[MrsCogan]

Originally Posted by PrimaryErn

Roger: thanks for the followup. Psychologically that makes sense. And hey, if you eat this way, and it works for you, and it makes you simply not want these foods, then thats good if it fits in with your life, for sure. I can appreciate that!

Mrs C: good points. Some of the science bothers me when discussing things like this. The fat molecule one especially. Fat molecules, if I remember correctly, HAVE insulin receptors - they can't bond to them. Chemically only insulin can bond to insulin recpetors - well, and chemicals that have the same electronic shell configuration as insulin.
However, question on your point that the brain is predominantly made out of protein. Isn't it predominantly made out of fat (or a close fat-like substance)?

I think it's protein, but not the same kind of protein as muscle

I ask because i had to do some research on a very high-fat diet as an alternate to medication to control epileptic siezures for my ex when she wanted to drop her meds to have kids, and I though that was why they fats were considered healthy for brain activity - the brain being more fat.

I hope it worked. Kids are wonderful!

Regarding the species food and evolution: depending on how you view evolution, and research on how much the species changed during various pieces of history, you can choose to base diet on very different times. I for example can say my ancestors were italian, and probably ate a version of the meddeteranian diet for several thousand years, which should be enough to base my diet today on.

Your Italian ancestors were homo sapiens just like you. The Mediteranean diet is an excellent one as long as you don't eat too many calories.

Or I can say, my tribal hominid ancestors probably ate cooked, hunted game, fruits and veggies for several 100k years.

homo erectus evolved about 2 million years ago and they were the first to use fire. They probably ate a lot like chimpanzees. Fruit, vegetables and a little meat.

Or my basic tree-dwelling superprimates for a million years ate nearly all fruit from europe and africa plus some bugs, small animals, bird eggs, etc.

There's a lot of evolution between us and them which you can see by looking at the skulls. They had powerful jaws for grinding grains. We are more "gracile" which means thinner and lightweight. We have smaller jaws because we didn't need the big ones. You don't need a powerful jaw to eat cooked grain.

Its hard to point at a specific time. But I think my system is more like the ancestors from the ad 0 time and less like the 100,000 y/o time - and even less like the austrio-whatever they're called time.

Australopithecus. You are right. They were our ancestors but they were an entirely different animal than we are. Our species evolved LONG after fire was in use by early hominids. Our guts evolved to eat some foods cooked.

But I think to a certain degree, we're forgetting an important thing with this whole experiment - its not science, its non-scientific personal discovery.

as an exercise in self-discipline it is almost understandable. But the problem is, you can do a lot of self-discipline stuff without endangering your health. I'm very busy and have a lot to do (which is why I will disappear off these boards from time to time) and I can't risk my health for the sake of some kind puritanical "virtue."

My only caveat is the dreaded 'detox' - so many bad diets and practices do harm and the proponents claim its just natural detox. If symptoms don't improve and STAY improved in short order I wouldn't wait to address them.

"detox" is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ word. There's no such thing. It means you are having bad side effects from whatever you are doing or eating and don't want to admit it because only evil big pharma has bad side effects and something virtuous and groovy simply can't by definition.