Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Hot Topics => Topic started by: chuck5855 on October 02, 2014, 03:39:05 am
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Thought this was interesting until the article talks about cooking. Any thoughts on the cooking/digesting part, especially lack of energy?
http://www.npr.org/2010/08/02/128849908/food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter (http://www.npr.org/2010/08/02/128849908/food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter)
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I think Wrangham's ideas are built on a lot of assumptions that, as best I can tell, have yet to be investigated quantitatively. Most of the studies he cites were terribly designed, and can't really provide the weight of evidence he claims.
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I find these kind of arguments annoying, in that they try to convince others on something they merely are speculating about,, especially considering he's a vegetarian. Which means he has no direct experience of eating meat raw as compared to cooked. It's been too long for me to comment on the amount of energy I got from eating cooked meat. But I can promise you one thing,, I most assuredly at it with bread or potatoes, or pie..... Show me the studies where someone has gone from low carb raw meat diet (high fat) to to the same diet with simply cooking the meat and fat. I would really like to see that one. And what numbers of candidates were in the study and details...
I wish his dinner guest had the question for him about denatured proteins etc..
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Wrangham claims to not be vegetarian, but he has revealed that he comes so close to it, that he does have quite an incentive for bias:
Richard Wrangham, July 10, 2009 at 1:46 PM: "I am not vegetarian, but it is 32 years since I have eaten mammals except for twice under really unusual circumstances. My non-mammal-eating has nothing to do with my research on food. I just prefer not to eat anything that I would not kill." http://www.world-science.org/forum/richard-wrangham/ (http://www.world-science.org/forum/richard-wrangham/)
Brain growth among our hominid ancestors began before even Wrangham's earliest estimate for cooking, and the latest hypothesis is that raw sedge grass tubers (called tiger nuts or chufas) had something to do with that. Tubers may turn out to be very important in the evolution of brain growth--to what extent and how much of that is due to the cooking of them is quite open to question.
Wrangham does tend to present speculative opinions as though they were obvious facts.
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Although a well-regarded primatologist before his cooking hypothesis, Wrangham owes much of his public success to his cooking hypothesis, but it's just that: a hypothesis (googled definitions: a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation, a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth.) There's always a problem when you try to turn a hypothesis into a truth.
I can't fault him, though. I, too, wonder why man is the only animal to routinely cook its food, especially now that I know my personal benefits of eating food raw. If my caveman son offered me a juicy brontosaurus burger, I'd have to tell him that he ruined a perfectly good piece of meat.
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Very interesting article. When you stop and think about it. It makes a lot of sense. Energy and nutrition wise. I've been eating raw for well over 3 years now. I know what he's saying when he talks about loosing weight and energy on a raw meat/fat diet. It's true. I can gorge myself on raw meat and fat and still loose weight.
I'll be honest. If I don't workout with resistance weights. I'd be skin and bones! I think there is something to this cooked food argument. Problem is, "almost" everybody eats raw food on this site at one form or another. But, there's also a lot of people on this site that do eat cooked food too.
Plus, this is just my opinion here. Raw meat/fat doesn't give the energy boost that I expected. Granted, I enjoy eating raw meat and fat. But, I'm wondering if I should change it up and try something new. I have a tendency to try things in stages and see how my body responds. I personally have found that Raw Meat is not this wonder food that I was hoping for. I find it rather laughable when I hear of postings of a possible cure all with some of you. Almost like you're hoping for raw meat/fat to cure all your problems and issues. But, to each their own. I'm not here to judge or be critical. All of us are on our own separate journeys here. :)
But, I am always open to new ideas and thoughts. I just thought I'd put my two cents worth in the pot. Great topic (finally).
I realize that most people on this site will disagree. I expect that! You have to be open to ideas in this world in order to accept them. My mind is always open to that! Peace.
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Good, you'd be the perfect test case. Doesn't sound like you eat many carbs. How about keeping your diet exactly as it is, and simply cook your meat and fat, and see if you gain weight and energy. And of course you'd have to keep the amounts the same, i.e., grams of meat and fat per meal per day. I'd love to hear your results.
But as I said before, when you leave the raw diet, most will also include other foods into their diet,, such as more carbs (especially cooked carbs) and hence one would then naturally induce more insulin and put on weight, and have subsequently more sugar in the blood to fuel for more energy.
Please let us know if you plan to do this. Also I'll throw in, similarly to those who initially go on a diet of high proportions of raw fruit, they too will in the beginning feel lots of energy from all the abundant fructose. And over time, for many, they will have to eat larger and larger meals of fruit to maintain that 'high',, eventually wasting from such a diet. Thus you may want to keep tabs on how you are doing after several months to a couple of years of eating cooked meat and fat. The changes may be subtle.
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PP is right in stating that the growth in hominid brain-size occurred well before the advent of cooking. He is however quite wrong re tubers being responsible for increased brain-size as it has been shown that average hominid brain-size actually decreased when lots of starchy foods like tubers were introduced into the human diet in the neolithic era.
I strongly suspect that Wrangham is deliberately lying when he cited a raw diet, containing some raw meat in it, as preventing women from menstruating. Last I checked, the study referred to a 100% raw vegan diet. The trouble is that, up till very recently, most scientists assumed automatically that a "raw food diet" inevitably meant a 100% raw plant food diet as they simply could not imagine that any human could eat a raw meat diet.
Wrangham also made some very stupid claims before, such as the one that, since chimps supposedly need c.6 hours to chew their food every day(?), that therefore raw-meat-eating humans would have to do the same. Complete nonsense.
His claims re raw food leading to weight-loss are also bogus. Eating raw foods does seem to normalise weight, so there have been cases where underweight people started gaining weight on a raw meat diet.
And, Chris, there are actually many people here, myself included, who started out with countless health problems and managed to cure them all with the help of this raw diet, so your suggestion is actually rather "laughable" in itself.
I , for example, used to have chronic fatigue, among many other conditions, pre-Rawpalaeodiet, and my energy levels soared when I switched to this diet.
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PP is right in stating that the growth in hominid brain-size occurred well before the advent of cooking. He is however quite wrong re tubers being responsible for increased brain-size as it has been shown that average hominid brain-size actually decreased when lots of starchy foods like tubers were introduced into the human diet in the neolithic era.
I said that it may turn out that tubers were important in brain growth, and there are other possible factors too, such as increased meat/fat eating (brains, marrow and fish have been hypothesized by scientists) and increased hunting, which I discussed before.
Tubers, such as sedge grass tubers for example, were not introduced into the human diet during the neolithic. They go back millions of years.
Two million years ago, human relative 'Nutcracker Man' lived on tiger nuts
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109003949.htm (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140109003949.htm)
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/eating-paleo-dont-forget-worms-and-tubers-140110.htm (http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/eating-paleo-dont-forget-worms-and-tubers-140110.htm)
Did Our Ancestors Prefer Meat or Potatoes? [meaning tubers, not literally potatoes]
Findings show that our relatives liked to dig up underground foods
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21775270/ns/technology_and_science-science#.VC0w8vk7sts (http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21775270/ns/technology_and_science-science#.VC0w8vk7sts)
Sex Differences in Food Preferences of Hadza Hunter-Gatherers, http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP07601616.pdf (http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP07601616.pdf)
Gut microbiome of the Hadza hunter-gatherers (http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140415/ncomms4654/full/ncomms4654.html)
http://huntgatherlove.com/content/siberian-potatoes (http://huntgatherlove.com/content/siberian-potatoes)
"One interesting food plant used by Stone-Age man was the water chestnut, which now grow in the lakes as far north as Lithuania. Water chestnuts have also been found in old sediment deposits, such as those in Lake Jäkälä at Savitaipale." http://www3.lappeenranta.fi/museot/museo/english/karjala_elo.html (http://www3.lappeenranta.fi/museot/museo/english/karjala_elo.html)
[Note: water chestnuts are interestingly similar to tiger nuts. Both are sedge grass tubers.]
etc., etc.
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Hmm, I recall once referring to a study showing that the Hadza actually loathed tubers and only used them as a last resort when other foods were unavailable. As reagrds tubers, the whole point is that tubers are starchy foods and the average hominid brain-size dramatically decreased once they incorporated lots more starchy(non-tuber) foods in their diet. So, tubers are highly unlikely to have led to bigger hominid brains.
I anyway do NOT believe that food of any kind led to bigger human brains. Sure, just switching to a raw meat diet from a mostly raw plant food diet would have helped to gain the sort of bigger brains that carnivores have, but the increase to modern human-size brains requires some other evolutionary impetus.
Hmm, I hope that scientists will soon manage to bring back the Neanderthals via DNA-sciences. Given the cold-climate/intelligence theory and the significantly bigger brains of Neanderthals, I strongly suspect that the Neanderthals were far more intelligent on average than modern humans.
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Yes, I recall your strange interpretation of that study and noted at the time that it didn't fit well with what was in the actual study report. Your views on ancestral underground storage organs (tubers, roots, corms, bulbs, rhizomes and such) don't bother me, as I'm not out to convert the committed, just share info with anyone who is truly interested.
Coincidentally, I recently met Jeff Leach, the guy who is currently researching the dwindling number of Hadza (aka Hadzabe'e) who are still hunter-gatherers, and saw his presentation, which I agree with Eric was excellent--one of the best Paleo-related presentations I've seen. I highly recommend his presentations and interviews and such to anyone who is able to attend or view online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9A7E08JoBs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9A7E08JoBs) or read one of his presentations. Jeff even spent some time living with the Hadza HG’s and eating their food, including the tubers (such as the ekwa tuber mentioned in the study you referred to, which Jeff said some time ago is "tasty"), and I discussed tubers a bit with him. He said that the Hadza eat quite a lot of roots and tubers.
(http://2hzaurtpu.site.aplus.net/pics/pic081.jpg)
Not all tubers are starchy. Some apparently contain more of other things, like various fibers and/or glucose. Jeff said that the Hadza tubers he ate tasted more fibery than starchy to him, though he also noted that starch content can vary by season and age and size of the tuber, which I have seen reported before.
Brain size did decrease over the last 10 to 50 thousand years (with estimates varying), but it was millions of years after humans and pre-humans had already been consuming tubers and even you cited the figure of 250,000-300,000 years for cooking--long before the advent of the Neolithic. At least you're now blaming non-tubers, rather than tubers, for the recent (in biological terms) brain size decrease.
I agree that food is probably not the whole story in the evolution of brain growth, as I already indicated. Food may be just the fuel that fed the growth triggered by something else, as some scientists have hypothesized. I mentioned one hypothesized factor of (increased and more complex) hunting (such as persistence-tracking hunting)--which required increased intelligence. Another hypothesis I've seen is that cooperation was key (and cooperation is also at play in hunting). At any rate, it's all still speculation, with some early evidence, at this point. I'm open to wherever the evidence takes us.
It would be pretty cool if some Neanderthals were still around. I have long also suspected that Neanderthals were more, rather than less, intelligent than the average H. sapiens sapiens, even of today. Most moderners find it hard to imagine that so-called "savage cavemen" were more intelligent than today's average. I expect that brain degeneration will continue.
"idiocracy is where we are now" - cognitive scientist David Geary, http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking (http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking)
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The study in question was actually very clear on the fact that the Hadza only ate tubers as fallback foods and also that the Hadza preferred all other main foods to tubers:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19350623 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19350623)
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Here is the full text of the study (http://www.bioanth.cam.ac.uk/fwm23/tubers_and_fallback_foods_21040_ftp.pdf)
The key point that you continue to ignore is that tubers were reported in that study to be one of the top 5 staple food types of the Hadza HGs, which they ate throughout more of the year than most other foods, because tubers are available for longer and more abundantly than many other plant foods. Fallback food does not necessarily mean "eaten rarely." It can be quite the opposite--a food that they often "fall back on" and thus eat frequently. Jeff Leach said there was one month where they only had plenty of meat to eat from big game once during the entire month, and so had to "fall back on" tubers quite a bit that month. A food doesn't have to be their top favorite for them to eat it. And quite to the contrary of your claim that the Hadza "loathe" tubers, Jeff reported that ekwa is "tasty." It's also edible raw and Jeff photographed a Hadza girl eating one raw and enjoying it. I think I posted that image somewhere.
Don't worry, I get it--you hate tubers and you won't acknowledge that the Hadza eat many of them, regardless of what scientists and witnesses who live among them say. It's clear that nothing will convince you. Suit yourself.
Ancient Eurasians also ate foods rich in starch and fibers, such as Sarana bulbs, aka "Siberian potatoes." This tradition continued in the Americas, where even some Eskimos ate "Eskimo potatoes." These tubers are not quite like what we typically think of as potatoes, though they are tubers and some of the species called "wild potatoes" do contain starch, IIRC.
Another interesting thing that Jeff Leach reported was that the GI microbiome of the Hadza was extremely similar to that of vervet monkeys and chimpanzees--animals that eat omnivorous diets heavy in fruits and greens. More and more it's looking like GCB and Iguana were right about the natural diet for humans being a tropical, fruit-heavy diet (though also higher in greens, fiber and tubers than most Instinctos probably eat, and with many of the fruits being berries--wild, of course). I doubted that at first, as it seemed like wishful thinking by tropical fruit lovers, based on little evidence, but now the evidence is too strong for me to not take it seriously. My early speculative hypothesis that humans might be more designed to eat a meat-heavy facultative carnivore diet appears to have been dead wrong. I now take very seriously GCB's warning that relying too heavily on meat can be dangerous--not so much because of eating lots of meat, but because of the resulting tendency to not eat a diversity of fiber-rich plant foods. When one does eat a meat-heavy diet, it's probably important for it to be as raw and organ-rich as possible, thus helping to explain why Lex Rooker has fared better than most carnivores in the longer run (though I'm still concerned that what he's doing may be risky--time will tell).
The foods in the image I shared are all important plant foods of the Hadza. Interestingly, figs are an important food for the Hadza, vervet monkeys and chimpanzees. Another key aspect of the Hadza diet that Leach reported is that it is extremely diverse and massively heavier in fiber than what Americans eat. It's not the sort of diet that will thrill many Americans, including me :'( , but it's what seems to work best to promote a healthy microbiome and prevent the diseases of civilization.
Another difference between the Hadza and Instinctos is that fruits tend to be more of a children's food (except maybe for baobab fruit), probably because fruits are foods that tend to be easily gathered by children. However, what one eats during the growing and developing years of childhood is quite important, so being a "children's food," is not really much of a criticism. It could actually be seen as a strong point. The study only looked at what Hadza HG adults eat. It would be interesting to see a study look at what their children eat.
One of the million dollar questions is "Why are humans still so well adapted to a diet rich in fiber and fruits, and why should a meat-heavy diet low in those foods potentially be problematic, given that hominids have had decent hunting skills going back a couple million years or so?" A question along those lines was asked after Jeff's presentation and he answered that it may be more important what our ancestors were eating 6-7 million years ago (and the microbiota they had) than what they were eating later on. Of course, that wouldn't necessarily mean that there weren't important later dietary changes too.
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The KEY point you continue to ignore is that the tubers were mentioned as being the LEAST preferred food-group among the Hadza. They are described as fallback foods, as in" foods to fall back on when other food groups are unavailable". Now, admittedly, an HG existence like the Hadza's means that they usually do not have the best possible food-sources available at all times and so they may well have to eat tubers more often than they would like, but whether they eat them in quantity or not(and you have by no means proven that), the point is that tubers are low-quality foods and are viewed as such by the Hadza in general. One or two occasional exceptions, like the ones you cited, merely prove the rule.
As for a mainly raw tropical fruit diet, I can safely state, from my own and others' experience, that that leads nowhere. I tried that to some extent and it was nowhere near as helpful as having a raw-meat-heavy diet with a few organs - all that happened was that I was "less worse" re my symptoms but significant improvement only happened with large amounts of raw meats.
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I don't understand why you hold the Hadza's diet as supreme? If you look at Prices' writings, there have been many groups of peoples who's health have been stellar. I will say you seem to be cherry picking 'evidence' to support your tuber Uberance. I mean, so what if they like and eat figs. Does that mean we're meant to eat fruit, or lot's of it. I'll repeat myself here and say if you lived in the wild and walked everywhere and were constantly moving around as opposed to sitting in front of your computer, you'd be able to utilize fructose and all sorts of sugars. You'd look for calories wherever you could find them. And, I'm also repeating that high protein diets don't promote longevity or for that matter support diverse colon bacteria. But consistent moderate protein including meat, can and does especially when combined with other vegetable food stuff. And I've shared that I share your viewpoint of having RS in the diet and have mentioned what I include in my diet. So there's not a discrepancy there.
Another thing I don't get, is tubers have probably always been available to eat. So, why should tubers have been responsible for the increase of mans brain size. And if it's the discovery of fire, then less RS would be available if they cooked them... Please explain your reasoning here. thanks
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This is definitely an interesting article regardless of what kind of diet you are currently on. Although there does appear to be a bit of speculation by both gentlemen involved, the writer also makes some good points about the history of our eating habits, as does Mr. Wrangham. So,whether or not you agree with the opinions stated, I believe the point of the article is that meat in any form does seem to be beneficial to us humans, whether we like it or not. In fact, this intrigued me to look further into it and I found another related article that folks on this forum might like to read ;) http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/cooking-meats-ancestors.htm (http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/cooking-meats-ancestors.htm)
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This is definitely an interesting article regardless of what kind of diet you are currently on. Although there does appear to be a bit of speculation by both gentlemen involved, the writer also makes some good points about the history of our eating habits, as does Mr. Wrangham. So,whether or not you agree with the opinions stated, I believe the point of the article is that meat in any form does seem to be beneficial to us humans, whether we like it or not. In fact, this intrigued me to look further into it and I found another related article that folks on this forum might like to read ;) http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/cooking-meats-ancestors.htm (http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/cooking-meats-ancestors.htm)
The article spouts such nonsense I am surprised that you did not do some research here and elsewhere on Wrangham and cooking before linking it. The topic should anyway have gone into the Hot Topics forum. have done so now.
To address the various silly points in the article.
1) Cooking destroys nutrients, at least in all animal foods and fruits. Here in this paragraph are various references showing the sheer loss of nutrientsd caused by cooking:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Effect_of_cooking_on_digestibility_and_allergy
. Cooking does remove the cell walls in some plant foods such as vegetables and grains so that the nutrients within become more bioavailable(if cooking is done at low temperature, especially) , but since cooking creates additional heat-created toxins, these negate any benefits.
The article is being deceitful in claiming that cooking got started c.1.8 million years ago. In fact, most anthropologists agree that cooking only got started c.250,000-300,000 years ago. Wrangham is also avery dishonest and biased. He is a vegetarian, so not actually and advocate of cooked meat but of cooked tubers and the like. He also made a very obviously bogus claim that chimpanzees needed to chew raw meat for at least 6 hours a day in order to get enough calories therefrom and then suggested that raw foodists somehow "must" be like that. Not only is the chimp reference unlikely to have any validity, but if Wrangham had even bothered to check with real raw-meat-eating people he would have found out that we actually take much less time to eat our raw meats by comparison, partly because we do not waste time cooking, but also because we usually bolt down our food rather than chewing it like cooked-foodists do.
The only thing that Wrangham got right was that eating cooked food makes you fat, and that the more one cooks or processes a food, the bigger the weight-gain. Eating raw meat does not necessarily lead to weight-loss either, as some can experience lots of weight-gain if they overeat raw animal foods.
Wrangham also failed to explain the issue of heat-created toxins created by cooking. On being questioned about them, he made some stupid, unsubstantiated statement about how he thought that humans had adapted to such toxins. This is obviously not correct since plentiful evidence exists to show that humans are very badly affected, healthwise, by those very toxins:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_foodism#Toxic_compounds_created_by_cooking
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Tyler, no matter how you try to slice it, the fact remains that both that study and Leach's research report that the Hadza HG's eat plenty of tubers and they do not report that they "loathe" them. They could be wrong, but you haven't provided convincing evidence to refute the research. If you don't believe me, then ask the first-hand witness and researcher, Jeff Leach, yourself like I did. He answers some questions online.
I said "fruit-heavy diet," not "raw tropical fruit diet"--I wasn't trying to imply fruit-only or nearly so. I suspected that you might try that straw man approach, so I also mentioned greens, fiber and tubers (and the traditional Hadza diet also contains meats, insects, nuts, honey, etc., not just fruit). I haven't drawn any firm conclusions on the subject, just pondering it. Iguana's views on it don't seem quite as outlandish to me now, though I doubt that I eat as much fruit as he or GCB do, but who knows.
Van, I didn't say that I hold the Hadza's diet as supreme. Please don't try to put words in my mouth/keyboard. :) Scientists focus on the Hadza/Hadzabe'e because there is still a small group of them that are living in a manner rather similar to that of Stone Age hunter gatherers, which is an increasingly rare thing (and the last of the traditional Hadza are starting to modernize, so time is running out to study them). Stone Agers are of course long dead and they and their microbiota thus can't be studied (aside from dig-site remains), so living HG groups like the Hadza are the closest thing that scientists have (and they also seek other types of evidence, of course).
Someone asked Jeff the same basic question after his presentation--why the Hadza (even though he had already given some reasons)? He responded by asking "Who would you suggest I study instead?" (He has studied other populations, BTW, and is developing a growing database of evidence).
I suggested the Chukchi to him on his blog. They would be an interesting contrast.
It sounds like we agree that meats, fruits and tubers have all long been part of the human diet. The evidence so far suggests that the consumption of meat and tubers increased as brain size increased, so both have been posited as possible fuel for larger brains (though that doesn't necessarily mean that they triggered the growth, of course).
Re: brain growth, it's not my reasoning, it's the reasoning of some scientists and others. I just shared the fact that the hypothesis exists. Here is one place it was discussed where there is info that touches on your questions: http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/2014/07/legumes-and-potatoes-are-certainly-p-l.html (http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/2014/07/legumes-and-potatoes-are-certainly-p-l.html)
As for me, I don't know what the primary cause of brain growth was and I am open-minded on the question. I go wherever the best science takes me. The various hypotheses on it are interesting. It will be interesting to see where the research leads on the question.
In the past in this forum I wrote about another hypothesized factor in brain growth of hunting and/or scavenging of marrow and brains and how the Inuit had one of the largest cranium sizes measured. I don't recall you taking issue with my discussing that, nor claiming that I was calling the Inuit diet "supreme," but perhaps I forget? How is it cherry picking for me to discuss BOTH the Hadza and the Inuit (and the Chukchi, Nenets, etc.), whereas it's not for you to only take issue with the Hadza? Do you have a problem with scientists studying the Hadza or people discussing the research? Should we only discuss research on LC groups (such as the "Medicine Men" doctors who studied the heart health markers of Chukchi hunters, which I discussed previously)? Isn't more information helpful in learning, generally?
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I have little idea as to intact original dieters there might be on the planet. I simply mentioned that Price was fortunate to have been able to find and study in his ways the health of many peoples around the world. My simple point was that almost all societies he studied had great health except for those who's diets had not been altered by western diet influences. And that they all shared one thing in common, a good source of some animal protein. I'm sure you're aware of this. I restate this simply to balance the table of what constitutes a healthy diet. If your researchers quoted could in theory go to those earlier groups, they would probably find additional balances of healthy bacteria. And my guess is that some form of RS existed in all their diets. To what extent RS played a role in 'others' diets, I don't know. I haven't thought much about it. My point on the Tuber creating a bigger brain, I think you missed, was they've been around probably since people existed, and hence have probably been eaten for the same amount of time. Thus why should those tubers all of a sudden create a bigger brain? Especially with the introduction at some point of fire, hence cooking the tubers would result in lower levels of RS.
I am still not convinced that food for the intestine has to be in the form of this seemingly narrowly defined description of RS. And maybe this is simply semantics, but I've written before that any undigested fibrous material making it to the large intestines feeds bacteria there. Which means that everyone is feeding their guts all the time. You've pointed out the various gut feeding foods found in fresh animal parts. I've mentioned the effects of seaweed ( which has probably been one of the most used for of RS for all the peoples living around oceans ) . What I'm waiting to see from 'Jeff' and others, should they find other societies that eat a completely unadulterated balanced diet from local sources complete with animal proteins, and no additional flour, sugar or cooking oils,,,, how their bacteria counts will compare, especially if they hadn't been treated with antibiotics through their lives.
Bottom line as to what I'm trying to say is, My guess is that all natural diets contain enough beneficial food for healthy colon health. And it's all the other stuff we consume that messes with it.
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Tyler, no matter how you try to slice it, the fact remains that both that study and Leach's research report that the Hadza HG's eat plenty of tubers and they do not report that they "loathe" them.
No they do not talk about the amounts the HGs ate of tubers. In the reports I cited, they do indeed state , unequivocally, that tubers were the Hadza´s "LEAST PREFERRED FOODS" and that tubers were "FALLBACK FOODS", in other words, foods they fell back on when nothing else was available. That is , to put it mildly, somewhat indicative that I was correct!
I said "fruit-heavy diet," not "raw tropical fruit diet"--I wasn't trying to imply fruit-only or nearly so. I suspected that you might try that straw man approach, so I also mentioned greens, fiber and tubers (and the traditional Hadza diet also contains meats, insects, nuts, honey, etc., not just fruit). I haven't drawn any firm conclusions on the subject, just pondering it. Iguana's views on it don't seem quite as outlandish to me now, though I doubt that I eat as much fruit as he or GCB do, but who knows.
I was under the impression that iguana eats lots of raw meat, not mostly raw fruit. Whatever the case, diets high in plant food, containing tubers or otherwise, are not as healthy as ones with high proportions of raw meat in them.
Stone Agers are of course long dead and they and their microbiota thus can't be studied (aside from dig-site remains), so living HG groups like the Hadza are the closest thing that scientists have (and they also seek other types of evidence, of course).
The problem with this is that we have little idea what palaeo HGs experienced. One can be reasonably sure, however, that the situation of palaeo HGs was quite different from the Hadza. For example, many palaeo HGs had to migrate across the glaciers in order to hunt wild game, whereas Hadzas live in much hotter areas. Plus, in palaeo times, there were the megafauna and a much higher density of wild game than nowadays. So Hadzas ate not typical Palaeo HGs at all.
It sounds like we agree that meats, fruits and tubers have all long been part of the human diet. The evidence so far suggests that the consumption of meat and tubers increased as brain size increased, so both have been posited as possible fuel for larger brains (though that doesn't necessarily mean that they triggered the growth, of course).
As I mentioned earlier, the evidence re tubers being linked to big brains has been long debunked. Wrangham is the main proponent of this theme and he himself has admitted that he has no evidence to support it.
In the past in this forum I wrote about another hypothesized factor in brain growth of hunting and/or scavenging of marrow and brains and how the Inuit had one of the largest cranium sizes measured. I don't recall you taking issue with my discussing that, nor claiming that I was calling the Inuit diet "supreme," but perhaps I forget? How is it cherry picking for me to discuss BOTH the Hadza and the Inuit (and the Chukchi, Nenets, etc.), whereas it's not for you to only take issue with the Hadza? Do you have a problem with scientists studying the Hadza or people discussing the research? Should we only discuss research on LC groups (such as the "Medicine Men" doctors who studied the heart health markers of Chukchi hunters, which I discussed previously)? Isn't more information helpful in learning, generally?
I have previously pointed out flaws with raw zero carb diets and have suggested that the Inuit may be better adapted to them. I do not however think that even the Inuit are a role-model since they are not representative of what palaeo HGs were like.
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I have little idea as to intact original dieters there might be on the planet.
They are few and far between, and the Hadza are one of the better groups to study, and they live in an area that humans have lived in for millions of years, so it's not at all surprising that scientists have studied them.
And that they all shared one thing in common, a good source of some animal protein. I'm sure you're aware of this.
Yes, of course, you're preaching to the choir on that. And the Hadza also eat some animal protein (as do all primates, as I discussed extensively in the past), and that wasn't the only thing that all the groups shared.
I restate this simply to balance the table of what constitutes a healthy diet.
Yes, as I already explained, I wasn't talking about extreme fruit-only diets and I still think that some Instinctos lean too heavily on fruits and don't have sufficiently diverse diets for their needs, I just don't discount the views of GCB and other Instinctos on tropical fruits and excess meat intake as much as I used to.
If your researchers quoted could in theory go to those earlier groups, they would probably find additional balances of healthy bacteria. And my guess is that some form of RS existed in all their diets. To what extent RS played a role in 'others' diets, I don't know. I haven't thought much about it.
It's too bad that they can't go to those earlier groups. So to some degree we are indeed left to guess about that. We can get some idea from dig-site evidence.
My point on the Tuber creating a bigger brain, I think you missed, was they've been around probably since people existed, and hence have probably been eaten for the same amount of time. Thus why should those tubers all of a sudden create a bigger brain? Especially with the introduction at some point of fire, hence cooking the tubers would result in lower levels of RS.
The reason why some like the tuber hypothesis is that our primate ancestors started eating tubers in quantity when they shifted from the trees to savannah, whereupon their brains grew, and as they consumed more tubers, their brains grew further. RS wasn't considered early on, because the scientists weren't aware of it. It turns out that if you cook AND COOL tubers overnight, you still end up with plenty of RS. If cooking causes you to eat more tubers, then you might even get more RS. Thus, it might not be cooking that's the factor, so much as RS, but it's a speculative hypothesis at this point.
So RS (and perhaps other prebiotics) is a possible factor. I'm not saying that it definitely is, I'm just sharing the various hypotheses.
Many of the same things can be said for meat/fat, which I've discussed extensively in the past, so I won't rehash that here.
I am still not convinced that food for the intestine has to be in the form of this seemingly narrowly defined description of RS.
It doesn't have to be just RS, and in nature it's never just RS that feeds gut bacteria. I don't know anyone who claims that commensal bacteria will only eat RS. That was never the point.
And maybe this is simply semantics, but I've written before that any undigested fibrous material making it to the large intestines feeds bacteria there.
And I explained before that it's not all about RS. Leach's findings are actually more about biodiversity of diet and microbiota. He has found that a diverse diet feeds a diverse microbiome, which is associated with health benefits.
Which means that everyone is feeding their guts all the time.
Not everyone is feeding their guts equally well.
You've pointed out the various gut feeding foods found in fresh animal parts. I've mentioned the effects of seaweed ( which has probably been one of the most used for of RS for all the peoples living around oceans ) . What I'm waiting to see from 'Jeff' and others, should they find other societies that eat a completely unadulterated balanced diet from local sources complete with animal proteins, and no additional flour, sugar or cooking oils,,,, how their bacteria counts will compare, especially if they hadn't been treated with antibiotics through their lives.
Yeah, and like I said, I suggested the Chukchi to him.
Bottom line as to what I'm trying to say is, My guess is that all natural diets contain enough beneficial food for healthy colon health. And it's all the other stuff we consume that messes with it.
It's a testable hypothesis. Would people who call themselves "Paleo dieters" (mostly the cooked type, as with most of the groups Price studied) fit what you mean?
No they do not talk about the amounts the HGs ate of tubers. In that reports I cited, they do indeed state , unequivocally, that tubers were the Hadza´s "LEAST PREFERRED FOODS" and that tubers were "FALLBACK FOODS", in other words, foods the fell back on when nothing else was available. That is , to put it mildly, somewhat indicative that I was correct!
Tyler, I already explained multiple times that the foods in the study were all STAPLE food types. They were all chosen for that reason, to give a representative sample of the Hadza diet, and that "LEAST PREFERRED" and "FALLBACK FOODS" DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN "MINIMALLY-CONSUMED." Like I said, if you don't believe me, you could go to the horse's mouth of one of the Hadza researchers, like Jeff Leach, like I did, but I doubt you will, because you've made clear that you're more interested in being correct than in learning the truth.
Whatever the case, diets high in plant food, containing tubers or otherwise, are not as healthy as ones with high proportions of raw meat in them.
That predetermined view explains many of your comments.
Unfortunately, Stone Age glacier hunters aren't alive today, so we can't directly study them or their microbiota.
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Tyler, I already explained multiple times that the foods in the study were all STAPLE food types. They were all chosen for that reason, to give a representative sample of the Hadza diet, and that "LEAST PREFERRED" and "FALLBACK FOODS" DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN "MINIMALLY-CONSUMED." Like I said, if you don't believe me, you could go to the horse's mouth of one of the Hadza researchers, like Jeff Leach, like I did, but I doubt you will, because you've made clear that you're more interested in being correct than in learning the truth.
I did not suggest that tubers were minimally consumed, merely that they were the least desired foods. I mean, if one is to take the Hadza`s dietary views as gospel, then, surely, one should heed the Hadza re their viewing tubers as being their least preferred food group and a food which they only ate when other foods were not sufficiently available? That predetermined view explains many of your comments.
Rubbish. I was referring to the much more frequent reports of amazing health recovery on diets high in raw meat compared to diets high in raw plant foods. Anecdotal reports, maybe, but still valid.
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I did not suggest that tubers were minimally consumed, merely that they were the least desired foods.
Least desired of five MAJOR food categories (you do know that the Hadza eat far more than just the studied sample foods, right?).
I mean, if one is to take the Hadza`s dietary views as gospel, then, surely, one should heed the Hadza re their viewing tubers as being their least preferred food group and a food which they only ate when other foods were not sufficiently available? Rubbish. I was referring to the much more frequent reports of amazing health recovery on diets high in raw meat compared to diets high in raw plant foods. Anecdotal reports, maybe, but still valid.
I don't take the Hadza's (or anyone else's) dietary views as gospel, but if you wish to, then if you assume that they “loathe” tubers (despite the evidence to the contrary) and eat them (which you don't appear to be disputing), then to be consistent you would do both—-loathe them AND EAT THEM.
Thought experiments aside, I’m not telling anyone to do anything, so feel free to do whatever you wish.
Just about every dietary approach has anecdotes to support and critique it with. Apparently you dismiss the reports of Iguana, GCB and his wife, GoodSamaritan, Brady, Miles and others who report faring well while eating plenty of plant foods, and with GCB, Brady, Miles and Löwenherz reporting ill effects from excessive meat consumption (IIRC)?
Löwenherz even started out as rabidly pro-LC. He ended up reporting seriously ill effects:
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/hot-topics/massive-health-problems-good-bye-raw-paleo (http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/hot-topics/massive-health-problems-good-bye-raw-paleo)!/msg110956/#msg110956
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Lowenherz had some fairly offbeat dietary habits as I would read form his posts. For example, I think he lived in europe and for some time just ate fish and coconuts. I recall he would tend to lean towards the extremes. Might be interesting to see what his diet was like in detail for the last six months before he gave up and got sick. I think you'll find some sort of focused eating habits of those low carvers who have failed, and or, a history of failing diets and extremism leading up to low carb.
Too many times, and I bet you've seen this also, one gets on the raw pale or zero kick, and it's about how big a steak they had for dinner, or how many steaks they had. It can often look like this macho thing. I know for myself, the first time I ate raw meat, I couldn't stop. My body needed it that badly. Probably ate 2-3 pounds one night in Montrame. But if one has the notion the more the better and continues eating that way,, Yes, excessive meat consumption is going to probe unhealthy for most. Also many have a hard time to procure good tasty fats. I understand that didn't help you, however much fat you ate on low carb. But I never learned how to eat raw fat at Montrame. In fact, as I've mentioned before in the five times I visited there, I only saw one woman eat a plate of fat (interesting I think she had cancer) and had been prescribed to eat fat (prescribed being contrary to the notion of instinctive).
What I think Tyler is indicating is that there are many 'dieters' who come to raw paleo from all sorts of meat limiting diets, diets that have been resplendent with all sorts of veggies and fruits, and have finally flourished with the addition of raw meat eaten often, but not in excess. Seems to be about balance.
I know if I lived where GS lived I wouldn't be able to resist all those incredible sweet fruits. And hence I wouldn't have had the opportunity of eating moderate protein and high amounts of fat, because I'd be shoveling fruit into my mouth all the while. GS went through his period where he ate copious amounts of beef as I remember, but was sensitive enough to know when he had too much protein, and has cut back. As to his practices of eating lots of fruit to gain weight and then lose it to cleanse his body as according to Adjonous, we'll just have to see if that's productive, for him. But my guess is for him after he's had some experience with the pendulum swinging both ways, and he probably already has, that he, and most of us find the middle way. Some include more carbs than others.
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Well said, Van. I agree that it seems to be about balance and the folks at the extremes seem to fare the worst in the longer run.
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Least desired of five MAJOR food categories (you do know that the Hadza eat far more than just the studied sample foods, right?).
I am aware that they must have eaten a wider variety of foods, overall, given that they were HGs in areas of food-scarcity, but that still means that they derived most of their diet from those 5 MAJOR food-groups.
I don't take the Hadza's (or anyone else's) dietary views as gospel, but if you wish to, then if you assume that they “loathe” tubers (despite the evidence to the contrary) and eat them (which you don't appear to be disputing), then to be consistent you would do both—-loathe them AND EAT THEM.
Not necessarily. if one were to follow the Hadzas' dietary preferences, then one would only eat those foods they thought were best/healthiest for them and exclude those foods they liked the least, since their dislike would be based on the lack of nutrition/taste in such foods. Let#s face it, the Hadzas live, like most HGs, in times of scarcity, so if they come across a food they do not like or want they will still eat it if it is edible, simply because they have to survive and do not possess fridges or freezers like modern peoples do.
Just about every dietary approach has anecdotes to support and critique it with. Apparently you dismiss the reports of Iguana, GCB and his wife, GoodSamaritan, Brady, Miles and others who report faring well while eating plenty of plant foods, and with GCB, Brady, Miles and Löwenherz reporting ill effects from excessive meat consumption (IIRC)?
I do not dismiss their reports. It is just that I have found that raw, low carb diets usually provide far stronger health-benefits than raw high-carb ones. Raw vegans have been reported as having difficulty raising children healthily on a raw vegan diet, and many raw vegans and fruitarians report experiencing health problems after years on such a diet.Those on a raw high carb diet that includes some raw animal foods(at least 5% of diet?) will likely not get any nutritional deficiencies, but I have not come across as many anecdotal reports of success from such a group as from raw, lo carbers.
Again, I do not think Iguana is necessarily raw, high carb as he eats a lot of raw meat every day.
Actually, like you, I am leery of raw vegan and raw zero carb diets, I just think that some can handle the latter type of diet very well, with a very few being able to handle a raw vegan diet in the long-term.
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I am aware that they must have eaten a wider variety of foods, overall, given that they were HGs in areas of food-scarcity, but that still means that they derived most of their diet from those 5 MAJOR food-groups.
Right, and tubers are one of the 5 major food groups, in other words, one of the types of foods they eat plenty of.
if one were to follow the Hadzas' dietary preferences, then one would only eat those foods they thought were best/healthiest for them and exclude those foods they liked the least, since their dislike would be based on the lack of nutrition/taste in such foods.
The thing that determines their health, microbiome, epigenetics and genetics over the long run is what they eat/ate, rather than what they wish they could eat. So the actual fact of what they eat is more important, scientifically, than what they would eat if they had unrestricted choice. If only their top favorite food in the study could be considered nutritious enough to emulate in our own diets (which is ridiculous, but I'll play along with you), then we would eat only honey, which was preferred the most by both males and females. How much honey do you eat?
I don't buy that they loathe tubers anyway, which contradicts what Jeff Leach said. He knows much more about the Hadza than you or I do.
Let#s face it, the Hadzas live, like most HGs, in times of scarcity, so if they come across a food they do not like or want they will still eat it if it is edible, simply because they have to survive and do not possess fridges or freezers like modern peoples do.
Yes, thanks for making my point. So they will eat a food like a tuber even if they don't consider it their tastiest food. In addition to mere survival motives, they will also be more likely to gather and eat something if it gives good calorie or other payback (such as water in some cases--such as with the ekwa tuber--which is essential in an arid climate) for the amount of calories expended to obtain it.
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Right, and tubers are one of the 5 major food groups, in other words, one of the types of foods they eat plenty of.
The fact that the tubers are their LEAST preferred major food group, because of their low caloric value, means that they would far rather eat the other 4 major food groups in preference. Also, the fact that they eat tubers only as fallback foods in times of scarcity should indicate that they do not view tubers as being ideal foods, let alone healthy foods.Oh, yes, and it is mentioned that tubers are most often taken by the Hadza when berries are least available The thing that determines their health, microbiome, epigenetics and genetics over the long run is what they eat/ate, rather than what they wish they could eat. So the actual fact of what they eat is more important, scientifically, than what they would eat if they had unrestricted choice.
I never stated that the Hadza were an example of health, that was your stance not backed by any real facts. I am sure that their consumption of an unhealthy diet including some tubers has meant that they lead rather unhealthy lives. Besides, the wild HG Hadzas are now a tiny minority, who knows what they ate in palaeo times, therefore? If only their top favorite food in the study could be considered nutritious enough to emulate in our own diets (which is ridiculous, but I'll play along with you), then we would eat only honey, which was preferred the most by both males and females. How much honey do you eat?
I did not suggest that their top food was the only healthy one, merely that the other 4 food groups were not fallback foods and therefore far healthier than tubers to eat.
Yes, thanks for making my point. So they will eat a food like a tuber even if they don't consider it their tastiest food. In addition to mere survival motives, they will also be more likely to gather and eat something if it gives good calorie or other payback (such as water in some cases--such as with the ekwa tuber--which is essential in an arid climate) for the amount of calories expended to obtain it.
The whole point is that scientists point out routinely that tubers provide very low caloric value, especially in comparison to foods like meats. Plus, eating a food simply in order to survive does not make it remotely healthy, that is simple logic. I mean, HGs would eat manure simply in order to avoid total starvation.
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We seem to be going around in circles on this, so I've put it aside for now, sorry, and may come back to it later.
It will be interesting to see what Jeff Leach's Hadza and general GI microbiome research produces in the future. As I mentioned before, he is begging LC and Paleo dieters to submit their samples to the American Gut Project, along with people from all around the world. It's a chance for LC advocates who say that their health is great to demonstrate it.
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tyler your logic seems to be too narrow minded. For instance, I doubt you would disagree that to have copious amounts of never ending meat would be healthy,, especially if you gorged every day on it. Hence, it might have proved extremely healthy for the Hazda's to go on frequent meat fasts and live off of something that potentially build up their floras from RS based food stuffs. Thus it May have been an important part of their over all diet.
The problem or shortcoming to submitting our decals to his study is that I haven' seen any thing that definitively will tell us what is ideal, and if there is an ideal, what that would mean. And yes, I understand there are less than supposed ideal bacterias, but how do we know of what balance once again is desired, unless you hold the Hazda's gut profile as gold standard.
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Let me add an example,, jeff and other's point out the protective nature of the fatty acids produced by the RS supported bacteria in the gut. And how they also level blood sugar fasting levels... But this may be idea for those eating a carb heavy or RS heavy diet, and not potentially useful for those eating a diet already replete with fats. For instance, if the game that the Hazda's were able to catch/eat were limited to lean animals, then their fat sources could very well be supplemented from the 'fat' produced by the RS fed bacteria. And again, I am very interested in this subject, and am anticipating wonderful findings in the future. In fact, I have this idea as to how wonderful it would be to be able to leave meat totally alone and go back to becoming vegetarian with the concept that my intestine's bacteria could convert everything I needed to flourish, as does a cow,, which basically lives off of fats produced by the bacteria in their guts.
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The point is that tubers are very low in calories and therefore not an ideal food - they also contain antinutrients. Therefore it makes sense that the Hadza only rely on them as fallback foods if other foods, such as berries, are unavailable.
Not sure what exactly you mean by that meat reference.
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Nutrition is not only and simply a matter of calories and of the few known nutrients or so called anti-nutrients. There are billions of various substances in a foodstuff and we know only a few properties of a very tiny fraction of them.
Interactions of an animal with its food are much more complex than what we will ever be able to analyze.
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Tyler, you make references to intermittent fasting. If big game was plentiful on a daily basis, intermittent fasting wouldn't be possible for the Hazdas, or any tribe, unless self inflicted. So if you look at it from that point of view, that the substitution of tubers from meat could possibly be a healthy part of their diet. I think eating large portions of meat daily is not healthy. And the RS ingested may be just as valuable as the proteins obtained by meat. Being that an all meat and fat diet doesn't provide as large a spectrum of gut bacteria,, IF that is more desirable.
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You reeled me back in with some excellent questions, Van. :D
The problem or shortcoming to submitting our decals to his study is that I haven' seen any thing that definitively will tell us what is ideal, and if there is an ideal, what that would mean. And yes, I understand there are less than supposed ideal bacterias, but how do we know of what balance once again is desired, unless you hold the Hazda's gut profile as gold standard.
Yeah, there isn't certainty and there never will be. I'm not waiting for certainty and so far I am benefiting, though I'm not telling anyone what to do.
I don’t think Jeff is claiming that the Hadza are guaranteed to have a perfect GI microbiome. He just figured that they are one of the best populations to study, if not the best. He has also studied other populations and asked anyone who thinks there is a better group to study than the last of the traditional Hadza (who are quickly modernizing now) to let him know. I suggested the Chukchi, but one problem with them is that they eat special rare foods like raw fermented walrus (a staple food of the coastal Chukchi) that not many people have access to, so their diets aren't as relevant to moderners.
I'll let Jeff's words and research speak for themselves. He tries to remain somewhat cautious and balanced, while at the same time warning VLCers that all may not be as well as they think, and he emphasizes diversity in both the GI microbiome and the diet.
(Emphases mine)"[Jeff Leach's] interest in modern diet and the gut microbiome began almost a decade ago when his daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. As with other autoimmune diseases, an underlying genetic susceptibility must exist for type 1 diabetes to manifest but an environmental component (trigger) is necessary. With advances in metagenomics and huge government initiatives like the recently completed Human Microbiome Project, its becoming increasingly clear that the gut microbiome plays a significant if not causal role in the development of type 1 diabetes, other autoimmune diseases, and modern (ecological) diseases in general.
In an effort to raise awareness about the changes in human ecology that have given rise to diseases of the modern world, Jeff launched the Human Food Project ..." http://humanfoodproject.com/the-people/founder-jeff-leach (http://humanfoodproject.com/the-people/founder-jeff-leach)
http://chriskresser.com/you-are-what-your-bacteria-eat-the-importance-of-feeding-your-microbiome-with-jeff-leach
Chris Kresser: ... what I’ve noticed is that many people who are on a ketogenic or very low carb diet – let’s say less than 30 or 40 grams of carbohydrate a day – come back with an alkaline pH in the stool. They have low levels of butyrate or other total short-chain fatty acids and some other markers of dysbiosis. So, that got me thinking and wondering about the potential adverse effects of a very low carb or ketogenic diet from the perspective of gut flora, gut microbiota, and wondering is it that people who are doing the ketogenic diets are not only doing a ketogenic diet, but they’re also just not eating enough plant fiber? And that kind of makes sense. If they’re really trying to limit their carbohydrates, they’re going to be somewhat limited in terms of the variety of vegetables and certainly fruits that they can eat. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I read a blog post of yours a while back that was speculating maybe that 35 or 40 grams of carbohydrate may not be sufficient to reach the levels of bacterial fermentation that you were just talking about. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Jeff Leach: ... that’s interesting that you’re seeing the shifts in the pH in the colon. That’s fascinating, and it’s what you would expect. It’s an interesting topic, and it’s a pretty passionate crowd of people as well.
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Like Jimmy Moore and those guys. I mean, I have nothing but ultimate respect for Jimmy. He is all in, but I worry about it. What’s interesting in American Gut is we have quite a few paleo dieters that have identified as paleo dieters in the study, and we need a lot more. It’s a group of people we’re very interested in, and we’re interested in the very low carbohydrate guys as well. We’re seeing an increasing number of those guys in the study, but we need more of them to have any kind of definitive take on the problem. But if you just look at it from what we know from the literature – and there are not many studies that have isolated very low carb people – but when you come at it from the perspective of pH like you do, which is spot on, what happens when people go on a low carb diet – you know more about this than I do, but I always get the emails, What’s wrong with eating 10 cups of broccoli a day? One of the big things that the low carb diets do is they really drop out the resistant starch in the diet. And what’s interesting about a lot of butyrate producers, Roseburia and these guys and Eubacterium, they’re cross-feeders. For example, you have certain species of bacteria, groups of bacteria that break down whatever, cellulose and hemicellulose, and produce acetate and propionate and all these things, but a lot of the butyrate producers are cross-feeders and they’re feeding off of other activities. So, when I see a very low carb person, I often see not only a huge drop in dietary fiber, but a drop in diversity of dietary fiber and a significant drop in resistant starch, which is a huge source of nutrients for the microbiome as well. Resistant starch is often called the third dietary fiber.
But I lump it all together with anything that escapes digestion in the upper GI tract and ends up in your colon and is available for fermentation, and it’s a lot of things besides just dietary fiber. But I’m concerned about it for the exact reasons that you are. We don’t have the data. Nobody has done any nice clinical controlled trials, but when you starve the bacteria, you may see an increase in mucin degraders like Akkermansia and a few other ones. That shift in the pH is going to provide opportunities for pathogens to maybe bloom up that may cause some down-the-road, long-term problems. But again, maybe not. Nobody knows for sure, but if you’re shifting that pH and you’re not fermenting, you’re opening the pathogen’s door. It’s going to take a long time to unwind this, but I think the more low carb people we can get in the study, we can contribute to the conversation at least to the point where it can serve as a baseline for maybe more controlled clinical kinds of studies. But I would never recommend a low carb diet. I think you can eat lots and lots of healthy carbs and maintain your weight. I’m not necessarily a paleo dieter. I don’t eat grains. I have a type 1 diabetic daughter, so our family is very sensitive to the effects of all grains.
Jeff's papers and articles:
Leach, JD. Please Pass the Microbes, Nature, Vol 503, No 7478, pp. 33, 2013.
Leach, JD. The Human Microbiome. Optimum Nutrition, Autumn Issue, 34-35, 2013.
Leach, JD. Ghosts of our African Gut. Paleo Magazine, Dec/Jan 2012, 40-42.
Leach, JD. Letter to the Editor: Low carbohydrate-high protein diet and incidence of cardiovascular diseases in Swedish women: prospective cohort study, British Medical Journal 2012;344:e4026
Leach JD & K Sobolik. High dietary intake of prebiotic inulin-type fructans from prehistoric Chihuahuan Desert. British Journal of Nutrition. Vol 103 (11):1558-1561
Leach, JD. Dirtying up our diets. Op-ed, New York Times, June 21, 2012.
Leach, JD. Dishing up the dirt that’s good to consume, Op-ed, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 27, 2012.
Leach JD (in review) Probiotics versus prebiotics? an evolutionary perspective. Network Health Dietitians Magazine (UK)
Leach JD, 2009. Revised energy conversion factor for undigested carbohydrates and implications for resource ranking in optimal foraging theory. North American Archaeologist. Vol 30, No. 4. 393-413.
Leach JD Aug 22, 2008. Wiping out bacteria on lettuce has downside, Letter, USA Today.
Leach JD July 28, 2008. Gut Check, Op-ed, San Francisco Chronicle.
Leach JD. 2008. Prebiotics nothing new, says evolutionary hitchhiker. Functional Ingredients Magazine, June 2008.
Leach JD. 2008. Are daily dietary fibre recommendations too low? an evolutionary perspective.Network Health Dietitians Magazine May, 2008.
Leach JD. 2007 Paleo Longevity Redux. Letter to the Editor, Public Health Nutrition. 2/8/2007
Leach JD. 2007. Prebiotics in Ancient Diets. Food Science and Technology Bulletin (2007),
4 (1):1-8.
Leach JD. 2007. Evolutionary perspective on dietary intake of fibre and colorectal cancer. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2007) 61, 140–142
Leach JD Jan 22, 2007. Fighting E. coli the old-fashioned way, Op-ed, San Francisco Chronicle
Leach JD. 2006 Reconsidering Ancient Caloric Yields from Cultivated Agave in Southern Arizona. Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of Science. 39(1): 18-21.
Leach JD, Gibson GR, Van Loo J. 2006. Human Evolution, Nutritional Ecology and Prebiotics in Ancient Diet. Bioscience & Microflora Vol. 25, No. 1. pp 1-8
Leach, J.D., Rastall, R.A. and Gibson, G.R. 2006. Prebiotics: Past, Present and Future, In Gibson, G.R. and Rastall, R.A. (eds) Prebiotics: Development and Application. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., pgs 237-248.
Leach, J.D., Bousman, C.B. and D. Nickels. 2005. Comments on Assigning a Primary Context to Artifacts Recovered from Burned Rock Middens. Journal of Field Archaeology 30(2): 201-203.
Leach, JD. 2005. Sharp increase in cook-stone use in the Chihuahuan Desert during periods of agricultural intensification. Antiquity 79(304): http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/leach05/ (http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/leach05/)
Leach, J.D., Bradfute, T. 2004. Cultural Response to Demographic and Environmental Stress During the Classic Mimbres Period (AD 1000-1130/40), Southern New Mexico: the Cook-Stone Evidence. Antiquity 78(300): http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/leach/ (http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/leach/)
Leach, J.D. 2003. Learning from Once-Hot Rocks. University of Leicester Bulletin 25:9.
Johnson, D. R. Mandel, M. Petraglia, and Leach, J.D., 2002, Site Formation Processes in a Regional Perspective, Geoarchaeology: An International Journal Vol 17, No 1:3-6.
Leach, J.D. , Mauldin, R.P., Kuehn, D. and Morgan, G., 1999, Late Wisconsin-age Proboscideans from Southern New Mexico. Texas Journal of Science, 1999, 51(2):195-198.
Leach, J.D. , Hunziker, J., Mauldin, R.P. and Harris, A., 1999, A Bison sp. From Lincoln County, Southern New Mexico. Texas Journal of Science, Vol 51.
Leach, J.D. , 1998, A Brief Comment on the Immunological Identification of Plant Residues on Prehistoric Tools and Ceramics: Results of a Blind Test. Journal of Archaeological Science 25, 171-175.
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Let me add an example,, jeff and other's point out the protective nature of the fatty acids produced by the RS supported bacteria in the gut. And how they also level blood sugar fasting levels... But this may be idea for those eating a carb heavy or RS heavy diet, and not potentially useful for those eating a diet already replete with fats. For instance, if the game that the Hazda's were able to catch/eat were limited to lean animals, then their fat sources could very well be supplemented from the 'fat' produced by the RS fed bacteria. And again, I am very interested in this subject, and am anticipating wonderful findings in the future. In fact, I have this idea as to how wonderful it would be to be able to leave meat totally alone and go back to becoming vegetarian with the concept that my intestine's bacteria could convert everything I needed to flourish, as does a cow,, which basically lives off of fats produced by the bacteria in their guts.
From what I've seen from years of reading people's reports on the Internet, is that those following the most extreme and highly restricted diets at both ends of the macronutrient spectrum tend to do the worst in the longer run. Unfortunately, they tend to frequent dogmatic forums where their negative results get deleted (such as at the ZIOH zero carber forum and the 30 Bananas a Day LFHC forum). They do tend to lose weight (especially the LFHC folks) and associate that with success, but thinness does not guarantee health and well being.
I suspect that it's more optimal to get a significant portion of one's "dietary" fat from one's microbiota (using the term "dietary" loosely, as I don't know of a term for the fat we use that comes from our microbiota), instead of all from consumed foods. You could be right that as one increases consumption of prebiotic foods that it makes sense to cut back on the fat. I've noticed that my desire for fat has naturally fallen as I have expanded my diet and included more prebiotic-rich foods in it.
As always, YMMV.
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all good points,, looking forward to learning more.
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Tyler, you make references to intermittent fasting. If big game was plentiful on a daily basis, intermittent fasting wouldn't be possible for the Hazdas, or any tribe, unless self inflicted. So if you look at it from that point of view, that the substitution of tubers from meat could possibly be a healthy part of their diet. I think eating large portions of meat daily is not healthy. And the RS ingested may be just as valuable as the proteins obtained by meat. Being that an all meat and fat diet doesn't provide as large a spectrum of gut bacteria,, IF that is more desirable.
Ah, I see. I only view intermittent fasting as something needed for a cooked diet as it allows the body time to get rid of toxins without ingesting more during that period of fasting. My point was that the distribution of foods in Nature is not necessarily ideal for a particular species and what an HG tribe eats does not necessarily represent ideal health. I mean, giant pandas, for example, eat mostly bamboos when their digestive systems are far more oriented/adapted towards eating meat, thus causing them problems since they find bamboos more difficult to digest and lower in calorie.
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Ah, I see. I only view intermittent fasting as something needed for a cooked diet as it allows the body time to get rid of toxins without ingesting more during that period of fasting.
Remember, though, that intermittent fasting vastly predates cooking--by millions of years.
My point was that the distribution of foods in Nature is not necessarily ideal for a particular species and what an HG tribe eats does not necessarily represent ideal health.
That point ironically has been used by promoters of dairy and other more recent staples than Stone Age HG staple foods. Are you acknowledging that they could theoretically be right after all?
I mean, giant pandas, for example, eat mostly bamboos when their digestive systems are far more oriented/adapted towards eating meat, thus causing them problems since they find bamboos more difficult to digest and lower in calorie.
Recall, though, that giant pandas have the physical makeup of hypercarnivores (second only to polar bears amongst the bear species in carnivorous morphology), whereas humans are omnivores that evolved from primates and pre-primates that consumed tree foods and insects. Humans appear to be better adapted to plant foods than giant pandas. Plus, microbiota help both pandas and humans turn foods into energy and nutrients. Giant pandas appear to be less well-adapted to their change in diet than humans, which may help explain how humans have come to dominate the planet, while GP's are nearing extinction.
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Whether IF existed prior to cooking is irrelevant. It was not an essential practice until cooking was invented and was something forced on HGs not something they would have willingly indulged in, necessarily.
That point ironically has been used by promoters of dairy and other more recent staples than Stone Age HG staple foods. Are you acknowledging that they could theoretically be right after all?
It is not an argument that can convincingly justify the consumption of dairy and grains as grains and even dairy are way more artificial foods than foods found in Nature(I mean of course dairy-consumption for adults being the unnatural aspect). What I meant was that the distribution of foods in palaeo times may have been more ideal for us hominids than modern times, since millenia of human inhabitation has ruined the environment and impoverished it. For example, it is a possibility that, in untouched palaeo times, the hadza had far more access to plentiful wild game compared to modern, ravaged times where wild game is far scarcer.
Re Pandas:- My point was that tubers are low-calorie foods, thus being foods only used as fallback foods when other foods were unavailable. I also do not see the hadza as having adapted to eating tubers like cassava. One would assume that millions of years of eating tubers would have led to them adapting to the many antinutrients found in tubers, but this is not so.
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I also do not see the hadza as having adapted to eating tubers like cassava. One would assume that millions of years of eating tubers would have led to them adapting to the many antinutrients found in tubers, but this is not so.
Cassava? The Hadza have not been eating cassava very long because it originated in South America, not Africa, and the last remaining traditional hunter gatherers among them still do not eat much of the domesticated foreign foods like cassava, though they are increasingly starting to eat some, unfortunately--such as corn, which per Jeff Leach they love on those occasions they get their hands on some. They are quite badly adapted to corn, which became apparent in Leach's research, because they developed an overgrowth of pathogenic prevotella (grain-loving) bacteria after feasting on corn (I think it was for just 2 or 3 days, or thereabouts).
They did not show any evidence of any GI microbiome problems while eating their usual wild tubers. Quite the contrary, while eating their traditional wild foods they showed the most biodiverse microbiome yet recorded (and thus it turned out that Leach was right to guess that their microbiome would be an excellent one to study). The research of Leach and others has found that GI microbiome biodiversity is associated with low levels of the chronic diseases of civilization. Like both Leach and Van have cautioned, it's still relatively early in the research, but that's where it has been consistently pointing.
Thanks for sharing your unique opinions.
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Having healthy bacteria does not compensate for the fact that tubers are low-calorie foods. I am sure that pandas also have a healthy GI microbiome.
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The calorie numbers only measure what is obtained from digestion in the stomach and small intestine by the human body. They don't take into account the energy and nutrition that the microbiota provide when they generate or help absorb and process SCFAs, minerals, B vitamins and other nutrients, even during the night while we sleep, which is an especially important time for autophagy (cellular repair and clean up). The GI microbiome is a big piece of the puzzle that has been seriously underemphasized and often overlooked in Paleo circles until recently. It's not just important what we feed ourselves, it's also important what we feed our Old Friends. This probably helps explain while some people appear to thrive on crappy diets, while others find that they have to eat super healthy diets or else become ill--it may be due in part to differences in the quality of their GI microbiome (perhaps mainly differences in biodiversity, if the early research is on target) and related factors like how leaky and alkaline vs. acidic their guts are (not to be confused with alkalizing vs. acidifying foods).
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Thanks for the interesting discussion, particularly to PaleoPhil!
Yes, we are not a thermal engine in which the power output only depends on cubic capacity, rpm, efficiency and calories injected!
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Thanks Iguana. The giant panda microbiome enables them to survive on a 99% plant diet despite having much more carnivorous physiology than humans, yet they do not have as optimal a mix of microbiome and physiology as healthy humans do (and tubers and certain other USOs also appear to be higher quality foods than bamboo). One of humanity's traits that appears to account in large measure for our success in populating and dominating almost the entire planet is our very diverse and adaptable microbiome and our mixed and adaptable physiology. The combination of a diverse microbiome with a mixed physiology and diverse diet appears to be far more adaptable than a 99% bamboo diet with carnivorous physiology and less diverse microbiome. Thus, changes in habitat are threatening giant pandas with extinction, whereas humans are growing even more in numbers.
Unfortunately, we have been damaging our microbiome, particularly since the advent of industrialization, urbanization, and antibiotics. Further damaging it by excessively restricting Paleo diets (such as with chronic VLC/ZC, veganism, and the Wai diet) where not necessary doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Instincto, even when somewhat high in fruit (if not overly deficient in other foods), now seems more reasonable to me than chronic VLC/ZC. I can see now why GCB and other Instinctos turned away from very high meat intakes. That's not to suggest that Instincto is perfect. I suspect that many Instinctos excessively restrict diet biodiversity in other ways--such as avoiding the better starchy foods (and not just the bad ones). It sounds like you have not fallen prey to that as much as other Instinctos, which may help explain your long term success.
It may turn out that certain practices in meat-heavy societies, such as traditional coastal Inuit and Chukchi, help avoid problems from lack of plant diversity, though they are less practical in modern societies. It seems easier to develop a healthy diverse omnivorous diet in modern societies than a healthy VLC/ZC diet.
I should add that there are risks with starchy foods, and I'm not trying to totally discount those. I'm actually currently investigating one potential risk from a phenomenon known as persorption.
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Thanks Iguana.
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Instincto, even when somewhat high in fruit (if not overly deficient in other foods), now seems more reasonable to me than chronic VLC/ZC. I can see now why GCB and other Instinctos turned away from very high meat intakes. That's not to suggest that Instincto is perfect. I suspect that many Instinctos excessively restrict diet biodiversity in other ways--such as avoiding the better starchy foods (and not just the bad ones). It sounds like you have not fallen prey to that as much as other Instinctos, which may help explain your long term success.
Thanks to you!
The practice of "instincto" can never even approach perfection. The theory is something else and I haven't been able to find any serious flaw in it.
I should add that there are risks with starchy foods, and I'm not trying to totally discount those.
Absolutely. Like for every foodstuff, the main risk is overconsumption when not properly - instinctively and permanently readjusted.
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Healthy levels of bacteria cannot really compensate for either a bad diet or an evolutionarily unsuitable one. Take sloths, pandas and koalas, for example, who are unable to get enough energy from their so-called "natural" foods, thus forcing them into a sedentary lifestyle, for the most part.
Given the immense energy needed by the human brain, one can safely assume that a diet rich in tubers will eventually lead to a smaller brain, over many generations. It is telling that a large increase in starchy foods consumption, such as tubers, in the Neolithic era, resulted in a significantly smaller brain-size. Conversely, human average brain-size increased when meat-intake increased(and therefore , correspondingly, intake of other food items such as tubers decreased).
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Luckily, the better tubers and other underground storage organs can be part of a healthy Paleo diet, upon which it looks like we can agree to disagree.
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It is telling that a large increase in starchy foods consumption, such as tubers, in the Neolithic era, resulted in a significantly smaller brain-size.
Isn’t it rather the result of an increase in cereal grains and in cooked foods — including over-consumption of tubers which became possible once they were cooked?
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Luckily, the better tubers and other underground storage organs can be part of a healthy Paleo diet, upon which it looks like we can agree to disagree.
I wonder if there is any scientific info somewhere on what percentage of tubers are edible by humans without any processing(ie no cyanide-containing cassavas!) and which tubers(if any) are very low in antinutrients.
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Isn’t it rather the result of an increase in cereal grains and in cooked foods — including over-consumption of tubers which became possible once they were cooked?
Cooking got started c.250,000 years ago, well before the Neolithic era. I will admit that, judging from HGs and Weston-Price's accounts of such tribes, that they likely ate some of their meats raw. However, the problem seems to be the introduction into the human diet of lots more starchy foods like tubers and grains.
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I pointed out before that the allegation that all starchy foods or tubers require cooking is a red herring. One of the early tubers that proto-humans consumed going back 2 million years or more requires no cooking at all (sedge grass tubers known as tiger nuts, and a similar sedge grass corm called water chestnut that is edible raw is native to Asia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleocharis_dulcis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleocharis_dulcis) and a somewhat similar water caltrop is edible raw and is native to Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_caltrop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_caltrop)). While consuming this tuber, Nutcracker Man's brain didn't shrink--it grew larger. Here again is one of the links: http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/2014/07/legumes-and-potatoes-are-certainly-p-l.html (http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/2014/07/legumes-and-potatoes-are-certainly-p-l.html)
Iguana is correct that brain and body shrinkage were linked to cooked grains, rather than tubers.
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Nearly right! Unfortunately, there are some basic facts you two have overlooked.
Let's check the facts. The "Australopithecus boisei" appeared between 2.3 million to 1.2 million years ago in East Africa.
The Australopithecines are portrayed as having tiny brains(c. 500-550cc)so are not really a good example, to put it mildly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_boisei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_boisei)
And are obviously not a true ancestor of human beings, given its resemblances to a gorilla mentioned in the article etc.
Then come "true humans" in the form of Homo Habilis, with much bigger brains and who, unsurprisingly, are portrayed as having incorporated lots of meat into their diet:-
"2,300,000 to 1,500,000 B.C.: Appearance of the first "true humans" (signified by the genus Homo), known as Homo habilis ("handy man")--so named because of the appearance of stone tools and cultures at this time. These gatherer-hunters were between 4 and 5 feet in height, weighed between 40 to 100 pounds, and still retained tree-climbing adaptations (such as curved finger bones)[21] while subsisting on wild plant foods and scavenging and/or hunting meat. (The evidence for flesh consumption based on cut-marks on animal bones, as well as use of hammerstones to smash them for the marrow inside, dates to this period.[22]) It is thought that they lived in small groups like modern hunter-gatherers but that the social structure would have been more like that of chimpanzees."
taken from:- http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1c.shtml (http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1c.shtml)
And as the timeline shows, the more meat is added to the hominid diet, the larger the brain becomes:-
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1c.shtml (http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview1c.shtml)
So we have the start of the increase of brain-size coinciding with a massive increase in meat-eating in the diet over the millenia and thus, logically, a coinciding reduction in the amount of plants in the diet including tubers. So we have a clear case in palaeo times where decreasing tuber-consumption led to an increase in brain-size followed by the Neolithic era where an increase in tuber consumption and other starchy foods like grains led to a decrease in average brain-size.
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Nearly right! Unfortunately, there are some basic facts you two have overlooked.
Nice try, Tyler. I didn't overlook anything. You just wrongly assumed I did. Believe whatever you want to believe.
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Hmm, so far your claims are even more extreme and wild than Wrangham's. Even Wrangham had to admit that, for proper digestion of tubers, they needed to be soaked and cooked first, which is why he tried to claim that cooking got started so far back.
I see you have not really debunked any of my points. Indeed. on checking further, I see that the Nutcracker Man hominid was an evolutionary dead-end, with an evolutionary split-off (occurring before the advent of the Paranthropus hominids) eventually becoming the species Homo and, ultimately, us. So Nutcracker Man was not even a direct ancestor of us:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1382932/Paranthropus-boisei-Ancient-human-relative-primate-equivalent-cow.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1382932/Paranthropus-boisei-Ancient-human-relative-primate-equivalent-cow.html)
"So what of Paranthropus and their grass? Did that influence their brain size? It’s hard to say. What we do know is that their brains never increased in size like ours. They flourished for over a million years, splitting into a range of different species; yet their brains never became larger than 500cc. Meanwhile on the human branch, our brain was more than doubling in size from 400 to 1000cc"
http://evoanth.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/paranthropus-diet-and-their-brain-size/ (http://evoanth.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/paranthropus-diet-and-their-brain-size/)
This seems to contradict the notion in the blogspot article you cited which claimed that NutCracker Man increased vastly in brain-size.
So my point still stands:- as the genus Homo started eating more meat, their brains started growing. Nutcracker Man was just a prior offshoot and ultimately an evolutionary dead-end, no doubt because of its diet of tubers etc.
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I think it worthwhile to be a bit more openminded about the value of different foodstuffs. A food, a tuber for instance, doesn't have to be digested in our stomach to be useful. That non-digestible starch in the tuber will travel to our large intestine which, if we're healthy, should host a range of bacteria that can digest the starch that's indigestible by us and turn it into a range of fatty acids that our bodies can use. So human use of starchy tubers doesn't depend on us having learned to cook them. I've seen videos of African bushmen digging up tubers and eating them straight away, no cooking at all.
Obviously some roots and tubers are more valuable than others. Some are relatively free of toxic compounds, and those that remain are of low enough concentration and potency that our livers can effectively render them harmless. Others, like cassava, require extensive processing and cooking to render non-toxic enough to eat, so these are much less valuable without cooking.
There's a continuum here, it's not just black and white.
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Thanks, Eric, at least you get it.
And as I noted before, it's possible for both meat/fat and tubers to contribute to brain growth. It doesn't have to be an either-or. Humans tend to see things in terms of simple, absolute, binary possibilities ("Should I take the left fork of the trail, or the right?"). Nature is often more complex and subtle than that.
Another complexity re: tubers is that traditional peoples often cook just the outside of certain tubers, leaving the core raw, or nearly so. So this is another area where it's not a question of simple binary alternatives--there is a continuum of cooking, from thoroughy cooked, to partially cooked, to raw.
It's also not just a matter of the plant toxins that Paleoists tend to obsess over. The outer part of tubers (and other plants) tends to have larger particles that are reportedly less beneficial when persorbed (absorbed into the circulatory and lymphatic systems), with the best small particles being in the core. Studies have found that large starch particles can become problematic over time if they are not broken down before eating and consumed in excess (they can lodge in and embolise arterioles and capillaries if not broken down soon enough by the amylase in serum and other fluids). Cooking (and probably other forms of processing) breaks down the large particles. (For a summary on the topic, see Persorption of Resistant Starch Granules: Should We Be Worried? by Shmuel HaShual, Monday, March 17, 2014, http://glutinousthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/03/persorption-of-resistant-starch.html (http://glutinousthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/03/persorption-of-resistant-starch.html)).
While later research (K.J. Steffens, Persorption--Criticism and Agreement as Based upon In Vitro and In Vivo Studies on Mammals, 1995, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-79511-4_2#page-1 (http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-79511-4_2#page-1)) found the persorption effect to not be as pronounced as early research by Gerhard Volkheimer (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475370 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1475370), 1974) had suggested, it's existence was confirmed.
Interestingly, the starch particles in tiger nuts are much smaller than the largest particles in large, mature cooking tubers that are more common in supermarkets. Thus, it's plausible that humans would be better adapted to the small starch particles in ancestral tubers like tiger nuts, and it's not surprising that tiger nuts are quite edible and nutritious raw and fresh, whereas those with larger particles and more toxins tend to be cooked, especially the outer layers that contain more of both the larger particles and plant defense toxins.
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We've been over this before. The human brain requires a lot of energy to maintain. Tubers, being low calorie, are not as ideal as meats in this regard. Also, that paranthropus boisei hominid had evolved specific adaptations re enhanced jaws etc. designed to make eating tubers a much easier proposition, whereas regular homo ancestors did not have such adaptations, making tubers a less than ideal food for them. The clincher is that eating tubers did not help paranthropus boisei re gaining brain-size.
Not that I believe that just eating meat led to bigger brains. I just think it allowed our ancestors to have diminished jaws instead of larger, gorilla-like ones, thus permitting extra brain-growth to occur, rather than being the direct cause of said brain-growth.
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Tyler, Eric's post already addressed that. I don't want to rehash it, so I refer you back to it.
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Not that I believe that just eating meat led to bigger brains. I just think it allowed our ancestors to have diminished jaws instead of larger, gorilla-like ones, thus permitting extra brain-growth to occur, rather than being the direct cause of said brain-growth.
It is totally wrong to simply link diminishing jaws with growing brains. If you compare Cro-magnon with modern men, the former had bigger jaws...and bigger brains!! Our jaws diminished when we started to replace raw, tough foods like meat and tubers with mushy, soft cooked foods. That's also the reason our brain size diminished, but I guess we already know that.
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Cro-magnon's brain was bigger:
http://phys.org/news187877156.html (http://phys.org/news187877156.html)
"Although scientists don’t know for sure why our overall brains are shrinking, some researchers hypothesize that our brains are becoming more efficient as they grow smaller."
LOL. Extra LOL ;D Just like modern technology, I guess ;)
"One idea is that Cro Magnons needed large skulls because of the difficulty in chewing their food, which included lots of meat such as rabbits, foxes, and horses. Since our food has become easier to eat, we don’t need such large skulls or jaws."
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I don't understand why people make a big deal about the fact that our brains are shrinking. What are the benefits of a larger brain? If having a big brain is so great, why don't blue whales rule the earth? Their brains weigh 15 pounds, much larger than ours.
It's not about how big brains are, but what you do with them and how readily you're able to acquire the food energy needed to adequately power them.
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We already started cooking c.250,000 years ago and our brain size did not diminish at that time. It was only when we introduced lots of starchy foods such as grains and tubers into the diet that our brain-sizes decreased to a large extent(10%).
As regards, the shrinking human brain-size supposedly making us smarter, that is just typical human hubris. It is highly likely that Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals were more intelligent than us modern humans. After all, they were subject to the theme of the survival of the fittest etc. Neolithic civilisation allowed the less intelligent to outbreed the more intelligent etc.
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I don't understand why people make a big deal about the fact that our brains are shrinking. What are the benefits of a larger brain? If having a big brain is so great, why don't blue whales rule the earth? Their brains weigh 15 pounds, much larger than ours.
It's not about how big brains are, but what you do with them and how readily you're able to acquire the food energy needed to adequately power them.
You do have a point in that crows, for example, have been shown to be intelligent. So far, with a few exceptions, though, intelligence has been linked to a ratio between brain-size and size in general.:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio)
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And as I noted before, it's possible for both meat/fat and tubers to contribute to brain growth. It doesn't have to be an either-or. Humans tend to see things in terms of simple, absolute, binary possibilities ("Should I take the left fork of the trail, or the right?"). Nature is often more complex and subtle than that.
Yes, that’s what I tried to explain twice in this thread.
Like most “instinctos” I know, I regularly eat sweet potatoes, and other tubers once in a way. I ordered tiger nuts again some months ago and just ate some today. I knew cassava is said to be toxic raw, but I nevertheless found it palatable when I was hungry on Rambi Island in the Fiji where there was at the time nothing else to eat than that and coconuts plus a few papayas, as there had been a hurricane preventing people to go fishing. Also there was no shop where I could buy food. No ill effects whatsoever from raw cassava.
Cooking got started c.250,000 years ago, well before the Neolithic era..
Yes, we can’t know exactly, but it could be even earlier, perhaps 300 or 350,000 years ago. The point is that it was certainly not generalized until much later, at the beginning of Neolithic.
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We already started cooking c.250,000 years ago and our brain size did not diminish at that time.
Do you have any info to back this up? If not then this is just your opinion, plus you're basically saying that cooked paleo diet feeds the brain as much as RPD, which I doubt.It was only when we introduced lots of starchy foods such as grains and tubers into the diet that our brain-sizes decreased to a large extent(10%).
"Lots" is the key word here. As Iguana pointed out, it is rather the over-consumption of tubers, and the consumption of tubers and grains that are not originally edible raw, that most likely led to diminished brain size.
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I doubt that cooked tubers were the culprit behind diminished brain and body size. Grains are more likely.
The dose is the poison. Since sweet potatoes and cassava aren't normally consumed raw and raw consumption of them hasn't been thoroughly studied, one is taking an unknown risk by eating them raw more than on rare occasion. I don't eat much in the way of raw sweet potatoes, though I have tried it a few times. If I ate more, I would try to keep the particle size and toxin level down by eating the youngest, smallest, tastiest ones I could find and soak them first.
I do eat a completely raw young, small starchy potato now and then without soaking, which is something my grandfather and other Irish people used to do, and it is more palatable to me without soaking than sweet potatoes (though maybe that's because I haven't tried a small sweet potato yet). I haven't tried cassava raw. Cassava is reportedly much more toxic than those and other tubers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_use_processing_and_toxicity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava#Food_use_processing_and_toxicity)), which is probably why Tyler likes to use it as an example of a tuber. l) ;D
Unfortunately, I don't have as easy, cheap and plentiful access to high quality ancestral starchy foods that are edible raw, such as tiger nuts, water chestnuts and water caltrops, as my ancient ancestors did. The starchy foods that require cooking or other processing are replacements for the ancestral starchy foods that are less available outside of ancient human habitats. I wouldn't assume that the later starchy foods can simply be eaten completely raw like the early ones with the same results, and I also wouldn't assume that just avoiding all starchy foods completely will produce the same results as a more ancestral diverse diet. Humans have been working out various compromises for thousands of years to try to fill the needs that ancestral foods provided. A good GI microbiome can help with this.
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I merely cited cassava as it was the most toxic cited among those many tubers which need to be throughly cooked and processed.Cassava is known to routinely cause cyanosis etc. There are, of course, some tubers which are probably low enough in antinutrients to be edible without issues, and then there are those many tubers which are just barely edible but which are high enough in levels of antinutrients so as to not be truly suitable foods at all. The way I see it, in order for humans' digestive systems etc. to be designed to eat tubers in general, we would have had to be very similiar to paranthropus boisei in terms of having massive jaws needed to masticate tubers properly etc. Plus, the very fact that some tubers have to be cooked in order to be edible does strongly suggest that they were not a significant part of the hominid diet until after the advent of cooking, and even then likely only after the Neolithic when agriculture came into being.
The point is that our bodies are not well designed to deal with the antinutrients found in plants like tubers. A herbivore usually has several stomachs and countless extra enzymes etc. which are all needed to properly digest such items in full. The antinutrients block uptake of nutrients plus the tubers are low in nutrient value anyway. I do not deny that tubers are seen as fallback foods. Indeed, after a little more checking l) ;D, increasingly, Nutcracker Man and other hominids are cited as using tubers only as fallback foods when other foods were not as available, or not really eating tubers at all, eg:-
However, research on the molar microwear of P. boisei[8][9] found a microwear pattern very different from that observed for P. robustus in South Africa which is thought to have fed on hard foods as a fallback resource.[10] This work suggests that hard foods were an infrequent part of its diet. The carbon isotope ratios of P. boisei suggest it had a diet dominated by C4 vegetation unlike P. robustus in South Africa.
taken from:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_boisei (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_boisei)
So we have a long period of increased meat-eating and less plant food in later Palaeolithic times, and likely only minimal tuber-consumption in the hominid given recent findings such as above.
I doubt that cooked tubers were the culprit behind diminished brain and body size. Grains are more likely.
What I have established, though, is that tubers could not have been responsible for greater hominid brain-growth as increased meat-consumption(and, logically, by extension, decreased tuber consumption) was shown to be responsible for that.
Given that tubers are starchy foods like grains, really the only difference between them is that grains, even when cooked, contain even more antinutrients in them compared to most tubers.
Just goes to show, one should never take anything other people state for granted, even if it sounds plausible or backed up by scientific data, as more recent data can debunk older data easily, given new evidence.
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I merely cited cassava as it was the most toxic cited...
Of course.
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Do you have any info to back this up? If not then this is just your opinion, plus you're basically saying that cooked paleo diet feeds the brain as much as RPD, which I doubt."
I am NOT claiming that cooked-palaeo feeds the brain per se, merely that meat, whether raw or cooked, helped feed the brain. Although, given other data, it seems that the more one processes(eg:- cooks) the meat, the less intelligent people become(and therefore vice versa), according to recent studies, so maybe HGs in palaeo times only rarely cooked their meat.:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805706/ (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805706/)
My original point that cooking got started c.250,000 years ago is commonly stated all over the web in many scientific resources so I am surprised why you challenge me on this, just google. Only Wrangham has tried to claim that cooking got started even earlier(he claims 1.8 million years ago) and he himself has admitted that there is no palaeoanthropological proof whatsoever to support his claims. The beyondveg.com link I already provided has a vast resource page and links to scientific studies, and it was already pointed out in that beyondveg.com article that the average hominid brain-size was still growing.
Lots" is the key word here. As Iguana pointed out, it is rather the over-consumption of tubers, and the consumption of tubers and grains that are not originally edible raw, that most likely led to diminished brain size.
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Here is some more info on why the Hadza (Hadzabe'e) have been studied by scientists (it's not that their diet is proclaimed as supreme, it's that a group of them are one of the last remaining mostly-HG communities left in the world and they are living in an area where humanoids have lived for millions of years, and where they themselves may have lived for tens of thousands or possibly even hundreds of thousands of years, according to a scientist in the video):
The Hadza Last of the First Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwibguSYCW0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwibguSYCW0)
Unfortunately their way of life is changing, so scientists are trying to gather as much info as they can before their society is destroyed, and some are trying to help the Hadza preserve some of their land and way of life. It's interesting that so much effort has been put into preserving wild animals, and so little into preserving (semi-)wild humans.
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The point is that the Hadza no longer have access to the vast areas they had even a few centuries ago. Plus, constantly changing climates over the eons would have led to vastly different types of diets even in the same location etc. So, the Hadza are not good examples of Palaeo HGs who had access to large megafauna etc.
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The point is not that they are a perfect example, but they are one of the least bad examples we have left, which is why scientists study them.
I wish I could also share the Medicine Men Go Wild episode on the semi-traditional Chukchi, but I found nothing about it on the Internet any more. Luckily I bought a CD of that show. It was interesting and it also would probably be more popular with LC proponents.
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The point is not that they are a perfect example, but they are one of the least bad examples we have left, which is why scientists study them.
"Least bad" example is just not good enough. For all we know, palaeo HGs likely cooked much less than the Hadza, and so on and on. It seems extraordinarily likely that the Hadza diet and lifestyle was way different 100s of thousands of years ago than in modern times, partly because human interference with Nature has become ever greater since the invention of fire. Also, relying on the Hadza reminds me too much of the Noble Savage theory. For all we know, the Hadza may be incompetent HGs compared to most others etc.