Even if you are right about canines being opportunistic it is still true that in natural wild environment carnivorous have also eaten some berries and plants for millions of years
being 100% carnivorous is then unnatural
It's also true that the evidence suggests the primary and optimal diet for canines in the wild is carnivorous and that plant foods are basically last-resort foods. I would need to see counter-evidence before I would believe that 100% carnivore is unnatural for canines. They are not obligate carnivores, but to say that 100% carnivorous is therefore "unnatural" for them seems a stretch. That would seem to be like saying that eating beef and fish is unnatural if one doesn't also eat pork. Canines appear to do very well indefinitely on a carnivorous diet (and I also know some pet owners who have fed their dogs 100% carnivorous diets for many years and the dogs are apparently doing well). If you check those links I provided you'll find that the wild dog diets that were analyzed did not include any plant foods at all.
I do know quite a lot about Innuits and their diet
but they haven't lived in natural environment for humans - hence their lifespan has been shorter
homo sapiens has lived for millions of years in warm climate and fruits and plants have been present in their diet
Yes, but my question was how can we claim that a zero carb diet results in zero energy when zero-carb Inuit hunted whales? I eat some plant foods myself, so I'm not arguing against eating any plant foods, but I recognize that whale-hunting takes some energy.
Re dogs:- I believe that dogs can be fed on veg. Indeed, some extreme vegans force their dogs to eat only vegan or vegeterian meals. UIt's only cats who are obligate carnivores.
Quite right, and many of those extreme vegans use the bogus argument that if dogs can eat plant foods that they must be very good for them and therefore don't need meat. Again, I'm not arguing that dogs are obligate carnivores and I acknowledged from the start that they can eat some plant foods. That doesn't mean that plant foods are necessarily optimal for them. A dog owner once claimed to me that pancakes must be good for his dog because his dog likes them. Humans can eat and survive on the SAD diet, but that doesn't mean that SAD is optimal for humans.
Re "Paleophil":- Out of curiosity, are you also the "Paleophil" on the paleofood list?
Yes.
Re pemmican:- Well, I've never felt the need to eat pemmican. Pemmican, after all, isn't a raw food, so it's only really seen as a possibility for those raw, zero-carbers who refuse to eat any carbs at all, and who find themselves in a situation where they can't find decent equivalent raw food sources.
OK, thanks for clarifying that. So if I decide to try zero carb and don't mind eating some tallow that has been heated, it sounds like pemmican would supply energy, though it might have other negative effects you talk about.
Most RAFers, instead, find that eating amounts of raw carbs(like raw fruit), during times of meat-scarcity, is a far better alternative to eating cooked-animal-food as the latter generally gives detox-reactions(eg:- a hangover-like effect) once consumed, while eating raw fruit does no such harm(at least not to raw low-carbers).
It's interesting to see the different perspectives between the zero-carbers and 99-100% rawists. Zero-carbers tend to claim the opposite--that they get toxic reactions from eating carbs, but not necessarily from some cooked food--even if they eat mostly raw. I'll bet there have been some hum-dinger arguments over it. :-) I'm not currently doing either 100%--just learning with an open mind at this point.
.... So heated animal fats are not a solution for me re increasing physical activity, quite the opposite.
Yeah, it definitely sounds like they didn't work for you.
I'm interested in pemmican as a convenience food and more socially acceptable food than raw meat, in addition to the long storage life. If I experience the terrible effects that you did with it I won't keep eating it, but so far I haven't. My other alternative semi-Paleo convenience food is mixes of nuts and dried fruits--basically trail mix. I find nuts alone to be too dry and bland. I do well overall on trail mixes, but my dental health fares a bit worse than with jerky and pemmican, and since I've moved toward a more carnivorous diet (though I still include raw organic spring greens, berries, bananas and some other foods I seem to do well on), I've had some amazing improvements in my teeth and gums and in other ways.
Another point is that the Inuit are following diets quite unlike what the vast majority of (raw or cooked) zero-carbers are doing. The Inuit(on traditional diets), after all, eat vast amounts of seafood, raw or cooked, including plenty of aged meats and a variety of organ-meats, yet most zero-carbers don't seem to value either aged meat , let alone seafood, they just concentrate on fatty muscle-meats and water, for the most part, which is not very much like the Inuit diet of rotting whalemeat, seal-blubber etc.
OK, so what I'm getting out of this is, that if the right special foods are included then there will be sufficient energy provided by a zero-carb diet, but it may be difficult to get them in the modern societies or they may have carcinogenic or aging effects.
Also, it's been claimed by some scientists that the Inuit have specially adapted, on a genetic level, to zero-carb diets over many generations, so that they're less affected than people who start them only later in life etc.. This makes some sense if you've read about the science of "epigenetics" which has shown how smoking by a grandfather can, for instance, influence the gene-expression of their grandchildren etc.
I don't buy that one. The people who claim that tend to be vegetarians/vegans with a predetermined agenda, looking for excuses to justify it. I say to them, "Show me the evidence." Most of the Inuit are believed to have migrated to the Arctic less than 10,000 years ago--some mere centuries ago. I am familiar with epigenetics, but I haven't seen scientists use it to explain the Inuit paradox. Also, there are people right in this forum and others who have been doing near-zero-carb for years without apparent ill effect. Doesn't mean it's good for everyone, of course--just means that we don't need epigenetics to explain Inuit survival and energy on zero carb diets.
Plus, if we claim that the Inuit underwent a special adaptation to zero carb via epigenetics in under 10,000 years, then we would also have to take seriously the vegetarian/vegan claims that people from societies that have been eating grains for 10-20,000 years (the date keeps getting pushed back as roasted grains are found at older and older cooksites) and yams for far longer have also adapted via epigenetics. We can't use the argument ourselves and not allow our critics to do the same.
Thanks for the input. It's good to get different perspectives.
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The biggest problem will likely be the social turn-off factor. My girlfriend gets disgusted just from my mention of eating raw meat.
One of the interesting facts about Stone Agers is that their dental remains show very low rates of caries despite not having tooth brushes or dental floss to clean their teeth and gums with. They likely used twigs and perhaps leaves or hide rags. My own calculus builds up mainly where my teeth are malaligned, so I think proper alignment had a lot to do with it. I do notice that I have less white crud on my teeth and gums the closer to zero carb I go, my teeth are whiter, my gums less inflamed, and an exposed root is no longer painful.