Free the Animal

Interview With Healthy Cooking Coach Rachel Matesz

A couple of weeks ago I was pleased to receive a comment to one of my posts and, as I often do, I visited  the commenter's website; when they have one. And what a find it was. After about three minutes of browsing, I immediately emailed Rachel to ask if she had time for an email interview to be conducted at our leisure.

I think we're really fortunate that she did. Before we get to my questions and answers, let's meet the chef.

"I teach people how to cook up healthier, more productive lives. From cooking classes to cooking parties and through cookbooks,  one-on-one coaching, magazine articles, and speaking engagements, I teach people how to improve the way they shop, cook, eat, and look at food –– so they have more energy for life!

"I am particularly skilled at helping people with special needs follow special diets, such as wheat-free, gluten-free, dairy-and/or casein-free, corn-free, grain-free, peanut-free, egg-free, or preservative-free diets. Do you have a child on the autism spectrum, with ADD or ADHD, or frequent respiratory infections? Do you have Celiac Disease, food allergies or intolerances, an autoimmune disorder, migraines, PMS, acid reflux, excess weight, or other health challenges you would like to deal with holistically?

"I wrote The Ice Dream Cookbook: Dairy-Free Ice Cream Alternatives with Gluten-Free Cookies, Compotes & Sauces (Planetary Press, October of 2008). I co-authored the award-winning book, The Garden of Eating: A Produce-Dominated Diet & Cookbook (Planetary Press, 2004) with Don Matesz. I also developed 130 recipes for two books by best-selling author Barry Sears, including Zone Meals in Seconds (HarperCollins, 2004)."

~~~

Can you tell us how you were led to a low-carb, paleo way of eating and cooking, if that's an apt description of who you are now.

I got into the paleo diet as a way to recover from more than 12 years I'd spent following various permutations of the macrobiotic diet, nearly nine of them as a vegan (dairy-free vegetarian).  I developed so many chronic nutritional deficiencies eating that way. Dissatisfied with the macrobiotic approach, my husband and I adopted a dairy-free, omnivorous whole foods diet. We experimented with a Zone-style diet and then with a hunter-gatherer (or paleo) diet. The work of Dr. Weston Price was a huge inspiration to both of us. We didn't follow a strictly low-carb paleo diet but it was a huge improvement over the a grain based diets we'd followed for years before.

Was It Worth It?

Those who follow along on Facebook and Twitter got to see a cheat meal in real time last night.

Big cheat Indian. NOT #paleo #primal. Nonetheless, delicous.

I hesitate to call it a "cheat," as we were actually attending the HS graduation party for some longtime friends of ours, originally from India. My wife had their son in her 5th grade class. So, it was all about the event and since I love the taste of Indian food, and, I just hit my target of 180, time to ease up.

But man, did I ever get nuclear heartburn. Once home and ready for bed at 11:30, I had to resort to the teaspoon of baking soda. Then, around 2am, I wake to the damn heartburn again. Awful. So, another teaspoon of baking soda...

Then, around 5:30... let's just say "lower intestines," and leave it at that.

7:30; I wake up viciously, nauseatingly hungry. The kind of hunger that makes you almost vomit.

Now, here I sit at 12:30pm, still having eaten nothing and finally feeling normal again, with normal hunger. Just took some of that leftover tri-tip outta the fridge. ...Maybe with some scrambled eggs.

About an hour later: There, recovery. Room temp leftovers: tri-tip and pork loin, accompanied by half an avocado -- all drizzled with Greek EV olive oil and sprinkled with parsley.

Paleo Diet in US News & World Report

Well, I could poke it all full of holes, but Keith already did that.

In the meantime, here's the comment I posted to the article, which at this time is awaiting moderation approval.

~~~

Paleo Doesn't Mean Just One Thing

I think Dr. Cordain is a real hero for being instrumental in helping to light the way to a more sane lifestyle.

That said, there are many variations, some going by small-p 'paleo,' LC paleo, high fat paleo, primal, ancestral, evolutionary fitness, and so on.

Why? Well, because our ancestors emerged out of Africa 50,000ish years ago and spread across the globe, and they adapted to different things, a prime example being the ability in some to digest lactose beyond weaning, which is actually a genetic mutation some 7,000ish years ago that turned off the gene that halts lactase production. So, it's reasonable to assume there are other adaptations and mutations, some subtile and some profound.

In the end, studies of primitive peoples not in contact with industrial civilization demonstrate one thing very clearly: people can live healthfully on natural diets from equator to arctic circle, and those diets can include vast differences in macronutrient content. Protein can't be more than about 30% of intake, so that leaves carbohydrate & fat. That swings wildly, being very high in many tropical places to almost nil in regions far away. For example, the Kitavans get about 70% of energy from natural carbs (starchy roots & tubers, mostly). They exhibit no "diseases of civilization." On the other extreme were the now "civilized" Inuit, getting maybe 2-3% of intake from carbs, and at times as much as 90% from fat. Again, when studied, none of our typical laundry list of diseases.

I think it's far more important to begin with a principle, which is to eat only real, whole, non-industrial foods: meat, natural fats (animal, olive, coconut), vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Then, attempt to ascertain where your ancestors most likely came from; tropical, far north, or in-between. Were they isolated from civilization for most of the time since agriculture so few adaptations to it? These can all be clues as to what might work best for you. In my case, I'm northern Euro, and what works for me is lots of meat and animal fats, plenty of vegetables, fruits episodically, and nuts. I've lost over 50 pounds, so far, corrected my own blood pressure from 160/100 to normal ranges, corrected and reversed gum disease for which I had two surgeries in 2001, and relieved myself of a couple of prescription medications, for GERD and allergies, the latter that I had been on for decades.

As documented on my blog, I now sport HDL (good) cholesterol at an astounding 135 (above 60 recommended) and triglycerides (fat in the blod) in the 40s (below 150 recommended).

Whichever style or version of paleo works best for you (and there's probably great variation) I can say this this is my style for life. At 48, I feel better, more energetic, more full of life than at any time I can remember.

A Morning Video Juxtaposition

The first video is about food, the second about conditioning. The first video is about a sustainable, delicious, easy, fun, anti-inflammatory, and gene expressing way of eating that will shed fat, promote lean mass, and get rid of that awful "carb face" most of you start getting at age 40, or even before for the most serious carb junkies. The second video is about lazy, fake, fool yourself "conditioning" that, even beyond being a scam fraud, will once again reinforce the false notion that getting in shape requires inhuman drudgery rather than fun.

Carb face? I'll demonstrate. To the left is me, 2 1/2 years ago, age 45, on a trip to Europe. And to the right, age 48, just a month or so ago in Puerto Vallara.

What I did do is replace my cauliflower brain with a real brain (watch the video) and ate mostly in a way that Methuselah has outlined, and for exactly the same reasons.

What I didn't do was pretend to work out, like the folks pretending to jump rope using the "Jump Snap" and twirling their wrists.

As one commenter pointed out, "Why not just use two hair brushes and save the money?" That video is courtesy of the folks at Windy City Crossfit. What a laughable sad state of affairs.

Oh, and by the way? I have not one single time in the last two years worked out for more than an hour...per week. In fact, I'm down to about 50 minutes per week and on my way to 40, in two 20-minute sessions.

More intensity = less time = better results.

Mainstream Recognition

I have a stack of stuff to get out and you're going to be surprised over the next day and beyond, much of which concerns the enormous growth of this blog, what I have planned, how you can take part, and how we can make a large contribution to aiding the general public on two fronts: the obesity epidemic, and, the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases that don't need to be.

However, courtesy of Ricardo Carvalho over yonder in Portugal, this can't wait.

This report concerns early life nutrition, predominantly fetal and infant nutrition, providing useful reference information and 'key messages' for healthcare professionals. It discusses the evidence-base and draws conclusions about the ways in which the patterns of early life nutrition can be improved, and the likely consequences of such improvements. This is now of critical importance in addressing the rapid increase in the incidence of so-called lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes, which are linked to overweight and obesity. In addition there is now compelling evidence for a role of early life nutrition in setting the risk of other conditions including osteoporosis, asthma, lung disease and some forms of cancer. Evidence is growing that early life nutrition can play a role in behavioural and cognitive problems in children and adolescents, and possibly even in cognitive decline and other aspects of ageing.

Then, from pages 5 and 6 of the full report (PDF).

"Humans evolved to consume a diet very different from that consumed by many people today. This makes our physiology potentially mismatched to our contemporary lifestyles, increasing the risks of ill health."

Nutritional transitions and patterns of chronic disease

Human diets have changed substantially during the course of our evolution and history. Compared with current diets, the pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer diets of our Palaeolithic ancestors were based on wild animal and plant foods and were much higher in protein and lower in carbohydrate.

The introduction of agriculture 10,000 years ago permanently changed the nature of our food supply, as plants and animals were domesticated for the first time. Further dietary change followed the Industrial Revolution, which created opportunities to process foods such as grains and cereals; and the onset of global trading introduced new foods into the UK diet. Our dietary patterns have continued to evolve to the present day – as new food products have become available and we are influenced by dietary trends occurring in other parts of the world.

Although it is argued that this rate of change in diet from Palaeolithic times has been too fast to allow the human genome to adapt, and is linked to the rising incidence of chronic diseases, many of the improvements in nutrition in the UK over the last century have had an enormous beneficial impact on mortality and public health. Diseases such as goitre or rickets, which were historically associated with social deprivation and malnutrition, are now rarely seen. Improved nutrition has therefore played a role in the dramatic increase in life expectancy. Some recent trends, however, are a cause for concern, such as the increase in the sugar and salt content of the diet. These recent dietary changes have also been accompanied by reductions in physical activity, and there is considerable concern about the consequences of the combined effects of these changes on the incidence and patterns of obesity and associated diseases."

Here's a chart provided that's not perfect (did Cordain consult?), but considering the mainstream source, this is progress.

So, there you have it folks, and this signals that it's only a matter of time until the truth prevails.

I'm doing what I'm doing because I have never had a shadow of a doubt in two respects: a paleo-like diet is optimal and produces lean, healthy bodies, and, it's a truth that can't be hidden by any authority. This is not like politics where people go out of their way to lie to themselves. This is ultimately about well being and it cannot long be suppressed.

We shall prevail.

Sugar Feeds Cancer

I've previously posted on this, one post you should definitely read. Via a comment on Art's private blog, I see even more evidence that that ingesting sugar (including too much grain and/or fruit / juice) in the presence of cancer kills people a lot faster. Read what Patrick Quillin, PHD, RD, CNS has to say.

A mouse model of human breast cancer demonstrated that tumors are sensitive to blood-glucose levels. Sixty-eight mice were injected with an aggressive strain of breast cancer, then fed diets to induce either high blood-sugar (hyperglycemia), normoglycemia or low blood-sugar (hypoglycemia). There was a dose-dependent response in which the lower the blood glucose, the greater the survival rate. After 70 days, 8 of 24 hyperglycemic mice survived compared to 16 of 24 normoglycemic and 19 of 20 hypoglycemic. This suggests that regulating sugar intake is key to slowing breast tumor growth.

In a human study, 10 healthy people were assessed for fasting blood-glucose levels and the phagocytic index of neutrophils, which measures immune-cell ability to envelop and destroy invaders such as cancer. Eating 100 g carbohydrates from glucose, sucrose, honey and orange juice all significantly decreased the capacity of neutrophils to engulf bacteria. Starch did not have this effect.

A four-year study at the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection in the Netherlands compared 111 biliary tract cancer patients with 480 controls. Cancer risk associated with the intake of sugars, independent of other energy sources, more than doubled for the cancer patients. Furthermore, an epidemiological study in 21 modern countries that keep track of morbidity and mortality (Europe, North America, Japan and others) revealed that sugar intake is a strong risk factor that contributes to higher breast cancer rates, particularly in older women.

If I had to speculate, it would be that cancer is brought about by unnatural foods in our diets (grains & vegetable oils, primarily) that generate and promote chronic inflammation and this inflammation, in-turn, causes cancer. And, once that job is complete, sugar takes right over to feed that cancer.

Wanna read something really dumb, then, continuing with Quillin?

In 1990, I called the major cancer hospitals in the country looking for some information on the crucial role of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) in cancer patients. Some 40 percent of cancer patients die from cachexia.5 Yet many starving cancer patients are offered either no nutritional support or the standard TPN solution developed for intensive care units. The solution provides 70 percent of the calories going into the bloodstream in the form of glucose. All too often, I believe, these high-glucose solutions for cachectic cancer patients do not help as much as would TPN solutions with lower levels of glucose and higher levels of amino acids and lipids. These solutions would allow the patient to build strength and would not feed the tumor.

Good job, folks. Give them intravenous nutrition, 70% of which is the primary fuel for cancer cells, a medical fact know since 1931 -- a discovery by Otto Warburg that earned him a Nobel prize in medicine.

Oh, well, even though high fat-eating gunter-gatherers don't get cancer, we certainly couldn't feed cancer patients high fat.

Finally, if you read that previous post of mine that I highlighted at the beginning of this post, then you are aware of the anecdote of a man putting his metasticized lung cancer into remission via a high-fat diet a-la Jan Kwasniewski (see here, too). Well, Dr. Quillan has another similar one.

A female patient in her 50s, with lung cancer, came to our clinic, having been given a death sentence by her Florida oncologist. She was cooperative and understood the connection between nutrition and cancer. She changed her diet considerably, leaving out 90 percent of the sugar she used to eat. She found that wheat bread and oat cereal now had their own wild sweetness, even without added sugar. With appropriately restrained medical therapy -- including high-dose radiation targeted to tumor sites and fractionated chemotherapy, a technique that distributes the normal one large weekly chemo dose into a 60-hour infusion lasting days -- a good attitude and an optimal nutrition program, she beat her terminal lung cancer. I saw her the other day, five years later and still disease-free, probably looking better than the doctor who told her there was no hope.

Now, if all this is true, and we know what other bad things sugar does -- like making you fat & diabetic -- then why in the world would you want to touch it in any significant way?

Oh, and by the way, can you guess the other thing we talk about here a lot that actually protects you should you get cancer and require chemotherepy? (hint: it starts with an 'f')

Paleo for Everyone, All the Time, for Universal Health Improvement

I noted this a few days back, here. And now Stephan-the-Great has really done a wonderful and fascinating job interpreting the whole deal. Read the whole thing, please, but here's the punchline.

On to the results. Participants, on average, saw large improvements in nearly every meaningful measure of health in just 10 days on the "paleolithic" diet. Remember, these people were supposedly healthy to begin with. Total cholesterol and LDL dropped, if you care about that. Triglycerides decreased by 35%. Fasting insulin plummeted by 68%. HOMA-IR, a measure of insulin resistance, decreased by 72%. Blood pressure decreased and blood vessel distensibility (a measure of vessel elasticity) increased. It's interesting to note that measures of glucose metabolism improved dramatically despite no change in carbohydrate intake. Some of these results were statistically significant, but not all of them. However, the authors note that:

In all these measured variables, either eight or all nine participants had identical directional responses when switched to paleolithic type diet, that is, near consistently improved status of circulatory, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism/physiology.

Translation: everyone improved. That's a very meaningful point, because even if the average improves, in many studies a certain percentage of people get worse. This study adds to the evidence that no matter what your gender or genetic background, a diet roughly consistent with our evolutionary past can bring major health benefits. Here's another way to say it: ditching certain modern foods can be immensely beneficial to health, even in people who already appear healthy. This is true regardless of whether or not one loses weight.

This solidifies my thinking along several lines:

1. It's not about weight / fat loss, primarily (these study participants were overfed to keep them from losing weight during the study).
2. It's not about carbohydrate within reason (they kept the same carb ingestion levels as before).
3. It is all about Real Food all the time. Just dump the shit. Eliminate all grains, all legumes, all sugar, all processed vegetable oils, and all products derived therefrom. Eat as much as you want of the following: natural fats (animal, olive, avocado, coconut), meat / fowl / seafood, vegetables (starchy ones within reason), fruits (focus on berries), and nuts (peanuts aren't nuts).

It is so simple, so enjoyable, you'll feel better than you can remember in your entire life, and it works 100% of the time for 100% of the people.

Shit: Don't. Eat. It.

Later: I see Dr. Eades has a post on it, too.

Paleo Trumps -- the Science

Now, when I say "Paleo," I mean Paleo-like, i.e., not necessarily low in sat-fat. That said, my good friend in Scotland, Chris Highcock, came up with something this morning.

I'd love to tell you what it is, but you're just going to have to hit that link above to find out.

In Search of the Perfect Human Diet

This looks to be excellent as well as perfectly accessible for those not tuned into a lot of reading.

That's CJ Hunt, who has taken on quite a worthwhile project. It'll save thousands of lives, at minimum. Visit the project website.

(HT: Dr. Dan)

Hunger

The longer I go down this path of paleo-like eating, the more I am convinced that hunger is the key. I tell people, now: ultimately, this is not a battle of the bulge, fat, or weight. This is a battle over hunger and ultimately, your hunger is going to win in the long run unless you simply have the rare constitution to be miserable all the time -- like many of the calorie restriction folks do.

Fortunately, there is a solution, and that solution is to eat a natural diet of plenty of meats, fish, natural fats (animal, coconut, olive), vegetables, fruits (moderation), and nuts (moderation too). I think that the reason so many Atkins dieters ultimately plateau, stall, fail and put weight back on is that they have the wrong focus: low carb. Now, a natural diet is almost always going to be low carb unless you opt to have starchy tubers play a big role in your diet. But so often I see those who focus on low carbohydrate eat way too much processed junk (just like many vegetarians, now), much of it chock full of anti-food like unfermented soy protein, soy oil, and other heavily processed and refined "vegetable" oils. And, because it's low carb, people eat in unrestricted amounts, they tend to eat a lot of favorite junk (like diet sodas and protein bars), and they are not getting the proper nutrition

What I and others have found is that over time on this sort of diet (paleo), keeping cheating to a minimum, your hunger alters radically. At this point in my progress, it's difficult to imagine failure and regression. Why? Because I simply have no hunger for crap, anymore. Yea, I might take in a slice of pizza, now and then (can't even remember the last time, however), or a burger, but I quickly realize that I'm satisfied after only a few bites. Moreover, it can have negatives effects that turn you back the other way. During the holidays, I partook of three cookies after an evening meal of real food. Where prior to that I felt wonderfully satisfied, the whatever in the cookies made me feel uncomfortably full (now an unfamiliar feeling) for a couple of hours. Yuk.

And as far as the daily paleo eating goes, I often have to motivate myself to eat, because I simply don't get hungry at "mealtimes," anymore. Some days I'm hungry by 9 am, and some, not until 1 in the afternoon. I might be hungry for dinner at 6, but sometimes not until 9 or 10, and sometimes not at all, which is a good time to take in a fast. When I say not hungry, what I mean is that I have no desire to eat anything at all. Food doesn't even occupy my thoughts in the slightest.

I also think that if you've been eating paleo for at least a few months and you haven't seen noticeabgle changes in appetite and hunger, then maybe you need to do some fasting, twice per week, 24-30 hours each. It seems counter-intuitive, and I don't know enough to say what sorts of hormonal changes might be taking place, but I think forcing hunger intermittently plays a big role in reseting your whole hunger mechanism to a more natural state.

Animal Fat, Protein & Paleo

Back when I answered some reader questions the other day, I forgot to address a couple of things. Trygve had asked:

Also read that you eat less fat now? why is that? and how much are you eating now of the different nutrients?

He also asked how to get down to 6-8% body fat, a question I'll answer in the immediate: I'll let you know when I get there.

First I should clarify that I really don't know, for sure, that I'm eating appreciably less fat. It certainly seems so (I don't count anything), but it's also the case that I no longer obsess over it. That is to say: I just increasingly go with what I have an appetite for and I don't try to single out animal fat for consumption most times. Sometimes it's a ribeye smothered in melted butter -- or a fat-dominant sauce of my own creation -- and sometimes I slightly gorge myself on fruit. There's an aspect of this that takes time -- that is: a year to two. I have a clue on that score, which I'll save for a future blog. Hint: your body fat composition; i.e., what is your own body fat made of in terms of fatty acids: saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated, and how long does it take to shift those ratios? Think about that.

I make myself laugh, sometimes. While I was never one to sit in front of a TV and munch on pure junk (well, very occasionally), I did used to munch on sunflower seeds by the pound, in shells. You see, when I was a kid, my dad ate sunflower seeds. He tossed a small handful in his mouth and shelled, ate them, and spit out the seeds one at a time -- all "see mom, no hands" style. All very impressive to a five-yr-old. In short order, I could do it too (it's all in the tongue), and that habit persisted for decades (hundreds of pounds worth). But I've never sat regularly and munched sweets, potato chips, or any of the related products. In spite of that, I ballooned to 230 pounds, at least 50 pounds overweight.

But now, if I do munch or graze over a period of hours in front of the tube -- which is less and less -- I'm just not that desirous, anymore -- it's gonna be nuts and fruit. For fruit, various grapes are my absolute favorite. It's my new candy. Cherries, sweet and in season, will certainly do too.

The question really raises a much larger issue: the conflation of adequate healthful diet and optimal healthful diet. I describe my diet as "Paleo-like," which means I generally ascribe to The Paleo Diet as espoused by Loren Cordain. However, I have a really huge problem with his stance on animal fat -- which review of his book I'll definitely get to later. Why? Because the way I eat is in fairly true "Paleo" fashion in terms of quality. But he's telling me that in term of quantity (relative macro-nutrient ratios: protein, fat, carb), I'm not eating Paleo. I'm eating too much fat: "artery clogging saturated fat." He's full of shit. To wit:

While Stephan is far too much the detached scientist and gentleman, I -- on the other hand -- suffer no such limitations. That's why Stephan would never claim to have put Cordain in short pants, but I believe he has.

The Myth of the High Protein Diet

You really owe it to yourself to get a load of that. It's really simple mathematics. We really can't eat that much protein for very long (I have tried). For nearly a week I was eating around only 1,000 calories per day, 95ish% protein and I was stuffed -- and probably nutritionally starving. My wife had the same experience.

As a result, I will never even experiment with an unsustainable diet ever again (wait until my Oprah post -- maybe tomorrow). Why?

The phrase "low-carbohydrate diet" is a no-no in some circles, because it implies that a diet is high in fat. Often, the euphemism "high-protein diet" is used to avoid the mental image of a stick of butter wrapped in bacon. It's purely a semantic game, because there is no such thing as a diet in which the majority of calories come from protein. The ability of the human body to metabolize protein ends at about 1/3 of calories (1, 2), and the long-term optimum may be lower still. Low-carbohydrate diets (yes, the ones that are highly effective for weight loss and general health) are high-fat diets. [emphasis added]

Stephan always knows how to give you the overview in the first paragraph. Let me get to my point, mix up another cocktail (not Paleo), and admonish you once more to read and grasp Stephan's -- what I consider -- inviolable deduction.

I think there's a huge conflation going on. Remember: it only takes one single observation that contradicts the hypothesis to send you back to the drawing board. I'm not going to take time at the moment to cite examples, but what we know is that we have observed healthful primitives (generally no cancer, heart disease, diabetes, auto-immune diseases, etc.) from both extremes. You have the Inuit at about 80-90% animal fat with all but about 1-2% of the balance protein, and you have -- on the other extreme -- the Kitavans and Kuna, upwards of 50-60% cabohydrate.

What's the difference? They don't eat derivative, processed crap produced by large, state-protected corporations marketed  via TEEVEE to your kids, subsidized through the euphemism of "taxation" (in the Animal world: theft; try it: you'll see what I mean).

Five minutes later: I forget to make my point about the conflation of adequate with optimal nutrition. The point is, we don't really know. I question whether it's worth really finding out. My strategy is intermittency in the relative quantitative consumption of naturally occurring fat (animal) and carbohydrate (fruits). Most vegetables are pretty irrelevant to the equation -- so eat up.

Paleo Ways

I'm probably going to review this book (The Paleo Diet, Loren Cordain) when I finish it, and that will include all the negative bits, of which there are a number. However, I've read enough that I'm convinced it's an essential book that everyone interested in optimal health ought to read.

In spite of the silly (and misguided, in my view) saturated fat-phobia (oops, there I go...), it's very valuable in view of understanding ourselves in terms of the vast and varied fossil record, i.e., human evolution in the context of diet (and most notably: how diet drove the evolution), and how utterly-woefully far we've come. A hint: fully 60% of the caloric value in the average American diet (grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugars, vegetable oils and all their derivatives) was not consumed by our primitive ancestors -- AT ALL! Not a bit. Not even one ounce. This is faint recollection (feel free to correct), but when you compare that 60% with what would have been eaten in its place by a primitive ancestor 50,000 years ago, that portion of the primitive's diet contains on the order of 300-600% more essential nutrition in terms of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, omega-3 fatty acids, etc. -- not to mention an enormous reduction in anti-nutrients and toxins, found most prominently in grains, legumes and dairy.

Another bonus to the book is understanding how moronic vegetarianism is from an evolutionary perspective -- although, thanks to the scientific wonders that brought us cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a host of other diseases of civilization, vegetarians can now survive, wherein previously, all humanoid vegetarian lines went extinct. In other words: thanks to the humanoid bone marrow and brain scavengers responsible for tripling the size of the humanoid brain and halving the size of the gut over the many millennia, vegetarians can now eat the diets of large-gut pea brains and chimpanzees, and live, even thrive. (!!!) Got it? MmmK...moving right along.... But first, don't get me wrong. It's not the choice to be vegetarian / vegan that's moronic; I respect the choice, and it's actually a good thing that they won't go extinct as they would in pre-agricultural times (our big brains require LOTS of energy -- you would have to eat the fibrous plant matter literally all day long, every day, just to survive -- if even possible). No; what's moronic is the use of science, evolutionary thinking, and the fossil and archeological record in a fraudulent effort to justify vegetarianism as our "natural diet." It's BS, and anyone who seriously thinks it's not...is a moron, deluded, or a scamster. Frankly. All legitimate, peer reviewed archeological evidence -- every shred -- contradicts that notion and provides overwhelming evidence that humans were omnivores -- oftentimes bordering on near total carnivory.

A fairy long excerpt, but it's provided to illustrate the importance of getting and reading the book so as to understand how vastly inferior your diet likely is, compared to people who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

At first, humans were not terribly good hunters. They started out as scavengers who trailed behind predators such as lions and ate the leftovers remaining on abandoned carcasses. The pickings were slim; ravenous lions don't leave much behind, except for bones. But with their handy tools (stone anvils and hammers), our early ancestors could crack the skulls and bones and still find something to eat -- brains and fatty marrow.

Marrow fat was the main concentrated energy source that enabled the early human gut to shrink, while the scavenged brains contained a specific type of omega 3 fat called "docosahexaenoic acid" (DHA), which allowed the brain to expand. Docosahexaenoic acid is the building block of our brain tissue.

Without a dietary source of DHA, the huge expansion of our brain capacity could never have happened. Without meat, marrow, and brains, our human ancestors never would have been able to walk out of tropical Africa and colonize the colder areas of the world. If these people had depended on finding plant foods in cold Europe, they would have starved. In a landmark series of studies, my colleague Mike Richards, at Oxford University, studied the bones of Paleolithic people who lived in England some 12,000 years ago. Their diet, Richards confirmed, was almost identical to that of top-level carnivores, such as wolves and bears.

[...]

The archaeological record clearly shows that whenever and wherever ancient humans sowed seeds (and replaced the old animal-dominated diets), part of the harvest included health problems. One physical ramification of' the new diet was immediately obvious: Early farmers were markedly shorter than their ancestors. In Turkey and Greece, for example, preagricultural men stood 5 feet 9 inches tall and women 5 feet 5 inches. By 3000 the average man had shrunk to 5 feet 3 inches and the average woman to 5 feet. But getting shorter -- not in itself a health problem -- was the least of the changes in these early farmers. Studies of their bones and teeth have revealed that these people were basically a mess: They had more infectious diseases than their ancestors, more childhood mortality, and shorter life spans in general.

They also had more osteoporosis, rickets, and other bone mineral disorders, thanks to the cereal-based diets. For the first time, humans were plagued with vitamin and mineral-deficiency diseases -- scurvy, beriberi, pellagra, vitamin A and zinc deficiencies, and iron-deficiency anemia. Instead of the well-formed, strong teeth their ancestors had, there were now cavities. Their jaws, which were formerly square and roomy, were suddenly too small for their teeth, which overlapped each other.

And here's what 10,000+ year old wild human hunters tend to look like. Fat soluble vitamins ADEK2 were sufficient in mothers to ensure wide dental bridges (if you had to have teeth straightened, as did I -- including removing teeth to make room -- chances are your mother was severely fat-soluble vitamin deficient). I like how Stephan at Whole Health Source put it:

Both the Kiffians and the Tenerians had excellent dental development and health. Take a look at some of the pictures. Those are the teeth of a wild Homo sapiens. Straight, free of decay and with plenty of room for the wisdom teeth. They must have had good dentists.

Ha! "good dentists."

Learn more about these amazing wild animals here and here.

The Paleo Diet

I'm finally getting around to reading The Paleo Diet, by Loren Cordain. I'm doing so on my new Amazon Kindle, which I love. I've had the Sony Reader (500, then 505) for some time, but though it's wonderful quality hardware, it requires software to interface (a kinda iTunes-like thing) and Sony simply refuses to make its Connect software compatible with the Mac (I switched about a year ago, never to look back). So, Sony Corporation: YOU'RE FIRED! I've been purchasing their high-quality products for as long as I can remember, but will never give them another dime for anything if I can help it.

So anyway, one cool thing about the Kindle is that you can clip excerpts and either have the Kindle email 'em to you via the cellular network for a small charge, or, just use USB. Accordingly, I've got an except from the book's intro.

I have examined thousands of early-nineteenth and twentieth-century photographs of hunter-gatherers. They invariably show indigenous people to be lean, muscular, and fit. The few medical studies of hunter-gatherers who managed to survive into the twentieth century also confirm earlier written accounts by explorers and frontiersmen. No matter where they lived -- in the polar regions of Canada, the deserts of Australia, or the rain forests of Brazil -- the medical records were identical. These people were free from signs and symptoms of the chronic diseases that currently plague us. And they were lean and physically fit. The medical evidence shows that their body fat, aerobic fitness, blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin metabolism were always superior to those of' the average modern couch potato. [...]

Amazingly, scientific studies of Greenland Eskimos by Drs. Hans Bang and Dorn Dyerberg from Aalborg Hospital in Aalborg, Denmark, showed that despite a diet containing over 60 percent animal food, not one death from heart disease-or even a single heart attack-occurred in 2,600 Eskimos from 1968 to 1978. This death rate from heart disease is one of the lowest ever reported in the medical literature.

These are the same sorts of things I've been reading in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, as well as Good Calories, Bad Calories. The failure of the "health authorities" to integrate this information, combined with the murderous advice to "cut the fat and eat more grains" boggles the mind. And here's where it has gotten us.

You Don't Have to Believe in Evolution

...And yet you can still benefit tremendously, just as we benefit every day from Newtons "Laws," even though they have been found to be not precisely true in all circumstances.

I never make any bones about the fact that I don't believe in any supreme being, and I'm as convinced of the overwhelming evidence in support for evolution as I am that the universe is heliocentric and not geocentric, as was believed by virtually everyone until only about 1,000 years ago.

And evolution is observed to happen all around us. Stephan experiences it every day in the lab.

What many people don't realize is that the facts point overwhelmingly toward evolution. American teachers have been tying their hands with the same wimpy anecdotes for decades. Evolution is not just about the fossil record and a few moths somewhere; it's a dynamic process that's happening around us at all times.

I'm constantly dealing with it in the lab. For example, sometimes by chance I'll create a mutant strain of yeast that grows slowly. I'll streak it out on a petri dish. Five days later, one out of twenty of the colonies growing on that plate will have mutated into faster-growing strains. These mutations are called 'suppressors' because they suppress slow growth. If I then take all the yeast on that plate and put them in liquid medium, by the next day, 99% of the cells will be of the faster-growing variety. The slow ones get left in the dust. That's natural selection.

Another example is antibiotic resistant bacteria. All you need is a selective pressure, in this case an antibiotic, and over time if an organism survives it will rise to the occasion. Bacteria are frighteningly rapid at adapting because there is a huge population of them and they have an extremely short generation time. But the same process applies to all organisms, usually on a longer timescale.

Then, of course, you have all manner of fruits, vegetables and livestock that have been intelligently selected (as opposed to naturally). And how about dogs and cats? It used to be thought that dogs, for instance, were selectively bread from wolves 10-15,000 years ago (inbreeding eventually causes the vast array of breeds within species). However, the evidence now points to a quasi-natural selection with the advent of human agriculture. Dogs are the result of some wolves self-selecting to follow humans and subsist on their garbage dumps (as well as the vermin those dumps attracted). Several generations of no longer needing their keen hunting skills, we had relatively docile dogs that make for excellent human companions. That's quick evolution.

That said, it is not my purpose to convince anyone, or even to belabor the whole point. Frankly, it doesn't matter. What I provide is a whole range of integrated living techniques that just happen to logically conform to an evolutionary model. It works. You can benefit even while you maintain your faith in alternate origins. What would be helpful, however, it to actually put in the effort to understand natural selection and the logic behind it. That will help you in your quest for vibrant health. If that leads, ultimately, to implicit contradictions in your thinking, it's your problem to deal with. Nonetheless, what I provide is a model based on evolution, and it really works.

Now with that introduction, let's take a look at how it shakes out in terms of human diet. Loren Cordian recently gave a lecture at Colorado State University on the Paleo diet. It's in seven parts on YouTube, each about 10 minutes. I'll link them all up for you, so feel free to mark this post and come back at time permits to review.

One disclaimer is that I don't buy everything he says. While I concur that things like dairy, high fat meats, and franks & sauages weren't available in the diets of primitive man, to the extent they are minimally processed and include only animal products and by-products, I'm fine with them in my own diet now and then.

Here's part one, embeded, to wet your apetite.

And here are the other parts.

PART II

PART III

PART IV

PART V

PART VI

PART VII