Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: CHK91 on January 18, 2011, 01:46:27 am
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Do any of you happen to have a reference to which fruits and vegetables found commonly in the supermarket have remained relatively unchanged from their original form? Meaning not excessively changed through artificial selection.
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This is a bit pointless as raw meats have also been heavily altered given millenia of domestication and the severe inbreeding that resulted therefrom since the Neolithic era. If you want to be sure to get only unchanged foods, then your only safe bet is to only get hold of raw wild game or raw wildcaught seafood or raw wild fruits/veg.
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This is more for knowledge purposes. I just wanted to have a better understanding of exactly what plant foods our ancestors had available to eat. I can't think of many wild plant foods that would have be edible at that time. Perhaps civilization has made these foods less prominent? ??? Extinction of wild varieties?
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well tyler is pretty much right..virtually none.
for a list of things you are curious about, I would definitely check with Daniel Vitalis' stuff as that seems to be his main thing. I'm sure this would include wild herbs like lambsquarters and dandelion or other bitter medicinal herbs you might get in the supermarket, mushrooms, seaweeds, wild animals and some types of the remaining wild fruits. Not saying all these things were eaten in any serious quantity, but wouldn't have changed much due to civilization. There are degrees between things as well. For instance the Florida style avocados I believe are far more akin to their natural origin than hass varieties. Obviously a berry is more natural than a kiwi etc...many varieties of fruits and vegetables certainly did not exist, including much what what we know to be vegetables like broccoli or black eggplant, many of which are predated by varities of corn, alcohol etc.. :)
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AFAIK wild blackberries are considered one of the least altered fruits, even among wild berries.
They are practically the same as their "paleo ancestors"
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AFAIK wild blackberries are considered one of the least altered fruits, even among wild berries.
They are practically the same as their "paleo ancestors"
Possibly. Another very ancient and wild fruit is the cempedak. Delicious and very nourishing.
Some might argue that this fruit grows in SE Asia and as our ancestors are supposed to have come from Africa they would never have encountered any cemepdak. But they would never have encountered any blackberries neither because this is a fruit of temperate areas, which, as far as we know, were not significantly populated before the mastery of the fire.
Nevertheless, I eat both blackberries and cempedak. ;)
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Those photos are so revolting-looking they seem like pro-RZC propaganda.
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Well, so they're gone.
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Well, so they're gone.
I was just being humorous as the photos do look rather off-putting. Not an attempt at cernsorship. Please put them back.
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Those photos are so revolting-looking they seem like pro-RZC propaganda.
It actually looks pretty good. :(
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Daniel's friend came out with a new book recently which includes many wild foods which are more in the north eastern parts of the U.S.
http://www.danielvitalis.com/2011/01/new-book-now-available-ancestral-plants/ (http://www.danielvitalis.com/2011/01/new-book-now-available-ancestral-plants/)
Maybe that would help, but you might not live in the area.. it seems like there almost no wild foods here in the southwest..
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Possibly. Another very ancient and wild fruit is the cempedak. Delicious and very nourishing.
Some might argue that this fruit grows in SE Asia and as our ancestors are supposed to have come from Africa they would never have encountered any cemepdak. But they would never have encountered any blackberries neither because this is a fruit of temperate areas, ...
Most scientists currently believe that my H. sapiens sapiens ancestors started out in Africa and migrated through the Middle East to Eurasia, ending up in Western Europe thousands of years ago, never stepping foot in SE Asia (and if I have any Neanderthal blood, some of my roots in Europe may go back as much as 600,000 years). I don't see what's wrong with my questioning whether SE Asia is really most like the original habitat of my ancestors, as GCB suggested but then backed off from a bit, and whether SE Asian fruits are really the most nutritious fruits for me and one of humanity's most nutritious foods just because some people like the taste of them and claim without much evidence that they are very similar to the fruits of ancestral humans (of East Africa?). As Nation implied a while ago, sometimes it's good to have someone question assumptions so that this forum doesn't become a circle jerk.
This doesn't mean that none of us can eat tropical or domesticated fruits (which appears to be a straw man that no one has suggested, AFAIK), it's just a matter of not assuming that some people's opinions are fact without investigating how much evidence and logic there is to support them. I haven't even proposed an alternative hypothesis, just asked questions and shared some info and experience. Maybe it will turn out that SE Asian fruits are superfoods and people like me have health issues with them because of damage from SAD, I don't know. I've got an open mind on the subject.
I enjoy the taste of some tropical fruits and occasionally eat some mango or a few chunks of pineapple, so I may actually eat and enjoy tropical fruits more than Tyler, ironically. Since not even the most expert scientists can agree on what the Paleo foods of our ancestors were and which time periods are most key for providing clues as to what would be most optimal for us, self-experimentation will likely remain a key tool for a long time to come. It's also important to bear in mind that not everyone's experience will be exactly the same.
I think that CHK91's original question is an interesting one regardless of whether one uses it as a tool to help determine which foods to eat or not. The history of domesticated and wild foods is a fascinating one. The problem is that there isn't a lot of information easily available on the subject. Wikipedia offers some and Daniel Vitalis has scrounged up some, so his website is probably also worth checking out.
The book looks interesting, thanks for the link, Caveman.
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I was just being humorous as the photos do look rather off-putting. Not an attempt at cernsorship. Please put them back.
OK, here they are, from http://hungerhunger.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html:
(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1262/1133957071_f50e4a1b5d.jpg)
(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1382/1133957033_7d0b418a97.jpg)
These are wild durians from the jungle. They all have about the same slightly burnt durian flavor. The dark orange one can sometimes taste of peanut butter. Of the three types here, I found the medium orange type to be the best. As it was about to rain, I didn't have time to buy my favorite wild durian which has a more distinct wild durian smell and taste, with thick flesh and small seeds, but you can read about it here. These wild durians are so creamy (many people are thrown off by not just the smell, but by the creamy texture as versus crunchy/soft texture of most fruits), two or three is enough to make you feel full. The dark orange one especially is so dense and thick it is like eating hardened cream. My friend from China found it "quite pleasant, not at all as bad as what people say about it."
When I was eating these by myself this afternoon, I just praised God for giving us durians! Not exactly a beauty-contest winner (imagine the flesh in brown color--you know what I mean!) but it is absolutely delicious and lovers of this fruit would blow all their money just to eat it. Thank goodness durians are seasonal fruits or we'll all go broke.
And rambutans:
(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1228/976139277_237ede1305_z.jpg)
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Most scientists currently believe that my H. sapiens sapiens ancestors started out in Africa and migrated through the Middle East to Eurasia, ending up in Western Europe thousands of years ago, never stepping foot in SE Asia (and if I have any Neanderthal blood, some of my roots in Europe may go back as much as 600,000 years). I don't see what's wrong with my questioning whether SE Asia is really most like the original habitat of my ancestors, as GCB suggested but then backed off from a bit, and whether SE Asian fruits are really the most nutritious fruits for me and one of humanity's most nutritious foods just because some people like the taste of them and claim without much evidence that they are very similar to the fruits of ancestral humans (of East Africa?). As Nation implied a while ago, sometimes it's good to have someone question assumptions so that this forum doesn't become a circle jerk.
I was not particularly aiming at you. No one really knows what was like the original habitat of our ancestors and it doesn’t matter much to me. Yes, most scientists currently believe that our H. sapiens sapiens ancestors started out in Africa, so let’s admit that’s probably right. What I meant is we shouldn’t exclude food from other areas than central tropical Africa, because if we do so, we should exclude almost everything such as blackberries, ocean fish and shellfish, beef, mutton, seal, caribou, hen’s eggs, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, almost all vegetables and fruits. Then, only safus, African insects and larvae, gazelle, giraffe, zebra, hippopotamus and elephant meat would be real paleo food and raw paleo nutrition would be totally impracticable.
So, why exclude cempedak, cherimoya, soursop, sapote mamey, sapote chico, sapote blanco and durians, for example, if we include blackberries and beef as paleo?
This doesn't mean that none of us can eat tropical or domesticated fruits (which appears to be a straw man that no one has suggested, AFAIK), it's just a matter of not assuming that some people's opinions are fact without investigating how much evidence and logic there is to support them. I haven't even proposed an alternative hypothesis, just asked questions and shared some info and experience. Maybe it will turn out that SE Asian fruits are superfoods and people like me have health issues with them because of damage from SAD, I don't know. I've got an open mind on the subject.
Fine!
I enjoy the taste of some tropical fruits and occasionally eat some mango or a few chunks of pineapple, so I may actually eat and enjoy tropical fruits more than Tyler, ironically. Since not even the most expert scientists can agree on what the Paleo foods of our ancestors were and which time periods are most key for providing clues as to what would be most optimal for us, self-experimentation will likely remain a key tool for a long time to come. It's also important to bear in mind that not everyone's experience will be exactly the same.
I couldn’t agree more.
I think that CHK91's original question is an interesting one regardless of whether one uses it as a tool to help determine which foods to eat or not. The history of domesticated and wild foods is a fascinating one. The problem is that there isn't a lot of information easily available on the subject. Wikipedia offers some and Daniel Vitalis has scrounged up some, so his website is probably also worth checking out.
Yes, info about the origin of plant food is difficult to find, I realized that some years ago when I asked myself the same type of questions you currently raise. But I remember GCB has clarified his stand on that issue in a post here somewhere.
Cheers
François
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Given evidence of cro-magnon interbreeding with neanderthals, it's pretty clear that the out of africa theory is at least partially wrong, maybe wholly.
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What I meant is we shouldn’t exclude food from other areas than central tropical Africa, because if we do so, we should exclude almost everything such as blackberries, ocean fish and shellfish, beef, mutton, seal, caribou, hen’s eggs, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, almost all vegetables and fruits. Then, only safus, African insects and larvae, gazelle, giraffe, zebra, hippopotamus and elephant meat would be real paleo food and raw paleo nutrition would be totally impracticable.
I dsagree with you.
There was different climate hundreds of thousands years ago in Africa. The temperature was 10 degrees C lower than today, on average.
So the blackberries could also be in Africa long time ago. I bet they were there :)
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Yes. perhaps, who knows? What I meant is that we don't really know, climate change, vegetation shifts. Perhaps there was cempedaks or alike fruits also in Africa or perhaps some of our ancestors hominids where living elsewhere than Africa, as TD pointed out. But from where came the ancestors of Neanderthals? Anyway it doesn't really matters.
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Anyway it doesn't really matters.
I think the same about this issue.
I simply eat those fruits which I like and after which I feel good.
Wild berries are my number one. Unfortunately I cannot eat them throughout the whole year. :'(
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The durian pictures are lovely. Durians are delicious and expensive.
Now the rambutans are cheap when in season and there is just too much around at the top of the season. Don't pig out on them as they contain a lot of sugar and can hit your teeth with tooth decay if you decide to eat kilos at a time.
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Maybe that would help, but you might not live in the area.. it seems like there almost no wild foods here in the southwest..
Here in AZ, I am sure there is more food than we think.
There is medicine everywhere but as far as daily plant food goes all I can think of is mesquite pods and cactus fruit.
Unfortunately the blue man group will attack anyone found harvesting saguaro fruit on public land, still kinda worth it though.
Nonetheless, I am moving to somewhere with more wild game, there is some here but not too many.
I have actually heard reports of javelina in tempe (city area). If I see one :o I might just kick off the shoes and rush it with a blade.
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The durian pictures are lovely. Durians are delicious and expensive.
How much costs a kg of durian in the Philippines? In Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka it's not really expensive.
Now the rambutans are cheap when in season and there is just too much around at the top of the season. Don't pig out on them as they contain a lot of sugar and can hit your teeth with tooth decay if you decide to eat kilos at a time.
I think there’s no problem with the sugar in fruits because it is associated in complex forms with minerals, vitamins, micro-nutrients and several other components. The problem is the white industrial sugar which is almost pure saccharose (C6H22O11) and whose ravages are well described by the devil Morf in Chapter 7 of Günther Schwab outstanding book (http://www.peterjamesx.com/ebooks/Dance%20With%20the%20Devil/Dance%20with%20the%20Devil%20Chapter%207.htm) that I found on-line this morning:
"My second trusted ally in this decisive battle against human health is factory-white sugar."
"What have you got against sugar?" asked Groot. "So far as I'm aware, it's absolutely indispensable."
"You are quite right. Sugar, which plants form as a food and as a building material,
is a fundamental element in life. It is contained in sugar cane in quantities of 14 per cent
and in sugar beet in quantities of 17-20 per cent and is therefore highly valuable as a form
of nourishment. Indeed, it is indispensable, since it contains, in organic form, all the mineral-building
materials required for life.
“In the factory, however, sugar is subjected to a long and complicated process.
The sugar juice is heated with slaked lime, which causes the destruction of calcium salts and protein.
Thanks to the alkaline reaction all vitamins are also destroyed. During further phases of the process
the sugar comes into contact with caustic calcium, carbonic acid, sulphur dioxideand sodium bicarbonate.
It is then cooked several times, cooled, crystallized and centrifuged.
The molasses are then de-sugared by means of strontium hydroxide.
"After this, the now lifeless mass is taken to the refinery. It is cleaned with calcium carbonate,
bleached with sulphuric acid, filtered with charcoal, and coloured with poisonous ultra-marine
or some other equally deleterious material. The end product of this is a chemical substance
known as sucrose C6H22O11 which is sold in the shops as powdered sugar, caster sugar,
granulated sugar, cube sugar and so on. Factory-made sugar has lost contact with all the vitalizing
salts and oxidization ferment, and is an artificial product wholly devoid of life, for the digestion of
which the human organism is not equipped. All vital and protective substances have either been
removed, de-natured or reduced to wholly negligible proportions. The end product of the factory
process has a concentration of 98.4 to 99.5 per cent and as such acts simply as a poison."
"That's a sweeping claim," said Rolande, "let's have some proofs of it."
Morf: "Ask a farmer what happens when he uses a manure that's concentrated to seven times
the strength the land can absorb. All plant life dies off. It's much the same with factory-white sugar.
It's an irritant to the mucous membrane, the glands, the blood vessels and the digestive organs; such
sugar is the only food which contains no water; it is deficiency food No. 1; it acts like a burglar in the
organism, brutally appropriating all the vital substances, trace elements and organic minerals which
are essential to its absorption into the body. Such sugar combines very easily with calcium and so, like
white flour, drains it away from bones and teeth.
"Moreover, it changes the quality of the saliva, so that teeth are also attacked from outside.
The fluids surrounding the teeth have a pressure of about 7 atmospheres. Factory-made sugar
has an osmotic pressure of 33.8 atmospheres over that of saliva. It therefore forces itself like
a wedge with an additional pressure of 27 atmospheres through all the cracks in the teeth.
Further, coarse substances that are rich in minerals stimulate intestinal movement; the fact
that they are wholly lacking in refined sugar serves most admirably to hinder the motion of
the bowel. The more sugar man absorbs, the more sluggish the bowel becomes, and there is
a whole host of very potent diseases for which we can thank this sluggishness of the bowel."
Rolande: "There are means of combating that."
"That's just what's so magnificent about it," answered Morf. "Chemical laxatives complete
the work of undermining health from within. The disturbances caused by sugar, especially in
the bodies of children, are most satisfactory. Of the 80,000 little children which die annually
in France,more than half are the victims of sugar which has been put into their milk.
“It's not the germs that are contained in milk, but the sugar that brings indigestion
in its train as well as enteritis, acute diarrhoea, rest?lessness and nervous symptoms of every
kind. Sugar, moreover, is the indirect cause of various infections from which children suffer;
so I do my utmost to persuade parents, uncles and aunts and all other kind-hearted relatives
that they're doing children a kindness by giving them plenty of sugar, sweets, chocolates and
so on. There isn't a single plant that could develop root, buds, stems, leaves, blossoms, let alone
fruit, from industrial sugar. You can store sugar for as long as you pleased without any risk.
The only things that can be stored thus for unlimited periods are dead things.
(…)
"Dental enamel is the hardest substance found in the body of any vertebrate.The teeth of
prehistoric animals have lain for a hundred thousand years in the ground without losing any
of their polish. Even healthy human teeth, when all other parts of the body have decayed, can
resist the influences of heat, frost, damp and dryness, bacteria and acids, over periods of thousands
of years. The tooth is a veritable bastion of life. When it falls sick, then life itself is in decline.
The Dainty Diet Fiend has honoured me with a particularly difficult task, namely the storming of this
bastion, and in all modesty I can say that I have succeeded in it."
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What I meant is we shouldn’t exclude food from other areas than central tropical Africa...
I agree with that (if the food doesn't give the person any problems).
...because if we do so, we should exclude almost everything such as blackberries, ocean fish and shellfish, beef, mutton, seal, caribou, hen’s eggs, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, almost all vegetables and fruits.
If the rule is that the specific food species has to have originated in Stone Age East-Central Africa, then that would be correct, but if the rule is that it's OK to eat the equivalents of foods of Stone Age East-Central Africa, then there were berries, freshwater fish, ocean fish, vegetables and fruits in East-Central Africa, so that those that are descended from or very similar to those species might be considered OK, or at least potentially OK.
GCB had suggested that the fruits of SE Asia are very similar to the fruits of human ancestral habitat (presumably Stone Age East-Central Africa). Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I don't know and he didn't provide any evidence to support this contention. It would be interesting to know. One thing to consider is what time period to consider--10,000 years ago, 30,000 years ago, 70,000 years ago, 100,000 years ago, 1 million years ago, 2 millions years ago, etc.?
Art De Vany claims that the key period is around 70,000 years ago because there was a bottleneck of H. sapiens at that time. He says that there was an intensification of the ice age combined with a major volcanic eruption that darkened the sky, resulting in a dramatic drop in temperature so that East Africa wasn't tropical at the time and that only a few thousand H. sapiens survived, which he says they did by living by the shores of freshwater bodies of water and the sea coast and increasing intake of fish/shellfish/seafood to offset the decrease in available land mammals and fruits/veggies. Whether he's right or not, I don't know. He at least provided some details about why he thinks that fish/seafood is a key ancestral food beyond taste/smell/texture and current climate of the area. Come to think of it, Art is probably another decent source of info for answers to the original question of the topic of this thread.
Then, only safus, African insects and larvae, gazelle, giraffe, zebra, hippopotamus and elephant meat would be real paleo food and raw paleo nutrition would be totally impracticable.
According to De Vany, fish, shellfish and seafood were also consumed in Africa going back at least 70,000 years. I don't know when hominins first started inhabiting sea coasts and accessing seafood. I'll bet ocean shellfish were eaten as soon as seacoasts were inhabited, as freshwater shellfish were consumed before the habitation of seacoasts.
So, why exclude cempedak, cherimoya, soursop, sapote mamey, sapote chico, sapote blanco and durians, for example, if we include blackberries and beef as paleo?
I'm not excluding anything, but there it's possible to imagine plausible hypotheses for eating just Eurasian and African foods and their descendents as well as for eating just African and tropical foods and all those foods. There hasn't been a lot of research on the subject, so I think it's premature for people like both GCB and Art De Vany to draw solid conclusions (and the fact that their conclusions are different supports the need for more research), but it is interesting to see their different opinions, though it's not a huge deal to me either way.
Yes, info about the origin of plant food is difficult to find, I realized that some years ago when I asked myself the same type of questions you currently raise. But I remember GCB has clarified his stand on that issue in a post here somewhere.
Yes, as I mentioned, he backed off somewhat from his original claim. Perhaps he initially said more than he meant. It could be just coincidence that the writings of he and other Instinctos include so much on South/SE Asian tropical fruits, but it is an interesting coincidence.
I think there’s no problem with the sugar in fruits
It depends on the individual, the quantity consumed, and other variables, just as it does with animal fat and protein.
Yes. perhaps, who knows? What I meant is that we don't really know, ...
Precisely my point.
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On Rambutans:
I think there’s no problem with the sugar in fruits because it is associated in complex forms with minerals, vitamins, micro-nutrients and several other components.
My wife thought so too. But you should have seen how my wife gets addicted to these rambutans in the past 3 years. She would order our maids to buy 10 kilos at a time. She and our 3 kids would gorge on it the whole day. Probably finish off the 10 kilos in 2 or 3 days.
Our 3rd child, the girl turned out to be the most carb sensitive and we blamed too much rambutan plus of course rice with her. Tooth Decay. Had her stop eating rice and fruit for some weeks to correct it. I even put her on zero carb diet for 3 days to stop a bad painful tooth decay infection.
And then put her on a strict quota of rambutan eventually, only 2 rambutans at breakfast when in season. The boys get a quota of 5 rambutans a day when in season. (I'm sure they cheat when I'm not looking).
I myself will eat some rambutan, but I like lanzones more which comes out in the same season.
Seriously, I put rambutan in the controlled quantity list for my kids due to the tooth decay aspect of it.
Durians, eat as much as we can afford.
Durians in manila cost 120 to 150 per kilo with the shell.
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Speaking of berries, btw, there are berries native to Africa that still grow wild there today, such as miracle berries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum) and chocolate berries (Vitex spp, http://www.ihavenet.com/Africa-Wild-Fruits-of-Africa-Potent-Weapon-Against-Malnutrition.html). Berries are one of six staple food categories of the Hadza identified by scientists (Sex Differences in Food Preferences of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07601616.pdf). The Hadza live in East-Central Africa, just south of what is supposed to be the cradle of humanity.
See also "The quest for food" by Paleo blogger Dr. BG at http://nephropal.blogspot.com/2010/08/quest-for-food.html.
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For people that are raw paleo omnivores, of course it makes little sense to fret COMPLETELY over how many degrees something is different than our ancestors because there would be little else to eat. The problem however, is obvious with such ridiculous methodologies that suggest taste is any factor at all in selecting healthful food, when we know that foods have been altered to enhance certain characteristics, and environments have shifted and tools allow us to gather much more than what can be achieved in nature. Once we know which foods are really natural through research, we can began to understand that criticisms of sugars or any other thing very much has nothing to do with just what has come from extracting things form plants themselves and cooking, but is fundamentally out of wack with how humans would have eaten year round.
People actually IN nature ate a certain way based on their requirements to be fit enough to actually acquire that food and survive, not sit around leisurely and be able to eat whatever to fuel those requirements. They unquestionably ate the food that was available based on their environment and sometimes whatever they could find. They ate a variety of things that even to contemporary raw-paleos might seem repulsive and had functions like bark , or bugs, or bitter stuff. Knowledge and research from DeVany, Vitalis etc..will state (inconclusively) how and what people might have ate in those regions and times, which means that those diets constructed from such(if one wished to emulate a diet) are far more conducive to choosing foods than those foods which were not even around prior to the age of agriculture or in any abundance. This just one of many reasons why it can make way more sense to eat wild rice over an orange.
If one wants to avoid hypocrisy in criticizing all things neolithic, only then can they not eat pretty much ANY fruits and domesticated meats and be taken seriously. Everyone else just has to choose the most healthy,pastured, or wild foods they can gather to fit their idea of a proper diet. In a weird way, the zero-carb cooked ground-beef eater can be proved based on research to be far more accurate representation of a healthy 'paleo' diet, than a diet constructed of any variety of foods in the paleo pyramid. Even people that might criticize such a diet like Sisson or Dr.Harris, or Aajonus, they would still agree on principle that it would be 'less-flawed' than eating a diet so far off the spectrum of our ancestors just because all those random foods fit under fruit, vegetable, or meat.
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Oopsie, I think I stirred the pot a bit too much, heh heh. -[ Oh well.
Some good points, though you lost me towards the end there, KD. ???
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Some good points, though you lost me towards the end there, KD. ???
than a diet constructed of any variety of foods in the paleo pyramid. Even people that might criticize such a diet [just meat/cooked meat] like Sisson or Dr.Harris, or Aajonus, they would still agree on principle that it would be 'less-flawed' than eating a diet so far off the spectrum of our ancestors just because all those random foods fit under fruit, vegetable, or meat.
30 bananas, 5 Brussel sprouts, 1 piece of farmed sashimi from whole foods.
8 heads of lettuce, 4 eggplants, 1 ounce ground beef, 4 papayas
etc...
other than game meats and a handful of fruits, the only truly wild edible foodstuffs are largely ignored as regular food, precisely because we have an artificial abundance of all the other crap which tastes good and fills us up just as easily and we don't actually have to go out and survive for long stretches outdoors and kill. Someone eating cooked ground beef is obviously engaged in some kind of artificial paradigm, but its not necessarily any less so than any other artificial interpretation of 'paleo' by naming any food or any quantity of food unobtainable in natural settings as paleo. Doesn't make either bad, just becomes sort of a silly arguing point when you can measure the nutrition and effects there-of of food in question regardless of it being 'paleo', particularly the benefits of wild foodstuffs. Even between 'the wild' or among 'fruits' you will find some people have problems with wild sugary fruits that they wouldn't with modern hybridized starchy fruits or roots. So basically as per usual, things are not as simple as exclude x, eat y to gain health. All the variables and quantities and other things are what really matter. Including wild food is just one way to tweak those variables when coming from an artificial situation.
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This just one of many reasons why it can make way more sense to eat wild rice over an orange.
I heavily disagree. Rice ideally needs to be cooked so has heat-created toxins, whereas oranges are eaten raw. Way more sensible to eat oranges rather than wild rice, even if the oranges aren't wild.Plus, rice is non-palaeo so people are less adapted to them.
If one wants to avoid hypocrisy in criticizing all things neolithic, only then can they not eat pretty much ANY fruits and domesticated meats and be taken seriously. Everyone else just has to choose the most healthy,pastured, or wild foods they can gather to fit their idea of a proper diet. In a weird way, the zero-carb cooked ground-beef eater can be proved based on research to be far more accurate representation of a healthy 'paleo' diet, than a diet constructed of any variety of foods in the paleo pyramid. Even people that might criticize such a diet like Sisson or Dr.Harris, or Aajonus, they would still agree on principle that it would be 'less-flawed' than eating a diet so far off the spectrum of our ancestors just because all those random foods fit under fruit, vegetable, or meat.
Again, I heavily disagree. For one thing, a cooked-zero-carber usually eats other things like pasteurised dairy(yuck!) and cooked eggs, and usually avoids all organ-meats, and prefers to eat only intensively-farmed 100 percent grainfed meats for the extra fat, so is very much further off indeed from the palaeo food pyramid. Also, eating according to taste(as well as instinct by the way), can make one eat whatever is necessary to be healthy. For example, when I was 100 percent raw vegan/fruitarian, I would get massive hunger-pangs which were never sated by eating plant foods, but cooked animal foods gave me permanent stomach-aches(and I had slowly lost my taste for the latter over time), so that led me eventually to try eating sizeable amounts of raw animal foods, because they were the only foods that solved the problem.
There are other aspects to consider:- raw, solid vegetables are not very tasty, to put it mildly, so people don't generally get urges to eat vast amounts thereof; that is why Aajonus recommended juicing raw vegetables so as to persuade people to eat far more raw veg than they ever would otherwise, plus his recipes all include adding sweeteners like raw cream or raw honey to the raw veggie-juice in order to disguise the revolting taste. Similiarly, excessive fruit-intake usually involves problems re blood-sugar-levels, so anyone paying any attention to their body re instincts/tastes/other sensations, would naturally sense that fruit shouldn't be consumed too much. Of course, if one follows a philosophy/way of thinking which bans raw animal foods like raw veganism (and only some of the Instinctos), the above doesn't work, but if one genuinely follows one's tastes/instincts/sensations, one can do quite well. Besides, as I pointed out, one can get all the healthy nutrients one needs even if one is eating a 90 percent raw plant food, 10 percent raw animal food diet.
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30 bananas, 5 Brussel sprouts, 1 piece of farmed sashimi from whole foods.
8 heads of lettuce, 4 eggplants, 1 ounce ground beef, 4 papayas
etc...
Brussels sprouts taste foul when cooked, and are a notorious part of really awful boarding-school-dinners. I know they are pretty tasteless when raw, as I foolishly ate some thawed ones a few times as a child. Egg-plants? They are always cooked, I seriously doubt they are that pleasant to taste when raw, either -checking online, they are reported to have a nasty, bitter taste, no doubt because they contain nicotine and the like in them. I know for sure that raw lettuce could never be a solid staple as it's pretty tasteless unless one adds lots of sauces onto it(adding sauces is not very Instincto a habit!).
What it boils down to is that unsuitable non-palaeo foods like rice usually need to be cooked and have sauces added to them to make them more palatable. But the whole point of Instincto is to avoid all processing.
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Brussels sprouts taste foul when cooked, and are a notorious part of really awful boarding-school-dinners. I know they are pretty tasteless when raw, as I foolishly ate some thawed ones a few times as a child. Egg-plants? They are always cooked, I seriously doubt they are that pleasant to taste when raw, either. I know for sure that raw lettuce could never be a solid staple as it's pretty tasteless unless one adds lots of sauces onto it(adding sauces is not very Instincto a habit!).
What it boils down to is that unsuitable non-palaeo foods like rice usually need to be cooked and have sauces added to them to make them more palatable. But the whole point of Instincto is to avoid all processing.
The indian(hindi) word for eggplant is "baigan" derived from "be-guna" - which means "without merit", basically dont bother eating.
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I heavily disagree. Rice ideally needs to be cooked so has heat-created toxins, whereas oranges are eaten raw. Way more sensible to eat oranges rather than wild rice, even if the oranges aren't wild.Plus, rice is non-palaeo so people are less adapted to them. Again, I heavily disagree. For one thing, a cooked-zero-carber usually eats other things like pasteurised dairy(yuck!) and cooked eggs, and usually avoids all organ-meats, and prefers to eat only intensively-farmed 100 percent grainfed meats for the extra fat, so is very much further off indeed from the palaeo food pyramid. Also, eating according to taste(as well as instinct by the way), can make one eat whatever is necessary to be healthy. For example, when I was 100 percent raw vegan/fruitarian, I would get massive hunger-pangs which were never sated by eating plant foods, but cooked animal foods gave me permanent stomach-aches(and I had slowly lost my taste for the latter over time), so that led me eventually to try eating sizable amounts of raw animal foods, because they were the only foods that solved the problem.
There are other aspects to consider:- raw, solid vegetables are not very tasty, to put it mildly, so people don't generally get urges to eat vast amounts thereof; that is why Aajonus recommended juicing raw vegetables so as to persuade people to eat far more raw veg than they ever would otherwise, plus his recipes all include adding sweeteners like raw cream or raw honey to the raw veggie-juice in order to disguise the revolting taste. Similarly, excessive fruit-intake usually involves problems re blood-sugar-levels, so anyone paying any attention to their body re instincts/tastes/other sensations, would naturally sense that fruit shouldn't be consumed too much. Of course, if one follows a philosophy/way of thinking which bans raw animal foods like raw veganism (and only some of the Instinctos), the above doesn't work, but if one genuinely follows one's tastes/instincts/sensations, one can do quite well. Besides, as I pointed out, one can get all the healthy nutrients one needs even if one is eating a 90 percent raw plant food, 10 percent raw animal food diet.
I would rather eat A orange over wild rice for sure, but would rather eat a diet of wild foods that includes wild rice (like) than some modern hybridized diet inconsiderate of many internal factors and disguised as more natural when it ain't. One just has to weight the results of a food/diet, thats it, as everything is more or less changed. I don't have to praise which false modern permutation is correct, only weigh the results. The point is, is that the emphasis of Sisson, DeVany, Vitalis, Aajonus on dissecting ancient and traditional ways of eating and its impact on modern health is far superior IN RESULTS than merely eating foods devoid of 'toxins'. People can survive to 100 eating no raw nutrients, so just existing on any known percentage is not proof of anything of merit in a diet. Just merely shifting people who are thriving on even the most cooked of above approaches to 'raw' or 'paleo' has no bearing on success whatsoever, when ignoring all the other factors. Even experiencing and promoting 100% raw diet, one should be able gauge the health and success of such systems over all the other rawists insisting on purity over rationality. Without disagreeing that the diet you generalize as being 'zero-carb' is perhaps unhealthful, it still attempts to replicate the kinds of fuel sources one would eat, so the foods themselves become just mediocre versions, not complete fabrications.
Everything you say here about juice is wrong of course, as juice tastes fine and the argument is reversed in that vegetable fiber is seen as harmful by that philosophy which is what rationalizes eating juice and not because not enough vegetables will be eaten otherwise. The creams and so forth are specific methods to my knowledge and not taste enhancers. Wrong also on eggplant and lettuce, as these are eating by even hygienists and predominately fruitarians raw without spices or condiments. I have no problem eating heads of lettuce daily, and would enjoy it, but knowledge would keep me from doing so.
The main issue on topic is that the majority of wild foods actually eaten by traditional peoples are seen as inferior in taste or excluded due to unavailability in comparison to the modern foods, so obviously there is some disconnect there.
-When cooking, processing, alcohol, and medicinal qualities are taken into account as predating most foods available
-that certain foods impact healing positively or negatively,
-and no one has any dogma about what is considered healthy,
then Vitalis'/DeVany's research begins to actually make sense as being far more important than just avoiding 'bad stuff' defined by humans.
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Rice ideally needs to be cooked
If a wild grain hasn't been dried, it can be eaten raw. Why is it not considered as paleo as any wild fruit/veggie? It will have moisture, water content, etc just like any other raw food. If it's raw, wild and edible, why would it be considered less paleo? Who's to say paleo men never ate em (in small quantities of course). I'm asking these questions because it seems like what is considered RP or not is an arbitrary opinion.
Another example would be nuts, i've had freshly picked almonds and they are nothing like dried almonds but in most people's eyes, dried nuts are still RP. Why are they held to a different standard than, say, something like pemmican, both have been dried/cooked. It seems arbitrary again! (My point wasn't that Pemmican should be considered RP but that dried nuts are not RP using the same logic).
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Berries are one of six staple food categories of the Hadza identified by scientists (Sex Differences in Food Preferences of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07601616.pdf). The Hadza live in East-Central Africa, just south of what is supposed to be the cradle of humanity.
Interesting article. In Hadzaland, tubers are a much more reliable source of carbohydrates than berries:
Hadzaland receives considerable rain (300-600mm) during the months of December
through May, and almost no rain from June through November, so there is a marked contrast
between the rainy season and the dry season. Most foods vary seasonally, with the exception of
some tubers and some game animals.
(...)
Many Hadza tubers are continuously available
throughout the year, and are a source of carbohydrates.
(...)
For example, because we collected the data in three different regions over two years (one year
without any berries available and one with several species of berries available) ...
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nifty.
I tried raw sweet potato the other day, it's incredible how sweet and filling it is. What other tubers do guys eat?
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People can survive to 100 eating no raw nutrients, so just existing on any known percentage is not proof of anything of merit in a diet. Just merely shifting people who are thriving on even the most cooked of above approaches to 'raw' or 'paleo' has no bearing on success whatsoever, when ignoring all the other factors.
The above comment is meaningless - after all, the fact that people can live to 100 or even 122 on a cooked diet does not remotely validate a cooked diet or make it somehow "better" than a raw, palaeolithic diet, like Instincto. After all, there are many other non-dietary methods that have vastly increased health due to modern medicine giving people artificial hips etc. One can safely state therefore that a raw, palaeolithic diet would make a person's lifestyle much more bearable so that they could also live to 122 but without the need for such frequent hospitalisation/surgery etc. as would be required for cooked-palaeodieters and others in order to live that long.
Everything you say here about juice is wrong of course, as juice tastes fine and the argument is reversed in that vegetable fiber is seen as harmful by that philosophy which is what rationalizes eating juice and not because not enough vegetables will be eaten otherwise. The creams and so forth are specific methods to my knowledge and not taste enhancers. Wrong also on eggplant and lettuce, as these are eaten by even hygienists and predominately fruitarians raw without spices or condiments. I have no problem eating heads of lettuce daily, and would enjoy it, but knowledge would keep me from doing so.
The above is amazing b*llsh*t. Its a simple fact that RVAFers complain about the nasty taste of veggie-juice all the time, and have to add sweeteners like raw honey, raw cream all the time to make it bearable re taste.
Plus, the whole point of juicing raw veg is to break down the cell-walls and thus release the nutrients. The trouble is that this makes the antinutrients in the raw veg also more bioavailable as a result, which is why RVAFers complain all the time about nutritional deficiencies gained from drinking too much raw veggie-juice. Eating raw solid vegetables is fine as the bland taste of raw, solid vegetables makes one eat far less of them, so intake of antinutrients via raw solid veg is negligible. Sure, juicing them and adding sweeteners like raw honey makes them more palatable , but the whole point of Instincto is that any form of processing is a bad idea.
As for egg-plant , it tastes foul/very bitter because it contains antinutrients; one such antinutrient is nicotine, in an amount equivalent to one-twentieth of a cigarette.It does sound as though your knowledge of juicing is pretty poor. I mean, granted one or two veg like raw carrots come across fine when juiced, same with fruits, but raw veggie-juice in general is pretty foul-tasting, which is why coconut-cream, raw honey and raw cream are used all the time by Primal Dieters - common knowledge.
The main issue on topic is that the majority of wild foods actually eaten by traditional peoples are seen as inferior in taste or excluded due to unavailability in comparison to the modern foods, so obviously there is some disconnect there.
Granted, there needs to be more awareness made in the RVAF diet community about the desirability of raw insects, or "high-meat" etc. But I would heavily disagree that they lack taste; I am sure someone brought up on live witchetty grubs and the like would love their taste.
-When cooking, processing, alcohol, and medicinal qualities are taken into account as predating most foods available
-that certain foods impact healing positively or negatively,
-and no one has any dogma about what is considered healthy,
then Vitalis'/DeVany's research begins to actually make sense as being far more important than just avoiding 'bad stuff' defined by humans.
The big problem that fouls up your argument completely beyond repair is the fact that cooking/processing, alters the nutritional composition of those foods to a far more harmful extent than the millenia of inbreeding that the Neolithic era has inflicted on the raw meats/veg/fruits we eat nowadays.
There have been constant attempts to suggest that either the raw component is the only really important factor(which is what Primal Dieters and the like advocate) or that the palaeo aspect is the only really important issue and that the raw aspect is irrelevant(usually espoused by partially-raw zero-carbers). Unfortunately, both are clearly wrong, given the multitude of RVAFers who do badly on either raw dairy and/or cooked foods, palaeo- or otherwise.
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If a wild grain hasn't been dried, it can be eaten raw. Why is it not considered as paleo as any wild fruit/veggie? It will have moisture, water content, etc just like any other raw food. If it's raw, wild and edible, why would it be considered less paleo? Who's to say paleo men never ate em (in small quantities of course). I'm asking these questions because it seems like what is considered RP or not is an arbitrary opinion.
Another example would be nuts, i've had freshly picked almonds and they are nothing like dried almonds but in most people's eyes, dried nuts are still RP. Why are they held to a different standard than, say, something like pemmican, both have been dried/cooked. It seems arbitrary again! (My point wasn't that Pemmican should be considered RP but that dried nuts are not RP using the same logic).
First of all, what is considered "palaeo" is whatever can be eaten raw without processing/cooking. Rice like grains, legumes etc. contains antinutrients so is better cooked, and isn't palaeo.
Plus, when one is on an all-raw diet, things like antinutrients in raw nuts/raw rice tend to foul up one's digestion, so would never have been a staple in rawpalaeo-eras way back when. I personally don't view raw nuts as being rawpalaeo, anyway.Plus, due to laziness before going rawpalaeo, I tried eating raw rice, and it tasted extremely bland and didn't benefit me re health or digestion.
Technically, drying is still sort of rawpalaeo(though not ideal) but any cooking is definitely NOT rawpalaeo. So dried raw nuts are still rawpalaeo but pemmican , which is cooked, is NOT rawpalaeo.
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yeah precisely, its meaningless to cite people that you heard about over the internet doing fine on small amounts of animal foods and whatever unnatural amounts of fruits to validate that because these people won't even get blood tests or actually can prove any feats of health that people on SWD can achieve.
I like veggie juice, any kind strait, don't drink it, so whatever information you grabbed off usenet groups 10 years ago doesn't apply to everyone. I don't know what Aajonus believes, but I can tell you anyone who finds the taste or digestive issues or headaches with it I'd say is incredibly toxic, considering many raw vegan people with questionable levels of health I know drink it strait without animal products or sweeteners. I'll just repeat all the things you cited have specifc funcitons to Primal Dieters,a nd never seen a single person juice foods and use these things regularly and i've met a few, so I'll go by that. You are not right again about the function, but who cares.
your problem in thinking is as always that you cite evidence of a harmful thing without comparing it to the damage done by such arbitary thinking in regards to issues of what is necessary to create health in a modern situation. the concept is simple. you can't cite one type of thing as superior to another by using the term natural when both are not. No matter how much information you can throw on it, results rule andn ot studies on paper or concepts on what is good. Vitalis's stuff is a testament to this after having experiences and knowledge of a spectrum of raw approaches. Choices arn't made based on what is easy or good about cooking, processing or harvesting of wild foods, only that these things are tools that CAN potentially outweigh just eating the raw foods that fit under categories as being non-toxic. The reality is the majority of people increase their health on even programs I could care less about following myself like Sisson etc...then they ever did eating 100% raw, so while that can be linked largely to vegetarian concepts, obviously there is something in the cooking and processing which can still create value, whereas something like excess sugar will always create problems no matter what the diet.
as for grubs -like high meat- I would eat them in a second without question or thought to taste, anyone who wouldn't is a fucking wuss who eats some baby diet.
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On Rambutans:
My wife thought so too. But you should have seen how my wife gets addicted to these rambutans in the past 3 years. She would order our maids to buy 10 kilos at a time. She and our 3 kids would gorge on it the whole day. Probably finish off the 10 kilos in 2 or 3 days.
I wouldn’t worry about that since cultivated rambutans are very near their wild counterparts, AFAIK. When I used to get some, I ate a lot of it also. I especially like the old ones getting black and fermenting: there’s a delightful mixture of sugar and alcohol inside and I could almost get drunk!
Our 3rd child, the girl turned out to be the most carb sensitive and we blamed too much rambutan plus of course rice with her. Tooth Decay. Had her stop eating rice and fruit for some weeks to correct it. I even put her on zero carb diet for 3 days to stop a bad painful tooth decay infection.
It’s hard to correlate tooth decay with a specific food, because it’s not a disease happening overnight. It may have been due to previous nutrition or to other foods (What kind of rice was she consuming? Polished or whole rice? What else had she been commonly eating?). Even when we get a flu, we are usually never sure which food caused it and even whether it’s due to a food eaten shortly before or pehaps long ago.
I strongly suspect my own tooth decay (which mostly happen before I was 18) was due to white sugar (sucrose) and white flour, but I think it was rather a combination of both and other diet factors which all together generated appalling deficiencies.
Durians in manila cost 120 to 150 per kilo with the shell.
Is that about 2.30 € / kg ? (I found 1.00 PHP = 0.0167795 EUR)
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yeah precisely, its meaningless to cite people that you heard about over the internet doing fine on small amounts of animal foods and whatever unnatural amounts of fruits to validate that because these people won't even get blood tests or actually can prove any feats of health that people on SWD can achieve.
This is, first of all, rather foolish since a) I did once try doing small amounts of raw animal foods plus lots of raw fruits and did far better on that than I ever did on SAD or cooked-palaeodiet and b) there is plentiful scientific evidence re the harmful effects of heat-created toxins. More to the point, blood-tests are absolutely meaningless as most scientists, nowadays, aren't even sure what cholesterol-levels truly signify re actual health, let alone other aspects of blood-tests. I wince every time that someone like Lex or whoever suggests that such tests mean anything given that the science behind it is so appallingly poor.
I like veggie juice, any kind strait, don't drink it, so whatever information you grabbed off usenet groups 10 years ago doesn't apply to everyone.
I actually tried veggie-juice plenty of times during my raw vegan phase(wheatgrass for example which tastes foul and is the holy grail for raw vegan diets, by the way) and I even experimented with them during my RVAF diet years, so your protestations are absolutely LAUGHABLE. And given that RVAFers routinely complain of the taste of raw veggie-juice without sweeteners..
Well, perhaps you just stuck to raw carrot-juice or raw fruit-juice or perhaps there is a rather more serious accusation involved....
I don't know what Aajonus believes, but I can tell you anyone who finds the taste or digestive issues or headaches with it I'd say is incredibly toxic, considering many raw vegan people with questionable levels of health I know drink it strait without animal products or sweeteners. I'll just repeat all the things you cited have specifc funcitons to Primal Dieters,a nd never seen a single person juice foods and use these things regularly and i've met a few, so I'll go by that. You are not right again about the function, but who cares.
B*llsh*t again. Like I said before, Primal Dieters have repeatedly complained online about health-problems gained from excessive-raw-veggie-juice consumption(more than 1 glass a day), and many regained their health once they cut out this non-palaeo food, plus many had recovered their health on raw meats before they even got round to trying raw veggie-juice(juicers are expensive after all). What is ridiculous re your above absurd comments is that raw vegans routinely eat/drink things that they find taste foul, not because they want to get healthy, but because the ONE main reason they are raw vegan is that they want to be kind to animals, and figure that they must suffer therefore re lack of taste of raw veggie-juice etc.
your problem in thinking is as always that you cite evidence of a harmful thing without comparing it to the damage done by such arbitary thinking in regards to issues of what is necessary to create health in a modern situation. the concept is simple. you can't cite one type of thing as superior to another by using the term natural when both are not. No matter how much information you can throw on it, results rule andn ot studies on paper or concepts on what is good. Vitalis's stuff is a testament to this after having experiences and knowledge of a spectrum of raw approaches. Choices arn't made based on what is easy or good about cooking, processing or harvesting of wild foods, only that these things are tools that CAN potentially outweigh just eating the raw foods that fit under categories as being non-toxic. The reality is the majority of people increase their health on even programs I could care less about following myself like Sisson etc...then they ever did eating 100% raw, so while that can be linked largely to vegetarian concepts, obviously there is something in the cooking and processing which can still create value, whereas something like excess sugar will always create problems no matter what the diet.
No, the actual reality is that people do very badly on cooked-palaeodiets. I have been a member of cooked-palaeodiet forums for many years now, and the reports they make are PATHETIC compared to reports made from people on raw diets, even those which include a lot of raw dairy in them.At best, health-improvements mostly involve minor benefits such as slight improvement in diabetes and the like.Raw foods offer far better results time and again, given endless reports on other RVAF diet forums.
Plus, then there's your specious claim:-
"cite one type of thing as superior to another by using the term natural when both are not"
This is particularly moronic since cooking is a far harsher process and far more damaging to foods than millenia of inbreeding of raw meats/raw fruits/raw vegetables. In other words, some things are clearly FAR more natural than others, so are far healthier than more unnatural methods such as cooking.
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The obvious fallacy behind defending cooked foods, however palaeo, is that the above accusations against raw foods, such as most not being like they were 100,000 years ago due to domestication/agriculture and therefore unnatural, is that cooked-foods also share the same problems but are even worse as they are extensively harmed by the process of cooking as well, re the addition of heat-created toxins as well as the destruction of enzymes and bacteria.
The claims re a few people reacting to wild, raw fruits even, are also pointless as these few people get those very unusual problems as a result of their health being harmed by the decades-long consumption of cooked foods. In other words, if they had been rawpalaeo from the word go they would have been fine. More to the point, for such people it would make far more sense, health-wise, to go raw zero-carb than to go cooked-zero-carb(after all people who react negatively to raw carbs also react to cooked/processed carbs, indeed usually in a worse way).
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Tyler, I'm glad you cite your experiences whenever these types of things are discussed, but your experiences and a few others you have read about over the internet do not a scientific rule make.
if you have ever spent 5 seconds in a juice bar you will realize people indeed will order strait green juices or strait wheatgrass juices. if you can accept that, then you'll have to excuse me thinking everying you say her just becomes one more worse assumption about people you have never met and reveals things you don't apparently understand. The purpose of a juicer IS its function which is to remove pulp so that nutrition enters the blood stream without any digestion in the stomach. One can cite this as its detriment as well as its function, but that is essentially the only way that tool works. The point is not to concentrate nutriton, but to achieve nutrtion that cannot be gleaned naturally or can ferment in the digestive system or aid healing by avoid pulling needed energy away to internal processing akin to fasting.
I, having lived in New York and Miami and other places with high concentrations of health nuts of various persuasions, have met alot of such raw foodists and cooked paleos in person. I know for certain what you have to say in many cases means absolutely nothing compared to the actual results. I have met countless people with equally certain mindsets that end of being a downfall in regards to resisting anything 'unnatural' even when the results are not better than others who eat entirely unnatural food. I'm not recommending a cooked diet or even any cooked foods so that as always is left field to me. As per bloodtests, seeing since I am sure you would cite the same researchers on problems with cooked foods...I can only say that people that are genuinely healthy will LOOK healthy, be virile, strong and have good blood work. Blood work can also test for things like D or B-12 which are undeniably accurate in assessing basic performance. If people can't supply ALL these things, their theories that look good on paper are worthless. This does not suggest anyone who looks good or can get a clean bill of health from a doctors is 'healthy' in the sense that raw fooders will talk about which ironically can only be 'proven' in dark matter microscopes or whatever.
Things are indeed more healthful then others, and I would rather eat SOME hybridized or domesticated foods than SOME cooked wild foods, but all and all there is no clear demarcation line for me. This includes a large midsection of things that are either harmful or healthful depending on one's circumstances and the quantity consumed. If you are going to tell me that eating tons of oranges daily is automatically better than a little steamed brussel sprouts (or better wild dandelion) then I really don't think you have a very good understanding of how modern humans process food or the complexity of the human body. For these reason I will choose to pass judgments on those who pass judgments on others who provide no evidence of their own 'health'
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cooking is a far harsher process and far more damaging to foods than millenia of inbreeding of raw meats/raw fruits/raw vegetables.
That´s the point. Even if cooking is perfectly paleo, it has obviously still negative effects on health.
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In Hadzaland, tubers are a much more reliable source of carbohydrates than berries
During the berry season however, they may sometimes eat almost nothing but one type of berry for two months. A variety of wild tubers, three species in particular, are the staple of the diet since they can be found all year round.
http://books.google.de/books?id=nrMRezmNrPcC&pg=PA690&lpg=PA690&dq=hadza+berries&source=bl&ots=WTXBmr59yu&sig=aa9_Bs5S8pnQsAtl9YSjojqv_ks&hl=de&ei=5U03TbzMM4rAswa5pLSiAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=hadza%20berries&f=false
... the Hadza live in an environment that is more like the one in which we evolved than is that of the !Kung ...
Neither the !Kung nor the Hadza nor both societies together can be a sufficient basis for drawing conclusions about the environments of evolutionary adaptedness. Given that some of our ancestors dwelt in tropical forests, groups like the Aka, Efe and Ache are also key models. Before and during the human dispersal out of Africa, it is highly likely that adaptation to shorelines, including shellfish collecting, was important ...
But the Hadza and the !Kung do tell us much about what it means to hunt and gather in warm climates on open plains, especially in Africa, the site of most of human evolution.
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/at-the-cutting-edge-of-human-adaptation
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Tyler, I'm glad you cite your experiences whenever these types of things are discussed, but your experiences and a few others you have read about over the internet do not a scientific rule make.
Unfortunately for you, issues with raw veggie-juice are very common among ex-primal dieters, though of course not as common as negative experiences with raw dairy.
if you have ever spent 5 seconds in a juice bar you will realize people indeed will order strait green juices or strait wheatgrass juices. if you can accept that, then you'll have to excuse me thinking everying you say her just becomes one more worse assumption about people you have never met and reveals things you don't apparently understand. The purpose of a juicer IS its function which is to remove pulp so that nutrition enters the blood stream without any digestion in the stomach. One can cite this as its detriment as well as its function, but that is essentially the only way that tool works. The point is not to concentrate nutriton, but to achieve nutrition that cannot be gleaned naturally or can ferment in the digestive system or aid healing by avoid pulling needed energy away to internal processing akin to fasting.
Well, virtually all the juice-bars I have come across in the UK and elsewhere sell mostly freshly-squeezed fruit-juices, plus usually only a few raw veggie-juices(wheatgrass is the most common one sold). The issue of whether people drink the raw veggie-juice straight is meaningless - after all, plenty of people complain about the revolting taste of wheatgrass, but still drink plenty of it because they are under the erroneous assumption that it is healthy. Also, I pointed out that Primal Dieters who traditionally drink raw veggie-juice as 25 percent(!) of their diet feel a strong need to add raw sweeteners to the mix to enhance the taste, given the quantity they take in.
And AV and others routinely recommend juicing precisely because juicing increases the amounts of nutrients.
As for your stating that raw veggie-juice is an unnatural process, the whole point of Instincto is that such processing is ultimately harmful, and many RVAFers, mainly ex-Primal Dieters , would heartily agree with the Instincto ban on juicing and other processing.
I, having lived in New York and Miami and other places with high concentrations of health nuts of various persuasions, have met alot of such raw foodists and cooked paleos in person. I know for certain what you have to say in many cases means absolutely nothing compared to the actual results. I have met countless people with equally certain mindsets that end of being a downfall in regards to resisting anything 'unnatural' even when the results are not better than others who eat entirely unnatural food. I'm not recommending a cooked diet or even any cooked foods so that as always is left field to me. As per bloodtests, seeing since I am sure you would cite the same researchers on problems with cooked foods...I can only say that people that are genuinely healthy will LOOK healthy, be virile, strong and have good blood work. Blood work can also test for things like D or B-12 which are undeniably accurate in assessing basic performance. If people can't supply ALL these things, their theories that look good on paper are worthless. This does not suggest anyone who looks good or can get a clean bill of health from a doctors is 'healthy' in the sense that raw fooders will talk about which ironically can only be 'proven' in dark matter microscopes or whatever.
A number of the people I've come across who focused on blood-tests and the like as a measure of their health were clearly orthorexic to a certain extent. Not saying all were, but focusing too much on details like exact number of calories a day, blood-tests, the exact amount of daily protein-intake to ensure it doesn't go above the recommended 100g a day(according to some scientists) etc., tends to be extreme, and doesn't lead anywhere since much of the science behind blood-tests is not clear, let alone things like the "ideal" percentage of body-fat or whatever. Measuring vitamin-levels is one (minor)thing, but a number of RVAFers have stated that their health had recovered, even though their cholesterol-levels showed, at the time of the tests, that they were supposedly not healthy, among other aspects.
Plus, "looking good" or performing well in sports means precious little in a modern world where people take lots of sports-enhancing drugs, use plastic surgery or other artificial techniques to make them seem more healthy than they really are. I always wince when someone posts well-lit photos plus "tests" of various dietary gurus like Art DeVany, as these provide no real accurate idea of just how healthy that person really is. Of course, that person's entire medical file throughout life would be a bit more useful to us, but, sadly, doctors are bound by confidentiality laws.
As for that comment re eating tons of oranges a day compared to a little cooked brussels sprouts, that would only apply to those Instinctos who frowned on meat-consumption. I mean, if one genuinely followed one's instincts/tastes, one would inevitably eat a very varied diet, not just tons of oranges. The problem with Instincto is that some were warned away from raw meats, which was hardly "instinctive".
Of course, Instincto, while useful for many, cannot be useful to all. I am thinking of those raw, zero-carbers who, as a result of damage done by decades of eating heavily refined/cooked carbs, have lost their ability to handle even raw carbs. Such would be best placed to restrict their diets to raw animal foods only, rather than having a wider variety of raw foods.
Things are indeed more healthful then others, and I would rather eat SOME hybridized or domesticated foods than SOME cooked wild foods, but all and all there is no clear demarcation line for me. This includes a large midsection of things that are either harmful or healthful depending on one's circumstances and the quantity consumed. If you are going to tell me that eating tons of oranges daily is automatically better than a little steamed brussel sprouts (or better wild dandelion) then I really don't think you have a very good understanding of how modern humans process food or the complexity of the human body. For these reason I will choose to pass judgments on those who pass judgments on others who provide no evidence of their own 'health'
The whole point of a raw, palaeolithic diet is that both the raw and the palaeolithic aspects are promoted as being roughly equally important. Granted, for some people, either the raw aspect or the palaeo aspect is much more important to their health
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as usual, this just illustrates points I am not making. I never said anything about instinctos. and the examples I gave had nothing to do with how an instincto person eats, just examples of diets that can be construed 'paleo' but include no foods found in the paleolithic or even recent ancient civilization. The issue I am putting forward that there are other methods to constructing a diet (in reference to wild foods convo) that Vitalis points out as being superior to fabrications claiming as long as things are 'raw' they are therefore healthy. No matter how healthy a diet one can construct thinking this way, the IDEA is wrong and unhealthy and is exclusive of a variety of possibly necessary tools to create health. The only criticism of instincto in regards to this one (too many easy others) is that the diets are obviously not matching up with how a human would eat in nature, and don't provide for the kind of health necessary to actually hunt and kill the foods eaten, so its even more fabricated.
Without any of these requirements/constant excuses towards objective assessment of health, you have to admit all you have on paper is the idea that raw foods create health, and whatever experiences you have on other approaches tinged by a very critical/skeptical viewpoint on most kinds of healing.
Perhaps you can actually argue against this actual reality without bringing up mystery accounts of people you have read about and just gauge the actual evidence of people who have increased their health when they did not on other raw approaches. This is what I meant by what I said with witnessing others, being a perceptive person not easily swayed by mirrors and magic in real time. I believe that is something that can be gauged without agonizing over plastic surgery.
the difference for me is even though I can have some kind of pride in my particular all-raw or virtually all raw program for myself, doesn't mean I can't see the obvious superiority of other programs such as Vitais or DeVany in creating health to vast permutations of all raw all 'paleo' diets.
I don't need to make up excuses and carry massive contradictions to make myself feel better about such seeming unfairness to my raw superiority. You say raw vegans have to supplement to be healthy and in other threads say that supplements are useless. You say juice tastes bad like its some kind of law, and yet one of the main criticisms among raw vegans critical of juicing is that it is 'too sweeet' and therefore makes i easy to 'overeat' vegetables. Also, its impossible to create more nutrition in a vegetable. Most importantly, you You totally discount that MOST long term vegans are against the sugar in fresh modern fruits, have the lab work to back it up, and do far better on what amounts to neolithic forms of carbs, sprouting, processing and fermentation than fresh whole and raw fruit. This when you acknowledge that cooked plaoes can do better according to you than raw vegans (but are still massive failures- of course!). SO obviously there is some other chain of command to raw fruits > anything not raw, and even cooked wild foods < anything raw. I believe that is where the discussion is and has nothing to do with anything else you have made it out to be.
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as usual, this just illustrates points I am not making. I never said anything about instinctos. and the examples I gave had nothing to do with how an instincto person eats, just examples of diets that can be construed 'paleo' but include no foods found in the paleolithic or even recent ancient civilization. The issue I am putting forward that there are other methods to constructing a diet (in reference to wild foods convo) that Vitalis points out as being superior to fabrications claiming as long as things are 'raw' they are therefore healthy. No matter how healthy a diet one can construct thinking this way, the IDEA is wrong and unhealthy and is exclusive of a variety of possibly necessary tools to create health. The only criticism of instincto in regards to this one (too many easy others) is that the diets are obviously not matching up with how a human would eat in nature, and don't provide for the kind of health necessary to actually hunt and kill the foods eaten, so its even more fabricated.
I've come across a very similiar sort of argument where someone erroneously claimed that it was impossible to correctly follow a cooked-palaeolithic diet as we no longer had access to the exact same foods that palaeo peoples had such as a cooked mammoth steak or wild aurochs meat etc. It's a bogus argument, of course, as people are not trying to 100 percent emulate their palaeolithic ancestors(or raw-eating ancestors) in absolutely ALL respects anyway - we hardly are going to strip naked or wear loin-cloths and hunt mammoths nowadays. The whole point is that as long as we follow general principles re our palaeolithic ancestors we will be healthier than if we followed more modern methods such as cooking food(cooking was only invented in the last 10 percent of the palaeo era), or juicing or rendering or drying and the like.
And the claims re people on such rawpalaeo diets not being able to survive and hunt in the wild while following such diets makes absolutely no sense either. Indeed the added burden of having to cook each meat-meal (for a cooked-palaeodiet) would waste a lot of time that could have been spent on hunting/foraging instead.
More to the point, we are NOT just saying that " as long as things are raw, we will be healthy". We are stating that "as long as we are eating raw and palaeo, and not eating grainfed meats, and listening to our bodies' needs etc. etc., we will be healthier than someone eating that same type of diet in cooked form". As for the "variety of tools to create health" comment, we RPDers all accept that some alternative non-dietary methods can help speed up health-recovery if used as well). What it boils down to is that cooking, per se, does not confer any benefits in most cases; and in the cases where it does provide benefits, those benefits are cancelled out by the other damage done by cooking that food.
Without any of these requirements/constant excuses towards objective assessment of health, you have to admit all you have on paper is the idea that raw foods create health, and whatever experiences you have on other approaches tinged by a very critical/skeptical viewpoint on most kinds of healing.
Perhaps you can actually argue against this actual reality without bringing up mystery accounts of people you have read about and just gauge the actual evidence of people who have increased their health when they did not on other raw approaches. This is what I meant by what I said with witnessing others, being a perceptive person not easily swayed by mirrors and magic in real time. I believe that is something that can be gauged without agonizing over plastic surgery.
Anecdotal reports from RVAFers gleaned from 10 years of reading endless posts on other RVAF diet forums are, of course, valid. Besides, there is actually far more additional scientific evidence favouring rawpalaeodiets than there is favouring cooked-palaeodiets, for rather obvious reasons, if you think about it(re additional studies done on the negative effects of heat-created toxins, the hygiene hypothesis theory etc. etc. etc.)
As for claims by cooked-palaeodieters like Art DeVany, they should be treated with just as much suspicion as the claims made by the likes of Aajonus. What we do have as additional evidence is the fact that a large minority of people who eventually go rawpalaeo or for RVAF diets and succeed in regaining their health are people who previously tried and failed miserably healthwise on cooked-palaeodiets like DeVany’s approach(and failed on other cooked diets or the raw vegan/fruitarian diet), myself being just 1 tiny example thereof.
The only thing I will say re DeVany is that there is more emphasis on exercise in his dietary philosophy, and, while exercise is touted by many RVAFers, it should ideally be promoted to the same extent as a healthy diet, given scientific studies attesting to the high level of physical activity in palaeo times etc.
the difference for me is even though I can have some kind of pride in my particular all-raw or virtually all raw program for myself, doesn't mean I can't see the obvious superiority of other programs such as Vitalis or DeVany in creating health to vast permutations of all raw all 'paleo' diets.
Their approaches both have various stumbling blocks. Those facing the standard decline in old-age will not benefit as much from the cooked-aspect of DeVany's diet given the links made between heat-created toxins in cooke foods and age-related decline, those with some form of dairy-intolerance will not benefit much from Vitalis' recommendations to consume raw dairy etc.
You say raw vegans have to supplement to be healthy and in other threads say that supplements are useless.
Inaccurate. I said that raw vegans have to supplement in order to REMAIN healthy in the long-term, after some years of doing the diet.I also stated that going raw vegan does benefit people a lot in the short-term, health-wise, as they directly benefit from not consuming heat-created toxins from cooked foods after that point.
I did state that I thought supplements were useless; perhaps I should have said "partially useless", though, as what I meant was that rawpalaeo foods will always be superior to supplements in the long run, but I have previously acknowledged that some unusual people with very severe vitamin-/mineral-deficiencies might be more quickly helped by taking heavy dosages of supplements in the very short-term rather than slowly building up reserves with rawpalaeo foods. Also, while I specifically found that I didn't properly absorb the vitamin pills I used to take(I experienced frequent urination, which was a dead giveaway), I do accept that other people can absorb nutrients from supplements, albeit not as well as with rawpalaeo foods, and taking supplements after 5-10 years of being raw vegan is better than taking no supplements at all.
The only thing I will say re DeVany is that there is more emphasis on exercise in his dietary philosophy, and, while exercise is touted by many RVAFers, it should ideally be promoted to the same extent as a healthy diet, given scientific studies attesting to the high level of physical activity in palaeo times etc.
You say juice tastes bad like its some kind of law, and yet one of the main criticisms among raw vegans critical of juicing is that it is 'too sweeet' and therefore makes i easy to 'overeat' vegetables.
In my raw vegan days, there were very, very few veggie-juices which were deemed to be too sweet, mainly raw carrot-juice being singled out.
Also, its impossible to create more nutrition in a vegetable.
I actually stated that juicing shreds the cell-walls of plants, thus releasing more nutrients for consumption.
Most importantly, you You totally discount that MOST long term vegans are against the sugar in fresh modern fruits, have the lab work to back it up, and do far better on what amounts to neolithic forms of carbs, sprouting, processing and fermentation than fresh whole and raw fruit.
There are many subsets of the raw vegan movement, fruitarians being one very large subtype thereof, who definitely do NOT agree with the above claim re sugar in fruits. As for sprouts, people in palaeo times would sometimes have eaten sprouted plants, nothing neolithic or processed about that. Fermentation, such as „high-meat“ and fermentation of plant foods would have been a basic part of palaeolithic life for an obvious reason( no refrigerators at the time)? So are „palaeolithic“.
As for processing such as drying, that depends on the raw vegan, plenty are against processing fruits – certainly, there is a lot of info online re the negative effects on health of dried fruits. Some go in for highly processed stuff such as almond butter and similiar nonsense, with cooked-vegans going in for tofu etc. But those are hardly healthy, and don’t compare too well with those eating raw solid fruits. Fermentation of raw fruits is also not generally practised: well, except those wishing to make some form of alcohol therefrom , of course.
This when you acknowledge that cooked palaeos can do better according to you than raw vegans (but are still massive failures- of course!).
Not really. I have previously pointed out that raw vegans can easily do better than cooked-palaeos in the short-term, simply because they are not consuming high levels of heat-created toxins such as the cooked-palaeos are doing. The only catch with a raw vegan diet is that raw plant foods are not complete foods, so that , in the long-term, despite the fact that the body is ingenious at creating substitutes for various nutrients, a raw vegan will slowly get nutritional deficiencies. A cooked-palaeodiet, while unhealthy in that it contains a lot of heat-created toxins derived from cooking, will not have that aspect of raw veganism as animal foods are „complete foods“, providing all the nutrients the human body needs.
SO obviously there is some other chain of command to raw fruits > anything not raw, and even cooked wild foods < anything raw. I believe that is where the discussion is and has nothing to do with anything else you have made it out to be.
The trouble is that you are over-simplifying things as usual. After all, the whole point of a raw, palaeolithic diet is that different (rawpalaeo) foods provide for different needs. Some people might benefit from raw, zero-carb, others from raw omnivore, I have even come across 1 or 2 people stating that they did better with far more raw plant foods in their diet than raw animal foods.
Plus, the comparison(<>) you gave above is invalid. A fair comparison would be between raw wild game and cooked wild game, or raw fruit and cooked fruit etc., if you want to suggest that cooking is better. After all, people absorb different foods for different purposes.
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as the same as my last response, basically none of this really addresses what I wrote. I found my last argument impossible to argue against, but here were are...
The whole point is that as long as we follow general principles re our palaeolithic ancestors we will be healthier than if we followed more modern methods such as cooking food(cooking was only invented in the last 10 percent of the palaeo era), or juicing or rendering or drying and the like.
Plus, the comparison(<>) you gave above is invalid. A fair comparison would be between raw wild game and cooked wild game, or raw fruit and cooked fruit etc., if you want to suggest that cooking is better. After all, people absorb different foods for different purposes.
no. unfortunately that is not the case. Even if we eat 100% the cleanest healthiest foods with the right balance of nutrtients (if anyone even does such) this isn't the case, and other tools are often necessarily.
I can think of 1000s of examples of where similarly 'processed' foods as part of an overall DIET would be superior to other diets without such things and have listed some. Thats exactly what I am saying is false. Why would I have to compare one thing to another, when methodologies will exude all kinds of such processes and believe what they are doing is therefore AUTOMATICALLY correct...no matter how equally artificial. You always want some 1:1 comparison, but you won't have it when you can't even see past such narrow perception towards such things. All the matters is how a person can get healthy or become unhealthy on certain whole APPROACHES. So discussing individual foods or processes and weighing how bad one thing is over another and all the detriments is a waste of time and will in fact leave one is the raw>anything non raw camp every time to their own loss. The only real issue here (for this thread) is whether someone can have better results emphasizing wild/indigenous foods and processes over arbitrarily eating any foods that appear to be raw fruit, animal or vegetable as I have said a few times now. If you have anything to say about that, then maybe do so, instead of your typical dissections of exercise or medicine and photoshop or other things that you can use to 'rationalize' why people do well...while neglecting the obvious holes in logic that creating health is not so simple.
And the claims re people on such rawpalaeo diets not being able to survive and hunt in the wild while following such diets makes absolutely no sense either. Indeed the added burden of having to cook each meat-meal (for a cooked-palaeodiet) would waste a lot of time that could have been spent on hunting/foraging instead.
I'm not talking about the processes of cooking, i'm taking about physical bodies capable of taking on extremes in temperature/situation and have strength and skill. Believe it or not, some of these people will eat raw meat too, maybe even know what kind of bitter (yuck) plants to eat and even eat bugs and other dreadful things.
More to the point, we are NOT just saying that " as long as things are raw, we will be healthy". We are stating that "as long as we are eating raw and palaeo, and not eating grainfed meats, and listening to our bodies' needs etc. etc., we will be healthier than someone eating that same type of diet in cooked form". As for the "variety of tools to create health" comment, we RPDers all accept that some alternative non-dietary methods can help speed up health-recovery if used as well). What it boils down to is that cooking, per se, does not confer any benefits in most cases; and in the cases where it does provide benefits, those benefits are cancelled out by the other damage done by cooking that food.
who cares, you still can't say with certainty someone eating cooked healthy food will be less healthy than someone eating raw hybridized food depending on what kind of diet that person eats. So if the diet is high in modern fruits and low in other foods, it can create just as many or more problems as cooked foods even if it is not deficient in nutrients, happens all the time and doesn't matter if they are vegan or omnivorous raw, just a fundamental issue for modern humans. Even when you look at traditional peoples in the tropics, they often exclude the local fruits in favor of other foods and starches. What people like DV point out is there is a REASON for this other than the typical nonsense spewed my raw food people about pure addictions or degeneration in behavior. It has to do with HEALTH.
In my raw vegan days, there were very, very few veggie-juices which were deemed to be too sweet, mainly raw carrot-juice being singled out.
all greens other than bitter herbs will taste sweet unless there is some underlying issue. I could care less what PD people have written, may of which after all are not in good health or necessarily have been on the diet very long and have all kinds of artificial desire or habits. What you are essentially saying is the same stuff people say about grains having no flavor or coffee or tea because SOME people use flavor enhancers. The very criticism of even plant juices is too much sugar, and sugar...tastes sweet.
of course you focused on how paleo or not the practices of certain raw vegans were that exclude fruit, instead of acknowledging that the reason they do in fact process sprouts and other fermented foods is to heal the body by avoiding all kinds of naturally fermenting fruit sugars. Many believing fundamentally that modern unripe fruits are not food at all, and having the documents proving' such at least to them and shared as an idea and expeirence by many others include raw meat eaters.
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I'm not talking about the processes of cooking, i'm taking about physical bodies capable of taking on extremes in temperature/situation and have strength and skill.
The title of this thread is “Non-mutant fruits and vegetables”. It would be a good idea to stop flooding it with unrelated, obscure and endless arguments.
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[after relizing posts were deleted/moved to some lame thread]
wtf? I'm not voluntarily entering into your psychodrama pal. You once again offered nothing but your criticism of myself here even after I answered you politely. Where is my post of DV and wild foods? please just delete my posts if you want to abuse your impartial moderator status. no decent moderator would plug their methodologies into threads where they do not belong, particularly in MrBBQ's post who has suffered from similar dogmatic thinking. you are insensitive and unaware of anything but your ineffective world long disputed in many peoples minds long ago as naive.
"no. unfortunately that is not the case. Even if we eat 100% the cleanest healthiest foods with the right balance of nutrients (if anyone even does such) this [necessarily creating health over other systems] isn't the case, and other tools are often necessarily."
please cite how any of this is obscure or irrelevant or add any decent reply or where any of your ideas can be taken 100% seriously as all knowing in regards to which systems are unhealthy. I have massive proof as to why modern fruit eating is harmful even in comparison to cooked foods which is totally relevant and I have cited one piece of this. I already cited why referencing people who know about wild nutrition and are fit because they don't eat decimating restrictive ineffective diets and can exist in the wild on those ACTUAL foods that exist in the wild as also totally relevant. Although I guess that got lost in the 'move'.
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Tyler and Francois, I don't want to get into a debate on it, so I'll just report that while some elements of Instincto make sense to me, my experience doesn't exactly match yours when it comes to Instincto, so from my perspective you speak for yourselves on the topic. I think some of the more cantankerous debate could be mellowed out into more reasonable and fruitful (pardon the pun ;) ) discussion if folks frequently made it clear that they speak only for themselves.
Interesting article. In Hadzaland, tubers are a much more reliable source of carbohydrates than berries:
Quite correct, Hanna. I saw that in the article too but didn't report it because anything less than glowing reports about beloved yummy fruits tends to be met with hostility at this forum and underground storage organs seem to be poorly regarded overall here. It's refreshing to see that you haven't yet been criticized for reporting about the Hadza.
Re: USOs, I noticed that my local market has a sign for jicama, which is a USO that is edible raw, but they were out of it at the time.
It is indeed interesting that even though the Hadza prefer berries to USOs, they eat more of the latter, because it is more plentiful and available year round. This is something that some Instinctos don't appear to take fully into account, because it seems that some don't restrict themselves to seasonal foods (please correct me if I err).
Some chimps have been observed digging up shallow USOs and eating them. IIRC, Australopithecines are also believed to have eaten raw USOs. I tried raw celeriac and turnips and didn't care for them, but found that I like raw parsnips. Like the Hadza, I also like berries, raw honeycomb and meat.
Isn't it interesting that the Hadza who live near the alleged original habitat of H. sapiens sapiens reportedly prefer berries above all fruits and that fruits are apparently not available year round even in that tropical zone?
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Isn't it interesting that the Hadza who live near the alleged original habitat of H. sapiens sapiens reportedly prefer berries above all fruits and that fruits are apparently not available year round even in that tropical zone?
Its not just the Hadza, its basically all traditional peoples that live in tropical zones - or otherwise where the most abundance of fruiting plants is available (but as you point out not always year round...at least for most species). Fruitarian travelers are always shocked to find residents of various locales letting durians or other falling fruits rot and eating all kinds of other sugars and starches from all degrees of raw->cooked. Their confused brains can only cite addictions or influence of new habits, however often there is not only the dearth you speak of but a greater intelligence (and experience) driving people to choose those types of foods over even the wild fresh and raw..nevermind the distorted modern varieties.
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no. unfortunately that is not the case. Even if we eat 100% the cleanest healthiest foods with the right balance of nutrtients (if anyone even does such) this isn't the case, and other tools are often necessarily.
I can think of 1000s of examples of where similarly 'processed' foods as part of an overall DIET would be superior to other diets without such things and have listed some. Thats exactly what I am saying is false. Why would I have to compare one thing to another, when methodologies will exude all kinds of such processes and believe what they are doing is therefore AUTOMATICALLY correct...no matter how equally artificial. You always want some 1:1 comparison, but you won't have it when you can't even see past such narrow perception towards such things. All the matters is how a person can get healthy or become unhealthy on certain whole APPROACHES. So discussing individual foods or processes and weighing how bad one thing is over another and all the detriments is a waste of time and will in fact leave one is the raw>anything non raw camp every time to their own loss. The only real issue here (for this thread) is whether someone can have better results emphasizing wild/indigenous foods and processes over arbitrarily eating any foods that appear to be raw fruit, animal or vegetable as I have said a few times now. If you have anything to say about that, then maybe do so, instead of your typical dissections of exercise or medicine and photoshop or other things that you can use to 'rationalize' why people do well...while neglecting the obvious holes in logic that creating health is not so simple.
Hmm, you do have a talent for writing rather huge amounts of text without really saying much re either bolstering your past arguments or effectively debunking my own ones. But here are some counter-points of my own:-
Anyway:- re your point of "emphasising wild/indigenous foods and processes" over eating anything that is raw animal, fruit, or vegetable":-
First of all, as pointed out previously, cooking is anything but "wild" since wild animals do not go in for cooking their foods. The process of fermentation, which you mentioned, is also part of Nature as wild animals also take advantage of fermentation of foods for their own purposes.
More to the point, despite your assertions,none of us have suggested that we should only eat anything that is raw animal, fruit, or vegetable. On the contrary, we have also stated that grassfed meat is important and that raw wild game/raw wildcaught seafood is superior to other kinds of raw animal foods and so on.
Plus, it is obviously important to compare the raw equivalent to its cooked equivalent when one is trying to suggest that cooked diets are superior - otherwise, one could falsely suggest that one particular cooked food had advantages over only one lesser, raw food, even though it had severe disadvantages to health of its own, and was far inferior to other types of raw foods. Besides, you are playing a hypocritical double-standard in that you are specifically comparing a widely-varied cooked-palaeodiet/cooked-meats to a mono-diet of eating primarily raw oranges, yet still blather on about how one should not compare single foods, and judge the diets as a whole - and the latter is precisely what I did!
I'm not talking about the processes of cooking, i'm taking about physical bodies capable of taking on extremes in temperature/situation and have strength and skill. Believe it or not, some of these people will eat raw meat too, maybe even know what kind of bitter (yuck) plants to eat and even eat bugs and other dreadful things.
The above is absurd. I mean, the vast majority of cooked-palaeodieters haven't the faintest clue about what their palaeo ancestors really ate, let alone even what more modern hunter-gatherers ate. I somehow doubt that Art DeVany would be eating raw witchetty grub like the Aborigines - and if he ever did, it would just be in order to pose for photographs rather than any genuine attempt to survive in the wilderness.
who cares, you still can't say with certainty someone eating cooked healthy food will be less healthy than someone eating raw hybridized food depending on what kind of diet that person eats. So if the diet is high in modern fruits and low in other foods, it can create just as many or more problems as cooked foods even if it is not deficient in nutrients, happens all the time and doesn't matter if they are vegan or omnivorous raw, just a fundamental issue for modern humans. Even when you look at traditional peoples in the tropics, they often exclude the local fruits in favor of other foods and starches. What people like DV point out is there is a REASON for this other than the typical nonsense spewed by raw food people about pure addictions or degeneration in behavior. It has to do with HEALTH.
An absurd comment on your part:- First of all, a diet high in raw plant foods and low in raw animal foods can provide all the nutrients that a human being needs. Secondly, there is no real evidence to suggest that raw, hybridised fruit is harmful when it is a part of a varied raw diet, whereas there is plentiful evidence that even a so-cqlled "healthy" cooked-palaeodiet can be shown to be harmful, given the plentiful scientific evidence showing the harm caused by heat-created toxins in cooked foods.
all greens other than bitter herbs will taste sweet unless there is some underlying issue. I could care less what PD people have written, may of which after all are not in good health or necessarily have been on the diet very long and have all kinds of artificial desire or habits.
Yet you foolishly cite veggies like egg-plants as an example of poor veggies that have a bitter taste...ah well!
What you are essentially saying is the same stuff people say about grains having no flavor or coffee or tea because SOME people use flavor enhancers. The very criticism of even plant juices is too much sugar, and sugar...tastes sweet.
No, the criticism of veggie-juices is that juicing makes the antinutrients in raw veg more bioavailable as a result of the shredding of the cell-walls. As for taste/instinct, people would far rather eat a raw solid orange than drink freshly-squeezed wheatgrass or broccoli juice or whatever nonsense. And it's truly bizarre to single out PDers as adopting an artificial diet when most cooked-palaeodieters adopt artificial methods too, some even worse(many, many cooked-palaeodieters only adopt semi-palaeo practices such as eating grainfed meats(the zero-carbers), while others eat some dairy and/or grains as well.
of course you focused on how paleo or not the practices of certain raw vegans were that exclude fruit, instead of acknowledging that the reason they do in fact process sprouts and other fermented foods is to heal the body by avoiding all kinds of naturally fermenting fruit sugars. Many believing fundamentally that modern unripe fruits are not food at all, and having the documents proving' such at least to them and shared as an idea and expeirence by many others include raw meat eaters.
What a few fringe raw vegans may(or may not) believe in as regards raw fruit is irrelevant. Besides, the whole purpose of sprouting is to increase the amounts of enzymes in the foods and to decrease the levels of antinutrients in them.
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Tyler you didn't address what I said at all. All one needs is to find one success of someone doing something 'unnatural' to their benefit when they couldn't otherwise following such dogmatic viewpoints to suggest that those viewpoints are totally invalid. My track record is listing these endlessly from raw paleo practices to 'neolithic' or supplementation or otherwise. Often people get boxed in believing they were correct ONLY because they were natural and raw and end up being incredibly unhealthy in comparison to others. Lex and others point out this often other than myself. Why do I have to respond individually to your claims that people emphasize grass-fed or wild? The point is they ain't thinking critically about how food functions in the body, and as per discussion, modern fruits turn to shit internally, and this is widely believed by most (not fringe) health savy people on the planet from vegans to carnivores. The literature and research is endless. and people on any approach whether it is vegan or raw meat can see success limiting sugars from modern fruits compared to when they PERSONALLY ate modern fruits indiscriminately. How this is off topic is besides me.
The point is people can not unilaterally pan lifestyles which have the ability to create more health then their own by refrenacing theories that arn't rooted in reality. The reality is fruit does not carry an automatic role of healthfulness jsut because it is raw, nor is it necessarily more avlaible or preferable to other plant sources nevermind animal food sources. In simple speak, you can construct a diet that is raw and paleo that is not healthy, and whatever criticisms you can lobby at individal products of cooking or other evil things, they can stil create greater health.
When you can find plenty of examples of people increasing health doing traditional processes and expanding on their diet choices to include wild foods by any means while emphasising things like low sugar over 'eat whats raw' then any comparison of a single food to another food becomes pointless. That there is enough information to suggest one CANNOT discriminate against processes unilaterally as being bad withotu resorting to diagrams or comparisons of individual foods
like with juicing or any other things, you project assumptions about things which are essentially fabrications of your own which you then use to prove things. I've read countless articles on juicing from extreme pro and con and none mention anti-nutrients and almost all the cons (Bee Wilder, Sisson etc..) mention sugar. This is an invention of the raw paleo board as far as I am concerned. One can only possibly take ion more 'antinutriton' by increasing the ammount of vegetables by jucing more than one might eat, the proces itself is incapable of such.
As for the overwhelming evidence against modernt fruits:
You can assess and address this information individually, but at the end of the day you have to respect that people have success doing what they do, and not place superficial caveats like they were damaged by modern foods or something, this is something that effects every human and that is what the data shows.
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[after relizing posts were deleted/moved to some lame thread]
Where is my post of DV and wild foods? (…) Although I guess that got lost in the 'move'.
Nothing got lost, your most relevant and informative posts are here: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/hot-topics/clash/
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Tyler and Francois, I don't want to get into a debate on it, so I'll just report that while some elements of Instincto make sense to me, my experience doesn't exactly match yours when it comes to Instincto, so from my perspective you speak for yourselves on the topic. I think some of the more cantankerous debate could be mellowed out into more reasonable and fruitful (pardon the pun ;) ) discussion if folks frequently made it clear that they speak only for themselves.
Phil, to avoid further derailing of this thread, I answer here: http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/instinctoanopsology/personal-experience/msg60889/#msg60889
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Tyler you didn't address what I said at all. All one needs is to find one success of someone doing something 'unnatural' to their benefit when they couldn't otherwise following such dogmatic viewpoints to suggest that those viewpoints are totally invalid. My track record is listing these endlessly from raw paleo practices to 'neolithic' or supplementation or otherwise. Often people get boxed in believing they were correct ONLY because they were natural and raw and end up being incredibly unhealthy in comparison to others. Lex and others point out this often other than myself. Why do I have to respond individually to your claims that people emphasize grass-fed or wild? The point is they ain't thinking critically about how food functions in the body, and as per discussion, modern fruits turn to shit internally, and this is widely believed by most (not fringe) health savy people on the planet from vegans to carnivores. The literature and research is endless. and people on any approach whether it is vegan or raw meat can see success limiting sugars from modern fruits compared to when they PERSONALLY ate modern fruits indiscriminately. How this is off topic is besides me.
The claims re modern fruit are usually based on absurdities, such as referring to extreme 100 percent raw fruitarian diets, which are irrelevant to rawpalaeos who eat a wide variety of raw foods. More to the point, in virtually all cases, the studies concerned tend to be completely bogus as they focus on things like highly-refined fructose, such as found in corn-syrup, and then disgracefully try to pretend that fructose in raw fruits is exactly the same as that(Taubes is a classic conman in this regard). The very few studies which are not so dishonest are, unfortunately for you, countered by vast numbers of studies showing health-benefits if one increases one's intake of raw fruit and veg.
Plus, plentiful anecdotal evidence exists among RVAFers to show that the raw aspect is just as important as the palaeo aspect. Some RVAFers have even found the raw aspect to be MORE important than the palaeo aspect for their own health, and happily consume plenty of raw fruits or raw dairy. The experience of Lex and yours, re the palaeo aspect being more important than the raw aspect, so that your lot view the cooked aspect as being largely irrelevant, does not invalidate the experience of the former type. Plus, more and more cooked-palaeos are finding that they need to go raw in order to regain better health than they did on cooked-palaeodiets. Not to mention the fact that many omnivorous rawpalaeos don't like or thrive on raw veg, but do fine on raw fruits, and indeed suffer, health-wise, if they cut out all raw fruits and go raw, zero-carb.
As for "finding one success", like I said before, cooking is by itself a harmful process; the only benefit it gives is that it makes some foods(mostly non-palaeo foods) more bioavailable, thus increasing the nutrients the human body can take in from eating them. So, there will always be a raw equivalent diet which will work better than the cooked equivalent thereof, as long as one listens to ones's body re instincts/sensations ; or at the very least the same, if the cooking-process is only very, very minor etc.etc.You can, of course claim that someone might be irresponsible and only ever eat a raw, 100 percent raw olive-diet, say, but that is very unlikely indeed, and there are so many additional pitfalls associated with non-rawpalaeodiets such as the degree of cooking involved, the extra processing other than cooking that may also be involved etc., that the chances of failure via experimentation on such non-RPD diets are heavily increased by comparison to rawpalaeodiets.
The point is people can not unilaterally pan lifestyles which have the ability to create more health then their own by refrenacing theories that arn't rooted in reality. The reality is fruit does not carry an automatic role of healthfulness just because it is raw, nor is it necessarily more available or preferable to other plant sources nevermind animal food sources.
Well, rawpalaeos, like I said, do not view individual raw foods as being the only essential healthy food. We also focus on a variety of raw organ-meats, on "high-meats" and so on and on. Plus, other raw plant sources can be more problematic than raw fruits. For example, some raw vegetables have too high levels of antinutrients in them for warding off insects, thus causing digestive upset to humans etc.. Raw fruits do not have this problem as they are meant to be eaten.
When you can find plenty of examples of people increasing health doing traditional processes and expanding on their diet choices to include wild foods by any means while emphasising things like low sugar over 'eat whats raw' then any comparison of a single food to another food becomes pointless. That there is enough information to suggest one CANNOT discriminate against processes unilaterally as being bad without resorting to diagrams or comparisons of individual foods.
Ah, I see, you're a believer in Weston-Price's notions, to some extent.That's why all the kerfuffle. The trouble is that Weston-Price made the exact same mistake you are criticising rawpalaeos for, namely suggesting that diet alone would solve all health-problems, that all one had to do was eat foods cooked or processed in certain ways to be healthy. He tried to claim that all these hunter-gatherer tribes were in the peak of health, yet scientists like Mann have since then pointed out that this was a wholly inaccurate claim.He also cited endless different types of diet as all being supposedly super-healthy, yet these diets were often so radically different from each other, that such sweeping claims could not possibly have been true. Plus, he failed completely to realise that there were various non-dietary reasons as to why hunter-gatherers did not have the kind of diseases that modern Westerners had:- for example, heavy amounts of exercise reduces the amounts of AGEs/heat-created toxins in the human body, and so does caloric restriction/Intermittent Fasting, and both exercise and feast/famine/fasting were routinely practised by such hunter-gatherers throughout their lives.Also, those hunter-gatherers did not cook their foods as harshly as modern settled peoples do. So, while some have used Weston-Price to suggest that cooking is OK or can be better than some raw diets, they are mostly wrong, except in the case of really extreme raw diets like raw veganism/fruitarianism.
like with juicing or any other things, you project assumptions about things which are essentially fabrications of your own which you then use to prove things. I've read countless articles on juicing from extreme pro and con and none mention anti-nutrients and almost all the cons (Bee Wilder, Sisson etc..) mention sugar. This is an invention of the raw paleo board as far as I am concerned. One can only possibly take ion more 'antinutriton' by increasing the ammount of vegetables by jucing more than one might eat, the proces itself is incapable of such.
On the contrary, it was mentioned on numerous occasions on quite different RVAF diet forums. We only repeat it, as so many RVAFers have found that they did OK on some forms of raw solid veg, but got nutritional deficiencies from consuming too much raw veggie-juice, in the long-term.
As for the overwhelming evidence against modernt fruits:
You can assess and address this information individually, but at the end of the day you have to respect that people have success doing what they do, and not place superficial caveats like they were damaged by modern foods or something, this is something that effects every human and that is what the data shows.
The point I made was perfectly valid, that some rawpalaeos are very badly affected by any fruits, however raw, while others thrive on them, so that people should choose what works for them within a raw diet, rather than choosing a less effective cooked diet. And the data against fruits is way overshadowed by the much larger number of studies showing that raw fruit is healthy, anyway, like I said before.
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The claims re modern fruit are usually based on absurdities, such as referring to extreme 100 percent raw fruitarian diets, which are irrelevant to rawpalaeos who eat a wide variety of raw foods. More to the point, in virtually all cases, the studies concerned tend to be completely bogus as they focus on things like highly-refined fructose, such as found in corn-syrup, and then disgracefully try to pretend that fructose in raw fruits is exactly the same as that(Taubes is a classic conman in this regard). The very few studies which are not so dishonest are, unfortunately for you, countered by vast numbers of studies showing health-benefits if one increases one's intake of raw fruit and veg.
no, tyler, that is the thing, these are not limited to a few studies and plenty people here share these experiences. As I said, you are ther one putting into extremes of fruitarian or zero carb and dismissing the reality to focus on such extremes. I am saying that vegans who limit their fruit sugar intake improve their health and the same with cooked fooders and the same with raw omnivores or raw zero-carbers. only you assume if one moderates or eliminates sweet fruits that they all of a sudden are zero carb which is ridiculous. Plenty of people eat low sugar and have improved their health over diets high in modern fruits, this is a FACT. THis alone does not decimate fruit being possibly harmless, but other information done over decades by specialists in raw nutrtion does magnify it. There are people that emphasize foods that actually exists in nature as healthful food, that do not have these repercussions. Maybe THEY don't give a dam about processing, but the point is they get better results doing what you or I define as crappy things . Ive never advocated any cooking or WAP style eating and the philosophy you mention is just as/or more naive than believing modern fruit is by default ok. there is no one way of eating that will guarantee one remain free of disease and people need to include whatever tools they need whether it is 'zero-carb' or supplements or whatever for health without being cornerered into some decimating mindset that equallly has none to do with how people eat in nature.
You pick and choose between the studies, as the claims of fruit being arbitrarily healthy come mostly from conventional systems and not people with long term experience on fruit diets. As I've said numerous times before, people on these diets only suffer to some degree from deficiencies, with most of the serious issues dealing with over-sufficiency, which can be corrected even WITHIN veganism! with some success (sprouting or cooking), so obviously they are not just issues of lack of animal foods. all you need is single examples to prove that fruit can cause damage that cooked foods might not..nevermind that properlly excuted and tailored raw diets would not.
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First of all, we do offer perfectly good alternatives to those who cannot handle raw carbs, namely a raw, zero-carb diet. But there are also plenty of people, myself included, who do very well even on high-sugar raw fruits in large amounts. It seems you are making a dubious sweeping statement in suggesting that raw fruits are harmful for all.
As for the comment on veg/fruit I made, that is self-evident. For example, I find raw solid veg tasteless and not terribly nutritious, raw veggie-juice just goes through my body completely unabsorbed, giving me liquid diarrhea, whereas raw fruits work wonders for me. Exception is tropical fruit, but that has nothing to do with the sugar-content as I do fine on non-tropical fruits which are high in sugar.
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It is indeed interesting that even though the Hadza prefer berries to USOs, they eat more of the latter, because it is more plentiful and available year round. This is something that some Instinctos don't appear to take fully into account, because it seems that some don't restrict themselves to seasonal foods (please correct me if I err).
Instinctos usually do not restrict themselves to seasonal foods at all since they typically believe that humans are adapted to a supposed tropical fruit paradise.
My current view is that instincto and similar diets (such as mine which is very similar to instincto) replace the carbs that our human ancestors got from (cooked) tubers and later from grains with carbs from fruit. This may not be paleo and has certain disadvantages (much fructose, fruit acid, low availability of local fruit and wild fruit in many areas etc.), but is possibly healthier than a partly cooked diet or a very low carb diet in the long run.
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Instinctos usually do not restrict themselves to seasonal foods at all since they typically believe that humans are adapted to a supposed tropical fruit paradise.
I don't believe anything of that sort (and I avoid all beliefs in general), I just don't know.
My current view is that instincto and similar diets (such as mine which is very similar to instincto) replace the carbs that our human ancestors got from (cooked) tubers and later from grains with carbs from fruit. This may not be paleo and has certain disadvantages (much fructose, fruit acid, low availability of local fruit and wild fruit in many areas etc.), but is possibly healthier than a partly cooked diet or a very low carb diet in the long run.
Are there some significant differences between your current views / diet and the instincto ones? Or were you just saying that you don't consider yourself as instincto anymore because GCB didn't answer to one of your posts?
Do you believe our hominids (and apes) ancestors ate cooked tubers even before mastering the fire? ;) ???
Just curious
François
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First of all, we do offer perfectly good alternatives to those who cannot handle raw carbs, namely a raw, zero-carb diet. But there are also plenty of people, myself included, who do very well even on high-sugar raw fruits in large amounts. It seems you are making a dubious sweeping statement in suggesting that raw fruits are harmful for all.
I suggested that assuming fruits by default are healthy is wrong, and that as a fact people will get better results limiting sugar then they did when they did not limit sugar. This doesn't say that all fruit in all amounts is bad - not at all -only that eating raw fruit is not in itself a healthy practice devoid of other variables. Accepting that zero-carb is a strategy pretty much defies the idea that just because something is a raw fruit over any other non-grain food that it is acceptable to eat, or that restrictions can't have benefits. So obviously you already agree in part that one can't just eat foods within the umbrella of raw paleo, particularly to correct modern problems. I don't see why you can't accept my example within veganism to apply to other situations. Obviously if people can correct various issues by just limiting fruits while not increasing anything else that we might define healthful in the raw or paleo sense, then there is something wrong with the assumption that fruits will always be healthier the tubers,USOs or even grains (sprouted or even cooked), or that they are even a necessary part of a healthy diet when gauging actual peoples in nature.
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Arguing that raw fruits are not suitable in a few cases means nothing when, quite clearly, cooked foods like grains or tubers causefar more problems for people. And, judging from the data, those who do get issues with raw fruits only did so after decades of consumption of highly refined carbs swamping their bodies. In other words, if they had been raw from the very beginning of their lives, they would have had no issues with raw fruits.
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Arguing that raw fruits are not suitable in a few cases means nothing when, quite clearly, cooked foods like grains or tubers causefar more problems for people. And, judging from the data, those who do get issues with raw fruits only did so after decades of consumption of highly refined carbs swamping their bodies. In other words, if they had been raw from the very beginning of their lives, they would have had no issues with raw fruits.
ok lets take a survey on who that applies to here and who might qualify for thinking about their sources of nutrition a bit more carefully. Then we can survey the data of the number of people who have attempted a high fruit diet throughout history and which ones returned to a grain based diet with less problems and which turned to a raw meat diet. Once again all you can do is cite the harmful products of grains without really getting that high fruit diets CAN causes more problems and crisis even tho (and basically because) they are raw. Returning to some crappy diet (by your definition) is enough to fix this problem for many folks. This is the whole point in me bringing up proponents of high sprout diets and so forth, as for them there is the advantage of such foods over the problems associated with modern fruits which THEY certainly see as worse than SWD.
Also this does not take into account indigenous peoples who neglect fruits for other foods, even tho they never ate modern foods.
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The trouble is that indigenous peoples eat highly toxic things like cassava(a type of tuber), which are unquestionably worse than raw fruits. Check out online details on cassava re its cyanaide content etc.
And grains cause far more problems than modern fruits, in terms of things like coeliac disease/IBS etc. etc. Plus, like I said, while a minority get issues from raw fruits, that is solely due to past decades on cooked diets which included highly refined carbs. Plus, the difference between wild fruits and cultivated fruits is very minor compared to the far bigger difference between grains and raw fruits, since grains have extra heat-created toxins of various kinds, plus humans are far less adapted to grains than to raw fruits.
Sprouts can , to some extent, counter nutritional deficiencies gained after being many years on raw vegan/fruitarian diets, but they are unnecessary when one is rawpalaeo, as we already get plenty of the nutrients we need without need of sporuts as well.
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yeah, but people here don't have to choose between a serving of casava or a serving of fruit or sprouts or whatever, they just have to understand that in cases, its going to be less appropriate to eat modern fruit as a large part of a diet, and not rationalize it just because it is raw or then criticize other things entirely as being inferior because they are not raw or even paleo. On a 1:1 level this is true, but you can't deny current peoples that have suffered issues unique to fruits and not other seemingly more detrimental carbs OR say definitively that traditional people's health might improve eating more of the wild fruits around them and less starchy foods.
no matter how much cyanide is out there or visible detrimental problems of the WAPF or whatever, most people will agree that this issue is an important factor to health, and certainly not marginal or not shared by a wide spectrum of people. Even the sprout advocates would claim the removal of fruit sugars to be the healing part over anything intrinsic in sprouts, thats why that logic can easily be transferred to RAF or RVAF diets that emphasize low sugar fruit and veg, or even high sugar but light starch/low-digestive-fermentation fruit/veg..and can neglect the sprouts if they choose.
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Arguing that raw fruits are not suitable in a few cases means nothing when, quite clearly, cooked foods like grains or tubers causefar more problems for people.
few cases? Go to the candida forums on Curezone and Healthboards which are probably the health-related forums that get the most traffic. Ask them what happens to their candida symptoms and health in general when they raw eat fruit, even in small amount. Then ask them how do they on cooked grains/tubers, the answers you'll get will contradict your statement. Maybe I'll do the exercise later.
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yeah, but people here don't have to choose between a serving of casava or a serving of fruit or sprouts or whatever, they just have to understand that in cases, its going to be less appropriate to eat modern fruit as a large part of a diet, and not rationalize it just because it is raw or then criticize other things entirely as being inferior because they are not raw or even paleo. On a 1:1 level this is true, but you can't deny current peoples that have suffered issues unique to fruits and not other seemingly more detrimental carbs OR say definitively that traditional people's health might improve eating more of the wild fruits around them and less starchy foods.
The big trouble with your above claim is that people only eventually develop issues with raw, modern fruits once they've been decades on a diet of highly refined carbs. Yet, people quickly deteriorate on veggies like cassava which is one of the least nutritious foods out there, given the cyanide content.
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[/quote] On a 1:1 level this is true,.[/quote] Well, at least we agree on that.
no matter how much cyanide is out there or visible detrimental problems of the WAPF or whatever, most people will agree that this issue is an important factor to health, and certainly not marginal or not shared by a wide spectrum of people. Even the sprout advocates would claim the removal of fruit sugars to be the healing part over anything intrinsic in sprouts, thats why that logic can easily be transferred to RAF or RVAF diets that emphasize low sugar fruit and veg, or even high sugar but light starch/low-digestive-fermentation fruit/veg..and can neglect the sprouts if they choose.
Invalid, as the whole point of eating sprouts has little to do with fruit-sugars but far more to do with sprouting increasing the levels of enzymes and reducing the antinutrient levels. Sprouting has no relevance to a rawpalaeo diet high in raw fruits and low in raw veg, as such a diet has very few antinutrients and has plenty of enzymes in it already. More to the point, sprouts are an aspect of RAW diets, not cooked diets:- while they are certainly useful in countering some of the negative aspects of cooked diets(such as the lack of enzymes etc.) , they are irrelevant to raw, palaeolithic diets.
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few cases? Go to the candida forums on Curezone and Healthboards which are probably the health-related forums that get the most traffic. Ask them what happens to their candida symptoms and health in general when they raw eat fruit, even in small amount. Then ask them how do they on cooked grains/tubers, the answers you'll get will contradict your statement. Maybe I'll do the exercise later.
Curezone and health boards are very vague sites, hardly being representative of diets in general all over the web. Candida seems to be solved by a number of us rawpalaeos even if those are raw omnivores, so that kind of debunks the notion. Plus, tubers like cassava cause other problems that are unrelated to blood-sugar. If you want to experiment, feel free to try a diet filled 50 percent with raw, wholly unprocessed cassava tubers, and you'll see what I mean! l) l) ;D >D -d ;) Even the cooked version of cassavas is notorious for causing widespread malnutrition among Africans.
More to the point, issues with carbs of any kind are merely one common type of symptom, and are gained due to decades on diets filled with refined, heavily processed/cooked carbs. So, cooking is still debunked that way. Plus, people who have issues with any raw carbs are in a minority here, anyway, judging from current polls.
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Invalid, as the whole point of eating sprouts has little to do with fruit-sugars but far more to do with sprouting increasing the levels of enzymes and reducing the antinutrient levels. Sprouting has no relevance to a rawpalaeo diet high in raw fruits and low in raw veg, as such a diet has very few antinutrients and has plenty of enzymes in it already. More to the point, sprouts are an aspect of RAW diets, not cooked diets:- while they are certainly useful in countering some of the negative aspects of cooked diets(such as the lack of enzymes etc.) , they are irrelevant to raw, palaeolithic diets.
ok you go talk to Fred Bisci, Gabriel Cousens, and Brian Clement who combined have 100 years experience and record keeping and state 100% otherwise. You can even read their sucess stories about how they are still breathing. Please don't get back to me about the irrelevance of raw vegan diets. I have already basically proven that if all one has to do is replace one 'paleo' raw vegan food with another non paleo vegan food to ones advantage, obviously one can't cite the original food as being completely harmless or superior in all cases. Its a simple concept, which won't resonate on black and white thinking which seems to plague many health communities. Just because people run into all kinds of awful rabbit holes and curezone forums doesn't meant the issues are not real. I guarantee as I have already stated that no matter on vegan, cooked vegan, raw omnivore or raw carnivore, decreasing fresh raw modern fruits can be crucial for health, and thats all one needs to know to not randomly slander people who bring up the advantages of wild fruits or other exotic foods that might require processing to garner nutrition. People who 'suceed' eating raw fruits don't prove otherwise, particularly when they can be proven to unessential to others, at least on a regular basis. Even if I agree that perhaps the ideal human can eat SOME fruit carbs without issues, this is basically unhelpful as a strategy for those you cannot any more than added fats or cooked food or any other thing.
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ok you go talk to Fred Bisci, Gabriel Cousens, and Brian Clement who combined have 100 years experience and record keeping and state 100% otherwise. You can even read their sucess stories about how they are still breathing. Please don't get back to me about the irrelevance of raw vegan diets. I have already basically proven that if all one has to do is replace one 'paleo' raw vegan food with another non paleo vegan food to ones advantage, obviously one can't cite the original food as being completely harmless or superior in all cases. Its a simple concept, which won't resonate on black and white thinking which seems to plague many health communities. Just because people run into all kinds of awful rabbit holes and curezone forums doesn't meant the issues are not real. I guarantee as I have already stated that no matter on vegan, cooked vegan, raw omnivore or raw carnivore, decreasing fresh raw modern fruits can be crucial for health, and thats all one needs to know to not randomly slander people who bring up the advantages of wild fruits or other exotic foods that might require processing to garner nutrition. People who 'suceed' eating raw fruits don't prove otherwise, particularly when they can be proven to unessential to others, at least on a regular basis. Even if I agree that perhaps the ideal human can eat SOME fruit carbs without issues, this is basically unhelpful as a strategy for those you cannot any more than added fats or cooked food or any other thing.
All meaningless, as people who do not benefit from raw plant foods, do indeed benefit far more from some or all raw animal foods.
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GS, you didn't answer to that question about the price of durians:
Is that about 2.30 € / kg ? (I found 1.00 PHP = 0.0167795 EUR)
I add that eating a lot of rambutans (just as you mentioned, perhaps 10 kg in 2 -3 days) did not cause any tooth decay on me. GCB wrote that his children who always had a lot of tropical fruits at disposal don't have any tooth decay.
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Quote from: Hanna on Yesterday at 02:59:39 AM
Instinctos usually do not restrict themselves to seasonal foods at all since they typically believe that humans are adapted to a supposed tropical fruit paradise.
I don't believe anything of that sort
No. You just eat lots of sweet fruit all year round and claim that your diet is "paleo". l)
Are there some significant differences between your current views / diet and the instincto ones?
I have tried to explain my views for 173 posts. For example:
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/instinctoanopsology/mechanical-food-processing-and-fermented-foods/msg43658/#msg43658
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/instinctoanopsology/mechanical-food-processing-and-fermented-foods/msg44943/#msg44943
You will certainly agree that coconut puree isn´t instincto. I even think that fresh carrot juice is preferable to chewing carrots. In my case, carrot juice has usually a very quick "instinctive stop".
Do you believe our hominids (and apes) ancestors ate cooked tubers even before mastering the fire? ;) ???
We don´t know when fire was mastered. Nobody knows.
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No. You just eat lots of sweet fruit all year round and claim that your diet is "paleo". l)
Technically speaking, those in the tropics in the palaeo era would indeed have been eating sweet fruits all year round.
We don´t know when fire was mastered. Nobody knows.
Not quite. Scientists have plentiful evidence for cooking having gotten started c. 300,000 years ago. Some possible evidence exists for the invention of fire(and its use for wamrth not cooking) occurring up to 200,000 years earlier than that, although this is heavily disputed. There are also very vague, very few claims made for earlier periods, up to 1.9 million years ago or so, but these are largely held in ridicule within the scientific community due to several inherent flaws in those claims.
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No. You just eat lots of sweet fruit all year round and claim that your diet is "paleo". l)
By “RAW paleo” I mean without Neolithic food such as dairy and cereals and without cooking.
Don’t forget that animals interfere with their environment. For example, the only primary forest where there are plenty cempedaks, jackfruits and durians are the rainforest populated by apes such as orangutans. They have spread the seeds of the fruits they like and eat. Therefore we can’t know how was the environment of the hominids before they mastered the fire. Once they cooked, they certainly ate so much cooked carbs (tubers probably) that they were no longer interested in raw fruits and stopped to select and spread their seeds. They certainly set the fire to vast areas where the secondary vegetation growing after the fire had nothing in common with the primary forest they used to live and feed in before.
I have tried to explain my views for 173 posts. For example:
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/instinctoanopsology/mechanical-food-processing-and-fermented-foods/msg43658/#msg43658
http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/instinctoanopsology/mechanical-food-processing-and-fermented-foods/msg44943/#msg44943
Ok, thanks to remind me. And I answered you this, amongst other things:
Even if there was no grinders and blenders in the Paleolithoc era, I don’t think grinding food is too bad; in the case of someone missing teeth it can be the best solution to still eat raw. But if our natural grinder (our mouth with teeth) is in working order, why recourse to an external grinder? Of course, it’s not “forbidden” (everybody being free to eat and process whatever he or she likes). Everything has advantages and shortcoming, and so it is for grinding. The main shortcomings of grinding seem to me that we mix different parts of the stuff, some of these parts we might not have eaten when unprocessed so that we could eat the parts we like and reject the parts tasting bad. Per example, once meat is ground, we can no longer choose the ratio of fat to muscle because everything is mixed. If you grind carrots or make carrot juice, you cannot spit out and reject the possible bad one since it’ll be mixed with all the others.
You will certainly agree that coconut puree isn´t instincto.
Yes, I agree. Sorry, I didn’t remember you stance on grinding.
I even think that fresh carrot juice is preferable to chewing carrots. In my case, carrot juice has usually a very quick "instinctive stop".
Another arguments for chewing is to use our organs instead of a prosthesis. If we don’t use it, our organs become atrophied. Just like the use of shoes makes our soles tender and feeble.
We don´t know when fire was mastered. Nobody knows.
It doesn’t matter since we specify RAW paleo: it means we don’t cook, just like our ancestors before they started cooking, whenever it was.
Cheers
Francois
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GS, you didn't answer to that question about the price of durians:
I add that eating a lot of rambutans (just as you mentioned, perhaps 10 kg in 2 -3 days) did not cause any tooth decay on me. GCB wrote that his children who always had a lot of tropical fruits at disposal don't have any tooth decay.
Is that supposed to somehow negate the experience of GS' family that he reported? Are you claiming that your and GCB's children's experience holds for all?
Technically speaking, those in the tropics in the palaeo era would indeed have been eating sweet fruits all year round.
Not according to the Hadza research, where there was apparently some seasonality to at least the berries they favored, whereas the tubers were apparently plentiful year-round, as Hannah pointed out. Did you miss the posts on it? Do you have other research which contradicts it? I'm open to whatever the facts are. So far I'm only seeing opinion coming from you on this.
I love berries and fruits and would love it if it turned out that the Instincto stories about them were true and that I thrived on sweet fruits year round. So far I'm not finding either to be the case, but I would be thrilled to find that they were, so please do share any evidence you've found regarding Stone Age or hunter-gatherer consumption of plentiful year-round berries and fruits in tropical Africa.
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Not according to the Hadza research, where there was apparently some seasonality to at least the berries they favored, whereas the tubers were apparently plentiful year-round, as Hannah pointed out. Did you miss the posts on it? Do you have other research which contradicts it? I'm open to whatever the facts are. So far I'm only seeing opinion coming from you on this.
This was discussed a great while back on the Paleofood list, and it was pointed out that tubers were mostly not useful when raw, whether in terms of antinutrient-levels or general palatability. A generous 1 percent was once suggested as a suitable percentage of tubers which were edible raw, without any issues, as I vaguely recall.
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This was discussed a great while back on the Paleofood list, and it was pointed out that tubers were mostly not useful when raw, whether in terms of antinutrient-levels or general palatability.
I also pointed out before in this forum that recent scientific research has claimed that tubers that are edible raw were consumed for millions of years, going back to at least the Australopithecines and that chimps still consume raw tubers today (see where I discussed it here http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/general-discussion/raw-complex-carb-options/msg56943/#msg56943 and the original article here "Early Humans Skipped Fruit, Went For Nuts," http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-diet-nuts.html and see also Paul Jaminet, PhD on tubers at http://www.foodrenegade.com/for-the-love-of-tubers). There doesn't appear to be a lot of research on this, though, so it will be interesting to see whether other scientists confirm or contradict this.
A generous 1 percent was once suggested as a suitable percentage of tubers which were edible raw, without any issues, as I vaguely recall.
Could you share the study? I haven't come across that one and would like to see it.
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Is that supposed to somehow negate the experience of GS' family that he reported? Are you claiming that your and GCB's children's experience holds for all?
Isn’t my answer below sound? I may be wrong, but I always thought that tooth decay results from a deficiency in minerals and probably also in micronutrients, as is induced by refined food such as white sugar, white flour and polished rice. This seems to be the conclusion of Weston Price, but cooking is probably also a factor.
It’s hard to correlate tooth decay with a specific food, because it’s not a disease happening overnight. It may have been due to previous nutrition or to other foods (What kind of rice was she consuming? Polished or whole rice? What else had she been commonly eating?). Even when we get a flu, we are usually never sure which food caused it and even whether it’s due to a food eaten shortly before or pehaps long ago.
I strongly suspect my own tooth decay (which mostly happen before I was 18) was due to white sugar (sucrose) and white flour, but I think it was rather a combination of both and other diet factors which all together generated appalling deficiencies.
Tooth decay is the result of a long, slowly evolving process. Foods such as dates, sugar cane, honey or sweet fruits can cause toothaches, but only if the dental enamel is already damaged and formerly unnoticed caries are already present.
This was discussed a great while back on the Paleofood list, and it was pointed out that tubers were mostly not useful when raw, whether in terms of antinutrient-levels or general palatability. A generous 1 percent was once suggested as a suitable percentage of tubers which were edible raw, without any issues, as I vaguely recall.
Are these percentile figured in calories, in weight or in volume? Anyway they are invalid in my view as it t varies largely with time and with each individual. I can eat much more than 1% of sweet potatoes. Yakon is even more palatable and delicious. I even ate some raw manioc (which is considered toxic raw) without any problem. Some atypical people can even eat raw regular potatoes!
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The point was made that tubers usually need to be processed quite heavily in order to get rid of (some of)the antinutrients in them. So they are often pretty useless even when raw. Some tubers are even dangerous - cassava, a main staple of some Africans' diets contains a cyanide compound which kills if it isn't fully processed. Also, Wrangham focused on tubers re his cooking claims because he realised that they often needed to be cooked in order to be really useful for human consumption.
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Yeah, that's the point of view of guys and scientists eating cooked food. They also think that meat is not edible raw or that cooking makes it more tender and digestible! They've never tried to eat neither raw meat nor raw sweet potatoes.
So, we have definitely derailed this thread. Shouldn't we split it?
Cheers
François
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"A generous 1 percent was once suggested as a suitable percentage of tubers which were edible raw, without any issues, as I vaguely recall."
I'd still be interested to see the source of that 1% figure. I checked Paleofood and didn't find anything on it.
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I'd still be interested to see the source of that 1% figure. I checked Paleofood and didn't find anything on it.
It was mentioned ages ago on that list. I can't remember when it was posted. It could have been merely a hypothetical figure, given as an example.
The basic point is that tubers often need to be specially prepared in order to be edible(ie cooked etc.) And even those which are cooked can lead easily to malnutrition due to being very nutrient-poor in themselves. Tuber-rich diets in Africa have been sometimes mentioned as contributing to malnutrition.
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The basic point is that tubers often need to be specially prepared in order to be edible(ie cooked etc.)
Not those which are edible raw.
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AFAIK a much higher proportion of the starch can be digested if the starchy food has been cooked before.
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Not those which are edible raw.
Some are edible raw, but still contain antinutrients. Plus, tubers have now been farmed/bred for millenia so are unlikely to be the same as their wild counterparts I would imagine,having lower levels of nutrients in palaeo times .
The point made elsewhere is that diets very rich in tubers, such as found in Africa(60 percent of diet is cited in some cases), are thought to contribute heavily to malnutrition,so tubers are not ideal.
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Some are edible raw, but still contain antinutrients.
Yet according to recent research, raw tubers were nonetheless a staple part of the hominin diet going back at least as far as Australopithecines:
Early Humans Skipped Fruit, Went for Nuts
Tooth analysis reveals our human ancestors preferred root vegetables, nuts and insects in their diets.http://news.discovery.com/human/human-ancestor-diet-nuts.html
Combine this with the observational studies of modern hunter gatherers who never fail to eat tubers as a staple food when they are available and the fact that chimps have been observed digging up tubers and eating them (raw of course) and the case seems rather strong that raw tubers and other underground storage organs were a staple in the hominin diet going back millions of years. There are exceptions, of course, such as the Arctic peoples who did not have access to lots of USOs. It's interesting, however that the Inuit tended to eat caribou stomach contents and cherish the liver of seals and fish. Was this their effective substitute for underground storage organs (albeit at a much smaller intake) and could their love of these foods be due in part to a biological adaptation to the consumption of certain starchy foods (USOs and nuts)?
Plus, tubers have now been farmed/bred for millenia so are unlikely to be the same as their wild counterparts I would imagine,having lower levels of nutrients in palaeo times .
Sure, but check out Stephan Guyenet's multiple posts on tubers, including on the guy who did an all-potato-diet experiment (I think it was for a month). I think you'll find the information there rather surprising. Stephan predicted the outcome. When a scientific hypothesis enables predictions it is demonstrated to at least be practically useful, if not perfectly theoretically conclusive.
The point made elsewhere is that diets very rich in tubers, such as found in Africa(60 percent of diet is cited in some cases), are thought to contribute heavily to malnutrition,so tubers are not ideal.
Show me the evidence, not the "thought," please.
I do think you have a point re: cooked tubers, which I think are a substandard modern substitute for the raw tubers of the past, but the accumulating evidence suggests that raw tubers, roots, corms and bulbs may have played a larger role in ancient diets than Dr. Cordain and Ray Audette originally believed. The recent research and the example of modern hunter gatherers suggests that starchy foods historically provided more calories in ancient diets than fruits. If you have any counter evidence I'd be interested to see it, and it will be interesting to see what future research might reveal on this topic.
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Hmm, I once read about a former rock-star, ages ago in a daily telegraph magazine article, who claimed that he nearly died from deficiencies after eating only raw potatoes for a set period (c.1 month?)and nothing else.
As for that study, I wouldn't take it too seriously. After all, there was that series of studies which tried to claim for years that Neanderthals were 90-100 percent carnivores only for subsequent studies to debunk this notion, due to better scientific techniques for examining bones etc. The palaeolithic era is still very poorly understood.
Well, obviously, "Arctic tribes in general" are hardly an "exception", indeed they kind of prove that adaptation to tubers was by no means a given among humanity. Also, the claim re the Inuit eating the stomach-contents(ie fermented plant matter) being considered a substitute for tuber-consumption isn't appropriate as the plant-matter is after all fermented/pre-digested. Besides, I don't think it's been proven that the Inuit HAD to eat raw plant foods, as such.
Also, tubers don't seem too reliable as a dietary staple, given past history, re the Irish potato famine and similiar other crises involving tubers.
http://blogs.alternet.org/wilspencer/2010/02/27/grains-nuts-seeds-and-tubers/
*I seem to have missed that other link re tubers and malnutrition. But there is evidence that even processed cassava can cause the protein-deficiency disease, "kwashiorkor" and even iodine-deficiency :-
http://www.answers.com/topic/cassava
As for cooked tubers, since cooking does greatly increase the availability of starch-content, it produces more calories and the antinutrient levels are heavily reduced. So, while some vegetables can still be eaten raw in moderation, tubers should always be cooked(or preferably avoided altogether in favour of better foods entirely).
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Hmm, I once read about a former rock-star, ages ago in a daily telegraph magazine article, who claimed that he nearly died from deficiencies after eating only raw potatoes for a set period (c.1 month?)and nothing else.
I searched for anything on that but couldn't find it. I did find an article from that same periodical on the potato diet guy. He did it for two months:
Washington man completes 60-day potato challenge
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/washington-man-completes-60-day-potato-challenge/story-e6freuyi-1225963611024
That man's experiment doesn't prove anything, but it does raise questions about just how toxic potatoes are if someone can eat little else for 60 days and end up better off by all appearances rather than worse off. Of course, the benefits he experienced could possibly be attributable to replacing worse foods like wheat with the less-"bad"-but-not-necessarily-"good" potatoes, but it is intriguing.
It will be interesting to see what future experiments and research produce. I have seen many cooked Paleo dieters experimenting with cooked tubers lately, with some experiencing negative results and others positive. I think it's somewhat of a fad that Paleos have gotten carried away with at this point, but there could theoretically be a kernel of truth behind it if raw tubers and other raw USOs were consumed in significant quantities by hominins. It is a heck of a coincidence that every HG tribe I've read about that had access to edible tubers was observed eating them as a staple food. It puzzled me that Dr. Cordain didn't address this in The Paleo Diet (or maybe I missed it), though he did later suggest sweet potatoes for athletes in The Paleo Diet for Athletes.
As for that study, I wouldn't take it too seriously.
I do take my personal experience more seriously than the research. On that note, while cooked tubers do tend to make a heavy lump in my stomach and make me feel logy if I eat too much, and I can't eat even a single daikon root without getting a little stomach upset, raw parsnips don't seem to bother me. It's possible that there's just too little starch to cause any symptoms, especially since I tend to eat less of a raw starch than a cooked one, but it is mildly intriguing.
Plus, I don't have any particular reason to believe your vaguely remembered account on the rock star more than the reports on Australopithecines and the potato diet guy. I'm open minded on the subject. Raw tubers and roots definitely aren't my best food, but I'd like to be able to add a little more variety to my diet, in part to keep my interest and weight up and as a side benefit to calm the concerns of some friends and relatives that I might be restricting my diet too much. Raw USOs might be one such option for me. The preliminary results with raw parsnips are pretty encouraging.
I'm curious about what raw tubers the Australopithecines ate, but so far I haven't seen any article specify any of the tuber species that were consumed.
The palaeolithic era is still very poorly understood.
Yes, that goes without saying.
Well, obviously, "Arctic tribes in general" are hardly an "exception", indeed they kind of prove that adaptation to tubers was by no means a given among humanity.
Interesting opinion. If you believe that then do you also believe that omnivory was by no means a given among humanity, since USOs, fruits and nuts were of minor importance in the Arctic and even today the Coastal "Chukchi" reportedly subsist almost completely on walrus and whale during the winter months? I agree that tubers and USOs and plant carbs in general are not a necessity, especially given that liver and eggs contain some animal starch, but that also doesn't necessarily mean that starches couldn't have played a larger role than fruits in the overall average diets of Stone Age and pre-Stone Age hominins, as the above research and observations of modern HGs seems to suggest. Even though the Hadza preferred berries, they ended up getting more of their calories on an overall annual basis from tubers than from berries. So, even though their taste/senses told them to eat berries, what they actually ended up eating more of was tubers.
Another thing to bear in mind is that drying and soaking would have been possible prior to the adoption of cooking.
Also, the claim re the Inuit eating the stomach-contents(ie fermented plant matter) being considered a substitute for tuber-consumption isn't appropriate as the plant-matter is after all fermented/pre-digested. Besides, I don't think it's been proven that the Inuit HAD to eat raw plant foods, as such.
I don't think they had to either. The scientists who reported the evidence on Australopithecine consumption of USOs didn't claim that they HAD to eat them, just that they did. So that's a digression that I'm not intrigued by.
Also, tubers don't seem too reliable as a dietary staple, given past history, re the Irish potato famine and similiar other crises involving tubers.
That's a red herring because that was a single domesticated variety that the population had become overreliant on and the famine was triggered by a blight on the potatoes, not from malnutrition from eating the tubers. Have you ever heard of any such widespread blight happening to wild tubers that are edible raw and thus qualify as raw Paleo? The reason such catastrophic blights happen is apparently because 1) the natural antinutrient defenses in domesticated plant foods are reduced to such an extent that they become highly susceptible to infection and overpredation and 2) the over-reliance on a single species of plant further increases the odds of a widespread catastrophic blight.
Plus, the potatoes in Ireland were not the same species as the raw Paleo tubers consumed by Australopithecines in ancient Africa. So that's doubly a red herring.
*I seem to have missed that other link re tubers and malnutrition. But there is evidence that even processed cassava can cause the protein-deficiency disease, "kwashiorkor" and even iodine-deficiency :-
http://www.answers.com/topic/cassava
Cassava is another tuber that was not one of the raw Paleo tubers consumed by Australopithecines in ancient Africa.
As for cooked tubers, since cooking does greatly increase the availability of starch-content, it produces more calories and the antinutrient levels are heavily reduced. So, while some vegetables can still be eaten raw in moderation, tubers should always be cooked(or preferably avoided altogether in favour of better foods entirely).
Presumably cooking would not be necessary on the raw Paleo tubers that the Australopithecines ate before cooking was invented.
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I searched for anything on that but couldn't find it. I did find an article from that same periodical on the potato diet guy. He did it for two months:
Washington man completes 60-day potato challenge
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/breaking-news/washington-man-completes-60-day-potato-challenge/story-e6freuyi-1225963611024
That man's experiment doesn't prove anything, but it does raise questions about just how toxic potatoes are if someone can eat little else for 60 days and end up better off by all appearances rather than worse off. Of course, the benefits he experienced could possibly be attributable to replacing worse foods like wheat with the less-"bad"-but-not-necessarily-"good" potatoes, but it is intriguing.
It will be interesting to see what future experiments and research produce. I have seen many cooked Paleo dieters experimenting with cooked tubers lately, with some experiencing negative results and others positive. I think it's somewhat of a fad that Paleos have gotten carried away with at this point, but there could theoretically be a kernel of truth behind it if raw tubers and other raw USOs were consumed in significant quantities by hominins. It is a heck of a coincidence that every HG tribe I've read about that had access to edible tubers was observed eating them as a staple food. It puzzled me that Dr. Cordain didn't address this in The Paleo Diet (or maybe I missed it), though he did later suggest sweet potatoes for athletes in The Paleo Diet for Athletes.
Cordain pointed out that plant foods actually consisted of, at most, 25 percent of calories of HG diets near the equator - so tubers were hardly a staple, even of those tribes that ate them. Plus, I am deeply sceptical of the notion that all non-arctic tribes ate more than minimal amounts of tubers, let alone lots of tubers.
As for that comment re the raw potatoes experiment of the artist, it was mentioned in the Daily Telegraph magazine in an interview of a pop-star, and magazine articles don't seem to get reported online, last I checked. What makes it interesting is that that man's diet consisted of RAW potatoes, whereas the other guy you mention ate cooked potatoes(he mentions the use of cooking-oil). Now, the whole point of my argument was that RAW tubers were not ideal foods, givne their antinutrient-levels. Cooked/processed tubers provide a lot more nutrition than raw tubers but still have their defects, such as heat-created toxins derived from cooking plus lack of bacteria and lack of enzymes.
I do take my personal experience more seriously than the research. On that note, while cooked tubers do tend to make a heavy lump in my stomach and make me feel logy if I eat too much, and I can't eat even a single daikon root without getting a little stomach upset, raw parsnips don't seem to bother me. It's possible that there's just too little starch to cause any symptoms, especially since I tend to eat less of a raw starch than a cooked one, but it is mildly intriguing.
I think, like with raw vegetables, only a few tubers are worth eating raw, albeit in small amounts, due to concerns about antinutrient-levels.
Interesting opinion. If you believe that then do you also believe that omnivory was by no means a given among humanity,
No, I am not convinced that all HGs in non-arctic areas ate huge amounts of raw tubers. At best, I think tuber-consumption may have increased after cooking was invented.
Another thing to bear in mind is that drying and soaking would have been possible prior to the adoption of cooking.
Drying and soaking is not as effective as cooking for removing antinutrients.
I don't think they had to either. The scientists who reported the evidence on Australopithecine consumption of USOs didn't claim that they HAD to eat them, just that they did. So that's a digression that I'm not intrigued by.
It seems reasonable to assume that tubers were eaten in order to avoid starvation during times of famine, rather than being a preferred food, given taste-issues and lack of nutrients by comparison to other foods.
That's a red herring because that was a single domesticated variety that the population had become overreliant on and the famine was triggered by a blight on the potatoes, not from malnutrition from eating the tubers. Have you ever heard of any such widespread blight happening to wild tubers that are edible raw and thus qualify as raw Paleo? The reason such catastrophic blights happen is apparently because 1) the natural antinutrient defenses in domesticated plant foods are reduced to such an extent that they become highly susceptible to infection and overpredation and 2) the over-reliance on a single species of plant further increases the odds of a widespread catastrophic blight.
Blight does seem to occur in wild varieties, however they are more resistant usually than domesticated varieties.
The claim that antinutrient levels are heavily reduced by cultivation does not apply, though. it was mentioned, for example, that for various reasons farmers often want to cultivate cassava tubers with higher levels of antinutrients in them - while the reason therefore was not mentioned,I suspect this has to do with the fact that the higher the levels of antinutrients, the more resistant the plants are to insect infestation or parasites. So, useful for those farmers not using lots of expensive pesticides/chemicals.
As for number 2), the same would apply to any palaeo HG tribe which fixated on only one type of plant.
Plus, the potatoes in Ireland were not the same species as the raw Paleo tubers consumed by Australopithecines in ancient Africa. So that's doubly a red herring.
Irrelevant that they were not the same species as that does not imply full immunity to blight.
Cassava is another tuber that was not one of the raw Paleo tubers consumed by Australopithecines in ancient Africa.
They could have been consuming other tubers which were just as bad, for all we know, but heavily processed them.
What is revealing is that HG tribes consuming lots of tubers seemed not to thrive on them. Well, I can think of the Maori, as a classic example, with their fixation on tubers. The problem seems to be the poor levels of protein in tubers, compared to other foods.
Presumably cooking would not be necessary on the raw Paleo tubers that the Australopithecines ate before cooking was invented.
Good point. Although, like I said, Australopithecines may have resorted to tubers during times of famine, mainly as a last resort. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the main reason why cooking was eventually invented was in order to greatly lower the high levels of antinutrients in raw tubers, and some raw vegetables. Indeed, it is quite possible that they only cooked tubers/veg and ate anything else raw, for a while.
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Cordain pointed out that plant foods actually consisted of, at most, 25 percent of calories of HG diets near the equator - so tubers were hardly a staple, even of those tribes that ate them.
This does certainly not apply to the Hadzas (I don´t know about the other HGs):
Plant foods—roots, berries, and fruit—were also abundant for those who knew where to look and constituted about 80 percent of the Hadza diet.
http://books.google.de/books?id=Ug0oo_l5YbsC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Hadzas+diet&source=bl&ots=-HSbD7531f&sig=10TI__6dC24mZL4Y3VmxQO-ANAU&hl=de&ei=QipATfWmIoWcOsvB-c4I&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CFwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
During the wet season, the diet is composed mostly of honey, some fruit, tubers, and occasional meat. The contribution of meat to the diet increases in the dry season, when game become concentrated around sources of water. (...) The Hadza ... adjust their diet according to season and circumstance. Depending on local availability, some groups might rely more heavily on tubers, others on berries, others on meat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadza_people#Subsistence
See table 4:
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07601616.pdf
See figure 2 and figure 3:
http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/marlowe_pubs/Tubers%20as%20Fallback%20Foods%20and%20Impact%20on%20Hadza%20AJPA.pdf
Even though the Hadza preferred berries, they ended up getting more of their calories on an overall annual basis from tubers than from berries.
According to your link, they ate more berries.
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This does certainly not apply to the Hadzas (I don´t know about the other HGs):
http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/marlowe_pubs/Tubers%20as%20Fallback%20Foods%20and%20Impact%20on%20Hadza%20AJPA.pdf
The last link you just gave rather debunks several points made in favour of tubers. To quote from the above text:-
1st page:-
"We showed the Hadza photos of these foods and asked them to rank them in order of preference. Honey was ranked the highest. Tubers, as expected from their low caloric value, were ranked lowest."
and "Tubers fit the definition of fallback foods because they are the most continuously available but least preferred foods. Tubers are more often taken when berries are least available."
and from page 3:-
"For both women (n 5 49) and men (n 5 45) the most preferred food was honey (mean rank 5 4.07) and the least preferred food was tubers (mean rank 5 2.10). Baobab was ranked third by women and men. There were sex differences on the other two foods: women ranked berries second and meat fourth, while men ranked meat second and berries fourth. In addition, though both sexes ranked honey first, men did so significantly more often (Mann–Whitney U 5 753, P 5 0.003, n 5 94). Women ranked berries significantly higher than men did (U 5 679.5, P 5 0.001, n 5 94) (see Fig. 1). It appears that men prefer men’s foods a bit more than women do and women prefer women’s foods a bit more than men do (Berbesque and Marlowe, submitted for publication).
So, in other words, tubers were looked down on by the Hadzas as being the most inferior foods re taste etc., with them only being eaten because they were available all year round, and often primarily eaten only when other better foods were not available. Hardly a sign that tubers are a healthy part of a palaeo diet, more a way to reduce the possibility of starvation.
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I firmly believe as humans we use our instincts of what we should eat and listen to our body when eating with what agrees/disagrees with us. Humans adaptability shant be underestimated. If all that's around us is domesticated beef and vegetables and we're doing fine, then I don't see a problem. I'd love to have some wild animals or vegetables but hey if I can't get to em i'll adapt and make do.
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I firmly believe as humans we use our instincts of what we should eat and listen to our body when eating with what agrees/disagrees with us. Humans adaptability shant be underestimated. If all that's around us is domesticated beef and vegetables and we're doing fine, then I don't see a problem. I'd love to have some wild animals or vegetables but hey if I can't get to em i'll adapt and make do.
To me the whole point of 'diets' is to make sure one eats enough of the healthy foods for their requirements + beyond to help expel modern wastes from the environment and internal build up. Whether one sees it or not, believing otherwise is ultimately to pick and choose what practices are healthy amongst all the known humanoids that have been studied...as multiple conflicting strategies have been shown to keep healthy people relatively healthy. Just because we believe we have the best evidence, its still just one piece of an ongoing discussion on health.
People might be able to accomplish this eating 100% grainfed beef and/or bananas and nothing else. who knows. The issue is that one cannot eat whatever fruits vegetables and meats and assume since they are NOT doing other stuff that their diet is automatically healthy and/or healing. This is the trap. It may be that some people can get by eating any quantity of modern fruits and neglecting certain foods or dietary protocols/ratios etc.. necessary for such healing, but the studies and accounts of most long term raw foodists show this is often not the case and that these diets can create problems that wouldn't exist even on SWD or even the most deficient cooked low fat veg-diets. There are plenty of apparent symptoms on top of outright degenerative failure associated with such things which are easy to see. Often the mindsets themselves are poisonous and destructive, as it sets up a situation where the things possibly required are so out of the periphery of what is believed.
People can be on various cooked and/or neolithic permutations of 'paleo' and traditional diets that avoid such foods or excess can do much better than such philosophies that see eating without specificity to such needs of modern people. Because the foods themselves (mainly fruits) interact poorly in the bloodstream of modern humans, it is irrelevant at that point what foods people ate in the past in comparison to what diets are shown to avoid such problems or correct others more efficiently...or at all. Interestingly enough as pointed out many times, all traditional peoples consume starches and vegetation even when ripe fruits are available. Had these same people been given the option of supermarket fruits, would they eat them?...and then to their detriment? who knows.
If people were truly healthy to begin with, perhaps they could eat whatever modern fruits etc...without running into too many degenerative problems, but most people don't have that luxury. Fundamentally you are right tho, one can't stress about the things one doesn't have, only make the most intelligent decisions on what the body really needs. One doesn't have to dwell on a moment to moment basis, just not have too many concepts of what is harmful or healthful that neglect obvious results.