I don't think that we are carnivores. I believe that we are omnivores. We certainly have big brains that can compensate for our lack of talons or claws, and lack of speed, and carnivore's teeth and all of that stuff. But what if we are adapted to enjoy fruit like a great ape is?


A lot of folks in this carnivore thread are in agreement that eating veggies and grains "off the plain" might be all about what one might do in a famine situation if there was no other food around. Correct me if I am wrong, but don't great apes choose fruit above all else if fruit is available?

Who doesn't like fruit? Who doesn't like attractive colours, sweet smells and flavours? Y'all can tell me that you don't like asparagus, but I'd like to bet that fruit has to call to you sometimes, no???

A lot cultures and religions of humans seem to have adopted periods of fasts or mono-eating or perhaps some sort of similar annual cleansing rituals. Some might say that a meat only diet may be toxic without such a cleanse and may lead to cancer and other health issues.

I betcha (personally) that I could last on meat only, only if it was a seasonal thing. I am an omnivore. But when the fruit is ripe, I'm sitting in a tree stuffing my face and enjoying the health benefits.

That's just me. Carry on.

Why do you suspect this may be true?

Hey Frederick. This is why. Just an opinion. Not here to change the world.

http://www.vegsource.com/earthsave/...es/1000128.html


http://www.anthro.psu.edu/walker.html

Hi Everyone! I've been lurking for awhile and have been greatly entertained by this thread. I just had to respond to this one though...



I have a friend who, just today, had the choice between a banana and a piece of pizza to even out her sudden blood sugar drop.

She chose the pizza.

Maybe apes would choose the pizza too if it was readily available?

Oh heck, so would I! This is why I became 100 pounds overweight! No argument there.

Maybe apes would choose banana splits... or cheese cake... or butterscotch malts... or a seafood pasta dish?! Wow!... have we all lost our minds?!!! If so... let's eat CARBS till the cows come home, and then blame it on what other animals would "choose" to do. NO NO NO... WE choose to eat all this JUNK! There is NO REASON other than using food like a DRUG! We smoke and drink and do drugs out of cultural reasons... now, would an ape do that? Maybe they would smoke crack if it were "readily available"? WHAT DOES THIS have to do with what this thread is about?! IMHO we eat food that is non-food/poison simply for the same reasons we do any other cultural thing... and sometimes culture takes a turn for the worse when it comes to diet, or other aspects of living. Sorry, but I am getting pretty tired of this type of "logic" being used in this thread!

The point I was TRYING to make was that we can't just assume an ape will eat fruit over and above anything else just because it MIGHT be a healthier alternative. It just happens to be sweeter than your basic fire-ant.. (big assumption there I know..).. and probably a lot more convenient as it doesn't run away..

Right... but what does an ape's diet have to do with a human's diet? Or any other animal's diet? The other animals don't have the cultural influences that we human's do. What we eat is based in our culture. That is the point I (and others on this thread) are TRYING to make!

Who's to say that an ape's diet isn't cultural? Doesn't a young ape learn from it's parents?

No matter.. carry on then..

Sorry to be so late, we just had a powerful category 5 tropical cyclone (hurricane/typhoon) come ashore directly west of our place, and it was still cat 3 as it passed us by. Nearly 10" of rain so far and we had very strong wind. We have serious problems with downed trees, and some storm-induced problems with our electrical supply and other bits and pieces of work we must do to get it all back up and running. I will try to get back to you all more quickly tomorrow, and I may even get a window of opportunity later on today, but it is remote.

You will not show ketones in your urine if there are carbs in your diet, the ketones are reprocessed- into bodyfat.

I would really appreciate it if people who repeatedly ask questions or make statements relating to things I have said would please read all my posts- I have already covered this subject in detail.

Once more: Your body ONLY burns FAT for muscular work, and it burns fat all the time, 24/7. Ketones do not appear in the urine until all carbs are stopped and then the ketones will disappear again in a few weeks as your body begins using them as glucose-replacement rather than converting them, as it does all carbohydrates, into bodyfat (from which they came). BOTH a keto-adapted and carb-eating person will show no ketones in the urine. SOME people have a problem with fat metabolism while insulin is present, and glucose being converted into bodyfat, but not everyone, which is why some (a few) people do not become fat or obese no matter what they eat. Those who have a problem find any effort very hard and may fall asleep until the fat storing process is over. Ketones are a valuable nutrient, and like glucose, only appear in the urine briefly during a dietary change. If they persist, then it indicates a disease-condition.

OK? Am I making my self clear?

Dean.. You can eat the same cut of meat indefinitely, no problem. Variety is for your mind, not your body. meat i a complete food, but be aware that red meat logically has to be the best, since it is from a mammal and thus very, very close in composition to your own body's tissues. I would guess that the way a cat becomes fixated on one food is indication that this is ok, and the cat thus avoids wasting energy pursuing other prey when one is abundant. Cats don' t eat all the prey animal, that is a myth, as anyone whose cat has access to hunt wildlife will confirm. Write me via the address on my website, and I will give you my son Starfinder's e/mail and website, he is a vet and is into our diet. He even has designed proper food for dogs and cats, which he tells about on his website.


I eat plenty of cheese, why avoid it, especially with 'visions'? (Only cheese).

Hunger indicates insufficient fat. Anything called a 'fast' is probably not enough food. Eat all kinds of meat, butter cheese, etc. Make sure you eat fat -slowly- until you can't eat any more, then finish with lean....at each meal. Fat satisfies, and it is filling. Lack of enough fat in a low to zero carb diet is not good. There is no such thing as 'low carb bread' or low carb spaghetti, that is like low carb sugar or low carb cornstarch? What is a name? Bread is made from starch. Spaghetti is a form of pasta made from starch. I guess that with some inorganic filler you might replace 20% of the carbs, and in comparison with 100% could by a huge stretch be called 'low'. Read the label and let me know how many gms carb in 100.

It is unlikely for most people to lose 2-1/2 pounds of just bodyfat in three days- it represents about 10,000 calories- base metabolism is usually around ~1800, so in three days without doing anything, you burn ~5400. If you run every day, you will burn 600 cal/mile, so in order to lose that fat, you have to run 2-1/2 miles each day. I think you had been taking in salt and carbs and the loss was mostly water.

BetyLouWho Sorry, are you another person who has jumped into the thread which has over 760 posts, without first reading it?

Humans are not omnivores and you 'like' fruit because your mother gave it to you as a baby, plus it is sweet like human milk, the first thing you tasted at birth- what we eat is cultural.

Please- do a search and at least read all my posts before stepping in the bucket again. Oh, and have you ever asked yourself why your progress after all those months 'on LC' is..... zero? The answer is in this thread.

Apes are not humans by a long period of divergent evolution. SOME great apes like to eat monkey meat better than fruit, and if it did not take so much effort and skill to kill the clever little buggers, they might eat ONLY monkey.

This is incorrect.

I think you are perhaps confusing carbs from sugars and starches with carbs from vegetables. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of members here can attest to the fact that ketones most definitely do appear in the urine while eating at least 3 cups of vegies as per Dr Atkins' Induction stage.

I'm glad to hear you were not injured by Cyclone Larry.

Rosebud

Yes, thank you no-one here was hurt.

If there are ketones spilling in the urine on a steady-composition (unchanging) diet, then there is some sort of problem with the person's metabolism. A very slight purple color on the test stick is not significant.

This is also incorrect. Once fat is broken down into ketone bodies, it cannot be re-converted back to fat again. It must be either burned or wasted/excreted.

Any change in colour on the test stick indicates ketosis is present, and is therefore significant.

And ketosis showing on a "steady composition" diet - as it does for most Atkins dieters - absolutely does not mean there is a problem with the person's metabolism. It simply means they are burning fat instead of sugar.

Rosebud

I don't like fruit.

Oh, it's clear alright.

No matter how you think ketones ( a type of carbohydrate) are dealt with, you do not BURN sugar. You ALWAYS burn fat. You can only STORE sugar as fat. If you consume NO carbs you will spill NO ketones in the urine- that is, once you have adapted to the lack of carbs. I have played with keto-sticks for a very long time, please, give me a break. So far as your own profiles indicate, not one of you have been eating a close facsimile of the zero carb style for even a couple of years steady and I doubt anyone in this thread has EVER gone low enough and long enough to become keto-adapted. You can read 'scientific' papers until the cows come home, but most if not all on metabolism are badly flawed and practice shows that to be so.

I started this thread not to argue with people over their tenaciously held mythic beliefs about food, which they use to deny the true nature of human nutrition so they can just manage to go along with a partial reform. I did it to provide access to my experience, which shows very clearly what happens to a person if they can persevere and follow this path for a very long time. What you like is cultural, and has no basis in fact or science. It is what you were taught to eat and in my long term experience people will hang like grim death rather than completely drop the carb based foods which are literally killing many of them. SO let's not waste valuable time denigrating the things I say, they work and are excellent 'black box' solutions, whether the details of what goes on inside the 'black box' are correctly known or described is of no consequence in the real world.

Mr Bear, I am not arguing with you just to denigrate you or the things you say. I am simply correcting some of your incorrect statements.

Rosebud

Bear,

I have read this entire thread and am very intrigued by your way of eating, and I have a couple questions for you that have not in fact been covered on this forum.

1. Acid/Base Balance - I'm surprised that this topic has not been addressed. There is a supposed (I say "supposed" as there is some contention regarding this) acid/base balance that your body must maintain, preferring a base pH. Different foods yield different pH readings, either putting an acid or a base effect on your kidneys, and supposedly ill effects, such as calcium depletion can result if there is too much of an acid load on your body. Meats, eggs, and cheese are high acid-yielding, while vegetable and fruits are high base-yielding. Here is a link supporting this:
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/nutriti...ools/acid.shtml
(Note: I'm not necessarily promoting "The Paleo Diet"; it was just a handy resource for this information.)
Have you heard of this before, and what do you think about it?

2. I'm a college student in Pittsburgh, living on a tight budget and forced to eat campus food most of the time. I have been eating as close to a Paleolithic-style of eating as possible, but most of the time I have to eat cheeseburgers (no bun of course) and deli meats. Once in a while, I can get some roast beef or chicken thighs from the cafeteria, but not usually. It sounds to me like in order to follow your eating plan, you really need to have access to lightly cooked red meat, which I really don't have access to. What would you recommend in my case? How could I get those lost nutrients, if not from vegetables?

Thanks for the information.

If you look younger than others your age and have countered the effects of aging, why is your hair all grey?

Sorry, but I'm willing to use my carefully conserved month's worth of smilies just to repond to that ridiculous comment!

Maybe the same reason mine has been since age 25?? Genetics..

Thank GOD for hair color, lol.

My dear rosebud:

I am absolutely sure that you genuinely believe you are 'correcting' my 'incorrect statements'.

However: Did it ever occur to you that it might be YOU who are incorrect? Relying on published studies and data which are, in my opinion- mostly rubbish? If an explanation of a real physical condition does not fit close, long-term observations, it is not acceptable to me.

Please, just leave it be. I don't need or want to have you as my 'truth cop'- you lack sufficient direct experience to make your assertions valid in my universe view.

Your being a medical professional, a nurse- is even more reason for me to find your opinionating... suspect.

In short- your responses in contradiction of my expressed knowledge fail to convince me because in general, you quote established medical dogma rather than speaking either from your own experience, or about scientific research which YOU YOURSELF have performed.

Medicine is an art... not a science. It is filled with dogma and ritual. It resists mightily any change or contradiction.

Riiiight. So all the many, many members here who have shown a positive result on their ketostix while eating (shock, horror!) vegetables, are imagining things. Okay.

Bowing out now.

Rosebud

Well genetics may account for it occurring at age 25, but it's aging that caused the change. If you could attribute everything to genetics, then Bear's claimed good health could be attributed to genetics, as well.

So glad you were not hurt in that awful storm, Bear; I saw some footage on tv, and it looked really nasty.
I have followed the all-meat diet for three weeks now, and it gets easier and easier. I eat a steak every day, very rare, quite a progress since I was eating mainly fowl and fish before. I still cook in coconut oil, but I will get organized soon and make some beef suet as per your recipe. Thank you so much for your awesome advice.
I have just one question today: how can I speed my weight loss? I am eating
1200-1400 calories a day, which is a bit below my basal metabolism requirement of 1600. On average, 70% fat to 30% protein. I have been increasing exercise intensity, as per your recommendations.
But in 3 weeks, I have only lost 1 kilo (2 lbs). If I lower calories further, will I not slow down my metabolism even more?

Losing a genuine two pounds in the first 3 weeks is a fantastic result. You need not limit your calories so much- if you are obese, you will lose at near the same rate, and some people lose faster by eating whatever amount it takes to satisfy. NO CARBS, however. It will take another 3 weeks to get you keto-adaptation up, then the loss may increase. Once you reach the proper bodyfat % for your height and sex, then to lose more you must restrict caloric content, but not until then. If '63' means 5'3", then a proper female weight for that, with about 23-25% BF should be around 95-105 pounds. At that height 145 is very chubby, 195 obese.

Perhaps you are ingesting carbs unknowingly.

Cat 5 is as strong as they come. We live in a sheltered mountain valley, and the storm was down to cat 3 when it passed by, but our road in and out is blocked with trees, and our phones are dead.


The body's pH is highly buffered, and you are very unlikely to alter it in the manner you are asking about. If you ingest a lot of organic acids, you may shift towards basic, but only very slightly and not for long. Meat, eggs and cheese can not make your body's pH shift. It is a 'vegetarian myth'. There are many of these nasty little hooks floating around pretending to be fact. Meat contains considerable combined calcium- a necessity for proper muscle metabolism- in the most highly bioavailable form- better even than hydroxyapatite (bone mineral).

I have a pretty low opinion of the so called 'paleo diet' mob. (I found it rather humorous that my thread wound up shoehorned into this category.) The form of diet the 'paleo/neanders' adhere to is a modern hunter-gatherer diet. No one knows exactly what old stone age people ate, other than there seems to have been no significant amount of vegetation of any kind- not even fruit- in their diet. We are not stone-agers of 40,000 years ago, and we need to find our food amongst what is available in the modern world, by choosing proven and effective foods, not by trying to 'reproduce' some fanciful, imaginary pre-historic diet. I can only speak of what I have 'proven' over a period of 47 years, and I will yield ground only to someone who comes forth with that kind of long term, personal ,practical hands-on experience in diet.

Buy a skillet and a hotplate. Buy a plate, knife and fork. Cooking meat is easy. Buy fresh meat at the market. Buy meat with plenty of fat ($$$), or if you can, buy trimmed lean meat ($$) and ask the butcher for some suet fat (free or $) to 'use in cooking' or to 'feed the birds'. The latter technique, buying cuts on special, can make your budget go way further than it does eating the way you currently do. Trust me on this, I did just this for man many years while going to school and while studying ballet.

Freeze the fat if can, or get it whenever you buy meat. A small electric cooler, like a Kompressor Waeco -if you have no fridge access- is a good investment.

'Roast' anything, bought pre-cooked in a restaurant or school food service- is relatively expensive compared to doing your own cooking and is basically not good for your health OR bodyfat. And, hey- take it from me- chicks love guys who can cook (and clean up afterwards).

YOU SAID IT!!!!