Here's a Saturday afternoon link roundup.
~ Karen De Coster at LewRockwell.com: Primal Life: A Journey of Diet and Health. Yours truly is quoted and at the end she provides an enormous list of paleo and primal resources.
~ Don Matesz at Primal Wisdom puts together the definitive guide and rebuttal to the most cited and most bogus argument against eating paleo: Life Expectancy.
~ My good friend Dr. Kurt Harris takes on some of [redacted]'s ideas: 180 + 180 = 360. Quite a lot of interesting comments.
~ And Dr. Mike Eades shows why it's a good policy to be skeptical of meta-analysis studies: Saturated fat and heart disease: studies old and new.
To give you an example of what I mean, let’s assume that we have a study looking at a flipped coin. If a researcher flips a coin 10 times and comes up with 6 heads and 4 tails, runs this through a program checking for statistical significance, he/she will discover that the 6-4 ratio isn’t a statistically-significant difference because of the low number of overall flips (10). Now, let’s say that 50 researchers did the same kinds of study and some found that their coins came up heads 6 times out of 10 or 4 times out of 10, etc. If a researcher then wants to ‘prove’ that heads comes up more times than tails on a coin flip, he/she can gather all the studies showing heads come up more times than tails, add them together in a meta-analysis and come up with 25 studies, each with 10 flips, showing that heads came up 63 percent of the time. Now we’re talking 250 flips and we would probably reach statistical significance. We know that over the long run a flipped coin is going to come up heads about 50 percent of the time and that the more the times it is flipped the more likely the number of heads will close in on the 50 percent figure. But, the meta-analysis that selected the studies showing the 63 percent heads is statistically significant because the studies were cherry picked.
~ And even more New York City "cavemen" in the news. Just wait until the raw meat eating scene!
~ Let's just finish up with some humor, ok? I'm talking about John Robbins and his take on the paleo way.
Central to Audette's views is his belief that we are natural meat-eaters. If you think there is validity to his argument, then I would ask you to consider a simple experiment. The next time you see a deer or wildebeest, see if you can run it down, jump up on its back, and dig your teeth into its hide. I think that you would discover several things. You'd probably find out that you don't have a lot of desire to do this. Even if you tried, though, you'd probably find that you can't run fast enough or jump high enough to manage the task. And even if you could, you'd find that your mouth doesn't open very wide, and your canine teeth aren't very long or very sharp or very hard. And even if you could bite off a piece, I think you'd find yourself quite displeased with the result.
Of course, the reason we don't have the teeth and claws of a pure carnivore is because we evolved big brains as our principal offensive weapon, along with the manual dexterity to exploit our brain's potential, and then we fashioned tools our brains and hands could use. In fact, stone tools go back more than 2 million years. Can he possibly be that ignorant?
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I’ve been out of the loop all week, so thanks for these Mr. Richard
Yes Richard. In fact, it’s not only possible, but highly probably that if has embraced a predominantly vegetarian diet for any considerable period, his brain is so starved for tryptophan, fat, and cholesterol that it’s a miracle he can even still type, let alone espouse absurdities about our inability to hunt.
If we weren’t suited to hunt, we wouldn’t have become the apex predator in every ecosystem we inhabited. Focusing on our apparent lack of adaption to hunting is about as elucidating as the trying to divine the diet of a gorilla by look at it’s massive canines. They are true vegetarians! Their mouths do open incredibly wide, and their teeth are monstrous. A hippo’s mouth opens even wider, yet they are not carnivores either.
Thanks for the good finds!
Yup, there are many ways to skin a cat (or a deer), but apparently John Robbins can only think of one. Guys like him were probably weeded out by natural selection before the worst thing before sliced bread (i.e., unsliced bread) was invented.
I think I’ll cook my meat first, but Vlad is rad!!
Yes, he CAN be that stupid! If, in the face of what is known about mammilian nutrition, he still believes man is not a natural meat-eater, then he’s bonkers. It’s far more likely that he’s ignorent, and still pontificating about it. Now THAT’S stupid.
Great links, Rich! Going ZC and implementing IF changed my life. Just for fun, I tried on my bikini last night:
[IMG]http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww74/klowcarb/bikini020510.jpg[/IMG]
My stomach has never been flatter and I’ve never had so much energy. I actually started out as very low carb paleo, and your blog was a favorite then and continues to be. We have different diets, but I love your zeal for research and your experimentations.
Woops, here see if this picture works: http://i707.photobucket.com/albums/ww74/klowcarb/bikini020510.jpg
Nice! Do you have a before picture we can compare it to?
After Karen quoted you, she said:
“This lifestyle is about taking a healthy food foundation and perpetually modifying it to customize your lifetime diet for your needs, and to accommodate your desires. It is a learning process, and for me it is also about constant change and experimentation.”
Great points there!
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well John Robbins doesnt seem to allow comments… so there I was hiking by a bubbling brook in the mountains of Honolulu. the brook was so noisy that a pig nibbling on some leaves didnt hear me. as soon as I saw him my heart rate doubled. I looked around for a club. nothing. I had no knife. then it hit me, the stream bed had some great stones. I left my backpack, picked up three big throwing rocks and circled downwind of the pig. he was young, about 60lb. as I threw the first one he looked up. the next missed, the third hit behind the head. he was still breathing as I rushed up, grabbed him by the tail, tossed him into the stream and put my boot on his head underwater until he drowned. what anatomy was key for all this? the brain. I have never hunted anything. Dont own a gun. but dont tell me a hungry man doesnt have the evolutionary equipment to hunt.
Yes, a hungry man will first try to hunt, then if unsusccessful, he might start nibbling on grass… until he hunts again.
I’m not sure but I have heard that lions raised in captivity cannot be released back into the wild, because they lack the skill, desire and knowing how to hunt animals.
So, even if a lion wont hunt if it never had to, humans raised in captivity, eg city, and who have never hunted, surely wont go and try to strangle every animal they see in the forest. However, if you read about hunter-gatherers, hunting is like the thing for them. Who gets a kill will also get great respect from tribe members. It will be followed by a feast. Everyone wants meat and wants to hunt it. And they are very good at it.
I’m sure if a Masai tribe members sees a wild fatty animal, they will do everything they can to kill it. NAPD describes how two Masai men guard their cattle and kill lions coming after the cows if they have to, with nothing more than spears. Price describes the great skill they have in hunting.
If we weren’t suited to hunt, then I suppose, like rabbits, we’d never bother. And if we didn’t have such convenient, steady sources of calories, we’d all be a lot more motivated to “run down,” in our fashion, deer and wildebeests. Starve a rabbit, though, and it’s still never going to occur to it to try pouncing on a mouse.
I’d say that rabbits and vegans thus obviously live on a higher moral plane than the rest of us, except I think if you starve most vegans…they’ll eat the rabbit.
Heather;
Very well said. Watch out, I may quote you.
Exactly what I was thinking.
And John Robbins asking whether we find a slaughterhouse or a fruit orchid more appealing is a byproduct of modern day society. Raw meat and butchering are a taboo of sorts. Also, our slaughterhouses are appalling (see Food Inc.)
Slaughterhouse tourism was a big thing only a century ago. Meat processing companies were proud of how they were doing things. You could even see the killing floor. According to Meatpaper’s Fall 2009 issue: “In the early 1900s, 200,000 people visited Armour’s main plant in a single year, among them women’s clubs, church societies, domestic science classes, trained nurses, journalists, scientists and housewives’ leagues.” John probably doesn’t have a Meatpaper subscription.
I’m glad that butchering is starting to make a comeback. I’d thought they were ubiquitous (blame The Brady Bunch) until I went looking for one a few years ago. I’ll I could find were grocery store meat departments.
(Er, “All I could find.”)
I’m lucky to live rural Vermont, people here have a strong desire to keep business local. As such, the butcher is still going strong.
Also, I noticed when I was backpacking in Europe, most everyone seemed to still go to their ‘butcher on the corner’. It would be nice to see that again in the States.
Fun comments, all.
I applaud your kindness in not commenting on JR’s appearance. Quite an endorsement of the rabbit’s way of life. Thankfully, I too am similarly discreet.
Geaux Saints.
Heather, you provided foder for a great paleo joke! “What’s the difference between a rabbit and a vegan? If you starve the vegan, it will eat the rabbit.” LOL. I’ll have to use that one in mixed (paleo & vegan) company.
I followed your link over to LM’s forum from PaNu. Why did you even bother? Not criticizing. Just saw LM’s response to your post is all. Cultist? One could say the same from what I have seen of his devoted followers when one questions LM’s explanation that ASP is the reason those on zero carb can get fat. Why the heck anyone would ever buy anything from this guy is beyond me.
JD:
The only reason I bothered is because I know for a fact that some of Lyle’s devoted fans also read this blog. It’s a short qualification and Lyle, once again, demonstrated that he is incapable of being reasonable.
Yeah LM reminds me of Anthony Colpo lol! Two peas in a pod.
Actually, Lyle later asked some pretty decent questions and issued some valid criticisms, so I’ll be doing a post on that.
Ugh… I tried to wade through more of that thread… no can do; S/N ratio is way too low there. My sense, though, is that Lyle definitely knows his sports nutrition. But, with respect to general nutrition for the long haul, he doesn’t strike me as anywhere near as knowledgeable as Stephan Guyenet.
It’s not ASP. There’s another reason why calories count w.r.t. weight. It’s in my blog so I’m not going over it again here.
Man not the raw meat eating scene. This will definitely make us look like a bunch of barbarians! Oh well. I would advise anyone who eats their meat raw to read “Catching Fire” by Richard Wrangham. In the meantime, cook your food. Thanks for the compilation Richard.
Hey Ben, I’m sorry if I caused us paleos to look so wacky, that was not my intention. My only goal with the interview was to spread the message about the benefits of Paleo and grass-fed beef. I told the reporters that most of the paleo dieters do not eat raw meat, and this wasn’t necessary to experience health benefits from Paleo. I do believe raw/rare is better nutrient wise then overcooked stuff, I also prefer its taste. I’m familiar with Wrangham’s theories, not buying it.
I’ve read a bit on the web about Wrangham’s theory, and what stands out for me is that it requires that the cooking of food date back vastly earlier than what the data currently support. I also think the shrinking of hominid guts can be just as easily explained by a shift to consumption of calorically dense animal foods. That said, cooking food can be conservatively dated back 250,000 years, which predates our own species, so it’s definitely a part of our evolutionary milieu.
Vlad! I totally see where your coming from and glad you had the chance to get the message out and potentially shift a few people’s chain of thought. If you haven’t read “Catching Fire” in its entirety, i’d recommend doing so. The comparisons of nutrients absorbed between raw vs cooked after digestion is compelling. I certainly do not cook my meat to death, I like my steak rare actually.
Again, glad you had the opportunity to give us Paleo followers a say in the matter. It looks as if things a heating up in the mainstream lately with this stuff. Good to see!
Ben, I did read “Catching Fire” and I still eat my meat raw. I like Wrangham’s arguments about cooking leading to division of labor, but IMO those who fare poorly on raw diets are those eating raw vegan or vegetarian. That I am not doing. However, I do not think carnivores NEED to eat raw. I have felt most energetic, satiated and happy eating raw meat and raw eggs. I have gotten stronger and have not lost weight (purposely eating more). So I’m not a dogmatic raw ZCer.
The observation he makes about the division of labor is interesting, no doubt… but as I saw it, the key point Wrangham makes is that cooking food makes it far more digestible; thus, more calories are available, more easily assimilated.
And really, this is what cooking is in essence: the gelatinization of starches, the denaturing of proteins, and, often, the incidental synthesis of oh-so-tasty, albeit potentially not-so-healthy Maillard products. Wrangham goes on to say we might be fairly well adapted to tolerate these browning products as well – IIRC, Peter at Hyperlipid has some interesting posts on this stuff – see his AGE RAGE posts …
Just as weapons and cunning serve us in place of fangs, claws, and talons, cooking is a functional extension of the digestive system. So, in Wrangham’s view, cooking is a co-adaptive behavior. I’ll buy that.
Now, maladaptive behaviors – those are interesting, too, but I digress…
Anyway, I like me a little sushi and steak tartar now and then. So tasty.
-Jay
BTW, Katelyn – I didn’t mean at all to suggest that you didn’t grok those points Wrangham makes about cooking and caloric availability (as I infer you clearly do)- only that I saw it as worth mentioning in a little more detail for discussion’s sake.
Katelyn,
Your definitely spot on regarding the raw vegans etc who consume ALL of their food raw. Their is nothing wrong with a bit of raw meat at all. I’m just not sold on eating all of our meat that way. But if your feeling great because of it that is awesome!
I think eating organs and the rest is probably best done raw. The muscle meat should probably be better cooked.
Monday Squats in the house! // Feb 7, 2010 at 22:20
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