PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Keith's point is there are "farms" that are raising animals on grassland where they cannot grow corn or wheat or whatever. this grassland is better for the topsoil than monoculture.

the claim is directed at cattle & pig & chicken growers inefficiently diverting grain to animal feed and to vegetarians who think the only way to grow animals is through massive grain operations

Dummass, I may be misunderstanding you, but are you arguing that if we had more vegans and vegetarians, it would cause an INCREASE in agriculture, which would be a Bad Thing?

A very high percentage of crops go towards feeding livestock. Ignoring all other pro/con nutritional arguments, meat is a very inefficient means of getting calories. That's why I went vegetarian: it's better on the planet, as it requires LESS agriculture, at least compared to commercial (non-hunted) meat. I may become a hunter after I move out of the city.

[peakishmael]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thank you Spartacus for an excellent rebuttal. One could also add as reference, The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith.

Ms. Keith was a vegan for twenty years, until illness caused her to rethink her politics and diet. Quoted from the back of her book: The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won't save us. In service to annual gains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil--the basis of life itself.

Dummass, I may be misunderstanding you, but are you arguing that if we had more vegans and vegetarians, it would cause an INCREASE in agriculture, which would be a Bad Thing?

A very high percentage of crops go towards feeding livestock. Ignoring all other pro/con nutritional arguments, meat is a very inefficient means of getting calories. That's why I went vegetarian: it's better on the planet, as it requires LESS agriculture, at least compared to commercial (non-hunted) meat. I may become a hunter after I move out of the city.

[swgprop]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

observational study alert !!!

I am EXTREMELY suspicious

Great response Spartacus, thanks.

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thank you Spartacus for an excellent rebuttal. One could also add as reference, The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith.

Ms. Keith was a vegan for twenty years, until illness caused her to rethink her politics and diet. Quoted from the back of her book: The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won't save us. In service to annual gains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil--the basis of life itself.

(My apologies if this has already been posted)

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myt...2451159&sr=1-1

I've come across that, I'll have to get it soon, after I finish the 10¹⁰ items on the reading list. ; )

To be fair to Buettner, he's not dogmatically vegetarian. While not seeming to have rigorously counted calories he's at least reporting what he thinks he saw - lots of vegetables and some meat.

[dummass]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thank you Spartacus for an excellent rebuttal. One could also add as reference, The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith.

Ms. Keith was a vegan for twenty years, until illness caused her to rethink her politics and diet. Quoted from the back of her book: The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won't save us. In service to annual gains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil--the basis of life itself.

(My apologies if this has already been posted)

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myt...2451159&sr=1-1

[Spartacus]

observational study alert !!!

I am EXTREMELY suspicious

I've read about Okinawan diets (very high pork, IIRC)[3] and Sardininian diets before and this is the first time I've read that they're low meat

One Okinawan scientist studied this. His theory, and I’m not sure I agree with it completely, is that because pig is the most genetically similar to humans, there’s something in the pork protein that helps repair arterial damage

right, Okinawans eat next to zero meat, but an Okinawan scientist studied pork ...


The further implicit claim that everyone needs to eat the same way also raises my suspicion [2]

The Longevity Expedition / Dan Buettner's search for the fountain of youth

The only proven way to slow down aging in mammals is caloric restrictions.

We should take in about 40 percent fewer calories than we normally eat—but that’s unrealistic

Text by Josh Dean

unrealistic and COMPLETELY UNPROVEN in humans. There has been TONS and TONS and TONS of research on rats and yes, even chimps that when applied to humans completely failed. Until the actual intervention studies are done in humans it's unproven.

The artful way he slips from talking about mammals to "We should take in about 40 percent ... ".

Proven in mammals (don't mention it's NOT proven in humans humans), but "we should ..." . Suspicion meter just keeps creeping upward. Why was this artful sneak needed? Someone have an axe to grind?

These diets [like Atkins, or the low-fat craze] are the worst.

mmm .... riiiiight. He's been looking at societies that he CLAIMS don't do Atkins (not one) or low fat (not one) , so he wouldn't know a rabid Atkins dieter if one bit him on the arse, but he knows Atkins or the low-fat ones are "the worst".

What has been proven is that over 1 year Atkins beat out Ornish and McDougall and Zone diets on all measures of cardiovascular health.

This was the recent Stanford "ATOZ" study (not observational), run by Chris Gardner, a scientist who has been a vegetarian for 23 years, has raised 2 vegetarian kids and plans to raise "the one that's coming" as a vegetarian.

http://med.stanford.edu/news_release...arch/diet.html
http://www.ehcafe.com/2009/10/23/sta...s-atkins-wins/


But this (that Atkins beats all the others) is unproven for the lifespan of human beings because the study was not for a lifetime. Note that I'm willing to state what's proven and what's not. What I'm objecting to is the way Buettner sling around "proven" and "unproven" in exactly the wrong places, and if he has good evidence (intervention studies, not biased obervational studies) they're not presented.

We've had 40 years of terrible science and national "diet associations" and "diabetes associations" and "heart associations" pushing the WORST DIET IMAGINABLE[1] for heart and diabetic patients. They thought their diets were "proven" too (based on observational studies).

On the Greek island of Ikaría, more people reach a healthy age 90 than anywhere else on the planet. We’re investigating the benefits of a local larval honey and the island’s radon-rich hot springs.

What, he's not going to collect rigorous evidence of how many calories they consume? Wouldn't that go a LOT further to prove his major point about calorie restriction than springs and Radon? Unless he had already decided before doing anything else that calorie restriction works ...

(note very carefully - he says calorie restriction is proven, yet there's nothing in there about the calorie counts. I Wonder why. A quick Google search didn't associate "count calories" with Buettner either. My suspicion meter is running way into the red area now. Maybe he doesn't need to count the calories, it's proven, so why bother?)


If you want another view on lowering calories, on this page look for "obesity paradox"

http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/


[1] if the recent research results on Atkins(good), Ornish(bad), saturated fat (good for you or neutral), polyunsaturated fats (terrible), small dense ldl(really, really bad), fructose(really, really bad), wheat(really, really bad), oxidized ldl(really, really bad) and apoB is verified in further trials, the new diet, this time with proven results, will be the exact opposite of the last 40 years of cr*p shoved down our throats for obesity, heart health & diabetes management.

Richard Bernstein's clinical results are already far, FAR better than anything the ADA has put out for the last 30 years.

[2] note that Atkins always maintained that not everyone should be on his diet, while most of the current crop of vegetarians and low-fatters (Ornish & McDougall, and definitely a lot of the vegetarians) still maintain EVERYONE MUST cut the fat to near zero and cut meat, and MUST devour vegetables like a combine harvester. Atkins could have been 100% wrong about everything else and that one piece of advice would still put him leagues ahead of 99.9% of the world's dieticians. Who ever heard of a doctor saying EVERYONE with an infection should take pennicillin (or any drug?) Yet the d

[jk]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

responding to an old post, but what the heck

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7219473.stm

soft drinks AND FRUIT cause gout

the actual study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum

NOTE the scientific herd mentality, from the BBC article one of the investigators says:
"I can think of some situations, for example in severe treatment failure gout, where reducing sweet fruits, such as oranges and apples could help," he added.

so take all the toxic drugs in the world, and if they don't kill you, and your gout keeps getting worse, with uric acid crystals popping out of your joints, dripping in blood, THEN AND ONLY THEN, drop one of those incredibly healthy fruits or 2 from you diet.

I've been thinking about this line quite a bit since I read it. If I ever were to adopt Roger's PaNu diet, I'd have to cut back on fruit. I had always thought pretty much all types of fruit were good for you, and I enjoy eating it.

On the other hand, if I don't go on the diet, I'm seriously considering bumping up my consumption of Snickers bars.

Unfortunately this is an observational study, not intervention.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks for your response.



True, but the amount required should drop considerably after the body adapts to ketosis. The brain is capable of using ketones as fuel, too. Adaptation starts on about day 3, and can take up to 2 weeks to maximize. After that, the brain can derive 25% of its energy from ketones. I know people in long-term ketosis who have BG of 60 (or less) and feel great.

Hello Sharky

True and I believe the brain should be encouraged to use ketones as well.

My point was just that, as you recognize, the BG level can only be minimized to a point, and that some glycosylation of Hemoglobin is normal and will occur even on zero carbs, 90% fat, and 10% protein.

Thanks for your interest
RM

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks for your response.

You still need some glu for your brain.

True, but the amount required should drop considerably after the body adapts to ketosis. The brain is capable of using ketones as fuel, too. Adaptation starts on about day 3, and can take up to 2 weeks to maximize. After that, the brain can derive 25% of its energy from ketones. I know people in long-term ketosis who have BG of 60 (or less) and feel great.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Since GI is relatively useless, is there a better metric to use when evaluating food choices? Does that apply to glycemic load too? Maybe just total carbs would be better?

If you make lists of the GI of foods, you will see there are some that have a GI of zero or close to it. Just eat those. But seriously, GI and G load are articial measures that are kind of pointless when you can decrease the load or the GI the most just by eating more foods with no carbs. So yes, counting carbs is better, but just because the others are half measures. I don't have the references at hand but the few trials of using GI have little effect on BG regulation, and certainly less than total carb reduction.

One important caveat and the main reason Gi is worthless, Fructose is the unhealthiest simple sugar but generally goes straight to the liver with little glycemic response. So better GI, worse for your metabolism

So count fructose as worse than equimolar amounts of starches or glucose when you count total carbs.

If you are not diabetic, 50 -75 g/day is a good level to shoot for if you want to count carbs - If you get to step 3 of PaNu, eat whatever you want within reason, and send your food portions to fitday or some other calculating program, you will usually be in the range of 10 -20% carbs (50-100g or thereabouts) automatically. PaNu is therefore in some ways "harder" than carb counting, but the grain elimination makes it much simpler.

On a related subject, if you suppress carb intake, won't glucagon and gluconeogenesis kick in, and raise your blood sugar anyway?

Yes, once below about 50g per day - but only enough so you don't pass out and never as high as BG spiking with a carb laden meal. Glu passively diffuses into the brain in a gradient dependent fashion and the gradient needs a minimum concentration at all times. That minimum is maintained and is kept as stable as possible by creatiing glu as needed internally and not flooding the bloodstream with glu from meals.

Don't think of it as "all glucose in the blood is poison" - think of glucose levels above a certain amount glycating an amount that is above the threshhold of what we can handle or compensate for. Remember that post with mortality vs HBA1c? As I recall, there was about a 6 fold reduction in mortality with reduction of A1c from 7 to under 5. At 5 there is clearly still glycation of hemoglobin going on as the value is not down to zero, but our repair mechanisms are not yet overwhelmed.

Do you know of any effective way of minimizing that effect? I would guess that reducing protein intake might be helpful, but wouldn't that encourage muscle catabolisation?

You don't want to minimize gluconeogenesis generally, but if you go 40% protein there is a lot of excess that is wasted or converted to glu and then to fat if you are in calorie excess (not likely as its hard to eat that much protein)

You still need some glu for your brain. Your amino acids fungible like cash in a bank - they are turned over naturally and new proteins are assembled all the time in a steady state fashion - even exercise does not change it that much. If you eat enough protein, you are just providing aas to keep the balance and not have an aa deficit in your muscle. If you are short aas over many days, you will start to waste some muscle just for glu - I believe this will be minimized if you are usually in or near ketosis as even your brain requirements for glu go down with metabolic training and glu is also re-assembled from the glycerine liberated from your triglyceride stores.

You can visit Peter at hyperlipid and see that he does what you suggest - he limits protein to about 10% of calories and is 80-85% fat and 5% carbs. This requires some unnatural dietary maneuvers like tossing egg whites, but could be of benefit if a person were type II DM or close to it.

Also, as you moved from reducing carbs to increasing fat intake, what form does that fat normally take in your diet?

I prefer animal fats like butter that are about 50% SFA, 40% MUFA and maybe 10% PUFA (roughly). As discussed, I favor total PUFAs as low as possible and then making sure the ratio is 2:1 O-6: O-3. Coconut oil is good. Minimize plant oils and don't cook with anything but animal and coconut.

I made chili the other day with buffalo burger, and added a half stick of butter to add fat (Texas chili -no beans - and no noodles like at hospital cafeterias in the obese state of wisconsin)

Also, see this

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2...ohydrates.html

and this

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2...-and-oils.html

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

This is why glycemic index is a pretty useless concept.

Since GI is relatively useless, is there a better metric to use when evaluating food choices? Does that apply to glycemic load too? Maybe just total carbs would be better?

On a related subject, if you suppress carb intake, won't glucagon and gluconeogenesis kick in, and raise your blood sugar anyway? Do you know of any effective way of minimizing that effect? I would guess that reducing protein intake might be helpful, but wouldn't that encourage muscle catabolisation?

Also, as you moved from reducing carbs to increasing fat intake, what form does that fat normally take in your diet?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

since i know you're writing a book, i wanted to point out that the messsage carrier you pointed to earlier was insulin, the body's own response to sugar. you didn't say the sugar carried the message. here you say the fat carries the message, instead of pointing to the metabolic response to the fat. i think your message-carrying metaphors will be stronger if you don't conflate these levels of analysis.

Hmmm...I am not sure how the message can't be considered in terms of its larger metaphorical evolutionary meaning as well as specific biochemical/hormonal pathways. The fat does carry a satiety message that is different than fructose in particular.


More specifically, I can't simplify it to the level of insulin response because it is more complicated than that. Excess insulin response is something in general to avoid, but fructose actually gives little insulin response.

I may have used the shorthand of "insulin response" in some other posts as a reason to avoid fructose. As fructose comes roughly 1:1 with glucose, in say, an orange, there is always an insulin response to the glucose half when you eat fructose. Fructose is unhealthy in it's own way. I'll try not to confuse by simplifying like that too much.

As you probably know, gram per gram pure glucose raises your blood sugar almost twice as much as sucrose, which is half fructose and half glucose. Lower "glycemic index" than equimolar amounts of pure glucose. This is why glycemic index is a pretty useless concept. Fructose goes directly to the liver and is metabolized there. The negative effects of fructose are legion, and since gram per gram it may be worse to get fructose than pure glucose, we need to explain why we did not evolve an same "off" switch with fructose- it can't be high insulin alone as fructose has less insulin response than glucose.

I know "sugars" have been lumped together, and for heuristic purposes (trying to get people to avoid both fructose and insulin spikes from glucose)I think that is appropriate. Partly, I suppose this is a rhetorical counter to the idea that there are "good carbs and bad carbs". In a sense, there are, but the first thing patients ask me is how much fruit they can eat. Why not? It tastes great with all that ridiculously sweet fructose in evolutionarily discordant amounts in it. Then they think whole wheat bread might have less insulin response because it has "7 grains" in it. If it is mechanically processed wheat bread, it is not really any better than wonder bread with more lectins in it.

Here is more about fructose:

"Although fructose produces a very small insulin response, long-term use of fructose nevertheless induces insulin resistance, which eventually results in fructose-induced hypertension. Somewhat surprisingly, the low concentration of insulin released after fructose ingestion also means that there is a low satiety response to fructose. It is possible to consume a great deal of fructose without feeling full. Finally, fructose is 10-17 times more effective than glucose in producing Advanced Glycation Endproducts--the crosslinked matrix of proteins and sugars that accumulates in our tissues and stiffens them."

http://lowcarb4u.blogspot.com/2008/07/fructose-ii.html

The more I learn about historically available sources of fructose vs saturated fat, the more the transient vs dependable abundance argument makes sense to me, at least as an explanation for the lack of satiety with fructose/sucrose. However, experiments with other critters also show differential satiety effects so I may need to go back a few million years with the evolutionary argument. It may not be 500,000 ya but more like 50,000,000.

[jk]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I think the metabolic meaning of saturated fat, because it correlates with group hunting success, beginning perhaps half a million years ago, is that food is abundant, you can stop eating now.

since i know you're writing a book, i wanted to point out that the messsage carrier you pointed to earlier was insulin, the body's own response to sugar. you didn't say the sugar carried the message. here you say the fat carries the message, instead of pointing to the metabolic response to the fat. i think your message-carrying metaphors will be stronger if you don't conflate these levels of analysis.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I'm curious about this. It seems to me that when early humans made a kill, the ideal thing to do was to eat as much as possible before the meat spoiled and predators came to fight you for it. Isn't the hunters' "abundance" quite fleeting?

Jimmy

Actually I believe the signal is both kinds of abundance. The fleeting kind would have been, simply, the most available calories at once that a paleolithic human could experience. Wild honey might have had this fleeting abundance also, so I believe the second kind of abundance - engendered by co-evolution of large mammal eating with cooperative living and hunting, is the more important abundance. The ability to eat only to satiety might have co-evolved with the organized behaviors that over time, made food more abundant generally. It would not have been adaptive to eat 6000 calories at once and waste it if humans could share the kill cooperatively, and with cooking and drying, save the food for consumption over several days.

The progression is argued to be from opportunistic scavenging beginning millions of years ago to oreganized and cooperative hunting of large mammals in the range of 4 - 800,000 years ago.

My hypothesis is that we evolved a satiety signal with saturated fat that we do not get from other calorie dense foods, particularly fructose.

Fructose seems to have a positive feedback mechanism, with the stimulation of appetite and nearly direct storage as fat. I believe this is related to historical sources being smaller and requiring more energy and much more time to exploit - no negative feedback was necessary. Great apes spend up to 5 hours a day just chewing the non-franken raw fruits they rely on in order to get enough calories. Humans spend 45 minutes to and hour a day chewing our mostly cooked food. (The Fuhrman mechanical satiety approach to weight loss, bulked-up hard to chew food that is hard to get too many calories from, would seem modeled on uncooked paleolithic carbohydrate food sources. To me, this mechanical satiety approach does not seem as optimal as the high fat hormonal satiety approach in our current environment, as there is more to health than just caloric intake or even insulin levels.)

We tend to think of both fat and sugar as calorie dense, but historically, the storage fat of animals was always the most calorie dense food on a calories consumed per hour of eating basis. Saturated fat is how we store calories in our own bodies. Our guts shrank and our brains grew largely because we co-evolved with prey animals who provide us with calories via their own storage fat

Interestingly, Chimpanzees hunt opportunistically, but don't invest more than 30 minutes or so away from their plant food sources to do so. Lacking the hunting efficiency provided by the tools and social organization of hominids, they cannot risk coming home empty handed. Wrangham, in his book Catching Fire describes a chimp that preys on infant monkeys. The chimp will kill the infant and eat only the guts, tossing away the rest of the carcass. It will kill another monkey before eating the rest of the first carcass. It is simply more efficient to eat the easy to chew and digest guts (with their mesenteric fat) than to eat the whole monkey. This behavior would fit your "eat it now and just the tasty bits" temporary abundance. I think the "Share it with the group and you will get more", a socially enabled abundance, would be more important to the satiety signal.

This is still a working hypothesis of mine.

Something must account for why saturated fat is metabolic matter to the anti-matter of fructose.