I just thought I'd say hello ...

[van]

You have to watch guys like william and me, for we're zero carb guys.  In my opinion no need to jump on that bus right away, for it's plagued with theories and speculation.  My best advice for you it definately don't mix your meat with veggies or fruits, just fat.  When eating carbs like fruits they can spike insulin responses and cause cravings.  Best to eat them alone and when hungry as opposed to bored.  Eating fruit after exercise lessens the blood sugar or insulin effect, and eating them in moderation.  Fruits like berries are also low glycemic and have higher ratios of vitamins/mineral.  Use them as a treat, rather than a staple.  You also might try having fruit in the morning when hungry, and then having two smaller meat and fat meals when hungry.  This should be a little easier on the digestive system.  Charles on the zero carb site had good advise, don't eat your protein meal until you feel hungry enough to eat a whole steak.  The thought is that if you are really truly hungry, your body will most likely digest it fine,  unless you over eat.

[TylerDurden]

That is a very interesting fact.I'm new and innocent of all adult struggle. 

It's not a fact just mindless and dishonest propaganda. There are plenty of studies showing fruit/veg consumption throughout the Palaeolithic era(eg:-


http://www.springerlink.com/content/u386383180288602/


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC470712/

The only reason why there has been a focus on meats in palaeo studies was because plant-remains do not survive as well as bones, the latter easily fossilising. However as technology has increased, there is more and more evidence to show that plants were indeed consumed in palaeo times.

Re blackberries:- there are quite a number of blackberry bushes in my area in London, near train-stations etc.. Sadly, while they often have lots of blackberries, I dare not touch them because those bushes are constantly being used by disgusting people as a sort of public toilet. The only blakcberry bush I trust is the fenced-in one within the men's swimming  pond at Hampstead Heath.

[Paleo Donk]

It's not a fact just mindless and dishonest propaganda. There are plenty of studies showing fruit/veg consumption throughout the Palaeolithic era(eg:-


http://www.springerlink.com/content/u386383180288602/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC470712/

Do you have memberships to all these journals and have access to all the full studies? The rest of this study is very important but heres the most interesting part

The isotpic evidence from Middle and Upper Paleolithic human skeletons recurrently indicate individuals who derived the majority oftheir protein from animal sources(Bocherens 2009; Richards, 2009). That much can be confidently inferred from the isotopic data,although its precision does not really allow the size of that majority to be closely ascertained.  If it were reasonably high, as the balance of broader palaeoecological evidence might suggest, then very many of the nutritional requirements would be met by consuming sizeable quantities of fresh meat and associated tissues. The dietary needs of non-meat component are notso much related to quality as to bulk, and an important function of the bulk is to dilute the nitrogen load within the diet, bringing it below toxic levels. Among living communities, that dilution is effected by consuming in reasonable quantities some combination of fat and plant foods.

So, we have evidence that most of the protein we got was from animals, though they don't mention here what the isotopic evidence is exactly, I've seen it mentioned in other papers and paleo bones, as William said, were similarly composed of those of lions.

Now, they turn to speculation on to whether the rest, "bulk" of the diet comes from either fat or vegetation. So the bulk apparently is the energy that fuels the animal and cannot be directly measured in the bones like the protein can.

In the next paragraph, the author states that the inuit who eat 96-99% meat get their bulk and thus "dilute" their nitrogen intake by eating large amount of fat from whales or caribou and get almost nothing from plants.

I assume the rest of the paper is proposing that we  get our bulk, energy, from plants not the animal fat like the inuit. They must be suggesting that we were thought to have eaten lean meat for protein and plants for energy.

This of course makes very little sense and assumes after we have killed or found an animal that we would have eaten just the lean parts and left the fattier parts for others and then continued searching for plants to fill in our energy requirement.

The paper refers to diluting the nitrogen content several times. Obviously yes we know we must not eat nothing but lean meat and protein is never really meant to be more than 20-30% of our diet anyways.  Thanks for the experiment redfulcrum

I would like to read the rest and see how the authors explain leaving the fat on the animal in search of plants to provide energy??? This is model for some paleo diets now. Eat lean meat and lots of plants. I see no way of this happening.


So, even though our bones show overwhelming stable isotopic evidence that we got most (perhaps all) our protein from animals its still possible and suggested here that we ate just the lean, left the fat and ate plants instead for energy.

[Paleo Donk]

Heres another paper that summarizes carbon and nitrogen isotopic values for 36 different European individuals found in the upper paleolithic era. The first page does not give estimates for what percent of the diet was animal protein like others do but it says that a suprising amount of marine protein was found.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/n2871q7u63170045/



Below is a link to a review of a book titled, "The Evolution of Hominin Diets: Integrating Approaches to the Study of Paleolithic Subsistence"

The book is 300 pages, $129 and came out in 2009.

http://www.paleoanthro.org/journal/content/PA20090276.pdf

[TylerDurden]

Isotopic analysis is rather flawed, I'm afraid. For example, there was that study of Neanderthal bones which claimed that Neanderthals ate an all-meat diet consisting mostly of mammoth-meat, but subsequent studies showed that the Neanderthals did indeed eat a variety of plant food as well, and also ate small game.

As for membership, I'm  annoyed at having to spend 30 dollars or more per subscription just to get 1 interesting article so I don't bother. It's the most frustrating thing that most serious palaeo-oriented articles require subscriptions.

[roony]

Raw meats & fats dont effect the colour of your pee or poop, apart from making your stools black & pee lighter from high levels of nutrition


The more clear your pee, the healthier you are

Black poop is super health, lighter shades not so good health

[TylerDurden]

I would heavily disagree with that comment. For one thing, when I was in really bad health pre-rawpalaeodiet, my stools were coal-black and I had massive constipation among a 100 other health-problems. Black stools I think are attributed to blood in the stools. At any rate, I am now much healthier and my stools are a simple brown.

[goodsamaritan]

Hello everyone.  I'm had a sea change in my diet in the last few weeks - all driven from within.

And now one of those jolts of recognition in the last few days about Paleo, and now Raw Paleo.  (I've had a long history of alternative and spiritual diets, but I even bore myself to think about it, so I won't go there for now.)

I just ate three raw lamb chops from a supermarket, and they tasted great.  (My heroic avatar is more a target than current reality.  :-D)

Not sure how much I'll post - I want to read a lot at the moment rather than talk.  But thanks for the great site.

Hello hello hello....
Surprising you just started on raw paleo and you think raw meat tastes great.

[Stig of the Dump]

It's not a fact just mindless and dishonest propaganda.

I thought I should give the benefit of the doubt, and from the explanations beneath I can see the whole picture - most or virtually all protein from meat; carbs and fats less certain.

Here's my take on it, from a purely common sense point of view (how I would operate in similar conditions).

There certainly are some very tasty berries and leaves knocking around, and I imagine I would have nibbled and grazed on these as I wondered around hunting for game.

By the end of the day hopefully we'd have caught something, and knocked up a pure meat meal where I would have without doubt eaten all the fat and anything edible, as it is all so tasty.

(I know of at least one more scientific reason that indicates we eat plants and fruits.  Fruits are 'asking' to be picked (to use animals to spread seeds) so they attract with bright colours.  Pure carnivores have vision sensitised to movement and don't have great colour acuity as they don't need to notice brightly coloured fruits.  But we do notice them, and pick and eat intuitively.)

[Stig of the Dump]

Hello hello hello....
Surprising you just started on raw paleo and you think raw meat tastes great.

I've done a lot of fasting, so I'm pretty pure when it comes to taste - just short of nutrients I guess.

[RawZi]

(I know of at least one more scientific reason that indicates we eat plants and fruits.  Fruits are 'asking' to be picked (to use animals to spread seeds) so they attract with bright colours.  Pure carnivores have vision sensitised to movement and don't have great colour acuity as they don't need to notice brightly coloured fruits.  But we do notice them, and pick and eat intuitively.)

    All the guys who are colorblind, are they possibly a mutation to be obligate carnivore?  Or maybe we all were colorblind, but developed colorsight at a time it made sense to eat fruit?  Newborns don't usually see well yet, no fruit for them!

    Anyway, thank you for posting that.  I have very good colorsight.  This wmight mean I should eat (some) fruit.

    I hope you're enjoying it here, Stip of the Dump.

[goodsamaritan]

The carnivores are very loud in this forum.  Trust me, there are many omnivores as well.

[Stig of the Dump]

   All the guys who are colorblind, are they possibly a mutation to be obligate carnivore?  Or maybe we all were colorblind, but developed colorsight at a time it made sense to eat fruit?  Newborns don't usually see well yet, no fruit for them!

    Anyway, thank you for posting that.  I have very good colorsight.  This wmight mean I should eat (some) fruit.

    I hope you're enjoying it here, Stip of the Dump.

Thanks.  Thinking about it, you could argue that our colour acuity is just a throwback to our frugivore ancestry, which might have lead to it dropping away (it has a cost, obviously) and increasing colour blindness.

Thanks for all the welcomes.  It's nice to have somewhere to chat about this stuff as it is all zinging around in my mind.  (I normally frequent very dry futurist, economic and financial forums, where eating raw meat could be discussed OT with 99.9% non-believers.  I can hear them all now:  "You'll die of food poisoning!")

[Stig of the Dump]

The carnivores are very loud in this forum.  Trust me, there are many omnivores as well.

It's all that red meat. 

[Stig of the Dump]

You have to watch guys like william and me, for we're zero carb guys.  In my opinion no need to jump on that bus right away, for it's plagued with theories and speculation.  My best advice for you it definately don't mix your meat with veggies or fruits, just fat.  When eating carbs like fruits they can spike insulin responses and cause cravings.  Best to eat them alone and when hungry as opposed to bored.  Eating fruit after exercise lessens the blood sugar or insulin effect, and eating them in moderation.  Fruits like berries are also low glycemic and have higher ratios of vitamins/mineral.  Use them as a treat, rather than a staple.  You also might try having fruit in the morning when hungry, and then having two smaller meat and fat meals when hungry.  This should be a little easier on the digestive system.  Charles on the zero carb site had good advise, don't eat your protein meal until you feel hungry enough to eat a whole steak.  The thought is that if you are really truly hungry, your body will most likely digest it fine,  unless you over eat.

Thanks - that's really useful advice as I'm trying to work out an eating schedule.

(I sort of knew from RV not to mix the meat with fruit and veg, but I didn't buy enough meat and felt hungry at the end, and the berries were there, so I decided to be foolish.  That's why I was queasy I think.  Next time I'll get a big leg of something so I don't run out.)

[Stig of the Dump]

My schedule/synthesis at the moment is fast until 5pm, and specifically do some exercise before 5pm.  Then some carbs at 5pm - salad some days, fruit other days, blended up "energy soup" (avocado, apple, coconut, beetroot and greens) other days, chosen by what I have a taste for.  Then about two hours before bed (8-9-ish), a big pure meat/animal fat meal until stuffed, then go to sleep on the tryptophan post-feast euphoric snooze.

(This is a bit idealistic, as I love going out to a cafe for salad (and sometimes barely poached eggs) at breakfast to read the paper most days, and just joining in with whatever is going on at weekends.  But I have fasted today, and let's see.  My latest method is repeated failure, repeated restarting and gradual improvement.  It is working.)

[RawZi]

(I sort of knew from RV not to mix the meat with fruit and veg, but I didn't buy enough meat and felt hungry at the end, and the berries were there, so I decided to be foolish.  That's why I was queasy I think.  Next time I'll get a big leg of something so I don't run out.)

    I think acutaq is raw berries, raw blubber and raw caribou served as a dessert ice cream of sorts.  Some primal dieters mix some fruit with their white meat.  Some people make pemmican with berries, but some argue dried meat and melted fat, let alone dried berries are not raw.  I'm not saying you should mix, just that there may be other ways that work for some rawist people.

[cherimoya_kid]

My schedule/synthesis at the moment is fast until 5pm, and specifically do some exercise before 5pm.  Then some carbs at 5pm - salad some days, fruit other days, blended up "energy soup" (avocado, apple, coconut, beetroot and greens) other days, chosen by what I have a taste for.  Then about two hours before bed (8-9-ish), a big pure meat/animal fat meal until stuffed, then go to sleep on the tryptophan post-feast euphoric snooze.

(This is a bit idealistic, as I love going out to a cafe for salad (and sometimes poached eggs) at breakfast to read the paper most days, and just joining in with whatever is going on at weekends.  But I have fasted today, and let's see.  My latest method is repeated failure, repeated restarting and gradual improvement.  It is working.)

Personally,  I find my sleep is a lot better if I don't eat much within 3-5 hours of bedtime.  I also find that I feel better the next day, as well.

[Stig of the Dump]

I have experienced that too - late meals and bags under the eyes the next day.

I normally have my day the other way round, with breakfast in the morning, the big meal at about 2-3pm then nothing else, but I was reading yet another book on the train "The Evolution Diet" and he was suggesting eating the main, pure (mono?) protein meal an hour before sleep, so I thought I'd give it a try.

[Paleo Donk]

Isotopic analysis is rather flawed, I'm afraid. For example, there was that study of Neanderthal bones which claimed that Neanderthals ate an all-meat diet consisting mostly of mammoth-meat, but subsequent studies showed that the Neanderthals did indeed eat a variety of plant food as well, and also ate small game.

As for membership, I'm  annoyed at having to spend 30 dollars or more per subscription just to get 1 interesting article so I don't bother. It's the most frustrating thing that most serious palaeo-oriented articles require subscriptions.

How is isotopic analysis flawed? Isn't it used in numerous studies and don't they all report pretty much the same thing that paleo man's bones were carnivorous? Are they all wrong?

The article you linked did not say that the isotopic analysis was wrong only that the fuel (either carbohydrate or fat) was provided by some plant consomption. It doesn't say how much in that one page but it strongly implies that we indeed would not eat the fat from animals and instead look for carbohydrate in vegetation.  This seems highly improbable to me and without the rest of the paper we can't really tell how they planned on convincing us so.

[TylerDurden]

How is isotopic analysis flawed? Isn't it used in numerous studies and don't they all report pretty much the same thing that paleo man's bones were carnivorous? Are they all wrong?

The article you linked did not say that the isotopic analysis was wrong only that the fuel (either carbohydrate or fat) was provided by some plant consomption. It doesn't say how much in that one page but it strongly implies that we indeed would not eat the fat from animals and instead look for carbohydrate in vegetation.  This seems highly improbable to me and without the rest of the paper we can't really tell how they planned on convincing us so.

 It's too complicated to get into here, but isotopic analysis is apparently not advanced enough to distinguish between different types of foods so the results can depend on the interpretation of a scientist rather than actual data. As regards the studies done on the Neanderthals, 1 major study doing isotopic analysis claimed that Neanderthals ate only meats and mostly mammoth at that, a more advanced one with more modern techniques then showed that the Neanderthals in fact ate a variety of plant foods as well, and also ate smaller game (and seafood in some areas) and not just mainly mammoths.

[PaleoPhil]

   All the guys who are colorblind, are they possibly a mutation to be obligate carnivore?
....

Interesting speculation, and by coincidence I'm color blind and seem to do best on an obligate carnivore diet, or nearly so. However, canids eat berries despite being color blind, so I think color blindness suggests that fruits may not be a necessary food for survival of species with high rates of color blindness, but not that they never eat fruits.

[TylerDurden]

Interesting speculation, and by coincidence I'm color blind and seem to do best on an obligate carnivore diet, or nearly so. However, canids eat berries despite being color blind, so I think color blindness suggests that fruits may not be a necessary food for survival of species with high rates of color blindness, but not that they never eat fruits.

  I'm curious as to what it means to be colour-blind. Do you simply view the colours you don't perceive as "grey" or some other colour? And are there any humans only able to see  black/white and grey like some wild species?

[cherimoya_kid]

  I'm curious as to what it means to be colour-blind. Do you simply view the colours you don't perceive as "grey" or some other colour? And are there any humans only able to see  black/white and grey like some wild species?

Regular red-green color-blindness just means you don't distinguish colors as well, nor do you perceive them like most people do.  True color-blindness is incredibly rare in humans, but it does occur.

[PaleoPhil]

  I'm curious as to what it means to be colour-blind. Do you simply view the colours you don't perceive as "grey" or some other colour?

It's much more complicated than that. There are different types of color blindness.

I have a strong protan color vision defect so I tend to confuse red with green and blue-green. On the test at http://www.archimedes-lab.org/colorblindnesstest.html I scored only A and I correctly. This page also shows how a color wheel looks like to some severely colorblind people.

I do have difficulty seeing some wild berries in the grass and on bushes, especially reddish or purplish berries on green plants. My mother or sister will say "The berries on that bush/plant are coming along nicely," but I cannot see them (which tends to frustrate my mother ha ha "They're right here, can't you see them?" hee hee). If survival depended on wild berries I would be in some deep doo. This is yet another reason why there is no place for people like me in a vegan/vegetarian world. I seem to be a living rebuke to their world view. I not only appear to do much better on a meat-heavy diet than a plant-heavy one, I have difficulty even seeing many of the plants that vegans/vegetarians think were so essential for our ancestors to find, gather and eat.

There is a hypothesis that color blindness survived because it enabled grassland hunters to distinguish camouflaged khaki-colored animal from the slightly-different-colored khaki grass it is hiding in:

"About 6-8% of humans today are red-green color blind.  Most of them are men.  This X-linked inherited condition known as deuteranomaly is due to opsin pigments that are normally sensitive to green light behaving more like the red-sensitive ones.  This results in a difficulty in distinguishing between colors in the red and green wavelength ranges.  However, people with this condition are at an advantage in differentiating slight variations in khaki colors.  This could have been a benefit in the dry grassland environments of East and South Africa where humans first evolved." (PRIMATE COLOR VISION, ttp://anthro.palomar.edu/primate/color.htm)

It's interesting that color blindness mostly occurs in men--traditionally the hunters for whom color vision would be less important than for gathering females. Color vision deficient people also have a tendency to better night vision. This would presumably be an advantage for hunting or warring at dusk and night. (Ishihara Color Blindness Test, http://www.archimedes-lab.org/colorblindnesstest.html)

However, I haven't seen any evidence that color blindness was present in the Paleolithic (has anyone else seen that?), so it's also possible that it is a Neolithic mutation from antigenic diets rather than an evolutionary adaptation.

[/quote]And are there any humans only able to see  black/white and grey like some wild species?
[/quote]
Yes, a small number, as was said above.