Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Off Topic => Topic started by: PaleoPhil on November 06, 2011, 07:52:01 am
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Continued from http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79287/#msg79287 (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79287/#msg79287)
It may be fruitless, but I'm pleading with folks to please do less of making absolutist pronouncements as though they were all-knowing gods and instead put more thought and effort into their posts, especially in supplying specific evidence to support and explain their views. There are many types of evidence one could present, not just books and articles, but also years of personal experience, well-designed self-experiments, logical arguments backed by scientific knowledge, real-world observations of others, image/video documentation, and so on, but I'm not seeing a lot of it. It seems like there's a tendency for folks to act as if they are more interested in arguing than in learning and sharing and putting effort into their posts. Satya has done a good job at the Dirty Carnivore forum of redirecting the energy away from the mindless arguing and more into thoughtful, well-supported posts and I'd like to ask if folks could consider the same for this forum. I've seen it work, so it is possible.
Macronutrient ratios play indeed a fundamental important role in many medical conditions, for example fungal overgrowth, epilepsy, ADHD etc.
Where did I deny that? Don't expect sweet comments from me if you accuse me of making straw man arguments that I never did. This isn't relevant to what I actually wrote. I was talking about the wars on the Internet and via books and other media over low carb vs. high carb and low fat vs. high fat. I'm bored of the endless macronutrient wars and people that pronounce that "it's all about carbs" or "fat" or opinions to that effect or proclaim something like that the whole human race absolutely would do better on a low carb or low fat diet.
And even if I speculate about the diet of our ancestors 10k+ years ago, whats wrong with speculating? It's part of a thinking process.
Again, I didn't argue for that straw man that no one should ever speculate. I just pleaded for less speculative pronouncements and more learning and deeper and more skeptical thinking--especially when the speculation is used as the foundation for arguments. There's too much in this forum and the Internet in general of throwing out absolutist proclamations based on shoot-from-the-hip speculations pronounced as though they were dictates from heaven. I'm all for speculation when it's used as the starting point for thought and discussion, not as the conclusion.
Please realize that your speculations about word combinations like "must have" are of no use for anyone.
Please realize that you don't speak for everyone, unless you're claiming to be God or a Borg who has access to everyone's minds or a dictator who can kill any of us who disagree. Besides, it's not a speculation to point out that stating that something "must have" been absolutely so without providing evidence is asking the readers to accept an absolute assumption without evidence. It's a simple recognition of the logical fallacy called begging the question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question).
Have you learned anything from any hunter gatherer group? Or have you just read some nice books and articles like nearly everyone else here?
Are you now at least acknowledging that it's not true that we can learn "absolutely nothing" from HGs, but instead may be able to learn something by means other than books or articles? What if anything do you accept as useful sources of information on hunter gatherer groups (living as a HG, living among HGs, direct communication with HGs, videos of HGs, writings by HGs, observers reporting on HGs, field studies, lab studies, ...)?
Many of todays hunter gatherers are in a very poor shape and show detrimental habits like smoking and drinking alcohol.
I can't believe you're using the same style of proclamations without evidence, which I just decried, in your points to me, and you're not making it very clear who or what you're referring to or how it relates to what I wrote. If you're expecting me to be convinced by the methods I took issue with, that is puzzling.
This is a good example of where it would help for you to put in a little more effort and provide specific examples to not only support what you're saying, but to explain it. Which hunter gatherers are you talking about? Are you talking about traditional pipe smoking and home-fermented alcoholic beverages or store-bought modern versions? Are you saying that the HGs are in very poor shape because of their traditional foods and lifestyles or modern influences? Who do you believe have higher rates of chronic diseases (aka the diseases of civilization), the hunter-gatherer peoples that have maintained more of their traditional diet and lifestyle or those which have adopted more modern practices?
Are you seriously trying to re-animate Tyler's dead straw man argument in which he basically complained about people advocating mindless HG re-enactment that assumes without evidence that 100% of what HGs do is healthy, which I have actually argued against doing, not for? I don't recall anyone arguing recently in this thread for that inanity. As I pointed out, my signature and icon caption, which I think have been there for months now, show I don't believe that nonsense.
Regarding healthy diets for human beings there is not really SO much to learn, IMO. It's more about unlearning. The message is simple: Just eat all parts of HEALTHY animals (raw) and some raw plant food as desired. That's all.
Yet more of the same revelatory pronouncements. How can I make it plain to you that I'm not convinced of anything just because you say it's so and I'm much more interested in your actual experience, experiments and thorough research than in opinions that don't appear to have had much thought or effort put into them? Are you God or a prophet with a direct link to his mind? If not, I require more evidence than your say-so.
And of course, there are many other factors beside macronutrient ratios. Nobody denies this, PP.
Then we are in agreement on that, but my point was that there is too much emphasis on macronutrient ratios when it comes to diets for the general population and not enough on the bigger picture. I was not implying the ridiculous notion that all of the science and medicine that in any way touches on macronutrients must be discarded or ignored. Nobody that I know of has argued for that.
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By the way, when I wrote this:
Some people have been making a lot of guesses and assumptions, which is typical on the Internet. Instead of doing that, why not read all you can about the actual hunter gatherer, pastoral and horticultural peoples you've been making guesses about and learn what you can? It's much more interesting and rewarding than pure speculation. Why not do as Stephen Covey advised and seek first to understand, then to be understood? http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79137/#msg79137 (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79137/#msg79137)
I meant Stone Age hunter gatherers too, not just those that were observed in recent centuries, and it was a request, not a demand, but I'm hoping that people will seriously consider it and in the constructive way in which it was intended.
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I already pointed out how the lack of megafauna in post-Neolithic times makes any comparison between Palaeo HGs and modern HGs ridiculous. .... In short, it is safe to assume that the differences between tribes must be vast if they are separated by tens of thousands of years in time. Only logical.
So is your answer to my question yes, Lowenherz's statement was right that we can learn absolutely nothing at all from hunter gatherer groups (and would you say that even for HGs observed directly by you in person)? Do you think that Lowenherz is a better source of information on diet or lifestyle than any information about or from HGs?
Here's his original quote, so folks will know what I'm referring to:
We are talking about the Paleolithic era here. No books have been written at that time. What can we learn from actual hunter gatherer groups, Phil? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Most of them smoke and drink alcohol etc.
Löwenherz
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79233/#msg79233 (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79233/#msg79233)
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There's a certain hypocrisy in you accusing others of absolutism, when that is clearly what you espouse. Your signature is just a diversion, not genuine.
The fact is that we all have differing viewpoints on everything , whether diet or anything else. Just as some people are entitled to stick solely to one middle-of-the-road idea, so are others entitled to take the view of just one end of the relevant spectrum of opinion, whether formed from one's own personal dietary experiences, or the realisation, backed up by scientific data, that much "data" related by WP et al about modern hunter-gatherers is seriously flawed or simply not relevant to HGs from tens of thousands of years before etc.
More to the point, we are a raw, (early)palaeolithic diet community, not a neolithic one, so we should NOT be emulating modern HGs with their grains, cooking or whatever.
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There's a certain hypocrisy in you accusing others of absolutism, when that is clearly what you espouse. Your signature is just a diversion, not genuine.
I renounce absolutism and any perceptions of any alleged past absolutism by me was not intended as such. If you have any examples give them so I have the opportunity to explain or correct them, otherwise give me a break. Your claims that my signature is a diversion are themselves a diversion based on falsehood. I believe what's in my signature and caption text and have since before I joined this forum. To say otherwise without evidence amounts to a childish argument of "liar, liar, pants on fire." I wouldn't have posted the signature text if I didn't believe it. Your attempts to twist and recast my words into your straw man arguments are not my actual views and you cannot read my mind. If my words ever give you the impression that they are conveying a message contrary to what's in my signature, then please ask me to explain it rather than rephrasing them in the worst possible light and jumping to extreme conclusions.
William and SuperInfinity were the biggest and most consistent exemplars of your "noble savage" pet peeve that I can recall. Who else do you see having pushed what you call "noble savage" notions other than them (or mistakenly including me with that lot) and perhaps Weston Price? When they pushed utopian notions along the lines of promoting "noble savages" (such as William's godlike cave man notions and extreme creationist views or SuperInfinity's notions about ancient utopian tropical rain forest dwellers) who should be blindly emulated with little or no credible evidence to back them beyond insane, mystical rantings or a handful of quoted rants from dubious vegan websites, I disagreed with them, I didn't chime in. I also disagree with Weston Price's promotion of whole-grain rye bread eating because the Swiss did it years ago, though at least he observed them and saw they were doing well, which was more evidence than William or SuperInfinity tended to provide, but insufficient to give a clean bill of health to rye bread, and I'm also skeptical that raw dairy is as healthy and essential as Price claimed, though I've seen enough corresponding claims of benefit from folks here and elsewhere that I won't argue that it can't possibly benefit anyone at all.
The fact is that we all have differing viewpoints on everything , whether diet or anything else.
Yes, everyone has viewpoints and everyone can also put a little effort behind those views if they so choose. As stated above, I'm just making a request, not a demand.
whether formed from one's own personal dietary experiences, or the realisation, backed up by scientific data, ....
Personal dietary experiences and scientific data are a couple of the things that I asked people to provide. If they do more of that instead of just dictating what the truth "must have" been or what others should do, I would be pleased. What I was decrying was the lack of evidence, not calling for just one type of evidence. Any plausible evidence at all would be a welcome change from evidence-less absolutistic pronouncements made as if from heaven.
More to the point, we are a raw, (early)palaeolithic diet community, not a neolithic one, so we should NOT be emulating modern HGs with their grains, cooking or whatever.
Again, that's a straw man argument I didn't make. You know full well that I don't eat grains, so this has the appearance of another diversion on your part. All I did was ask people to do a little more investigating and to provide more support for their opinions. I'd like to ASK (not demand) if there could be less of "must have," "must be," and more of the "my experience is," "the evidence is" and so on. I'm not telling anyone to blindly emulate anyone. If you thought that then you completely misunderstood me and it would explain why your characterizations of my views have been so far off from the truth.
I'm getting the sense, Tyler, that any mention of recent hunter gatherers by anyone is going to set off your alarm bells, so I'll try to be cognizant of that when posting, but I do hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt that I don't intend for my words to be taken as directives for people to blindly emulate 100% any particular hunter gatherer group without taking any other factors into consideration. My mention of one group or individual or experience or data point doesn't mean that I intend for people to disregard everything else.
You seem to have some of the strongest antipathy toward non-Stone-Age HG evidence I've encountered, even stronger than most critics of raw and Paleo diets. What inspired this in you? Was it that Beyondveg site or maybe the other guy that was one of the early founder-members of this site who went on to form another website, or what? I understand your savage attacks on gurus are meant to discourage newbs from blindly following them, so could your antipathy to research on the HG's of recent centuries be partly due to a desire to discourage similar blind devotion to a particular HG group, like the Inuit, say? If so, I can certainly understand and agree with you on that, although I wouldn't take it so far as to denounce everything on HGs without even investigating it first. Do you strongly prefer abstract ideas to real-world leaders and examples, perhaps because ideas are more trustworthy than leaders and examples?
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The passive-aggressive stance in the above post and the sheer length quite frankly bore me. All I will state is that, long before encountering this diet, I came across the Noble Savage theory, which purported to show that all primitive tribes were somehow more perfect/saintly than more settled peoples, and there were obvious flaws in the notion, so I get particularly annoyed with WP, and certain village idiots like Jared Diamond among others, these days. Not that I claim that all settled peoples are "better", merely that neither type can claim "perfection" re morality.
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Why don't you guys go for a hike in the bush and see what there is to eat?
I'd like to point out that life expectancy figures don't necessarily represent how long someone will live on their diet, but more often reflect the lack of medical care. If you break a leg out in the bush it can be pretty deadly, and cut the average life expectancy a lot.
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Continued from http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79287/#msg79287 (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79287/#msg79287)
It may be fruitless, but I'm pleading with folks to please do less of making absolutist pronouncements ...
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+ endless blah-blah.
LOL!
PP,
I'm sorry but I'm NOT your personal therapist.
Eat a big green salad to calm your nerves and relax. This is not World War III. We are just talking about raw foods.
Löwenherz
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The amount of wildlife and plants, nowadays, is a small reflection of the amounts found a few hundred years ago in the wild, and a truly tiny reflection of the huge amount of wild game and plant food found in Palaeolithic times. So virtually everyone would starve, these days, if stuck in the New Forest, in the UK, for example.
Billy is right re the life-expectancy, though. People did die younger mainly because of lack of medical care, during the Palaeolithic era. That said, diet does also play a role since switching to Neolithic foods caused severe health-problems, as, I'm sure, did cooked foods when introduced c. 250,000 years ago, given the damage caused by heat-created toxins.
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The amount of wildlife and plants, nowadays, is a small reflection of the amounts found a few hundred years ago in the wild, and a truly tiny reflection of the huge amount of wild game and plant food found in Palaeolithic times. So virtually everyone would starve, these days, if stuck in the New Forest, in the UK, for example.
That's very true.
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I already pointed out how the lack of megafauna in post-Neolithic times makes any comparison between Palaeo HGs and modern HGs ridiculous. .... In short, it is safe to assume that the differences between tribes must be vast if they are separated by tens of thousands of years in time. Only logical.
PP: So is your answer to my question yes, that we can learn absolutely nothing at all from hunter gatherer groups observed in recent centuries (not even those observed directly)?
...so we should NOT be emulating modern HGs with their grains, cooking or whatever.
I didn't mention grains or cooking (yet another of the countless straw men), but since getting answers out of you is like pulling teeth, I'll take that as a yes unless you say otherwise. It would partly explain why you so often fail to support your opinions on raw and Paleo diet and lifestyle well with evidence and why you emphasize raw so much more than Paleo (and yes, I know you reported that raw makes more of a difference in your health than Paleo, which I acknowledged with "partly") and rarely discuss hunter gatherers despite eating what the forum description states is a "hunter gatherer" diet.
No one was alive during the Stone Age, so we can't know exactly what Stone Age hunter gatherers ate, the hunter gatherers whose diets we can get the best grasp of are observed living hunter gatherers (with recent remains that are better-preserved than Stone-Age remains being in-between), which is why all the leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition examine the evidence in that area. It would be negligent for them to completely disregard that evidence and only focus on the limited Stone Age evidence. Of course, it would also be negligent to only focus only on the living HG evidence. All the relevant evidence should be examined (including also randomized trials, observational studies, scientific knowledge, and so on), rather than cherry pick what suits us.
All I will state is that, long before encountering this diet, I came across the Noble Savage theory, which purported to show that all primitive tribes were somehow more perfect/saintly than more settled peoples, and there were obvious flaws in the notion, so I get particularly annoyed with WP, and certain village idiots like Jared Diamond among others, these days.
Thanks for that grudging tidbit of explanation amidst the usual childish vitriol. At least we're getting somewhere finally. I can see how that would color your perceptions. Would you mind sharing the title or author of what it was that you read? If you told me before, I don't remember it.
Not that I claim that all settled peoples are "better", merely that neither type can claim "perfection" re morality.
I agree with you there.
Lowenherz, I'll take your nonanswer to mean you've given up trying to ascribe to me the nonsense about not recognizing any role for macronutrients at all, but that you'll ignore my request and continue to make absolutist pronouncements in little soundbite-like empathy-challenged posts, providing little or no supportive evidence, putting little effort into understanding what other members mean, and employing straw men and baiting insults with those who disagree with you, which is your choice, and it seems that Tyler will also continue in the same vein. It reminds me more of political debate than thoughtful discussion. And no doubt you and Tyler will follow this up with more insults, which just wastes everyone's time.
While I'd like to see Tyler and Lowenherz try to put a little more expansive effort into their posts, it is true that mine tend to go overboard in the other extreme, which is a valid complaint unlike the other useless insults. I thought I had already apologized for that in the past, but I discovered that was at another forum. It's good to be reminded about it since attention spans tend to be more limited in electronic communications than older forms. I'm not perfect, so I'm not asking for perfection from anyone else, just a modicum of honest effort and good will would be nice.
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While I'd like to see Tyler and Lowenherz try to put a little more expansive effort into their posts...
PP,
some of your posts sound very depressive or frustrated.
I'm sure that we both have a lot of things in common! So let us stop quarreling about irrelevant and trivial matters. Remember that we are a very small raw paleo community, just a few people out of 7 billion. Don't take every single word deadly serious. My response that we can learn "absolutely nothing" from current-day hunter gatherer groups could have been as slight overreaction. Maybe I have eaten too much red meat that day, which makes me a bit impulsively sometimes. But are there really SO many important things to learn from HGs nowadays? As Tyler pointed out they all cook their food, at least partly. As far as I know there is NO single 100% raw living HG group on this planet today. This is a RAW paleo forum and from my own experience I have no doubt that cooked food has detrimental effects on my body, especially cooked animal food. Believe me, I have been extremely skeptic about a 100% raw diet for many years until I collected enough evidences to be really sure. Tyler knows my endless thoughts about possible advantages of cooked animal fats etc, years ago. My comments or recommendations in this forum, even if they may sound sometimes a little bit harsh to you, are always based on my own experiences, for example about long-term effects of high fruit consumption. Yes, we can learn something from actual hunter gatherers. How to build traps, where to find wild honey, how to identify wild edible plants or whatever. But in our 2011 raw paleo lifestyle these things are relatively irrelevant, IMO, as most of us live in industrial regions where very little wildlife is left.
Please don't make things too complicated..
Best wishes
Löwenherz
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Precisely, there are vast differences between what modern HGs do and what palaeo HGs did, prior to the advent of fire. While some info from post-fire palaeo HGs might be useful, modern HGs have too many differences to be useful for us given that many of us have issues with raw dairy or fermented grains, tubers etc.. Plus, many people foolishly make false assumptions about the supposed "perfect" health of modern HGs, as a result of mainly focusing on such, which are not remotely valid.
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Löwenherz, Tyler Sure todays hg's are different and probably not as healthy as those that still eat raw but does that really mean we can't learn much from them. Well maybe not directly but I found weston price's book fascinating and learned a lot from it.
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I started studying HGs before they were all so corrupted and learned a great deal. Today, we would have to study those that had studied them back before their communities were destroyed. So little data really - but what there is can change one's view of everything. It did me. The hunter-gather lifestyle was more than just food. And much of the food choices, gathering/hunting and prep were pertinent.
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Sorry about the length of this post, but there are some good tidbits to respond to and ask follow ups on.
PP,
some of your posts sound very depressive or frustrated.
Frustrated that the forum that has the most info on my way of eating and living could easily be better than it is (in part because I'm a member at another one where it is and I see the contrast--but the info there is not generally as useful to me, because their way of eating and living is more different from mine than at this forum). But that's enough about frustration, is it really worth your time and energy pondering what my mental state might be? Just enjoy the show. It's actually a bit entertaining wondering what archaic insult Tyler is going to next use for me or some other member (and I actually like archaic words, which almost makes the time wasted worth it ;) ). I put out a request and I figured it would generate some backlash, but I figured it was overdo and I can't help improve something if I don't speak up. It may not work at all, but maybe it was worth a shot.
But are there really SO many important things to learn from HGs nowadays?
We'll never know if we don't even inquire and just assume that we can't learn anything, right?
As Tyler pointed out they all cook their food, at least partly.
And that's supposed to mean we can't learn anything? I'm aware of Tyler's views on cooking, which compared to mine seem somewhat extreme to me (it's all relative, I suppose), and I think you've hit one of the major nails on the head regarding why talk of HGs seems to bug him at times, which I'll try to be cognizant of (though I tend to be forgetful -[ ). My own views on that are closer to Lex Rooker's, and I actually put a bit more importance on rawness than Lex, just based on my own experience (which isn't necessarily going to be the same for others). Rawness is beneficial, sure, but it's not so uber important that we can learn nothing from someone who cooks some of their food. I'm no genius like Tyler, but to assume that we couldn't learn anything from people who cook would seem rather dogmatic to me. Besides, not even everyone here is 100% raw, so restricting our information sources to only those who are is extremely limiting.
My comments or recommendations in this forum, even if they may sound sometimes a little bit harsh to you, are always based on my own experiences, for example about long-term effects of high fruit consumption.
I'd be more interested in learning more about your personal experiences than your opinions of what others should eat based upon those experiences. If your experiences are impressive enough, they'll speak volumes and you won't need to proclaim what the best approach is because some folks will be inspired to try it out themselves. Like, just when I was considering tamping down or giving up on honey, Brady shared an amazing honey success story, so I decided to keep the experiment going. In other words, actions speak louder than words and teaching by example tends to work better than by pronouncements or dogma. Call me depressed or crazy or whatever you want, but I'd be more impressed if you could write more about improvements in your symptoms or health stats or point to some group of people who are eating similar to how you are and faring well than I would be by claims that things "must have" been a certain way with no evidence given other than someone's say so.
Yes, we can learn something from actual hunter gatherers. How to build traps, where to find wild honey, how to identify wild edible plants or whatever.
Now you're talking, thanks for thinking about it and not just dismissing it. And we can even learn things from people eating SAD diets, if nothing other than what NOT to do, right? To me asking questions and learning and experiencing new things is fun, but I'm kind of kooky that way.
But in our 2011 raw paleo lifestyle these things are relatively irrelevant, IMO, as most of us live in industrial regions where very little wildlife is left.
I think if you really look into it, you'll find more things you can learn than the ones you listed.
Please don't make things too complicated..
Too late, nature was already infinitely complex long before I came along, sorry. ;)
Precisely, there are vast differences between what modern HGs do and what palaeo HGs did, prior to the advent of fire. While some info from post-fire palaeo HGs might be useful, modern HGs have too many differences to be useful for us given that many of us have issues with raw dairy or fermented grains, tubers etc.. Plus, many people foolishly make false assumptions about the supposed "perfect" health of modern HGs, as a result of mainly focusing on such, which are not remotely valid.
I should have guessed that the rawness factor would be a major reason, maybe the prime one, that you would use to dismiss recent HG evidence and focus almost exclusively on Stone Agers, along with the Noble Savage thing and the distaste for Weston Price. It doesn't tend to occur to me to think in such absolutist terms as largely dismissing the living HG evidence just because they cook. It's adding up for me now, thanks. This thread is becoming the sort of exchange of interesting info I was hoping for. I'm still curious what writing had such an impact on you re: "Noble Savages."
Dorothy, were there any particular HGs that stood out for you?
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As usual, you are making false insinuations. The issue of cooking isn't the only one. I already pointed out how large, pleistocene animals were hunted as game in palaeo times, unlike in post-neolithic eras. Then there's the fact that modern HGs have often been using advanced technology. Classic examples include Inuit using rifles to kill whales etc. Similiarly, until c. 60,000 years ago, palaeo HGs didn't even use traps too effectively or use bows and arrows, according to reports, so had to use other methods to kill their prey, and so on.
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Basically I think alot of this forums strengths become its weakness. Intelligent skepticism to 'snake oil' becomes cynicism towards any kind of healing tools. This applies to an increasing lack of talk on minuate of diteary factors, or even dismissal of discussions of various health crisis brought on by healthy eating, lack of discussion about other factors than diet, and most importantly a lack of tipping ones hat to people actually finding results with anything that diverges from some robotic: less poisons in a diet = the best regardless of what that 'diet' contains or what lifestyle factors it ignores or what specific components one needs for their health situation.
Most people that seemed to have any real knowledge about basic functioning of the human body and how it processes fats, proteins, sugars, starches etc.. don't seem to post very much anymore and what you are left is largely philosophical bullshitting defending concepts on paper that SO rarely (statistically) see the light of day as noticeable and sustainable success. At such a rate that most would admit its oddly weird or confusing rather than expected when people actually do suceed at some marginal level employing them - despite the fact that the data supporting it seems so conclusivly correct.
Why people are so cynical and skeptical of the medical establishment and then accept information by people with no real known record of creating health -matching nevermind a HG but some regular 21st century joe/sue- or have experience cureing a specific disease, is what is strange to me. I guess some people can't help but fall for the same old natural hygiene gag and then suddenly people are granted as having all the answers because of some picture they can paint about millions of years ago which now also for some reason also has all the soultions to deal with reversing some super complex problems. The body knows!?
On another forum I'm on you have to actually submit videos attesting to your abilities and knowledge before being verified as someone who actually has information worth giving to other people. Not totally applicable to a raw health forum but there seems to be 0 constraints here from someone being able to be laid up in a deathbed, talking about that anyone that steams a carrot is automatically less healthy. Showing all the known cooked food toxins in that carrot with no need to show how their health decisions have trumped everyone else on plant earth who likely does far worse crap.
Based on some of these totally bizzaro-world conversations about HGs, I'm pretty confident at this point if aliens came down to earth they would probably assume 'cooked food toxins' were some kind of miracle components that kept people happy, sane, withstanding the elements and at a normal to healthy bodyweight and musculature. "raw food health" would translate more like divine wishes or rants within an asylum from a white person about being Michael Jackson.
sorry, little drunk.
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Kindly keep such anti-raw rants to the hot topics forum, in future, KD.
Besides, all this guff attacking heat-created toxins is pointless:- not only do we have plentiful anecdotal evidence from many of this forum's members on how cooked foods harmed their health due to toxins therein, but there is now multiple scientific data on the negative health-effect of these cooked food toxins. So, pretending that these toxins are harmless is just foolish.
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Based on some of these totally bizzaro-world conversations about HGs, I'm pretty confident at this point if aliens came down to earth they would probably assume 'cooked food toxins' were some kind of miracle components that kept people happy, sane, withstanding the elements and at a normal to healthy bodyweight and musculature. "raw food health" would translate more like divine wishes or rants within an asylum from a white person about being Michael Jackson.
lol
Some people on this forum definitely can't use one word when ten will do ;)
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The issue of cooking isn't the only one. I already pointed out how large, pleistocene animals were hunted as game in palaeo times, unlike in post-neolithic eras.
Right, I didn't say that you said that cooking is the only issue. Is it an important one? Do you remember what it was you read?
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PP,
again, you are making things way too complicated. And please remember: This IS a RAW paleo forum. So don't complain about the fact that Tyler (like me) is 100% convinced that raw food is better than cooked food. There are hundreds of low carb forums in the web for cooking people. Why should we talk about cooked food in a RAW paleo forum? As one of VERY FEW non vegan sites THIS forum is fully dedicated to RAW diets, no matter if current-day HG groups cook their food or not. If you want to eat cooked food, just eat cooked food, but don't complain that I and other members here don't eat cooked food and that I and other members here are not interested in discussions about cooked food.
I have written a lot of posts about my own experiences with cooked food, dairy, grains, starches and high fruit consumption. My 100% raw diet is simple: I eat the best animal foods I can get plus small amounts of raw plant food. That's all, PP. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you have special questions, just ask me and I will answer.
You are constantly criticising everything and everybody here. I suggest to you that you instead explain us your problems. Otherwise nobody can help you.
Löwenherz
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Dorothy, were there any particular HGs that stood out for you?
Back in the early 80's I took a class in anthropology with a professor that had lived with and studied the K'ung bushmen. She brought back videos and talked about their lifestyle and about their healing practices. I found how they lived to be fascinating. The circular housing arrangements, the complete lack of any crime or harm they did to one another to speak of, how they spent such a minuscule part of their day getting food and spent most of their time enjoying each other's company in good-natured laughter, singing and story-telling. She talked about how happy and balanced they generally were. You know how you can tell when a smile is real and goes all the way through a person - well - every single person in those videos smiled that way. In that class I started research into the shamanic practices of the Native Americans in the area and was accepted by and learned from a shaman who came from a long heritage of shaman ancestors. This was in the Pacific Northwest. He talked about the old ways and how they could be interpreted in our new world with me and taught our little group a little bit of what he knew. He was so balanced and happy too - like the K'ung - but not as much as the K'ung. I can't imagine anyone living in our modern world being THAT content. I interviewed the shaman for the class and he talked about how he was chosen and how some shamans had food power - in which they would know how to heal with food. Different shamans had different powers. I learned the ancient healing dances and how to spirit-travel. The K'ung used dances too. The K'ung might not have been 100% raw, but they ate mostly raw. The real destruction was much more than their diet, their healthy social structure and lifestyle were destroyed.
Health and happiness and balance are multi-faceted. Any little bit that can be gleamed of how to live generally from these people is priceless in my opinion.
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Kindly keep such anti-raw rants to the hot topics forum, in future, KD.
Besides, all this guff attacking heat-created toxins is pointless:- not only do we have plentiful anecdotal evidence from many of this forum's members on how cooked foods harmed their health due to toxins therein, but there is now multiple scientific data on the negative health-effect of these cooked food toxins. So, pretending that these toxins are harmless is just foolish.
Thanks for the uncharacteristic minor lashing but it has nothing to do with pretending, or anti-raw. People can support the idea of raw and even all raw diets and recognize that certain aspects of diet and health are far more important than such in contrast to many ways to go about a raw diet wrong. That people do better when they focus on those things and that many people seem to love to critize others for things that do not matter often when they really have no leg to stand on but a bunch of theories. Knowing full well one's experience of something is negative and sharing that is another story, but even then has no way of knowing it translates to other people. Its a simple observation from like a decade of forum-ing: People have no shame in presenting ideas that they religiously belive in when they can't even hold up to what they are criticizing or even of course when its something one hasn't even implemented to any real extent.
If people want to promote how all one has to do is eat raw and their health will be way better than the average populace or HGs just hang out on a raw vegan site. You'll find plenty of people having plentiful experience knowing all the answers, guiding people away form meats, dairy, injesting clay, eating fat, the idea of eating specifc food to heal and any other number of things due to how they see nature. Just saying one can add animal foods corrects the problem of bringing it back into balance with how we would have eaten is to be one with this logic that is always going to be out of touch with how even total cooked food 'users' can increase their health. You'll even find people there saying they are speaking from their 10,20,30 years (alive and intact to some degree) experience finding ways to justify how lack of something harmful somehow makes up for not paying attention to things that matter.
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You're trying to defend cooked diets by stating that raw foodists are capable of making mistakes as to their particular raw diets. The big problem with this is that cooked-food-eaters have the potential to make FAR greater numbers of mistakes than raw foodists , for obvious reasons, since their cooked diets can go wrong in more numerous ways, given the manifold ways one can process/damage a food through cooking. Plus, there are fraudulent, cooked food gurus just as there are fraudulent, raw foodist gurus. Either way, your claims are bunk.
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Its clearly problems that arise out from geting away from how HGs (and even less healthy cooked fooders) eat or not compensating for necessary added tools for a modern person as they stir up old problems - that you seem to have a total myopia around. Do you really suspect that everyone that has ever has sucess with a raw diet for months, years, or decades goes off that diet because of desires to eat cooked foods? obviously when altering a whole way of eating many people are left with a diet that is no longer workable and thus take 'refuge' with other (likely cooked food) approaches . All you can talk is of theory and would never argue that people were necessarily healthier because they abstained from cooked foods when taking real life examples. You are seeing 'wrong' or 'right' merely like people are a tube with a food-absorption-systems instead of measurieng how people actually function in the real world. Eating various ways raw can cause more problems than other diets, its not an issue of which one is likely to yield even more. Particularly when you can have people criticizing one rawish approach because it contain cooked foods, when another totally raw (including animal food) one yields worse results.
Again I'm not interested in promoting cooked food as a solution. I'm suggesting the forum as others would be better, geared more to helping people work through these problems that come up on a raw diet and how to tweak their diet to get the most sucess rather than have a raw rah party about how people with cooked foods must be doing worse even when they have more other pieces of the puzzle, which is the farse.
Theres no way to argue this with you. As usuall I can only get out what I would think would seem totally reasonable as realistically pointing to which things yield sucess.
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Yet more b*llsh*t from you, and, for god's sake, can't you say what you mean in a third of the text you usually use!?
First of all, there is an overwhelming urge to transition to cooked foods, regardless of ill-health caused thereby, simply because there is a huge social pressure to conform and go back to eating cooked foods, "like everybody else does". I know of a lot of people who had a spouse etc. who forced them to switch from their raw diet so that they "could be normal", "like everybody else", and similiar b*llsh*t. So, the fact that a few leave raw diets has usually nothing to do with health or lack thereof, but social manipulation, nothing more.
The claim that all we talk about is "theory" is of course pure horsesh*t, since we not only have plentiful anecdotal evidence to support our views but also plentiful scientific data as well.
Then there is the spectacularly stupid remark you made, that eating raw diets causes far more problems than on cooked diets. This is so obviously a lie, it's pathetic. I mean, there are a myriad ways to process/cook one's food that are completely absent in raw diets. Indeed, the whole point of raw diets is to greatly REDUCE the various ways a food is changed, so as to ensure the food remains of high-quality.
Simply put, we rawpalaeos have MORE "pieces of the puzzle", since modern science has shown, increasingly, major benefits for intake of bacteria and parasites(the hygiene hypothesis theory) as well as demonstrating the health-benefits of reducing the toxins from cooked foods etc.
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Yet more b*llsh*t from you, and, for god's sake, can't you say what you mean in a third of the text you usually use!?
ah, I though I was improving with those last ones..my apologies
You and others are in outright denial that 'eating raw' can't create problems for people that if they ate more intentional raw food OR seemingly less optimal cooked food apprached they could AVOID. This is based on a variety of super complicated internal things no one understands completely but should be discussed more often. Having to do without how this total shift-over in types of foods affects basic functioning and internal problems they interact with in non-paleo modern peoples. This is either excess of any number of things one needs to do to get enough food OR not enough of various things to account for the healing required when on raw diets...that doesn't seem to surface on cooked-stasis diets. This idea that the majority have left even this site never-mind the raw movement as a whole due to social pressures is so blatantly false that its shocking to hear from even you. Many people have a healing crisis and don't know how to get out of it or are just doing something wrong that ironically CAN be corrected with other systems that seem worse in terms of 'purity'. This represents most or the entirely of all diet change raw or otherwise (but mostly raw). Without any kind of crisis and experienceing total blissful health above what anyone else experiences, there is rarely social pressure that matters.
Ultimately many of these people that stress your type of bullshit as opposed to mine have to cling to their bullshit as an abstract beacon to focus on because they are far less healthy than some that bring zero consciousness to their health, nevermind people that know what the right things are to focus on. Unfortunately when people arn't modeling (and being self-critical to) their own experience and contrasting it to others, they are inevitably talking about theory. Even buttressed by 'science', personally saying this or that causes or removes symptoms or worked for people in the past does not contain all the solutions for creating true health.
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Tyler - when I read KD's statement about how raw diets could cause health problems I immediately thought about Cherimoya and about Lex and what they went through on their raw diets before learning about RAFs.
I guess if someone does not have all the information or access to the possible foods or is following some prescribed raw diet that isn't right for them - that eating a wider, healthier omnivorous cooked diet might very well be better.
But we know better than that here right?
KD ... you have to admit that people leave raw diets (or even lots of things that are really good for them) for lots of reasons - often social and practical and addictive. People are pretty complex in that way.
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I am somewhat shocked at the mindnumbing stupidity displayed by KD in his above post.
Obvious points to debunk:-
The first claim is that a multitude of problems occur on raw diets that just don't ever occur on cooked diets. That is obviously false, as there are FAR more problems that can occur on cooked diets as there are a multitude of different kinds of ways to process/cook a food which cause great harm, ranging from boiling to frying to baking, to adding trans-fats etc. etc. By contrast, raw foods have far less variation, with no processing/cooking being involved, and only quality being an aspect(re grassfed/wild or grainfed).
It is also SHOCKING to hear from you that you like to pretend that there are no vast social pressures from the cooked-food-eating mass population to eat cooked food diets. Such an outrageous lie, given so many rawists' experiences !
The problem you face is that all your lies are debunked by the fact that our anecdotal experiences prove the dishonesty of your claims, as does all the scientific data which shows negative health-effects from eating cooked foods.
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Yeah - I think KD will think a bit about the social pressure thing and concede on that. He's a logical guy. For some people social pressure means little or nothing and for some it means everything. The mental/emotional aspects of diet are important to take into consideration. Wouldn't you agree KD after pondering the emotional and social aspects of food that there are reasons to give up on diets that do work?
And wouldn't you agree Tyler that the harm done by eating nothing but raw fruit might be worse than any cooked diet that includes animal foods to provide fat, b12 etc.? I think that KD is thinking a lot about his times of emaciation and real sickness on an insufficient raw diet. At least - that was my impression when I read what he wrote. When I read what KD writes I'm often reminded of the pictures he posted and what a massive affect that must make on his viewpoints.
KD - would you say that for a healthy person with a variety of food choices and availability that raw would be better than cooked? ... or are you saying something different? I'm a little bit confused on this myself from what you wrote.
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The whole point is that a 100 percent raw plant foods diet gives certain disadvantages while giving other advantages re "incomplete foods". Only, a raw, palaeolithic diet can provide multiple health-advantages on both sides of the spectrum, without negative problems, in the long-term.
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Only, a raw, palaeolithic diet can provide multiple health-advantages on both sides of the spectrum, without negative problems, in the long-term.
That's a really big self-assured statement Tyler. Considering that there are so few people eating raw paleo today and no studies - even though I think that you might be right and raw foods are the best for me and with RAFs including I think it is and will be better - I personally would never be so bold to make such a broad certain statement like that.
I can appreciate KD's reluctance to accept such statements without question because such statements are indeed made by other dietary regimes that people also think provide multiple health advantages without negative problems in the long term.
There aren't enough people today that have eaten a raw paleo diet long term to make such a definite assertion. There are people that have eaten raw vegan and vegetarian that also make that assertion. I'm one of them. I have gotten only health advantages with no negative problems from my previous diets. Does that mean that I can say that everyone would get the same results? I was honestly shocked when I found out that other people did not.
It will take many people lots of years reporting their benefits as well as their failures on the raw paleo diet before we can even start to state such things with assurance. I might believe that it will be the case that over a long period of time and with studies that our raw diet will prove to be what you say it is, but to make such assertions at this point could open us up to the same kind of criticisms that are made here about other diets and their claims.
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Lowenherz, it seems like you read way more into what I wrote than I intended. The assumptions in your last post were way off and since you want me to be brief, I won't respond individually to each of them. Instead I hope the following gives the gist of where I'm coming from. First, one thing that would help shorten my posts is if you don't include so many claims about me and assumptions about what you think I mean that go well beyond what I wrote (though posing them in questions or a "sounds-like-your-saying ..." format is fine if you're truly curious). I'll also try your trick of splitting posts up.
This is a raw PALEO forum, so Paleo discussions are on topic here in the appropriate threads. It's not a generic raw food forum, or a raw LC forum, etc. There is very little info in this world that is both raw AND Paleo, so it would decimate this forum if we could only talk about things that are 100% both, and that's not required by the forum guidelines. That doesn't mean you can't limit yourself in that way if you wish.
I've participated at cooked Paleo forums and blogs too, but there my approach is considered too extremely raw and gross and too focused on the pre-cooking era of human/hominin history and the interest in RAF at other decent-sized forums is extremely limited. Since this forum allows discussion of both raw and Paleo matters, and even some that are technically neither, it's the best fit for me.
I have written a lot of posts about my own experiences with cooked food, dairy, grains, starches and high fruit consumption. My 100% raw diet is simple: I eat the best animal foods I can get plus small amounts of raw plant food.
Now that's the sort of constructive discussion I like. Thanks for that, and yes, I know you have written some stuff like that in the past, I never claimed that anyone NEVER writes like that. And if you don't want to do anything I suggested, that's your choice, it was just a request.
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That's a really big self-assured statement Tyler. ....
Amen Dorothy, you hit some nails on the head with your post, and I think that is part of the message that KD and I have been trying to convey. I wasn't trying to undercut the benefits that people have experienced from rawness, just appeal for a tad more reasonableness, explanation and evidence (and yes, I know I'm not perfect in this regard either).
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Wouldn't you agree KD after pondering the emotional and social aspects of food that there are reasons to give up on diets that do work?
There are social reasons to give up on diets that are working but not diets that have this proposed grandiose superiority to any alternative. If the margin is fairly small between working and semi-working obviously people will fudge more than between amazing and awful accelerated death as its painted here.
I really don't think sane people have in their mind that they eat food that is 100% bad for them on a daily basis to fit into society and that if they just ate raw that they would effortlessly return to being far healthier than anyone they know. No. I genuinely think there is a least an ambivalence or questioning at that point to what the real solution is. If there are people actually out there feeling in such a way that would be one more reason not to spread such ridiculous false discrepancies between raw and cooked dieters. I would like someone to give me the name and pictures of a single person who gave up a supreme sense of health, supremely healthy physique, and zen like disposition to be an all around unhealthy miserable slob for their loved ones.
Obviously what I'm trying to say is this hyperbole of ideal vs not ideal is the problem, not that people don't slide on their diet socially. Of course people go off raw and regret it or miss how they 'felt' . Some might leave a diet not in some kind of crisis either but odds are what they compromised with is not drastically differnt to what they were experincing on a raw diet OR what I was suggesting that often the previous result was fairly mediocre or poor. That said I always felt fantasitc up to the end on raw approaches that clearly were observed by others to not be working and yet things that were less optimal seemed to work on fixing things but not necessarly 'feeling' better and thus romanticizing those things.
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[but to make such assertions at this point could open us up to the same kind of criticisms that are made here about other diets and their claims.
Some claims appear to work by default as not doing bad things does seem make up the bulk of all health stuff, but these things are not known 100% by humans. It also doesn't account for all the other things one might NEED to do other than just avoid bad shit or issues of having too much of something that is supposedly 'non toxic' because it is raw and found on planet Earth. We can lump cooking in as bad If we wish however people can and do run into problems in raw eating and not only by approaching extremes of lacking this or that by even more strict ideologies. People following the most stringency to these claimed superior ideas have run into problems. I don't know how else to phrase that. My best guess is either because one inevitably has to eat a higher amount of this or that which are associated with problems OR they leave stuff out that are important to health but don't fall into the -ok- category OR that there are indeed various things that surface from eating raw itself that don't have such 'logical' solutions found in nature and don't have strait-forward directions on how to troubleshoot them. Other diets likely have their own even extreme problems but avoid some of these issues people seem to run into.
While we can cite anectodal experiece that raw can be useful for healing when other approaches did not for us personally, basically to keep integrity as a health approach among many (which should be the first concession) it is simply not fair to say HGs or Sisson's, Harris', Vitalis' etc... program "IS WORSE" their health "IS WORSE" because they cook x ammount of their diet. This is particulary true if their diet actually can or did get better results than MANY (not saying all or just one or two extremes) raw approaches that are inevitably validated by such simple raw=better logic. Who cares if the rests of the world makes mistakes if someone can't get their diet to reach the expectations one has with raw and CAN reach them doing something else. People simply can go on other things and have better results. Shouldn't be much of a hissy fit over that. Maybe quite a few have worse results and that needs to be pointed out too, but only when its accurate. If people still want to argue that their raw diet is 100% the answer for everyone in the face of any outliers to their ideas then they are going to have to really deliver massive personal triumphs of health to be taken seriously. Not just "I am alive and suspect to live slightly longer". IMO... (I guess??)
The objectionable part is indeed the assumptions. First the assumptions about what constitutes a human diet and then that simply eating this way ensures good health - or at least automatically better than ANY other raw or cooked approach. Just a false statement and embarrassing it has to be argued against. I assume the objetive of a forum should be to talk about which aspects of diet are most important and how to construct a suitable (all) raw diet that does not run into problems instead of (ok more long typeing). One should be able (and be required) to show how this actually manifests as better, not show the detriments of what SHOULD happen on other approaches. If there was 0 people running into problems doing what they believed to be natures diet and EVERYONE on every other approach was decaying at an exorbitant rate, this would not be the case.
Amen Dorothy, you hit some nails on the head with your post, and I think that is part of the message that KD and I have been trying to convey. I wasn't trying to undercut the benefits that people have experienced from rawness, just appeal for a tad more reasonableness, explanation and evidence (and yes, I know I'm not perfect in this regard either).
This time we are really going to change Tyler's mind and the forum for the better.
heh heh heh
ug
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Folks,
we are talking about foods here and not about nuclear explosives!
I see and feel a lot of peevishness and irritability here. In my case it is caused by eating too much red meat. Whereas fruits (in limited amounts), salads, fish, seafood, fowl and coconut fat make me very calm. I guess that many members here show similar reactions to high amounts of red meat..
Löwenherz
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Thanks for stating that, Löwenherz, it had to be said (even if I've never experienced the effect on my mood of too much red meat, because I don't eat too much of it!)
I concur with KD (according to the abstract of his writings kindly provided by Dorothy) that a raw diet of Atropa belladonna, Cerbera odollam and other plants listed here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants) is worse than a standard cooked diet - at least if you want to live.
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Folks,
we are talking about foods here and not about nuclear explosives!
I see and feel a lot of peevishness and irritability here. In my case it is caused by eating too much red meat. Whereas fruits (in limited amounts), salads, fish, seafood, fowl and coconut fat make me very calm. I guess that many members here show similar reactions to high amounts of red meat..
Löwenherz
Interesting I eat quite a lot of red meat and I feel that the more meat I eat(in general) the calmer I am. I have a hard time sourcing good quality white meat so I never tried not eating red meat in any given week. Might try that see how it effect my moods. Too much high glycemic foods make me hyperirritable and(in case of grains) rather aggressive.
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KD - I hope you understand that I am in complete agreement with you on hyperbole and assumptions. Outliers and others eating different diets with just as good results or better can't be ignored if we are going to be reasonable.
When it comes to not doing things that are good for us I think it makes sense to take into consideration psychology. I am one of those people that has a really tough time getting myself to do things that I know for a fact are good for me because of patterns from my childhood. An example is that I came up with a form of yoga decades ago that makes me feel truly amazing and there is no doubt in my mind (or my body) that it is good for me. But, often in my life as I started to feel the very best I have self-sabotaged so have had trouble doing my yoga consistently and would give it up just when it was having the best results. This had nothing to do with whether or not doing that yoga (or my other list of things that are obviously very good for me) was/is beneficial. I am pretty sure that my psychological issues in this regard have little to do with my diet. I have overcome that tendency many times with different activities and that success was not related to food. I could go into more detail about that but I don't think that really necessary and it is kinda private.
Please don't fall into a trap KD which might reduce your other on-target remarks by making the assumption that just because something is the healthiest thing in general to do that people won't turn from it. Maybe it is because I am insane - but then - from what I noticed - a great many people are. I will concede that there is a chance that maybe we who have trouble doing what is good for us might be damaged already from previous diets and that might be an influence, but it has to be taken into consideration doesn't it? People will turn from things that are good for them because of external and internal pressures. The variety of those pressures in our present modern society can be intense for some people. Some people will give up things that are the best for them because of a deep love, a desire for connection and community or even psychic attunement with others or because they got messed up somewhere along the line. We are highly social and psychologically complex animals. Our unconscious and subconscious minds can powerfully influence our wills - and not always in logical or beneficial ways. I personally think that it takes a sane society and family structure along with a sane diet to create sane people and in my opinion, our society is pretty insane.
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I see and feel a lot of peevishness and irritability here. In my case it is caused by eating too much red meat. Whereas fruits (in limited amounts), salads, fish, seafood, fowl and coconut fat make me very calm. I guess that many members here show similar reactions to high amounts of red meat..
I don't think so, but raw white meat stablizes my mood when need be, not to mention fats lol again :) and not oils. They burn me up.
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I eat quite a lot of red meat and I feel that the more meat I eat(in general) the calmer I am. I have a hard time sourcing good quality white meat so I never tried not eating red meat in any given week. Might try that see how it effect my moods. Too much high glycemic foods make me hyperirritable and(in case of grains) rather aggressive.
Raw red meat allows a perfectly very deep healing sleep for me. Grains got me irritable.
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...I am one of those people that has a really tough time getting myself to do things that I know for a fact are good for me because of patterns from my childhood. .. I could go into more detail about that but I don't think that really necessary and it is kinda private.
Fascinating. Diet can help some things that would never think it would though.
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That's a really big self-assured statement Tyler. Considering that there are so few people eating raw paleo today and no studies - even though I think that you might be right and raw foods are the best for me and with RAFs including I think it is and will be better - I personally would never be so bold to make such a broad certain statement like that.
I can appreciate KD's reluctance to accept such statements without question because such statements are indeed made by other dietary regimes that people also think provide multiple health advantages without negative problems in the long term.
There aren't enough people today that have eaten a raw paleo diet long term to make such a definite assertion. There are people that have eaten raw vegan and vegetarian that also make that assertion. I'm one of them. I have gotten only health advantages with no negative problems from my previous diets. Does that mean that I can say that everyone would get the same results? I was honestly shocked when I found out that other people did not.
Incorrect. Like I said before, we now have 1,000s of studies confirming the harm caused by heat-created toxins from cooked foods. We also have scientific data on the benefits of bacteria etc. Granted, there are next to no studies done on raw animal foods, solely due to prejudice, but one doesn't need that when extensive data on the harm done by cooking and non-palaeo foods is easily available. Plus we have evidence from the animal kingdom of the benefits of raw, natural foods.
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Incorrect. Like I said before, we now have 1,000s of studies confirming the harm caused by heat-created toxins from cooked foods. We also have scientific data on the benefits of bacteria etc. Granted, there are next to no studies done on raw animal foods, solely due to prejudice, but one doesn't need that when extensive data on the harm done by cooking and non-palaeo foods is easily available.
Making a leap that because there were studies done on the harm of one thing means that the opposite is beneficial without direct studies is misguided.
For instance, if exposure to the sun can create ill-effects, it does NOT stand to reason that keeping oneself in the dark is healthful.
Double-blind studies of cooked foods vs raw foods is necessary - and you are right - that we will likely not have that happen due to prejudice and lack of financial gain. So the prudent thing to do in such a situation imho is to be a bit cautious about the exuberance of our claims.
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Interesting I eat quite a lot of red meat and I feel that the more meat I eat(in general) the calmer I am. I have a hard time sourcing good quality white meat so I never tried not eating red meat in any given week.
That can be very different from person to person. Aajonus described this phenomenon in his two books.
Sourcing high quality white meat becomes indeed more and more difficult. Domesticated grain-fed fowl is no option for me and my hunting friends get fewer and fewer wild fowl every year. If I think of all these rivers and lakes in Europe, wild fowl must have been very abundant..
Löwenherz
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Making a leap that because there were studies done on the harm of one thing means that the opposite is beneficial without direct studies is misguided.
For instance, if exposure to the sun can create ill-effects, it does NOT stand to reason that keeping oneself in the dark is healthful.
Double-blind studies of cooked foods vs raw foods is necessary - and you are right - that we will likely not have that happen due to prejudice and lack of financial gain. So the prudent thing to do in such a situation imho is to be a bit cautious about the exuberance of our claims.
False analogy, I'm afraid, light/dark can't realistically be compared to raw/cooked. Plus, there is ample evidence from wild animals that raw foods are healthy(same as regards pets, if you've read about the pet-food-poisoning scandal in 2007 which diverted many owners to provide raw foods for their dogs instead).
Besides, most of our claims are not over the top. We don't generally make claims that genetic diseases are always fully cured by raw diets, and I have even pointed out that cancer exists in wildlife populations living off raw, natural foods.
The simple fact is that cooking cannot provide all the benefits that raw foods can. Naturally, some forms of cooked diets are "less worse" than others, and can even provide some health benefits, in some cases, but that's all.
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i also would like to mention there are too many long essays. i personally don't read them.
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False analogy, I'm afraid, light/dark can't realistically be compared to raw/cooked.
Perhaps in my case, a little properly made bone broth from red meat animal as opposed to a cooked white meat meal, well, ok, cooked is always worse than (wonderful) raw, but cooked white is many times worse for me than raw white, while cooked red bone broth is only a couple times worse for me than raw red. Raw red is good for me, but I have a temper.
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False analogy, I'm afraid, light/dark can't realistically be compared to raw/cooked. Plus, there is ample evidence from wild animals that raw foods are healthy(same as regards pets, if you've read about the pet-food-poisoning scandal in 2007 which diverted many owners to provide raw foods for their dogs instead).
Besides, most of our claims are not over the top. We don't generally make claims that genetic diseases are always fully cured by raw diets, and I have even pointed out that cancer exists in wildlife populations living off raw, natural foods.
The simple fact is that cooking cannot provide all the benefits that raw foods can. Naturally, some forms of cooked diets are "less worse" than others, and can even provide some health benefits, in some cases, but that's all.
If I make an analogy you take it so literally. You are not talking good science Tyler and I'm afraid that it might come back to bite raw paleo in the behind.
I also think raw is best and feed my dogs raw and have for a long time because it makes sense to me but when I got to the raw vegan forums after decades of doing it alone and heard people continually saying that it was the best and only way with not enough to back those statements up and then heard others not doing well on the diet it made me question. If people are going to go about stating that raw paleo - in all it's forms including zero carb as well as a lot of fruit and all other derivatives is the one and only way to be healthy for everyone and at the same time read how some people have gotten sick on that same board - I'm going to be very disappointed and start questioning whether people are thinking straight here either.
It's not that I don't agree with you about raw paleo in my own opinion - but it is just that - an opinion. If we close our eyes and ears to everyone else who gets different results or has a different opinion we will rightfully be accused of hubris and seeing things only through our own individual filters. I really would hate to see that happen to a diet that has such real promise. I would like scientists to take us seriously as well.
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We already have scientists taking us seriously, given the vast multitude of studies on the heat-created toxins in cooked foods and the rising popularity of the hygiene hypothesis.
As for people getting sick on this board, I would say that c. 90 percent of those are orthorexic hypochondriacs with mythical illnesses, given my experiences with such people in the past and on other forums - there are always tell-tale signs. But those orthorexics exist on all diet forums, not just rawpalaeo.
I do concede that our illnesses, derived from modern living, are so bad that some people here will genuinely suffer far more from eating raw carbs than from eating cooked animal foods, for example; but that does not per se make cooked foods healthy. It just means that they got an increased sensitivity to all carbs as a result of past eating of refined carbs over decades.
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The simple fact is that cooking cannot provide all the benefits that raw foods can. Naturally, some forms of cooked diets are "less worse" than others, and can even provide some health benefits, in some cases, but that's all.
Shouldn’t we formulate this the other way around? For example:
Raw food does not provide any benefits: it has just been the normal food of all living things on Earth ever since the apparition of life, about 4 billions years ago. On the other hand, cooking generates such an enormous assortment of complex and potentially noxious new chemical species that it will never be possible to apprehend the global interactions of any significant number of these molecules with animals and humans metabolism. Cooking plays havoc in the living matter (increases entropy) and is doubtlessly the main culprit for most human and domestic animals diseases.
Nevertheless, cooked food can prevent death from starvation or illness from malnutrition in case no or not enough suitable raw food is available.
i also would like to mention there are too many long essays. i personally don't read them.
Very true, I don't read them neither! ;)
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We already have scientists taking us seriously, given the vast multitude of studies on the heat-created toxins in cooked foods and the rising popularity of the hygiene hypothesis.
As for people getting sick on this board, I would say that c. 90 percent of those are orthorexic hypochondriacs with mythical illnesses, given my experiences with such people in the past and on other forums - there are always tell-tale signs. But those orthorexics exist on all diet forums, not just rawpalaeo.
I do concede that our illnesses, derived from modern living, are so bad that some people here will genuinely suffer far more from eating raw carbs than from eating cooked animal foods, for example; but that does not per se make cooked foods healthy. It just means that they got an increased sensitivity to all carbs as a result of past eating of refined carbs over decades.
It is good that scientists are seeing that the studies SUGGEST that further investigation is warranted. Let's not scare them away by sounding like fundamentalist believers and dismiss every account of differing results - categorizing them all as orthorexic - as we ALL could easily be classified so easily as such.
At present - there are NO double-blind peer-reviewed studies proving your statement I quoted above. Only studies that imply that perhaps a raw paleo diet could be worth further study.
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Hey Mentor Iguana - were my posts above too long too? Did you read those?
If I'm too long I will try even harder to edit.
I did respond to KD kinda long - but didn't think I could make my point to him with less words. I could cut those shorter too ....... or at least I can try. ;)
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It is good that scientists are seeing that the studies SUGGEST that further investigation is warranted. Let's not scare them away by sounding like fundamentalist believers and dismiss every account of differing results - categorizing them all as orthorexic - as we ALL could easily be classified so easily as such.
At present - there are NO double-blind peer-reviewed studies proving your statement I quoted above. Only studies that imply that perhaps a raw paleo diet could be worth further study.
B*ll*cks. The fact that we have many thousands of studies damning cooked foods and their negative health effects, along with many studies damning non-palaeo foods, means that rawpalaeo diets have a lot of science backing them.
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Hey Mentor Iguana - were my posts above too long too? Did you read those?
If I'm too long I will try even harder to edit.
I did respond to KD kinda long - but didn't think I could make my point to him with less words. I could cut those shorter too ....... or at least I can try. ;)
I try to read them, but I'm not sure I did read them all in totality, dear Dorothy!
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B*ll*cks. The fact that we have many thousands of studies damning cooked foods and their negative health effects, along with many studies damning non-palaeo foods, means that rawpalaeo diets have a lot of science backing them.
I think you just swore at me in British!
Just because something is suggestive does not make it proof. You can say that there is proof that there are toxins present in cooked foods and in many non-paleo foods - but whether that translates into eating an all raw paleo diet is simply not proven - there are just too many unknown variables.
Say that it has been proven that a raw paleo diet is the best diet for everyone everywhere to a scientist because of the studies you have collected and I highly doubt that they won't laugh out loud Tyler.
What I have been saying is so completely obvious to me that it is hard to believe that such an intelligent person as yourself is swearing at me over it. I guess if you are not open and there is no talking to you on the subject I should just bow out and put this into the part of my brain reserved for illogical things that aren't worth discussing because it will go nowhere.
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I try to read them, but I'm not sure I did read them all in totality, dear Dorothy!
Darn - and I thought I was doing so well! Can I ask you please to help me out Iguana and point out in the future when I fail. My fingers go so very fast. I would very much appreciate it.
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i also would like to mention there are too many long essays. i personally don't read them.
Looks like you solved your own problem. Those who aren't interested can just move on. That's the beauty of freedom of choice--everybody wins. Go team, hooray for us! ;D
I think you just swore at me in British!
LOL. That's a classic Dorothy quote. I love how your uplifting personality comes through even in the limiting medium of text.
You usually have so much interesting and thoughtful stuff in your posts, Dorothy, that I don't mind that they tend to be long. Besides, I could hardly complain given my whoppers. LOL I think fast typing speed is part of my downfall too. I need to remind myself that just because I can type out a boatload of text in a jiffy doesn't mean I should.
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First of all, "convincing" scientists is not our main aim here. After all, scientists are usually in the pay of companies, and it simply isn't in the interests of the big food corporations/supermarkets etc. to encourage the sale of raw animal foods, as those foods have a short shelf-life by comparison to heavily-processed ready meals which can last for months/years.
As for our members, you will find that many of us have already tried virtually every single other diet out there before going in for RVAF diets/rawpalaeodiets - I'm a typical example thereof(about the only diets I didn't do were the macrobiotic diet and breatharianism). This is not surprising as there is a big phobia in society about raw animal foods, so that the only diet viewed with greater disdain than RVAF diets is the breatharian diet, so RVAF diets are usually started only when other dietary possibilites have been excluded. What this means, is that trying to convince us of the supposed "merits" of other diets, particularly cooked diets, when we've largely already tried them with no, or very few, benefits gained therefrom, is a bit pointless.
I am, of course, not suggesting that other diets are always useless. I happen to be aware of some evidence indicating that cooked-palaeodiets can reduce symptoms of diabetes and a few other conditions, for example. But for people who are in real trouble, a rawpalaeodiet will usually be more effective. After all, there are obvious benefits:-
1) Reduction in the amounts of heat-created toxins, as many studies show, leads to a reduction in many age-related (and other)conditions such as arthritis, heart-disease etc.
2) A rawpalaeodiet provides high quality foods in the form of wild foods and grassfed meats etc. So it has higher nutrient levels.
3) There are no grains, dairy or legumes in a rawpalaeodiet. Many modern diseases are directly linked to consumption of those 3 foods. So a rawpalaeodiet avoids that trap.
4) A rawpalaeodiet has bacteria which helps populate the gut more effectively, thus easing digestion etc.
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Looks like you solved your own problem. Those who aren't interested can just move on. That's the beauty of freedom of choice--everybody wins. Go team, hooray for us! ;D
You usually have so much interesting and thoughtful stuff in your posts, Dorothy, that I don't mind that they tend to be long. Besides, I could hardly complain given my whoppers. LOL I think fast typing speed is part of my downfall too. I need to remind myself that just because I can type out a boatload of text in a jiffy doesn't mean I should.
Yes Phil. The point is that it would be nice to be able to follow the whole discussion with a clear understanding of what everyone means without spending a considerable amount of time reading uselessly long and tortuous posts such as KD’s. It’s a pity, because I’m sure he has some valuable and useful ideas.
Otherwise it tends to become a dialogue of the deaf where everyone takes much more pleasure in writing than in reading and understanding what the others mean.
Please don’t forget that the time many of us spend on this forum is depriving us of the opportunity to do other important things. Thus expressing our ideas in a clear and concise way is of the utmost importance.
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Yes and I apologize again for my lengthy posts, Iguana. I'm hoping that the other requests will also be given consideration.
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First of all, "convincing" scientists is not our main aim here. After all, scientists are usually in the pay of companies, and it simply isn't in the interests of the big food corporations/supermarkets etc. to encourage the sale of raw animal foods, as those foods have a short shelf-life by comparison to heavily-processed ready meals which can last for months/years.
As for our members, you will find that many of us have already tried virtually every single other diet out there before going in for RVAF diets/rawpalaeodiets - I'm a typical example thereof(about the only diets I didn't do were the macrobiotic diet and breatharianism). This is not surprising as there is a big phobia in society about raw animal foods, so that the only diet viewed with greater disdain than RVAF diets is the breatharian diet, so RVAF diets are usually started only when other dietary possibilites have been excluded. What this means, is that trying to convince us of the supposed "merits" of other diets, particularly cooked diets, when we've largely already tried them with no, or very few, benefits gained therefrom, is a bit pointless.
I am, of course, not suggesting that other diets are always useless. I happen to be aware of some evidence indicating that cooked-palaeodiets can reduce symptoms of diabetes and a few other conditions, for example. But for people who are in real trouble, a rawpalaeodiet will usually be more effective. After all, there are obvious benefits:-
1) Reduction in the amounts of heat-created toxins, as many studies show, leads to a reduction in many age-related (and other)conditions such as arthritis, heart-disease etc.
2) A rawpalaeodiet provides high quality foods in the form of wild foods and grassfed meats etc. So it has higher nutrient levels.
3) There are no grains, dairy or legumes in a rawpalaeodiet. Many modern diseases are directly linked to consumption of those 3 foods. So a rawpalaeodiet avoids that trap.
4) A rawpalaeodiet has bacteria which helps populate the gut more effectively, thus easing digestion etc.
Wow, did you ever get on a soapbox to divert from that issue! "Convincing scientists is not our main aim here" yet you want to use scientific data to validate your arguments. You only want to respect science when it serves your purpose.
Again - it's not that I don't agree with you about raw paleo foods - I do - I am of the same opinion considering logically my own experience, other people's experiences and the studies that we do have and what they might imply. I just think that making global and extreme statements makes your (and my) case weaker.
Anywhosywhatsitz --- it was a nice debate while it lasted. Into the illogical brain box it goes.
Cheerio!
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There is a big difference between "convincing scientists" and relying on scientific data! After all, many, many scientists are crooks in the pay of some sort of organisation which funds their research, whereas scientific data can sometimes prove the exaxt opposite of what the scientists are trying to prove.
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There is a big difference between "convincing scientists" and relying on scientific data! After all, many, many scientists are crooks in the pay of some sort of organisation which funds their research, whereas scientific data can sometimes prove the exaxt opposite of what the scientists are trying to prove.
I'm assuming that the scientists that did the experiments that you cite aren't crooks? Is it really inconceivable that there might be good and honorable scientists that might want to research this diet in the future? I never implied that any of us are interested in "convincing" anyone - let alone crooks. You cite science and yet make extreme extrapolations that are not scientific. Maybe, just maybe, if we are lucky, this diet might be taken seriously enough by some University professor to conduct a small study one day - or some person with more money than they know what to do with.
But the real issue is that I like things that make sense and are logical and it seems to me that there are a good many people here that do too - which makes me happy and gives me hope.
Are we calmly debating on topic again? I'd like that.
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And to the kind, sweet PaleoPhil .I say ....... :-*
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*sigh* - it's "cite" not "site". I have corrected your error, as of now, through editing. As for my "extrapolations", I am "merely" referring to thousands upon thousands of studies done on heat-created toxins. So my stance is a hell of a lot more "logical" than yours!
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*sigh* - it's "cite" not "site". I have corrected your error, as of now, through editing. As for my "extrapolations", I am "merely" referring to thousands upon thousands of studies done on heat-created toxins. So my stance is a hell of a lot more "logical" than yours!
There you go swearing at me again and trying to insult me by pointing out a spelling error.... and I do know that cite is spelled that way btw - just a mistake. Thanks for fixing it for me. I'll watch my fingers more closely when it comes to that word in the future.
Thousands upon thousands of experiments on something that are NOT on what you are trying to prove can only be suggestive that other studies could be of interest - they are not proof.
Again give any scientist all your studies and tell them that it proves that a raw paleo diet is therefore best for every person everywhere living in all different environments and circumstances, in different health and countless other variables - especially when raw paleo can include someone eating mostly fruit or mostly animal fat and a great variety of foods and they will dismiss you outright and won't take anything you have to say with seriousness.
How can regular thinking people take such a claim seriously? When you claim more than you can support it can call into question all your claims - which would be a shame.
Although I believe a raw paleo diet to be the best for me, think that that it is SUGGESTED by studies, and it is my opinion that it is likely to be beneficial in general for at least most people, I disagree with any statements that claim that it is scientifically proven to be the best for everyone or similar.
Going back and forth any more with Tyler probably isn't going to go anywhere but........
Does anyone else get my point? Is there something I am not understanding or seeing that others see?
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Does anyone else get my point?
Yes, I do.
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Does anyone else get my point? Is there something I am not understanding or seeing that others see?
Although, like Tyler, I'm convinced rpd is the best diet I do get your point. You are absolutely right that double blind research is required in the future.
However the sheer multitude of scientific studies pointing out problems with heat created toxins does make rpd a rather safe bet I think. Certainly defendable just not garanteeable(if that's a word ???).
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"Pedantic", to put it mildly.....
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or essential
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it doesn't matter if RPD is the best diet. The issue is which aspects of health are important: abstaining from cooked toxins OR constructing a healthy diet. One theoretically should be able to do both or say both is best but this will always be an assumption and that is why we are all here. If this wasn't true we would all be blissfully healthier than the rest of the human race to bother. It is possible to do the latter (to some degree) without the former being in focus and vs versa and this has been shown in ancient and modern history with diet experimentation. IMO People can't commit to that as being so mutable because that is how they are identifying their health success over others without really being honest about it. Just curing a few symptoms or avoiding toxins does not equate to health OR make someone healthier than people who live their lives in health focusing on the things that are important in health and in life.
Even ignoring that people have to often do things that others in other states do not, the abstract examples, even as being 'more safe' (never superior) or whatever do not hold true. Shouldn't need a study to accept an otherwise identical diet with the same person, one with meat and 1000 cals of oranges and another with meat and 1000 cals of sourdough bread is NOT automatically going to sway in one direction as far as health. We don't know 100% why this is and obviously real life examples are more complex than that and even worse, so don't bother nitpicking. Health isn't created when one stops taking in toxins but when eats and lives in a healthful way in addition to specific steps to reverse their own personal maze of health. This never lines up with just avoiding crap except that just happens be a huge tool to get healthier. The former has already failed as an experiment and most people don't realize why it isn't even worth entertaining as an idea. This is despite the fact that its almost universally fails to 'beat out' people living healthfully on varying amounts of 'bad stuff'.
hope that is short enough.
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You only want to respect science when it serves your purpose.
Hee, hee. You got his number right quick. ;D
I'm assuming that the scientists that did the experiments that you cite aren't crooks?
Bingo! How did you guess?
There you go swearing at me again and trying to insult me by pointing out a spelling error....
Just for your info--Tyler's not picking on you with that, he corrects lots of people's spelling errors.
Does anyone else get my point? Is there something I am not understanding or seeing that others see?
Sure, but the problem is you're using logic. Tsk, tsk.
I believe a raw paleo diet to be the best for me, think that that it is SUGGESTED by studies, and it is my opinion that it is likely to be beneficial in general for at least most people
Not good enough. Get on your knees and worship the raw Paleo god and curse all the crooked scientists that don't think 100% raw is best and who are always wrong ... except when they agree with us. ;)
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KD, the message I'm receiving from you is that health and well being are more important than fealty to raw purity. Am I reading you correctly?
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Well thats something most people will agree upon. I'm saying more that you can and will have people abstaining from all? the wrong things and still doing poorly without the right things. Many people will agree to that as well but IMO it is NOT a matter of having the most 'pure' factors in your gameplan than others at all if the overall diet is not solid. Its not a matter at that point what other diets are theoretically less solid if they don't cause such problems in reality. People don't need to be in denial of problems people face with cooked foods to recognize raw diets can create problems - just as diets with all the other factors being the same. Also the obvious that too much or too little of the right things can be worse or the same as too much of the wrong things. What people don't seem to agree upon is while focusing on eating raw or paleo (or whatever) they can ignore - because of that purity - tools that they need, or marginalize them because they think they have more of their bases covered than other people. People will tend to stick with the theory over the actual reality. Not talking about obsession or even other health aspects at all there, just 'diet'.
Also just for the record. I don't consume or think sourdough bread or think it is 'good', could be other things (I don't eat) like wild rice or milk or something more 'paleo' like 100 % wild tubers or whatever. Food does not go into a vacuum and disappear and leave a positive or negative ash of health or disease based on some listing of nutrition or toxicity. The modern human condition is complex and whole diets can be skewed to the negative by 'good' things and create problems and imbalances that 'less good' things will not. For any given person just because they have a diet featuring many of the right foods and snubbing everything supposedly bad it doesn't mean that it would be better necessarily than someone with less pure foods and a better all around diet. Of course the other factors of health come into play quite a bit as well. In general i'm talking strictly diet and how it affects health in ways one doesn't necessarily expect based on what makes sense on paper with its listed nutrient elements or toxicity. Its how the whole things interact with people and how it actually has and will manifest as either benefits or problems. We actually do have alot to examine without 'studies' IMO.
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OK, I think I follow. So someone might eat 100% raw and think that they are therefore eating an optimally healthy diet, but because they are missing certain key foods completely, they are actually eating worse than some cooked food eaters, right?
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More than that, as skipping individual foods due to dogma is just one aspect, but yes. 'Cooked food eaters' is pretty broad. For some reason its unfair here to compare anything other than 100% charred to a crisp diets diets without any fresh food to contrast, instead of similar diets that prioritize other things that become more workable. I do think on a completly physical level (no obsessive stuff) one can create problems on raw (without extremes to either end) that 'average' people do not, nevermind health conscious people or even people that eat similarly but with cooked food. Again, we don't know 100% why this is. I have my opinions and ideas, but as I've said, this should be the subject of more conversations so people CAN eat all raw if they like and avoid the problems people have run into
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Yes, well said.
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Hmm, given the length of some posts on rawpaleoforum, we really need the equivalent of the Ignoble Prize's "Miss Sweetie Poo".
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I do think on a completly physical level (no obsessive stuff) one can create problems on raw (without extremes to either end) that 'average' people do not, nevermind health conscious people or even people that eat similarly but with cooked food. Again, we don't know 100% why this is. I have my opinions and ideas, but as I've said, this should be the subject of more conversations so people CAN eat all raw if they like and avoid the problems people have run into
I for one would very much like to hear more about patterns or examples you have noticed KD.... and your opinions and ideas.... so that I might avoid as many mistakes as I possibly can. Maybe you could post more on this in your journal so that you can express yourself in the way you feel comfortable for those (like me) that find what you have to say valuable and appreciate you taking the time to write out your thoughts.
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Not good enough. Get on your knees and worship the raw Paleo god and curse all the crooked scientists that don't think 100% raw is best and who are always wrong ... except when they agree with us. ;)
LOL - Phil, you sure can make me laugh. :D
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Yes, I do.
Those three words meant more to me than my mind can keep up with.