Medical Doctor's blog about mimicking paleo metabolism...

[Raw Rob]

This doctor has a great blog that is just a few months old. He basically recommends a high fat zero/low carb approach, in order to mimic the metabolic effects of a paleo diet. He recommends people use dairy fat to substitute marrow, brains, organs, etc. because he knows it will be easier for the general population to do that, as apposed to actually eating all paleolithic foods. Anyway, I think it can help a lot of people. There's a lot of good stuff on there. I made a comment on his blog, and told him about our forum, just to reach out a bit.

http://www.paleonu.com/

[PaleoPhil]

...He recommends people use dairy fat to substitute marrow, brains, organs, etc. because he knows it will be easier for the general population to do that, as apposed to actually eating all paleolithic foods. Anyway, I think it can help a lot of people. There's a lot of good stuff on there. I made a comment on his blog, and told him about our forum, just to reach out a bit.

I've enjoyed some of that Doc's posts in the past, but as Tyler's pinned post suggests, including significant dairy is one of the most common errors in low carb diets. Easier is often not better.

[Raw Rob]

I've enjoyed some of that Doc's posts in the past, but as Tyler's pinned post suggests, including significant dairy is one of the most common errors in low carb diets. Easier is often not better.

Well yeah, you and I know that dairy is not ideal, but this guy's helping people. It's better than the diet that they used to be on I'm sure. Most people are not going to be as educated on proper paleo nutrition as most of us are on this forum. (Or they don't have a strong motivating factor like a debilitating disease.) His blog may lead them down the right path though. Plus, I was just more excited that he was an actual doctor that was willing to think outside the mainstream, unlike many of his colleagues.

Sorry I missed that Tyler had posted about it before. I did some searches and didn't find anything.
 

[TylerDurden]

Oh, I didn't post about this before, Paleophil must be referring to a general post I made about the danger of dairy-consumption on low-carb diets.


I've moved this topic to the hot topics forum as any posts related to dairy or cooking really belong there, not in the info/news/announcements section. Besides the info forum is really only for media-related RVAF subjects.

[PaleoPhil]

Well yeah, you and I know that dairy is not ideal, but this guy's helping people. It's better than the diet that they used to be on I'm sure.

Yes, but his suggestion to eat dairy fat instead of body fats is puzzling, as suet is cheaper than dairy products like butter at my local supermarkets, and is plentiful and convenient. So it's actually pretty easy, if one can get over the social pressures and psychological issues, and I don't understand why he doesn't at least mention suet, unless he is afraid of being attacked for it--which would be understandable, given that his livelihood is at stake.

Plus, I was just more excited that he was an actual doctor that was willing to think outside the mainstream, unlike many of his colleagues.

Yes, he is taking quite a risk as it is.

[PaleoPhil]

Oh, I didn't post about this before, Paleophil must be referring to a general post I made about the danger of dairy-consumption on low-carb diets.

Yes, that's it. It was an excellent post, thanks, but now I can't find it.

[Raw Rob]

So it's actually pretty easy, if one can get over the social pressures and psychological issues,

That's exactly why he does it. Most people can't get over it. Also, people are so used to shopping in the grocery stores like robots, he knows he can at least direct them to dairy.

and I don't understand why he doesn't at least mention suet,

He might not know what suet is. Hell, I've had two different grass-fed farmers not know what suet is. He mentions grass-fed tallow, lard, brains, bone marrow, organs in different articles.

I think he does a well enough job explaining that we evolved on actual animal fat, not dairy fat. He mentions that some people will have issues with dairy. If those people can't conclude for themselves that they should substitute dairy fat with real paleo animal fat, then natural selection steps in.

It reminds me of many of us who came to raw paleo through AV. I had to gradually realize many of the foods he recommended were not ideal at all. He pointed me in the right direction though.   

 

[carnivore]

 

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/6/17/panu-raw-or-cooked.html

PaNu - Raw or Cooked?
DateWednesday, June 17, 2009 at 12:22AM

For an excellent discussion of the role of cooking in human evolution, including a fairly convincing argument that cooking (not just control of fire) began with the transition from H. Habilis to H. Erectus, see the book Catching Fire by Harvard paleoanthropologist Richard Wrangham.

All food sources I discuss assume that cooking is pre-agricultural behavior and that we evolved to eat most of our food cooked. The only paleolithic diet that is substantially raw food would be for chimpanzees.

http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-...5035008&sr=8-1

Wrangham's book has a good discussion of how cooking allowed the human gut to shrink, and thereby freed up metabolic energy that could be devoted to brain growth. Increased meat-eating enabled by more sophisticated and efficient hunting of large mammals and particularly, increased animal fat eating beginning about 4-800,000 years ago likely enabled further increases in brain size (brain growth is highly fat-dependent).

[TylerDurden]

It's a shame that he cites someone as dodgy and unreliable as Wrangham. Fortunately, we already have an essay debunking Wrangham's ridiculous theories:-

http://www.rawpaleodiet.com/when-did-humans-begin-to-cook/

I still have to get around eventually to doing a review of Wrangham's new book. So far the few snippets I've come across all seem to rehash the same old rubbish he peddled before, so I'm not hopeful of anything interesting appearing. Still, it's good we have such a crackpot in charge of the anti-raw side of things as it makes them look bad.

[invisible]

An additional problem with dairy, which is the same as plant fats is that they contain medium and short term fatty acids which metabolize different than the long chain fatty acids found in meat. Carb restriction mimics the metabolism of starvation (calorie restriction), yet eating fat from meat more so than eating fat from dairy or plants. If eating only fat from meat then metabolism stays pretty much the same whether you are either eating or fasting.

Perhaps dairy stops people from fully becoming 'fat adapted' since the fats in dairy are not utilized exactly the same way for energy as stored body fat though the fat from meat is (since it is body fat).

[carnivore]

An additional problem with dairy, which is the same as plant fats is that they contain medium and short term fatty acids which metabolize different than the long chain fatty acids found in meat. Carb restriction mimics the metabolism of starvation (calorie restriction), yet eating fat from meat more so than eating fat from dairy or plants. If eating only fat from meat then metabolism stays pretty much the same whether you are either eating or fasting.

Perhaps dairy stops people from fully becoming 'fat adapted' since the fats in dairy are not utilized exactly the same way for energy as stored body fat though the fat from meat is (since it is body fat).

Interesting.
What about infants who drink milk of their mother : they don't seem to need to be fully adapted to fat since milk contains lactose and small/medium chain fatty acids.