Sat, May-27-06, 09:18
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Senior Member
Posts: 389
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Plan: lc
Stats: 93/75/74
BF:
Progress: 95%
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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Originally Posted by ThomasCGT
One cant say that masai eat low carb as milk solids, which make up maybe 80% of their diet, are approx 30% carbs. What they do eat that tickles us Atkins folk, is the high sat-fat Having observed the Masai in Kenya and Tanganyika over many years, I noticed a sprinkling only of elderly. Sometimes these were the 'medicine' men, who probably had some herbal knowledge/consumption. In general, the masai looked pretty unhealthy, apart from the young warrior class, but they would be their late teens and early twenties. Even with their clean arteries, they seem to succumb to early death, probably due to parasites from their diet and daily contact with animals. I havent seen any studies on why they are not long lived.
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keep in mind that the milk consumed by the masai comes from zebu cattle, which has twice the fat of the milk we typically drink.
some relevant commentary - by anthony ( the omnivore ) colpo - regarding the longevity of the masai from this discussion on the thincs website:
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Based on what we know, the major causes of death among primitive humans were infectious disease and violent death. This applies even to many recent hunter-gatherer/nomad societies. Mann's autopsy study of Masai men showed that the most common causes of death were "homicide" and syphilis. The Masai were well-known for their war-like attributes, raiding neighboring tribes, stealing their cattle and women…if you live that kind of life, don't expect to live to a ripe old age, no matter how fit you are or how much pristine free range food you eat!
What is most telling from Mann's studies is that the Masai were in far better physical condition and their cardiovascular systems were far healthier than age-matched Americans. "Age-matched" is the key word--if the Masai were able to combine the healthier aspects of their lifestyle with a more sanitary and civilized mode of living, then there is little reason to believe they would not live as long if not longer than the average westerner.
Many members of this group are no doubt familiar with the work of Weston A. Price, a quick read through Nutrition and Physical Degeneration should dispel the myth that "primitive diets" are somehow inferior to modern diets.
The longevity we enjoy today is primarily a result of improved sanitation and hygienic living conditions. Our control over microbes has progressed to the point where most of us are now living long enough to die from other causes.
The fact that this technology did not exist back in the Paleolithic is obviously no indictment of Paleolithic nutrition. In fact, if we were to take a large group of today's largely unfit and unhealthy westernized citizens and transport them back in time to the Stone Age to fend for themselves, sans their emergency medical care, prosthetics, visual aids, etc, etc, I think you would find that their longevity would suddenly be drastically reduced!
One very important point that is typically overlooked is that the Paleo era was also free of many other negative health influences--chronic stress (Stone Age man did not rush off every morning to catch the bus, did not have to work at a boring unrewarding job for decades on end, did not stress over meeting mortgage/car/college/alimony/widget-and-gadget repayments, etc, etc), drug use, and alcohol abuse. His kids were not stuck in the stupefying institutions we call schools, where they were pressured to confirm to a bizarre array of mind-numbing and often downright harmful trends adhered to by their peers.
He rose with the light and fell asleep soon after dark, rather than pounding down his melatonin levels by flicking on the lights and watching the replays until 3am. He exposed his skin to plenty of vitamin D-producing sunshine or, if he lived in colder climates, sought out fatty vitamin D-rich foods. Importantly, Paleolithic man had no choice but to be physically active.
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interestingly, dissection of masai cadavers has shown that they in fact do suffer from arteriosclerosis, eventhough CVD is nonexistent. their arteries apparently are far more elastic than ours, and can therefore widen to compensate for arteriosclerotic buildup.
Last edited by pbowers : Sat, May-27-06 at 09:26.
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