Guess who got a speaking spot at this Summer's Ancestral Health Symposium? This guy.

I'd like to same something quick about glutathione, which is that I don't see how taking it directly leads to higher levels in the body. It is a tri-peptide and just about all of it should in theory be chewed up into the individual amino acids in the stomach before being absorbed. Some might get absorbed but tri-peptides in general don't absorb well, usually individual AAs and some di-peptides are the bulk of absorbed protein. Glutathione is a great thing to have in the body but I don't see how taking preformed supplements necessarily leads to having more in a direct fashion.

Is there any evidence that grape cleanse works to kill cancer cells?

Great photographs but to be honest I'm a little disappointed there's no photos of yours Jessica, based on your avatar photo.

The lengths people go to get honey in the wild is something else. It's very romantic but part of me wants them to be taught how to keep bees so they don't have to fall to their deaths every so often.

Oh well, I guess it's like chocolate in that way.

[quote author=trollofthedungeon link=topic=6326.msg90780#msg90780 date=1336507997

And yes evolution does mean exactly that survival of the fittest. Have you actually read any Darwin or are you just repeating your schools indoctrination?
[/quote]

all you want to do is play definition games.

Definition of words isn't a game. Fittest means to fit into an environment. Someone with a tendency towards obesity would fit better in an environment of low food availability. Devolution also isn't a biological term since it denotes direction to evolution. Evolution has no direction, there is no better or worse. If the poor stupid people in your examples have more kids then they are fitting better in their environment (which includes government support of them and their children) then successful people are, again "fitting" meaning passing on genetic information.

I don't consider soaking very intensive processing.

I mean fuck, if we can't even nail down the position and velocity of an electron then we've got a looooooooooooooooong way to go before we know shit about shit.

I see the quantum mechanics conundrum in a different light. Knowing the position and velocity of an electron at the same time (which is what can't now be done, they can both be known separately at any given time) is just about the only thing that there doesn't seem to be any headway in knowing. And this is cherry picked out of all of science to say something like "we don't know anything" which I think is an attempt to discredit a lot of real knowledge in order to disorient people into believing the ideas of the person making that claim. In this case it's AV, who like I'm sure everyone knows made a career out of claiming things that he didn't make an effort to prove, whether or not he could. He just says things, some people believe it for their own reasons (none of which are ever evidence) and people give him money for books and consultations. He's certainly not the first and won't be the last to make a career that way. Say what you want about scientists, that they don't know "anything" (as you use a computer based on science driven building techniques) but at least their stated goal is to convince through evidence rather than story telling.

I'd actually be very surprised if anyone who uses the electron thing has actually read any quantum theory science. I'll eat my hat if you got that from reading science and not from watching "What the Bleep Do We Know" or something similar.

Haven't read the whole thread but it follows that if this is possible then it could be reproduced to demonstrate it, right?

My biggest problem with this study is that it is not a controlled study. It states in the abstract that it's an observational study, which means it's not testing any hypothesis. There are no controls, the people who follow this diet know they're doing it. Not only that but the way they go about it is placebo on steroids. In the methods it states that they gave people Halleluya Acres writings which is raw vegan propaganda of a religious nature. So they gave these people propaganda that says all health problems are caused by eating animal products and processed food and then they proceed to do the best they can to follow the recommended dietary regimen for a few weeks, and they say they subjectively feel better. I'm trying to think of a softer way to look at dietary intervention and I can't think of one.

The whole idea of an intervention study is to not induce a placebo effect, and this group turns that idea on it's head by giving to the subjects propaganda saying what they're about to do will cure them. I find it hard to believe that a group of scientists couldn't find the time or had the writing skills to cobble together a raw vegan dietary regimen for their subjects themselves and had to rely on a religious propaganda booklet. The more I think about it the more I find this study one of the worst I've ever read. I just checked where it was published, an alternative medicine journal. I bet they have some high standards for scientific rigor over there. I just realized now there's two studies, the Hallelejah Acres and the Hippocrates Health Institute.

So in the one study they give the subjects information that says if they follow this diet they will get better and lo and behold the subjects say they feel better after a few weeks. Then in the other one they find that people who went to a health resort had better mood after. Well that about proves it huh, who has ever heard of someone going to a resort for three weeks and having an improved mood afterwards? It must be the raw vegan diet, not the fact that they aren't at work, taking care of kids, making their own meals etc. Seriously both of those studies are beyond rubbish imo.

What isn't healthy in the short term? Not eating? I could feel fine on a fast food diet for a few weeks.

I don't pay close attention but my hairline looks the same to me. I never really paid much attention but I think I developed a widows peak during my vegetarian and raw vegan experimental time, but that could have just been a coincidence.

That blip about the fruit eating vs. fish eating leading to larger brains in human evolution is not the "underpinning" of Ray Peat's health ideas. What part of that short statement says anything about using sucrose, aspirin and exogenous hormones? I think you're still hung up  on the evolution angle being necessary which to me doesn't make sense. That's like saying that if cars were built to run on gasoline, which we know they are, there is no possible fuel mixture that could work better, and that if you are designing new fuel you have to somehow link it to the traditional fuel used before. All evolution gives you is the increased likelihood that an organism will be well adapted to a food that it has access to due to natural selection. Of course at every juncture in evolution there is a point where food availability changed or the organism changed to take advantage of a new niche, it's all up in the air all the time but looks stagnant from where we're sitting, like how a forest looks stagnant but is really a war field with plants and insects attempting genocide, altering the land in their favor etc.