Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: PaleoPhil on October 05, 2009, 04:31:55 am
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One of the common arguments used against RPDs and Paleo diets in general is the the idea that few or no Stone Agers lived beyond the age of 35, 33, or even 30, and that their average lifespans increased when they adopted agriculture. This is an old canard, refuted by scientists and explorers long ago. An average lifespan of 33 years doesn't mean that nearly everyone died around that age, it means that many died in infancy and a significant proportion lived well beyond 33. According to multiple sources (see below for some), if you survived childbirth, infectious disease, accidents, wild animals and battles, you likely had a good chance of surviving well beyond 33, with some reaching their 80s and beyond.
The average lifespans of hunter-gatherers actually decreased, not increased, when they adopted Neolithic farming. Newer techniques of determining age from bones may further raise the average lifespan estimates for Stone Agers (Ward Nicholson, Longevity & health in ancient Paleolithic vs. Neolithic peoples: Not what you may have been told, http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml).
The later increases in life expectancy during the industrial era were mainly due to public health achievements such as better sanitation, safer food, effective systems of quarantine, immunizations and improved childbirth survival rates. The crucial fact to focus on is that the bones of those Stone Agers who did survive into middle and old age are generally free of evidence of the chronic diseases of civilization.
The lifespan fallacy is commonly believed to have arisen from the loose interpretation of some remarks in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, in which Hobbes was actually inspired by the war-shortened lives of Englishman during the Civil War of the 17th century, not Stone Agers: “the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short" (Leviathan, 1651, ch. 13).
Stephan Guyenet, PhD researched the issue (Mortality and Lifespan of the Inuit, Saturday, July 5, 2008, http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-lifespan-of-inuit.html) and found that if one excludes infant mortality the first-contact Inuit “probably had a similar life expectancy” to the Russians that first recorded their health statistics, which is amazing given that the Russians had already infected them with contagious diseases to which they were not resistant.
This one should erase nearly any doubts: Dr. Michael Eades reviewed the Cassidy Study of nutrition and health in agriculturalists vs. hunter-gatherers that shows that the life expectancies and infant mortality of hunter-gatherers were superior to those of agriculturalists when major non-dietary variables were constant (Nutrition and health in agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers, by Michael Eades, MD, 22 April 2009, 2:21 Uhr, http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/nutrition-and-health-in-agriculturalists-and-hunter-gatherers/#more-2877)
See also:
> "Paleo Longevity Redux, Letter to the Editor", By Jeff D. Leach, Public Health Nutrition: 10(11), 1336–1337, http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=1363376
> Loren Cordain, PhD, “FAQs,” http://thepaleodiet.com/faqs/
I have more info, including more on the history of this fallacy, if anyone's interested.
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Another pint, bone remains of paleolithic people resemble today's 30 year olds, hence people thought paleo people died at 30, yet they actually died at old age with the bones looking like those of today's 30 year olds because of lack of degeneration. The idea was discussed here before.
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Another pint, bone remains of paleolithic people resemble today's 30 year olds, hence people thought paleo people died at 30, yet they actually died at old age with the bones looking like those of today's 30 year olds because of lack of degeneration. The idea was discussed here before.
Yeah, I think that's what this excerpt I have in my files is getting at:
> Longevity & health in ancient Paleolithic vs. Neolithic peoples: Not what you may have been told, by Ward Nicholson, http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml: <<Special update as of April 1999: LATE-BREAKING ADVANCES IN PALEOPATHOLOGICAL AGE-ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES have suggested that studies based on earlier techniques (as in the paper discussed here) may underestimate the age at death of older individuals and overestimate that of younger individuals. It's possible the range of estimation errors involved could be substantial. Thus, the profile of age-distribution results in compilation studies like the one discussed below may be flattened or compressed with respect to "true age.">>
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I agree with general principle of this post.
And I'd like to add that even if a paleo diet resulted in slightly lower life expectancy,
I believe that life would be of far higher quality.
I think most people would rather live to 75 and be free of cavities, not need braces,
never break a bone or have a hip replacement or have to inject insulin than
live to 85 and have to deal with all these problems of physical degeneration.
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The big problem is that the "Nasty brutish and short" theory is far more solid than the whole "Noble Savage" nonsense. For example, it's true that mean lifespans were shorter during the early Neolithic but there is the fact that Neolithic communities had to endure much higher levels of communicable disease inapplicable to diet, simply because they lived in much more populated communities and were therefore more subject to infection via plagues/epidemics. As we've seen throughout history , as soon as native tribes were exposed to diseases from settled communities, their average lifespan dropped considerably, and these events happened long before they took on eating the foods of those settled societies - more to the point, their native diets did NOT protect them from such epidemics.
And as for the claim that the skeletons of 80 year-olds etc. could compare to the skeletons of people in their 30s on a different diet, that's just absurd. There's nothing wrong with notions of stronger skeletons of Palaeo peoples but we shouldn't make claims re impossibly perfect bone-health or near-immortality(as one other poster has claimed, elsewhere).
I have heard a vague claim that a few people might have survived to old age in Palaeo societies due to being supported by their fellows, but this seems to apply more to people with important roles(eg:- shamans).
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Why is it a choice between one obviously wrong choice and another obviously wrong choice? Nasty, Brutish and Short versus Noble Savage is a choice between a dragon and a unicorn. Both are obviously myths.
Here's (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf) a study of modern hunter gathers and their modal age of death. You can see that most of those who survive childhood live into their 60s and 70s. They lag the modern developed world by 5-10 years depending on the comparison made.
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Why is it a choice between one obviously wrong choice and another obviously wrong choice? Nasty, Brutish and Short versus Noble Savage is a choice between a dragon and a unicorn. Both are obviously myths.
Here's (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf) a study of modern hunter gathers and their modal age of death. You can see that most of those who survive childhood live into their 60s and 70s. They lag the modern developed world by 5-10 years depending on the comparison made.
I agree heartily. Good link.
Now, since current completly dominant ideology is the "Nasty, Brutish and Short" one it makes some sense to contend a little bit for the opposite extreme "Noble Savage" myth. For it is quite clear IMO that Tyler's statement would come by far closer to the truth if it were formulated the other way around, namely:
The "Noble Savage" theory is globally far more solid than the whole "Nasty brutish and short" nonsense.
Even if modern man's avg lifespan is artificially made higher by the massive use of drugs, medically assisted pregnancy and childbirth etc.
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The only real evidence AFAIK is the bones of paleolithic man, and all they show is no aging, and a line in the Sumerian creation epic translated by Z. Sitchin, which shows that the lifespan of a more ancient people was 250,000 years.
Everything else is drivel, fantasy, etc. and so forth.
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Why is it a choice between one obviously wrong choice and another obviously wrong choice? Nasty, Brutish and Short versus Noble Savage is a choice between a dragon and a unicorn. Both are obviously myths.
Here's (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf) a study of modern hunter gathers and their modal age of death. You can see that most of those who survive childhood live into their 60s and 70s. They lag the modern developed world by 5-10 years depending on the comparison made.
I agree that neither side is the whole story and native tribes' lives could neither have been full of 100% misery or full of 100% rapturous joy, admittedly, not being prone to obesity etc. would have helped. That said, even that study cited admits that statistics are definitely vague for at least several tribes(and possibly for all others as well - for example, longevity myths are very common for more primitive regions/tribes in the world, where birth-certificates and other records etc. were unheard of, allowing people with the same given name as their father to outrageously claim they were 120 when they were only 70 etc.). The Caucasus is one example from Stalinist times and there were similiar dodgy longevity claims for the Hunza and other tribes.
And, of course, any comparison between modern hunter-gatherers and Palaeo tribespeople is fraught with danger as Palaeo peoples lived in different environments/conditions. Unfortunately,Fallon of the WAPF has deliberately made that mistake by falsely claiming that Palaeo peoples practised more Neolithic tribal habits such as salt, among other issues.
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Now, since current completly dominant ideology is the "Nasty, Brutish and Short" one it makes some sense to contend a little bit for the opposite extreme "Noble Savage" myth. For it is quite clear IMO that Tyler's statement would come by far closer to the truth if it were formulated the other way around, namely:
The "Noble Savage" theory is globally far more solid than the whole "Nasty brutish and short" nonsense.
Unfortunately for you, Weston-Price and Fallon have made so many outrageously exaggerated or false claims re the supposed perfect health of native tribes that no scientist takes them seriously any more re the "Noble Savage" theory. But I've already done enough posts detailing Price's flaws.
Also, just because something is non-mainstream doesn't mean we should adopt the non-mainstream approach simply because our diet is a little radical(to put it mildly!). What I mean is that a lot of people got discouraged in the past because they just came across a multitude of positive testimonials re raw but knew of no mainstream stuff supporting those claims. By finding scientific mainstream studies which showed that claims re toxins in cooked foods did indeed exist, I was able to provide more socially acceptable info.
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I agree with general principle of this post.
And I'd like to add that even if a paleo diet resulted in slightly lower life expectancy,
I believe that life would be of far higher quality.
I think most people would rather live to 75 and be free of cavities, not need braces,
never break a bone or have a hip replacement or have to inject insulin than
live to 85 and have to deal with all these problems of physical degeneration.
I couldn't have said it better myself, Aariel.
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Unfortunately for you, Weston-Peice and Fallon have made so many outrageously exaggerated or false claims re the supposed perfect health of native tribes that no one takes them seriously any more re the "Noble Savage" theory. But I've already done enough posts detailing Price's flaws.
Also, just because something is non-mainstream doesn't mean we should adopt the non-mainstream approach simply because our diet is a little radical(to put it mildly!). What I mean is that a lot of people got discouraged in the past because they just came across a multitude of positive testimonials re raw but knew of no mainstream stuff supporting those claims. By finding scientific mainstream studies which showed that claims re toxins in cooked foods did indeed exist, I was able to provide more socially acceptable info.
Science independently of Weston Price or Sally Fallon has already clearly destroyed the " Nasty, Brutish and Short " ideology. Period.
I certainly disagree with WP on many issues but most of your posts about WP's flaws did'nt convince me and i'am apparently not the only one. So i suggest: let's just forget WP if you don't like him. I had actually exactly the same opinion before i ever heard anything about WP. Mainly just because abandoning the neolithic cooked foods had so a tremendous effect on my health and life quality, the really important things, as pointed out by aariel. A good deal of experimental reality is always the best antidote to mythologies or ideologies.
Of course non-mainstream ideas may be wrong and even almost always are. Yet all major scientific breakthroughs WERE initially non-mainstream and the relevant ideas always had a hard time before they were accepted and became eventually mainstream. The question of cooked food toxins being shown sufficiently harmful to abandon cooking is not yet mainstream. Works done on this subject are restricted to a very small number of groups such as Helen Vlassara's one and are quite recent, though some older works occasionnally point to the problem. Moreover the results are usually challenged by other "food scientists" pointing out the advantages of cooking such as destruction of parasites or increase in "bioavailability" of nutriments such as lycopene in tomatoes, destruction of antinutrients etc etc. Present mainstream ideology is at best that cooking is a "necessary evil".
Yet i agree with you that the above mentionned studies are wellcome. Now, if he wants to but cultural bias usually prevents him to do it, every chemist or physicist (i am one) can tell immediately from a theoretical point of view that the fragile biomolecules must be very strongly affected by heat and tasting raw and cooked meat for instance confirms that without any laboratory tests. And also one can convince oneself that the overall effect on health must be by far negative. Fortunately Burger (and others non-mainstream thinkers) made this reasonning 40 years ago long before recent works and this saved my life. I could't wait until mainstream science, maybe some day in the future, will change his paradigm.
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Science independently of Weston Price or Sally Fallon has already clearly destroyed the " Nasty, Brutish and Short " ideology. Period.
Thanks for clearing that up.
I personally think life expectancy isn't much of a good indication of health. It's quite a mystery to me, looking at various people and seeing when they die or how long they live. My grandfather is 90, barely eats anything, and what he does eat is milkshakes, Chinese food (noodles), pasteurized juices and fruits. NO MEAT. He cannot eat hardly any meat because he has this problem with his throat closing up on him. He is stressed out and angry often because he owns a business and still goes there every day to run it, but isn't a good business owner. He gets no exercise and hasn't for decades. He gets almost no sun, and as far as fresh food I think it's almost nothing, occasionally some fresh fruit like grapefruit. Sometimes my mom makes him cooked eggs (grocery store eggs, nothing to write home about) and toast.
What I'm saying is that he is doing everything wrong in terms of what most on this forum, including most in mainstream health, thinks is wrong for longevity. Yet he's still alive, and actually gets up every day (7 days a week) to do stuff. Meanwhile plenty of people on paleo diets, or raw paleo diets (tribes people) die way earlier.
In fact I have yet to meet an old person who knows anything about paleo nutrition in my life. I remember one old person who talks about healthy diet, but her idea of that is stuff like diet soda. She's in her 80's.
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Thanks for clearing that up.
I personally think life expectancy isn't much of a good indication of health. It's quite a mystery to me, looking at various people and seeing when they die or how long they live. My grandfather is 90, barely eats anything, and what he does eat is milkshakes, Chinese food (noodles), pasteurized juices and fruits. NO MEAT. He cannot eat hardly any meat because he has this problem with his throat closing up on him. He is stressed out and angry often because he owns a business and still goes there every day to run it, but isn't a good business owner. He gets no exercise and hasn't for decades. He gets almost no sun, and as far as fresh food I think it's almost nothing, occasionally some fresh fruit like grapefruit. Sometimes my mom makes him cooked eggs (grocery store eggs, nothing to write home about) and toast.
What I'm saying is that he is doing everything wrong in terms of what most on this forum, including most in mainstream health, thinks is wrong for longevity. Yet he's still alive, and actually gets up every day (7 days a week) to do stuff. Meanwhile plenty of people on paleo diets, or raw paleo diets (tribes people) die way earlier.
In fact I have yet to meet an old person who knows anything about paleo nutrition in my life. I remember one old person who talks about healthy diet, but her idea of that is stuff like diet soda. She's in her 80's.
Yeah it's like the cliche about the 100 year old woman. When asked why she lived so long, she says it's the cigar and shot of whiskey she has everyday. In general, individual differences are greater than groups differences. So I think longevity varies greatly from one person to another. Also keep in mind that life expectancy is controlled by some odd factors, like infant mortality. Japan has one of the highest group life expectancies, but when you look at the data most of the effect is because they have one of the lowest infant mortality rates.
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Well, I would certainly disagree with the notion that science has proved anything substantial re the Noble Savage theory. Indeed, the Noble Savage theory was already debunked given multiple critiques of Rousseau, well before Weston-Price came onto the scene centuries later - which is one of the many reasons he is largely ignored by the scientific mainstream.I realise, naturally, that many RVAFers venerate Price like some sort of largely infallible shaman and Price's unorthodox anti-mainstream approach is highly seductive and seemingly rebellious to a group of people who've generally been somewhat dismayed by the results of the traditional Western medical approach. But I do think we should subject Price to the same level of wary scrutiny as we do Aajonus.
Re studies done on toxins in cooked foods:- That's where you're mistaken. When multiple journals such as New Scientist and major online websites(such as the BBC), routinely report major studies which confirm that well-cooked diets are unhealthy being full of toxins, then one can safely state that toxins in cooked foods is now a mainstream idea. The best that pro-cooked-food-advocates can claim is the bacteria/parasite issue and that is being increasingly viewed with skepticism as the Hygiene Hypothesis theory is increasingly confirmed. The claim re cooking improving digestion is only solid as regards the issue of non-palaeo foods like grains(with plenty of studies confirming the negative effects of non-palaeo foods) and quickly falls apart when one checks studies confirming that raw meat is better digested than cooked etc.
The way I see it, science always gets things right in the end, by trial and error, so it's safer to trust in it than in Shangri-La-like mythical accounts of perfect health in native tribes derived from Price et al.
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Re studies done on toxins in cooked foods:- That's where you're mistaken. When multiple journals such as New Scientist and major online websites(such as the BBC), routinely report major studies which confirm that well-cooked diets are unhealthy being full of toxins, then one can safely state that toxins in cooked foods is now a mainstream idea.
Toxins in "overcooked" food is a mainstream idea, yes. But not yet the idea that homo sapiens should abandon cooking altogether. I wish i were mistaken but i don't think mainstream science is about to demonstrate that raw is a key concept in nutrition. A few years ago, i had some e-mails exchanged with Vlassara where i suggested her to compare rodents on a really natural raw diet and on the usual commercially available processed chows rather than on more or less heated chows (as her group usually does to change the amount of ingested dietary AGEs) since one might expect even much more striking differences between the really "raw" and the "cooked" mice. Apparently the suggestion met little interest and i'm afraid that such a basic experiment is neither underway nor even planned anywhere.
Up to now, Vlassara, cautiously, just warns against ingestion of fried, broiled etc foods and promotes steaming and boiling instead.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070424155559.htm
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Toxins in "overcooked" food is a mainstream idea, yes. But not yet the idea that homo sapiens should abandon cooking altogether. I wish i were mistaken but i don't think mainstream science is about to demonstrate that raw is a key concept in nutrition. A few years ago, i had some e-mails exchanged with Vlassara where i suggested her to compare rodents on a really natural raw diet and on the usual commercially available processed chows rather than on more or less heated chows (as her group usually does to change the amount of ingested dietary AGEs) since one might expect even much more striking differences between the really "raw" and the "cooked" mice. Apparently the suggestion met little interest and i'm afraid that such a basic experiment is neither underway nor even planned anywhere.
Up to now, Vlassara, cautiously, just warns against ingestion of fried, broiled etc foods and promotes steaming and boiling instead.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070424155559.htm
This is yet another example I've been talking about for quite some time. Sure the control group will set the baseline of good or poor health and the test group can then reflect difference or not based on the study design. But when you are trying to study health, it seems crazy not to feed the control an entirely natural, organic diet. So for rats and mice it would be raw food, not highly processed kibble. I wish someone would publish the study about feeding two groups of rats Corn Flakes or the box the Corn Flakes came in and demonstrate the the box is healthier than the Corn Flakes. That would really blow some minds (assuming it's repeatable)
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Yet all major scientific breakthroughs WERE initially non-mainstream and the relevant ideas always had a hard time before they were accepted and became eventually mainstream.
Yes, for example, Charles Darwin was at first harshly ridiculed when he proposed biological evolution via natural selection and he wasn't a thoroughly credentialed scientist when he began developing his theory, and some of the people who made the greatest breakthroughs were perceived by some as eccentrics or social misfits (such as Einstein).
He cannot eat hardly any meat because he has this problem with his throat closing up on him. He is stressed out and angry often
I've known two elderly people who had the throat-narrowing problem and coincidentally they both ate more wheat than avg. It's just speculation, but could it be related to inflammation brought on by a pro-inflammatory, antigenic diet?
I've also noticed that my stress and anger levels were higher when I ate grains, dairy, nightshades, squashes, soda pop, fruit juices, tropical fruits (such as lots of bananas), etc. Despite having a more stressful job now, my stress levels are now much lower.
Well, I would certainly disagree with the notion that science has proved anything substantial re the Noble Savage theory.
The aim of this thread is not to promote a "noble savage theory," only to examine the persistant avg lifespan argument that has been used to criticize the RPD and more ancient diets in general. Feel free to defend this anti-raw-Paleo argument if you wish, but please do not try to change the topic to noble savagery. You are free to create your own topic on that if you wish.
Toxins in "overcooked" food is a mainstream idea, yes. But not yet the idea that homo sapiens should abandon cooking altogether.
Quite correct. Tyler's support of the crucual importance of all-raw eating was already skewered by a blogging physician, despite the doctor's stated preference for only lightly cooking his meats, and I think if Tyler tried to propose it to other physicians and scientists he would get an equally or more negative response. As a matter of fact, I challenge Tyler to prove just how much of a "consensus" there is behind raw dieting by proposing his diet as optimally healthy to scientists and physicians and see how they respond. A thread could be created to report the responses. Seems only fair to back up the claim of consensus behind all-raw rather than expect us to accept it on face value.
Tyler and I agree, I think, on the benefits raw eating has provided for us. Perhaps we partially agree on the subject of this thread, too: Tyler, who do you think had longer average lifespans, the early Stone Agers during the time they were eating all-raw Paleo diets or later people who ate cooked neolithic diets heavy in grains?
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The aim of this thread is not to promote a "noble savage theory," only to examine the persistant avg lifespan argument that has been used to criticize the RPD and more ancient diets in general.
The Noble Savage theory is directly related to the above notion as the average lifespan argument is just a very small part of the whole absurd notion that savage tribes lived lives of idyllic bliss.And, judging from a certain other poster's claims re immortality(!) in Palaeo tribes, I'd say my stance is strongly justified.
Quite correct. Tyler's support of the crucual importance of all-raw eating was already skewered by a blogging physician, despite the doctor's stated preference for only lightly cooking his meats, and I think if Tyler tried to propose it to other physicians and scientists he would get an equally or more negative response. As a matter of fact, I challenge Tyler to prove just how much of a "consensus" there is behind raw dieting by proposing his diet as optimally healthy to scientists and physicians and see how they respond. A thread could be created to report the responses. Seems only fair to back up the claim of consensus behind all-raw rather than expect us to accept it on face value.
You're missing the point. I'm well aware that nutritionists in particular have a disdainful view of raw. I was talking about the scientific concensus, as viewed from the actual results of scientific papers, not individual scientists and their opinions.Most organisations aren't going to promote raw let alone big corporations due to the short shelf-life of raw foods. Similiarly, this doctor seems to be merely creating his own dietary niche and blithely ignoring any scientific data that contradicts his view - for example, dismissing the ample scientific data against dairy /the evidence of the harm done to human health by heat-created toxins - in that extract given as an example, he doesn't even bother providing scientific examples of his stance on those two subjects, hardly the sign of a true scientist, but it is the sign of a sensationalist who's trying to carve out his own peddled diet.
In short, it's only kooks like him who are happy to peddle highly processed foods, most people in the mainstream recognise that diet sodas and well-cooked meals are bad for you(even if they still eat such). There is a rearguard action to defend the notion that lightly-cooked meals are "not that bad", but when one looks at the actual scientific data one finds invariably that even that issue is suspect, given the evidence. So, like I said, on a scientific basis, the battle is already half-won, in terms of scientific papers published, in that it is becoming scientifically untenable to defend the consumption of well-cooked (animal) foods. Fighting the pro-raw diet on a cultural, as opposed to scientific basis, is another matter, as we have thousands of years of cooked diet in our cultures and people don't necessarily adopt healthier diets even if they know they are healthier.
Tyler and I agree, I think, on the benefits raw eating has provided for us. Perhaps we partially agree on the subject of this thread, too: Tyler, who do you think had longer average lifespans, the early Stone Agers during the time they were eating all-raw Paleo diets or later people who ate cooked neolithic diets heavy in grains?
Depends on the era. One can safely state that from 9,000 to 2,000 years ago lifespan was shorter.
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Toxins in "overcooked" food is a mainstream idea, yes. But not yet the idea that homo sapiens should abandon cooking altogether. I wish i were mistaken but i don't think mainstream science is about to demonstrate that raw is a key concept in nutrition. A few years ago, i had some e-mails exchanged with Vlassara where i suggested her to compare rodents on a really natural raw diet and on the usual commercially available processed chows rather than on more or less heated chows (as her group usually does to change the amount of ingested dietary AGEs) since one might expect even much more striking differences between the really "raw" and the "cooked" mice. Apparently the suggestion met little interest and i'm afraid that such a basic experiment is neither underway nor even planned anywhere.
Up to now, Vlassara, cautiously, just warns against ingestion of fried, broiled etc foods and promotes steaming and boiling instead.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070424155559.htm
So far, there have been standard dietary recommendations to avoid broiled meats, baked foods, fried foods , barbecued foods/grilled foods etc. The only types of cooking that are routinely recommended are boiling, steaming and poaching and that's usually it. So, I'd say that's a major step in our direction. And when I put forward the results of these studies, all the pro-cooked advocates can do is either damn the evidence(without providing any remote scientific results which disprove them) or they weakly claim that it doesn't matter as they're only lightly cooking their foods, anyway.Claiming that lightly-cooked foods are "less worse" than well-cooked foods is not a solid argument in favour of cooking but it's the one they invariably use, in the end.
So, in short, scientifically speaking, we're well on the way to proving our point re raw. There's still more scientific data needed on the function of enzymes in raw foods, and suchlike, but we're doing very well.
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Depends on the era. One can safely state that from 9,000 to 2,000 years ago lifespan was shorter.
Well, i'm happy to read this from you and i'm inclined to believe that it is true. Though it is not easy IMO to provide clear cut scientific proof.
Just notice that if this is indeed true it is by no means in line with the " Nasty, Brutish and Short" ideology. Nor is the largely absent osteopororis, dental cavities etc in paleomen.
As Raw Kyle recalled, lifespan isn't much of a good indication of health. The recent probably longer lifespan reached by neolithic man in the last century can be largely traced back to the massive use of medical crutches that just prevent people from dying but by no means makes them "healthy" at least as "healthy" as paleomen apparently were. And by far, even if paleomen's health was certainly not perfect. Nor was their diet since they already ate part of their food cooked at least in the upper paleolithic. But we RPD should always keep in mind that even that part of cooked paleofood had never the dramatic consequences on health we observe with neolithic foods.
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. So, like I said, on a scientific basis, the battle is already half-won, in terms of scientific papers published, in that it is becoming scientifically untenable to defend the consumption of well-cooked (animal) foods. Fighting the pro-raw diet on a cultural, as opposed to scientific basis, is another matter, as we have thousands of years of cooked diet in our cultures and people don't necessarily adopt healthier diets even if they know they are healthier.
Sure, there is scientifically absolutely no doubt about the adverse effects of cooking but you underestimate the resistance of the scientific community to accept this reality. Scientists are like other people with their prejudices and cultural bias and it is actually not possible to distinguish a cultural and a scientific basis. Science and culture are basically entangled, unfortunately.
I bet that scientific consensus in favor of a 100% raw diet will not be reached soon.
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The Noble Savage theory is directly related to the above notion as the average lifespan argument is just a very small part of the whole absurd notion that savage tribes lived lives of idyllic bliss.And, judging from a certain other poster's claims re immortality(!) in Palaeo tribes, I'd say my stance is strongly justified.
Refuting the avg lifespan canard is not the same thing as making claims of blissful perfection in all things during the Stone Age. I have not argued for a noble savage theory in this thread, nor has anyone else here. To help clarify that, I'll openly and soundly reject and denounce this "Noble Savage theory," as you describe it, with its claims of "idyllic bliss." I do not believe that Stone Agers were inherently perfectly noble and I don't believe that utopia is possible. I hope that puts that ridiculous straw man to rest once and for all.
While it's harder to refute the points that people actually make than it is to knock down straw men, I recommend the former, because it will make your posts more interesting and perhaps more convincing. Your straw men arguments don't seem to be convincing anyone. Based on some other of your posts, I know you are capable of better.
You're missing the point. I'm well aware that nutritionists in particular have a disdainful view of raw. I was talking about the scientific concensus, as viewed from the actual results of scientific papers, not individual scientists and their opinions.
I know what you mean, but it's not a realistic way of representing a "scientific consensus." People consent, not papers. A scientific consensus is not YOUR controversial interpretation of other people's papers which they would not agree with. A consensus is when the majority of scientists agree with a particular general interpretation of the accumulated studies. I guarantee you that the majority do not agree with your view of what the consensus is, therefore your so-called consensus bears no relation to reality. Right now the consensus seems to be that high heat cooking on grills and frying pans, especially with fat (such as deep fat frying), is unhealthy and that people should instead steam, bake, stir-fry, boil, cook low-and-slow, etc. Neither you nor I agree with this consensus and trying to pretend that our view that all-raw is best is the consensus doesn't make it so. If you don't believe me, then accept my challenge. If you can find a single scientist, JUST ONE, who accepts your interpretation that the vast majority of studies prove that an all-raw diet is optimal, then I will take your claim seriously.
Similiarly, this doctor seems to be merely creating his own dietary niche and blithely ignoring any scientific data that contradicts his view -
I was very critical of his post about "the raw crowd" myself, but I wouldn't go that far. Given that he OK'd Lex's all-raw diet, he has now spoken more positively, at least in part, about RPD than anyone other than Ray Audette. If he's OK with Lex's diet, then I must have badly misjudged him and I should followed my normal rule of seeking "first to understand, then to be understood." I'm hoping to do that in the future--with any luck I'll get some time to read more of his blog this weekend. How much of it have you read so far?
In short, it's only kooks like him ...
His disagreeing with you (or me, for that matter) doesn't make him a kook. I regret having reacted very negatively to his critique of RPD before more thoroughly investigating. You're helping me to realize that more vividly by giving me a third-party perspective on someone else doing the same thing. Given that he is one of the few "experts" on planet earth who have said anything good at all about someone doing RPD, we should probably try to smooth things over rather than throw oil on a fire. He could provide us with helpful info like he did for Lex.
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Well, i'm happy to read this from you and i'm inclined to believe that it is true. Though it is not easy IMO to provide clear cut scientific proof.
Just notice that if this is indeed true it is by no means in line with the " Nasty, Brutish and Short" ideology. Nor is the largely absent osteopororis, dental cavities etc in paleomen.
As Raw Kyle recalled, lifespan isn't much of a good indication of health. The recent probably longer lifespan reached by neolithic man in the last century can be largely traced back to the massive use of medical crutches that just prevent people from dying but by no means makes them "healthy" at least as "healthy" as paleomen apparently were. And by far, even if paleomen's health was certainly not perfect. Nor was their diet since they already ate part of their food cooked at least in the upper paleolithic. But we RPD should always keep in mind that even that part of cooked paleofood had never the dramatic consequences on health we observe with neolithic foods.
Yes, Nassim Taleb, the author of the bestselling The Black Swan--and someone who tries to follow a (cooked) Paleo diet and who very cordially responded to a question I emailed him--wrote something similar:
"Life expectancy: Another problem. I keep hearing the fiction that medical practitioners doubled our life expectancy. Life expectancy increased because of 1) sanitation, 2) penicillin, 3) drop in crime. From the papers I see that medical practice may have contributed to 2-3 years of the increase, but again, depends where (cancer doctors might provide a positive contribution, family doctors a negative one) . Another fooled-by-randomness style mistake is to think that because life expectancy at birth was 30, that people lived 30 years: the distribution was massively skewed: the bulk of the deaths came from birth & childhood mortality. Conditional life expectancy was high ... just consider that Paleo men had no cancer, no tooth decay, almost no epidemics, no economists, and died of trauma. Perhaps legal enforcement contributed more than doctors to the increase in life."
--Nassim Taleb, http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm
I would qualify his comments a bit, replacing "no" cancer, tooth decay, etc. with "little or no...." Just because we can't point to evidence of such doesn't mean it was necessarily completely nonexistent, though the evidence does indicate these things were extremely rare.
I like his joke about "no economists."
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I think it more likely that the increase in life expectancy was due to increased meat consumption, after the various revolutions and peasant rebellions.
Bread really was the staff of (short, malnourished) life until then, for all but the aristocracy who hogged the meat for themselves and their enforcers and tax collectors.
Idyllic bliss might be a reasonable description of a life without the curses of our times. No taxes! No religion, or other pollution! No politicians, no tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spy, rich man, poor man, Indian chief or any other.
Acquiring food and little else, which is considered fun by modern man.
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Well, you've supplied Tyler with one example of Paleo Utopianism. I don't subscribe to it--all was not bliss in any era or for any species (surely an antelope that is being eaten alive by a lion does not think that all is blissful at that moment, even if it is for the best for nature as a whole in the long run)--and that still doesn't make it wise for critics of raw Paleo diets to use the avg lifespan canard, since it only undermines their own credibility.
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Well, i'm happy to read this from you and i'm inclined to believe that it is true. Though it is not easy IMO to provide clear cut scientific proof.
Google under "beyondveg.com longevity height" and you'll find the data.
Just notice that if this is indeed true it is by no means in line with the " Nasty, Brutish and Short" ideology. Nor is the largely absent osteopororis, dental cavities etc in paleomen.
No, it doesn't. The nasty, brutish and short philosophy covers a hell of a lot more than just general health. I wouldn't mind people quoting (somewhat limited) better health of ([post-cooking)palaeo-era tribes but most people imply there is a noble-savage theme to that with a supposedly idyllic, moral life in the stone age etc..
As Raw Kyle recalled, lifespan isn't much of a good indication of health. The recent probably longer lifespan reached by neolithic man in the last century can be largely traced back to the massive use of medical crutches that just prevent people from dying but by no means makes them "healthy" at least as "healthy" as paleomen apparently were. And by far, even if paleomen's health was certainly not perfect. Nor was their diet since they already ate part of their food cooked at least in the upper paleolithic. But we RPD should always keep in mind that even that part of cooked paleofood had never the dramatic consequences on health we observe with neolithic foods.
Well, that's where we differ. I find that the consumption of cooked palaeo foods was indeed harmful to human health, maybe not to the huge extent of damage grains and dairy and processed foods have done, but it was still very significantly harmful.
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"Life expectancy: Another problem. I keep hearing the fiction that medical practitioners doubled our life expectancy. Life expectancy increased because of 1) sanitation, 2) penicillin, 3) drop in crime.
Umm, this is erroneous. Sanitation was introduced by doctors as was penicillin.
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Refuting the avg lifespan canard is not the same thing as making claims of blissful perfection in all things during the Stone Age. I have not argued for a noble savage theory in this thread, nor has anyone else here. To help clarify that, I'll openly and soundly reject and denounce this "Noble Savage theory," as you describe it, with its claims of "idyllic bliss." I do not believe that Stone Agers were inherently perfectly noble and I don't believe that utopia is possible. I hope that puts that ridiculous straw man to rest once and for all.
The very fact that Weston-Price holds such a near-infallible aura here in the RVAF community rather strongly indicates that Price's Noble Savage theory is strongly favoured in this community, the notion re hunter-gatherers living longer (in a healthier state)
than modern man is just one common aspect thereof, which has been claimed before in RVAF circles.
Also, there are inescapable facts such as the modern vast decrease in deaths from childbirth as a result of increased sanitation, which we can't ignore(though one can explain it by pointing out that it is the environment and not the so-called "pathogen" which is at fault.Just pointing out that modern innovations did improve on the health of tribes(eg:- the Maori doing better, healthwise, despite switching to a modern diet - their native diet being rubbish).
what you mean, but it's not a realistic way of representing a "scientific consensus." People consent, not papers. A scientific consensus is not YOUR controversial interpretation of other people's papers which they would not agree with. A consensus is when the majority of scientists agree with a particular general interpretation of the accumulated studies. I guarantee you that the majority do not agree with your view of what the consensus is, therefore your so-called consensus bears no relation to reality. Right now the consensus seems to be that high heat cooking on grills and frying pans, especially with fat (such as deep fat frying), is unhealthy and that people should instead steam, bake, stir-fry, boil, cook low-and-slow, etc. Neither you nor I agree with this consensus and trying to pretend that our view that all-raw is best is the consensus doesn't make it so. If you don't believe me, then accept my challenge. If you can find a single scientist, JUST ONE, who accepts your interpretation that the vast majority of studies prove that an all-raw diet is optimal, then I will take your claim seriously.
You've just admitted my point that scientists already accept that well-cooked foods are harmful(eg:- microwaving/frying/grilling/barbecuing etc.), that's bad for them as it means that the pro-raw argument is already half-won, if only 3 or so cooking methods are considered "OK" . And opinions of specific scientists means nothing as science depends on the results of scientific studies, not human opinions of what those studies mean. For example, that guy , Harris, blithely dismissed the concept of advanced glycation end products but was unable to provide any decent scientific data to back up his claim that AGEs don't matter.So, his argument looked dead-in-the-water.That's what I meant, there is a big difference between scientific concencus(as shown by advances made by studies, and mass cultural opinion as held by nutritionists and individual scientists).
I was very critical of his post about "the raw crowd" myself, but I wouldn't go that far. Given that he OK'd Lex's all-raw diet, he has now spoken more positively, at least in part, about RPD than anyone other than Ray Audette. If he's OK with Lex's diet, then I must have badly misjudged him and I should followed my normal rule of seeking "first to understand, then to be understood." I'm hoping to do that in the future--with any luck I'll get some time to read more of his blog this weekend. How much of it have you read so far?
I've read 2 full articles by him so far. I got a bit tired of the negative opinionated language and the lack of data, personally.
His disagreeing with you (or me, for that matter) doesn't make him a kook. I regret having reacted very negatively to his critique of RPD before more thoroughly investigating. You're helping me to realize that more vividly by giving me a third-party perspective on someone else doing the same thing. Given that he is one of the few "experts" on planet earth who have said anything good at all about someone doing RPD, we should probably try to smooth things over rather than throw oil on a fire. He could provide us with helpful info like he did for Lex.
What makes him a kook is the fact that he goes against the masses of scientific data when it suits him, whereas a good scientist would be willing to accept an opposing view if there was enough convincing data(as with AGEs).I don't mind opposing views, but they have to have some substance to them. And, similiarly, just because he was nice to Lex, doesn't make him a competent scientist or an authority on anything. (*For example, I always remember a brilliant Science teacher at my prep-school who was a great teacher but who also happened to shout and scream insults at us, all the time).
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For example, that guy , Harris, blithely dismissed the concept of advanced glycation end products but was unable to provide any decent scientific data to back up his claim that AGEs don't matter.So, his argument looked dead-in-the-water.
Harris' problem is that you can't produce any studies which demonstrate that AGEs do matter, at least no well constructed human studies intended to study the issue. You can produce oodles of tangential evidence that the byproducts of cooking are harmful, but no direct confirmation of that claim. It just hasn't been studied directly or thoroughly. If it had, this wouldn't be a debate.
It's not possible to prove a negative. The onus is on the claimant to prove the positive. Hence Harris' disdain for those who claim absolutely that cooking is the cause of all ills; without direct testing of the claim that various cooking byproducts are harmful rather than theoretically harmful or genuinely correlated with harm.
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Google under "beyondveg.com longevity height" and you'll find the data.
Well, I will do it but i always prefer to look at the original scientific works or papers.
No, it doesn't. The nasty, brutish and short philosophy covers a hell of a lot more than just general health. I wouldn't mind people quoting (somewhat limited) better health of ([post-cooking)palaeo-era tribes but most people imply there is a noble-savage theme to that with a supposedly idyllic, moral life in the stone age etc..
Very funny. ;D Maybe you didn't notice but "nasty, brutish and short" contains the word short, for short life times as far as i can remember. And rebuttal of the relevant ideology does by no means imply what you repeat again and again, namely the adoption of the "noble savage" mythology. As PaleoPhil told you, your strawmen arguments are unlikely to convince anyone.
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Harris' problem is that you can't produce any studies which demonstrate that AGEs do matter, at least no well constructed human studies intended to study the issue. You can produce oodles of tangential evidence that the byproducts of cooking are harmful, but no direct confirmation of that claim. It just hasn't been studied directly or thoroughly. If it had, this wouldn't be a debate.
It's not possible to prove a negative. The onus is on the claimant to prove the positive. Hence Harris' disdain for those who claim absolutely that cooking is the cause of all ills; without direct testing of the claim that various cooking byproducts are harmful rather than theoretically harmful or genuinely correlated with harm.
Well, what has been shown VERY CLEARLY is that the more you heat the food the worse are the biological parameters such as insulin sensitivity, inflammation indicators, arterial elasticity etc etc
Whether this is due to AGEs or the MANY other heat induced chemicals or changes doesn't matter much here.
Just google Helen Vlassara papers and read the (free) abstracts.
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An exemple of a paper that shows the relationship between lifespan, health and heated food ingestion. Note that lowAGE and RegAGE diets just differ by heating temperature and/or duration and AGEs= glycotoxins
Reduced Oxidant Stress and Extended Lifespan in Mice Exposed to a Low
Glycotoxin Diet
Association with Increased AGER1 Expression
Weijing Cai*, John Cijiang He, Li Zhu*, Xue Chen*, Sylvan Wallenstein, Gary
E. Striker and Helen Vlassara*
From the Department of Geriatrics,* Division of Experimental Diabetes and
Aging, the BioMath Department, and the Department of Medicine, Division of
Nephrology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York
Aging is accompanied by increased oxidative stress (OS) and accumulation of
advanced glycation end products (AGEs). AGE formation in food is
temperature-regulated, and ingestion of nutrients prepared with excess heat
promotes AGE formation, OS, and cardiovascular disease in mice. We
hypothesized that sustained exposure to the high levels of pro-oxidant AGEs
in normal diets (RegAGE) contributes to aging via an increased AGE load,
which causes AGER1 dysregulation and depletion of anti-oxidant capacity, and
that an isocaloric, but AGE-restricted (by 50%) diet (LowAGE), would
decrease these abnormalities. C57BL6 male mice with a life-long exposure to
a LowAGE diet had higher than baseline levels of tissue AGER1 and
glutathione/oxidized glutathione and reduced plasma 8-isoprostanes and
tissue RAGE and p66shc levels compared with mice pair-fed the regular
(RegAGE) diet. This was associated with a reduction in systemic AGE
accumulation and amelioration of insulin resistance, albuminuria, and
glomerulosclerosis. Moreover, lifespan was extended in LowAGE mice, compared
with RegAGE mice. Thus, OS-dependent metabolic and end organ dysfunction of
aging may result from life-long exposure to high levels of glycoxidants that
exceed AGER1 and anti-oxidant reserve capacity. A reduced AGE diet preserved
these innate defenses, resulting in decreased tissue damage and a longer
lifespan in mice.
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Mouse studies != human studies. Humans have been cooking for some duration of time, perhaps even evolutionary timescales depending on what random source you choose to believe. The result might be a higher tolerance for cooking created compounds than in other animals.
Like I said, there is plenty of reason to believe that cooking creates compounds which could be problematic in humans. There's even plenty of research showing that these compounds are probably bad, and indeed are bad for people with various problems (diabetics especially). What has not been done is the science necessary to prove it generally. This is a lot like the diet-heart hypothesis. You feed rabbits cholesterol and watch them die of heart attacks, then claim that the same thing happens to humans. Problem: it doesn't actually happen in humans. Virtually all the observational data show no correlation between cholesterol levels and heart disease. Similarly, we have lots of specific studies showing that, for example, charred meat contains carcinogen-like compounds. It stands to reason that they'd cause cancer. Now you have to do the study that tests for that. It doesn't just follow logically, nothing in science does.
To prove the effects of cooked food you'd need to do a study where one cohort ate raw everything while another cohort ate the same stuff cooked. If at the end of your study, incidence of disease and mortality differed in a statistically significant manner, you'd have borne out the hypothesis.
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To prove the effects of cooked food you'd need to do a study where one cohort ate raw everything while another cohort ate the same stuff cooked. If at the end of your study, incidence of disease and mortality differed in a statistically significant manner, you'd have borne out the hypothesis.
Sure. But this thread is about lifespan and for obvious reasons the experiment would take a very long time for man :) and is much more easy to perform with rodents whose lifespans are a few tens of months as opposed to 80 years or so.
Yet, as i said, biological parameters that reflect health status such as glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, inflammatory indicators such as C reactive protein, oxidative stress etc have also been compared in humans on a mildly cooked (called lowAGE) and on more heavily cooked (called highAGE) diet for a given period (admittedly short with respect to human lifespan) . The result is quite clear enough, everything is degraded on highAGE with respect to lowAGE. And one can only expect that the results would have been even more spectacular if a really raw rather than a lowAGE diet had been used.
Now it is very likely that we are capable to detoxify the poisons from cooked food in a limited way probably because these poisons also form inevitably in a very tiny quantity even in raw food just left at room temperature and so we were somewhat exposed to a minute amount of them during our whole evolutionnary track. In a modern "cooked framework" this "raw food adapted" detoxification ability might be just overwhelmed progressively with age, more or less rapidly depending on our genetic background and life style. So that illness usually appears only upon aging once a sufficient amount of poisons has accumulated in the organism.
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Tyler, I wasn't comparing cooked Paleo to raw Paleo, I was comparing cooked Paleo to cooked modern foods. Whenever I say anything good at all about cooked Paleo, please understand that I am only saying that in comparison to cooked modern foods, not to older, more raw diets. In other words, I believe that BOTH the raw and Paleo aspects of the RPD are beneficial--not just raw or just Paleo. So raw is better than cooked and Paleo is better than modern. Does that make it more clear?
I noticed you didn't accept my challenge to test whether the scientific consensus favors all-raw diets. I think that is more telling than any rhetoric you could come up with to support that claim. You don't seem to have convinced a single person here that all-raw is the current dietary consensus among scientists. I hope you are right, but I doubt it, and extraordinary claims like that require extraordinary evidence, not just your personal assertions and rhetorical arguments. I'll make the test easier for you: if you can find a single respected scientist (unfortunately, Aajonus is not currently respected and isn't widely regarded as a scientist) who accepts that all-raw, including raw meats, is optimal, then I'll concede your point. I don't mean a scientist who accepts a study finding AGEs to be harmful, I mean one who agrees that all-raw is best and therefore eats an all-raw diet him/herself.
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Harris' problem is that you can't produce any studies which demonstrate that AGEs do matter, at least no well constructed human studies intended to study the issue. You can produce oodles of tangential evidence that the byproducts of cooking are harmful, but no direct confirmation of that claim. It just hasn't been studied directly or thoroughly. If it had, this wouldn't be a debate.
It's not possible to prove a negative. The onus is on the claimant to prove the positive. Hence Harris' disdain for those who claim absolutely that cooking is the cause of all ills; without direct testing of the claim that various cooking byproducts are harmful rather than theoretically harmful or genuinely correlated with harm.
Brilliantly stated, pfw. Harris' criticism is an understandable one that we cannot refute because scientific studies haven't been done on all-raw diets. I don't expect scientists or physicians to adopt my diet or recommend it to patients simply because I do well on it or because some studies suggest AGEs may be harmful. They need stronger evidence than that before they will make that radical a change.
Based on my experience and that of others here, as well as the suggestive evidence about toxic byproducts of cooking, I happen to believe there is a very good chance that Tyler is right about raw meats and fats being significantly superior to cooked ones, even lightly cooked ones (after all, why else would I be eating a RPD?), but I do not delude myself by pretending that this is a popular opinion in the scientific community. Unfortunately, I doubt there is a single other person on planet earth who agrees with Tyler on that.
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Well, I will do it but i always prefer to look at the original scientific works or papers.
beyondveg.com shows the title of each relevant research paper cited in a bibilography somewhere.
Very funny. ;D Maybe you didn't notice but "nasty, brutish and short" contains the word short, for short life times as far as i can remember. And rebuttal of the relevant ideology does by no means imply what you repeat again and again, namely the adoption of the "noble savage" mythology. As PaleoPhil told you, your strawmen arguments are unlikely to convince anyone
Of course it implies it. Part of the claims re the idyllic life of the noble savage is the long lifespan claim. Yet, even when one takes into account child-mortality, one still finds that native lifespan was less than us by far, so "nasty, brutish and short" applies.
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Harris' problem is that you can't produce any studies which demonstrate that AGEs do matter, at least no well constructed human studies intended to study the issue. You can produce oodles of tangential evidence that the byproducts of cooking are harmful, but no direct confirmation of that claim. It just hasn't been studied directly or thoroughly. If it had, this wouldn't be a debate.
It's not possible to prove a negative. The onus is on the claimant to prove the positive. Hence Harris' disdain for those who claim absolutely that cooking is the cause of all ills; without direct testing of the claim that various cooking byproducts are harmful rather than theoretically harmful or genuinely correlated with harm.
You're dead wrong as alphagruis mentions. So far, there have been multiple conclusive studies showing that AGEs and other heat-created toxins greatly harm animals(studies on humans re diet are impossible to maintain for an entire lifespan after all). There are also even many clear-cut studies showing that humans are directly affected in the short-term by AGE-rich diets, in that humans are shown to benefit from low-AGE diets, with health-improvements to their conditions when AGEs are reduced(there are also studies showing the direct immediate harm done by AGEs on human tissue). Plus, AGEs/advanced glycation end products in particular, have been again and again implicated in age-related conditions, meaning that there is a reduction in longevity or increase in aging rate, as a result of eating cooked foods.So, one doesn't need to prove that raw is beneficial , just that cooking is harmful. And so far, there has been NO evidence whatsoever in the pro-cooking camp that heat-created toxins are beneficial for humans.So, scientifically speaking, people like Harris have no leg to stand on, which is why he blithely dismissed those claims without evidence.
Plus, science works on the principle of the correct data being provided by whichever side has the most studies backing it or condemning the other side. There are a few studies backing the consumption of raw food(either direct or indirect) and many, many thousands of (direct or indirect) studies backing the notion that cooked foods are harmful with only some isolated studies(eg:- re lycopene) in the pro-cooked camp.So the raw camp is winning.
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I noticed you didn't accept my challenge to test whether the scientific consensus favors all-raw diets. I think that is more telling than any rhetoric you could come up with to support that claim. You don't seem to have convinced a single person here that all-raw is the current dietary consensus among scientists. I hope you are right, but I doubt it, and extraordinary claims like that require extraordinary evidence, not just your personal assertions and rhetorical arguments. I'll make the test easier for you: if you can find a single respected scientist (unfortunately, Aajonus is not currently respected and isn't widely regarded as a scientist) who accepts that all-raw, including raw meats, is optimal, then I'll concede your point. I don't mean a scientist who accepts a study finding AGEs to be harmful, I mean one who agrees that all-raw is best and therefore eats an all-raw diet him/herself.
You're deliberately twisting the issue. I stated that it was the scientific concensus that cooking was harmful, the raw issue is another matter but since raw is the opposite of cooking, it follows that constant scientific recommendations to lower thecooking temperature gradually encourage people to move towards the raw camp)-note how now it's commonly recommended by people to just sear meats on the outside, these days. Now, granted there is still controversy about the full extent of harm of cooking within the scientific community, with some claiming that boiling is "OK", and others admitting grudgingly that even boiling does some harm, but that doesn't change the fact that the pro-cooking camp is in real trouble(I mean can you find any genuine scientist who claims that any kind of cooking(even cooking till the food is charcoal) is healthy). I mean, even Wrangham, the most fanatical pro-cooking candidate has recognised that he can't blithely ignore the existence of AGEs, a sure sign that the mass of scientific papers is now too great for a serious scientist to ignore(I don't count Harris as a serious scientist).
Another issue I have with all this discussion is the seeming need for guru-worship re mentions of Harris. I mean, the vast majority of RVAFers have usually come a cropper as a result of following 1 guru or another(I'm a case in point, having foolishly believed in Aajonus re the raw dairy issue, the raw vegan-philosophy re Dr Hay etc.) In the end, I learnt far more by just reading all the message-archives and finding out all the past mistakes other RVAFers made. Also, most gurus tend to disappear after they stop publishing etc.(look at Ray Audette who no one seems to have heard of in a long while).
Since people are throwing down the gauntlet, can someone please provide me with a study which shows that humans need to consume those heat-created toxins in foods in order to survive/be healthy?
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OK, I think you are agreeing that there is no scientific consensus supporting all-raw diets like our RPD, yes? If all you meant was that there is consensus that certain types of cooking at high heat show evidence suggestive of harm, I agree with that. It was only when you seemed to extrapolate this to consensus support for all-raw diets that I was incredulous, as were others here. I agree that the views of Wrangham and the rest of the most stridently pro cooking camp are in trouble, just as the pro-Food-Pyramid views are in trouble. That doesn't mean all-raw has been embraced. On the contrary, it is still ridiculed. Haven't you ever encountered any negativity toward all-raw diets from anyone other than Dr. Harris? If so, then you know what I'm talking about. There is a vast area where most scientists' views seem to lie in-between the extremes of Wrangham's proposed 2 million years of cooking vs. support for 100% raw diets.
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Plus, science works on the principle of the correct data being provided by whichever side has the most studies backing it or condemning the other side.
Science works on the principle of truth.
You have confused consensus/fashion/popularity/politics with science.
See my sig line.
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Plus, science works on the principle of the correct data being provided by whichever side has the most studies backing it or condemning the other side.
I can testify that you are wrong in this respect. As William points out consensus in science does not mean truth. A false idea doesn't become true just because a majority of scientists adopts it or because a large number of "studies" apparently supports it. There is no principle of democracy that works in science. And there are many reasons that explain this unfortunate situation. One of them is the peer reviewed publication system as well as conference organization principles that strongly favors consensus and rejects minority opinions and outsiders. Another is simply that among scientists too there are much more followers than creative leaders. So if the leaders overlooked something or there is a fundamental flaw in the "studies" one gets both consensus and bad science.
Moreover there is actually a huge amount of (junk) works in "food science" on all the "positive" effects of cooking. To find them you have to look under Maillard reaction products which is just the original name for AGEs, the one used by food scientists long before a few medical scientists "discovered" the same chemicals from their dark side in diabetes studies and renamed them in their way.
In particular "food scientists" assigned antioxidant properties to Maiillard products alias AGEs and there was a large consensus about their "positive" effects over several tens of years. And yet, just bad science.
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beyondveg.com shows the title of each relevant research paper cited in a bibilography somewhere.
Of course it implies it. Part of the claims re the idyllic life of the noble savage is the long lifespan claim. Yet, even when one takes into account child-mortality, one still finds that native lifespan was less than us by far, so "nasty, brutish and short" applies.
It doesn't make any sense to compare lifespans of paleoman and modern neolithic man because, as already said lifespan, isn't just an indicator of health. What makes more sense is to compare lifespan just before and just after the neolithic revolution.
Note also that by the time Rousseau wrote about his "Noble Savage" philosophy lifespan was much shorter and I'm not sure that the French or English peasants lived longer than the "savages" then just discovered in south pacific islands such as Tahiti by Cook or La Pérouse.
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(I mean can you find any genuine scientist who claims that any kind of cooking(even cooking till the food is charcoal) is healthy).
Cooking till the food is charcoal paradoxically becomes HEALTHY AGAIN ! Yes every scientist can safely claim that :)
There are even people eating charcoal when poisoned and this is a recognized medical cure of poisoning.
Yet the charcoal is no more food, no protein, no fat, no carbs, no vitamins, zero calories, no AGEs.
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Based on my experience and that of others here, as well as the suggestive evidence about toxic byproducts of cooking, I happen to believe there is a very good chance that Tyler is right about raw meats and fats being significantly superior to cooked ones, even lightly cooked ones (after all, why else would I be eating a RPD?), but I do not delude myself by pretending that this is a popular opinion in the scientific community. Unfortunately, I doubt there is a single other person on planet earth who agrees with Tyler on that.
Yes, if it were a popular opinion it would have been amply tested experimentally by scientists.
It is not even yet a simple conjecture or an attractive working hypothesis worth to be tested for the majority of scientists. The idea that raw might well set the true baseline for humans clashes with culture.
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Yes, if it were a popular opinion it would have been amply tested experimentally by scientists.
It is not even yet a simple conjecture or an attractive working hypothesis worth to be tested for the majority of scientists. The idea that raw might well set the true baseline for humans clashes with culture.
Yes, and no doubt critics will ironically some day try to tag Tyler with promoting "noble savagery," if they haven't already, for promoting raw Paleo as superior to the cooked modern foods of civilization. So for him to use that charge against us is "a bit like the pot calling the kettle black."
In my experience I've noticed that critics tend to resort to that charge when they've run out of ammunition against the raw Paleo diet & lifestyle or the rights of indigenous peoples. The nice thing about it from the critic's perspective is it is sufficiently vague and untestable that it is difficult to prove false, no matter how untrue it may be. Whenever someone says something good about raw Paleo diets or lifestyle, a critic can simply misrepresent their views in exaggerated form and dismiss them as promoting the "noble savage theory" without having to refute the benefits of the diet or lifestyle or even examine the data or try the diet themselves. This is a tactic similar to the charge of "orthorexia" that dieters have started throwing at each other (since there are no clear, obvious physical symptoms of it, there is no easy way to disprove it) and of "Communist" during the Red scare. If you deny the charge, the critic can just say "Of course he would deny it--he's hiding his true feelings. I know what he really meant by his words." Unless "noble savage theory" is clearly defined and someone really did promote it in no uncertain terms, such charges amount to claims of mind reading ability.
In particular "food scientists" assigned antioxidant properties to Maiillard products alias AGEs and there was a large consensus about their "positive" effects over several tens of years. And yet, just bad science.
Interesting, I speculated only semi-seriously that some might have claimed that AGEs were medicinal in the way that some claim the natural insecticides in plants might be medicinal/healthy antioxidants/etc. and now I find that someone scientists actually did claim that AGEs were themselves antioxidants. Negative reactions like diarrhea to plant antinutrients are sometimes written off as temporary "detox" reactions (such as by raw vegans and vegetarians in past forum discussions I've seen and at this source: "Sample List of Allowed Foods on a Detox Diet," http://altmedicine.about.com/od/detoxcleansing/a/Foods_Eat.htm) that are actually part of a healthy process. I wonder if anyone made the same claims regarding negative reactions to cooked foods?
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Plus, science works on the principle of the correct data being provided by whichever side has the most studies backing it or condemning the other side.
As has been pointed out, this is absolutely not how scientific knowledge is produced. That's how bullshit hysterical nonsense gets pushed on the public via the media and institutions looking to score more grant money. Scientific knowledge is the product of constantly testing hypotheses. There is never certainty and everything can be falsified.
I'm very sympathetic to the idea that cooked food is harmful. I believe it's a strong hypothesis, and merits further testing. It is not yet a well tested, proven hypothesis that generates a theory which can predict results. No one as done studies where one cohort eats raw and another eats the same stuff cooked and compared health outcomes. The fact that studies in humans are hard does not change the reality of the scientific method - until the raw hypothesis is tested, to claim that it's fully backed by science is, by definition, wrong. It's compelling. It is not proven.
No one needs to show that AGEs are beneficial. The burden of proof is on the raw claimaint to show that cooking causes statistically significant levels of harm in a population. If your two cohorts show no difference in mortality or health outcomes over a period of years, then clearly cooking is simply not harmful enough to be significant. If they do, then it clearly shows that cooking is significant. Until that science is done, the hypothesis is not confirmed. This is the basic scientific method. Are AGEs harmful? Probably. So is breathing car exhaust, getting lots of sunburn, having radio waves near your testicles - virtually every modern technology can and likely does cause harm to some, they just don't do so in a statistically significiant portion of the population. Cooking might just be yet another one of those toxic yet not epidemiologically significant activities modern humans participate in. The science has not been done to show it one way or the other.
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It doesn't make any sense to compare lifespans of paleoman and modern neolithic man because, as already said lifespan, isn't just an indicator of health. What makes more sense is to compare lifespan just before and just after the neolithic revolution.
Note also that by the time Rousseau wrote about his "Noble Savage" philosophy lifespan was much shorter and I'm not sure that the French or English peasants lived longer than the "savages" then just discovered in south pacific islands such as Tahiti by Cook or La Pérouse.
The Maori at that time had mean lifespans of c.25 , less than their French/English counterparts.As for the issue of lifespan and health, it is noteworthy that people are not only living longer but are healthier than in the past(I don't necessarily attribute that to diet but to modern life providing extra comforts unavailable in previous generations).
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Cooking till the food is charcoal paradoxically becomes HEALTHY AGAIN ! Yes every scientist can safely claim that :)
There are even people eating charcoal when poisoned and this is a recognized medical cure of poisoning.
Yet the charcoal is no more food, no protein, no fat, no carbs, no vitamins, zero calories, no AGEs.
I was very clearly referring to eating only food grilled to charcoal, and nothing else, not just eating a tidbit. No scientist could claim that eating only charcoal was healthy.
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I can testify that you are wrong in this respect. As William points out consensus in science does not mean truth. A false idea doesn't become true just because a majority of scientists adopts it or because a large number of "studies" apparently supports it. There is no principle of democracy that works in science. And there are many reasons that explain this unfortunate situation. One of them is the peer reviewed publication system as well as conference organization principles that strongly favors consensus and rejects minority opinions and outsiders. Another is simply that among scientists too there are much more followers than creative leaders. So if the leaders overlooked something or there is a fundamental flaw in the "studies" one gets both consensus and bad science.
Moreover there is actually a huge amount of (junk) works in "food science" on all the "positive" effects of cooking. To find them you have to look under Maillard reaction products which is just the original name for AGEs, the one used by food scientists long before a few medical scientists "discovered" the same chemicals from their dark side in diabetes studies and renamed them in their way.
In particular "food scientists" assigned antioxidant properties to Maiillard products alias AGEs and there was a large consensus about their "positive" effects over several tens of years. And yet, just bad science.
Virtually all the studies , these days,favouring cooking, focus on unhealthy non-palaeo foods like grains. Given that there are also multiple other studies which focus on the ill-health caused by grains-consumption, the pro-cooking camp is discredited.
Also, the wonderful aspect of science is , like you said, that they favour the majority , so with the raw(or anti-cooking) camp having far more studies in its favour, it is now becoming more and more difficult to defend the practice of cooking.It doesn't matter if scientists make mistakes along the way as, as we've seen, they always in the end, correct them. And I heavily disagree re your notion as current scientific concensus is only solid if backed by a mass of studies. That's why Wrangham very reluctantly was forced to acknowledge the existence of AGEs, despite his obvious distaste re that issue.
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Yes, and no doubt critics will ironically some day try to tag Tyler with promoting "noble savagery," if they haven't already, for promoting raw Paleo as superior to the cooked modern foods of civilization. So for him to use that charge against us is "a bit like the pot calling the kettle black."
The above claim is nonsense, of course since I'm not one of those RVAFers who goes on about the excellent health of the Inuit or whatever tribe.
. My whole point was that too many RVAFers were relying too much on dodgy claims from past eras/tribes with little or no real evidence to support such. We simply will not be taken seriously by scientists if we keep on mentioning frauds like Price with all their blather about the noble-savage -like lifestyle.
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As has been pointed out, this is absolutely not how scientific knowledge is produced. That's how bullshit hysterical nonsense gets pushed on the public via the media and institutions looking to score more grant money. Scientific knowledge is the product of constantly testing hypotheses. There is never certainty and everything can be falsified.
You're applying a far too strict interpretation of scientific results. There have been many theorems/theories (such as Fermat' Theorem) which stayed, technically, unproven for centuries but were still regarded as canon in the meantime because of the available evidence at the time. In short, we don't have to make the pro-raw claims as strong as, say, the theory of gravity, before it becomes accepted by a sufficient number of people.The point is that the mass of scientific studies favouring our position (re anti-cooking) is now so large that it is becoming more difficult for people to justify cooking on a scientific basis(after all, scientists have to refer to scientific results/studies to back up their own views, ultimately). Granted, on a cultural level, as opposed to scientific, we have a long way to go re full acceptance of raw, but we've made incredible progress, particularly in the last 20 years, on the scientific front.
I'm very sympathetic to the idea that cooked food is harmful. I believe it's a strong hypothesis, and merits further testing. It is not yet a well tested, proven hypothesis that generates a theory which can predict results. No one as done studies where one cohort eats raw and another eats the same stuff cooked and compared health outcomes. The fact that studies in humans are hard does not change the reality of the scientific method - until the raw hypothesis is tested, to claim that it's fully backed by science is, by definition, wrong. It's compelling. It is not proven.
One doesn't need a study which compares raw-eating to cooked-eating people. All one needs is what we have so far:- studies showing distinct localised harm done to human tissue by AGEs, studies showing a reduction in negative symptoms after following a low-AGE diet, studies showing a direct link between age-related conditions and levels of AGEs etc.
No one needs to show that AGEs are beneficial. The burden of proof is on the raw claimaint to show that cooking causes statistically significant levels of harm in a population.
Absolutely wrong. The burden of proof is on the pro-cooking camp to show that cooked food is either harmless or more beneficial than raw food. After all, we are the only species on this entire planet that cooks its own food.
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Interesting, I speculated only semi-seriously that some might have claimed that AGEs were medicinal in the way that some claim the natural insecticides in plants might be medicinal/healthy antioxidants/etc. and now I find that someone scientists actually did claim that AGEs were themselves antioxidants. Negative reactions like diarrhea to plant antinutrients are sometimes written off as temporary "detox" reactions (such as by raw vegans and vegetarians in past forum discussions I've seen and at this source: "Sample List of Allowed Foods on a Detox Diet," http://altmedicine.about.com/od/detoxcleansing/a/Foods_Eat.htm) that are actually part of a healthy process. I wonder if anyone made the same claims regarding negative reactions to cooked foods?
I am not aware whether or not someone went that far.
It is quite funny to see that actually various medicinal (antimutagen, antioxidant, antibiotic, and antiallergen) properties of AGE's have often been pointed out and looked for in even fairly recent works where the negative effects of these chemicals is the main concern. It seems to me that scientists desperately look for some positive effects of cooking. The following abstract from 1996 is just one example: (Food browning=formation of AGEs)
Food Browning and Its Prevention: An Overview†
Mendel Friedman Western Regional Research Center, Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 800 Buchanan Street, Albany, California 94710
Enzymatic and nonenzymatic browning reactions of amino acids and proteins with carbohydrates, oxidized lipids, and oxidized phenols cause deterioration of food during storage and processing. The loss in nutritional quality and potentially in safety is attributed to destruction of essential amino acids, decrease in digestibility, inhibition of proteolytic and glycolytic enzymes, interaction with metal ions, and formation of antinutritional and toxic compounds. Studies in this area include influence of damage to essential amino acids on nutrition and food safety, nutritional damage as a function of processing conditions, and simultaneous formation of deleterious and beneficial compounds. These compounds include kidney-damaging Maillard reaction products, mutagens, carcinogens, antimutagens, antioxidants, antibiotics, and antiallergens. This overview covers the formation, nutrition, and safety of glycated proteins, characterized browning products, and heterocyclic amines. Possible approaches to inhibiting browning reactions and preventing adverse effects of browning during food processing and food consumption, including protection against adverse effects of heterocyclic amines by N-acetylcysteine, caffeine, chlorophyll, conjugated linoleic acid, lignin, and tea extracts, are also described. This research subject covers a complex relationship of the chemistry, biology, and pathology of browning products and the impact on human nutrition and health. Future study should differentiate antinutritional and toxicological relationships, define individual and combined potencies of browning products, and develop means to prevent the formation and to minimize the adverse manifestations of the most antinutritional and toxic compounds. Such studies should lead to better and safer foods and improved human health.
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Cooking might just be yet another one of those toxic yet not epidemiologically significant activities modern humans participate in. The science has not been done to show it one way or the other.
I think that the adverse effects of cooking are now by far a sufficiently compelling conjecture. Everything points actually to them not only the formation of AGEs, but also the racemization and deamidation of the aminoacids, the formation of crosslinked aminoacids such as lysinoalanin, the formation of glucose or other sugar degradation products, the oxidation of lipids etc etc.
Were it not for the formidable cultural barrier, the raw hypothesis would have been tested and adopted tens of years ago by the scientists. In every other scientific domain, such an attractive conjecture would have resulted in an explosion of works intended to test the idea.
I bet that even if a scientist finally provided some day in the future a study that compares a 100% raw and a cooked diet with the likely outcome that raw is the winner, his work would be sharply criticized and every tortuous argument used to reject it.
Moreover I find it very funny to think about the feelings of the attendants of an international conference, where the above scientist had given a talk presenting his work, during the subsequent traditionnal conference dinner offering them a "nice cooked meal".
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The Maori at that time had mean lifespans of c.25 , less than their French/English counterparts.As for the issue of lifespan and health, it is noteworthy that people are not only living longer but are healthier than in the past(I don't necessarily attribute that to diet but to modern life providing extra comforts unavailable in previous generations).
This doesn't make sense. We don't really know what the maximum lifespan was for all these peoples before contact. Mean lifespan is a tricky notion that depends on so much different things that it is of little interest.
Similarly "to be healthier" is just a vague concept. I don't think that 30% dental decay is healthier than a few percent or less. Of course modern availability of abundant cheap energy has helped tremendously in providing extra comforts, no starvation, medical crutches in the form of drugs and hospitals etc but we should now be aware that this is just temporary and at any rate irrelevant to the present discussion. Again it is quite misleading to compare paleomen with the situation prevailing during the past century.
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Absolutely wrong. The burden of proof is on the pro-cooking camp to show that cooked food is either harmless or more beneficial than raw food. After all, we are the only species on this entire planet that cooks its own food.
I'm beginning to think you want to be regarded as fringe. This line of argument virtually guarantees no progress, or at the very least is the best possible way to retard progress.
Since virtually every human being on the planet eats cooked food for the majority of their diet, and the average industrialized human still manages to live longer than at any point in recorded history, claiming that they have to prove their diet's efficacy over one that hasn't obtained since pre-civilizational times is laughably absurd to anyone not already a firm believer in raw. In pop-science, the burden of proof is on the paradigm changer, which is, in this case, raw. In real science, the burden of proof is on the claimaint period, regardless of what they are claiming. If you make a positive assertion that raw is better, you must prove it.
One doesn't need a study which compares raw-eating to cooked-eating people. All one needs is what we have so far:- studies showing distinct localised harm done to human tissue by AGEs, studies showing a reduction in negative symptoms after following a low-AGE diet, studies showing a direct link between age-related conditions and levels of AGEs etc.
A comparison is precisely what is needed to demonstrate the validity of the hypothesis. Without it, it will forever be conjecture. This is, again, essentially required by the scientific method. It's not "a strict interpretation" because there is no other possible interpretation. You don't have a data point until you run a test to gather it. All extrapolations must be tested. All sorts of evil has been done because people find lots of supporting evidence for an idea which later, upon direct testing, turns out to be completely wrong - certainty without rigorous, direct testing is unwarranted.
alphagruis: I agree that a raw v cooked study will be difficult to do given the cultural biases towards cooked food. A real test might not take place in my lifetime, if it ever does. However, that does not change the status of the hypothesis. The reality of the situation is that until a comparison study is done to confirm the hypothesis, it remains a hypothesis. Which is really all I'm trying to point out here.
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... I'm not one of those RVAFers who goes on about the excellent health of the Inuit or whatever tribe.
. My whole point was that too many RVAFers were relying too much on dodgy claims from past eras/tribes with little or no real evidence to support such.
This seems a matter of necessity. There haven't been many controlled, randomized clinical trials on Paleo diets (only two, as I recall, and they included significant cooked foods) and none that I know of on raw Paleo diets, so I believe that leaves us with the following for evidence:
1) paleoanthropological analysis of Paleolithic hominid skeletal/dental remains and the remains of their tools, clothes, shelters, discarded food remains, etc.
2) observational studies of modern traditional tribes, such as the Kitavan acne study (which you could cite if you wish, since I believe it's a fairly high carb diet)
3) nutritional studies of other diets that contain some other elements of RPD or that find problems with modern aspects of diets (such as grains, dairy, legumes, sugars, cooking, etc.)
4) inductions and deductions from knowledge of human and animal biology, anatomy, physiology, morphology, medicine, biochemistry, etc.
5) our own experiences--not scientific, but compassionate physicians and fellow dieters tend to take it seriously
6) the anecdotal experiences of others (for example, your experience serves as anecdotal evidence for me)--this is probably the weakest evidence of all of these and is not scientific, but it can provide useful clues. For example: I had loose teeth and a medical history somewhat similar to Lex's, Lex reported firming teeth and other benefits on his diet which, along with the anecdotal success stories of Del Fuego and William intrigued me enough to get me started on my planned near-ZC experiment, and I emulated Lex's diet to a great extent and experienced several of the same benefits. These experiences were not scientific evidence, but they did help me out a lot by helping to motivate and guide me.
So "[going] on about the excellent health of the Inuit or whatever tribe," as you put it, seems to be relatively unavoidable if we are going to discuss much in the way of evidence for Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) nutrition. While double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical studies are considered the gold standard in nutritional science, these categories of evidence were apparently sufficient to get everyone here to try the diet. You see to draw mainly from category 3. What evidence convinced you to try it? If I missed any categories, please let me know.
I've actually found the knowledge that scientists have gleaned from studying Paleolithic remains and modern HG tribes to be generally more useful in my own experience than clinical studies, so it's no surprise that I would cite it. I use it because IT WORKS FOR ME and has worked for dozens of other people that I know about, not out of some fictitious desire to re-enact Paleolithic times for the sake of re-enactment. That may be entertaining, along the lines of Civil War re-enactment I suppose, but if it doesn't do anything for my health or well being or the environment or provide some other rational and observable benefit, then I'm not interested. For example, I'm not a believer in magic or superstition or whatever you want to call it.
On the other hand, if some of the older ways, such as those that the RPD/Paleo/PaNu/etc. diets are based upon, work for me, then I'm not going to discard them simply because they're not modern or "civilized" or because someone ridicules it as "tribal" or "a noble savage theory" or re-enactment or animal-murder or orthorexia or anorexia or whatever other accusation someone comes up with next--that's their problem, not mine. You've adopted one of the older approaches (all-raw) whole-heartedly. I don't accuse you of promoting noble savagery because of that--but I would not be surprised if you are on the receiving end of some of this sort of criticism in the future. I accept your word that all-raw works for you. Please show me the same courtesy and stop bringing up these canards unless I actually directly and specifically use them to support my case (and I think you could argue that with William re: Paleo Utopianism at this point, but good luck on trying to convince him otherwise ;) ). Please don't try to read my mind or discern hidden motives or read between the lines. It's not necessary--I'm a very simple man. Let's just deal with what we actually write. I know it's not easy on the Internet given all the trolls and whatnot, but I think I've demonstrated by now that I'm not a troll and I've tried to do the RPD as close as I can given my circumstances.
We simply will not be taken seriously by scientists if we keep on mentioning frauds like Price with all their blather about the noble-savage -like lifestyle.
I sympathize with your concern about that and I know that most vegetarians and vegans and some scientists and doctors who have heard of Price simply dismiss whatever someone who disagrees with them is saying if they cite Price, and I've tried to go easy on citing him since you tipped me off to the growing support there is here for him, but I think that the raw-meat aspect of our diet frankly turns off such people even more, so it may not make a huge difference in the long run. However, this is an anti-dairy forum, so I can understand your low tolerance for Price, especially the WAPF, which seems even more pro-raw-dairy than Price's evidence actually was.
Given all that, I see no problem with people citing other non-Price evidence re: tribal peoples, such as provided by Cordain, Eaton, Lindeberg, Wortman, etc. Do you have a problem with that? Are you afraid it will give legitimacy to Price's work?
P.S., As I've mentioned before, I would prefer it if we forego the "nonsense" comments--and you can take me to task on that if I do it. It doesn't improve your arguments and that sort of language only tends to make people dig in more. An occasional outburst doesn't bother me, especially if there is humor inserted somewhere, but a negative pattern starts to get a mite unpleasant after a while. I see us as being in two different sections of the same big tent here and therefore on the same team.
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...These compounds include kidney-damaging Maillard reaction products, mutagens, carcinogens, antimutagens, antioxidants, antibiotics, and antiallergens. ...
Thanks, but this one appears to regard Maillard products as unhealthy, rather than healthy.
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This doesn't make sense. We don't really know what the maximum lifespan was for all these peoples before contact. Mean lifespan is a tricky notion that depends on so much different things that it is of little interest.
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Actually we do. It is possible to estimate the rough age of bones on a scientific basis, and my figure re Maoris is quite correct.
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This seems a matter of necessity. There haven't been many controlled, randomized clinical trials on Paleo diets (only two, as I recall, and they included significant cooked foods) and none that I know of on raw Paleo diets, so I believe that leaves us with the following for evidence:
1) paleoanthropological analysis of Paleolithic hominid skeletal/dental remains and the remains of their tools, clothes, shelters, discarded food remains, etc.
2) observational studies of modern traditional tribes, such as the Kitavan acne study (which you could cite if you wish, since I believe it's a fairly high carb diet)
3) nutritional studies of other diets that contain some other elements of RPD or that find problems with modern aspects of diets (such as grains, dairy, legumes, sugars, cooking, etc.)
4) inductions and deductions from knowledge of human and animal biology, anatomy, physiology, morphology, medicine, biochemistry, etc.
5) our own experiences--not scientific, but compassionate physicians and fellow dieters tend to take it seriously
6) the anecdotal experiences of others (for example, your experience serves as anecdotal evidence for me)--this is probably the weakest evidence of all of these and is not scientific, but it can provide useful clues. For example: I had loose teeth and a medical history somewhat similar to Lex's, Lex reported firming teeth and other benefits on his diet which, along with the anecdotal success stories of Del Fuego and William intrigued me enough to get me started on my planned near-ZC experiment, and I emulated Lex's diet to a great extent and experienced several of the same benefits. These experiences were not scientific evidence, but they did help me out a lot by helping to motivate and guide me.
So "[going] on about the excellent health of the Inuit or whatever tribe," as you put it, seems to be relatively unavoidable if we are going to discuss much in the way of evidence for Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer) nutrition. While double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical studies are considered the gold standard in nutritional science, these categories of evidence were apparently sufficient to get everyone here to try the diet. You see to draw mainly from category 3. What evidence convinced you to try it? If I missed any categories, please let me know.
There are several flaws with the above assumptions you've made.Palaeoanthroplogical evidence is very sparse and most such experts admit that the evidence is constantly changing(like that Neanderthal supposed ZC-diet study which was subsequently found to be wrong given problems re bone-analysis).Then 2), the observational studies of modern tribes such as the Kitavans:- there have been too many changes, even in hunter-gatherer lifestyles between the Palaeolithic era and modern times, so that it is seriously misleading to cite such studies as they give a totally wrong impression of what the Palaeolithic era was like(as the latter had different climates etc.). The 3) option is the best as there are now 1,000s of reliable studies re the dangers of cooking, and there are very gradual studies done on raw diets(only raw vegan so far).4), inductions/deductions drawn from human or animal physiology, is less reliable - I've noted for example how both carnivores and vegans can give excellent, well thought out reasons for why humans are destined to be carnivores/herbivores(as applicable) but such arguments are too dodgy to be reliable as human morphology/digestive system is still not properly understood etc..5) and 6) , our own and others' experiences, is solid as an option and the one which draws most people into this sort of diet, I mean there are no reports of mass food-poisoning/mass parasitic infection in the raw foodist community, which is what one should expect if one is to believe standard cultural propaganda against raw animal foods.
My personal motivation was simply this:- I had tried every possible dietary combination, prior to rawpalaeo, except for cooked zero-carb(couldn't do it as I found the higher my intake of cooked animal food was in my diet, the worse my health became), so there was only raw vegan/frutiarian, and when that failed, only RVAF diets left. I was never motivated by mention of the Inuit and while I found the palaeo mythology amusingly enticing I didn't take it seriously, I just wanted to rebuild my health.
The way I see it, most people will come to RVAF diets by 1 of 2 means. Either they will read some of the many mainstream studies which feature on major news sites such as the BBC focusing on the harm done by grilled foods etc. or they will do what I did, and simply travel through the various diets until they reach the RVAF diet option, in which case, their motivation will be mainly testiomonials from long-term RVAFers re success of the diet. The former would be the mainstream approach and the latter the unconventional approach.
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I'm beginning to think you want to be regarded as fringe. This line of argument virtually guarantees no progress, or at the very least is the best possible way to retard progress.
Since virtually every human being on the planet eats cooked food for the majority of their diet, and the average industrialized human still manages to live longer than at any point in recorded history, claiming that they have to prove their diet's efficacy over one that hasn't obtained since pre-civilizational times is laughably absurd to anyone not already a firm believer in raw. In pop-science, the burden of proof is on the paradigm changer, which is, in this case, raw. In real science, the burden of proof is on the claimaint period, regardless of what they are claiming. If you make a positive assertion that raw is better, you must prove it.
So far, the primary claims have not so much been re the benefits of raw but on the negatives associated with cooking, which have been amply demonstrated in mainsteam science. Simply put, if one can show how strong the argument is against the opposing side(ie against cooking) then that vindicates the other opposing side(ie raw)(unless you're suggesting there is some 3rd state, separate from raw or cooked!).
In short, we are now in a situation where most scientists and nutritionists(albeit reluctantly) admit the harm done by well-cooked foods(particularly well-cooked animal foods). We have ample evidence re specific harm done by heat-created toxins on human tissue and proof that lowering AGE-levels reduces AGE-related conditions - there have even been studies showing how certain types of heat-created toxins(such as heterocyclic amines) are also found in cigarette-smoke, and smoking has already been conclusively established as harmful within the scientific community, and now there's extensive research on the benefits of bacteria, which just happen to be in abundance in raw foods. So, the pro-cooking camp is in real trouble.
The arguments re humans living longer in recent years is irrelevant to the discussion for the following reason, that substantial medical technology has been the prime instigator behind that, not diet. Humans were eating cooked food both before and after the increase in lifespan so that factor was not relevant.
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I agree that a raw v cooked study will be difficult to do given the cultural biases towards cooked food. A real test might not take place in my lifetime, if it ever does. However, that does not change the status of the hypothesis. The reality of the situation is that until a comparison study is done to confirm the hypothesis, it remains a hypothesis. Which is really all I'm trying to point out here.
We don't deal here with a mathematical conjecture such as the famous second Fermat's theorem that indeed remained just a conjecture and nothing more for several centuries until it was finally proven by Wiles.
The raw versus cooked hypothesis is a matter of life science. In life science as in physics every hypothesis or even the best of our theories are just working tools that can be used as long as they are not falsified, i.e. proven to make predictions at odds with experiment. Useful theories have to make testable predictions otherwise they are laught at because they are "not even wrong" as Pauli put it.
So either the "raw" or the present dominant "cooked" hypotheses may just be falsified rather than ever definitely "proven" in the future.
So I'm afraid that even the basic raw versus cooked experiment we talked about would not really settle the issue. As I already pointed out previously it would be sharpely criticized by the losing camp in all its technical details and every experiment has weak technical features, in particular in life science. It would just give one more piece of evidence (admittedly a strong one) against one or the other camp.
I claim that, based on all the evidence at hand, it is scientifically at least as sound to adopt the "raw" hypothesis as my present working hypothesis rather than the "cooked" one. I can't see any serious falsifying data against it, whereas dark clouds have accumulated now over the "cooked" one. I belong to a minority, well, don't bother me, that's just the way science works until the next change of paradigm.
So both the raw and the cooked are just hypotheses, and the cooked one has certainly no stronger scientific basis than the raw one, it just happens that it's the dominant one.
Of course if the burden of "proof" means the struggle to get consensus it is obviously on the raw side. Humans have indeed thrived on cooked diets as never before (nearly 7 billions peoples), since the neolithic revolution. So from a short sighted darwinian point of view our species has succeeded in a tremendous way. Yet exponential growth is unsustainable and darwinian success and health status are not the same thing.
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Actually we do. It is possible to estimate the rough age of bones on a scientific basis, and my figure re Maoris is quite correct.
No, YOU do...
As for me everything in this respect is highly questionable and uncertain.
You state it yourself in your reply to PaleoPhil:
"Palaeoanthroplogical evidence is very sparse and most such experts admit that the evidence is constantly changing" ;D
http://ryan-koch.blogspot.com/2009/05/reality-of-primitive-peoples-lifespan.html
The paper referred to in this blog doesn't support the "Nasty, Brutish and Short" ideology at all
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You are making the classic short-sighted mistake of all Price devotees in that you are suggesting that evidence from a closer era re modern tribes is as good as evidence from far away times such as in the Palaeo era. Clearly, evidence from palaeo times is inevitably going to be less substantial and clear-cut given the extra millennia involved, plus there were different practices in palaeo times(Ie no grain-eating such as happened with the Maoris). While evidence from closer periods can indeed be sketchy of itself, scientific analysis of aging in bones seems to be more rigorous than scientific measuring of diet via bone-analysis.
Incidentally, there is plenty of evidence re Maori low life expectancy(lower than in Palaeo times) plus lower fertility etc. I went over this before, providing links:-
"In my haste last time I forgot to check a couple of websites. Anyway,
it turns out that the severe collapse in the Maori population after
the colonists arrived, appears to have been not only due to being
shifted onto swamp-land etc.,like I stated earlier, but also to do
with the fact that there was a large reduction in the amount of
animal food available to them as a result of this transfer, so that
they depended mostly on the grains in the ancient Maori diet, such
as sweet potatoes(kumara),ferns etc., which caused a devastating
collapse in health. So we basically have 2 periods. One, centuries
before the colonists arrived, where Maoris suffered a significant
decrease in health after turning to a moderate extent to grain
products via agriculture, and then very nearly dying out after
switching to mainly grain products over a period of a few decades. So
it wasn't a transition to refined Western-type refined foods that
almost killed off the Maori population(despite what Price claimed), but the grain in the diet.
Geoff
--- In rawpaleodiet@yahoogroups.com, "Geoff" <geoffpurcell@...> wrote:
>
> Actually, there's plenty of evidence to show that the Maoris were
in
> a poor state of health in pre-colonial times. It seems that the
> Maoris followed a mainly meat/fat/fish diet, with very little
> veg/fruit, up to c.1500 AD, after which they turned to agriculture
to
> some extent, eating grain such as manioc, sweet potatoes, as well
as
> ferns etc., at which point their health suffered dramatically(note
> that they still had very high portions of seafood in their diet, at
> the time).
>
> Here's an excerpt from the Net re this:-
>
> "The harshness of the Maori diet meant low life expectancy, high
> infant mortality, and low fertility" (Olssen & Stenson, 1989: 4).
> from:-
>
> http://www.rcnz.org.nz/resources/fnf/a99.htm
>
>
> The following 2 websites go on about the gradual decrease in height
> of (pre-1769)Maori skeletons, over the centuries, as they turned to
> eating grains, including a few mentions of frequent stomach-tumours
> in the Maori population, and the excessive wearing of teeth,
> especially molars, due to consumption of plant foods. They do have
> one or two nice things to say about Maori health, but mostly they
> mention the low rate of life-expectancy(25-30 years), the low
> fertility, the high susceptibility to disease etc in pre-colonial
> times:-
>
> http://tinyurl.com/gs5oy
>
> http://tinyurl.com/kk5vu
>
>
> The major cause of Maori near-extinction appears to be the arrival
of
> the colonists carrying new diseases, to which they weren't resistant
> (due to bad grain-filled diet?), and the British tendency to put
> Maoris on swamp-land reservations, which encouraged the spread of
> disease even more. This is similiar to the New World, where Indian
> tribes similiarly contracted disease within a couple of decades of
> contact with white settlers, long before they actually turned to
> Western-style diets.(The Maoris actually only turned to Western-
style
> diets c.1900, according to the Net, some time after the threat of
> extinction had passed. I won't deny that their
grain/fish "primitive"
> diet was better than a refined-foods diet, but, given the evidence,
a
> Palaeo diet is undoubtedly better than a Weston-Price grain- (or
> dairy-)-filled diet).
>
> Geoff"
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There are several flaws with the above assumptions you've made.Palaeoanthroplogical evidence is very sparse and most such experts admit that the evidence is constantly changing....
I do wish you would stop making assumptions about what you think I really mean instead of taking my words at face value, Tyler. I never said anywhere that any of the evidence categories was without flaw. I only meant that those are all the categories that I'm aware of--the quality of the evidence varies. If you have others feel free to add them.
I agree that most people are convinced by 5 and 6--their own experience or that of others (especially if they see them improve first-hand). It's not scientific, but personal experience is generally the most convincing. My own experience was the main convincer for me too.
My personal motivation was basically the same as yours--I had tried pretty much everything else and then happened upon forums where people were talking about gluten and dairy elimination helping their IBS (I had IBS-C). I checked out the published studies on this and they were very encouraging. I was still skeptical (as usual), so I asked my primary care physician about it and he actually encouraged me to try it (he had quite a refreshingly open mind compared to my prior PCP). I decided to give it a shot. It worked better than my wildest dreams, so I looked into why and found out about the Paleo diet. Having studied biological evolution, Paleo made sense to me, so I gave it a shot and improved further.
I learned about the Inuit later on. They were not a motivation for me either--their example did help explain it and revealed interesting things I didn't know about, like the potential to do well on high fat diets, some raw meats/organs and high meat (along with Ray Audette, Aajonus, William, DelFuego and Lex). I'm rather skeptical, conservative, and independent, so I usually don't try anything different until I've found multiple confirming sources and I never dogmatically follow the example of a single group or guru. I noticed that more and more Paleo dieters were having problems with carbs and/or cooked foods on broad Paleo diets--including myself--whereas other people like William and Geoff Purcell were doing much better on more restricted diets. I reviewed what I had been eating when I was doing best in the early days of my Paleo diet when I was keeping a food diary. I found I had been eating mostly wild salmon, bison, pork chops, raw beef jerky and other (cooked) meats with some raw fruits and raw green salads. I did some more investigating and found DelFuego and Lex and eventually wound up here.
So please don't assume that anyone tried RPD solely because of the Inuit or any other tribe. Instead, why not ask them what their actual individual reasons were--you may be surprised by the answers you get. In your and my case we had the same basic reason.
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You are making the classic short-sighted mistake of all Price devotees in that you are suggesting that evidence from a closer era re modern tribes is as good as evidence from far away times such as in the Palaeo era.
Useless babble.
While evidence from closer periods can indeed be sketchy of itself, scientific analysis of aging in bones seems to be more rigorous than scientific measuring of diet via bone-analysis.
"
Baseless statements
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Useless babble.
Not at all. It is simple fact that Price devotees mostly assume that evidence from palaeo times is indistinguishable from evidence from tribes nearer to our modern era and often claiming it's of the same quality. A good example is Sally Fallon's baseless insistence that salt was consumed in palaeo times.
Baseless statements
An absurd choice of words. Just do a basic search and you'll find multiple sources showing how easy it is to determine the age of bones(unsurprising given advances in recent years in forensic science), eg:-
http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=45647
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH8-45J5675-1T&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1045909511&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f421ec2796c6bf735fe275470be338bd
I suppose this now belongs in hot topics, given the post above this one.
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One of my main concerns re Price, I should make clear, is that by promoting Price's views/claims one is generally promoting a cooked, neolithic diet as that is what he basically proposed(or at least suggesting that Price's diet is not unhealthy). Sure, he also promoted consumption of some raw animal foods(though apparently in some moderation, with the exception of raw dairy) but the diet was largely cooked, with hefty amounts of fermented grains, tubers and the like.So, in a sense, Price's diet or the general hunter-gatherer diets of Neolithic-era tribes, being both largely cooked and mostly Neolithic, are almost the polar opposite of rawpalaeo in concept.
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I agree that most people are convinced by 5 and 6--their own experience or that of others (especially if they see them improve first-hand). It's not scientific, but personal experience is generally the most convincing. My own experience was the main convincer for me too.
I'm deeply convinced that various personal experiences are actually one of the most important evidence at hand, among all the sources of evidence of your list, PaleoPhil. When Seignalet (or others) reports hundreds of patients improved by his diet it is scientifically significant. When many people such as Lex Rooker report about their dietary experience in a journal it is scientifically significant when some organizational principle finally emerges.
As a physicist I claim that it is utterly wrong that only "double blinded clinical investigations" might provide scientifically meaningful data with respect to diet. That's just bullshit babble from short sighted pretentious hardboiled reductionnists, an approach, that physics itself has now shown to be deeply insufficient, misleading and wrong. Unfortunately the news has not yet been received by the majority of life scientists and certainly not by most doctors.
Appropriate diet and health are emergent phenomena, i.e. a non trivial collective result dependant on many intertwinned factors that cannot be simply varied independently or held constant at will, as in standard reductionnist approach, without being fooled by the outcome. Symptoms of bad studies are always the same: conflicting, non reproducible, confusing results. Sadly, the rule rather than the exception in many modern life science studies.
In other words it is an illusion to believe that dietary issues may be readily settled by experiments designed according to the same reductionnist principles as the study of the vibrations in the wings of a B 747 airplane.
Unfortunately things in life science are much more involved and we have to invoke and take advantage of much less direct evidence.
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I'm deeply convinced that various personal experiences are actually one of the most important evidence at hand, among all the sources of evidence of your list, PaleoPhil. When Seignalet (or others) reports hundreds of patients improved by his diet it is scientifically significant. When many people such as Lex Rooker report about their dietary experience in a journal it is scientifically significant when some organizational principle finally emerges.
As a physicist I claim that it is utterly wrong that only "double blinded clinical investigations" might provide scientifically meaningful data with respect to diet.
Good point. I guess I should have said that 5 and 6 are not regarded as "scientific" by the current crop of scientists and under the current general understanding of science. I probably shouldn't have assumed that people would understand I meant that. I think anecdotal evidence was probably more highly regarded in the past before science became more formalized, and who knows what the future holds. Still, I'm willing to concede to the scientists that 5 and 6 are not "scientific" in today's general sense of the word. I still find them personally very useful and I think most honest scientists would admit they do provide even them with some value--such as clues as to what they should be investigating next (if they can get the funding).
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I think anecdotal evidence was probably more highly regarded in the past before science became more formalized, and who knows what the future holds. Still, I'm willing to concede to the scientists that 5 and 6 are not "scientific" in today's general sense of the word. I still find them personally very useful and I think most honest scientists would admit they do provide even them with some value--such as clues as to what they should be investigating next (if they can get the funding).
Yes, absolutely. It is an unfortunate situation that life scientists began to emulate reductionist physics with his methods (and relevant undeniable successes) by the 1960's and still do so today. Now that, ironically, physics has clearly demonstrated the drastic limitations of this approach and its clearcut inadequacy in complex systems such as living organisms as well as the need to adopt a global collective emergent point of view in the latter.
A nice exemple of such global point of view or concept of emergence is precisely in the title of this forum RAW PALEO. This conveys higher organisation principles that do not refer to any molecular components of food (no need to even know that such things exist) and just tells us something about the appropriate higher organisation level namely which natural real food we might eat (land animals, fishs, vegetables, nuts, berries, insects... no grains, no dairy) and in which form ( raw rather than processed). This is in sharp contrast with the usual reductionist point of view where mainstream life science attempts to define an appropriate diet in terms of specific molecular components such as fatty acids, amino acids, vitamins, sugars etc. The ridiculous confusion and failure generated by the latter reductionist approach is clear enough. And so is the much more successful, attractive and astonishingly efficient character of the former higher level emergent point of view.
No, don't let reductionist mainstream life scientists tell you what good science is, they do really not know what they speak about.
As you point it out, PaleoPhil, scientists could learn a lot from the raw paleo experiment and get very valuable clues from it.
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Fascinating. I hadn't thought about it much before, but was there a specific turning point in the 1960s when reductionism was adopted and was there an individual or group that got the scientific community to embrace it?
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It was the general trend after 1950 with the discovery of the DNA structure by James Watson and Francis Crick and later on a gene regulation mechanism by François Jacob and Jacques Monod. This led to the development of molecular biology an approach which reduces essentially life to genes and other remarkable molecules. Nothing is wrong with the reductionist statement that living organisms are made of molecules (This helps a lot to understand why raw is most likely better than cooked). It is just that this doesn't mean that knowledge of the properties of these molecules is akin to understand life. Human and other species's genomes have now been sequenced but this did not reveal the secret of life which not in any part but belongs to the whole.
Well I'm afraid this digression led us far away from the initial subject of this thread. Thanks for your interest.
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More science that refutes the lifespan canard:
Gurven, Michael and Kaplan, Hillard 2007. Hunter-gatherer longevity: cross-cultural perspectives. Population and Development Review 33: 321-365.
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2007pdr.pdf)
"The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years. This range appears to be the closest functional equivalent of an “adaptive” human life span. Departures from this general pattern in published estimates of life expectancy in past populations (e.g., low child and high adult mortality) are most likely due to a combination of high levels of contact-related infectious disease, excessive violence or homicide, and methodological problems that lead to poor age estimates of older individuals and inappropriate use of model life tables for deriving demographic estimates."
You would think this would be enough to kill the canard, but I doubt it. Critics of raw Paleo and similar diets just keep mindlessly repeating "nasty, brutish and short" like a religious mantra, and that seems to satisfy them. Anything to keep from having to challenge their cherished beliefs or expend some mental effort, apparently.
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More science that refutes the lifespan canard:
You would think this would be enough to kill the canard, but I doubt it. Critics of raw Paleo and similar diets just keep mindlessly repeating "nasty, brutish and short" like a religious mantra, and that seems to satisfy them. Anything to keep from having to challenge their cherished beliefs or expend some mental effort, apparently.
But don't hunter-gatherers these days not eat raw paleo?
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What of it, do you think their lives would be shorter if they ate more raw? I haven't seen any of the critics try that tact, though I wouldn't put it past them. They do use the lifespan argument as a criticism of all Paleo diets.
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Well, one study or review doesn't mean anything, really. Plus, it even admits that high mortality would explain why other studies showed much shorter lifespans. I mean death by disease cannot be dismissed, in this regard. Also, from what I understood, child mortality was high not low. It certainly was in palaeo times, given the past evidence, though, admittedly, infanticide might well explain some of the deaths.
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Also, from what I understood, child mortality was high not low. It certainly was in palaeo times, given the past evidence, though, admittedly, infanticide might well explain some of the deaths.
Let's separate child mortality from death in childbirth. Price's book mentions a Dr. Romig among the Eskimos, here's a quote :
"... similar impressive comment was made to me by Dr. Romig, the superintendent of the government hospital for Eskimos and Indians at Anchorage, Alaska. He stated that in his thirty-six years among the Eskimos, he had never been able to arrive in time to see a normal birth by a primitive Eskimo woman. But conditions have changed materially with the new generation of Eskimo girls, born after their parents began to use foods of modern civilization. Many of them are carried to his hospital after they had been in labour for several days. One Eskimo woman who had married twice, her last husband being a white man, reported to Dr. Romig and myself that she had given birth to twentysix children and that several of them had been born during the night and that she had not bothered to waken her husband, but had introduced him to the new baby in the morning...."
From NAPD, here's the link:
http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price18.html (http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/price18.html)
Dr. Price wasn't BSing, either. I read a book of interviews with Haida Native American women when I was in college. They also reported that they would have the baby during the night with their husband asleep next to them, then wake their husband in the morning.
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Well, one study or review doesn't mean anything, really. Plus, it even admits that high mortality would explain why other studies showed much shorter lifespans. I mean death by disease cannot be dismissed, in this regard. Also, from what I understood, child mortality was high not low. It certainly was in palaeo times, given the past evidence, though, admittedly, infanticide might well explain some of the deaths.
Of course, EVERY eminent Paleo proponent from Eaton onwards, AFAIK, has characterized acute infectious disease and infant/childhood mortality as CHARACTERISTIC of Paleo/HG societies. It's the long-term CHRONIC disease that characterizes modernity (and hence the self-justifying emphasis on longevity rather than quality of life that one tends to find among apologists for hypermodernity--to them lengthening of serfdom is somehow a blessing). To criticize (raw) Paleo for what it proclaims is actually quite the compliment. Only the super-utopian lesser-knowns like the departed William have claimed that Paleo folk suffered no disease whatsoever. Do Eaton, Cordain, Stefansson, Harris, Guyenet, Masterjohn, Minger, etc. claim this? Of course not. Canard!
Raw Paleo is the most savage of all Paleo approaches, abhorred even by most Paleo dieters; considered disgusting and worthy of nothing but condemnation. How ironic it is that it seems to work better than any other approach and there appear to be fewer failures on raw Paleo than the more "civilized" cooked Paleo, cooked LC, cooked HC, etc.