Hello all,

I have been eating the natural human dietary regime for over 47 years now. I do not eat anything whatsoever from vegetable sources. The only things veggie I use are spices. My diet is usually 60% fat and 40% protein by calories. I used to eat 80/20 when younger and about twice as much quantity of meat also, but that seems too much energy at my age, which is 71- even though I am very active. I think the body actually becomes more efficient with energy as you age, but I have no way of proving it true. Otherwise, my body today is very like it was at the age of 30. I figure most of what we call 'aging' is due to insulin damage to the collagen and other body structures. No carbs = no insulin. I don't heal quite as fast when injured as I did as a youngster, however. But I have few wrinkles, and my skin is still strong and elastic.

At this point I would like to point out that a zero carb diet does NOT cause ketosis. The body rapidly adapts within a few weeks and begins consuming the ketones from fat metabolism. A fully keto-adapted body excretes no ketones in the urine. A metabolic by product, 'ketone bodies' are actually a special kind of carb, and they substitute for glucose at the structures which use it. They have the added advantage of making you feel good- and well fed.

The body cannot store dietary fat, there is no mechanism for transport across the adipose cell's wall, nor can it 'burn' carbs, which actually are toxic in more than the tiny amount required by the brain and a few other structures. The body converts dietary carbs (all convert to glucose as they are absorbed) into body fat. The conversion mechanism requires insulin which is very tissue-damaging. It is correct to say that dietary carbs are the base cause of both heart blockage and diabetes, (not a disease).

I must warn all of you that it is very unlikely that very many will be able to eat as I do over the long term, or in fact, to follow any diet for long which is much different from the one you were trained to as a baby/child. This is because diet is learned much the same way language, dress and behaviour is, and is buried deep and inaccessible, a part of your acculturation/socialisation. The very thing which makes us human is that deep and almost instinctive complex of behaviour.

It requires a powerful will and a determination to change, in order to succeed in adopting the 'extreme' diet which this website is based on. Even those who are morbidly obese, as powerful a motivation as any I can imagine will have 'cravings' for what I call 'non-food' (all vegetation and carbs) which will eventually prove irresistible. A few may manage to stay on the diet for years, but unless you are prepared to stick with it for maybe ten or more years, you will drift back into eating what I consider poison. For some reason my mum was not interested in forcing me to eat the veggies I hated so, and i was able to eat only what I liked- mostly meat, especially hamburger and the fat those at our table would cut from their steaks. Still I had massive struggles abandoning the 'civilised diet'.

I suggest that no non-food be taken home, none allowed in your fridge or pantry (out of sight is hopefully out of mind). Make a request when seated in a restaurant that the bread bin be removed (but please leave the butter), and when ordering, request that the vegetables be removed from the plate in the kitchen (just say you don't like to see 'good food go to waste').

Even during the years I was soundman for Grateful Dead, I stuck to my guns and remained totally carnivorous. I am restricted by the forums rules (as I read them) from telling about my essay on diet and exercise which is posted on my website. Basically it states that humans were totally hunting peoples until the end of the paleolithic age. No paleolithic archeological dig has ever produced any food residues from vegetables. Chemical analysis of bones from the digs indicates they are the same composition as the African lion- thus, virtually no intake of vegetation. There were no 'hunter-gatherer' societies until the neolithic, even though some modern HG tribes still made and used typical paleolithic napped-stone tools. The so called Nearthin and Paleodiet thus are both nonsense, true paleolithic people were total carnivores and ate no veggies whatsoever.

In the relatively short evolutionary period since the consumption of vegetables as food there has not been any real adaptation to such low grade low energy, difficult to digest foods. Because we have no adaptation to digesting or processing vegetables as food, they are all basically very bad for us.

We evolved as an active, group-hunting animal. We have a high natural requirement for physical exercise and cannot live long or be healthy without a lot of it.

I hope my post is of some help to others. Just persist. I show that it IS possible to overcome your dietary socialisation.

Hi, theBear,
I was very interested in your Post since you echo many of my own sentiments about veggies. I would rather not have to eat any at all but it seems that society somehow crams the notion down our throats that eating them is a necessity. I usually do have veggies as a side at a dinner out, but leave them there, on the side. You mentioned that you had a web-site. Could you please PM the link to me? I would be very interested in reading your info.
Thanks,

Hullo Bear, and welcome.

You are very welcome to add the URL of your website as your homepage. Just go to "UserCP" on the green menu bar, and open "edit profile," and you will see where to add the URL.

Cheers.

Rosebud

What a interesting post and one I can relate to. I have always disliked most vegetables and some time struggle to eat them. I have always prefered meat and fat. I gained most of my weight eating potatoes, and whole grain breads and pasta. This is information I will be refering back to in the future. Thanks for posting it.

Hi, theBear:

I found your comment interesting with some new info. Some reference sources would be interesting to read.

I am also exactly your age. I just do not look as young as you are.

I will be studying my diabetes as well as the effect of the low carbohydrate diet on myself. My first study is shown in my thread.

I would also like to see your website.

Diabowl

Hello I just wanted to ask you a few questions...there seems to be a few contradictions in your argument here.
Firstly you say:



Which insinuates that it is pre-programmed into us to eat a mix of vegetation, protein and fat, and other food items. Thus, if we tried to detach ourselves from that, we would not be able to, or at the very least find it considerably hard.

Then you go on to say:



What web site? This one you just posted to? Only I think that you're kind of contradicting yourself there, you say it takes far too much willpower for people to change to an 'extreme' diet....when you are talking yourself of eating only meat....no vegetation at all....so in my book, your version of a diet is MUCH more 'extreme' than what people here on the boards are trying to do.

The you go on further to say:



A-haaa, so it should be relatively EASY to follow your plan then....because if we came from civilizations which already did not eat vegetation (which I find almost impossible to believe but nevermind...I'll keep with your argument...) then surely you are preaching to the already converted....we just don't know it yet?

I have one further question. Where exactly do you get your vitamines and minerals from if you don't eat any vegetation?

I totally respect your view of your own plan in general, but I would be hypocritical if I sat here and told you I believed every single thing you said.

What about the argument that yes, indeed we might very well have evolved from people who didn't touch a leafy thing their whole lives....but we also live at least two thirds longer than 'they' did then and who was to say 'they' got it right back then? Who's to say that the way we have been eating for the past (however long) isn't better for us than what they were doing back then....just because it happened in the past doesn't make it better!! I often hear people say in an argument about diet in general that they think the stone age, or cave man diet was much better for people than it is now.....but cave dwellers lived on average 20 years, you were concidered positively OLD if you hit 25!!!! We live till we are in our 80's or 90's now.....do you not think that could be because we eat better more neutricious things than they did??!

I agree that this is possibly the best plan you could be on.....but for YOU. Not nesasarily me, or everyone else on this board.
You make a very convincing argument, and I respect your post, but I also feel that such radical change of anyones diet could cause problems...especially when our bodies have been 'programmed' in the way you describe, into eating vegetation for all these years.

Allow me to clear up this misconception by quoting Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades in their wonderful book, "Protein Power Lifeplan" (I've chopped it into shorter paragraphs for readability):

Another misconception is that prehistoric man usually died when he was twenty years old, so it didn't matter how much meat or fat he ate because he didn't live long enough to develop heart disease or any of the other disorders that meat and/or fat supposedly cause.

The twenty-year figure that is often used as the average age of death for prehistoric man is precisely that: the average age of death. That figure tells us nothing about the rate of aging or the maximum life span of prehistoric man.

A much more reliable figure that has been developed and used by those scientiests studying aging is the mortatily rate doubling time (MRDT), the time it takes for the mortality rate, i.e., the probabiliy of dying each year, to double. For example, if your probability of dying this year is arbitrarily set at one, and it takes eight years before your probability of dying is double what it is now, your MRDT is eight, which is about what it is in humans. Someone thirty years old, therefore, is twice as likely to die at age thirty-eight, four times as likely to die at age forty-six, and eight times as likely to die at age fifty-tow, and so on. The MRDT of mice is about three months; a fruit fly's about ten days.

Dr. Steven Austad from the University of Idaho has been able to determine that the MRDT of prehistoric man was about the same as ours. Prehistoric man had the capability to live as long as we do, he just didn't have as gentle an environment, so what we're comparing when we compre our average age at death to his is the relative hostility of our two environments.

Remember, prehistoric man did not have antibiotics or any knowledge of medical practices that we have today. Probably a good many died of broken bones and infection from wounds sustained in hunting.



All of the Eades' books provide a wealth of information regarding why veggies and grains are not necessary for human growth and nutritional health.

That said, just eating meat and fat today cannot be likened to prehistoric man's diet. They ate much more of the animal, not just the sirloin cut. They ate marrow, the innards, just about everything. We don't eat those things, and so miss out on many of the vitamins and nutrients.

Perhaps theBear eats more than just hamburger and sirloin. He's obviously doing something right if he's in such excellent shape.

Hi Bear - interesting post. I'm a fiber skeptic and I believe that grains and legumes are deleterious to human health, but to extend that to vegetables, fruit, seeds and nuts is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Given the existance of modern hunter/gatherer peoples who do, indeed, eat vegetation; I'd have a hard time believing that our paleolithic ancestors shunned it completely. I can't imagine a caveman wandering around in spring not partaking in the bounty of berries, for example. Our sweet tooth had to evolve at some point, on something other than honey.

As long as it is not a commercial site, posting about it is fine.

Dr's or not, I would seriously love to see the 'evidence' for this argument. I'm sorry, but no matter where you sit on the fence regarding any issue, you will always find some kind of 'support' from someone out there....or some research which supports the theory. I believe in evidence.....scientific fact, not someone elses 'opinion'.

-Ok.

I see that the old bugbear of 'seeing' only what fits into one's world view still holds strongly amongst some of those responding to my post. I will attempt to clear things up a bit.

My website is: www.thebear.org.

diabowl:

A zero-carb diet is the traditional treatment for diabetes (not a disease) before the development of injectable insulin, first from pigs.

Diabetes is the result of the immune system sensing the widespread tissue damage from insulin, targeting the source cells in the pancreas and destroying them. Insulin resistance type diabetes is the result of the tissues themselves rejecting insulin. Neither form is found in any other animal in nature, man's carnivorous pets fed a grain based diet may also suffer this syndrome.

In the absence of dietary carbs, the body does not need to produce insulin and the diabetes essentially 'disappears'. You will never be told this by a doctor because then you would be free of the need for medical intervention and your daily ration of drugs. All the assorted ills diabetics suffer are actually caused by insulin, cataracts, heart attacks, bad joints, etc. These are the kind of damages done to the tissues by insulin, and the injected kind is a far more powerful damaging agent than the endogenous hormone. Blood monitoring on a zero-carb regime will quickly confirm the stability of blood glucose.

foxgluvs:

Nowhere in my post do I say 'preprogrammed'. I thought I made it quite clear that a person's eating habits, including the composition of the diet is solely determined by that person's mother between birth (and about 8), the same time all the social skills which make us uniquely human ware acquired.

The name of this website is lowcarber.org,, is it not? A low carb diet is 'extreme' relative to the usual western civilised diet. My diet is just the end point of lowering carbs. My statement was not that it took 'far too much willpower', only that it requires strong willpower and great determination.

I am sure that there are a great many things known by anthropologists that you would find 'impossible to believe', however scientific evidence does not require belief, only knowledge. The composition of the materials found in paleo digs as well as bone composition tests are well known and published, I suggest a search on Google. And check the journals of anthropology in a library.

Vitamins. that is easy, there are virtually no sources of any vitamins to be in vegetation (which is why all vitamin supplements are synthetic), but all are found in abundance in meat. For example no source of A other than animal liver exists. The amount of B complex in 30 gm of fresh red meat is more than can be extracted from one hundred kilos of yeast concentrate- once it was done, but at great expense. C is not the only antiscorbitic substance, since a diet of just red meat prevents scurvy (the Inuit diet).

Moderns live a long time in spite of a wickedly bad diet but it is due to medicine. Most paleo people died either of trauma of various kinds in hunting and war, starvation or disease. Lifespan is therefore not a measure of the effectiveness of diet, as even a lousy one can get you to ~30/40. I think you mean nutritious. It is just plan nonsense to claim that there is any basic difference between individual humans so far as body functions, etc are concerned, the biggest cop up in avoidance is ' is ok for you but everybody's different', so please, let's not go there.

bawdywench:

I have eaten nothing but sirloin steaks for months on end, but I do like eggs cheese, many cuts of meat, even organs like liver tongue kidneys and brains (although the Inuit never eat any of them- and most likely neither did the true paleo hunters). Fish and chicken are nice too, in fact I have never 'met' an animal I would not eat. The one meat that needs to e eaten sparingly is liver, which contains a lot of starch (glycogen) and vit. A which is toxic in excess. Excess may be as little as one ounce of the liver of an animal feeding on fish.

Kristine:

Concerning vegetables, there is no 'baby'- it is all just a load of dirty water. Moderns do not eat any raw natural vegetation other than sugary fruit and some difficult to indigestible nuts. All modern veg foodstuff have been extensively modified by selective breeding to reduce to eliminate toxins and still require long cooking, are low in nutrients and cause a growth of harmful bacteria in the intestine, while the fibrous cellulose residues (fibre) scratches the delicate lining and causes mucus and scarring. This reduces nutrition and eventually as you age, this damage will lead to malnutrition even on a good diet. Meat leaves the stomach as a liquid after about 45-60 min, and is totally absorbed in the first foot or two of the small intestine- no scratching and no mucus formation. Human milk is very sweet, hence the 'sweet tooth' is easy to develop if reinforced by lollies as a baby. Without this reinforcement sweets are seldom later sought after. If paleo people actually ate seasonal fruits (quite possible in some places), they ate them where found, no evidence or residue has been found in digs.

The only thing careful about my diet is I don't use salt (a chemical) and I don;t cook the meat much, I make sure I eat a lot of fat. Virtually any meat is ok, even for long periods, it is a matter of personal taste, like- I really like raw oysters and soft shell crabs (and for that matter Aussie mud crabs..)

Excellent post.

bear,
very interesting post! I would be interested in a list of what you do eat..so far you mentioned meat, poultry, fish, eggs and cheese...do you eat butter? mayo? spices like pepper? garlic? Do you eat only hormone free meat? I know that if you buy your meat at a grocery store for example, cows are injected with hormones nowadays. Also animals are fed with grains. Doesnt that change the meat at all and make it any danger when ONLY eating meat? just curious! Would love to hear your take on it! I will check out your website!

WOW - those posts are the best that I have read on the subject of diet (mostly because I agree with 100% of them)

Pure GOLD theBear!!

(especially the vegetables thing - I say they are totally optional and I get called on that opinion constantly)

Oh, the fiber!!! I think people are so programmed to eat that stuff - I won't touch it! There was a study involving women that showed a MASSIVE increase in cancer for those ladies that ate the most vegetable fiber, and it was COMPLETELY DISMISSED AS A FLUKE!! http://www.applesforhealth.com/colcan1.html

Reenactment:
"Why do you eat that stuff?"
"Because they told me to."
"Well, aren't they the same ones that said you'll go brain dead in three days if you don't eat carbs?"
"Yes."
"And you still listen to them?"

I've always been a vegetable-sceptic, too. When I was younger, I was intensely interested in 'living off the land', and after reading lots of books and experimenting, I realized that if you couldn't hunt or fish, you'd soon die here in the Northeast woods. Most edible vegetation here is of the seasonal green-leafy variety, and usually very bitter, and any most pre-historic peoples would likely choose fat/meat over bitter greens if given a choice. Vegetation was probably 'starvation fodder' to be eaten only as a last resort. I don't know where the fathers of broccoli, tomatoes, and cauliflour came from, but I've never seen any growing here in the wild.

Actually, the body does need insulin in small amounts, even in the abscence of dietary carbs. Insulin is required to put glucose in the muscle fiber, and is necessary to make certain hormones. It just isn't needed in very high amounts.



Do you have a citation for that? I've always assumed the Inuit ate the offal because of the extremely high nutrition and fat levels.

Protein intake stimulates insulin secretion, along with glucagon.

I hate to be the one to bring some reality to this discussion but I used to be a bit of an anthropology buff.

All my research, lectures, presentations I went to detailed that paleo man was an omnivore and an opportunistic diner.

All the analysis that I've seen of paleo human coprolites (dung) included both vegetable and offal matter. In the case of vegetable matter, more or less vegetable matter in the dung was used to place the season. A lot of this dung was found preserved in caves. Analysis has gotten so good, via DNA, they were able to identify the type of matter and even sometimes the species. The coprolites contained protein (both muscle and offal), insects, berries, grasses and other vegetation.

Further for paleo, depending on your timeline definition--mine is before settlement--the area of habitation was quite widespread and the resulting diet diverse. If you want to look at it as a time when there were still mastadons, they found vegetable matter and offal in those coprolites as well.

Another idea to think of...before there could be agriculture, as primitive as the first agriculture must have been, there must have been a selection from the wild of what to grow. That means that certain grasses, bulbs, fruits, and yes vegetables were growing and available in the wild.

And looking to todays woods and forests for sustenance is quite useless, the forests of today are domesticated and barren. And further, why limit yourself to this area/climate/continent. But you don't even have to look far past what was available in the forests and fields of North America when Native Americans were living in this country to see what might have been availble in the wild--onlions, garlic, cabbage, gourds, fruits and berries, greens, and yes even grasses/grains.

Oh and another thing...the liver is a great source of vitamin A, and offal are concentrated sources of other nutrients. I hardly think there would be so many primitive peoples who had culteral traditions and ceremonies for the eating of brains, hearts, and livers if these things weren't part of a more ancient diet.

Welcome bear and thank you for such an interesting post. It is immensley interesting to hear from someone who has been living this lifestyle for so many years. I am almost 60 and have been on and off low carb diets for the last ten years, mainly because I wasn't quite sure if I was doing the right thing. But after just reading "Life without Bread" and your post I am motivated to stay on this diet forever now. My wife recently had chest tightness and has taken my advice to kick the carbs (she is maintaining 72 carbs a day right now until she gets more used to it, and drinking cayenne tea, that stuff is amazing). I still have 30 or 40 carbs a day but maybe that will come down with time. Thanks again for your post. I will look up your website.

Bear, thanks for posting the link. Your above posts make a lot of sense to me and follows my ideas on eating. Now I feel better about eating a lot of meat, fish, and chicken, eggs and occasional cheese. However, my one non-natural food vice is coffee with cream. I have an occasional sweet tooth, especially when I'm tired and the coffee and cream satisfies that.

What is cayenne tea, where do you get it and what is amazing about it.....? I'm genuinely interested

That is my situation exactly... and coffee with heavy whipping cream seems to take care of my "sweet tooth".

And... BEAR! WHAT A FABULOUS POST! You are truly an inspiration! A living proof of what I have been suspecting ever since reading "Life Without Bread"!... and anything else on the damaging nature of insulin! Bravo to you, Bear!!!!!!! I have a freezer full of meat, and might just adopt your style of eating for a while. And, to be totally honest, the ONLY time I have ever seen my weight and body fat easily fall to the levels that were healthy for me, was when I ate as you do, with a very small amount of really low carb veggies. I did this for like a month, just to "cure my sugar addiction/do induction to get started on LC/etc."... and during that one month that I kept this diet up, I was able to lose weight and body fat effortlessly! And, the only reason I started eating nuts and berries and other carbs was cuz I thought it was necessary for health! And, just as soon as I did, my body fat started to go right back up! I am SO EXCITED to read your post... you have no idea! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN???!!!!!!! PLEASE stick around!!!!!!!

This is FUNNY! I was looking over theBear's web site, and found his discussion of diet and exercise, and I thought "hey, I've read this before!"

And, I had read it before, and actually was telling folks about it on this post! From 2 1/2 years ago!

It's a small cyber world, huh?!

I pray, hope, and would even give away 1/4 of my soul for any kind of empirical scientific research stipulating that plant food consumption isn't necessary for optimal health.

I disdain, loath, and find ALL veggies the nastiest tasting stuff imaginable. Every serving of veggie I eat ruins the rest of my dinner.

Even the smallest excuse, I'd try this diet in a heartbeat. For me, it would require no effort to cut out veggies! Even now, forcing myself to eat a single serving a day is a monumental effort that I'd much rather do without.

Veggies not being necessary for optimal health would something too wonderful to be true, but I would readily embrace it. After 3 years of this, I am all too ready to take a year off eating any veggies what so ever.

Nice to see that I'm not alone, and there are others who dislike veggies too!

With kindest regards,

Frederick

Wow! I can't believe so many people don't like veggies. I love them.

This is mind boggling to me. LOL

Just curious, what do you like about them? The benefits? You can't like the way they taste, can you?

I love the taste. You might be a super taster. They can taste things in foods most of us can't. Usually they hate the ones in the cabbage family most (including broccoli and cabbage). Do they taste bitter to you?

To me I just taste a wonderful medley of rich, complex flavors. Hard to describe. Lets see, I had asparagus for lunch. I was munching it raw, but cooked it up with lemon and butter. How to describe... aw I can't. I'll just sound like one of those wine snobs saying stupid things like "floral" and "oaky".

My favorite ones are brussel sprouts, winter squash, asparagus, broccoli, savoy cabbage, artichokes.