Thank you for this brilliant and thorough discussion! I'm a recent advocate of keto and carnivore, and feel blessed to have been enlightened on the right path! if only ore people could be exposed to this info!
This is directed to the author of this post. I'm curious if you've read nutrition and physical degeneration by Dr. Price. My holistic dentist has a copy on the bookshelf in his waiting room and I was skimming through it the other day. I actually found it quite interesting that many of the villages he investigated that had excellent dental health were eating agricultural not hunter-gatherer diets. For example, the citizens of a village in Switzerland at the time were largely subsisting on rye bread and cows milk. The author noted that they eat meat about once a week. They also weren't eating many vegetables or fruit much of the year because of the climate. I think it's notable that they chose not to eat meat more frequently even though there was likely plenty of game available in their region.
Thank you for the excellent article. People are a lot mobile comparing to the older generations. When I discuss “healthy diet” with people, I keep the evolutionary background in mind. Your article provides a strong foundation eating like your ancestors.
Yes, it is a classic text worth owning. One general pattern Price found is that all of the healthy pre-modern cultures he studied ate from at least one of the following three categories of animal food:
Maybe plants are made more easily digestible by cooking, but I don't think that holds true for meat. There is a large community of raw carnivores online. And having eaten my meat raw for the last 6 months, I would anecdotally state that it is much more easily digested.
And to your scavenger point, I haven't been sick or suffered any infections... even after leaving the meat in the fridge, uncovered on a rack for up to a week. I've left it out on the counter loosely covered to warm up. By all modern standards, it should be covered in bacteria. Yet, I'm still alive and thriving. ;)
I'm always hesitant to consider the diets of modern hunter-gatherer tribes as being representative of anything of the past due to the overall die-off of big game, but overall I think the correlation between latitude and animal foods would hold.
The drive to conserve energy would dictate that if you could get enough calories by just eating fruits if they're available compared to the risk:reward ratio of hunting big game, why not?
Fruit tastes good without much need to process further, so again, why not? Same for honey. (With the caveat that modern fruits bread almost no resemblance to ancestral varietals.)
I think the degree of greens would have varied seasonally, and/or been mostly for "medicinal purposes," and/or been fermented to some degree after burying them in the ground, or fermenting them in animal stomachs (or just eating stomach contents of big game), etc.
In the modern context, how much plant material/fiber is appropriate is going to be highly individual given the changes in our gut due to all the antibiotics and exposure to food-grade surfactants, etc.
It would make sense if we retained the ability to eat fruit, but grains are sort of a recent "hack" of that system.
Would we expect some meat + maybe dairy (if that's your type) + fruit to be a good diet then?
And is there something lacking in grains as a major food source, or is it not merely a lack, but active anti-nutrients?
It always seems to me like "bioavailability" and "protein quality" aren't enough to explain the bad health of so many vegans. The protein "quality" is supposedly only about 20% lower. Even people who eat a little meat seem much healthier than those who eat no meat, although many micronutrients are allegedly very lacking in animal products, even if they're more available?
Humans and other apes are actually more sensitive to fructose than other mammals due to a loss-of-function mutation in the gene encoding the uricase enzyme (which breaks down uric acid). This mutation probably helped ancient apes survive starvation by boosting their ability to store energy as fat and glycogen from fructose.
Hm, "sensitive to fructose." Being unable to store fructose as fat actually kinda sounds like what the honey diet/peater types are doing. Of course it also seems to go more wrong than starches, in those who can't deal with it well.
Thank you for this brilliant and thorough discussion! I'm a recent advocate of keto and carnivore, and feel blessed to have been enlightened on the right path! if only ore people could be exposed to this info!
Thank you. I suspect you'll be interested in my upcoming podcast with the authors of this new study: https://x.com/trikomes/status/1864733327477084620
It will likely get posted next week.
Many thanks for that
This is directed to the author of this post. I'm curious if you've read nutrition and physical degeneration by Dr. Price. My holistic dentist has a copy on the bookshelf in his waiting room and I was skimming through it the other day. I actually found it quite interesting that many of the villages he investigated that had excellent dental health were eating agricultural not hunter-gatherer diets. For example, the citizens of a village in Switzerland at the time were largely subsisting on rye bread and cows milk. The author noted that they eat meat about once a week. They also weren't eating many vegetables or fruit much of the year because of the climate. I think it's notable that they chose not to eat meat more frequently even though there was likely plenty of game available in their region.
Thank you for the excellent article. People are a lot mobile comparing to the older generations. When I discuss “healthy diet” with people, I keep the evolutionary background in mind. Your article provides a strong foundation eating like your ancestors.
Yes, it is a classic text worth owning. One general pattern Price found is that all of the healthy pre-modern cultures he studied ate from at least one of the following three categories of animal food:
- Seafood,
- Dairy
- Organ meats
The treatise on the proper human diet! So thorough and objective. Most articles on this subject are blatantly biased. Thank you.
Maybe plants are made more easily digestible by cooking, but I don't think that holds true for meat. There is a large community of raw carnivores online. And having eaten my meat raw for the last 6 months, I would anecdotally state that it is much more easily digested.
And to your scavenger point, I haven't been sick or suffered any infections... even after leaving the meat in the fridge, uncovered on a rack for up to a week. I've left it out on the counter loosely covered to warm up. By all modern standards, it should be covered in bacteria. Yet, I'm still alive and thriving. ;)
There are one billion vegetarian Hindus, granted not peak health most of them, but reproductively quite successful.
Can you fit one billion carnivore humans on the entire earth?
I'm always hesitant to consider the diets of modern hunter-gatherer tribes as being representative of anything of the past due to the overall die-off of big game, but overall I think the correlation between latitude and animal foods would hold.
The drive to conserve energy would dictate that if you could get enough calories by just eating fruits if they're available compared to the risk:reward ratio of hunting big game, why not?
Fruit tastes good without much need to process further, so again, why not? Same for honey. (With the caveat that modern fruits bread almost no resemblance to ancestral varietals.)
I think the degree of greens would have varied seasonally, and/or been mostly for "medicinal purposes," and/or been fermented to some degree after burying them in the ground, or fermenting them in animal stomachs (or just eating stomach contents of big game), etc.
In the modern context, how much plant material/fiber is appropriate is going to be highly individual given the changes in our gut due to all the antibiotics and exposure to food-grade surfactants, etc.
It would make sense if we retained the ability to eat fruit, but grains are sort of a recent "hack" of that system.
Would we expect some meat + maybe dairy (if that's your type) + fruit to be a good diet then?
And is there something lacking in grains as a major food source, or is it not merely a lack, but active anti-nutrients?
It always seems to me like "bioavailability" and "protein quality" aren't enough to explain the bad health of so many vegans. The protein "quality" is supposedly only about 20% lower. Even people who eat a little meat seem much healthier than those who eat no meat, although many micronutrients are allegedly very lacking in animal products, even if they're more available?
Humans and other apes are actually more sensitive to fructose than other mammals due to a loss-of-function mutation in the gene encoding the uricase enzyme (which breaks down uric acid). This mutation probably helped ancient apes survive starvation by boosting their ability to store energy as fat and glycogen from fructose.
Hm, "sensitive to fructose." Being unable to store fructose as fat actually kinda sounds like what the honey diet/peater types are doing. Of course it also seems to go more wrong than starches, in those who can't deal with it well.
Why does Ted Kaczynski have a plate of food on his head?
You might enjoy my perspective on the connection between diet and our obesity epidemic: https://carbsyndrome.com/obesity-it-is-all-in-your-head/
William L. Wilson, MD: docww@aol.com