I was pretty impressed until I saw "lean meat" in the 4th paragraph.

It's a pity these people haven't actually studied hunter-gatherers to know that they gorge themselves on fatty foods at every opportunity

I agree MioHardly new!


How illogical can you get! We eat far more PUFAs (margarine and cooking oils) but it is SFAs (which we actually eat less of) that cause a problem because if you eat more SFAs you eat less fish????

Apart from that .... they are spot on!

Lean meat.....well, I mean, if you think about it, like mentioned above, the caveman I don't think were sitting around the kill saying "Hmm, look at this fat, do you have something to trim this?" LOL honestly.

The amount of fat on animals naturally varies throughout the year as the seasons change. I'm sure the hunters avidly awaited the coming of the fat season.

The first author of this article is Loren Cordain so it is hardly new ideas although it makes a lot of sense as always. The reason Cordain do not believe in large amounts of fat is that is was simply not available in large amounts during most of human evolution (Afrika). These of you descending from Inuits may have a slightly different metabolism although humans in the arctic is a fairly recent thing in human evolution anyway.

As far as I'm concerned - sugar is the main contributary factor that has caused our problems - its added to everything! not to mention all the additives and messing around we do with food

Sugar is lethal and addictive in my opinion and with our sedetary lifestyles we dont need it at all!

jo

JHTuresson:

fat is available year-round in Afrika: Hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, elephants, coconuts, avocadoes, nuts of all kinds, bird eggs, etc. Even lean atelopes have localized fat deposits that hunters put to good use.

Also, consider that the fattiest parts of the animals are eaten first (i.e. marrow, brain, fat around kidneys, ribs), and they are the only thing eaten except in cases of famine.

The Masai of Kenya live on zebu milk and blood. Zebu milk is near 12% milk if memory serves. The Samburus of Tanzania do the same.

The Berbers of the Sahara desert live on camel/camel milk, which is even fattier.

Read Steffanson's classic «The Fat of the Land» (this book is rare though) for a comprehensive review of the fat eating that goes on in primitive tropical peoples.

In fact, Barry Groves has written an article based on «The Fat of the Land» and on the human craving for fat.

Read it here:

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/love-fat.html

Maybe by lean meat they mean that these were wild, grass-fed animals they were eating rather than the feedlot corn fed animals that constitute the food supply now ?

I find it hard to believe that African animals did not have significant fat deposits. The land was/is a paradise for animals, especially the grazers. Granted, one mechanism of survival is to be fast enough to outrun the predators, and being lean would contribute to this characteristic. But there are other means of protection that would not require the animals to be lean.

Consider also, that a certain amount of body fat is necessary for reproduction to occur. Extremely lean animals do not reproduce, its the body's way of sensing when times are hard and its no use expending energy bringing another mouth into the world that would only starve. So no, the animals of Africa would certainly have had their share of fat, and primitive man would no doubt have been aware of this and taken advantage of it.

By the same token, I'm not sure that primitive man got 75% of his calories from fat at all times. I would venture a guess that he ate a lot of protein as well, since it was almost always available at the same time as the fat. So while Cordain is off base with the extremity of his philosophy, he does have a valid point inasmuch as (as someone already said) the animals were not heavily marbled with fat in thieir muscle tissues.

The big difference of course, is the amount of carbohydrate available to primitive man. On this we are all in general agreement as far as I can tell. I'm not sure that Cordain's message is that detrimental to the low carb message overall, other than that it is more difficult to stay on low carb if you are also trying to do low fat. The fat contributes mightily to satiation from a limited number of calories, and this is the key to success.

The animals in ancient times were of course grassfed naturally, so their muscle meat was more lean than it is today. But who says that hunter gatherers preferred muscle meat? I have read of numerous case studies and such in my anthropology studies at college that more primitive, isolated peoples living today avidly preferred the organs, marrow, and fat deposits to the muscle meat. In fact, the Native Americans had a condition they referred to as "rabbit starvation," in which a man would die if he was fed only with lean meat. One account I read said that during the "fat" season, they would go out and slaughter animals specifically for their fat and organs and they would discard everything else (including the muscle meat).

Another interesting thing that hunter-gatherers did was to eat the intestinal contents of the animals they caught. Talk about being naturally fermented.

edited for a tag

No doubt about it, primitive man certainly went for the good fat food first. It only makes sense, since fat has over twice the calorie content of protein.

I suppose you also have to look at storage issues. Primitive man surely attempted to store and extend the amount of time a particular kill would last. Saturated fat will store pretty well, and dried lean muscle strips in the form of jerky would have a similar longevity. I'm guessing they ate of the organs and marrow first, then possibly stored the suet and made jerky out of as much of the muscle as possible. This would be the most parsimonious use of the kill.

Then again, with an abundance of game, there may have been no need to completely utilize a particular kill. So it may be that in times of plenty, the fat content of the diet was higher.

This is Loren Cordain’s view cut from the discussion at:
http://www.theomnivore.com/Cordain%...heOmnivore.html

"Only a single study of body composition in hippos has been reported in the scientific literature (1), and it shows hippos to be quite lean (males (n=4) 7.0 + 2.7 % body fat by weight [range = 4.3 - 10.7 %]; females (n=4) 10.9 + 2.0 % body fat by weight [range = 7.9 -12.3]) when compared to domestic animals. Also bear in mind that body fat in hippos is not stable but rather varies considerably by season, hence peak body fat percentages are maintained only for a few months out of the year, like all other wild mammals. Contrast the hippo figures to the typically obese (~30 % body fat by weight) feedlot cow which is always slaughtered at a peak body fat percentage 12 months out of the year (2). It should be pointed out that a feedlot cow with 30% body fat by weight has a total edible carcass that is a staggering 84.6 % fat by energy calculated from the 3rd order polynomial relationship between fat weight and fat energy (3).

No studies of the body composition in rhinos or elephants have been reported in the scientific literature, so the assumption that they maintain higher body fat % than domestic feedlot cattle is unwarranted. Photographs of wild elephants and rhinos frequently show visible ribs in their midsection indicating minimal subcutaneous fat stores."


JHT: I agree that people in periods may have been able to selectively feed on the fat parts but I do not believe this was the rule. The difficulties and risks involved in killing large animals make it unlikely (in my view) that they would kill a hippo etc every other day to just eat fat. I think it was much more common that the used the complete animal.

Also, that many people prefer fat meat (my self included) does not prove that it is the healthiest. An optimum level may be higher than what people ate most of the time, evolutionary speaking, but that is not mean that more is always better (what is optimal, 50, 85, 95 99 Energy% from fat??). A parallel is salt consumption, if everyone just ate what they crave most people would consume too much (and most people do).

The milk drinking people referred to is not interesting to me as I have an evolutionary view on diet and these mentioned cultures are quite recent. Milk consumption correlate well to atherosclerosis rates internationally and has been proved to cause atherosclerosis in many animal experiments, so I stay away from milk.

Cordain again:
"As regards to the Masai, an autopsy study of the hearts and aortae of 50 Masai men has demonstrated them to have extensive coronary atherosclerosis. Here is a quote from the abstract of the paper (5)) "The coronary arteries showed intimal thickening by atherosclerosis which equaled that of old U.S. men"." (link above)