OT Primitive diet

I don't know where this guy gets his ideas about not eating potatoes and yams. There are plenty of hunter-gatherer cultures (Australian Aboriginals come to mind) that eat them and know how to process them to remove all the toxins (cooking directly in a fire, or leeching them out in water, etc.)

Watch Ray Mears' Wild Food program (or read the book), they go into depth about carbs and how important they were to ancient hunter-gatherers, even the toxic ones. True, they're not very nutritious, but you get instant energy that you can use to get more nutritious food.

I didn't read the whole thing but it seems like another version of the Atkins diet rather than a treatise on what our hunter-gatherer ancestors ate.
 
Regarding water intake, the "64 ounces of water a day" rule is a load of bull... check this out: http://calorielab.com/news/2006/05/28/8-glasses-of-water-a-diet-urban-legend/

excerpt: "“I want to emphasize that I found no scientific evidence to back up 8 x 8,” Valtin says. “I’m talking about randomized trials published in peer-reviewed journals.” Nor did he find a definitive origin for the 8×8 recommendation, though he suspects a misreading of a 1945 federal report. That report said people need about 64 ounces of fluids a day, adding that much of it is contained in food — a caveat Valtin believes was overlooked."

I used to have a link to the original document published by Valtin / Dartmouth, but I guess it got left on another computer. I was arguing against the idea of "if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated" before I ever stumbled across Valtin's research. Think about it - if you're (voluntarily) shivering, are you already hypothermic? If you're sweating, are you already experiencing heat exhaustion? If you're hungry, are you already hypoglycemic? If you're tired, are you already sleep deprived? Of course not, because messages about maintaining homeostasis get sent to our brain *before* we reach a critical state, giving us a chance to do something about it. Why, then, would the body's ability to warn us about possible future dehydration lag so far behind? Answer is, it doesn't. Drink when you're thirsty.

As far as whether or not humans evolved... here's a comprehensive collection of creationist claims (not saying anyone here's a creationist, it's just that creationists tend to be the most vocal opponents), each one a link that leads to its scientific refutation. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html Evolution is not easy to understand. It's a complex topic with very complex and extensive data that really needs some undergraduate-level study to fully appreciate, kind of like nuclear physics, aerospace engineering, etc.

That aside, we know from the fossil record that H sapiens sapiens (modern humans) have been around for 40,000-90,000 years (it differs according to area). For all but the most recent 5k of that, we ate what the land provided without the use of farming - the paleolithic diet. It dovetails with the idea that low-carb is good for you - the various bits of us that control blood sugar and store fat are obviously not adapted to dealing with large amounts of fast-burning refined carbs.

I used to think that calories were calories and that it didn't matter what form I got them in. I was also tired all the time, or would bounce around between tired and feeling fine. Then I learned enough about what the body does with different kinds of carbs to motivate me to experiment - I stopped eating cookies, crackers, and the like in quantity, and made sure I was getting 'real food' for lunch. Huge difference, not tired anymore, thus a permanent change in diet. If I feel the need to binge I just eat dessert before a meal proper, which seems to slow down the blood sugar spike.

Everyone will react a little differently to different combinations of foods. If anyone is interested in experimenting in whatever way, I'd suggest trying the change for a minimum of 2 weeks. That will give you a good solid chunk of data to use.
 
I changed my diet to more primitive/natural food, too. Lost around 40 pounds during the last 3 months - while still drinking one litre of beer per day! (sometimes more) Coffee with cane sugar, too!
I mainly changed from fat meat to fish (raw, smoked etc., doesn't have to be lean), also I eat a lot of apples, pears, bananas, oranges, tomatoes, cucumber, radish, potatoes etc.. I stopped eating raw carrots, they taste like sh!t and aren't that healthy... I eat as little bread as possible.

The results: Way better digestion, better fitness (OK, I'm jogging every single day, but I've been doing this for years), studying/learning is going way easier, I sleep better and I'm much happier. I eat junk food like pizza or hamburgers from time to time (depends on what my friends are doing) - and even then I never wish to go back again. For me, it was the right thing to do.
 
B-about the water thing...since i started cross country in the fall of last year, i have been drinking about a minimum of 2 liters of liquids a day, most of it being water (and the balance typically being milk). i often drink more than that. i do have to pee quite often, but i haven't been sick since i started either...even when half the school is full of sick people, and being in very close contact with someone that was sick.

in general i suppose i try to stick to the "if it doesn't rot or sprout" rule, but i never had a name for it before. i just try to avoid highly processed types of foods. i have also been trying to avoid corn syrup and other not-entirely-natural sugars...but i enjoy pizza and icecream and candy and the like somewhat often.

all in all, its pretty interesting to think about.
 
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if you missed lunch, or had to work late,
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:D Like every day...:D

Im going to have to do some more research into this, it sure feels like the right idea.:thumbup:
 
Sounds like the Atkins diet to me, but presented in a way that makes sense unlike the Atkins system.

Alot of truth in that write up, mixed with quite a bit of bunk "science".

The suggestion to discuss it with a nutritionist is a good one but frankly, most would turn you away from it or laugh at you outright.

Not saying it doesn't have merit, just that I think it needs to be looked into a bit further.
 
I teach people I work with the "if you are thirsty you are dehydrated" as a bit of a social engineering tactic. following Bernoulli's first law of eduaction "a simple lie is easier to teach than a complex truth" (yes the aerodynamics guy) If they don't let themselves get thirsty they stay hydrated, if they don't then by the time they get around to maybe finding a drink, and drinking just enough to take the edge off, they get into trouble. plus with kids, who can go from fine to heat stroke in a matter of hours, I'd rather scare them into drinking more, than sending them to hospital.

Shotgunner, most might, but I'd hazard that most of us would not listen to those types of people anyway. I'm sure if you looked, you could find one, or even a sport med student looking for a research project...
 
FWIW, I am not in any way endorsing the primitive foods diet. I didn't read the supplied link, so have no idea what it contains. The things I have stated come from my own research on food and diet.

While there are many 'diets' out there, they are often awful. The thing I am suggesting, is that people research or embark upon a 'diet' in the true meaning of the word, a pattern of eating, which embraces whole grains, fruits, vegetables. Meat isn't necessarily bad, neither are carbs, it really depends on how you get them.

The reason I have even said anything is that the way I eat could be said to be fairly primitive, due to the lack of processed or refined foods. People can be considerably healthier simply by proper diet, despite what some may claim. Just like plants require proper soil, fertilization, and minerals, people require proper nutrition.

This does fit in this particular forum really well, because proper diet will let you adapt easily to wild foods, and also ease physical conditions in an actual survival situation, due to increased thinking ability and lessened concern over hunger/thirst.
 
Actually I just went and read the article and frankly I am pretty skeptical...

They all have straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them.

Straight teeth and perfect eyesight? Of all the hunter-gatherer pictures I've seen, most have been missing a bunch of teeth. I couldn't speculate on eyesight but one of the more effective ways I can think of to avoid Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and cancer would be to die of disease, famine, or murder before any of these become a serious issue!

And as far as depression or schizophrenia go, well, I would guess most hunter gatherer tribes can't really afford to indulge themselves in depression, and they are probably too small to have a good representative sample for something like schizophrenia.

The diet may be good for you but the most reliable way to avoid most of these problems is not just to EAT like a hunter-gather, but to LIVE like one...including dying at age 40.
 
siguy said:
B-about the water thing...since i started cross country in the fall of last year, i have been drinking about a minimum of 2 liters of liquids a day, most of it being water (and the balance typically being milk). i often drink more than that. i do have to pee quite often, but i haven't been sick since i started either...even when half the school is full of sick people, and being in very close contact with someone that was sick.

in general i suppose i try to stick to the "if it doesn't rot or sprout" rule, but i never had a name for it before. i just try to avoid highly processed types of foods. i have also been trying to avoid corn syrup and other not-entirely-natural sugars...but i enjoy pizza and icecream and candy and the like somewhat often.

all in all, its pretty interesting to think about.
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You are on the right track, to an extent. Water gives your cells an avenue to get rid of things that can help make you sick. Exercise does as well. These, along w/ your age, are all in your favor.

The problems will come when your intake of pizza and ice cream outdo your body's ability to rid itself of the junk they contain w/ your current level of exercise/health/hydration, etc. It can be a slow process to lose health, and can be similarly slow to gain it back.

The best way to illustrate is a house or a room, kept clean by a person. If they are constantly bombarded w/ packages, they will be able to get rid of them in a timely fashion, moving things they need to the proper location and garbage out of the house, and keep their house clean. If the house is clean, they will be efficient in moving goods from one area to another, and removing trash. If they have too much garbage being brought in, they lose efficiency. Things start getting stacked in closets and hallways. Life would go on in a seemingly normal fashion, but they would be less able to deal with the garbage, and less able to put important things where they need to go. If things did not change, the garbage would be in walkways, fill up the kitchen, etc. Important goods would have no place to be kept, and getting rid of the garbage would be very difficult and time consuming. You can see that in this scenario, it would take a considerable amount of time to get the house cleaned back up and in top shape.

Your health is the same way. As long as you keep the amount of incoming garbage low, your body can deal with it. Too much for too long, and things get out of hand.
 
Steve Watts went on the paleo diet.

He lost over 150 pounds I think. pretty amazing when you see the pics of how he used to be.
 
misanthropist said:
I couldn't speculate on eyesight but one of the more effective ways I can think of to avoid Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and cancer would be to die of disease, famine, or murder before any of these become a serious issue!
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That's pretty much what I was thinking, too. I heard someone say once that every man will get prostate cancer, provided he lives long enough to develop it. I'm certainly not going to knock unprocessed foods and a plant-rich diet, but the intro of that article had me thinking "Snake Oil Salespitch."

These things go in cycles, perhaps because it's so easy to take one small study, flawed or not, and blow it up into a media frenzy. Remember in the 80's when pasta was supposed to cure everything? All the fattest people I know eat tons of pasta. For that matter, the sickliest folks I know are vegetarians.

I'm not entirely sold on low-fat or low-carb diets, either. Most of my forebears ate whole milk, whole eggs, salt and butter, red meat, homebaked bread, sweets and cookies every day of their lives, finances allowing. Mind you, none of them was a 300# glutton, and most worked pretty hard at physical jobs, so of course that's a factor as well. They all lived well into their 70's or 80's(with a little help from modern medicine, too) and for most, it was the alcohol and tobacco that killed them, not their diets.
 
Interesting because every historical account that I have read says that when the first Englishmen came into contact with the Indians of the Northeast, they noticed that, aside from having a real obsession with personal cleanliness by European standards (Europeans actually didn't stop bathing until they had denuded much of the forests in many places and had to use what fuel they had for cooking and heating rather than heating bath water) the Indians were larger and seemed much healthier....that is until they started catching diseases that they had not been exposed to for at least 12,000-15,000 years while the bugs mutated. What, you may ask, was the core of their diet? Things like "feed" corn, squash, beans and potatoes. Paleolithic man, on the other hand was probably lucky if he lived to be 30 and Paleolithic woman was probably lucky if she lived past her 21st birthday if she happened to have any children. Man was likely in a constant battle against exinction for much of his existence. Current research indicates that there may have been as few as 15,000 Neaderthals living in Europe at any time. Their problem was that they needed 5000 calories a day just to survive, as opposed the 2000+ that a normal sized modern man would need today. And we are larger than our early Homo Sapiens ancestors in most cases because of our protein rich diet.
 
misanthropist is right. The very first paragraph in that article is bullshit, and sets up a broken premise for the rest of the page. There are no citations for this data. And presuming they are true, they are pretty easily explained away. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, and cancer are common for all people who reach an age most hunter gatherers never reach. Anything other than "perfect eyesight", strength and speed will result in premature death. They are likely slim because they have trouble attaining all the calories they need and metabolizing nutrition they get. The diet "coded into our genes" means humans can eat almost anything and thrive as a result. Humans are especially hearty and for the most part don't require a very specialized diet.
 
James_Terrio said:
That's pretty much what I was thinking, too. I heard someone say once that every man will get prostate cancer, provided he lives long enough to develop it. I'm certainly not going to knock unprocessed foods and a plant-rich diet, but the intro of that article had me thinking "Snake Oil Salespitch."
These things go in cycles, perhaps because it's so easy to take one small study, flawed or not, and blow it up into a media frenzy. Remember in the 80's when pasta was supposed to cure everything? All the fattest people I know eat tons of pasta. For that matter, the sickliest folks I know are vegetarians.

I'm not entirely sold on low-fat or low-carb diets, either. Most of my forebears ate whole milk, whole eggs, salt and butter, red meat, homebaked bread, sweets and cookies every day of their lives, finances allowing. Mind you, none of them was a 300# glutton, and most worked pretty hard at physical jobs, so of course that's a factor as well. They all lived well into their 70's or 80's(with a little help from modern medicine, too) and for most, it was the alcohol and tobacco that killed them, not their diets.
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Most of these folks back then never lived long enough for these diseases to become a big issue. If they actually got them, they would likely die pretty quickly.
 
By the way. Other than the medical advances of the last 150 year or so, the one event that had the most dramatic effect on the health and longevity of Post-Roman Europeans was.......wait for it...........the introduction of new, high calorie content foods from the New World in the 16th and 17th Centuries, most noticeably potatoes.
 
jdm61 said:
Most of these folks back then never lived long enough for these diseases to become a big issue. If they actually got them, they would likely die pretty quickly.
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Joe, I'm not talking about the ancients. I'm talking about my own grandparents and great-grandparents. Moderation is the point.
 
James_Terrio said:
Joe, I'm not talking about the ancients. I'm talking about my own grandparents and great-grandparents. Moderation is the point.
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Actually, in the case of our grandparents, the trick was eat the same amount of calories as you burn doing hard work every day and don't live at McDonalds and 7-11:D
 
jdm, you sound surprised that a new disease would kill people... it's been pretty well proven that when people grow up with diseases present, they survive them, than if they meet them at adulthood. child immune systems are very adaptable, most adults loose that ability. I'd also like to know where you get your info, not that it is wrong, just very different to what I've been taught.

as for any discussion of true ancients, until we have more than a very small population sample to study, I've got the debate on ignore. there is not enough info to definitively say anything about pre-recorded history humans.
 
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