Added review of Stefansson's book

[TylerDurden]

This is just a note to  say that I've put my review of Stefansson's book "Not By Bread Alone" on rawpaleodiet.com. Here is the link:-

http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/75/

I can't claim to be a great literary critic so this is not comparable in quality to the times literary supplement in content but it addresses the main points of the book and encourages people to read the book before trying this diet. Given that a large part of the book is devoted to the rather obscure(and irrelevant to us) topic of  "The Pemmican Wars", I felt the need to leave that out, mostly.

I'll try to add my much shorter review of Ray Audette's book Neanderthin in a week or so.

In the meantime, let's hear comments, positive or negative. I will probably have to update it anyway, from time to time re addressing a couple of points.

The idea behind these reviews is to get people to read (most of) c.10 books which each cover a small part of raw, palaeolithic diet philosophy(there being no one book which is both raw AND palaeo). The books I have in mind are(feel free to disagree):- Ray Audette's Neanderthin, Loren Cordain's book "Paleodiet", Aajonus Vonderplanitz's 2 books, this book by Stefansson, perhaps 1 or 2 books by the (cooked, low-carb) Michael Eades,Weston-Price's Nutrition and physical degeneration book(going to take ages but I'll finish it eventually as it's a key work), and perhaps an Instincto book or two by Burger or someone else.

Obviously, any review of Burger would be best done by a Frenchman, I can do dr price's book as well(unless some masochist wishes to take on the job), GS could do aajonus Vonderplanitz perhaps(?). And so on...

[carnivore]

I did not read a review, but a rebuttal with your personal point of view trying to prove that Stefansson is dead wrong on many if not all subjects!
That did not makes me want to read the book of someone who is apparently incompetent, dishonest and almost idiot.

However, I read the first chapters a few months ago.
You forgot to mention that the author who "promotes a cooked, all-animal-food-diet including dairy and eggs" speculates that we are still adapted to a "chimp diet" :

"According to the geologists, the gathering stage, or ape-
man period, lasted several million years. During this time
man ate roots and tubers, shoots and succulent leaves, fruits
and yams and nuts, worms and snails and rodents, eggs and
fledgling birds. This period was long enough for us to
become well adapted to digesting and assimilating the diet,
to be healthy on it. We can be healthy on it now, as is
demonstrated by those vegetarians, like Bernard Shaw, who
have money enough to buy these at-present rather costly
foods. The deficiency group of diseases, malformed bones,
difficult childbirth, they seemingly do not trouble those
humid-forest natives, and those high-income vegetarians, who
can manage to get enough of the sort of food on which
monkeys do well."

[goodsamaritan]

I edited the link URL to SEO friendly:
http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/review-of-not-by-bread-alone-by-vilhjalmur-stefansson/

[TylerDurden]

Cheers, GS!

I didn't think that it would appeal to raw, zero-carb diehards. But, at the same time, it was vitally important to include details re blond eskimoes and possible related fraud as it is relevant to Stefansson's overall theories(and mentioned in that book). The fact of the  matter is that Stefansson has interesting stuff to say, much of which is antagonistic to the notion of a raw diet, but which provides useful info, nevertheless. It would have been dishonest of me to promote pemmican, for example, given its AGE-content etc.

* I would dispute the notion you make re Stefansson citing the chimp vegetarian diet as natural for humans. Perhaps in the far past, but these days, Stefansson advocates a pastoralist diet(ie meat/eggs /dairy).*

[PaleoPhil]

...However, I read the first chapters a few months ago.
You forgot to mention that the author who "promotes a cooked, all-animal-food-diet including dairy and eggs" speculates that we are still adapted to a "chimp diet" :

"According to the geologists, the gathering stage, or ape-
man period, lasted several million years. During this time
man ate roots and tubers, shoots and succulent leaves, fruits
and yams and nuts, worms and snails and rodents, eggs and
fledgling birds. This period was long enough for us to
become well adapted to digesting and assimilating the diet,
to be healthy on it. We can be healthy on it now, as is
demonstrated by those vegetarians, like Bernard Shaw, who
have money enough to buy these at-present rather costly
foods. The deficiency group of diseases, malformed bones,
difficult childbirth, they seemingly do not trouble those
humid-forest natives, and those high-income vegetarians, who
can manage to get enough of the sort of food on which
monkeys do well."

But Stefansson followed that bit of vegetarian mostly-nonsense, hindered by his own complete lack of experience with vegetarianism, (though rightly pointing toward vegetarianism's tendency to produce deficiency diseases among all but a small number of the elite) with:

After the largely vegetarian gathering stage came the hunting
stage, during which the ape turned definitely human.
This will have lasted between one and three million years.
The period was long enough to enable digestion and assimilation
to adapt themselves to a largely carnivorous diet.