spEEdfrEEk
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Posts posted by spEEdfrEEk
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'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
year of bike?list of mods?
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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
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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 Just found this on another board. I don't think its for me but holy crap this guy is an animal. Check out some of his demo vids.
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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 Anyone tried this workout?
http://www.ast-ss.com/max-ot/max-ot_intro.asp
The principles sound good though I'm sure some things work for some and not for others. I was considering giving it a try but I'm not sure just yet.
BTW you have to sign up to see the workout but I think you can read some of the info without signing up. The sign up process is very easy and free and I haven't gotten any spam as a result so you don't have to worry about that.
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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 -
There is so many mixed opinions out there on this stuff. Anyone have any knowledge of its health benefits? Anyone use this?
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 -
This is a protein only with no fat. (Stillmans)
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 -
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 Where would one get "natural" ephedra from ?
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...And down almost 14lbs. (my weight seems to fluctuate a half-pound from day to day)
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 -
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 -
Apparently she makes her own "stacker".....everyday she takes a baby asprin, 200mg caffiene pill, and a primateme tablet......(yes thats a pill for asthma)
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 -
Not sure if I want to go MWF and then try to do cardio on T/Th or just go 4 or 5 days of strength (and do cardio whenever) so that I can squeeze more stuff in.
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 -
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 Atkins also says no alcohol but I stuck by my Bacardi Diets (zero carbs) and the pounds still came off. I found it to be a very effective appetite suppressant.
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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 -
Do you have any information about milk?
Yep, it's pretty much as bad as you're thinking it is.
I FINALLY made a commitment to cut out the gallon of skim milk I drink every day.Wise choice.
I feel like its the root of some of my respiratory problems.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.
I decided to replace the protein I lost from the milk elimination by supplementing egg protein (from powder)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.
What is your recommendation for calcium supplementation???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.
What's most bio-available?I thought about Sardines...
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)
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Congrats bud -- major accomplishment!
:cool: TJ :cool:
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Harbanger, or something like that.. I got 'em cheap from Academy
:cool: TJ :cool:
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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.
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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 geneticdifferences 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
-
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
-
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:
So what's the deal with decaf only while on Atkins? -
If the sex is atheletic enough it won't be necessary..
TJ I wonder if this would also work before sex???iain
-
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:
-
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:
Really wierd caca going on here..
in The Garage
Posted
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