First to Dr Harris: Thanks for seeing beyond my volatility. I make no bones about the fact that I'm a Hit & Run kinda guy, with the BIG condition that I hate being wrong (and if I don't, I a'int worth wasting time on). Simply stated: I like taking risks this way. It's like an experiment with something at stake, but the only risk in capital is what I've already built. And that's important to me, so it is risky.

Like I say to everyone: take it or leave it; but, I am certainly sensitive to feedback. And yes, I prefer being perceived as honest as to being perceived as polite and gentlemanly. While those are certainly not disvalues (or mutually exclusive, for that matter), they are values so far down the line as to motivate me to “just cut to the chase;” remove all doubt. Honesty is crucial, long term. Or, I'm just lazy in this way.

Now to David-Dorian. I could have wasted hours and hours in an argument and still not achieved what I believe has been achieved (with the help of a handful of great readers): You know more than when you began this. You're exited about the stir. You understand it's not bullshit. And, I think you're curious about it. Enough for me, sir. We're cool, if that's OK.

A clarification or two. First, “paleo” is anything from equator to arctic circle, i.e., Kitavan to Inuit, and it has been a very long time since I may have implied anything different. Figure out what macro-nurtrient ratios work for you (I don't bother with them, 'cause it's just that my high-animal-fat intake is satisfying and so kinda dictates the rest…). I do recommend, however: begin with very low to zero carb, high fat, for at least a few weeks or so (Why not? Can YOU tell me, why not…a coupla' weeks or so???) and take it from there and eventually build your very own unique diet plan.

I had a big section about the next thing (see the note below), but suffice to say that while the blog has selection bias built in (99% of voluntary testimonials are positive), as I know, I am still at 100% of more than 15 family and friends who have achieved various ranges of impressive, unexpected, thought-unattainable benefit from high-fat, low-carb paleo. You're welcome to think I'm lying or exaggerating, but while I've had only one or two less than stellar reports in comments or emails from readers, for my circle, its a solid 100%.

So, what ought I do, David? Should I back off? Should I be more circumspect, doubtful, far less self assured? Tell me, please. I'm at 100%. Knowing in advance that it will eventually crack a bit, should I start hedging now?

And, I'm not a huge Atkins fan, such as it seems to be becoming (vegetarians: same thing; they're a market, now).

http://freetheanimal.com/2009/07/atkins-lost-so...

[this was much longer and more in depth, but I somehow dumped it. Didn't have the will to reconstruct completely, just essentials. Thanks, all, for making that so possible.]

None of her doctors ever did much but monitor. Only until I had her go
full paleo did she see reversal and was able to get off insulin within
a few months.

Is that right, is it? I must be one of those people you mention, because my body really struggles to digest bullshit when I am fed it. I imagine you must come across an awful lot of people like me when you turn up to a knife-fight with a blunt pencil… keep researching, grasshopper.

In point of fact, I do not promote a low fat/high grain diet. My own opinion is no more mainstream than anyone who embraces the paleo-diet. In fact I advocate a macronutrient combination that takes into account the muscle-fiber type distribution, bone structure, metabolic rate (approximated) and age of the INDIVIDUAL (sorry for the caps – no italics on this response box). My clients also experience life-changing (and perhaps life-saving) results.

I had only two points of disagreement with Richard: One, I disagreed with the notion of UNIVERSALLY recommending the paleolithic diet. To me that is as uninformed as to universally recommend the low fat/high carb diet. (By the way, I share the opinion that this diet is largely responsible for the epidemic of metabolic syndrome and obesity – and I have been a critic of that diet for 15 years or more. For a long time this made me very unpopular in my industry – health and fitness. Only now are people starting to change their minds.)

My second disagreement was with leveling personal attacks on people you don't know. Are there frauds and “grant whores” in the academic field. Of course there are! Do they waste money and often stand in the way of scientific advancement? They do – and that makes me as angry as it appears to make a lot of people on this site. However, if you really want to make that kind of waste stop, then have your facts straight, be specific about the people that you accuse – and you can still be polite.

As a final comment – I disagree with Richard's tone. But I am 100% on his side in a search for a better answer to his own health. It's been my experience that most MD's have less real understanding of nutrition, exercise or stress management than my Grandma did (present company excepted). These critical lifestyle components are absent from their medical curriculum. Richard did a courageous and righteous act by breaking from what his doctors told him to follow what he knew was right.

And by the way, I happen to know for a fact that Dr. Clegg would feel the same way.

I'll leave aside the ad hominems and I do not endorse name-calling in either direction. However, my thoughts are as follows:

“I make no appeals to authority, Richard.”

Well, that is how you started out, with nothing else but.

“Your opinions about “scientists” don't change the facts about the way human chemistry works. You obviously do not know. I don't know everything – no one does – but I certainly know more than you.”

You have in fact so far demonstrated that you know substantially less than Richard does about the meaning of the results being discussed. My own experience supports his assertions far more than yours. Perhaps you have just not elaborated your arguments enough yet.

“Not because I have a high opinion of myself”

you doth protesteth too much

“but because I spend every day working in this field, because I have a degree in exercise science, and because I actually talk with people like Dr. Clegg who are doing the work to advance the understanding of what keeps us alive and healthy.”

I would suggest that, in keeping with a Kuhnian model of the existing paradigm of diet and health, that it is precisely the fact that you “spend every day working in the field and talking with people like Dr. Clegg” that keeps you from being able to see the total failure of the paradigm you work within.

It is entirely consistent that the failure of the old paradigm be obvious not only to other scientists and medical professionals (like me, Michael Eades, MD, Stephan Guyenet, PhD and Petro Dobrynyski, DVM) but also to intelligent laymen like Richard. The Kuhnian model in fact predicts that the new paradigm will be most inconceivable to those with the most training and professional investment in it.

“Clinical research has conclusively demonstrated that the long-term results of Atkins and the paleo-diet is INCREASED weight gain, and often damage to the liver and gall bladder.”

These studies, to my knowledge, and as you have characterized them do not exist unless they are unpublished. If you have them, you can email them to me through my website listed below. NAFL in particular is basically incurable by anything other than a low fructose high fat diet. Gallstones are caused chiefly by cholestasis due to inadequate cholecystokin stimulation – which caused by inadequate fat intake (read: high carbohydrate diet)

“It is more likely that the decrease in appetite you and your friends experience is from the drop in “non-foods.”

That is precisely the point. Neolithic amounts of fructose, linoleic acid and any amount of gluten grains are not “food” we evolved to eat.

“Packaged foods, high in additives, preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup are designed to make you hungry for more. So when you stop eating them you will start to feel a more normal appetite cycle.”

Nothing in your statement is in any way at odds with any of the many versions of paleo nutrition I have encountered, including my own. How is that any argument against paleonutrition?

“In fact, the implications of Dr. Clegg's paper on saturated fat are consistent with your paleo diet. During those times, animal protein was a more desirable food source than carbs from plants and fats from nuts.”

Animal protein is and always has been more obtainable than the higher energy density saturated fat found more in larger animals. Why would protein be more desirable than fat? Tell us how you would eat animal protein while avoiding the fat. If you eat the entire animal, you are at more than 50% calories as fat, at a minimum. Skinless chicken breasts and grocery store muscle cuts stripped of fat are strictly neolithic food.

Fats from nuts? Name modern HGs or indeed any humans in any time or place that get any significant amount of fats from nuts. If you agree with that, then perhaps you agree the fat must be coming from animals and a lot of it will be saturated.

“Meat eaters are at the top of the food chain, and therefore a meat diet already has a lot of nutrients in it. So if there was meat to be had, the body would signal itself to keep eating it as long as it was around – and it would do that by suppressing the normal satiety signals.”

I am sorry, but that is totally illogical. Why would the highest value, most energy dense food have the lowest satiety signal. What happens when only food that is skimpier in nutrients is encountered? There would be more satiety (as you have just defined it), so the subject eats less and then dies of starvation!

In fact, it is fat that gives the highest satiety signal, when the entire hormonal milieu is considered. I have never encountered anyone on a high fat, low carb diet who was less satiated than before they began the diet. Only someone steeped in a theory they don't think through could ignore the copious empirical evidence otherwise.

“The problem is – humans are not carnivores. We are omnivores, which means that a diet high in protein and fat (50-60% do you say?) WILL NOT WORK WITH HUMAN BODY CHEMISTRY over the long term.”

This is of course a non-sequiter. Omnivory per se says nothing about what macronutrient ratio might be optimal or even tolerated. Actually 70-80% fat is even better, although not required. Humans are omnivores that are on the carnivorous end of the scale. Weston Price found 4 modern HG tribes that were effectively 100% carnivorous, and there is no evidence of a single one, ever, that was vegetarian.

“No two human beings are completely alike, and there are many people who have unique body chemistry that defies the norm.”

In the ways that count, they absolutely are. Show me a human that has no DNA or that does not store their own fat as palmitic acid or that does not use exactly the same TCA cycle or the exact same neurotransmitters in their brain. There are variations in genotype and phenotype, but what is life-promoting to eat for one is not generally poison for another. I might expect blood-type diet promoters and vegetarians to make such statements, not professional nutrition researchers.

“If you find success with an off-the-wall diet then I am the last person to argue with your personal results.”

To characterize a meal of grass fed steak and asparagus with pastured butter as “off the wall” because there is no bread or industrial vegetable oil served is simply ignorant. Try to learn more about what you are criticizing.

“But be honest. Be honest about what you know and what you have personally learned. You have no idea that your results can be repeated for anyone else because you don't know enough about the way the human body works.”

Richard is not being polite, but I am certain he is being honest. My results back him up 100% and I am pretty confident I know a little about how the human body works.

“And when you start making claims that scientists that you don't know personally are frauds and whores you're just shooting your mouth off.”

I don't agree with the name-calling, but perhaps some thought about what makes people angry about the paradigm you promote (the low fat/ high grain one, I am assuming) that is only 30 years old, is in order.

Looking at the absolutely criminal epidemic of metabolic syndrome and obesity, that only gets worse with each official nutrition recommendation, Dr. Phil might well ask:

AND HOW IS THAT WORKING FOR YOU?

Your website lacks any content, it seems like a cheap sales pitch site. You lack credibility. Your Tai Chi videos on YouTube are just plain fruity. And in all your fruity videos you're wearing loose baggy clothes, you appear to be a skinny-fat dude with man boobs. Why don't you take your shirt off and show the world what your non-paleo Tai Chi lifestyle has produced, Richard certainly has?

Man-up (if you can)

Boy – you really are scared, aren't you? Be careful – anger will make your heart give out faster than a high fat steak.

And then:

Be a man. A real man doesn't have to call strangers names and strut around.

Readers note the childish goading, followed by petulant calls not to be childish, wrapped around a non-answer (i.e., no argument except yet more appeals to authority).

Your honesty will get you all the respect you need.

I've been reading Nikoley for many years and I respect him for his honesty, as well as for his diligence in citing relevant research to help debunk several nutritional myths so-called “experts” like you have been pushing the whole time westerners have grown fatter and unhealthier. Maybe he isn't right on everything, but I've found him to be willing to reevaluate his ideas a number of times.

I'm just amazed how so many so-called “experts” ignore overwhelming evidence and keep preaching diet advice which does not work for most people.

“Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash, and I am pleased to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.”