I am listening / watching this and getting allot from it to give evidence based talking points against people who was try to promote the paleao fad or diss our wonderful species specific diet.


[www.youtube.com]

if this needs to go to off topic make it so. I just thought it relevant to diet more...


warmly. Diogenes of Phoenix

life vs lifelessness

Diogenez,
Its an interesting review of paleo and low carb diets. Its not really pro-raw vegan, but I only sampled a few videos. Its more anti paleo, which I guess is ok. I met a woman in a place I used to work at she was doing adkins. At the time I was purely raw vegan. She really eyed a few of my very sweet fruit dishes, and at first I wondered what? Then she mentioned that she was doing adkins. She didn't seem too thin, but I suppose that one doesn't go on a diet unless one has the desire to loose weight.

Years earlier I had a friend that went on adkins, and I remember feeling so concerned for her. She had tried so many different diets, and finally was trying a very low carb, adkins like diet. She claimed that she was very slowly loosing weight, but the main thing for her was that she felt satisfied for once. She said that pouring pure cream into her decaf coffee, and mentioning that half and half had too many carbs. She also avoid carrots because they were too sweet. I was like what the? I thought that carrots were wonderful low calorie foods.

I haven't kept in touch so I don't know the full effect or results of her dieting. She at least had sought supervision of a doctor and a nutritionist, or so she said. I really don't know what they tested her for, but probably blood pressure, cholestrol etc.

Most people would say that this is an extreme. But then again I have had people express concern with my interest in raw foods. Even my partner advocated 'moderation' and that I go to extremes.

Im very impressed by the bodybuilder Derek Tresize. I don't think hes raw vegan, but if he was I would be even more impressed.

I watched one of his commentaries about the eskimo diet. This is a prime example of paleo ideals. I did have a question about his review and critique. How much real information can be obtained from a body that is hundreds or even thousands of years old? I saw a photo of one of the remains and it looked like a pile of old shoes or something like that. How much decayed? how much may have changed in other ways while it was sitting in its environment. How much can be attributed to factors other than diet? (if they did find evidence of various diseases)

I remember when a body was found in Alaska people wanted to really study it, for various reasons. I remember that the local elders were not particularly interested in allowing scientific study, and where wanting a quiet humane burial. I myself was interested for the cultural information which might have been revealed from a careful examination.

In this discussion I am concerned on two levels. One is the basic judgemental sound of ancient eskimo people. They didn't have access to a whole lot of things during particular time periods, and particular locations.They did their best with what was available. No access to safeway, whole foods or organic markets etc... The other concern is over people trying to replicate ancient diets of people whose culture and location and time period is totally different then their own. What is the purpose that?

The 'species specific ' diet is the newest specious attempt to justify a raw food diet. I'm not arguing against the raw food diet, just saying that the ' species specific' argument doesn't hold water. At this point in time there is no species specific diet for humans any more, just specific diets for individuals.

A troop of monkeys, gorillas, or bonobos, or a heard of elephants, rhinos or whatever are homogeneous. They all get up in the morning and are active and on the move all day. If they aren't fit enough or healthy enough to keep moving and get their own food and look after their survival they die - so it's survival of the fittest. There are no genetically weak animals in the wild. All the weak ones die out so the good healthy strong genes are passed on.
No animal in the wild has an office job or stays home doing housework with someone else getting their food or looking after them.

The human race has evolved over many centuries. You don't need to be able to climb trees, man a canoe for hours or do hard physical labor for hours on end to survive. If you are born with a weak genetic body you can still live a long healthy life, and many do.

Some people have healthy strong ancestry and good genes and can eat 30 bananas in one sitting and go for a 300 hundred mile bicycle ride, or eat 30 persimmons and then do hard physical labor, but the reality of the situation is that not many of us have evolved that way. Many of us don't have the body or genetics to be able to eat, digest, assimilate and eliminate 30 bananas in one sitting so that's why we all can't do what DR or Doug Graham do. They make the mistake of taking their body and saying because it works for me it should work for everyone else, but that is not the reality of the situation.

I've tried to be as brief as possible with this post.

BJ,

Generally agree with your ideas--we continuously ride the species-based diet merry-go-round to varying dgrees of enjoyment here--but am wondering if you are familiar with Robert Sapolsky's work; he studies baboons.

No Tamukha, I haven't heard of him. Is there anything you can share with us here?

BJ,

Well, you know, just about baboon societies and how they are socially structured--very similarly to ours. Specific to this idea of species appropriate diet, he and his colleagues noted in more recent research that baboons eating human food out of dumpsters showed marked deviations from noraml socialization and health patterns than the baboons living away from humans and their processed foods, and eating a more natural, less animal protein and starch heavy diet.

Thanks for posting this video series, quite interesting!

speaking of the Eskimo diet i was listening to Cousins talk about how these people never got diabetes till after processed sugar foods and how the combo of fat and toxic sugars work together to break the pancreas

life vs lifelessness

Diogenez,

I don't think the Inuit have been studied enough, but I've always believed that they may have a unique biology. Cousen's hypothesis is therefore interesting.

it is not just for this group it goes for another few groups the same findings and it is a study and i will work to dig it up as i can

life vs lifelessness

Tamukha,
There is a possibility of unique genetic factors for some very limited populations of humans on earth. What does this mean for the majority however? Its been a bit of an unknown for me personally. I often wonder about studies where they found this fact or that fact about nutrition and health and wondered if it applied to me as well. I remember in boy scouts we measured the width of our arm reach and compared it to our back, and total height. I remember that it was supposed to be a particular ratio. Everyone had that ratio, except me. I don't know what other ways I might differ from anyone else.

I have often heard various figures for intestine length and its impact on nutrition and health. I wondered if my ratio for height and arm length was different, was I also different on the inside? I remembered meeting a woman who had a bit of a weight problem, and she mentioned that her intestines were 3 times longer than the average person. I don't know how she found that out, but she claimed she had some exams for that by doctors. I said she probably would make a great vegetarian. Of course the look back was one of silence, I had obviously said the wrong thing.

Mislu,

As far as groups like the Inuit is concerned, I have allowed for the possibility that their having lived in relative homogeneity and isolation in a consistent climate for tens of thousands of years may have caused micro-evolutionary alterations in their digestive biologies. I think this is where the idea of ancestral diet, as posited by D'Adamo, may turn out to have credence. There is a majority of people having a specific arm length to back length ratio because there are anomolies, and vice versa, if that makes sense

yup but as soon as processed food was introduced it was all down hill and their health is horrid

life vs lifelessness