you can find people that eat high fat and meat diet that live long... but on a mass scale the evidence shows people who live the longest are active, no sugar, but eating some grains, legumes, good fats and moderate amounts of meat, not to much meat and usually decents amouts of fish / veggies.... red meat is not much but used in bits.
who cares about some tribe that eats all meat..

the evidence shows that those who live the longest eat a moderate diet, there not eating high fat diets..

[QUOTE=Mrs. Skip]Thanks, Frankly, for the link to that thread. I must have missed that thread when it was being replied to on the first page, back in the summertime. I rarely look past the first page, and I can't do a search anymore because there's an advertising box on this forum that blocks the search box, and I can't get rid of it no matter what I do. (Yeah, I'm pretty computer illiterate. )

I had that problem too but I found that if you go to your user CP page the ad is gone and you can use the search feature.

Quote:
Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas R. Hofstadter, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, has said of Kurzweil's and Hans Moravec's books: "It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two, because these are smart people; they're not stupid."

That's funny!! My DH bought his book not too long ago and it has made him rethink carbs - he's even talking about going carnivorous (WOW!)

Ray has some good points in his book but he is a little out there with his idea of mechanical body parts. He is still very much on the low-fat bandwagon with the exception of omega 3s.

The average life span in Spain is now 82 years, which matches the Japanese life span. The Spanish love pork. Now we have to have the Spanish Paradox, like the French paradox? Turns out the longest lived Japanese are the Okinawans, who love pork and cook in lard. The French eat meat, cheese, fat. I have a link to a Japanese study which shows the Japanese who live the longest eat the most animal products. If the rest of the Japanese wanted to live as long as Okinawans, maybe they need to eat pork too.
So some large populations who eat substantial amounts of meat and fat live a very long time. The quality of life is high in both France and Spain, their cuisine is very appealing.

I have heard the average jap / okinawa eats about 1/4lb of meat in a meal.. so it averages out to about 1lb of meat a day at the most..

plus they cook in lard im assuming.. but a key is there active and very social people , they have strong dedication the the family and the community, these traits are not very common in US; diets important but we often overall look other aspects of what creates a healthy culture; food is just fuel.

Hi Mineralman,
Japanese eat a low fat diet, but they eat a lot of fish, green tea, and sea vegetables. Often those promoting a low fat diet say look a the Japanese. Well, the Japanese also smoke a lot more than Americans. One could just as easily ascribe long Japanese life spans to smoking as they could to eating a low fat diet. So one should not expect to achieve a Japanese long life just by eating a low fat diet, American style, without all the other dietary factors which more probably result in a long life span.
http://www.okicent.org/
http://www.okicent.org/study.html
http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/pork.html
Okinawa, island of pork.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/life-expectancy.htm
Andorra (between Spain and France) has the longest life expectancy in the world.

http://organizedwisdom.com/helpbar/.../news/4484.html
This study puts Spanish life expectancy at over 80, with regions at 81. I had another link I will look for which now estimates overall Spanish life expectancy to be 82.

Switzerland and Australia also are at 82. So any of Andorra, Spain, Switzerland, Australia are just as good as Okinawa as role models for long life. France is close.

Bottom line - there appears to be nothing wrong with eating animal products. Just the opposite is true. Those nations with access to meat and fish live the longest, far longer than those with vegetarian diets. There also is no correlation to eating low saturated fat, and living long. All of those countries, with the exception of Japan, eat a lot of saturated fat in their diet. And the Japanese who do live the longest? Okinawans, who live on "The Island of Pork".

Now, any diet which works for you - meaning gives you correct body weight (fat loss for many of us), good blood pressure, good pulse rate, and gives you good energy levels - is by actual measurement a good diet.

If Paleo does this for you, then by all means eat Paleo. If eating cheese does this for you, then eat cheese. I doubt eating vegan will give anyone good health in the long run.

Strange about Australia having good life expectancy - they were third in the obesity stakes (after the US and UK) the last time that I looked.

Australians get a lot of sunshine the best source of vitamin D. Okinawans live further south than the rest of Japan, and also probably get more sunshine. Just think, if Australians control their weight, they could be the longest lived people on earth.

The current state of the Murray-Darling Basin suggests they won't be enjoying the long life in Australia itself, but I guess that's OT.

You're saying that healthy vitamin D levels can counteract bad diet. I don't think that's unreasonable, but wouldn't it be easy to pick that up in epidemiological analysis, and be a well-touted fact, if more sunshine equaled long life?

I think this statement makes a lot of good sense.

I was vegetarian for six months and to be honest I felt really quite good on it with regard to energy level. Problem is, I am very overweight and could not lose any of it while vegetarian even with meticulous calorie counting and avoiding refined grains and sugar. My triglycerides increased to 189 and my HDL dropped like a rock to 24. All indicative of syndrome x.

Now I'm eating plenty of lean meat, unlimited fruit and vegetables, no grains and no dairy. I find that I literally crave fruit now and eat all that I want. My weight is dropping at a pretty dramatic pace without having to watch carbs or calories, my blood pressure is 120/80, and my heartrate is in the 60's. I'll be interested in seeing if my cholesterol numbers improve as well. There's no reason that they shouldn't.

As for longevity, who knows? The Seventh Day Adventists certainly seem to do very well on a vegetarian diet, and the Okinawans for all their pork-eating consume plenty of tofu, veggies, and grains as well.

Dig

Pauleo, I was not saying sunshine counter-acts bad diet. I was saying, whatever your diet is, addition of sunshine is a plus.

Digger, keep up the good work. Just remember if you stall, you may want to cut back on the sweet fruit, and add some saturated fat.

A vegetarian diet is used by different religious groups to suppress sex drive. Including Seventh Day Adventists and Hindus. Look up John Kellogg on Wikipedia. This nut job was applying acid to young girls sex organs so they would never get the idea of masturbating. Not much different than the sexual mutilation of young girls in Africa.

I have heard okinawas will actually skim or cut fat off from food... like strain there soup to get fat out...

Sorry for misquoting you. Although I meant 'counteract' in the sense of a having a positive factor (sunshine) that offsets a negative factor (bad diet), so I'm not sure that this is different to your meaning.

Dr Bradley Willcox (from the study) says: "Meat consumption has risen from about 10 grams per day in the 1950s, when Okinawans were very poor, to over 100 grams per day now (versus about 300-plus grams in the U.S.). Meat consumption also varies tremendously by age group. Young people eat more, older people eat less."

It's kind of odd how much attention the "Okinawan diet" gets considering how hard it is to know what part of it is important to their age. I've heard the Okinawans' longevity attributed to the pork, the soy, the fish, the green vegetables, the root vegetables, the lard, the low fat, the lower number of calories... could be anything. They're an interesting group but since they eat a wide variety of foods, and not very much food, and because the diet of the famous centarians has varied considerably throughout their lifetimes, trying to determine the 'secret' is a lot harder than some people make it out to be.

Or maybe the "eat moderate amounts of a variety of foods" crowd has had it right all along?

Seems like all the long-lived people are those who've had to endure periods of 'going without' and I'm fascinated by some of the research being done with calorie restriction and intermittent fasting. Toughens the body and spirit, increases longevity?