Fructose Linked to Disease--Including Fructose from Fruit!

[PaleoPhil]

Here are some studies and commentary on this:

Soft drinks, fructose consumption, and the risk of gout in men: prospective cohort study
Hyon K Choi, associate professor of medicine1, Gary Curhan, associate professor of medicine2
BMJ, doi: 10.1136/bmj.39449.819271.BE, (Published 31 January 2008)
 http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/bmj.39449.819271.BEv1

".... Other major contributors to fructose intake such as total fruit juice or fructose rich fruits (apples and oranges) were also associated with a higher risk of gout (P values for trend <0.05).

Conclusions: Prospective data suggest that consumption of sugar sweetened soft drinks and fructose is strongly associated with an increased risk of gout in men. Furthermore, fructose rich fruits and fruit juices may also increase the risk. Diet soft drinks were not associated with the risk of gout."

Fructose is a coronary risk factor
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/fructose-is-coronary-risk-factor.html

As discussed in a previous Heart Scan Blog post, Say Goodbye to Fructose, a carefully-conducted University of California study demonstrated that, compared to glucose, fructose induces:

1) Four-fold greater intra-abdominal fat accumulation

2) 13.9% increase in LDL cholesterol, doubled Apoprotein B

3) 44.9% increase in small LDL, 3-fold more than glucose

4) Increased postprandial triglycerides 99.2%.

Other studies have shown that fructose:

--Increases uric acid--No longer is red meat the cause for increased uric acid; fructose has taken its place. Uric acid may act as an independent coronary risk factor and increases high blood pressure and kidney disease.

--Induces insulin resistance, the situation that creates diabetes

--Increases glycation (fructose linked to proteins) and protein cross-linking, processes that underlie atherosclerosis, liver disease, and cataracts.

Make no mistake: Fructose is a powerful coronary risk factor.

There is no doubt whatsoever that a diet rich in fructose from fruit drinks, honey, raisins and other dried fruit like cranberries, sucrose (table sugar), and high-fructose corn syrup is a high-risk path to heart disease.

Also note that many foods labeled "heart healthy" because of low-fat, low saturated fat, addition of sterol esters, or fiber, also contain fructose sources, especially high-fructose corn syrup.

Calorie Restricted Monkeys Part II
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 at 4:10PM
http://www.paleonu.com/

"...why don’t the monkeys get CAD, despite our successful efforts to give them the metabolic syndrome that correlates so closely with CAD risk in humans?

My shoot-from-the-hip speculation is that Homo Sapiens, during two million years of evolution since H.Habilis, lost what little tolerance for excess fructose we started with at the same time we acquired our metabolic preference for exploiting the fat stores of other mammals and became more tolerant of saturated fat than fructose.

Sugar is just more poisonous to humans, and that is why you have to try so hard to give CAD to monkeys, even if you are stimulating inflammation with gobs of linoleic acid. CAD may depend on not tolerating fructose. That would explain a lot and we should keep that in mind when reading animal studies.

So among the Neolithic agents, excess industrial oils are probably bad for most mammals, but sugar may be peculiarly bad for humans. Step one of PaNu stays step one."


And here is the discussion continued from http://www.rawpaleoforum.com/general-discussion/for-first-time-chimps-seen-making-weapons-for-hunting!/30/:

PaleoPhil wrote: "You could make that same sort of excuse re: the nonhydrogenated fat study--it used cottonseed oil, so I could say I don't use plant oils and only heat grassfed suet at low temps, writing the study off as useless in the same manner."

Not at all useless. It establishes that cooking is a harmful process.

If you can say that the cottonseed oil study establishes that cooking anything is harmful, then I can say the refined fructose studies establish that all sugars are harmful.

And claiming that "only" lightly cooking suet would be OK is meaningless.

If you can say that, then I can say that claiming that "only" fruit fructose is OK is meaningless.

Once one has to accept(as all have to do eventually) that cooking harms food in numerous ways, it becomes increasingly  impossible to argue convincingly that cooking is a beneficial process.At best, one is forced on the defensive, to make a vague unsupoorted claim that cooking "doesn't really do that much harm".

Same can be said for fructose and more. Since there are studies connecting actual fruit fructose to gout and heart disease, the evidence is actually more direct re: fruit fructose than cooking suet. You seem to have much lower standards of evidence for your hypotheses than you do for those you disagree with.

Fruit juice is a heavily processed food, involving added artificial vitamin C, heated/pasteurised to abnormally high temperatures to kill off potential bacteria and soft drinks are hardlt healthy carbs. Similiarly, dried fruits contain artificial levels of sulphur and other preservatives, hardly healthy or natural.

OK, we agree on fruit juice and dried fruits. Now, did it ever occur to you--why is fruit juice and dried fruit seriously unhealthy but beef blood and dried beef is not--or do you think beef blood and low-heat, homemade jerky are as unhealthy as fruit juice and dried fruit? If you do, please provide evidence.

Cranberries have been shown to be beneficial in fighting bacterial infections in the urinary system and have been shown to protect against cancer and kidney stones:-

As Carnivore, and I think Lex, said, some foods can have short term medicinial effects that are beneficial without necessarily being healthy as long run staple foods.

As for gout, that is routinely linked by scientists to consumption of (cooked) meats with fruit actually helping reduce gout symptoms(gout is linked to purines present in protein-foods especially organ-meats):-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15014182

That study says that dairy products reduce risk of gout. Surely you don't agree with that.

The presentation at the following link claims that "low fat dairy products may be protective": http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2984210/GOUT-TREATMENT-Part-3. Surely you don't agree with that either. There are a lot of bogus studies and recommendations when it comes to gout.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-some-foods-that-cause-gout.htm

This article contradicts the study and says that dairy products increase the risk of gout. I've researched gout before and found the same contradictions. There is no agreement on which foods cause it. I also know someone with gout and the purine-free diet didn't do her much good. I'm not convinced that purines are the whole answer.

Even an advocate of moderately-restricted purine diets questions the value of total purine elimination, suggesting there is at least an additional factor at work:

Gout, Diet, and the Insulin Resistance Syndrome
http://www.jrheum.com/subscribers/02/07/1350.html

"... A rigid purine restricted diet is of dubious therapeutic value and can rarely be sustained for long", so says a gout expert, professor A. G. Fam in "gout, diet, and the insulin resistance syndrome.

...Although high protein diets contain large quantities of purines and are associated with an increased rate of endogenous purine production, such diets often increase urinary urate excretion, and may even lower serum urate levels19,54. ....

CONCLUSION

While dietary restriction of purines has long been superseded by more effective urate-lowering drugs, recent data suggest that dietary measures may play a much greater role in the treatment of metabolic disorders commonly associated with gout: obesity, IRS, and dyslipidemia."

Plus, of course, the scientific concensus, nowadays, is that fruit and veg consumption PROTECTS against heart-disease:-

A) consensus is no guarantee of correctness (the current consensus is that so-called "unbalanced, extreme elimination" diets like RPD are nonsense and that you are therefore outside the pale, remember--just read the PaNu doctor's comments about RPD if you don't believe me--he attacks several of your views)
B) it depends on what they're replacing--when fruit and veg replace grains and dairy, they do protect against heart disease; if raw, pasture-fed meats and organs replaced the fruit and cooked veg, I think they would probably find even better protection against heart disease

It is far more likely that the scientists simply recognised that their data conflicted somewhat with the findings of 1000s of other studies proving helath benefits for fruits, so that they made a qualifying statement so as not to look too foolish,
They want to keep their jobs, so they genuflect to the dietary dogma, which I don't blame them for. I just wouldn't make the mistake of claiming it's a scientific practice to disregard the results of your own study without logical explanation or investigation.

Similiarly, there are now so many definitive studies done on the great harm of heat-created toxins on human health that it is now scientifically implausible to argue that well-cooked foods(especially well-cooked animal foods) are remotely healthy for humans - which means, of course, that rawists have already won half the battle already, on a scientific basis.

Many scientists may recognize problems with deep fat frying and other high-temp cooking methods, but raw diets are still regarded as dangerous quackery in most of the scientific and medical communities. RPD is a minority view among raw diets and a minority view among Paleo diets. Even the PaNu doctor whose diet is nearly raw and very similar to ours (aside from dairy) lambasted much of the views associated with the RPD. If he responded that way imagine how conventional doctors and scientists will respond when they find out about RPD.

As GS has pointed out from his own experience, wild fruits are available all year round in quantity as a staple in the tropics, so the same must have applied in Palaeo times(in those equatorial regions).

The vast majority of human beings do not descend from people from Southeast Asia, including me, so the fruits avialable in that area are irrelevant to me. Africa and Eurasia did not have the same flora and even the flora of SE Asia has been greatly manipulated over thousands of years of human intervention. Since you seem fond of scientitic consensus, the scientific consensus re: the habitat of early hominids is that it was Savannah land, not tropical. Even the minority Aquatic Ape view does not support a tropical habitat. The ancestors of Europeans did not live in tropics during at least the last half million years.

[TylerDurden]

If you can say that the cottonseed oil study establishes that cooking anything is harmful, then I can say the refined fructose studies establish that all sugars are harmful.

Poor reasoning. The same re cottonseed oil and trans-fat creation  applies to any kind of (unprocessed)oil(eg:- raw olive oil being cooked). The same cannot be said for refined fructose which is not the same as fructose in raw organic fruit, say.

 

If you can say that, then I can say that claiming that "only" fruit fructose is OK is meaningless.

Wrong again. Cooking is generally agreed to be less worse than actual processing of a food. So for example cooking lard is 1 thing but producing cooked, hydrogenated lard(or refined fructose) is quite another.

Same can be said for fructose and more. Since there are studies connecting actual fruit fructose to gout and heart disease, the evidence is actually more direct re: fruit fructose than cooking suet. You seem to have much lower standards of evidence for your hypotheses than you do for those you disagree with.

That's a bit rich given your unqualified acceptance of Weston-Price's more dodgy totally unscientific claims. For one thing I've already shown that studies routinely show that cooked animal fats produce the highest levels of AGEs(and even shown 1 study describing the harmful effects of tallow). As regards your claim re that 1 study re fructose in fruit, like I said, unfortunately that study is rather overwhelmed by endless other scientific studies showing direct health-benefits for fruit and vegetables.

OK, we agree on fruit juice and dried fruits. Now, did it ever occur to you--why is fruit juice and dried fruit seriously unhealthy but beef blood and dried beef is not--or do you think beef blood and low-heat, homemade jerky are as unhealthy as fruit juice and dried fruit? If you do, please provide evidence.

This is again a very poor
(IMO,illegal) comparison. Raw beef blood (even cooked) cannot be compared to fruit juice as fruit juice is heavily pasteurised(and in almost all  cases adulterated with preservatives of various kinds). Beef jerky, if not smoked or filled with some other preservative, is also not comparable to fruit juice as the latter is more processed.

As Carnivore, and I think Lex, said, some foods can have short term medicinial effects that are beneficial without necessarily being healthy as long run staple foods.

Well, at least, that is finally an admission of the benefits of herbal medicine(as practised by humans and even wild carnivores). It used to be that ZCers like Lex would not even accept that herbal medicine was useful nor even accept  that  herbal medicine  existed in the Palaeolithic. The point, though, I'm making is that while a 100% fruit diet may not be beneficial re long-term nutritional deficiencies, in small amounts such fruit/veg can be beneficial in the long-term re urinary issues or whatever, due to the phytonutrients they contain.

That study says that dairy products reduce risk of gout. Surely you don't agree with that.

The presentation at the following link claims that "low fat dairy products may be protective": http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2984210/GOUT-TREATMENT-Part-3. Surely you don't agree with that either.

Actually, I do believe in it, since dairy is quite different in its constituents to meats.Plus, there are numerous other studies showing quite different effects depending on whether low-fat or high-fat dairy is used. Simply put, I am sure that dairy can be useful for a few conditions but absolutely deadly for many others.

This article contradicts the study and says that dairy products increase the risk of gout. I've researched gout before and found the same contradictions. There is no agreement on which foods cause it. I also know someone with gout and the purine-free diet didn't do her much good. I'm not convinced that purines are the whole answer.

I also don't consider gout to be purely purine-related but gout's been around for 100s of years and the general remedy is to cut out alcohol and as much (cooked) animal food as possible. And it is most interesting that it is a condition directly linked to AGEs/advanced glycation end products and related inflammation.

A) consensus is no guarantee of correctness (the current consensus is that so-called "unbalanced, extreme elimination" diets like RPD are nonsense and that you are therefore outside the pale, remember--just read the PaNu doctor's comments about RPD if you don't believe me--he attacks several of your views)

Not true, there is a difference between opinion and actual scientific stance. For example, there are now 1,000s of studies on the harm done by heat-created toxins such as advanced glycation end products, such that only a few crackpot nutritionists defend a well-cooked diet, and it is scientifically acknowledged that cooking destroys enzymes/bacteria  and lowers nutrient-levels. The only difference is that food scientists and RPDers disagree as to the severity/harm done by such processes.

B) it depends on what they're replacing--when fruit and veg replace grains and dairy, they do protect against heart disease; if raw, pasture-fed meats and organs replaced the fruit and cooked veg, I think they would probably find even better protection against heart disease

That is your opinion, yet general scientific concensus shows that cooked animal food is worse than (mostly  eaten raw or lightly-steamed) fruit/veg so that replacing cooked meat with fruit/veg is healthier(PROVIDED enough minimal cooked meats are eaten in order to get all the complete nutrients). As for the issue of raw, well, we both have different beliefs as to quantities of raw meats or raw carbs.

They want to keep their jobs, so they genuflect to the dietary dogma, which I don't blame them for. I just wouldn't make the mistake of claiming it's a scientific practice to disregard the results of your own study without logical explanation or investigation.

Not true. Competent scientists are always reluctant to promote their own studies until they've been peer-reviewed by other eminent scientists and have been properly compared to any other studies which prove the opposite of their claims. The ones who immediately self-publicise their results and boast about them(Wrangham, I suspect?) tend to be frauds and are viewed with inevitable suspicion as scientists expect each others work to be properly analyzed before being accepted/rejected - a case in point are those 2 scientists who promoted their absurd cold fusion theory to the tabloids because they knew it was full of holes and wouldn't be likely to be viewed favourably by more competent scientists.So,  naturally, these people don't want to look bad by making outrageous claims until(if ever) those claims are backed by the evidence from other studies as well. Like I said, with Science, God is on the side of the big battalions.

Many scientists may recognize problems with deep fat frying and other high-temp cooking methods, but raw diets are still regarded as dangerous quackery in most of the scientific and medical communities. RPD is a minority view among raw diets and a minority view among Paleo diets. Even the PaNu doctor whose diet is nearly raw and very similar to ours (aside from dairy) lambasted much of the views associated with the RPD. If he responded that way imagine how conventional doctors and scientists will respond when they find out about RPD.

Like I said, they already agree partially with raw diets as regards the harm done by well-cooked (animal) foods so that's already a start. Scientists also accept that cooking destroys enzymes and bacteria and lowers the levels of healthy nutrients in food. Now it is accepted in scientific circles that very little is known about the role of(especially)enzymes and bacteria in the role of digestion(or anything else), even to this day, so it's merely a matter of time before all our rawist beliefs become accepted. For example, the Hygiene Hypothesis(which is concerned with the benefits of bacteria and parasites) is now a mainstream view. So, my view that we should follow the scientific concensus is correct. Heck, even the proc-ooked-food-advocate Wrangham has been forced to acknowledge the harm done by heat-created toxins in a recent radio interview, which is  major step forward for the raw food movement.

The vast majority of human beings do not descend from people from Southeast Asia, including me, so the fruits avialable in that area are irrelevant to me. Africa and Eurasia did not have the same flora and even the flora of SE Asia has been greatly manipulated over thousands of years of human intervention. Since you seem fond of scientitic consensus, the scientific consensus re: the habitat of early hominids is that it was Savannah land, not tropical. Even the minority Aquatic Ape view does not support a tropical habitat. The ancestors of Europeans did not live in tropics during at least the last half million years.

First off, the savannah theory is not uncontested nor even the main one any more

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism#Humans

. In the last 15 years or so, scientists have been more favourable to forest-type explanations re human bipedalism. The Savannah theory only worked if it was the main explanation as to why humans became bipedal. Now that numerous scientific studies have strongly indicated that hominids, for example, developed their bipedal ability in the trees(like orang-utangs do), there is ever less evidence for the savannah theory(though there is 1 claim re the original climate in Africa being a mixture of savannah and scattered forests, requring bipedalism in order to move from one forest to another.

Well, I would disagree yet again re the Out of Africa theory, though, at least, this one is indeed part of the scientific concensus, at least for now. That doesn't mean I intend to look to some Weston-Price-style shaman to provide me with easy answers. I'll simply wait until the relentless march of science eventually confirms my suspicions.

 I, for one, have no faith in the Out of Africa hypothesis. The multiregional hypothesis sounds far more likely, with the claim that homo erectus left Africa  a million to two million years ago(800,000 at the latest) and then moved across the world, gradually becoming hominised as homo sapiens. The out-of-africa theory is extremely unlikely and I suspect that one reason is a darwinian one in that the majority of humans don't like the notion that we could have interbred with the Neanderthals or homo erectus etc.There is some sign that things are changing, though, as new scientific techniques such as DNA-related ones are showing more proof re such admixture:-

http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0020105

To sum up, there is sufficient proof re fruit being eaten in non-arctic areas in palaeo times.

As regards the human manipulation of wild fruits claim re SE Asia, that's just absurd, the wild jungles of the Phillipines have hardly been farmed by humans.And domesticated plants are notoriously ill-equipped to survive in the wild without constant human intervention, so the basic wild situation re wild fruits would have remained unchanged over the millenia:-

"Most cultivated fruit strains can survive only under human protection. Cultivated fruit generally cannot survive/reproduce in real nature--the wild. This suggests that cultivated fruit is biologically "weaker" than wild, natural fruit." taken from:-

http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/fruit-table/wild-cultiv-fruit-1a.shtml

In other words, GS is quite right to state that wild fruits were abundant in Palaeo times in equatorial regions. As for Europe, that had interglacial periods of warmth and the glaciers only covered parts of Europe.

[PaleoPhil]

Looks like we'll just have to agree to disagree on fructose too. Much more research needs to be done on this subject, so my position is not nailed down too firmly at this point anyway. I actually hope you're right and fruit fructose does not cause anywhere near that problems that HFCS does.

I don't take a position on multiregional vs. out of Africa, especially since it doesn't affect any hypothesis I'm particularly interested in. I didn't notice you ever answering my question re: the fact that prominent advocates of the multiregional hypothesis also proposed that at least some of the ancestors of European homo sapiens were Neanderthals. You poked fun at Ray Audette, a self-admitted amateur, for proposing that--I'm just curious why you let scientists, who should presumably know better, off so easy?

[TylerDurden]

Looks like we'll just have to agree to disagree on fructose too. Much more research needs to be done on this subject, so my position is not nailed down too firmly at this point anyway. I actually hope you're right and fruit fructose does not cause anywhere near that problems that HFCS does.

Whatever the case, fructose-consumption in Palaeo times are unlikely to have ever been more than 25% of diet(mostly less), even in equatorial regions where fruit was consumed(given plant-consumption rates among current hunter-gatherers) so I don't see it as a problem provided a high-meat diet is involved(and like I said, refined fructose such as seen in soft drinks etc. seems to be the really damaging type).

I don't take a position on multiregional vs. out of Africa, especially since it doesn't affect any hypothesis I'm particularly interested in. I didn't notice you ever answering my question re: the fact that prominent advocates of the multiregional hypothesis also proposed that at least some of the ancestors of European homo sapiens were Neanderthals. You poked fun at Ray Audette, a self-admitted amateur, for proposing that--I'm just curious why you let scientists, who should presumably know better, off so easy?

But I've just recently mentioned the possibility of Neanderthals(and other hominids outside Europe) mixing with humans(and plenty of times previously  on other forums).Did I really make fun of Audette for suggesting that? Perhaps you can provide the relevant link? I was unaware that he was remotely interested in palaoe matters outside diet and certainly am not at all against the notion of Neanderthals mixing with humans as it would bolster the multiregional hyopthesis considerably.

[PaleoPhil]

...But I've just recently mentioned the possibility of Neanderthals(and other hominids outside Europe) mixing with humans(and plenty of times previously  on other forums).Did I really make fun of Audette for suggesting that? Perhaps you can provide the relevant link? I was unaware that he was remotely interested in palaoe matters outside diet and certainly am not at all against the notion of Neanderthals mixing with humans as it would bolster the multiregional hyopthesis considerably.

I thought it was in your first draft review of his book or something, but I don't see it anywhere, so I may have confused someone else's I've read, like at Amazon.com, with yours.

Ray seemed to make Neanderthals a direct-link ancestor, a run in the evolutionary ladder of homo sapiens (which is one reason why he named his book "NeanderThin"--because he viewed homo sapiens sapiens as neotenized, gracile Neanderthals--though I'm not sure what he thought about Africans and East Asians) whereas I think the multiregional guys tend to see Neanderthals as partial ancestors of Euorpeans, having mixed with early homo sapiens sapiens at some point. Maybe human history is more complex than either Out of Africa or Multiregional--some mixture of both?

[PaleoPhil]

Whatever the case, fructose-consumption in Palaeo times are unlikely to have ever been more than 25% of diet(mostly less), even in equatorial regions where fruit was consumed(given plant-consumption rates among current hunter-gatherers) so I don't see it as a problem provided a high-meat diet is involved(and like I said, refined fructose such as seen in soft drinks etc. seems to be the really damaging type).

....

I stumbled upon something else that supports your point that fruits were unlikely to ever have exceeded 25% of Paleo diets. It says that fruits in tropical areas were not as abundant as raw vegans/fruitarians think:

Idealist views of nature contradicted by examples of foods obtainable by actual hunter-gatherers. It has been claimed by numerous raw-foodists that originally humans started cooking because, as they migrated out of the tropical African climate in which the species began, fruits became unavailable in winter, and the only way to be able to eat a sufficient amount of food or meat was to cook it. Again, this argument might make some sense if one could point to at least a few tribes in tropical countries who consumed predominantly raw fruit, but this is simply not the case. In actuality, there are no tribes in the tropics who eat this way for the simple reason that fruit is not as abundant or easily available to human foragers as raw/fruitarian advocates seem to suppose. See Hawkes et al. [1982] for a good discussion of how "optimal foraging theory" applies in the case of the tropical rainforest Ache hunter-gatherers of Paraguay, how it does a good job of predicting and explaining the composition of their diet, and why fruit constitutes only a modest part of it.

.... (Note that even in the case of the Ache hunter-gatherers of Paraguay, one of the few examples of a primitive people that have been extensively studied who subsisted in a dense rainforest habitat--the type of environment considered ideal by raw-fooders--... fruits, a typical raw-foodist staple, were not as easily obtainable compared to other foods in their diet [Clastres 1972, see esp. p. 156; also Hawkes et al. 1982, and Hill et al. 1984].)

Source: Looking at the Science on Raw vs. Cooked Foods
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-3a.shtml

[redfulcrum]

Of course fruits weren't everywhere.  If they were such a necessity, we wouldn't need agriculture, just like chimps don't need agriculture.  I too highly doubt that fruits and veggies were in abundance during paleo times. 

[Hannibal]

I too highly doubt that fruits and veggies were in abundance during paleo times.  

For millions of years hominides lived in Central Africa and there was plethora of fruits.

[redfulcrum]

That's good and dandy, but humans are not early hominids.  Go find your fruits in the dead of winter in Germany.  If you haven't noticed we live on every continent except antartica.  Therefore fruits could never be a staple for Homo Sapiens.  I haven't read anything about Mongol warriors taking a bite of an apple.  Don't tell me people were getting most of their calories from fruits in Greenland.  The fruitarian thing is bogus.  Fruits are just nature's desserts, they don't have much life building properties. At least not for humans, especially these mutant modern fruits.   Keep eating lots of fruits and see how those pearly whites start to rot. 

[PaleoPhil]

By coincidence I recently read about wild, edible apples and learned that they originated in what is today Kazakhstan, which was part of the Mongol Empire, so I actually can imagine that Mongol warriors would have eaten apples.

[redfulcrum]

Whatever man!  They ruled China, are you saying that noodles were a part of their staples too? 

[PaleoPhil]

Whatever man!  They ruled China, are you saying that noodles were a part of their staples too?  

Why, yes indeed they were: "Spicy Mongolian Noodles," http://www.bigoven.com/127931-Spicy-Mongolian-Noodles-recipe.html

As a matter of fact, spicy Mongolian noodles are very famous.

Fear not, however, the Mongols also ate lots more meat than the southern Chinese, and still do, which is why the Mongols are bigger and more muscular, on average, than the southern Chinese . The northern Chinese, who I believe also eat more meat and less rice than the southern Chinese (I know someone from northern China who I've never seen eat rice, although she happens to be rather small), also seem to be bigger on avg than the southern Chinese, but not as stocky overall as Mongols (though there are quite a few slender Mongols too--I'm talking generalities here).

Some day I think I'd like to visit Mongolia. One interesting bit of trivia: it's reportedly the least densely populated nation on earth.

[Hannibal]

That's good and dandy, but humans are not early hominids.  Go find your fruits in the dead of winter in Germany.  If you haven't noticed we live on every continent except antartica.  Therefore fruits could never be a staple for Homo Sapiens.  I haven't read anything about Mongol warriors taking a bite of an apple.  Don't tell me people were getting most of their calories from fruits in Greenland.  The fruitarian thing is bogus.  Fruits are just nature's desserts, they don't have much life building properties. At least not for humans, especially these mutant modern fruits.   Keep eating lots of fruits and see how those pearly whites start to rot.  

I'm not talking about the period of time when hominides moved to the north. I'm talking about millions of years before that, when they lived in warm Africa with abundance of fruits. That doesn't mean that they had eaten a lot of them.

[redfulcrum]

Yea, but the most defining part about being human is our hunting heritage.  Hunting is what allowed us to leave africa or whatever warm climate area we're originally from.  If a group of people can survive without vegetation for thousands of years in the north pole and are still the same species like the rest of us are, that in itself should prove that meat is our common requirement, not fruits and veggies.  It's really that simple, humans are the only primates that can live almost anywhere on this planet because of one thing, meat.   

BTW, noodles aren't indigenous to Mongolians just like the sauerkraut they took from the Chinese that eventually made it to Europe.  Would you say sauerkraut is truly German?  Maybe the word is German, but that's about it.  Just like Marco Polo, without that guy we wouldn't have the Italian cuisine that we know of today.  All ideas from a far away land.  So is spaghetti really Italian.  We can go on and on about it.  In the whole time of human existence these so called traditional diets are still a snapshot in the whole history of humans.  I haven't heard of a nomadic society that cultivates grain.  They just let animals graze the land, eat the animals, and move on to the next grassy hill.  The mongols might start eating exotic foods after conquering foreign lands that had agriculture.  I still wouldn't consider Mongolian Noodles real traditional mongolian food.  Their bread and butter were actually just meat and milk products.  A Highly carnivorous society.  Perfect logistics for a highly mobile military.  The food just walks around with you for thousands of miles.  That's one reason why they were so powerful. 

[TylerDurden]

By coincidence I recently read about wild, edible apples and learned that they originated in what is today Kazakhstan, which was part of the Mongol Empire, so I actually can imagine that Mongol warriors would have eaten apples.

  Exactly what I was thinking of.

[RawZi]

BTW, noodles aren't indigenous to Mongolians just like the sauerkraut they took from the Chinese that eventually made it to Europe.  Would you say sauerkraut is truly German?  Maybe the word is German, but that's about it.  Just like Marco Polo, without that guy we wouldn't have the Italian cuisine that we know of today.  All ideas from a far away land.  So is spaghetti really Italian.  ...  I still wouldn't consider Mongolian Noodles real traditional mongolian food.  Their bread and butter were actually just meat and milk products.  A Highly carnivorous society.  Perfect logistics for a highly mobile military.  The food just walks around with you for thousands of miles.  That's one reason why they were so powerful.
Opening Pandora's boxes, one box at a time.

    When I think Mongol diet I think raw red meat and raw khumiss from mare's milk and eating on the run to the next victory, not farming.

[PaleoPhil]

...BTW, noodles aren't indigenous to Mongolians

That's correct, which is why I didn't say they were. Nor were apples. The Mongols still ate grain products in their empire days and before. Like it or not they were already doing some crop farming thousands of years before they even started building their empire:

Dr. Michel Louis Séfériadés,  An aspect of the Neolithization in Mongolia : the Mesolithic / Neolithic site of Tamsagbulag (Dornod district)
http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/seminars/a10.html

"... It is the type site for the Tamsagbulag culture (5th millennium BC). The occupants were both sedentary hunter fisher-gatherers and farmers. Semi-subterranean quadrangular houses without side doors have been found. Individual burials (seated flexed and with the head facing east or west) occur under the floor. Grave goods include necklaces (red deer), mother of pearl and lapis-lazuli jewellery, bone points, sickles, etc... Stone tool assemblages (microlithic and polished) are rich. They consist of flint, jasper, tufa, chalcedony, quartz and obsidian, and are specific to the area and site, with Tamsagbulag nuclei reused as tools, tamsagbulag scarpers and bifacially retouched arrowheads. Among the polished stone are hammers, adzes, querns and pestles, etc? Pottery is attested. Paleobotanical and faunal samples (millet, cattle, horse, etc.) are preserved, as is the bone industry. The first project of the French expedition proposed to (1) establish the importance of the site, its preservation and extent of as yet unexcavated areas, (2) place the site within its modern and early Holocene geomorphological and environmental contexts, and (3) garner information on the process of neolithisation of eastern Mongolia, the subsistence and social system of the hunter-gatherers and farmers of the Dornod region which are not unlike those from the opposite end of continent (Starcevo-Körös-Cris)

...The mongols might start eating exotic foods after conquering foreign lands that had agriculture.  ....

As we cam see above, they were already growing millet in eastern Mongolia (and western Mongolians were probably already trading for grain) before they started their great conquests. Once they started conquering, they garnered more crops through booty and taxation, adding to those provided by farming and trade. By the time of Kublai Khan's rule, the Mongol empire was the largest ever, with the longest trade route in the world, and their elites had access to the widest variety of foods on the planet. The Great Khan himself developed gout, a disease of agrarian civilization. Before you continue to contradict me again, you should at least specify what year you're referring to.

I haven't heard of a nomadic society that cultivates grain.

As shown above, they weren't entirely nomadic as early as the 5th millenium BC. Besides, you don't have to cultivate crops to eat them. You can also trade for grains and take them through plunder and taxation. Even the Lakota during their nomadic period traded for and ate some corn (maize).

I'm a carnivore. It's not like this pleases me. I wish the Mongols and the Lakota and the entire human race had never started eating grains. We can't erase history and start over. What's done is done. I celebrate and honor the fact that the Mongols' favorite food is still animal flesh, even though they do eat other crap. The Mongols have long been one of my favorite peoples.

[redfulcrum]

I still doubt that the Mongols prior the reign of Ghenghis Khan used grains as a staple.  I haven't found any info on Genghis having gout, but Kublai having it, which was his grandson.  By that time the empire was already huge and cultures were obviously mixing.  I'm sure Kublai had adapted to Chinese ways when he developed gout.

5000BC to 1200AD is a long time.  How can you consider the people living there before the same as the mongols of 1200AD?  You know how many different kinds of people existed in england during that time span?  That's like saying the ancestors of modern americans use to live in adobe just because of geography.  It's like jam packing the babylonians, sumerians, and iraqis all together even though they're from different time frames.   

Everyone ate grains.  Even hunter-gatherers ate them now and then, but eating it as a staple is a different story.  If those people were the same as the mongols, then the mongols would've been an agrarian society.  What happened?  "Oh this isn't working, let's go back to eating meat."   

[Paleo Donk]

Re: Chinese eating meat

I went to Northern China last year for  10 days and had formal meals twice a day. Each meal at least 15 different dishes that were brought out. Almost all the dishes contained some kind of meat drenched in a non-sweet sauce. There were occasional noodle dishes but I can't recall any dishes of just rice and you had to order rice separately.

[PaleoPhil]

Let's review:

I haven't read anything about Mongol warriors taking a bite of an apple.

They ruled China, are you saying that noodles were a part of their staples too?

I still doubt that the Mongols prior the reign of Ghenghis Khan used grains as a staple.

Now we're making progress. I still think the latest claim is a bit of an overstatment, but it's far closer to my own view than the above two claims--at least you're pushing it back before they ruled China under Kublai and before Genghis and not suggesting that Mongol warriors never took a "bite of an apple"--so I won't quibble.

Perhaps we also agree on the point that a diet heavy in animal flesh and blood, often lightly cooked or raw, was one of the not-so-secret weapons of the Mongol armies, as well as all the various waves of Steppes armies (Scythians, "Tatars," Celts, "Huns," etc.)? I have written about this a couple times before. You might try a search of these forums on the term "steak tartar," if you don't believe me or are interested. I'm one of the leading proponents of meat in this forum.

used grains as a staple.  I haven't found any info on Genghis having gout, but Kublai having it,

I didn't write that Genghis had gout, I wrote that Kublai had it. Here is what I wrote...

By the time of Kublai Khan's rule, the Mongol empire was the largest ever, with the longest trade route in the world, and their elites had access to the widest variety of foods on the planet. The Great Khan himself developed gout, a disease of agrarian civilization.

The Great Khan, Kublai ruled the largest land empire the world has ever seen. Genghis was also a Great Khan, of course. Kublai's empire was even larger than Genghis', for it was Kublai who conquered southern China, and I believe Kublai was the first Mongol to use the Chinese title of "Emperor." Kublai also built a navy and "assembled the biggest invasion force the world has ever seen, a fleet of more than 4,400 ships" ("Kublai Khan's lost fleet," http://www.mazalien.com/kublai-khans-lost-fleet.html).

5000BC to 1200AD is a long time.  How can you consider the people living there before the same as the mongols of 1200AD?

I don't and I didn't say that I do. I don't remember you ever specifying such an exact date as 1200AD until now, but don't you agree that the Mongols were probably eating more grain in 1200AD than they did in 5000BC?

Remember, your original quote was: "They ruled China, are you saying that noodles were a part of their staples too?" The answer is, yes, the Mongols were eating noodles and other grain products as "a part of their staples" by the time they ruled China. They were even growing some of their own grain way back in 5000BC, as I pointed out, so of course they were eating significant quantities of it by the time they ruled China. When they conquered the Chinese, I believe they shifted to relying more on the Chinese peasant laborers and did less of the farming themselves (and by utilizing China and Chinese peasant laborers they were probably able to greatly expand their access to crops). Was grain ever the number one Mongol food? I doubt it. I would think that flesh and dairy were then and are now their most important foods, with dairy increasingly growing in importance vs. meat as their population grew. Grain probably came next, with millet early on and later wheat and barley came to dominate their grain foods (though I don't know when the transition occurred).

That's like saying the ancestors of modern americans...

Please don't try to put words in my mouth. You've missed my point each time you've tried that.

Everyone ate grains.  

Who is "everyone" and when are you talking about?

Even hunter-gatherers ate them now and then, but eating it as a staple is a different story.

Correct. I never disputed that, and I also explained that the Mongols didn't eat as much grain as the southern Chinese. So the Mongols were in-between: they ate significantly more grain than hunter-gatherers, but much less than southern Chinese.

 If those people were the same as the mongols, then the mongols would've been an agrarian society.

I think we agree that the Mongols were a pastoral society, yes? That doesn't mean they didn't eat millet and later wheat as one of their multiple staple foods, unless your definition of staple is the first two foods and then everything else gets ignored. I think the third biggest food category qualifies as a staple. If you don't think grain came after meat/blood and dairy, what do you think did?

Look, I wish the Mongols didn't eat grain at all. It would be way cooler in my view. We both despise grains. Unfortunately, they did eat grains for at least 7,000 years, probably in increasing amounts over time, as with most civilizations, but of course nowhere near the quantity or proportions that the southern Chinese engaged in (which is why the Mongols tend to be bigger and more muscular, as I pointed out). It's doubtful the Mongols could ever have ruled an empire if they didn't eat at least some grains to supplement their meat and dairy (which is one reason I despise grains--they are the food of empire and enslavement; peoples who don't eat grains rarely form large empires or force people into serfdom or chattel slavery). As I also pointed out, meat and blood was one of the weapons of the Mongols and other Steppes armies. The plentiful rare and raw meat and blood gave their warriors strength, endurance and good vision. The fact that their armies relied far less on grains in times of war than most other armies also meant they could stay more mobile and travel faster and farther.

So were grains significant in the Mongol Empire? Yes. Were they as important as meat/blood (and dairy)? No way! Everything is not a duality of absolute extremes. Life tends to be more subtle and complex with much lying in between the extremes. Mongols ate more than meat and dairy and southern Chinese ate more than rice. Those were their most important foods, of course, but they weren't their only significant foods. They had other staples. I hope that makes it clearer.

Re: Chinese eating meat

I went to Northern China last year for  10 days and had formal meals twice a day. Each meal at least 15 different dishes that were brought out. Almost all the dishes contained some kind of meat drenched in a non-sweet sauce. There were occasional noodle dishes but I can't recall any dishes of just rice and you had to order rice separately.

That matches with my experience, about which I wrote above: "The northern Chinese, who I believe also eat more meat and less rice than the southern Chinese (I know someone from northern China who I've never seen eat rice...."