Andrew's Barefoot Running/ Raw Diet Articles

[Andrew Michaels]

Hey. After I started telling people I've been running long distance in
five fingers, they started asking me a lot of questions. I gave up
answering the emails and set off the write an article last month. One
became like five, but I finally finished.

I've already been called a "faker" by a barefooter cause I'm not
entirely barefoot and I aparently have not been doing it long enough
in his estimation, but whatevs. I'm just talking about my experience,
which I give in some detail.

I know there are some hard core paleo diet people here who may not be
keen on my raw food diet, but that's cool too.

The first article is here: You Were Born To Run, So Get At It
The rest are linked at the bottom. The first article is more of an
overview of my story, the later are more practical.

If you're wondering about the repetitions of "born to run", turns out
it's a popular search turn, so I harvested engine traffic by using it
in repetition.

Hope you all enjoy, and pass it on to those who might be interested.

[Gabo]

Thanks for another awesome series of articles, Andrew!
Other than some minor spelling and grammar errors, they're great.
I love your writing style and your passion for personal health!

[Fullcrum]

Hey, love your barefoot stuff. I'm definitely going to try this. Maybe I'll even buy the shoes eventually. Good stuff. I love your passion for health and what it has done for you. In fact, I love how your entire site goes into specific, practical details about living this way (like buying cheap fruit, ripeness rotations, keyhole gardening, etc.)

I just want to make an important point about the spread of what I believe is misinformation. I do not think it is your fault but rather a fault of rationalization in the raw vegan community in general.

It concerns your article on evolution. Your claims about the evolution of meat-eating as "tangential" to human evolution are incorrect. I don't negatively judge you for believing it. Doug Graham believes it though and, despite his awesome message of health, many of his more evolutionarily inclined rationalizations for his diet are wrong and intellectually dishonest. I hate watching otherwise intelligent and rational scientists laugh at this community because of the misinformation and pseudo-science propagated by seemingly everyone. This is not anyone's fault in particular, but awareness of the issue needs to be raised if more rational and intelligent people are to adopt this diet.

You are right to be "leery" of those who claim to know "what humans evolved to do." Like in many scientific disciplines

Now hear me out. Understand that I mostly agree with you when it comes to the "ideal human diet" as one full of a variety of easily digested, nutritionally dense, moisture rich foods. Which for me means mostly fruits and greens with some meat added in (in place of necessary supplements) for the reasons following.

BTW, have you seen the website Beyond Vegetarianism--Raw Food, Vegan, Fruitarian, Paleo Diets I'm sure you have. It provides the most exhaustive analysis of human evolution in relation to diet I have ever seen. Intestinal ratios, "we don't have claws or sharp teeth" debunking and all.

I don't want to get into a super debate or anything. But I will point out several things:

1) Human evolution is not a linear progression but "tangential" in nature. There were many offshoots, all of them extinct except for us. Many of them were not adapted to eating fruit. Consider Paranthropus boisei, whose massive molars (as evidenced by wear patterns and carbon isotope analysis) were adapted to eating coarse tubers and roots in the ground. Most anthropologists in the field agree that it was meat eating and cooking that allowed our exponential brain growth starting with Homo erectus.

2) I know Doug Graham claims humans can absorb B-12 when they get rid of the junk in their systems and improve their absorption, but, to my knowledge, this has never been scientifically verified. Many humans can survive decades without consuming B-12 because the body reabsorbs most of it, but eventually, we lose it and need to consume it. Frederic Pautenaude and other high fruit advocates believe it necessary to supplement with B-12. Which means it is not present in the foods on this diet. Which means our ancestors did not get B-12 from eating "raw vegan". Which means they ate meat. In substantial quantities. The only concentrated sources of B-12 in the natural world are animal products.

3) Consider that humans did not survive in most of the world eating raw or vegan. The Inuit did quite well on their heavy seafood and blubbler-rich mammal diet. Every culture in the world eats some animal foods. Without supplementation (of B-12), it is necessary. Failure to do so results in pernicious anemia, demylenation of neurons and other preventable diseases. Long term breast feeding (as in for over 2 years) from a well nourished mother can delay the onset of pernicious anemia in children born and raised 100% raw vegan, as far as I've seen. I cannot substantiate this particular claim though.

4) There are no truly vegan primates. Chimps actively hunt other monkeys, have been known to cannibalize each other and eat insects regularly. Gorillas eat insects as a byproduct of their massive foliage consumption. In fact, lowland gorillas (that eat more fruit and actively clean their food more than their highland counterparts) actively seek out and eat insects, because they need them. Check out this short article that talks about the gorilla's digestive system. Comparison Between the Digestive Tracts of a Carnivore, a Herbivore and Man - Second Opinions, UK Now the guy writing the article is not in the best shape. Many scientists are not. I have no idea why this is! But the science is sound. It doesn't matter who promotes the science: evidence is evidence.

5) I do not see evidence of a concentration of trees in the plains "higher" than that of forests. Forests are, by definition, denser in trees than plains. And that means less fruit.

6) Meat eating allows us to colonize the world. It's not like humans were "forced" into travelling places where there were no fruits or anything and had to eat meat. Meat eating is not an "accident" stumbled upon by many world cultures, but rather part of human nature that allowed us to colonize almost every part of the globe. Other animals do not "sacrifice" their ideal diet to colonize new habitats (which, if taking your view on this topic, one would have to assume happened).

7) We do have enzymes meant to digest meat. The stomach pH of herbivores is notably alkaline, while carnivores have acidic stomachs full of pepsin and HCl designed to quickly digest meat before it putrefies.

8) The claim that the fact that we walk upright is a sign of our fruitivory while all "true carnivores" walk on all fours...I mean, really? That's just a silly and completely irrelevant comparison. Only two species of mammals come to mind when I think of bipeds: humans and kangaroos. Maybe the elephant shrew. Bipedalism has nothing to do with eatings fruits or greens or meats.

9) Carbon isotope analysis of later human teeth shows an increase in meat eating. Cut marks have been found in bone marrow long before 200,000 years ago. Over 1.5 million years ago as you would have it. Hunting is what didn't begin until recently.

All this evidence points to the EVOLUTIONARY FACT that humans evolved to eat meat. Thanks to our modern technologies and lifestyles, we have the luxury to eat a diet even healthier than what we were "evolved" to eat, which is most of what you promote. I love veganism. It's the most ecologically sustainable way and, done right, among the healthiest ways to live.

There's just no evolutionary evidence of major fruit eating in our history.

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False information should never be used to justify a righteous cause that should be able to stand on its own. Raw veganism will NEVER gain scientific credence if messages like these continue to circulate. Studies on raw veganism will remain few and far between if the community adopts false beliefs. It may seem convenient to believe in this stuff, but any true truth seeker (which, above all, I know you are) will see the flaw in "settling" for concocted explanations. No need to pollute a great message with half-truths .
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Just bringing my views on truth to the table. Don't take it as an insult .

[Beuford]

Hey Fullcrum, it is good that you have taken the time to research this but maybe open another thread because a lot of people here will raise issues with some of the points you made.

Anyway nice site Andrew I am going to check out some more stuff on there.

[bluedragon]

Originally Posted by Fullcrum

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False information should never be used to justify a righteous cause that should be able to stand on its own. Raw veganism will NEVER gain scientific credence if messages like these continue to circulate. Studies on raw veganism will remain few and far between if the community adopts false beliefs. It may seem convenient to believe in this stuff, but any true truth seeker (which, above all, I know you are) will see the flaw in "settling" for concocted explanations. No need to pollute a great message with half-truths .
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That part I totally agree with, but it seems to me 2 people with opposing views are not likely to prove to each other which one is using false information or "intellectually dishonest" arguments. First of all, one would need to posses the knowledge of a doctor, a biologist and an anthropologist to argue with either of the points you make. When such points of view come from various doctors, what non-expert person can claim to know for sure that those claims are wrong, without even having access to the information that the doctors used, not to mention their expertise?

[Fullcrum]

On an on-topic note, people in the raw food movement may know of Daniel Vitalis, who also wears these vibram shoes. I saw him in NYC and he told me about some of the positive benefits he's seen with them.

He also talked about EMF radiation protection. I don't know how grounded that is in truth. But I can definitely see the benefits of running barefooted. I'm starting to do that more often anyway.

Many would argue that going barefoot is bad because it opens up your feet to parasitic worms and other infections. This is a big problem in third world countries. So I wouldn't barefoot it everywhere .

BTW - as far as access to information goes, I discussed this issue with an anthropology professor and took an anthro class this summer where we went indepth into the comparative anatomy and delved into the issue. Some of the stuff I learned in this class I have not found on the internet, which is weird.

The good thing about this field is that more and more data appears every year that can be used in debates like these .

And of course, I still support a high fruit high greens diet as the modern day diet solution (what with sustainability issues and the price of real meat and all), just with modifications in lieu of evolutionary evidence.