CALLING IT LOW CARBOHYDRATE

Recently, a Harvard study of "different diets" (all of which were "Heart Healthy") concluded that counting calories mattered most.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/pr...rotein-fat.html

They called these variations of the "Heart Healthy" diet different names. One of them was called "Low Carbohydrate". That consisted of a 1200 Calorie diet with 40% fat, 25% protein, 35% carbohydrate.

No one skilled in the art of established and published diets would call the above abomination "Low Carbohydrate".

LINCOLN DOG LEG STORY

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Abraham Lincoln


Evidently, the Harvard researchers can't tell a dog's leg from it's tail.

I expected better from Harvard.

Good one Steve !

Martin,

Carnivore bowels are smooth, shaped like a pipe, so meat passes through quickly — they don’t have bumps or pockets. Herbivore bowels are bumpy and pouch-like with lots of pockets, like a windy mountain road, so plant foods pass through slowly for optimal nutrient absorption. Human bowels have the same characteristics as those of herbivores.

Also, carnivores don’t require fiber to help move food through their short and smooth digestive tracts. Herbivores require dietary fiber to move food through their long and bumpy digestive tracts, to prevent the bowels from becoming clogged with rotting food. Humans have the same requirement as herbivores.

With the above in mind, please explain one more time your concept of “the optimal human diet”.

Bo

The problem with studies like these is they fool a whole lot of people. Most people don't have time to analyze these studies. Also, critical thinking is not taught so, people remember that they read somewhere calories in/calories out, it sticks. They don't bother to think if it doesn't matter where calories come from they could in theory eat a diet of 30% protein and 70% fat.

An optimal diet is one that contains no plant whatsoever. We've already been through all the arguments. It's all here on the forum.

Bo

Wading in (on the wrong side of the argument to boot) but your statement about seasons only apply to northern regions where nothing grows in the winter. However that far from applies to all regions of the world.

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I do not think our ancestors where mainly carnivores, although I think they would have preferred meat and fat because of it's nutritional denseness. I think that our modern imagination simply fails us. We eat from such a restricted subset of food, that if you remove carb-rich food, there is not all that much left. Meat, nuts, berries, vegetables. Our ancestor lived in an incredibly rich environment and ate an incredible variety of food that we probably can't even envision now. They were intelligent and could use tools to get at food that was outside the reach of most animals. Once they mastered fire, they could cook food that was indigestible raw. They ate a tons of different insects and things we probably can't even imagine. I am sure they did not limit themselves to just meat but ate as many things as their resourcefulness and intelligence allowed them to discover.

The only way to understand how our ancestors ate is to study the diet of aborigines, past and present.

How about honey?

What about maple sugar?

I think it would be more accurate to say that Trader Joe's Whole Wheat Cranberry Hazelnut Bread" contains whole grains that we certainly don't need to prosper but that some people can tolerate, more or less, in the sense that they don't drop dead from eating it. At least not right away.

It's ridiculous to think that we "need to prosper" food that was not part of diet for millions of years.

Why don't you just admit that you love the taste of a Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat Cranberry Hazelnut Bread and that's why you eat it. You are just lying to yourself when you imagine that you are doing yourself good and that you need "Trader Joe’s Whole Wheat Cranberry Hazelnut Bread" to "prosper"

You sound like a smoker trying to justify their habit. If you love grains, eat grains, but stop trying to lie to yourself and to us by imagining some la la land where grains are necessary for anyone else but birds.

I agree. And I will add.

The variety we see in our diet is not a function of our need but rather a function or our ability to eat a varied diet. This ability is a function of our physiology which adapts, to a certain extent and for a time, to a varied diet. It's also a function of transport, which allows us to get plants from all over the world. It's also a function of agriculture, which would otherwise limit us to what we could pick off trees and stuff.

Before agriculture and transport, we could still adapt to a varied diet but only according to what was available locally. The variety would be less than it is today. In some instances, the variety would be nil as for insular populations. They would eat one or two items and that's it. In others, they would have a great diversity. Yet in some, the diversity would come in cycles but they would still eat only one or two things for long periods.

Our physiology allows us to eat plants but we pay a price in health.

honey is the only readily available pure sugar that can be gathered, but it comes at a steep price. it's also meant for the insects themselves to have quick energy. considering that there is only one source of pure sugar but multiple sources of protein and fat, that would seem to indicate we weren't meant to subsist on it for a major source of fuel.

maple sugar has to be processed. the sap has to be collected, boiled, and refined before it's of any use, or even palatable, to humans. the same goes for cane sugar and beet sugar.

It is not the only way, and has been largely abandoned by the people who think about these things for a living.

Angeline,

Thank you for being the calm voice of reason among all this firestorm of dietetic passion.

Everyone,
no plant in one's diet? No cooking oil? No herbs that have healed millions over the ages? No coffee or tea even? No fiber of any sort? No enzymes? Putrefying, stagnant digestive system where meat rots for days because there is no fiber to prod it along? Forgive me, but this is crazy. Even if the person subsisted entirely on free-range organic meat, that still wouldn't be sufficient to move one's bowels.

To know that you do not know is the best.
To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease.
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)

I'm not one to advocate a meat-only diet. But this just sounds far too close to the Dr. Kellogg approach to anti-meat.

The history of coffee only goes back to the 9th Century.


I presume that early humans ate plenty of plants - because they tasted good; anyone who's followed a strict Atkins induction knows how SWEET that green peas or green beans can taste when high crbs have been restricted.