anyone tried the paleo diet?

[Andrew Gubb]

Who's got their mind made up now?

QFT

and

QED

because I'm too lazy to continue debating.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

I know the line of fruitarianism is very unclear. Botanically, anything with seeds is a fruit. Informally, anything sweet and round is a fruit. Technically grains are seeds, so eating bread with marmalade would be alright. But that's not what I wanted to try with fruitarianism. I wanted to do the "fruit"-fruit-version. And while I loved fruit before, the limited choice made me hate it after only days.

Ok Like I said nuts are not necessary, although things like tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, and bell peppers I would say are necessary: mild, non-starchy, non-sweet, mineral rich fruits. Most fruitarians include avocados occasionally as well. This definition of fruit in this diet is "the fleshy part of a plant surrounding the seed". It is a raw food diet, and would not include nuts, grains, beans, or seeds. This is definition you will most hear in the raw food world. Very few people survive on only sweet fruits although I do believe the woman in the link I gave only eats non-sweet ones rarely.

About curing cancer: Low-Carb diets are used to prevent cancer. I'm not sure if they can cure it, but cancer feeds on sugar.

Cancer can also feed on fat if you're in ketosis(when your whole body's running off fat). Cancer feeds on sugar because all cells feed on sugar when they can. That's like not drinking water because cancer cells require it! In fact that's what the most common approach to treating cancer is like these days: to "kill cancer cells" but the things that kill or damage cancer cells do the same to healthy cells. Although there has been excellent result with mega-doses of vitamin C, [as well as anti-andrenogenics(spelling may be off here)--which are naturally occurring in most fruits and vegetables ] (which is something that happens naturally on a fruitarian or frugivorous diet), no one knows why this works though.
Low carb diets also are typically means high-protein, the metabolic wastes of which are highly carcinogenic. Many proteins in themselves are carcinogenic, like casein (milk protein). High protein also stimulates high production of a certain growth factor, which in such doses, at certain times (essentially beyond infancy when extremely fast growth takes place) is a carcinogen. Burning fat also takes a lot of energy, leaving less for the body to heal it self with.

@secrets:

Who is this AG you keep talking about? What kind of anarchist are you? I am an anarcho-capitalist. (mises.org, lewrockwell.com (little conservative though), c4ss.org).

Oh sorry about that, AG=Andrew Gubb.
I really don't find a particular sort of anarchy encompasses the whole of my views, but I have some green anarchy and anarcho-primitivist leanings. Although exchanging value for value is practically a law of nature , but I can say I'm *not* a huge fan of the pseudo-capitalism/crony-capitalism the U.S. has going now. Maybe this belongs in the Word Affairs forum....
Thanks for the links

[Scipio]

Originally Posted by secrets0stolen

Cancer can also feed on fat if you're in ketosis(when your whole body's running off fat). Cancer feeds on sugar because all cells feed on sugar when they can. That's like not drinking water because cancer cells require it!

It's been proven in and out of the lab that insulin growth factor 1 levels and levels of insulin growth factor binding proteins have a profound impact on the rate of cancer cell hyperplasia. You'll have high IGF-1 from eating a hyperinsulinemic diet, which is not necessarily a high carb diet, but it is definitely not a high fat diet. It would mainly be high glycemic index and high glycemic load carbohydrates that would contribute to this.

Many proteins in themselves are carcinogenic, like casein (milk protein).

I don't think the problem is casein itself (which I would have to look into), but a few proteins within dairy such as betacellulin that enter the gut through back door endothelial cells and mimic hormonal action in the body. Another one of the reasons why dairy isn't on the Paleo diet.

High protein also stimulates high production of a certain growth factor, which in such doses, at certain times (essentially beyond infancy when extremely fast growth takes place) is a carcinogen.

Would you mind naming what you're talking about?
Nobody does a high protein diet either. The Paleo diet is a moderate protein diet.

[Scipio]

Originally Posted by Andrew Brunelle

In a perfect world, it would be the perfect diet. But in a world of carcinogens and factory farms, is there really a clear answer to what we should eat?

Yes. I personally ordered 200lbs of grassfed beef a couple months ago. I like going to the docks and getting fresh seafood as well, and eggs from local farmers. However, it's not always possible and I don't hang up myself on that. 80% of the health effects are just from moving from eating process garbage and grains to meat and vegetables, no matter how they're raised. The other 20% is from getting micronutrient rich, pastured and grass fed animal meats or vegetables and fruit grown in nutrient rich soil. Even without switching to those, you'll be getting a much higher micronutrient intake than most vegetarians and definitely more than the SAD--especially with regard to B-vitamins, choline, DHA, zinc, magnesium, vitamin A, and vitamin K2.

[Nameless One]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

I guess then that I really don't know what I'm talking about. I ate only fruit for for four weeks, and it was hell. I, like you, didn't eat more than 300-500 calories a day. But it wasn't that I wasn't hungry - I was starving. But my hatred for fruit had grown bigger than my survival instinct. In the end I included beans and tomatoes in "fruit" just to avoid starvation. I lost a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of muscle on this diet, but no fat. It took me almost a year to overcome my disgust of fruit since then. Now I eat fruit from time to time.
After my experience, including daydreams about meat and hamburgers, dozing off, dreaming of real food, I don't think anyone can seriously live off fruit only for longer than a week before it starts having negative and unhealthy side effects. I don't know what kind of delirium or euphoria you fasted yourself into, but there's just major things missing. Essential fatty acids, protein, salt, minerals and other nutrients. You can certainly will through the cravings and convince your body to shut up, but I don't believe it is healthy. You will also become diabetic pretty fast because of all the sugar.
Maybe I'm totally wrong and there are people who thrive on fruitarianism. But I doubt it.

On the other hand, I've thrived like never before on a high-saturated-fat, low-carb paleo diet. It's easier, no indigestion, very tasty, cheap and I feel, perform and look better than ever before.

My only argument is that you're taking your experience and canvasing it out onto other people, as it if it will hold true for everyone.

[Nameless One]

Originally Posted by secrets0stolen

You certainly were! 300-500 calories may do something for some individuals, but for the vast majority of people, it is waaaayyyy to little to live on. I'm a slim, moderately active female and eat 2000-2500 depending on hunger/activity level.

Richard Blackman was eating 400-700 calories on a typical day and he was a muscular dude who was out and about testing his fitness every day, i think 5'9 or 5'10" same height as me but probably 20-30 more pounds

I think maybe Bleicke was on the right track eating low calories of fruit, maybe he just couldn't take the detox! HA HA! just pokin fun at you Bleicke

Secrets you talk as if someone doesn't get their 2000+ calories a day they'll ****in die or something

[Nameless One]

Originally Posted by Beuford

Why would you not include nuts in your fruitarian diet? They are also high fat so you might enjoy them, walnuts are over 60% fat.

Nuts just knock me the **** out

There's a huge difference between sweet fruits and nuts, huge huge huge

Not tryin to knock anyones nuts here, just sayin adding nuts to the equation makes it a very different diet

[Bleicke]

That's what I said. And concerning detox: If the detox takes more than 30 days and almost ****ing kills me, I'm not sure if it's still detox. Maybe the diet is just unhealthy.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Nameless One

Richard Blackman was eating 400-700 calories on a typical day and he was a muscular dude who was out and about testing his fitness every day, i think 5'9 or 5'10" same height as me but probably 20-30 more pounds

I think maybe Bleicke was on the right track eating low calories of fruit, maybe he just couldn't take the detox! HA HA! just pokin fun at you Bleicke

Secrets you talk as if someone doesn't get their 2000+ calories a day they'll ****in die or something

I'm not saying low calorie can't work for some people, but the majority of reported problems on a fruitarian diet can be fixed by upping the calories.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Scipio

It's been proven in and out of the lab that insulin growth factor 1 levels and levels of insulin growth factor binding proteins have a profound impact on the rate of cancer cell hyperplasia. You'll have high IGF-1 from eating a hyperinsulinemic diet, which is not necessarily a high carb diet, but it is definitely not a high fat diet. It would mainly be high glycemic index and high glycemic load carbohydrates that would contribute to this.

Like I said before, fruit is on average low-med on the glycemic index and and load.

I don't think the problem is casein itself (which I would have to look into), but a few proteins within dairy such as betacellulin that enter the gut through back door endothelial cells and mimic hormonal action in the body. Another one of the reasons why dairy isn't on the Paleo diet.

There are obviously a lot of problems with dairy. While some say it isn't on the Paleo diet, I've heard at least a one person on this thread who claims to be eating paleo saying he eat large amounts of it. I've heard it up for consideration in a lot of supposedly paleo circles.

Would you mind naming what you're talking about?
Nobody does a high protein diet either. The Paleo diet is a moderate protein diet.

The name escapes me right now, I'll have to look it up.
And what would you consider "moderate protein"?

[Beuford]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

That's what I said. And concerning detox: If the detox takes more than 30 days and almost ****ing kills me, I'm not sure if it's still detox. Maybe the diet is just unhealthy.

Yes, I agree that eating nothing but a few pieces of fruit a day for 30 days is not the healthiest diet.

Originally Posted by secrets0stolen

There are obviously a lot of problems with dairy. While some say it isn't on the Paleo diet, I've heard at least a one person on this thread who claims to be eating paleo saying he eat large amounts of it. I've heard it up for consideration in a lot of supposedly paleo circles.

The paleolithic time period ends when agriculture began so dairy would not be on the diet, because the aim of the paleo diet is to eat what we have evolved to eat(although some people on the diet assume this means massive amounts of meat).

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Beuford

The paleolithic time period ends when agriculture began so dairy would not be on the diet, because the aim of the paleo diet is to eat what we have evolved to eat(although some people on the diet assume this means massive amounts of meat).

Yes, so strictly speaking, it's not Paleo, but like I said there are a bunch of people who claim to follow paleo that eat it

[Bleicke]

I eat a lot of dairy. As Dr. Harris at PaleoNu.com puts it: Paleo is not about re-enacting cavemen. It's about eating the foods and generally living in such a way that the metabolic function of a cavemen is emulated. For example you can eat Paleo even if you didn't kill an animal with a spear. You can buy the food. But the food you eat should be similar in how it reacts in your body to how the cavemans food would've reacted in his body.

So some dairy products are very similar to this 'Evolutionary Metabolic Milieu' (EM2). Consider butter or cream: It's basically the same as animal fat from meat. It reacts very similarly. Now milk is a little heavy in lactose, so you should avoid that generally. But butter, heavy cream and cheese is alright. Most paleo-people don't consider dairy paleo, but this is what Dr. Harris says.

Milk can be used because it is a very powerful natural "steroid". If you're a weightlifter and want to get big, drinking a gallon of milk a day is cheaper and more successful than drinking protein shakes or similar products. Milk sends a very potent growth stimulus to the body. According to Robb Wolf (robbwolf.com), this is also its danger: Guess what else thrives on growth stimuli? Cancer. According to Wolf, anyone not looking to gain huge amounts of muscle should avoid milk completely.

I use butter, cream and cheese because of their similarity to the EM2. I drink milk from time to time because a)I love it and b)it's good for muscle gains (that's my excuse).

[Excellent Lodestar]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

As Dr. Harris at PaleoNu.com puts it: Paleo is not about re-enacting cavemen. It's about eating the foods and generally living in such a way that the metabolic function of a cavemen is emulated. For example you can eat Paleo even if you didn't kill an animal with a spear. You can buy the food. But the food you eat should be similar in how it reacts in your body to how the cavemans food would've reacted in his body.

I use butter, cream and cheese because of their similarity to the EM2. I drink milk from time to time because a)I love it and b)it's good for muscle gains (that's my excuse).

I like the graphic Kurt put up on this subject:PaNu - P�Nu Blog - The Only Reasonable Paleo*Principle
where he says not all Neolithic foods are bad(though most are)

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by Beuford

Really if you are a raw vegan you are pretty much on the paleo diet except you don't hold the belief that our ancestors ate stacks of meat each day. A paleo diet can be high in carbohydrates. Just eat a lot of fruit.

Yeah this is kind of the... no, one of the many gripes I have with paleo.

The natural diet we evolved on was mostly fruitarian.

We didn't have nearly enough time as hunter-gatherers to change our digestive genetics.

[Bleicke]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

The natural diet we evolved on was mostly fruitarian.

How do you reach this conclusion? Fruits are very seasonal. You wouldn't survive on fruit where I live (Germany). You'd have nothing to eat 3/4 of the year. But there are loads of animals you can hunt.

I say that any place non-tropical, at least any place with a real winter, would be fruitarian hell and meat-eaters paradise.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

I eat a lot of dairy.

Me too.

As Dr. Harris at PaleoNu.com puts it: Paleo is not about re-enacting cavemen. It's about eating the foods and generally living in such a way that the metabolic function of a cavemen is emulated. For example you can eat Paleo even if you didn't kill an animal with a spear. You can buy the food. But the food you eat should be similar in how it reacts in your body to how the cavemans food would've reacted in his body.

That's very sensible. Although I wonder how much fruit we should be eating year-round, since in pre-grocery store times it was only available during the spring and summer.

So some dairy products are very similar to this 'Evolutionary Metabolic Milieu' (EM2). Consider butter or cream: It's basically the same as animal fat from meat. It reacts very similarly. Now milk is a little heavy in lactose, so you should avoid that generally. But butter, heavy cream and cheese is alright. Most paleo-people don't consider dairy paleo, but this is what Dr. Harris says.

I do pretty well with butter, ghee, cream, and small to moderate amounts of cheese. It's my big source for vitamin K2.

Milk can be used because it is a very powerful natural "steroid". If you're a weightlifter and want to get big, drinking a gallon of milk a day is cheaper and more successful than drinking protein shakes or similar products.

So I've heard! It's all the rage in some weight-lifting forums. I have access to fresh milk from a friend's friend, and have been thinking of going into a side business with him to sell milk and/or whey to weightlifters.

Milk sends a very potent growth stimulus to the body. According to Robb Wolf (robbwolf.com), this is also its danger: Guess what else thrives on growth stimuli? Cancer. According to Wolf, anyone not looking to gain huge amounts of muscle should avoid milk completely.

If you can get raw milk from old-fashioned breeds of cows like Guernsey or Jerseys, it's probably fine. These cows produce so much butterfat, it's insane. Not like the insipid 3% "whole" milk you get at the grocery store that are generally from Holsteins.

I've lost any concern about so-called "bad" effects from dairy since I read Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. People he studied who consumed a lot of dairy were in fine health. Of course, they only consumed raw dairy from grass-fed cows.

Nowadays most grocery-store milk comes from cows that are grain-fed, even organic milk. This milk has virtually no vitamin K2, which coupled with the fact that milk has a lot of calcium is bad news.

[liamona]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

How do you reach this conclusion? Fruits are very seasonal. You wouldn't survive on fruit where I live (Germany). You'd have nothing to eat 3/4 of the year. But there are loads of animals you can hunt.

I say that any place non-tropical, at least any place with a real winter, would be fruitarian hell and meat-eaters paradise.

LOL. That does kind of put a huge hole in the whole fruitarian argument, doesn't it?

In another thread I had posted a link to U.S. crop calendars which shows the same thing here too: nothing can be grown for months at a time in pretty much most of the states except Florida and California.

But it's probably great to be fruitarian in those two states, since it's warm most of the year too. There's nothing more enjoyable than eating fruit when it's hot outside. But December and January? Not so much.

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by liamona

LOL. That does kind of put a huge hole in the whole fruitarian argument, doesn't it?

Our ancestors lived in the rainforest, where fruit is available year round.

[Bleicke]

Animals are also available in the rainforest. The indigenous people of rain forests we see today hunt animals. And why do you suggest ALL our ancestors lived in the rainforest?

[Bleicke]

Originally Posted by liamona

I have access to fresh milk from a friend's friend, and have been thinking of going into a side business with him to sell milk and/or whey to weightlifters.

I love your business spirit :-) Nothing like making some money by helping other people.

[Andrew Gubb]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

Animals are also available in the rainforest. The indigenous people of rain forests we see today hunt animals. And why do you suggest ALL our ancestors lived in the rainforest?

A little bird told me!

[Beuford]

Frugivores that are not living in the rain forest become extinct in the winter because there is no food.
Right?

Now clearly our ideal diet has not changed to a more omnivorous one because that would mean our digestive systems would have changed. It hasn't, we still have the same digestive systems as the other great apes(only relative to our body size) who all eat diets at least 97% herbivorous, and a lot of fruit.

You can argue that there is a few caves with a few ancient human skeletons and a few pieces of skeletons of dead animals, but that is no evidence that humans have evolved to eat meat when our digestive system remains the same.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Beuford

Frugivores that are not living in the rain forest become extinct in the winter because there is no food.
Right?

Now clearly our ideal diet has not changed to a more omnivorous one because that would mean our digestive systems would have changed. It hasn't, we still have the same digestive systems as the other great apes(only relative to our body size) who all eat diets at least 97% herbivorous, and a lot of fruit.

You can argue that there is a few caves with a few ancient human skeletons and a few pieces of skeletons of dead animals, but that is no evidence that humans have evolved to eat meat when our digestive system remains the same.

Exactly.

[Bleicke]

You can analyze the bone density of a skeleton and then tell what that person ate when they were alive. And it shows that paleolithic people ate a diet very high in animals.

You can also do the pragmatic test: Look at a random sized sample of vegans and a random sized sample of paleo eaters. Compare things like body composition, body fat, skin health, dental health, hair, performance or anything else you like.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by Bleicke

You can analyze the bone density of a skeleton and then tell what that person ate when they were alive. And it shows that paleolithic people ate a diet very high in animals.

That's possible,doesn't change the fact our digestive system still isn't that of a carnivore. Behavior does not equal nature. Particularly in humans. Also, I may add vegans statistically have less osteoporosis. So, although I am not intimately familiar with how they relate those tests to diet, it may be based on false premises.

You can also do the pragmatic test: Look at a random sized sample of vegans and a random sized sample of paleo eaters. Compare things like body composition, body fat, skin health, dental health, hair, performance or anything else you like.

Vegan is too non-specific, because you have a lot of vegans out there living off french fries and tofu, comparing them to a paleo eater would be like comparing someone who lives off fried chicken to someone who live off rice, lentils, fruit and veg. How about a random sample of long-term 811rv's? I bet you'd get some pretty impressive results there.

[liamona]

The BeyondVeg.com site has some really great articles that take apart the myths of fruitarianism, and coincidentally site owner Tom Billings recently posted "Is a Strict, 100% Vegan Diet Optimal (for Everyone)?" (FYI Billings was a raw vegan from 1971 to 1996 and now follows a high-raw vegetarian diet. He is an avid reader of scientific texts, and quotes from them when appropriate.)

This article distills the basic arguments he made in a debate with the author of The 80:10:10 Diet, Douglas Graham.

Billings makes some good points, but the following is most relevant to the latest thread posts:

The “humans are frugivores” claim falls apart under cursory examination. Let’s assume that humans are obligate frugivores adapted to high-fruit vegan diets. That would imply:

· A highly specialized diet means we are adapted only to a narrow ecological niche, and we should not have succeeded outside the tropics.

· Over the course of evolution, human tribes that adopted fruit-based diets should have out-reproduced the tribes who ate animal foods, i.e., fruit-based diets should be the norm.

· Long-term success should be the norm on high-fruit diets; instead we see a high failure rate.

· In order to pick the fruit that is supposed to be the basis of our diet, humans should be quadrupedal (like chimps) and have the special adaptations for tree climbing that many non-human primates have.

With so many obvious fallacies in the “humans are obligate frugivores” claim, why does anyone promote such misinformation?

The debate was posted in raw fruit diet blog "The Fresh Network Blog" back in February. It followed a post in January called, "Why the shift away from veganism in the raw world?" which I hadn't seen before:

"As you may already have noticed, a big change has taken place in the raw food world, and this change is ongoing. More and more raw food authors, coaches and speakers are coming forward either to say they're not vegan anymore, to publicly promote the health benefits of certain animal products, or to warn that the vegan diet does not provide all necessary nutrients so vegans must supplement.

Taking into account those raw leaders who have never been completely vegan anyway, we can now count very few raw food promoters who are 100% vegan themselves and who also say that a 100% raw vegan diet provides us with everything we need (i.e. that there is no need to supplement)."

After these paragraphs are comments from various pro-veg diet authors and their experiences with the diet.

I find it interesting that the men seem to have the best experiences with raw veganism. Two of the women no longer follow it, and one believes in supplementing.

I was really surprised to read that Elaine Bruce, the founder of the UK Center for Living Foods who was following Ann Wigmore's diet for over twenty years was diagnosed with a fatty acid deficiency despite taking flax oil every day. She started taking cottage cheese with the flax oil (as proposed by researcher Joanna Budwig) and felt much better.

[secrets0stolen]

Originally Posted by liamona

A highly specialized diet means we are adapted only to a narrow ecological niche, and we should not have succeeded outside the tropics.

Not necessarily, we can obviously survive under a lot of conditions. The question is one of thriving.

Over the course of evolution, human tribes that adopted fruit-based diets should have out-reproduced the tribes who ate animal foods, i.e., fruit-based diets should be the norm.

Once again, people still survived, they could still reproduce. Doesn't mean that they thrived. People ate what was available.

Long-term success should be the norm on high-fruit diets; instead we see a high failure rate.

Completely unsubstantiated.

In order to pick the fruit that is supposed to be the basis of our diet, humans should be quadrupedal (like chimps) and have the special adaptations for tree climbing that many non-human primates have.

Ok. Lack of food=humans go down from trees to get supplementary calories(could be from anything) This in itself is not an argument.

I was really surprised to read that Elaine Bruce, the founder of the UK Center for Living Foods who was following Ann Wigmore's diet for over twenty years was diagnosed with a fatty acid deficiency despite taking flax oil every day. She started taking cottage cheese with the flax oil (as proposed by researcher Joanna Budwig) and felt much better.

Can't comment on that case extensively as I am not familiar with it. However, Ann Wigmore promoted a diet quite different from the one we are discussing, one of her principles being calorie restriction--which is setting yourself up for deficiencies in any diet.

[Beuford]

Have you never seen a human climb a tree before?

You can make all these stabs at humans eating fruit, but the most important thing is our digestive system(which I've never seen someone use to prove a high meat diet). Perhaps we should compare the "obvious fallacies" of a frugivore diet to the obvious fallacies of a meat diet. Such as not having a body built to eat more than maybe 1 piece of meat a week, although not necessary to do so.

[Excellent Lodestar]

Originally Posted by liamona

This article distills the basic arguments he made in a debate with the author of The 80:10:10 Diet, Douglas Graham.

Oh yeah...Graham. one of his raw Taliban was featured over at Matt's blog the other day. 180 Degree Health: Fat vs. Fruit

Matt is actually trying to make the point that Mostly fruit diet might actually be good for short term cleansing purposes and athletic performance on occasion...

but that wasn't good enough for the "80 bananas a day girl" featured in their video...she shows up in the "comments" section and, well, the brainwashed, elitist, childish tantrums ensue. Matt had to straighten her out. It's very informative.... and when banana girl shows up in comments, very entertaining.