysmal rates of reproduction and have been headed for extinction ever since they became vegetarians. If they had much predation pressure they’d have been wiped out a long time ago. Pandas are to brown bears what vegans are to meat-eating humans…they eke out a weak existence only in the absence of predation.
-Compared with carnivores like big cats their digestive system has anatomy that has some omnivorous traits.-
Yeah, because they came from a lineage most recently of facultative carnivores, and before that, omnivores. Just like giant pandas have carnivorous traits despite eating vegetarian diets because their ancestors were facultative carnivores. Just like humans show “omnivorous traits” despite being facultative carnivores because our distant ancestors were omnivores. Your points are never demonstrating what you think they’re demonstrating because you lack any real understanding of what you’re saying.
-Humans may be able to partially adapt relatively quickly to different diets including low carbohydrate ones but that doesn't make them optimal.-
I never argued that rapid adaptation to any diet makes it optimal. Alternatively, you cannot show that rapid adaptation, in itself, to a new diet makes that new diet sub-optimal. Regardless, humans have demonstrably been facultative carnivores eating primarily meat for millions of years, so a carnivore diet is not “new” to humans.
-From the start of the Neolithic on, much of the population may have had insufficient meat in their diet. The upper classes could chose what to eat and they chose an omnivorous diet just as their paleolithic ancestors who were not enslaved chose an omnivorous diet. Given the choice people normally choose a diet that meets their protein requirements with the balance a mix of fat and carbohydrate to provide energy.-
I’ll say it again: culture has a large role to play in what people decide to eat. The consumption of white bread was once a marker of social status, for example.
-Why are you still ignoring that fact that no human group has ever been known to be entirely carnivorous? Even the Inuit? Even nobility throughout history that could eat whatever they wanted? Even children that are given the option of what to eat?-
I’m not ignoring it. To the contrary, I’ve explained WHY that is the case among hunter-gatherers. It’s because wild animals are opportunists and will make use of the resources at their disposal. Humans and their ancestors have had the ability to digest certain plant foods going probably all the way back to our common ancestry with chimps, and it wouldn’t make sense for them not to make use of those plant resources, no matter how meager, when the net outcome is beneficial (i.e. when it’s easy to acquire and does not keep them from hunting the animal food on which they actually depend). AND I’ve explained why this occurs among children and adults in modern societies: (1) we share the same hard-wired instincts as hunter-gatherers to eat whatever is available that qualifies as food, and (2) we are subject to brainwashing whether it’s culture or cults.
Either way, FACULTATIVE CARNIVORES TYPICALLY EAT SOME PLANT FOODS. I don’t know how they lobotomized you considering how thick your skull is…
-What do you think the RDA is based on?-
LOL, seriously? The RDA is based junk science, politics, bribery. It’s based on a sick population eating terrible diets. It’s based on the same manipulative fuckery as the food pyramid. It’s a joke. It’s completely wrong. It’s essentially unattainable without supplementation. And people on carnivore diets are the ones who are finally making this absolutely clear to anyone naïve enough to think the RDA is a useful guideline.
-The minimum requirement for vitamin C is 10 mg to prevent scurvy but that's not the optimal intake. Inuit ate certain foods high in vitamin C such as whale skin. There have been multiple cases of carnivore dieters getting scurvy. Lack of scurvy does not mean one is getting optimal vitamin C intake.-
Again, how do you know people on a carnivore diet would have better health with additional Vitamin C?! There is no evidence, there wasn’t when you said it the first time and there isn’t any now. You’re just spouting speculative bullshit again. BULL SHIT
-Longevity is not associated with a low carbohydrate diet.-
Is association causation? No.
Is the lack of association indication of the opposite? No.
Is longevity associated with a higher carb diet? No.
Is every low carb diet the same? No.
Is a low carb diet the same as a carnivore diet? No.
Is there any controlled study of longevity on a carnivore diet? No.
Are you completely full of shit? Yes.
-We are omnivores.-
…and the record keeps spinning but the noise isn’t any more intelligible.
-Convoluted and confused lies and nonsense. If anyone wishes me to respond to anything specific written here please let me know.-
Yeah, that pretty much sums up all your responses. Dismissive because you lack any real understanding of biology or science in general.
Get it? Got it? Good. I don't know how someone like Bart Kay deals with this level of idiocy every day, it's exhausting. You can have the last word, I'm not going to waste another keystroke on this…you're only going to dig yourself into a deeper hole anyway.
Tim definitely wins this debate in my eyes.
The only point I will focus on is the facultative carnivore argument.
If you feed a cat the best possible vegan diet it will definitely become sick and die. Obligate Carnivore.
If you feed a dog the best possible vegan diet it will potentially live a long life, albeit a poor one. Facultative Carnivore.
Dogs generally don’t give a shit about sugar/starch and will select meat over any kind of food in any circumstance. Facultative Carnivore.
Humans love sugar/starch and will select meat over any kind of food depending on the circumstance. Omnivore.
One last point- the point about carbs and diabetes is absolute bullshit, if that were the case then Japan would have some of the highest rates of metabolic disease in the world, instead it is the opposite. Carbs add fuel to the diabetic fire, but they are certainly not the root cause and to suggest otherwise is preposterous and misleading.