I've been reading the book associated with the blog. Has anyone else here read it?

Here's the problem I have with this, and I'm not going to pretend to be arguing it from a scientific understanding of the underlying processes, because I don't have that.

What I do have is 15+ years of experience with online lowcarb communities and have never personally seen so much as a "lol you'll die of scurvy" troll thread. (Not saying such a thread does not exist, so googling to prove me wrong is not going to garner a debate; I've just never seen one.) Even if we take into consideration the idea that modern doctors wouldn't be great at diagnosing it, surely we would have seen at least one alarmist "my teeth fell out and so will yours" cautionary tale, as it's been quite a few years now since the "Bear"-type eaters got rolling.

Until more teeth start falling out I'm calling shenanigans on this one.

I'm not familiar with that particular blog, but possibly they were just getting desperate for another "why zero carb is bad" topic in their series of same? That series so far has certainly gotten their URL in front of eyeballs--I'd never heard of them before.

On Mark Sisson's forum, someone posted this quote by Weston A. Price, really interesting:

From http://journeytoforever.org/farm_li...ice/price6.html

I like that quote but it doesn't tell us what causes scurvy. Saying scurvy is caused by a dietary lack of vitamin C, and by a vitamin C deficiency, are not the same thing. If it was caused by a dietary lack of vitamin C, then why would fresh meat cure it when it's clear fresh meat contains about zero vitamin C? If it was caused by a vitamin C deficiency, then why does it take 4 months of 4g of pure vitamin C daily to cure it when it only takes 4 days of fresh meat to cure it?

In other words, it takes 480g (1 lbs!) of pure vitamin C to cure scurvy when you believe it's due to a vitamin C deficiency. But if you believe otherwise, it only takes whatever is in fresh meat for 4 days. Somebody remind me how much vitamin C floats around in my bloodstream. Please.

What else is in the adrenal glands besides vitamin C?

So in other words if we do not eat RAW meat and we do not eat ADRENAL GLANDS then we do not have the assumed protection from C-related malnutrition that "a meat diet" is commonly believed to give.

I'm trying to figure out how to be inflammatory to make people give me better proof this is wrong LOL. Yo mamma! Man I suck at flaming.

PJ

I'd also point out that that bloggers notion of zero carb is pretty much nothing like the notion that folks have here. She mentioned she was eating plenty of veggies.

It has raised some alarm bells for me. I have been having sore gums and some sores that seem to take a long time to heal. I've also raised my carbs a little, adding in squash, since it is in season. But I don't think I've ever had extremely low insulin. It always seems to stay high-ish no matter what. I've had it tested a few times.

Something we must keep in mind, there is no direct evidence of anything this blogger says except the personal experience. It's all inference after that. The only direct evidence is the one about direct observation, i.e. he ate this, he suffered scurvy, he cured it this way, etc. But nothing he says about the cause and mechanisms involved is direct or even evidence at all, it's all hypothetical.

With Stefansson, the direct evidence we have is that fresh meat cures scurvy in 4 days. We also have direct evidence that fresh meat contains virtually zero vitamin C. Does it matter at this point how and why? No, what matters is the direct evidence. A shame we didn't go further into this. But then there was probably loads of money to be made selling vitamin C. 1 lbs of C to cure scurvy? Count me in.

In ten years, this guy will write another book called "How I Was Wrong About Everything. Shit Happens."

LOL! Yeah mebbe so.

In fairness all a person has is their own experience.

And with ZC that is, in fact, 99% of the information we have available about it online -- people who do it and report their experience.


Yes but not knowing the answer or not having science already done on your specific issue, doesn't mean the issue isn't real or the hypothesis is completely invalid. There's plenty of areas in health that are in sore need of more research, and in the meantime everyone is left to do research via hypothesis on their experiment of one.

I acknowledge lack of science credibility here, but if people here are willing to discuss Matt Stone and his charming self-absorptive wild-ass-theories, I think this person deserves at least equal credibility.


I'm willing to bet of the many HUNDREDS of people who read this message in the next 48 hours, the % of them that ate fresh as in RAW MEAT is so incredibly rare that referencing this, as if ZC is ok because it's meat-based (and frankly many peoples' primal, paleo, panu, diets are pretty close to ZC also -- and they are *cooked* meats usually) is just a non-sequiter. I mean I am not arguing that "fresh as in raw meat may cure scurvy in 4 days." I will just take your word on this. I'm saying that almost nobody EATS RAW MEAT and yet we have forums of people on mostly meat-based diets believing that nutritional deficiency is no issue and that WS with the inuits is one of the proofs of that.

What I am saying is that unless a person goes around eating raw meat and organs, it sounds like none of the inuit/WS stuff applies AT ALL, and so there might be a lot of 'assumptions' about 'nutritional sufficiency' that we are wrong about.

I mean... we could be wrong... about something. It could happen.

I love it when people challenge stuff I normally don't even think about or assumed was all-clear. Damn I wish someone had done this with me with the fat/carbs argument 20 years ago!


Curious: why did the inuit make such a careful point to eat the adrenal glands and 2nd stomach in order to get the C? The reference there said the natives COULD get scurvy but didn't because of eating those parts. Those parts are not just 'fresh meat' like a local grassfed raw steak.


It matters, Martin, because most people DO NOT EAT RAW MEAT AND ADRENAL GLANDS and hence, if those are the things which are "preventing" nutritional deficiency -- through whatever cosmic manner they may do so -- then we have an entire forum of people who might need to consider their health feelings more carefully and consider their supplementation anew. It's an important question.

I simply always assumed that WS's stuff and inuit meant a mostly just meat diet was fine. I supplement more because I'm huge and I figure have decades of malnutrition to work against. But lots of people don't supplement because they think they get plenty from food -- and this indicates maybe they don't. Selenium, C, who knows what else.

PJ

No need to take my word for it, the paper about Stefansson and the Bellevue all-meat trial is available online for free, at least some of them are. Many papers were written on this single experiment. Look for the terms Clinical Calorimetry. When you find them, look at the date they were published. It's understandable how we can ignore all of this considering that we ignore other scientific papers with the excuse that they're "out of date". Science is never out of date. It can be refuted, confirmed, but not grow out of date. Yet here we are, having to repeat the same old thing to correct naive ideas about stuff.

We can discuss the biological systems and mechanisms involved in scurvy, or any other disease, but when comes time to discuss cause and effect, nothing beats direct evidence. Sadly, that guy with his blog has exactly zero. But don't let that prevent you from buying his book though. After all, that's the primary purpose of his blog.

As for raw vs cooked meat, it doesn't have to be completely raw, it can be cooked. But it can't be completely cooked through and through. Some must still be bloody, i.e. fresh. For some reason, when it's completely cooked, it loses its anti-scorbutic properties. Something is destroyed in the cooking. So it's fine to cook it lightly or sear it on both sides as long as the middle is still raw. Contrary to vegetables, which need to be cooked thoroughly (and prepared, and soaked, and sprouted, and generally processed, etc) in order to nourish us even a little, meat must not be cooked too much or it loses its nutritive quality.

Not interested in his book, just interested in the nutritional value of muscle meats cooked -- since that is what I eat. :-)

PJ

It just occurred to me, how do these Indians get scurvy? It's not by eating fresh meat: They eat a boatload of it and it cures scurvy. So it must be something else. Maybe they eat seasonal plants or maple sap. Which then calls for eating the adrenals. But here the cause of scurvy is not the lack of dietary adrenal glands, it's the addition of sugar or plant matter. So what's in plants and sugar that causes scurvy? Which begs the question, did our poor little blogger really eat what he claims he did? Maybe he did, and that's why he got scurvy (he ate lots of vegetables).

Again, what's in the adrenal glands besides vitamin C?

I'm not going to argue pro or against Paul and Shou-Ching Jaminet's scientific conclusions, as I don't feel knowledgeable enough in that area.

He is a physicist and she is a biologist. They started the blog and wrote the book after studying nutrition and diet for a few years. They both became very sick eating a couple of versions of the SAD. They concluded that a lowish-carb, diet which includes coconut oil, ghee, tallow, tubers, cream, meats/fish/eggs, veggies, some fruits, and small amounts of white rice is healthy. 65% fat, 20% carbs, 15% protein.

My impression of them after reading through the book one time rather quickly, and going through their blog archives, is different from some of you. It seems to me that their main concern is helping people with digestive issues.

Since I have had very poor results with both VLC and Primal eating plans, no further weight loss after the initial 17 pounds (in the first two months - last year,) no significant improvement in my periodontal issues, and still have ongoing digestive issues a year after eliminating gluten and casein, I am going to try the dietary guidelines from their book and see how it goes. I hope it works for me. If it doesn't work, I'll try something else. I won't try to flame them if it doesn't work because they are part of a community of bloggers who warn people about the dangers of eating gluten grains, sugar, low fat foods, and veg oils. I hope they get the word out and convince more people to stay away from those poisons. Not everyone can stick to a very low carb paleo, or meat-only diet, and not everyone does perfectly well on it, either.

Not everyone does what they claim either. So maybe that's why he got scurvy: He didn't actually do what he claims he did. Or rather, he didn't do what he believed he was doing. Considering that he is misinformed about normal insulin and fresh meat and scurvy, maybe he's misinformed about a whole lot of other things too. He barely knows this particular aspect of the subject, is all I'm saying.