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spEEdfrEEk

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  1. All good ideas. I can set the idle higher and prevent it from stalling, but it's an abnormally high idle to do so. Levers are stock and adjusted pretty well. I'll bleed the clutch check and that first. Then try the chemtool (never used it before) and see if that helps. If so, I'll prolly overhaul the carbs. I hope it's not a bearing issue. That would mean more work than I have the time for right now.. TJ
  2. '97 Relevant mods: DynoJet stage 1, K&N Filter, Jardine RT1 slipons. Thing has been in perfect tune for years. (did the dyno runs myself at a local dealership) This quirk is fairly recent, like within the last month or so. I'm just hoping it's not gearbox or counterbalancer related (or anything cryptic like that). I don't see how it could be valve clearance, and it's definitely not a CCT issue. (no rattles or clacking, etc.) TJ
  3. I'm getting a slight "lugging" of the engine in neutral. Doesn't happen as long as the clutch is in. If I pull the clutch in any gear (including neutral) everything is hunky dory at idle. However, if I'm in neutral and I don't squeeze the clutch, the motor will start to lug a bit. It will even stall if the engine is cold. Thoughts? TJ
  4. Yikes! He has the worst form, ever, on the one arm military press with dumbbell. You're making a big mistake if you let your spine get into that sort of position. Your spine should always be in lordosis if you intend to hoist anything over your head (IMO) TJ
  5. I can't tell by looking just at that page. I'd actually want to see the recommendations. Bear in mind, alot of these questions are already answered by the sports medicine community. As I've mentioned before, most success comes from training holistically and with periodization. (emphasis on recovery and nutrition as well) TJ
  6. Stay away from grains in general. There's no particular "safe" grain or even "safer" grain. Grains are the most allergenic substances (barring dairy) that you can actually consume. They wreak havoc on your immune system (in subtle ways) and are attributed to being the cause of several degenerative diseases: arthritis, diabetes, etc. Wheat is one of the only monoploidal things on the planet -- how's that for unnatural. The only reason wheat, corn, and soy are so popular today is not because they're healthy -- it's because they are cash cows that can be grown almost anywhere in the world and turned into any type of processed food product. TJ
  7. Coconut oil is one of the best oils you can possibly cook with. It maintains it's saturated state even when raised to high temperatures (like frying) without de-naturing. It is MUCH safer to cook with than the unsaturated (hydrogenated) oils like canola and safflower. The medium chain triglycerides that are in coconut oil are super metabolic -- they give you almost as much energy (as easily) as glucose. That's why I drink 1/4 cup of pure coconut milk every day 2 hours before I hit the gym to lift. The benefits of coconut oil are many.. TJ
  8. That's actually a dangerous signal to send your body. The last thing you want it to do is to adapt to metabolizing proteins (amino acids). 1) it's hard on the kidneys 2) it leads to catabolism and lower resting metabolic rate You should eat a diet higher in fat if you want your body to get better at metabolizing fats. (train it to do what you want it to do) Do a web search for something called "The Fat Fast". That's the closest thing your going to find to something that "jumpstarts" fat metabolism. TJ
  9. Best sources are from roots such as Ma-Huang. Twin Lab makes supplements that have the correct proportion of Ephedra & Caffeine (from Ma-Huang and Guarana). You can add a baby aspirin to that.. By the way, you won't "gain back the weight" when you stop taking the stack. The stack doesn't "make you lose weight". It repairs your own natural thermogenesis. (or thermogenic response). The best way to maintain it, after stopping the stack, is to always expose yourself to the cold whenever you can. This includes skipping the heater and big warm jackets in the winter time. I do my best to go without warm clothing in the winter -- unless the temp drops below freezing. TJ
  10. Don't weigh yourself every day -- the results are misleading. Weigh yourself once a week at exactly the same time in the morning (before eating breakfast). That will give you the most consistent results. I don't use a scale much any more, but when I did, it was always at 8am saturday morning. (for instance) TJ
  11. I'm actually up about 10 lbs.. Why? Trying to put on a bit more mass. I lost a ton of weight (and muscle) trying to get back into motocross racing. Went from a lean 200 down to 183. Big mistake. Lost quite a bit of strength and it still left me too heavy to compete with the 150 lb. guys in the 250 cc vet class. Oh well.. So now I'm full steam ahead on a growth program. I plan to take it up to about 215 and cut to 210. The heaviest I've ever been was 217 when I tried a stint in full on body-building (normally I lift for strength -- not size). Bad idea -- even though I was lean, my blood pressure went way up. Yes, it's true -- muscle and fat weight put similar stresses on the cardiovascular system. So now, it's back to my usual -- strength as a focus, but keep it under 210 lbs. total. TJ
  12. Won't be very effective. The ephedra that actually makes the ECA stack work is not the same as the synthetic ephedrine that's in asthma stuff.. Tell her to get some natural ephedra -- or even try some yohimbine, which has a better thermogenic effect on women. TJ
  13. If you're trying to get lean while getting stronger then put the cardio (short 10-15 min sessions) after your lifting. Why? 1) That cardio will help deplete the last of your glucose/glycogen stores and you'll run mostly on free-fatty acids (or ketones) afterwards 2) Taking the day _completely_ off from activity in between lifting days will help you recover faster and make more progress gaining strength. TJ
  14. One of the _original_ low-carb diets was done by an individual who had a strong propensity for hard liquor. I can't remember the guys name, but I'll try to dig up the article. I think it dated from the 1860's or so.. TJ
  15. Wow, I had forgotten I posted this on here. Perhaps I should clean it up so that it's actually formatted properly (and readable). The advice is correct but the program is just a jumble of text! ha ha. I'll fix it soon enough and repost.. TJ
  16. Yep, it's pretty much as bad as you're thinking it is. Wise choice. There's good research out there that implies dairy can cause mucus to form in the lungs, etc. Some believe that's what caused flo-jo's early demise. Egg protein is absolutely the best. It has the highest bio-availability, and that's what we need when we try to recover from sessions at the gym. There are companies now selling calcium mixes in containers similar to the protein powders. It's mostly marrow, which is the BEST way to get calcium. It's how paleo-folks did it. You got it.. Sardines. Anything with real bone is the best. The marrow powder is good when you get tired of the little fish Sorry so slow bud, I've been busier than I can even comment on. 8) TJ 8)
  17. Congrats bud -- major accomplishment! :cool: TJ :cool:
  18. Harbanger, or something like that.. I got 'em cheap from Academy :cool: TJ :cool:
  19. CATEGORY: diets/vegetarian TECHNICAL: ** SUMMARY: This is part two of one of the most profound documents I had ever read at the time I found it. It is written by Ward Nicholson who has done a tremendous amount of research into human diets based on evolution. As I said in the first part, Nicholson, initially practiced a type of diet known as the "hygienic" diet -- which is a strict vegetarian/vegan diet in which everything is consumed raw and unprocessed. I'm quite sure that you too will get as much out of this document as I did. And, after you've had a chance to read through it (and the remaining parts), I bet you too will find his argument pretty convincing. And, of course, that arguement is that human beings could never have evolved the way we did if we had been vegetarians/vegans or frutarians. Possibly the most profound statement, and one that I've repeated, is that most people have forgotten that modern drugs only masquerade the symptoms of an illness. A real cure can be sought through reverting back to a natural human-evolution type diet. The discussion on the use of fire for cooking is pretty interesting too. ------------------------------------------------------------- Part 2 of our Visit with Ward Nicholson Fire And Cooking In Human Evolution, Rates Of Genetic Adaptation To Change, Hunter-Gatherers, And Diseases In The Wild Health & Beyond: Ward, in Part 1 of our interview, you discussed the extensive evidence showing that primitive human beings as well as almost all of the primates today have included animal foods such as flesh or insects in their diets. Why haven't Natural Hygienists and other vegetarians looked into all this information? Ward Nicholson: My guess is that: (1) Most aren't aware that paleoanthropologists have by now assembled a considerable amount of data about our evolutionary past related to diet. But more importantly, I think it has to do with psychological barriers, such as: (2) Many Hygienists assume they don't have to look because the subjective "animal model" for raw-food naturalism makes it "obvious" what our natural diet is, and therefore the paleontologists' evidence must therefore be in error, or biased by present cultural eating practices. Or: (3) They don't want to look, perhaps because they're afraid of what they might see. I think in spite of what most Natural Hygienists will tell you, they are really more wedded to certain specific details of the Hygienic system that remain prevalent (i.e., raw-food vegetarianism, food-combining, etc.) than they are truly concerned with whether those details follow logically from underlying Hygienic principles. The basic principle of Natural Hygiene is that the body is a self-maintaining, self-regulating, self-repairing organism that naturally maintains its own health when it is given food and other living conditions appropriate to its natural biological adaptation. In and of itself, this does not tell you what foods to eat. That has to be determined by a review of the best evidence we have available. So while the principles of Hygiene as a logical system do not change, our knowledge of the appropriate details that follow from those principles may and probably will change from time to time--since science is a process of systematically elucidating more "known" information from what used to be unknown. Thus the accuracy of our knowledge is to some extent time-based, dependent on the accumulation of evidence to provide a more inclusive view of "truth" which unfortunately is probably never absolute, but--as far as human beings are concerned--relative to the state of our knowledge. Science simply tries to bridge the knowledge gap. And a hallmark of closing the knowledge gap through scientific discovery is openness to change and refinements based on the accumulation of evidence. Open-mindedness is really openness to change. Just memorizing details doesn't mean much in and of itself. It's how that information is organized, or seen, or interpreted, or related to, that means something. What's interesting to me is that the evolutionary diet is not so starkly different from the Hygienic diet. Much of it validates important elements of the Hygienic view. It is very similar in terms of getting plenty of fresh fruits and veggies, some nuts and seeds, and so forth, except for the addition of the smaller role of flesh and other amounts of animal food (at least compared to the much larger role of plant foods) in the diet. It's one exception. We have actually done fairly well in approximating humanity's "natural" or "original" diet, except we have been in error about this particular item, and gotten exceedingly fundamentalist about it when there is nothing in the body of Hygienic principles themselves that would outlaw meat if it's in our evolutionary adaptation. But for some reason, even though Natural Hygiene is not based on any "ethical" basis for vegetarianism (officially at least), this particular item seems to completely freak most Hygienists out. Somehow we have made a religion out of dietary details that have been the hand-me-downs of past Hygienists working with limited scientific information. They did the best they could given the knowledge they had available to them then, and we should be grateful for their hard work. But today the rank and file of Natural Hygiene has largely forgotten Herbert Shelton's rallying cry, "Let us have the truth, though the heavens fall." Natural Hygiene was alive and vital in Shelton's time because he was actively keeping abreast of scientific knowledge and aware of the need to modify his previous views if scientific advances showed them to be inadequate. But since Shelton retired from the scene, many people in the mainstream of Hygiene have begun to let their ideas stagnate and become fossilized. The rest of the dietary world is beginning to pass us by in terms of scientific knowledge. As I see it, there remain only two things Natural Hygiene grasps that the rest of the more progressive camps in the dietary world still don't: (1) An understanding of the fundamental health principle that outside measures (drugs, surgery, etc.) never truly "cure" degenerative health problems. In spite of the grandiose hopes and claims that they do, and the aura of research breakthroughs, their function is really to serve as crutches, which can of course be helpful and may truly be needed in some circumstances. But the only true healing is from within by a body that has a large capacity, within certain limits, to heal and regenerate itself when given all of its essential biological requirements--and nothing more or less which would hamper its homeostatic functioning. The body's regenerative (homeostatic) abilities are still commonly unrecognized today (often classed as "unexplained recoveries" or--in people fortunate enough to recover from cancer--as "spontaneous remission") because the population at large is so far from eating anything even approaching a natural diet that would allow their bodies to return to some kind of normal health, that it is just not seen very often outside limited pockets of people seriously interested in approximating our natural diet. And the other thing is: (2) Hygienists are also keenly aware of the power of fasting to help provide ideal conditions under which such self-healing can occur. But the newer branch of science called "darwinian medicine" is slowly beginning (albeit with certain missteps) to grasp the principle of self healing, or probably more correctly, at least the understanding that degenerative diseases arise as a result of behavior departing from what our evolutionary past has adapted us to. They see the negative side of how departing from our natural diet and environment can result in degenerative disease, but they do not understand that the reverse--regenerating health by returning to our pristine diet and lifestyle, without drugs or other "crutches"--is also possible, again, within certain limits, but those limits are less than most people believe. In some ways, though, Hygiene now resembles a religion as much as it does science, because people seem to want "eternal" truths they can grab onto with absolute certainly. Unfortunately, however, knowledge does not work that way. Truth may not change, but our knowledge of it certainly does as our awareness of it shifts or expands. Once again: The principles of Hygiene may not change, but the details will always be subject to refinement. Speaking of such details subject to refinement, I know you've been sitting on some very suggestive evidence to add further fuel to the fire-and-cooking debate now raging between the raw-foodist and "conservative-cooking" camps within Hygiene. Please bring us up-to-date on what the evolutionary picture has to say about this. I'd be happy to. But before we get into the evolutionary viewpoint, I want to back up a bit first and briefly discuss the strange situation in the Hygienic community occurring right now over the raw foods vs. cooking-of-some-starch-foods debate. The thing that fascinates me about this whole brouhaha is the way the two sides justify their positions, each of which has a strong point, but also a telling blind spot. Now since most Natural Hygienists don't have any clear picture of the evolutionary past based on science for what behavior is natural, the "naturalistic" model used by many Hygienists to argue for eating all foods raw does so on a subjective basis--i.e., what I have called "the animal model for raw-food naturalism." The idea being that we are too blinded culturally by modern food practices involving cooking, and to be more objective we should look at the other animals--none of whom cook their food--so neither should we. Now it's true the "subjective raw-food naturalists" are being philosophically consistent here, but their blind spot is they don't have any good scientific evidence from humanity's primitive past to back up their claim that total raw-foodism is the most natural behavior for us--that is, using the functional definition based on evolutionary adaptation I have proposed if we are going to be rigorous and scientific about this. Now on the other hand, with the doctors it's just the opposite story. In recent years, the Natural Hygiene doctors and the ANHS (American Natural Hygiene Society) have been more and more vocal about what they say is the need for a modest amount of cooked items in the diet--usually starches such as potatoes, squashes, legumes, and/or grains. And their argument is based on the doctors' experience that few people they care for do as well on raw foods alone as they do with the supplemental addition of these cooked items. Also, they argue that there are other practical reasons for eating these foods, such as that they broaden the diet nutritionally, even if one grants that some of those nutrients may be degraded to a degree by cooking. (Though they also say the assimilation of some nutrients is improved by cooking.) They also point out these starchier foods allow for adequate calories to be eaten while avoiding the higher levels of fat that would be necessary to obtain those calories if extra nuts and avocadoes and so forth were eaten to get them. So we have those with wider practical experience arguing for the inclusion of certain cooked foods based on pragmatism. But their blind spot is in ignoring or attempting to finesse the inconsistency their stance creates with the naturalist philosophy that is the very root of Hygienic thinking. And again, the total-raw-foodists engage in just the opposite tactics: being philosophically consistent in arguing for all-raw foods, but being out of touch with the results most other people in the real world besides themselves get on a total raw-food diet, and attempting to finesse that particular inconsistency by nit-picking and fault-finding other implementations of the raw-food regime than their own. (I might interject here, though we'll cover this in more depth later, that although it's not true for everyone, experience of most people in the Natural Hygiene M2M supports the view that the majority do in fact do better when they add some cooked foods to their diet.) Now my tack as both a realist and someone who is also interested in being philosophically consistent has been: If it is true that most people* do better with the inclusion of some of these cooked items in their diet that we've mentioned--and I believe it is, based on everything I have seen and heard--then there must be some sort of clue in our evolutionary past why this would be so, and which would show why it might be natural for us. The question is not simply whether fire and cooking are "natural" by some subjective definition. It's whether they have been used long enough and consistently enough by humans during evolutionary time for our bodies to have adapted genetically to the effects their use in preparing foods may have on us. Again, this is the definition for "natural" that you have to adopt if you want a functional justification that defines "natural" based on scientific validation rather than subjectivity. So the next question is obvious: How long have fire and cooking been around, then, and how do we know whether that length of time has been long enough for us to have adapted sufficiently? Let's take the question one part at a time. The short answer to the first part of the question is that fire was first controlled by humans anywhere from about 230,000 years ago to 1.4 or 1.5 million years ago, depending on which evidence you accept as definitive. The earliest evidence for control of fire by humans, in the form of fires at Swartkrans, South Africa and at Chesowanja, in Kenya, suggests that it may possibly have been in use there as early as about 1.4 or 1.5 million years ago.[100] However, the interpretation of the physical evidence at these early sites has been under question in the archaeological community for some years now, with critics saying these fires could have been wildfires instead of human-made fires. They suggest the evidence for human control of fire might be a misreading of other factors, such as magnesium-staining of soils, which can mimic the results of fire if not specifically accounted for. For indisputable evidence of fire intentionally set and controlled by humans, the presence of a hearth or circle of scorched stones is often demanded as conclusive proof,[101] and at these early sites, the evidence tying the fires to human control is based on other factors. At the other end of the timescale, these same critics who are only willing to consider the most unequivocal evidence will still admit that at least by 230,000 years ago[102] there is enough good evidence at at least one site to establish fire was under control at this time by humans. At this site, called Terra Amata, an ancient beach location on the French Riviera, stone hearths are found at the center of what may have been huts; and more recent sources may put the site's age at possibly 300,000 years old rather than 230,000.[103] Somewhat further back--from around 300,000 to 500,000 years ago--more evidence has been accumulating recently at sites in Spain and France[104] that looks as if it may force the ultraconservative paleontologists to concede their 230,000-year-ago date is too stingy, but we'll see. And then there is Zhoukoudian cave in China, one of the most famous sites connected with Homo erectus, where claims that fire may have been used as early as 500,000 to 1.5 million years ago have now largely been discredited due to the complex and overlapping nature of the evidence left by not just humans, but hyenas and owls who also inhabited the cave. (Owl droppings could conceivably have caught fire and caused many of the fires.) Even after discounting the most extreme claims, however, it does seems likely that at least by 230,000 to 460,000 years ago humans were using fire in the cave[105], and given scorching patterns around the teeth and skulls of some animal remains, it does appear the hominids may have done this to cook the brains (not an uncommon practice among hunting-gathering peoples today).[106] The most recent excavation with evidence for early use of fire has been within just the last couple of years in France at the Menez-Dregan site, where a hearth and evidence of fire has been preliminarily dated to approximately 380,000 to 465,000 years. If early interpretations of the evidence withstand criticism and further analysis, the fact that a hearth composed of stone blocks inside a small cave was found with burnt rhinoceros bones close by has provoked speculation that the rhino may have been cooked at the site.[107] Now of course, the crucial question for us isn't just when the earliest control of fire was, it's at what date fire was being used consistently--and more specifically for cooking, so that more-constant genetic selection pressures would have been brought to bear. Given the evidence available at this time, most of it would probably indicate that 125,000 years ago is the earliest reasonable estimate for widespread control.*[108] Another good reason it may be safer to base adaptation to fire and cooking on the figure of 125,000 years ago is that more and more evidence is indicating modern humans today are descended from a group of ancestors who were living in Africa 100,000-200,000 years ago, who then spread out across the globe to replace other human groups.[109] If true, this would probably mean the fire sites in Europe and China are those of separate human groups who did not leave descendants that survived to the present. Given that the African fire sites in Kenya and South Africa from about 1.5 million years ago are under dispute, then, widespread usage at 125,000 years seems the safest figure for our use here. /*URHERE*/ One thing we can say about the widespread use of fire probable by 125,000 years ago, however, is that it would almost certainly have included the use of fire for cooking.* Why can this be assumed? It has to do with the sequence for the progressive stages of control over fire that would have had to have taken place prior to fire usage becoming commonplace. And the most interesting of these is that fire for cooking would almost inevitably have been one of the first uses it was put to by humans, rather than some later-stage use.* The first fires on earth occurred approximately 350 million years ago--the geological evidence for fire in remains of forest vegetation being as old as the forests themselves.[110] It is usual to focus only on fire's immediately destructive effects to plants and wildlife, but there are also benefits. In response to occasional periodic wildfires, for example, certain plants and trees have evolved known as "pyrophytes," for whose existence periodic wildfires are essential. Fire revitalizes them by destroying their parasites and competitors, and such plants include grasses eaten by herbivores as well as trees that provide shelter and food for animals.[111] Fires also provide other unintended benefits to animals as well. Even at the time a wildfire is still burning, birds of prey (such as falcons and kites)--the first types of predators to appear at fires--are attracted to the flames to hunt fleeing animals and insects. Later, land-animal predators appear when the ashes are smouldering and dying out to pick out the burnt victims for consumption. Others, such as deer and bovine animals appear after that to lick the ashes for their salt content. Notable as well is that most mammals appear to enjoy the heat radiated at night at sites of recently burned-out fires.[112] It would have been inconceivable, therefore, that human beings, being similarly observant and opportunistic creatures, would not also have partaken of the dietary windfall provided by wildfires they came across. And thus, even before humans had learned to control fire purposefully--and without here getting into the later stages of control over fire--their early passive exposures to it would have already introduced them, like the other animals, to the role fire could play in obtaining edible food and providing warmth. So if fire has been used on a widespread basis for cooking since roughly 125,000 years ago, how do we know if that has been enough time for us to have fully adapted to it? To answer that, we have to be able to determine the rate at which the genetic changes constituting evolutionary adaptation take place in organisms as a result of environmental or behavioral change--which in this case means changes in food intake. The two sources for estimates of rates at which genetic change takes place are from students of the fossil record and from population geneticists. Where the fossil record is concerned, Niles Eldredge, along with Stephen Jay Gould, two of the most well-known modern evolutionary theorists, estimated the time span required for "speciation events" (the time required for a new species to arise in response to evolutionary selection pressures) to be somewhere within the range of "five to 50,000 years."[113] Since this rough figure is based on the fossil record, it makes it difficult to be much more precise than that range. Eldredge also comments that "some evolutionary geneticists have said that the estimate of five to 50,000 years is, if anything, overly generous."[114] Also remember that this time span is for changes large enough to result in a new species classification. Since we are talking here about changes (digestive changes) that may or may not be large enough to result in a new species (though changes in diet often are in fact behind the origin of new species), it's difficult to say from this particular estimate whether we may be talking about a somewhat shorter or longer time span than that for adaptation to changes in food. Fortunately, however, the estimates from the population geneticists are more precise. There are even mathematical equations to quantify the rates at which genetic change takes place in a population, given evolutionary "selection pressures" of a given magnitude that favor survival of those individuals with a certain genetic trait.[115] The difficulty lies in how accurately one can numerically quantify the intensity of real-world selection pressures. However, it turns out there have been two or three actual examples where it has been possible to do so at least approximately, and they are interesting enough I'll mention a couple of them briefly here so people can get a feel for the situation. The most interesting of these examples relates directly to our discussion here, and has to do with the gene for lactose tolerance in adults. Babies are born with the capacity to digest lactose via production of the digestive enzyme lactase. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to make use of mother's milk, which contains the milk sugar lactose. But sometime after weaning, this capacity is normally lost, and there is a gene that is responsible. Most adults--roughly 70% of the world's population overall--do not retain the ability to digest lactose into adulthood[116] and this outcome is known as "lactose intolerance." (Actually this is something of a misnomer, since adult lactose intolerance would have been the baseline normal condition for virtually everyone in the human race up until Neolithic (agricultural) times.[117]) If these people attempt to drink milk, then the result may be bloating, gas, intestinal distress, diarrhea, etc.[118] However--and this is where it gets interesting--those population groups that do retain the ability to produce lactase and digest milk into adulthood are those descended from the very people who first began domesticating animals for milking during the Neolithic periodic several thousand years ago.[119] (The earliest milking populations in Europe, Asia, and Africa began the practice probably around 4,000 B.C.[120]) And even more interestingly, in population groups where cultural changes have created "selection pressure" for adapting to certain behavior--such as drinking milk in this case--the rate of genetic adaptation to such changes significantly increases. In this case, the time span for widespread prevalence of the gene for lactose tolerance within milking population groups has been estimated at approximately 1,150 years[121]--a very short span of time in evolutionary terms. There is a very close correlation between the 30% of the world's population who are tolerant to lactose and the earliest human groups who began milking animals. These individuals are represented most among modern-day Mediterranean, East African, and Northern European groups, and emigrants from these groups to other countries. Only about 20% of white Americans in general are lactose intolerant, but among sub-groups the rates are higher: 90-100% among Asian-Americans (as well as Asians worldwide), 75% of African-Americans (most of whom came from West Africa), and 80% of Native Americans. 50% of Hispanics worldwide are lactose intolerant.[122] Now whether it is still completely healthy for the 30% of the world's population who are lactose tolerant to be drinking animal's milk--which is a very recent food in our evolutionary history--I can't say. It may well be there are other factors involved in successfully digesting and making use of milk without health side-effects other than the ability to produce lactase--I haven't looked into that particular question yet. But for our purposes here, the example does powerfully illustrate that genetic adaptations for digestive changes can take place with much more rapidity than was perhaps previously thought.* Another interesting example of the spread of genetic adaptations since the Neolithic has been two specific genes whose prevalence has been found to correlate with the amount of time populations in different geographical regions have been eating the grain-based high-carbohydrate diets common since the transition from hunting and gathering to Neolithic agriculture began 10,000 years ago. (These two genes are the gene for angiotensin-converting enzyme--or ACE--and the one for apolipoprotein B, which, if the proper forms are not present, may increase one's chances of getting cardiovascular disease.)[123] In the Middle East and Europe, rates of these two genes are highest in populations (such as Greece, Italy, and France) closer to the Middle Eastern "fertile crescent" where agriculture in this part of the globe started, and lowest in areas furthest away, where the migrations of early Neolithic farmers with their grain-based diets took longest to reach (i.e., Northern Ireland, Scotland, Finland, Siberia). Closely correlating with both the occurrence of these genes and the historical rate of grain consumption are corresponding rates of deaths due to coronary heart disease. Those in Mediterranean countries who have been eating high-carbohydrate grain-based diets the longest (for example since approximately 6,000 B.C. in France and Italy) have the lowest rates of heart disease, while those in areas where dietary changes due to agriculture were last to take hold, such as Finland (perhaps only since 2,000 B.C.), have the highest rates of death due to heart attack. Statistics on breast cancer rates in Europe also are higher for countries who have been practicing agriculture the least amount of time.[124] Whether grain-based diets eaten by people whose ancestors only began doing so recently (and therefore lack the appropriate gene) is actually causing these health problems (and not simply correlated by coincidence) is at this point a hypothesis under study. (One study with chickens, however--who in their natural environment eat little grain--has shown much less atherosclerosis on a high-fat, high-protein diet than on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.[125]) But again, and importantly, the key point here is that genetic changes in response to diet can be more rapid than perhaps once thought. The difference in time since the advent of Neolithic agriculture between countries with the highest and lowest incidences of these two genes is something on the order of 3,000-5,000 years,[126] showing again that genetic changes due to cultural selection pressures for diet can force more rapid changes than might occur otherwise. Now we should also look at the other end of the time scale for some perspective. The Cavalli-Sforza population genetics team that has been one of the pioneers in tracking the spread of genes around the world due to migrations and/or interbreeding of populations has also looked into the genes that control immunoglobulin types (an important component of the immune system). Their estimate here is that the current variants of these genes were selected for within the last 50,000-100,000 years, and that this time span would be more representative for most groups of genes. They also feel that in general it is unlikely gene frequencies for most groups of genes would undergo significant changes in time spans of less than about 11,500 years.[127] However, the significant exception they mention--and this relates especially to our discussion here--is where there are cultural pressures for certain behaviors that affect survival rates.[128] And the two examples we cited above: the gene for lactose tolerance (milk-drinking) and those genes associated with high-carbohydrate grain consumption, both involve cultural selection pressures that came with the change from hunting and gathering to Neolithic agriculture. Again, cultural selection pressures for genetic changes operate more rapidly than any other kind. Nobody yet, at least so far as I can tell, really knows whether or not the observed genetic changes relating to the spread of milk-drinking and grain-consumption are enough to confer a reasonable level of adaptation to these foods among populations who have the genetic changes, and the picture seems mixed.* Rates of gluten intolerance (gluten is a protein in certain grains such as wheat, barley, and oats that makes dough sticky and conducive to bread-baking) are lower than for lactose intolerance, which one would expect given that milk-drinking has been around for less than half the time grain-consumption has. Official estimates of gluten intolerance range from 0.3% to 1% worldwide depending on population group.[129] Some researchers, however, believe that gluten intolerance is but the tip of the iceberg of problems due to grain consumption (or more specifically, wheat). Newer research seems to suggest that anywhere from 5% to as much as 20-30% of the population with certain genetic characteristics (resulting in what is called a "permeable intestine") may absorb incompletely digested peptide fragments from wheat with adverse effects that could lead to a range of possible diseases.[130] We have gone a little far afield here getting some kind of grasp on rates of genetic change, but I think it's been necessary for us to have a good sense of the time ranges involved. So to bring this back around to the question of adaptation to cooking, it should probably be clear by this point that given the time span involved (likely 125,000 years since fire and cooking became widespread), the chances are very high that we are in fact adapted to the cooking of whatever foods were consistently cooked.* I would include in these some of the vegetable foods, particularly the coarser ones such as starchy root vegetables such as yams, which are long thought to have been cooked,[131] and perhaps others, as well as meat, from what we know about the fossil record. What about the contention by raw-food advocates that cooking foods results in pyrolytic by-products that are carcinogenic or otherwise toxic to the body, and should be avoided for that reason? It's true cooking introduces some toxic byproducts, but it also neutralizes others.[132] In addition, the number of such toxins created is dwarfed by the large background level of natural toxins (thousands)[133] already present in plant foods from nature to begin with, including some that are similarly carcinogenic in high-enough doses. (Although only a few dozen have been tested so far,[134] half of the naturally occurring substances in plants known as "nature's pesticides" that have been tested have been shown to be carcinogenic in trials with rats and mice.[135]) Nature's pesticides appear to be present in all plants, and though only a few are found in any one plant, 5-10% of a plant's total dry weight is made up of them.[136] [The reason "nature's pesticides" occur throughout the plant kingdom is because plants have had to evolve low-level defense mechanisms against animals to deter overpredation. On one level, plants and animals are in a continual evolutionary "arms race" against each other. Fruiting plants, of course, have also evolved the separate ability to exploit the fact that certain animals are attracted to the fruit by enabling its seeds to be dispersed through the animals' feces.] We have a liver and kidneys for a reason, which is that there have always been toxins in natural foods that the body has had to deal with, and that's one reason why these organs evolved. There are also a number of other more general defenses the body has against toxins. These types of defenses make evolutionary sense given the wide range of toxic elements in foods the body has had to deal with over the eons. [Not clear enough in the original version of the interview is the point that a wide range of GENERAL defenses might therefore be reasonably expected to aid in neutralizing or ejecting toxins even of a type the body hadn't necessarily seen before, such as those that might be introduced by cooking practices.] Such mechanisms include the constant shedding of surface-layer cells of the digestive system, many defenses against oxygen free-radical damage, and DNA excision repair, among others.[137] The belief that a natural diet is, or can be, totally toxin-free is basically an idealistic fantasy--an illusion of black-and-white thinking not supported by real-world investigations. The real question is not whether a diet is completely free of toxins, but whether we are adapted to process what substances are in our foods--in reasonable or customary amounts such as encountered during evolution--that are not usable by the body. Again, the black-and-white nature of much Hygienic thinking obscures here what are questions of degrees rather than absolutes. Also, and I know raw-foodists generally don't like to hear this, but there has long been evidence cooking in fact does make foods of certain types more digestible. For example, trypsin inhibitors (themselves a type of protease inhibitor) which are widely distributed in the plant kingdom, particularly in rich sources of protein, inhibit the ability of digestive enzymes to break down protein. (Probably the best-known plants containing trypsin inhibitors are legumes and grains.) Research has shown the effect of most such protease inhibitors on digestion to be reduced by cooking.[138] And it is this advantage in expanding the range of utilizable foods in an uncertain environment that was the evolutionary advantage that helped bring cooking about and enhanced survival.* I want to make clear that I still believe the largest component of the diet should be raw (at least 50% if not considerably more), but there is provision in the evolutionary picture for reasonable amounts of cooked foods of certain types, such as at the very least, yams, probably some other root vegetables, the legumes, some meat, and so forth. (With meat, the likelihood is that it was eaten raw when freshly killed, but what could not be eaten would likely have been dried or cooked to preserve it for later consumption, rather than wasting it.) Whether or not some foods like these can be eaten raw if one has no choice or is determined enough to do so is not the real question. The question is what was more expedient or practical to survival and which prevailed over evolutionary time. A brief look at the Australian Aborigines might be illustrative here.* What data is available since the aborigines were first encountered by Europeans shows that inland aborigines in the desert areas were subject to severe food shortages and prolonged droughts.[139] This of course made emphasizing the most efficient use of whatever foods could be foraged paramount. Estimates based on studies of aborigines in northern Australia are that they processed roughly half of their plant foods, but that no food was processed unnecessarily, any such preparation being done only to make a food edible, more digestible, or more palatable.[140] In general food was eaten as it was collected, according to its availability during the seasons--except during times of feasts--with wastage being rare, such a pattern being characteristic of feast-and-famine habitats. Some food, however, was processed for storage and later retrieval (usually by drying), including nuts and seeds, but may also have been ground and baked into cakes instead, before burying in the ground or storing in dry caches.[141] Fresh foods such as fruits, bulbs, nectar, gums, flowers, etc., were eaten raw when collected. Examples of foods that were prepared before consumption include the cooking of starchy tubers or seeds, grinding and roasting of seeds, and cooking of meat.[142] That these practices were necessary to expand the food supply and not merely induced by frivolous cultural practices like raw-foodists often tend to theorize can be seen in the fact that after colonization by Europeans, aborigines were not above coming into missions during droughts to get food.[143] But the more interesting and more pressing question, to my mind, is not whether we are adapted to cooking of certain foods, which seems very likely,* but how much we have adapted to the dietary changes since the Neolithic agricultural transition, given the 10,000 years or less it's been underway. At present, the answer is unclear, although in general, we can probably say there just hasn't been enough time for full adaptation yet. Or if so, only for people descended from certain ancestral groups with the longest involvement with agriculture. My guess (and it is just a guess) would be that we are still mostly adapted to a Paleolithic diet, but for any particular individual with a given ancestral background, certain Neolithic foods such as grains, perhaps even modest amounts of certain cultured milk products such as cheese or yogurt (ones more easily digested than straight milk) for even fewer people, might be not only tolerated, but helpful. Especially where people are avoiding flesh products which is our primary animal food adaptation, these animal byproducts may be helpful,* which Stanley Bass's work with mice and his mentor Dr. Gian-Cursio's work with Hygienic patients seems to show, as Dr. Bass has discussed previously here in H&B (in the April and June 1994 issues). How are we to determine an optimum diet for ourselves, then, given that some genetic changes may be more or less complete or incomplete in different population groups? I think what all of this points to is the need to be careful in making absolute black-or-white pronouncements about invariant food rules that apply equally to all. It is not as simple as saying that if we aren't sure we are fully adapted to something to just eliminate it from the diet to be safe. Because adaptation to a food does not necessarily mean just tolerance for that food, it also means that if we are in fact adapted to it, we would be expected to thrive better with some amount of that food in our diet. Genetic adaptation cuts both ways. This is why I believe it is important for people to experiment individually. Today, because of the Neolithic transition and the rates at which genetic changes are being discovered to take place, it is apparent humanity is a species in evolutionary transition. Due to the unequal flow and dissemination of genes through a population during times like these, it is unlikely we will find uniform adaptation across the population, as we probably would have during earlier times. This means it is going to be more likely right now in this particular historical time period that individuals will be somewhat different in their responses to diet. And as we saw above (with the two genes ACE and apolipoprotein- these genetic differences may even confound attempts to replicate epidemiological dietary studies from one population to another unless these factors are taken into account.* So while it is important to look for convergences among different lines of evidence (evolutionary studies, biochemical nutritional studies, epidemiological studies and clinical trials, comparative anatomy from primate studies, and so forth), it is well to consider how often the epidemiological studies, perhaps even some of the biochemical studies, reverse themselves or come back with conflicting data. It usually takes many years--even decades--for their import to become clear based on the lengthy scientific process of peer review and replication of experiments for confirmation or refutation. So my advice is: don't be afraid to experiment. Unless you have specific allergies or strong food intolerances and whatnot, the body is flexible enough by evolution to handle short-term variations in diet from whatever an optimal diet might be anyway. If you start within the general parameters we've outlined here and allow yourself to experiment, you have a much better chance of finding the particular balance among these factors that will work you. If you already have something that works well for you, that's great. If, however, you are looking for improvements, given the uncertainties above we've talked about, it's important to look at any rigid assumptions you may have about the "ideal" diet, and be willing to challenge them through experimentation. In the long-run, you only have yourself to benefit by doing so. Ward, despite the evolutionary picture you've presented here, there are still objections that people have about meat from a biochemical or epidemiological standpoint. What about T. Colin Campbell's China Study for example? Good point. Campbell's famous study, to my mind, brings up one of the most unremarked-upon recent conflicts in epidemiological data that has arisen. In his lecture at the 1991 ANHS annual conference, reported on in the national ANHS publication Health Science, Campbell claimed that the China Study data pointed to not just high fat intake, but to the protein in animal food, as increasing cholesterol levels. (High cholesterol levels in the blood are now widely thought by many to be the biggest single factor responsible for increased rates of atherosclerosis--clogged blood vessels--and coronary heart disease.) According to him, the lower the level of animal protein in the diet (not just the lower the level of fat) the lower the cholesterol level in the blood. He believes that animal food is itself the biggest culprit, above and beyond just fat levels in food.[144] Yet as rigorous as the study is proclaimed to be, I have to tell you that Campbell's claim that animal protein by itself is the biggest culprit in raising blood cholesterol is contradicted by studies of modern-day hunter-gatherers eating considerable amounts of wild game in their diet who have very low cholesterol levels comparable to those of the China study. One review of different tribes studied showed low cholesterol levels for the Hadza of 110 mg/dl (eating 20% animal food), San Bushmen 120 (20-37% animal), Aborigines 139 (10-75% animal), and Pygmies at 106, considerably lower than the now-recommended safe level of below 150.[145] Clearly there are unaccounted-for factors at work here yet to be studied sufficiently. One of them might be the difference in composition between the levels of fat in domesticated meat vs. wild game: on average five times as much for the former than the latter. On top of that, the proportion of saturated fat in domesticated meat compared to wild game is also five times higher.[146] Other differences between these two meat sources are that significant amounts of EPA (an omega-3 fatty acid thought to perhaps help prevent atherosclerosis) are found in wild game (approx. 4% of total fat), while domestic beef for example contains almost none.[147] This is important because the higher levels of EPA and other omega-3 fatty acids in wild game help promote a low overall dietary ratio of omega-6 vs. omega-3 fatty acids for hunter-gatherers--ranging from 1:1 to 4:1--compared to the high 11:1 ratio observed in Western nations. Since omega-6 fatty acids may have a cancer-promoting effect, some investigators are recommending lower ratios of omega-6 to omega-3 in the diet which would, coincidentally, be much closer to the evolutionary norm.[148] Differences like these may go some way toward explaining the similar blood cholesterol levels and low rates of disease in both the rural Chinese eating a very-low-fat, low-animal-protein diet, and in hunter-gatherers eating a low-fat, high-animal-protein diet. Rural Chinese eat a diet of only 15% fat and 10% protein, with the result that saturated fats only contribute a low 4% of total calories. On the other hand, those hunter-gatherer groups approximating the Paleolithic norm eat diets containing 20-25% fat and 30% protein, yet the contribution of saturated fat to total caloric intake is nevertheless a similarly low 6% of total calories.[149] What about the contention that high-protein diets promote calcium loss in bone and therefore contribute to osteoporosis? The picture here is complex and modern studies have been contradictory. In experimental settings, purified, isolated protein extracts do significantly increase calcium excretion, but the effect of increased protein in natural foods such as meat is smaller or nonexistent.[150] Studies of Eskimos have shown high rates of osteoporosis eating an almost all-meat diet[151] (less than 10% plant intake[152]) but theirs is a recent historical aberration not typical of the evolutionary Paleolithic diet thought to have averaged 65% plant foods and 35% flesh.* Analyses of numerous skeletons from our Paleolithic ancestors have shown development of high peak bone mass and low rates of bone loss in elderly specimens compared to their Neolithic agricultural successors whose rates of bone loss increased considerably even though they ate much lower-protein diets.[153] Why, nobody knows for sure, though it is thought that the levels of phosphorus in meat reduce excretion of calcium, and people in Paleolithic times also ate large amounts of fruits and vegetables[154] with an extremely high calcium intake (perhaps 1,800 mg/day compared to an average of 500-800 for Americans today[155]) and led extremely rigorous physical lives, all of which would have encouraged increased bone mass.[156] Okay, let's move on to the hunter-gatherers you mentioned earlier. I've heard that while some tribes may have low rates of chronic degenerative disease, others don't, and may also suffer higher rates of infection than we do in the West. This is true. Not all "hunter-gatherer" tribes of modern times eat diets in line with Paleolithic norms. Aspects of their diets and/or lifestyle can be harmful just as modern-day industrial diets can be. When using these people as comparative models, it's important to remember they are not carbon copies of Paleolithic-era hunter-gatherers.[157] They can be suggestive (the best living examples we have), but they are a mixed bag as "models" for behavior, and it is up to us to keep our thinking caps on. We've already mentioned the Eskimos above as less-than-exemplary models. Another example is the Masai tribe of Africa who are really more pastoralists (animal herders) than hunter-gatherers. They have low cholesterol levels ranging from 115 to 145,[158] yet autopsies have shown considerable atherosclerosis.[159] Why? Maybe because they deviate from the Paleolithic norm of 20-25% fat intake due to their pastoralist lifestyle by eating a 73% fat diet that includes large amounts of milk from animals in addition to meat and blood.*[160] Our bodies do have certain limits. But after accounting for tribes like these, why do we see higher rates of mortality from infectious disease among other hunter-gatherers who are eating a better diet and show little incidence of degenerative disease? There are two major reasons I know of. First, most modern-day tribes have been pushed onto marginal habitats by encroaching civilization.[161] This means they may at times experience nutritional stress resulting from seasonal fluctuations in the food supply (like the aborigines noted above) during which relatively large amounts of weight are lost while they remain active. The study of "paleopathology" (the study of illnesses in past populations from signs left in the fossil record) shows that similar nutritional stress experienced by some hunter-gatherers of the past was not unknown either, and at times was great enough to have stunted their growth, resulting in "growth arrest lines" in human bone that can be seen under conditions of nutritional deprivation. Such nutritional stress is most likely for hunter-gatherers in environments where either the number of food sources is low (exposing them to the risk of undependable supply), or where food is abundant only seasonally.[162] Going without food--or fasting while under conditions of total rest as hygienists do as a regenerative/recuperative measure--is one thing, but nutritional stress or deprivation while under continued physical stress is unhealthy and leaves one more susceptible to pathologies including infection.[163] The second potential cause of higher rates of infection are the less artificially controlled sanitary conditions (one of the areas where modern civilization is conducive rather than destructive to health)--due to less control over the environment by hunter-gatherers than by modern civilizations. Creatures in the wild are in frequent contact with feces and other breeding grounds for microorganisms such as rotting fruit and/or carcasses, to which they are exposed by skin breaks and injuries, and so forth.[164] Contrary to popular Hygienic myth, animals in the wild eating natural diets in a natural environment are not disease-free, and large infectious viral and bacterial plagues in the past and present among wild animal populations are known to have occurred. (To cite one example, rinderpest plagues in the African Serengeti occurred in the 1890s and again around 1930, 1960, and 1982 among buffalo, kudu, eland, and wildebeest.[165]) It becomes obvious when you look into studies of wild animals that natural diet combined with living in natural conditions is no guarantee of freedom from disease and/or infection. Chimpanzees, our closest living animal relatives, for instance, can and do suffer bouts in the wild from a spectrum of ailments very similar to those observed in human beings: including pneumonia and other respiratory infections (which occur more often during the cold and rainy season), polio, abscesses, rashes, parasites, diarrhea, even hemorrhoids on occasion.[166] Signs of infectious disease in the fossil record have also been detected in remains as far back as the dinosaur-age, as have signs of immune system mechanisms to combat them.[167] One of the conclusions to be drawn from this is that artificial modern conditions are not all bad where health is concerned. Such conditions as "sanitation" due to hygienic measures, shelter and protection from harsh climatic extremes and physical trauma, professional emergency care after potentially disabling or life-threatening accidents, elimination of the stresses of nomadism, plus protection from seasonal nutritional deprivation due to the modern food system that Westerners like ourselves enjoy today all play larger roles in health and longevity than we realize.[168] Also, I would hope that the chimp examples above might persuade hygienists not to feel so guilty or inevitably blame themselves when they occasionally fall prey to acute illness. We read of examples in the Natural Hygiene M2M which sometimes seem to elicit an almost palpable sense of relief among others when the conspiracy of silence is broken and they find they aren't the only ones. I think we should resist the tendency to always assume we flubbed the dietary details. In my opinion it is a mistake to believe that enervation need always be seen as simply the instigator of "toxemia" which is then held to always be the incipient cause of any illness. It seems to me you can easily have "enervation" (lowered energy and resistance) without toxemia, and that that in and of itself can be quite enough to upset the body's normal homeostasis ("health") and bring on illness. (Indeed I have personally become ill once or twice during the rebuilding period after lengthy fasts when overworked, a situation in which it would be difficult to blame toxemia as the cause.) The examples of modern-day hunter-gatherers as well as those of chimps should show us that you can eat a healthy natural diet and still suffer from health problems, including infectious disease, due to excessive stresses--what we would call "enervation" in Natural Hygiene. Ward, we still have some space here to wrap up Part 2. Given the research you've done, how has it changed your own diet and health lifestyle? What are you doing these days, and why? I would say my diet right now* is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 85% plant and 15% animal, and overall about 60% raw and 40% cooked by volume. A breakdown from a different angle would be that by volume it is, very roughly, about 1/4 fruit, 1/4 starches (grains/potatoes, etc.), 1/4 veggies, and the remaining quarter divided between nuts/seeds and animal products, with more of the latter than the former. Of the animal foods, I would say at least half is flesh (mostly fish, but with occasional fowl or relatively lean red meat thrown in, eaten about 3-5 meals per week), the rest composed of varying amounts of eggs, goat cheese, and yogurt. Although I have to admit I am unsure about the inclusion of dairy products on an evolutionary basis given their late introduction in our history, nevertheless, I do find that the more heavily I am exercising, the more I find myself tending to eat them. To play it safe, what dairy I do eat is low- or no-lactose cultured forms like goat cheese and yogurt.* Where the grains are concerned, so far I do not experience the kind of sustained energy I like to have for distance running without them, even though I am running less mileage than I used to (20 miles/week now as opposed to 35-40 a few years ago). The other starches such as potatoes, squash, etc., alone just don't seem to provide the energy punch I need. Again, however, I try to be judicious by eating non-gluten-containing grains such as millet, quinoa, or rice, or else use sprouted forms of grains, or breads made from them, that eliminate the gluten otherwise present in wheat, barley, oats, and so forth.* In general, while I do take the evolutionary picture heavily into account, I also believe it is important to listen to our own bodies and experiment, given the uncertainties that remain. Also, I have to say that I find exercise, rest, and stress management as important as diet in staying energetic, healthy, and avoiding acute episodes of ill-health. Frankly, my experience is that once you reach a certain reasonable level of health improvement based on your dietary disciplines, and things start to level out--but maybe you still aren't where you want to be--most further gains are going to come from paying attention to these other factors, especially today when so many of us are overworked, over-busy, and stressed-out. I think too many people focus too exclusively on diet and then wonder why they aren't getting any further improvements. Diet only gets you so far. I usually sleep about 8-10 hours a night, and I very much enjoy vigorous exercise, which I find is necessary to help control my blood-sugar levels, which are still a weak spot for me. The optimum amount is important, though. A few years ago I was running every day, totaling 35-40 miles/week and concentrating on hard training for age-group competition, and more prone to respiratory problems like colds, etc. (not an infrequent complaint of runners). In the last couple of years, I've cut back to every-other-day running totaling roughly 20 miles per week. I still exercise fairly hard, but a bit less intensely than before, I give myself a day of rest in between, and the frequency of colds and so forth is now much lower. I am sure people will be curious here, Ward: What were some of the improvements you noticed after adding flesh foods to your diet? Well, although I expected it might take several months to really notice much of anything, one of the first things was that within about 2 to 3 weeks I noticed better recovery after exercise--as a distance runner I was able to run my hard workouts more frequently with fewer rest days or easy workouts in between. I also began sleeping better fairly early on, was not hungry all the time anymore, and maintained weight more easily on lesser volumes of food. Over time, my stools became a bit more well formed, my sex drive increased somewhat (usually accompanies better energy levels for me), my nervous system was more stable and not so prone to hyperreactive panic-attack-like instability like before, and in general I found I didn't feel so puny or wilt under stress so easily as before. Unexpectedly, I also began to notice that my moods had improved and I was more "buoyant." Individually, none of these changes was dramatic, but as a cumulative whole they have made the difference for me. Most of these changes had leveled off after about 4-6 months, I would say. Something else I ought to mention here, too, was the effect of this dietary change on a visual disturbance I had been having for some years prior to the time I embarked on a disciplined Hygienic program, and which continued unchanged during the two or three years I was on the traditional vegetarian diet of either all-raw or 80% raw/20% cooked. During that time I had been having regular episodes of "spots" in my visual field every week or so, where "snow" (like on a t.v. set) would gradually build up to the point it would almost completely obscure my vision in one eye or the other for a period of about 5 minutes, then gradually fade away after another 5 minutes. As soon as I began including flesh in my diet several times per week, these started decreasing in frequency and over the 3 years since have almost completely disappeared. What problems are you still working on? I still have an ongoing tussle with sugar-sensitivity due to the huge amounts of soft drinks I used to consume, and have to eat fruits conservatively. I also notice that I still do not hold up under stress and the occasional long hours of work as well as
  20. CATEGORY: diets/vegetarian TECHNICAL: ** SUMMARY: This document was one of the most profound documents I had ever read at the time I found it. It is written by a truly great scholar by the name of Ward Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson, initially, practiced a type of diet known as the "hygienic" diet -- which is a strict vegetarian/vegan diet in which everything is consumed raw and unprocessed. I don't want to give away all of the goods, because it really is an exceptional read, but I will say this: After reading the document, it's fairly obvious that human beings could never have evolved the way we did if we had been vegetarians/vegans or frutarians. This paper is only the first of the 4-part interview with Mr. Nicholson. Since it's quite long, and most people will never wade through it, I want to go ahead and pull out some of the more interesting passages. In fact, these very passages were the ones that pushed me more towards a "paleo" type diet -- even though Nicholson's purpose was soley to disprove vegatarianism, and not to argue for evolutionary diets. The fist passage is my favorite. It was one of the first times I had heard anyone argue that the shift from hunter-gatherer diets to agarianism was a negative. There's even some pro low-carb sentiment to be found in it.. "In most respects, the changes in diet from hunter-gatherer times to agricultural times have been almost all detrimental, although there is some evidence we'll discuss later indicating that at least some genetic adaptation to the Neolithic has begun taking place in the approximately 10,000 years since it began. With the much heavier reliance on starchy foods that became the staples of the diet, tooth decay, malnutrition, and rates of infectious disease increased dramatically over Paleolithic times, further exacerbated by crowding leading to even higher rates of communicable infections." The next excerpt is one that I have told to countless other people. Many argue that man, today, is much better off and more healthy than in the past. I've even heard the average life expectancy being used as an indicator. When you look at this passage, ask yourself if we are more "physical" and more "healthy", and more "robust" with todays technology -- or were we better off then: "Skeletal remains show that height decreased by four inches from the Late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic, brought about by poorer nutrition, and perhaps also by increased infectious disease causing growth stress, and possibly by some inbreeding in communities that were isolated." The next passage is one that I have quoted to people before. Many have asked me why certain fruits (sweet fruits like apples, grapes, etc..) aren't healthy. I always hear "but they're natural?!?!?". Well, when you examine the fruits of the past, they bear little resemblance to the man-made, altered, super-sweet, and seedless fruits we have today: "Fruit as defined by Walker in the article included tougher, less sugary foods, such as acacia tree pods. (Which laypeople like ourselves would be likely to classify as a "vegetable"-type food in common parlance). And although it was not clarified in the article, anyone familiar with or conscientious enough to look a little further into evolutionary studies of diet would have been aware that scientists generally use the terms "frugivore," "folivore," "carnivore," "herbivore," etc., as categories comparing broad dietary trends, only very rarely as exclusivist terms, and among primates exclusivity in food is definitely not the norm." Perhaps the biggest nail in the coffin of the "humans are vegetarians" issue comes from the fact that the apes that we are most closest to are also not completely "plant eaters": "A breakdown by feeding time for the chimps of Gombe showed their intake of foods to be (very roughly) 60% of feeding time for fruit, 20% for leaves, with the other items in the diet varying greatly on a seasonal basis depending on availability. Seasonal highs could range as high as (approx.) 17% of feeding time for blossoms, 22--30% for seeds, 10--17% for insects, 2--6% for meat, with other miscellaneous items coming in at perhaps 4% through most months of the year.85 Miscellaneous items eaten by chimps include a few eggs,86 plus the rare honey that chimps are known to rob from beehives (as well as the embedded bees themselves), which is perhaps the most highly prized single item in their diet,87 but which they are limited from eating much of by circumstances. Soil is also occasionally eaten--presumably for the mineral content according to researchers.88" Nicholson points out that a great deal of the animal foods in a chimp diet come from insects, which was something I had never considered before this paper. Take note of the honey comment too. I plan to form an argument over the next few months that sugars (from grain, or processed foods) are indeed an addictive drug, and that they are being put into our processed man-made foods more and more because of their addicitive properties (by the food industry). After all, how many people do *you* know who continue to eat foods they know are bad, *JUST* because they crave the taste uncontrollably? (and the sugars are having that effect). I will form the argument slowly over time though, just like I did with the "cancer is curable with diet" arguement.. ------------------------------------------------------------- Interview with Ward Nicholson Scholar and thinker Ward Nicholson lives and works in Wichita, Kansas, where he used to publish and coordinate what I considered the singularly BEST health publication available in the world at that time, The Natural Hygiene Many-to-Many. Below, you'll find the complete text of Mr. Nicholson's October 1996 interview in Health & Beyond, an interview that blew the socks off the traditional "Humans are by nature fruitarian" argument. We'll discuss two things with Mr. Nicholson in H&B. One of these consists of the ideas and conclusions Ward has reached about Hygienists' actual experiences in the real world (based on interacting with many Hygienists while coordinating the N.H. M2M)--experiences often at variance with what the "official" Hygienic books tell us "should" happen. And the other involves the meticulous research he has done tracking down what our human ancestors ate in the evolutionary past as known by modern science, in the interest of discovering directly what the "food of our biological adaptation" actually was and is--again in the real world rather than in theory. Given the recent death of T.C. Fry (September 6, 1996), I consider Ward's analysis of special importance to those who continue to adhere strictly to the fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds diet. We'll tackle this month the question of humanity's primitive diet. In two subsequent issues, we'll wrap that topic up and delve into what Ward has learned from coordinating the Natural Hygiene M2M about Hygienists' experiences in real life. You'll find that will be a recurring theme throughout our discussions with Mr. Nicholson: what really goes on in real life when you hear a full spectrum of stories from a range of Hygienists, as well as what science says about areas of Hygiene that you will find have in some cases been poorly researched or not at all by previous Hygienic writers. Not everyone will agree with or appreciate what Mr. Nicholson has to say. But, as I've written more than once, I publish material in H&B that you won't find anywhere else, material and sound thinking that interests me and calls into question my ideas and my assumptions about building health naturally. In this series of three interviews, I guarantee Ward will challenge many of our mind sets. Mr. Nicholson has a lot of ground to cover, so without further ado, I happily present our controversial and articulate guest for this issue of H&B. Setting the Scientific Record Straight on Humanity's Evolutionary Prehistoric Diet and Ape Diets (Note: Ward has provided footnote numbers referencing the citations from which the scientific aspects of the discussion here have been sourced. Those of you who are interested may contact him and send $3 to receive a copy of all endnotes and bibliography after the last installment of these interviews has been completed and published.The address for doing this is given at the end of this article) Ward, why don't we start out with my traditional question: How was it that you became involved with Natural Hygiene? I got my introduction to Natural Hygiene through distance running, which eventually got me interested in the role of diet in athletic performance. During high school and college--throughout most of the 1970s--I was a competitive distance runner. Runners are very concerned with anything that will improve their energy, endurance, and rate of recovery, and are usually open to experimenting with different regimens in the interest of getting ever-better results. Since I've always been a bookworm, that's usually the first route I take for teaching myself about subjects I get interested in. In 1974 or '75, I read the book Yoga and the Athlete, by Ian Jackson, when it was published by Runner's World magazine. In it, he talked about his forays into hatha yoga (the stretching postures) as a way of rehabilitating himself from running injuries he had sustained. He eventually got into yoga full-time, and from there, began investigating diet's effect on the body, writing about that too. At first I was more interested in Are Waerland (a European Hygienist health advocate with a differing slant than Shelton), who was mentioned in the book, so I wrote Jackson for more information. But instead of giving me information about Waerland, he steered me in the direction of American Natural Hygiene, saying in his experience it was far superior. I was also fascinated with Jackson's experiences with fasting. He credited fasting with helping his distance running, and had a somewhat mind-blowing "peak experience" while running on his first long fast. He kept training at long distances during his fasts, so I decided that would be the first aspect of the Hygienic program I would try myself. Then in the meantime, I started frequenting health-food stores and ran across Herbert Shelton's Fasting Can Save Your Life on the bookracks, which as we all know, has been a very persuasive book for beginning Natural Hygienists. So to ease into things gradually, I started out with a few 3-day "juice" fasts (I know some Hygienists will object to this language, but bear with me), then later two 8-day juice-diet fasts while I kept on running and working at my warehouse job (during college). These were done--in fact, all the fasts I've experienced have been done--at home on my own. Needless to say, I found these "fasts" on juices difficult since I was both working, and working out, at the same time. Had they been true "water" fasts, I doubt I would have been able to do it. I had been enticed by the promises of more robust health and greater eventual energy from fasting, and kept wondering why I didn't feel as great while fasting as the books said I would, with their stories of past supermen lifting heavy weights or walking or running long distances as they fasted. Little did I realize in my naiveté that this was normal for most fasters. At the time I assumed, as Hygienists have probably been assuming since time immemorial when they don't get the hoped-for results, that it was just because I "wasn't cleaned-out enough." So in order to get more cleaned-out, I kept doing longer fasts, working up to a 13-day true water fast, and finally a 25-day water fast over Christmas break my senior year in college. (I had smartened up just a little bit by this time and didn't try running during these longer fasts on water alone.) I also tried the Hygienic vegetarian diet around this time. But as the mostly raw-food diet negatively affected my energy levels and consequently my distance running performance, I lost enthusiasm for it, and my Hygienic interests receded to the back burner. I was also weary of fasting at this point, never having reached what I supposed was the Hygienic promised land of a total clean-out, so that held no further allure for me at the time. After college, I drifted away from running and got into doing hatha yoga for a couple of years, taught a couple of local classes in it, then started my own business as a typesetter and graphic designer. Things took off and during the mid to late 1980s, I worked 60 to 80 hours a week, often on just 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night, under extreme round-the-clock deadline pressures setting type at the computer for demanding advertising agency clients. I dropped all pretense of Hygienic living, with the exception of maintaining a nominally "vegetarian" regime. This did not preclude me, however, guzzling large amounts of caffeine and sugar in the form of a half-gallon or more of soft drinks per day to keep going. Eventually all this took its toll and by 1990 my nervous system--and I assume (in the absence of having gone to a doctor like most Hygienists don't!) probably my adrenals--were essentially just about shot from all the mainlining of sugar and caffeine, the lack of sleep, and the 24-hour-a-day deadlines and accompanying emotional pressures. I started having severe panic or adrenaline attacks that would sometimes last several hours during which time I literally thought I might die from a heart attack or asphyxiation. The attacks were so debilitating it would take at least a full day afterwards to recover every time I had one. Finally, in late 1990/early 1991, after I had begun having one or two of these attacks a week, I decided it was "change my ways or else" and did a 42-day fast at home by myself (mostly on water with occasional juices when I was feeling low), after which I went on a 95%--100% raw-food Hygienic diet. The panic attacks finally subsided after the 5th day of fasting, and have not returned since, although I did come close to having a few the first year or two after the fast. Soon after I made the recommitment to Hygienic living, when I had about completed my 42-day fast, I called a couple of Hygienic doctors and had a few phone consultations. But while the information I received was useful to a degree with my immediate symptoms, it did not really answer my Hygienic questions like I'd hoped, nor did it turn out to be of significant help overcoming my health problems over the longer-term. So in 1992 I decided to start the Natural Hygiene M2M to get directly in touch with Hygienists who had had real experience with their own problems, not just book knowledge, and not just the party line I could already get from mainstream Hygiene. With this new source of information and experience to draw on, among others, my health has continued to improve from the low it had reached, but it has been a gradual, trial-and-error process, and not without the occasional setback to learn from. One of the motivating factors here was that although fasting had been helpful (and continues to be), unfortunately during the time in between fasts (I have done three subsequent fasts on water of 11 days, 20 days, and 14 days in the past five years), I just was not getting the results we are led to expect with the Hygienic diet itself. In fact, at best, I was stagnating, and at worst I was developing new symptoms that while mild were in a disconcerting downhill direction. Over time, the disparity between the Hygienic philosophy and the results I was (not) getting started eating at me. I slowly began to consider through reading the experiences of others in the M2M that it was not something I was "doing wrong," or that I wasn't adhering to the details sufficiently, but that there were others who were also not doing so well following the Hygienic diet, try as they might. The "blame the victim for not following all the itty-bitty details just right" mentality began to seem more and more suspect to me. This leads us up to the next phase of your Hygienic journey, where you eventually decided to remodel your diet based on your exploration of the evolutionary picture of early human diets as now known by science. Coming from your Hygienic background, what was it that got you so interested in evolution? Well, I have always taken very seriously as one of my first principles the axiom in Hygiene that we should be eating "food of our biological adaptation." What is offered in Hygiene to tell us what that is, is the "comparative anatomy" line of reasoning we are all familiar with: You look at the anatomical and digestive structures of various animals, classify them, and note the types of food that animals with certain digestive structures eat. By that criterion of course, humans are said to be either frugivores or vegetarians like the apes are said to be, depending on how the language is used. Now at first (like any good upstanding Hygienist!) I did not question this argument because as far as it goes it is certainly logical. But nonetheless, it came to seem to me that was an indirect route for finding the truth, because as similar as we may be to the apes and especially the chimpanzee (our closest relative), we are still a different species. We aren't looking directly at ourselves via this route, we are looking at a different animal and basically just assuming that our diet will be pretty much just like theirs based on certain digestive similarities. And in that difference between them and us could reside errors of fact. So I figured that one day, probably from outside Hygiene itself, someone would come along with a book on diet or natural foods that would pull together the evidence directly from paleontology and evolutionary science and nail it down once and for all. Of course, I felt confident at that time it would basically vindicate the Hygienic argument from comparative anatomy, so it remained merely an academic concern to me at the time. And then one day several years ago, there I was at the bookstore when out popped the words The Paleolithic Prescription1 (by Boyd Eaton, M.D. and anthropologists Marjorie Shostak and Melvin Konner) on the spine of a book just within the range of my peripheral vision. Let me tell you I tackled that book in nothing flat! But when I opened it up and began reading, I was very dismayed to find there was much talk about the kind of lean game animals our ancestors in Paleolithic times (40,000 years ago) ate as an aspect of their otherwise high-plant-food diet, but nowhere was there a word anywhere about pure vegetarianism in our past except one measly paragraph to say it had never existed and simply wasn't supported by the evidence.2 I have to tell you that while I bought the book, red lights were flashing as I argued vociferously in my head with the authors on almost every other page, exploiting every tiny little loophole I could find to save my belief in humanity's original vegetarian and perhaps even fruitarian ways. "Perhaps you haven't looked far enough back in time," I told them inside myself. "You are just biased because of the modern meat-eating culture that surrounds us," I silently screamed, "so you can't see the vegetarianism that was really there because you aren't even looking for it!" So in order to prove them wrong, I decided I'd have to unearth all the scientific sources at the local university library myself and look at the published evidence directly. But I didn't do this at first--I stalled for about a year, basically being an ostrich for that time, sort of forgetting about the subject to bury the cognitive dissonance I was feeling. In the meantime, though, I happened to hear from a hatha yoga teacher I was acquainted with who taught internationally and was well-known in the yoga community both in the U.S. and abroad in the '70s and early '80s, who, along with his significant other, had been vegetarian for about 17 years. To my amazement, he told me in response to my bragging about my raw-food diet that he and his partner had re-introduced some flesh foods to their diet a few years previously after some years of going downhill on their vegetarian diets, and it had resulted in a significant upswing in their health. He also noted that a number of their vegetarian friends in the yoga community had run the same gamut of deteriorating health after 10--15 years as vegetarians since the '70s era. Once again, of course, I pooh-poohed all this to myself because they obviously weren't "Hygienist" vegetarians and none of their friends probably were either. You know the line of thinking: If it ain't Hygienic vegetarianism, by golly, we'll just discount the results as completely irrelevant! If there's even one iota of difference between their brand of vegetarianism and ours, well then, out the window with all the results! But it did get me thinking, because this was a man of considerable intellect as well as a person of integrity whom I respected more than perhaps anyone else I knew. And then a few months after that, I began noticing I was having almost continual semi-diarrhea on my raw-food diet and could not seem to make well-formed stools. I was not sleeping well, my stamina was sub-par both during daily tasks and exercise, which was of concern to me after having gotten back into distance running again, and so real doubts began creeping in. It was around this time I finally made that trip to the university library. And so what did you find? Enough evidence for the existence of animal flesh consumption from early in human prehistory (approx. 2--3 million years ago) that I knew I could no longer ignore the obvious. For awhile I simply could not believe that Hygienists had never looked into this. But while it was disillusioning, that disillusionment gradually turned into something exciting because I knew I was looking directly at what scientists knew based on the evidence. It gave me a feeling of more power and control, and awareness of further dietary factors I had previously ruled out that I could experiment with to improve my health, because now I was dealing with something much closer to "the actual" (based on scientific findings and evidence) as opposed to dietary "idealism." What kind of "evidence" are we talking about here? At its most basic, an accumulation of archaeological excavations by paleontologists, ranging all the way from the recent past of 10,000--20,000 years ago back to approximately 2 million years ago, where ancient "hominid" (meaning human and/or proto-human) skeletal remains are found in conjunction with stone tools and animal bones that have cut marks on them. These cut marks indicate the flesh was scraped away from the bone with human-made tools, and could not have been made in any other way. You also find distinctively smashed bones occurring in conjunction with hammerstones that clearly show they were used to get at the marrow for its fatty material.3 Prior to the evidence from these earliest stone tools, going back even further (2--3 million years) is chemical evidence showing from strontium/calcium ratios in fossilized bone that some of the diet from earlier hominids was also coming from animal flesh.4 (Strontium/calcium ratios in bone indicate relative amounts of plant vs. animal foods in the diet.5) Scanning electron microscope studies of the microwear of fossil teeth from various periods well back into human prehistory show wear patterns indicating the use of flesh in the diet too.6 The consistency of these findings across vast eons of time show that these were not isolated incidents but characteristic behavior of hominids in many times and many places. The evidence--if it is even known to them--is controversial only to Hygienists and other vegetarian groups--few to none of whom, so far as I can discern, seem to have acquainted themselves sufficiently with the evolutionary picture other than to make a few armchair remarks. To anyone who really looks at the published evidence in the scientific books and peer-reviewed journals and has a basic understanding of the mechanisms for how evolution works, there is really not a whole lot to be controversial about with regard to the very strong evidence indicating flesh has been a part of the human diet for vast eons of evolutionary time. The real controversy in paleontology right now is whether the earliest forms of hominids were truly "hunters," or more opportunistic "scavengers" making off with pieces of kills brought down by other predators, not whether we ate flesh food itself as a portion of our diet or not.7 Can you give us a timeline of dietary developments in the human line of evolution to show readers the overall picture from a bird's-eye view so we can set a context for further discussion here? Sure. We need to start at the beginning of the primate line long before apes and humans ever evolved, though, to make sure we cover all the bases, including the objections often made by vegetarians (and fruitarians for that matter) that those looking into prehistory simply haven't looked far enough back to find our "original" diet. Keep in mind some of these dates are approximate and subject to refinement as further scientific progress is made. 65,000,000 to 50,000,000 B.C.: The first primates, resembling today's mouse lemurs, bush-babies, and tarsiers, weighing in at 2 lbs. or less, and eating a largely insectivorous diet.8 50,000,000 to 30,000,000 B.C.: A gradual shift in diet for these primates to mostly frugivorous in the middle of this period to mostly herbivorous towards the end of it, but with considerable variance between specific primate species as to lesser items in the diet, such as insects, meat, and other plant foods.9 30,000,000 to 10,000,000 B.C: Fairly stable persistence of above dietary pattern.10 Approx. 10,000,000 to 7,000,000 B.C: Last common primate ancestor of both humans and the modern ape family.11 Approx. 7,000,000 B.C. After the end of the previous period, a fork occurs branching into separate primate lines, including humans.12 The most recent DNA evidence shows that humans are closely related to both gorillas and chimpanzees, but most closely to the chimp.13 Most paleoanthropologists believe that after the split, flesh foods began to assume a greater role in the human side of the primate family at this time.14 Approx. 4,500,000 B.C.: First known hominid (proto-human) from fossil remains, known as australopithecus ramidus--literally translating as "root ape" for its position as the very first known hominid, which may not yet have been fully bipedal (walking upright on two legs). Anatomy and dentition (teeth) are very suggestive of a form similar to that of modern chimpanzees.15 Approx. 3,700,000 B.C.: First fully upright bipedal hominid, australopithecus afarensis (meaning "southern ape," for the initial discovery in southern Africa), about 4 feet tall, first known popularly from the famous "Lucy" skeleton.16 3,000,000 to 2,000,000 B.C.: Australopithecus line diverges into sub-lines,17 one of which will eventually give rise to homo sapiens (modern man). It appears that the environmental impetus for this "adaptive radiation" into different species was a changing global climate between 2.5 and 2 million years ago driven by glaciation in the polar regions.18 The climatic repercussions in Africa resulted in a breakup of the formerly extensively forested habitat into a "mosaic" of forest interspersed with savanna (grassland). This put stress on many species to adapt to differing conditions and availability of foodstuffs.19 The different australopithecus lineages, thus, ate somewhat differing diets, ranging from more herbivorous (meaning high in plant matter) to more frugivorous (higher in soft and/or hard fruits than in other plant parts). There is still some debate as to which australopithecus lineage modern humans ultimately descended from, but recent evidence based on strontium/calcium ratios in bone, plus teeth microwear studies, show that whatever the lineage, some meat was eaten in addition to the plant foods and fruits which were the staples.20 2,000,000 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.23 The main controversy about this time period by paleoanthropologists is not whether homo habilis consumed flesh (which is well established) but whether the flesh they consumed was primarily obtained by scavenging kills made by other predators or by hunting.24 (The latter would indicate a more developed culture, the former a more primitive one.) While meat was becoming a more important part of the diet at this time, based on the fact that the diet of modern hunter-gatherers--with their considerably advanced tool set--have not been known to exceed 40% meat in tropical habitats like habilis evolved in, we can safely assume that the meat in habilis' diet would have been substantially less than that.25 1,500,000 to 230,000 B.C.: Evolution of homo habilis into the "erectines," a range of human species often collectively referred to as homo erectus, after the most well-known variant. Similar in height to modern humans (5--6 feet) but stockier with a smaller brain, hunting activity increased over habilis, so that meat in the diet assumed greater importance. Teeth microwear studies of erectus specimens have indicated harsh wear patterns typical of meat-eating animals like the hyena.26 No text I have yet read ventures any sort of percentage figure from this time period, but it is commonly acknowledged that plants still made up the largest portion of the subsistence. More typically human social structures made their appearance with the erectines as well.27 The erectines were the first human ancestor to control and use fire. It is thought that perhaps because of this, but more importantly because of other converging factors--such as increased hunting and technological sophistication with tools--that about 900,000 years ago in response to another peak of glacial activity and global cooling (which broke up the tropical landscape further into an even patchier mosaic), the erectines were forced to adapt to an increasingly varied savanna/forest environment by being able to alternate opportunistically between vegetable and animal foods to survive, and/or move around nomadically.28 For whatever reasons, it was also around this time (dated to approx. 700,000 years ago) that a significant increase in large land animals occurred in Europe (elephants, hoofed animals, hippopotamuses, and predators of the big-cat family) as these animals spread from their African home. It is unlikely to have been an accident that the spread of the erectines to the European and Asian continent during and after this timeframe coincides with this increase in game as well, as they probably followed them.29 Because of the considerably harsher conditions and seasonal variation in food supply, hunting became more important to bridge the seasonal gaps, as well as the ability to store nonperishable items such as nuts, bulbs, and tubers for the winter when the edible plants withered in the autumn. All of these factors, along with clothing (and also perhaps fire), helped enable colonization of the less hospitable environment. There were also physical changes in response to the colder and darker areas that were inhabited, such as the development of lighter skin color that allowed the sun to penetrate the skin and produce vitamin D, as well as the adaptation of the fat layer and sweat glands to the new climate.30 Erectus finds from northern China 400,000 years ago have indicated an omnivorous diet of meats, wild fruit and berries (including hackberries), plus shoots and tubers, and various other animal foods such as birds and their eggs, insects, reptiles, rats, and large mammals.31 500,000 to 200,000 B.C.: Archaic homo sapiens (our immediate predecessor) appears. These human species, of which there were a number of variants, did not last as long in evolutionary time as previous ones, apparently due simply to the increasingly rapid rate of evolution occurring in the human line at this time. Thus they represent a transitional time after the erectines leading up to modern man, and the later forms are sometimes not treated separately from the earliest modern forms of true homo sapiens.32 150,000 to 120,000 B.C.: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis--or the Neanderthals--begin appearing in Europe, reaching a height between 90,000 and 35,000 years ago before becoming extinct. It is now well accepted that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary offshoot that met an eventual dead-end (in other words, they were not our ancestors), and that more than likely, both modern homo sapiens and Neanderthals were sister species descended from a prior common archaic sapiens ancestor.33 140,000 to 110,000 B.C.: First appearance of anatomically modern humans (homo sapiens).34 The last Ice Age also dates from this period--stretching from 115,000 to 10,000 years ago. Thus it was in this context, which included harsh and rapid climatic changes, that our most recent ancestors had to flexibly adapt their eating and subsistence.35 (Climatic shifts necessitating adaptations were also experienced in tropical regions, though to a lesser degree.36) It may therefore be significant that fire, though discovered earlier, came into widespread use around this same time37 corresponding with the advent of modern human beings. Its use may in fact be a defining characteristic of modern humans38 and their mode of subsistence. (I'll discuss the timescale of fire and cooking at more length later.) 130,000 to 120,000 B.C.: Some of the earliest evidence for seafoods (molluscs, primarily) in the diet by coastal dwellers appears at this time,39 although in one isolated location discovered so far, there is evidence going back 300,000 years ago.40 Common use of seafoods by coastal aborigines becomes evident about 35,000 years ago,41 but widespread global use in the fossil record is not seen until around 20,000 years ago and since.42 For the most part, seafoods should probably not be considered a major departure, however, as the composition of fish, shellfish, and poultry more closely resembles the wild land-game animals many of these same ancestors ate than any other source today except for commercial game farms that attempt to mimic ancient meat.43 40,000 to 35,000 B.C.: The first "behaviorally modern" human beings--as seen in the sudden explosion of new forms of stone and bone tools, cave paintings and other artwork, plus elaborate burials and many other quintessentially modern human behaviors. The impetus or origin for this watershed event is still a mystery.44 40,000 B.C. to 10--8,000 B.C.: Last period prior to the advent of agriculture in which human beings universally subsisted by hunting and gathering (also known as the "Late Paleolithic"--or "Stone Age"--period). Paleolithic peoples did process some of their foods, but these were simple methods that would have been confined to pounding, grinding, scraping, roasting, and baking.45 35,000 B.C. to 15--10,000 B.C.: The Cro-Magnons (fully modern pre-Europeans) thrive in the cold climate of Europe via big-game hunting, with meat consumption rising to as much as 50% of the diet.46 25,000 to 15,000 B.C.: Coldest period of the last Ice Age, during which global temperatures averaged 14°F cooler than they do today47 (with local variations as much as 59°F lower48), with an increasingly arid environment and much more difficult conditions of survival to which plants, animals, and humans all had to adapt.49 The Eurasian steppes just before and during this time had a maximum annual summer temperature of only 59°F.50 Humans in Europe and northern Asia, and later in North America, adapted by increasing their hunting of the large mammals such as mammoths, horses, bison and caribou which flourished on the open grasslands, tundra, and steppes which spread during this period.51 Storage of vegetable foods that could be consumed during the harsh winters was also exploited. Clothing methods were improved (including needles with eyes) and sturdier shelters developed--the most common being animal hides wrapped around wooden posts, some of which had sunken floors and hearths.52 In the tropics, large areas became arid. (In South Africa, for instance, the vegetation consisted mostly of shrubs and grass with few fruits.53) 20,000 B.C. to 9,000 B.C.: Transitional period known as the "Mesolithic," during which the bow-and-arrow appeared,54 and gazelle, antelope, and deer were being intensively hunted,55 while at the same time precursor forms of wild plant and game management began to be more intensively practiced. At this time, wild grains, including wheat and barley by 17,000 B.C.--before their domestication--were being gathered and ground into flour as evidenced by the use of mortars-and-pestles in what is now modern-day Israel. By 13,000 B.C. the descendants of these peoples were harvesting wild grains intensely and it was only a small step from there to the development of agriculture.56 Game management through the burning-off of land to encourage grasslands and the increase of herds became widely practiced during this time as well. In North America, for instance, the western high plains are the only area of the current United States that did not see intensive changes to the land through extensive use of fire.57 Also during this time, and probably also for some millennia prior to the Mesolithic (perhaps as early as 45,000 B.C.), ritual and magico-religious sanctions protecting certain wild plants developed, initiating a new symbiotic relationship between people and their food sources that became encoded culturally and constituted the first phase of domestication well prior to actual cultivation. Protections were accorded to certain wild food species (yams being a well-known example) to prevent disruption of their life cycle at periods critical to their growth, so that they could be profitably harvested later.58 Digging sticks for yams have also been found dating to at least 40,000 B.C.,59 so these tubers considerably antedated the use of grains in the diet. Foods known to be gathered during the Mesolithic period in the Middle East were root vegetables, wild pulses (peas, beans, etc.), nuts such as almonds, pistachios, and hazelnuts, as well as fruits such as apples. Seafoods such as fish, crabs, molluscs, and snails also became common during this time.60 Approx. 10,000 B.C.: The beginning of the "Neolithic" period, or "Agricultural Revolution," i.e., farming and animal husbandry. The transition to agriculture was made necessary by gradually increasing population pressures due to the success of homo sapiens' prior hunting and gathering way of life. (Hunting and gathering can support perhaps one person per square 10 miles; Neolithic agriculture 100 times or more that many.61) Also, at about the time population pressures were increasing, the last Ice Age ended, and many species of large game became instinct (probably due to a combination of both intensive hunting and disappearance of their habitats when the Ice Age ended).62 Wild grasses and cereals began flourishing, making them prime candidates for the staple foods to be domesticated, given our previous familiarity with them.63 By 9,000 B.C. sheep and goats were being domesticated in the Near East, and cattle and pigs shortly after, while wheat, barley, and legumes were being cultivated somewhat before 7,000 B.C., as were fruits and nuts, while meat consumption fell enormously.64 By 5,000 B.C. agriculture had spread to all inhabited continents except Australia.65 During the time since the beginning of the Neolithic, the ratio of plant-to-animal foods in the diet has sharply increased from an average of probably 65%/35% during Paleolithic times66 to as high as 90%/10% since the advent of agriculture.67 In most respects, the changes in diet from hunter-gatherer times to agricultural times have been almost all detrimental, although there is some evidence we'll discuss later indicating that at least some genetic adaptation to the Neolithic has begun taking place in the approximately 10,000 years since it began. With the much heavier reliance on starchy foods that became the staples of the diet, tooth decay, malnutrition, and rates of infectious disease increased dramatically over Paleolithic times, further exacerbated by crowding leading to even higher rates of communicable infections. Skeletal remains show that height decreased by four inches from the Late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic, brought about by poorer nutrition, and perhaps also by increased infectious disease causing growth stress, and possibly by some inbreeding in communities that were isolated. Signs of osteoporosis and anemia, which was almost non-existent in pre-Neolithic times, have been frequently noted in skeletal pathologies observed in the Neolithic peoples of the Middle East. It is known that certain kinds of osteoporosis which have been found in these skeletal remains are caused by anemia, and although the causes have not yet been determined exactly, the primary suspect is reduced levels of iron thought to have been caused by the stress of infectious disease rather than dietary deficiency, although the latter remains a possibility.68 So have Hygienists really overlooked all the evidence you've compiled in the above timeline? Are you serious? It was a puzzle to me when I first stumbled onto it myself. Why hadn't I been told about all this? I had thought in my readings in the Hygienic literature that when the writers referred to our "original diet" or our "natural diet," that must mean what I assumed they meant: that not only was it based on comparative anatomy, but also on what we actually ate during the time the species evolved. And further, that they were at least familiar with the scientific evidence even if they chose to keep things simple and not talk about it themselves. But when I did run across and chase down a scientific reference or two that prominent Hygienists had at long last bothered to mention, I found to my dismay they had distorted the actual evidence or left out crucial pieces. Could you name a name or two here and give an example so people will know the kind of thing you are talking about? Sure, as long as we do it with the understanding I am not attempting to vilify anybody, and we all make mistakes. The most recent one I'm familiar with is Victoria Bidwell's citation (in her Health Seeker's Yearbook69) of a 1979 science report from the New York Times,70 where she summarizes anthropologist Alan Walker's microwear studies of fossil teeth in an attempt to show that humans were originally exclusively, only, fruit-eaters. Bidwell paraphrases the report she cited as saying that "humans were once exclusively fruit eaters, eaters of nothing but fruit." And also that, "Dr. Walker and other researchers are absolutely certain that our ancestors, up to a point in relatively recent history, were fruitarians/vegetarians."71 But a perusal of the actual article being cited reveals that: The diet was said to be "chiefly" fruit, which was the "staple," and the teeth studied were those of "fruit-eater," but the article is not absolutistic like Bidwell painted it. Fruit as defined by Walker in the article included tougher, less sugary foods, such as acacia tree pods. (Which laypeople like ourselves would be likely to classify as a "vegetable"-type food in common parlance). And although it was not clarified in the article, anyone familiar with or conscientious enough to look a little further into evolutionary studies of diet would have been aware that scientists generally use the terms "frugivore," "folivore," "carnivore," "herbivore," etc., as categories comparing broad dietary trends, only very rarely as exclusivist terms, and among primates exclusivity in food is definitely not the norm. The primate/hominids in the study were australopithecus and homo habilis--among the earliest in the human line--hardly "relatively recent history" in this context. The studies were preliminary, and Walker was cautious, saying he didn't "want to make too much of this yet"--and his caution proved to be well-warranted. I believe there was enough research material available by the late 1980s (Health Seeker's Yearbook was published in 1990) that had checking been done, it would have been found that while he was largely right about australopithecine species being primarily frugivores (using a very broad definition of "fruit"), later research like what we outlined in our timeline above has shown australopithecus also included small amounts of flesh, seeds, and vegetable foods, and that all subsequent species beginning with homo habilis have included significant amounts of meat in their diet, even if the diet of habilis probably was still mostly fruit plus veggies. There is more that I could nitpick, but that's probably enough. I imagine Victoria was simply very excited to see scientific mention of frugivorism in the past, and just got carried away in her enthusiasm. There's at least one or two similar distortions by others in the vegetarian community that one could cite (Viktoras Kulvinskas' 1975 book Survival into the 21st Century,72 for instance, contains inaccuracies about ape diet and "fruitarianism") so I don't want to pick on her too much because I would imagine we've all done that at times. It may be understandable when you are unfamiliar with the research, but it points out the need to be careful. Overall, then, what I have been left with--in the absence of any serious research into the evolutionary past by Hygienists--is the unavoidable conclusion that Hygienists simply assume it ought to be intuitively obvious that the original diet of humans was totally vegetarian and totally raw. (Hygienists often seem impatient with scientists who can't "see" this, and may creatively embellish their research to make a point. Research that is discovered by Hygienists sometimes seems to be used in highly selective fashion only as a convenient afterthought to justify conclusions that have already been assumed beforehand.) I too for years thought it was obvious in the absence of realizing science had already found otherwise. The argument made is very similar to the "comparative anatomy" argument: Look at the rest of the animals, and especially look at the ones we are most similar to, the apes. They are vegetarians [this is now known to be false for chimps and gorillas and almost all the other great apes--which is something we'll get to shortly], and none of them cook their food. Animals who eat meat have large canines, rough rasping tongues, sharp claws, and short digestive tracts to eliminate the poisons in the meat before it putrefies, etc. In other words, it is a view based on a philosophy of "naturalism," but without really defining too closely what that naturalism is. The Hygienic view of naturalism, then, simplistically looks to the rest of the animal kingdom as its model for that naturalism by way of analogy. This is good as a device to get us to look at ourselves more objectively from "outside" ourselves, but when you take it too far, it completely ignores that we are unique in some ways, and you cannot simply assume it or figure it all out by way of analogy only. It can become reverse anthropomorphism. (Anthropomorphism is the psychological tendency to unconsciously make human behavior the standard for comparison, or to project human characteristics and motivations onto the things we observe. Reverse anthropomorphism in this case would be saying humans should take specific behaviors of other animals as our own model where food is concerned.) When you really get down to nuts and bolts about defining what you subjectively think is "natural," however, you find people don't so easily agree about all the particulars. The problem with the Hygienic definition of naturalism--what we could call "the animal model for humans"--is that it is mostly a subjective comparison. (And quite obviously so after you have had a chance to digest the evolutionary picture, like what I presented above. Those who maintain that the only "natural" food for us is that which we can catch or process with our bare hands are by any realistic evolutionary definition for what is natural grossly in error, since stone tools for obtaining animals and cutting the flesh have been with us almost 2 million years now.) Not that there isn't value in doing this, and not that there may not be large grains of truth to it, but since it is in large part subjectively behavioral, there is no real way to test it fairly (which is required for a theory to be scientific), which means you can never be sure elements of it may not be false. You either agree to it, or you don't--you either agree to the "animal analogy" for raw-food eating and vegetarianism, or you have reservations about it--but you are not offering scientific evidence. So my view became, why don't we just look into the evolutionary picture as the best way to go straight to the source and find out what humans "originally" ate? Why fool around philosophizing and theorizing about it when thanks to paleoanthropologists we can now just go back and look? If we really want to resolve the dispute of what is natural for human beings, what better way than to actually go back and look at what we actually did in prehistory before we supposedly became corrupted by reason to go against our instincts? Why aren't we even looking? Are we afraid of what we might see? These questions have driven much of my research into all this. If we are going to be true dietary naturalists--eat "food of our biological adaptation" as the phrase goes--then it is paramount that we have a functional or testable way of defining what we are biologically adapted to. This is something that evolutionary science easily and straightforwardly defines: What is "natural" is simply what we are adapted to by evolution, and a central axiom of evolution is that what we are adapted to is the behavior our species engaged in over a long enough period of evolutionary time for it to have become selected for in the species' collective gene pool. This puts the question of natural behavior on a more squarely concrete basis. I wanted a better way to determine what natural behavior in terms of diet was for human beings that could be backed by science. This eliminates the dilemma of trying to determine what natural behavior is by resorting solely to subjective comparisons with other animals as Hygienists often do. You mentioned the "comparative anatomy" argument that Hygienists look to for justification instead of evolution. Let's look at that a little more. Are you saying it is fundamentally wrong? No, not as a general line of reasoning in saying that we are similar to apes so our diets should be similar. It's a good argument--as far as it goes. But for the logic to be valid in making inferences about the human diet based on ape diet, it must be based on accurate observations of the actual food intake of apes. Idealists such as we Hygienists don't often appreciate just how difficult it is to make these observations, and do it thoroughly enough to be able to claim you have really seen everything the apes are doing, or capable of doing. You have to go clear back to field observations in the 1960's and earlier to support the contention that apes are vegetarians. That doesn't wash nowadays with the far more detailed field observations and studies of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Chimp and gorilla behavior is diverse, and it is difficult to observe and draw reliable conclusions without spending many months and/or years of observation. And as the studies of Jane Goodall and others since have repeatedly shown, the early studies were simply not extensive enough to be reliable.73 Science is a process of repeated observation and progressively better approximations of the "real world," whatever that is. It is critical then, that we look at recent evidence, which has elaborated on, refined, and extended earlier work. When you see anybody--such as apologists for "comparative anatomy" vegetarian idealism (or in fact anybody doing this on any topic)--harking back to outdated science that has since been eclipsed in order to bolster their views, you should immediately suspect something. The main problem with the comparative anatomy argument, then--at least when used to support vegetarianism--is that scientists now know that apes are not vegetarians after all, as was once thought. The comparative anatomy argument actually argues for at least modest amounts of animal flesh in the diet, based on the now much-more-complete observations of chimpanzees, our closest animal relatives with whom we share somewhere around 98 to 98.6% of our genes.74 (We'll also look briefly at the diets of other apes, but the chimpanzee data will be focused on here since it has the most relevance for humans.) Though the chimp research is rarely oriented to the specific types of percentage numerical figures we Hygienists would want to see classified, from what I have seen, it would probably be fair to estimate that most populations of chimpanzees are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% of their diet on average in most cases (as a baseline) to perhaps 8--10% as a high depending on the season, as animal food--which in their case includes bird's eggs and insects in addition to flesh--particularly insects, which are much more heavily consumed than is flesh.75 There is considerable variation across different chimp populations in flesh consumption, which also fluctuates up and down considerably within populations on a seasonal basis as well. (And behavior sometimes differs as well: Chimps in the Tai population, in 26 of 28 mammal kills, were observed to break open the bones with their teeth and use tools to extract the marrow for consumption,76 reminiscent of early homo habilis.) One population has been observed to eat as much as 4 oz. of flesh per day during the peak hunting season, dwindling to virtually nothing much of the rest of the time, but researchers note that when it is available, it is highly anticipated and prized.77 It's hard to say exactly, but a reasonable estimate might be that on average flesh may account for about 1--3% of the chimp diet.78 Now of course, meat consumption among chimps is what gets the headlines these days,79 but the bulk of chimpanzees' animal food consumption actually comes in the form of social insects80 (termites, ants, and bees), which constitute a much higher payoff for the labor invested to obtain them81 than catching the colobus monkeys that is often the featured flesh item for chimps. However, insect consumption has often been virtually ignored82 since it constitutes a severe blind spot for the Western world due to our cultural aversions and biases about it. And by no means is insect consumption an isolated occurrence among just some chimp populations. With very few exceptions, termites and/or ants are eaten about half the days out of a year on average, and during peak seasons are an almost daily item, constituting a significant staple food in the diet (in terms of regularity), the remains of which show up in a minimum of approximately 25% of all chimpanzee stool samples.83 Again, while chimp researchers normally don't classify food intake by the types of volume or caloric percentages that we Hygienists would prefer to see it broken down for comparison purposes (the rigors of observing these creatures in the wild make it difficult), what they do record is illustrative. A chart for the chimps of Lopé in Gabon classified by numbers of different species of food eaten (caveat: this does not equate to volume), shows the fruit species eaten comprising approx. 68% of the total range of species eaten in their diets, leaves 11%, seeds 7%, flowers 2%, bark 1%, pith 2%, insects 6%, and mammals 2%.84 A breakdown by feeding time for the chimps of Gombe showed their intake of foods to be (very roughly) 60% of feeding time for fruit, 20% for leaves, with the other items in the diet varying greatly on a seasonal basis depending on availability. Seasonal highs could range as high as (approx.) 17% of feeding time for blossoms, 22--30% for seeds, 10--17% for insects, 2--6% for meat, with other miscellaneous items coming in at perhaps 4% through most months of the year.85 Miscellaneous items eaten by chimps include a few eggs,86 plus the rare honey that chimps are known to rob from beehives (as well as the embedded bees themselves), which is perhaps the most highly prized single item in their diet,87 but which they are limited from eating much of by circumstances. Soil is also occasionally eaten--presumably for the mineral content according to researchers.88 For those who suppose that drinking is unnatural and that we should be able to get all the fluid we need from "high-water-content" foods, I have some more unfortunate news: chimps drink water too. Even the largely frugivorous chimp may stop 2--3 times per day during the dry season to stoop and drink water directly from a stream (but perhaps not at all on some days during the wet season), or from hollows in trees, using a leaf sponge if the water cannot be reached with their lips.89 (Or maybe that should be good news: If you've been feeling guilty or substandard for having to drink water in the summer months, you can now rest easy knowing your chimp brothers and sisters are no different!) An important observation that cannot be overlooked is the wide-ranging omnivorousness and the predilection for tremendous variety in chimpanzees' diet, which can include up to 184 species of foods, 40--60 of which may comprise the diet in any given month, with 13 different foods per day being one average calculated.90 Thus, even given the largely frugivorous component of their diets, it would be erroneous to infer from that (as many Hygienists may prefer to believe) that the 5% to possibly 8% or so of their diet that is animal foods (not to mention other foods) is insignificant, or could be thrown out or disregarded without consequence--the extreme variety in their diet being one of its defining features. Over millions of years of evolution, the wheels grind exceedingly
  21. Caffeine is fine on a low carb diet. It's actually beneficial if taken in modest amounts. (it causes the release of free fatty acids which are then used for energy..) :cool: TJ :cool:
  22. If the sex is atheletic enough it won't be necessary.. TJ
  23. Have a cup of coffee or some tea before getting active (while low-carb) and you'll lose even more. Caffeine causes the release of Free Fatty Acids (ffa) which will give you more energy and allow you to get rid of more adipose. :cool: TJ :cool:
  24. True story: When I'm very strict low-carb/paleo I usually sleep for 4 hours, wake up for a while, then sleep another 4 hours each night. A few years back I discovered some paleo research that showed that hunter-gatherer humans had the same sleep patterns. IE: You eat a healthy paleo-low carb human diet -- you start behaving like a paleo-low carb human (and gain all of the health benefits too.) :cool: TJ :cool:
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