I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Hadza Hunter Gatherers
Just a note about liver: Trditionally it is generally eaten in the first hours after the animal's death, by hunters, but also by farmers. Because it is sweet then, before rigor mrtis develops and the glycogen disappears. The liver you eat later is not the same liver.
As to dog eating or licking feces, I wonder if it is not the bacteria they are locking for? At one point we were taking probiotics and as soon as we went outside we were surroundered by dogs who competed to lick our hands. This had not happened before, and after stopping the probiotics did not happen again.
I love thinking about all these theories but theories only get us so far.
I've been experimenting with my diet for 40 years now, LOL. Each experiment was so grandly proposed and based on wonderful theories.
What works, works.
Maybe our ancestors would be insulted with the notion that we think that European diets were somehow less well thought-out than other diets on the planet such as the Hadza.
Lets not forget that Price noticed a sudden increase in bad outcomes in people. Before that, our society was turning out people better. My guess is that substituting other things for breast milk might have been a big part of the downfall. Of course, other changes were happening at the same time, such as NPK fertilizers, pesticides, radiation, crisco, vaccination programs, and antibiotics.
Out of my 4 grandparents, 1 died young just before TB drugs were invented. She grew up in an orphanage, so probably had a tragically bad beginning. Her husband lived to 93 and hated salads and loved red wine and was exposed to lots of EMF as an electrician and early radar guy. My other grandfather died youngish at 65 from cancer, he drove a truck for an industrial bakery. My other grandmother lived to 99 as I keep pointing out, on a lowish VA very normal, every-day diet. I wish I never veered from her diet, but I suppose that veering started even before I was old enough to choose.
So, you're arguing that we're not paleolithic humans anymore, and therefore we can't apply the same principles from pre-historic living to the modern era, yet we should still rely on our paleolithic instincts even though they are known to lead us astray in the modern environment...and you see no contradiction in that?
There is no contradiction... I've already explained the answer to this above. The instinct to protect against toxins that existed in the paleolithic environment still works against the same toxins in the modern environment.
How do you know people's aversion to liver is not related to copper status? By weight, raw liver has over 4 times as as much copper as any of the common nuts or dark chocolate, and the nuts and chocolate also have more fat, and likely more carbs, than liver, which means our desire for fat and simple carbs may be masking any distaste for the other components of the nuts and chocolate (which include a lot of defensive compounds). We're much more likely to eat something bitter (e.g. salad) when we cover it in fat (oil/cheese) and carbs (croutons, fruit, sugary dressing). Additionally, almost everyone today is raised on a plant-based diet, which has a much higher copper:zinc ratio than an animal-based diet, so it is reasonable to expect that most people attempting to eat liver today are already somewhat high in copper.
If I mix liver with fat and sugar will I enjoy it? No. If it was the copper people would still be averse to lower copper yet still high copper foods. It's not the copper.
White rice is a health-promoting food?! As someone who practically subsisted on white rice for 10 years (alongside healthy portions of meat at every meal), I can tell you it gives you a lot of energy and a lot of energy crashes, and it promotes dysbiosis and malnourishment. I practically had to have a rice IV line, I was eating every hour or two. Eating that frequently is not natural, and not healthy. Sure, having a small amount of white rice is probably fine, but you have to get the rest of your calories from somewhere... If you're going to have to eat some fat to maintain normal metabolism, you might as well max out your fat intake and only eat once or twice a day, giving your digestive and endocrine system a break and freeing you up to do other things with your time than constantly search for starch/sugar.
Again, you're completely ignoring the simple distinction I made before of subsisting on it vs including it in the diet.
Pre-historic humans were opportunists, just like every animal. They had the ability to metabolize carbs easily, and if there were some accessible, why wouldn't they eat them? But they weren't constantly accessible, and humans needed protein from animals, so they spent a lot of time hunting animals. And if you're going to spend most of your time hunting animals, then your diet is going to be primarily comprised of what's on an animal, which is protein and fat with a tiny amount of carbs.
Sounds like some argument from a low carb cookbook or something. Paleolithic humans just like modern hunter gatherers were masters of their environment and ate hundreds of different plant species. They extracted starch from fern roots, bullrushes, wild grain, wild legumes etc. Humans were eating wild grains for hundreds of thousands of years before the end of the paleolithic. They didn't ignore their sweet tooth either. Honey was gathered in considerable amounts as was sap from trees like birch and maple. The only novel food group in the neolithic was dairy products. Just as today people back then sought out a macro nutrient balanced tasty diet. Tribeswomen spent hours each day preparing plant foods even when there was plentiful meat.
While it is true that the conversion of carbs to energy is slightly more efficient than converting fat to energy, that is only a small part of the whole picture. Humans store carbs as fat because it's the only way we can carry around all the energy we need. We can use fat directly for most of our energy demands, so we don't need to convert fat to carbs. A carb-based diet leads to water retention, which means you're carrying around extra weight, which requires extra energy to move and puts additional strain on your joints.
We need fat and glucose... the blood glucose level is extremely critical, if there is no glucose eaten then protein is metabolised for it. We store both fat and glycogen. Including carbs in your diet does not lead to dysfunctional water retention, this is very ridiculous.
Natural selection pushed early humans toward specialization in hunting animals. Once that happened, the pattern kept reinforcing itself, due to increasing energetic demands of the brain and stomach. Once you become dependent on animals, it makes very little sense energetically to seek out small sources of energy (plants) that are scattered across the landscape and require lots of time to gather and digest.
Nonsense. We are clear omnivores. A mix of animal protein and fat with starch and sugar from plants is the optimal diet in terms of energy requirements. Our gut and dentition matches our preferred diet, a processed omnivorous cooked food diet. Humans have always sought out carbs since prehistory even those that had access to however much meat they wanted.
Among animals, there are essentially plant specialists (herbivores) and animal specialists (carnivores and omnivores). So-called omnivores are usually meat-eaters with varying abilities to find and digest plant material, but they typically can't survive indefinitely on plant material, whereas they could survive solely on animals if they had the ability to capture them whenever needed. Omnivores, including humans, basically have a buffer against starvation in the absence of animal food. Were it not for agriculture, there is no way we could get enough carbs to sustain our energy demands. And although there has been some adaptation to an agrarian lifestyle, the optimal diet for humans is still the pre-agriculture diet that is mostly animal (protein and fat), as evidenced by our physiology.
I've answered this above.
What exactly is the argument you're trying to make about instincts? They used to be infallible and they still are infallible? They used to be infallible but now they aren't? They are more reliable than cultural knowledge? You keep trying to counter what I say, but I'm not sure you have a cogent thesis of your own.
If I mix liver with fat and sugar will I enjoy it? No. If it was the copper people would still be averse to lower copper yet still high copper foods. It's not the copper.
Have you tried eating liver with fat and sugar? Have you tried eating fresh liver that still has glycogen in it? How do you define "high copper" and how do you know that your definition of "high" is high enough to elicit a negative response?
Again, you're completely ignoring the simple distinction I made before of subsisting on it vs including it in the diet.
I'm not ignoring anything. If you need calories, and most of them have to come from carbs or fat, then how much should come from carbs and how much from fat? As long as you eat sufficient protein, it doesn't look like there are any detriments to health by consuming all your calories in the form of saturated fat. However, there does appear to be a detriment to eating all your calories as carbs, whether it's from secondary plant compounds in whole plant foods, the constant insulin response from processed carbs that lack most secondary plant compounds, or the potential for gut dysbiosis from both secondary plant compounds and refined carbs. If your body only requires small amounts of glucose, stores most of its energy as fat, and has the potential to be harmed by too many plant foods, then how can you argue for the consumption of carbs beyond the minimum required by the body (which is easily made by gluconeogenesis in the absence of carbs). Whether you're just eating some or eating a lot, there is no critical need for carbs, but they do have the potential to harm.
In Perfect Health Diet, Paul Jaminet concludes that in an optimal diet, 20-30% of calories should come from net carbs and 50-70% should come from fat, but he also is relying heavily on dietary literature that has incorrectly vilified saturated fat for decades and promoted carbs instead.
Sounds like some argument from a low carb cookbook or something. Paleolithic humans just like modern hunter gatherers were masters of their environment and ate hundreds of different plant species. They extracted starch from fern roots, bullrushes, wild grain, wild legumes etc. Humans were eating wild grains for hundreds of thousands of years before the end of the paleolithic. They didn't ignore their sweet tooth either. Honey was gathered in considerable amounts as was sap from trees like birch and maple. The only novel food group in the neolithic was dairy products. Just as today people back then sought out a macro nutrient balanced tasty diet. Tribeswomen spent hours each day preparing plant foods even when there was plentiful meat.
No, this is science. The data show the presence of a wide variety of plant foods in the diet, but there is virtually no data that show how much were consumed. There's no accurate way to measure how much time was spent preparing plant foods in prehistoric times, and more modern tribespeople cannot be considered proxies for prehistoric people, so your statement is not valid. If you're not familiar with the work of Miki Ben-Dor, I recommend you look into it. He presents some excellent summaries on the bioenergetics of prehistoric humans.
We need fat and glucose... the blood glucose level is extremely critical, if there is no glucose eaten then protein is metabolised for it. We store both fat and glycogen. Including carbs in your diet does not lead to dysfunctional water retention, this is very ridiculous.
Making the small amount of required glucose from protein is not really a problem. I did not say dysfunctional water retention, I said water retention. A long-term ketogenic diet reduces water weight in the body long-term, does it not? Extra weight, including water weight, requires more energy to move, does it not? Extra weight impacts the joints, does it not? You can debate how significant the impacts are, but when you assess the effects over a lifetime, I would say it's potentially very significant. There's a reason distance runners (arguably a model state for Homo sapiens) are usually very light...
Nonsense. We are clear omnivores. A mix of animal protein and fat with starch and sugar from plants is the optimal diet in terms of energy requirements. Our gut and dentition matches our preferred diet, a processed omnivorous cooked food diet. Humans have always sought out carbs since prehistory even those that had access to however much meat they wanted.
Again, I would refer you to Miki Ben-Dor, especially in his latest interview with Paul Saladino. I don't think there is any data showing that prehistoric humans sought out carbs. Only that they consumed carbs. Again, the presence of something in the diet says nothing about the frequency or importance. I studied snowshoe hares for my Master's research and collected their fecal pellets to identify components of the diet. I found all kinds of crazy plants in their pellets, including spruce needles, but I know for certain that most of them comprise an insignificant amount of calories consumed because their digestive systems cannot derive enough energy from them. The presence of something in the diet does not mean it is important.
I've answered this above.
You provided a feeble response...
Tim Noakes would also be a good resource to check out. He wrote the runner's bible, The Lore of Running, in which he espoused carb consumption...then he acquired Type II diabetes as a distance runner following his own dietary advice. After doing further research, he realized his errors with carbs, did a 180 and started promoting fat consumption, and has recovered his health and running abilities since then. In Waterlogged, he touches on a lot of the same aspects of human evolution as Miki Ben-Dor.
It appears that overdosing of SAT fats makes immune system more sluggish. There is research popping from time to time @ NIH library of various diets influence this and that and in many times they are using HFD as an example of sub optimal diet, here is one of the samples: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5383418/
^ high‐fat diet [HFD]‐induced obesity [DIO]
Apart of the various self proclaimed internet health gurus views, there is no scientific evidence that HFD is actually healthy and that carbs(glucose) are evil.
@rockarolla That's a mouse study you linked to. Got any human interventional studies where they used a diet high in saturated fat that didn't simultaneously contain other things humans shouldn't be eating?
Paleomedicina has published case studies showing that their patients have resolved autoimmune conditions and cancer using a diet high in saturated fat and low in carbs/plants. Can't extrapolate much from case studies, but there is published evidence to go along with all the anecdotes. I'm pretty sure Paul Saladino has pulled up something legitimate to support the high saturated fat diet, but I don't have anything to link to, so I can't say definitively.
I'll look into human studies but generally they are pretty spare. BTW I was on a carnivore diet moderate in proteins for years and can not say it felt like some sort of magic. Lex Rooker(one of the zero carb icons) after 5 years of strict carnivore found his PSA has started to grow fast.
there is a thing that glucose is needed for cells proliferation:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6292257/
and low carb diet is also a low insulin one and it appears that insulin could be helpful by itself:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23027538/
more pro glucose stuff:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16320174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4010488/
The prevailing idea is that, in the resting state, macrophages utilize glucose at a high rate and convert 95% of it to lactate [5]. Upon polarization towards a M1 phenotype (e.g. after stimulation with LPS) glucose import via GLUT, as well as the glycolytic flux, is even further upregulated
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC96271/
Glucose has previously been shown to increase the in vitro phagocytosis of unopsonized Pseudomonas aeruginosa by freshly explanted murine peritoneal macrophages (PM) and cultivated alveolar macrophages (AM).