Re: Eat pemmican and get atherosclerosis!

[Paleo Donk]

I feel pretty bummed out that this post is not in hot topics and even has an exclamation point at the end of it. Its actually very disturbing that one of the moderators has the audacity to actually post something so bewilderingly unscientific with an exclamation mark at the end. I just feel sad. It sucks.

First off, atherosclerosis does not necessarily equal disease. The Masai being an excellent example of heavy atherosclerosis and little disease.

Pemmican has literally saved the lives of several people and touting such blatant misrepresentation of the entirety of the debate is unbelievably dangerous. I have stopped listening to Tyler's reasoning a long time ago because of incidences like this. Its sad because he can bring up some good points but his inability to admit to the entirety of the debate has really just turned me off.

[TylerDurden]

I feel pretty bummed out that this post is not in hot topics and even has an exclamation point at the end of it. Its actually very disturbing that one of the moderators has the audacity to actually post something so bewilderingly unscientific with an exclamation mark at the end. I just feel sad. It sucks.

I think it sucks that there are a few fanatics like William in the RVAF diet community, with sufficient lack of integrity , to be willing to defend the lightly-cooked diets of Neolithic hunter-gatherers when the evidence supporting them is so poor. The topic I put forward is perfectly relevant to rawpaleoforum, anyway, since it concerns the harm done by cooked foods such as pemmican to health. Hot Topics is the only  forum for promoting non-RPD foods, such as cooked foods/pemmican etc., so YOUR  post, not mine, is more appropriate in the Hot Topics forum. Whether you like it or not , this is a "raw, palaeo forum" in an overall sense, not a "cooked, palaeo forum" nor a "raw, non-palaeo forum"  nor a "rendered fat forum" nor a "junk-food forum", or whatever.

*sigh* I guess this part of the topic needs to be moved to the more relevant hot topics forum given the  above childish defence of pemmican, so I'll split it.*

And let's face it, unlike William and yourself, I now have at least dug up some scientific data confirming the dangerous nature of pemmican to human health. There's precious little data in favour of pemmican other than the anecdotal  notion that an all-pemmican diet doesn't require vitamin C in the long run. What makes it even worse is that quite a number of RVAFers have gone in for pemmican and found it to be harmful to them in a minor to a major way, depending on the individual, so that William's blatherings re advocating pemmican are really injurious to peoples' health. I also find it telling that 1 or 2 previous ardent pemmican-advocates on this forum have since  muted their pemmican-advocacy and have grudgingly admitted that it wasn't as superior a food as they originally thought it was.

First off, atherosclerosis does not necessarily equal disease. The Masai being an excellent example of heavy atherosclerosis and little disease.

I note that more recent reports show that the Masai are not even as healthy as was claimed in the past. Besides, atherosclerosis cannot remotely be considered a sign of good health. It is a sign of excessive inflammation(inflammation being directly related to many age-related health-problems), and, as pointed by myself and others, cooked foods greatly help to increase the rate of inflammation.

[TylerDurden]

*Some other issues that need mentioning*:- The nefarious WAPF and others would want us to erroneously believe that one can just eat a lightly-cooked hunter-gatherer diet all year long  like that of the Masai and just sit on one's butt all day  and be healthy(a definite Williamesque notion given his similiar past  similiar comments on paleofood list). Yet Mann's definitive study on the Masai showed that they only got away , to some extent, from the effects of atherosclerosis(with the level of atherosclerosis found to be of  a similiar extent as found in old western men!)  primarily because of the vast amount of strenuous daily exercise they  were forced to indulge in:-

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/1/26

In other words, Western men of the same age, who were on a SAD-diet,  and  who then trained at the same, vast  physical level as the Masai would also likely get the same health-benefits as the Masai did. This makes perfect sense as high levels of exercise are well known to reduce/relieve a wide number of health-problems(indeed, exercise has even been shown to increase muscle-growth  to younger levels for some older men).

Another factor is caloric restriction or intermittent fasting:-   Another major point is that numerous studies have shown that caloric restriction leads to lower accumulation of advanced glycation end products in the subject:-

http://jasn.asnjournals.org/cgi/content/full/11/8/1488

 This makes sense:- after all cooked/processed foods contain plenty of heat-created toxins such as Advanced Glycation End-Products(AGEs), so the routine restriction of intake of cooked/processed foods, due to famine etc. among the Masai or other native hunter-gatherer tribes, would inevitably lead to a lower intake of heat-created toxins derived from cooking, as the body would be given much more time to get rid of the ones already taken in, so that the relevant individual would be healthier than someone not on a calorie-restricted diet.

These above examples show that there are a number of other examples, completely different from diet, to explain better physical performance among hunter-gatherers.

1 other issue:- Pemmican has routinely been seen, NOT as a health-food, but as a 2nd-rate substitute food to be used for travelling long distances, whether among Arctic explorers or the Indians.  In other words, it was a convenience food used primarily because it lasted a long time(longer than other foods at the time), not a health-food as such.

[TylerDurden]

Interesting:- It seems we've had more active  troll-activity  in recent times with William promoting pemmican and ghee  endlessly  and DurianRider promoting durian and raw vegan diets etc. It would at least be interesting if they could include 1 or 2 decent scientific links to support their arguments, but I fear that is not to be. I don't mind the occasional silly pro-cooked etc. argument in the hot topics forum, but I do expect better.

[ForTheHunt]

William isn't a troll.

In my eyes he's wrong, but he has good intentions so I don't see the need to argue about this. Lets put our egos aside and just learn from each other, that's what this forum was made for. Not to argue.

[TylerDurden]

William isn't a troll.

In my eyes he's wrong, but he has good intentions so I don't see the need to argue about this. Lets put our egos aside and just learn from each other, that's what this forum was made for. Not to argue.

If people were to promote the consumption of cooked or raw meat on a raw vegan forum, however "good" their intentions supposedly were,  they would, quite understandably, be immediately banned for being  trolls for obvious reasons. This has happened quite often. William, in a similiar way, has promoted smoking, pemmican, now ghee, along with anti-palaeo "notions" such as Creationism etc.. I'd therefore call him an ueber-troll.

Still, it is common for many countries/towns to have  1 or 2 characters like William. The US had its "Emperor Norton", Vienna had its "Waluliso", and Britain had its Robert Coates. William is just the RPF equivalent, unfortunately.

[William]

William has had the gall to dare to disagree with know-it-all Tyler!

Amazing!

[cherimoya_kid]

William has had the gall to dare to disagree with know-it-all Tyler!

Amazing!

Dude, you don't help your credibility by talking about Creationism, etc.. If you want to impress us, let's see some hard scientific proof.  Otherwise, we are going to feel free to treat your claims about pemmican the same way we treat your claims about Creationism.

Can't you just give it a rest already?  You will not convince any of us.  It's really getting boring. You're not saying anything new.

[William]

Dude, you don't help your credibility by talking about Creationism, etc.. If you want to impress us, let's see some hard scientific proof.  Otherwise, we are going to feel free to treat your claims about pemmican the same way we treat your claims about Creationism.

Can't you just give it a rest already?  You will not convince any of us.  It's really getting boring. You're not saying anything new.

Hard scientific proof, eh? I eat the stuff daily, and live. So have many others, while a few have poisoned themselves - probably used Tyler's recipe.

I don't really care if you eat or believe what I do, however there may be others who do need it, as I did, and could use it to save their lives.
Denying them is wicked.

[KD]

I probably have no business butting into this, especially as I have no experience of pemmican, with my only thinking being that it can have at least some potential use or place in a healthy diet, and what I've already pointed out that the original article really wasn't a condemnation of pemmican or heat at all but basically a deficiency in meat and fat based diets and problems of excess saturated fat in general raw or cooked....BUT as pointed out in many circumstances with many people with many opinions about health, getting well during a period of eating X/abstaining from Y is no proof on the healthfulness or toxicity of X and Y, and one especially can't attribute any true measured healing or toxic results in total on the person to be due to such particulars especially in absence of other things known to perpetuate illness. Someone can live for a week on flower petals and claim increased health, but this doesn't prove flower petals are nutritious, healing, or sustainable as food. on the other end, there is no shortage of information claiming meat to be toxic in any form, so its correct that a forum like this its appropriate to discuss the personal experience and science that refutes those ideas, and refines to specifics among this narrow category.

Honestly it does bug me, when you say "pemmican isn't heated" and similar things, when what you really mean to say - I believe - is that it is heated, but the literature/impressions of people here, are wrong in that the high heat doesn't create the types of toxins known to occur among lean, and other foods at those temps (over 115F). Why not list the reasons one would benefit drying meat and rendering fat instead of just eating the same quantities of meat and fat, and what types of people would benefit (poor digestive, assimilation etc..)

[cherimoya_kid]

Hard scientific proof, eh? I eat the stuff daily, and live. So have many others, while a few have poisoned themselves - probably used Tyler's recipe.

I don't really care if you eat or believe what I do, however there may be others who do need it, as I did, and could use it to save their lives.
Denying them is wicked.

Really?  It's wicked, William?

There's literally nobody else on this forum who says they do better on pemmican than meat and fat.

I don't really trust people from other forums as much, because I know that the members here, especially those who have been doing these types of diets for years, are really, really good at finding the truth.  So, don't bother quoting del Fuego, or anyone else who's not a member here, please.

I'm starting to get in a different mood re: your behavior.  My next step may be to start modding your posts heavily.  Good luck getting a pro-pemmican post past me, after I reach that point.

Seriously, you want to lose all chance to talk about pemmican here, keep this up.  I'm not playing with you anymore. Try me and find out.

[TylerDurden]

Hard scientific proof, eh? I eat the stuff daily, and live. So have many others, while a few have poisoned themselves - probably used Tyler's recipe.

First off, I have no recipe as I haven't done my pemmican-experiment yet, anyway. Secondly, there are many hundreds of millions of  fools out there who happily eat junk-foods, and who are as fanatically convinced about the  supposed lack of harm from junk-foods and the supposed benefits of cooked foods, as you are about pemmican. If we allowed discussion of pemmican we would therefore be forced to also allow mass discussion of other rubbish such as on the supposed health benefits of  raw vegan or junk-food diets, threads on the supposed health-benefits of cooked diets/sugar, and so on, ad nauseam. After all, they make the same sort of  claims you do re the supposed health-benefits of their own diets- many can even provide scientific links to support their POV.


Anyway, their and your claims are of no relevance here as this is a rawpalaeo forum meant for people who  commonly do badly on non-RPD foods such as pemmican and their manifold negative experiences re cooked foods are of more interest/worth than your dubious claim.



More to the point, I'm a bit surprised at your mass-posting re constant shouting and screaming about pemmican within the last few months. An obvious conclusion is that it's a deliberate attempt to wreck the forums by derailing threads. On the other hand, there was a point, a long while back, where your posts  occasionally had something of interest in them. I haven't generally had a problem with occasional mention of pemmican-making by other members in the past as I understand it can be a useful short-term, albeit 2nd-rate, food for travelling by RZCers temporarily unable to get hold of higher quality rawer sources.  However this is too extreme. I would strongly suggest having less of a 1-track mind, and , for once discussing  topics other than pemmican on a regular basis. Occasional muted mention of pemmican isn't a problem if not so stridently expressed.

[RawZi]

(insert finger icon)

    I don't see that icon.

[KD]

Yes, it is wicked to discourage those who might need a healing way.
  

What specifically is healing about pemmican that is not healing about eating the same quantities of meat and fat?

Unless there is something specific, basically you are just saying one can heal even eating pemmican, which leaves you wide open to criticisms and suspicious about heat created toxins as the temps in the fat do go over traditionally accepted 'raw' temps (which require more than being 'left standing' to prove they are non toxic). I don't think anyone here would object to people promoting more flexible approach, as long as they arn't associating some kind of miracle to the foods themselves. Although if there is some kind of advantage I'd be genuinely interested to hear as for the moment it seems just as someone might say that steamed vegetables lets them eat raw meat, or that coffee or raw cacao doesn't effect them negatively or any number of things.

[goodsamaritan]

I thought the purpose of pemmican was as part of emergency food supplies.
Such as canned food.

Seriously, do people in this forum eat pemmican as staple food instead of raw meats?

[RawZi]

I'm a bit surprised at your mass-posting re constant shouting and screaming about pemmican within the last few months. ... On the other hand, there was a point, a long while back, where your posts  occasionally had something of interest in them. I haven't generally had a problem with occasional mention of pemmican-making by other members in the past as I understand it can be a useful short-term, albeit 2nd-rate, food for travelling by RZCers temporarily unable to get hold of higher quality rawer sources.  However this is too extreme. I would strongly suggest having less of a 1-track mind, and , for once discussing  topics other than pemmican on a regular basis.

    We have a primal diet section, where we put our primal diet discussions, and everyone can read them.  We have a Wai diet section, and Instincto etc.  Maybe we should make a pemmican diet section too.  People who might like pemmican will likely like it because they can read about pemmican.  The rest of us will like it, because the rest of the forum will be raw.  

    Nothing wrong with pemmican once in a while.  I tried it and didn't get a big reaction like jerky.  It's just a survival snack though, and not a daily food.  It tastes like cooked beef stew without the vegetables but with lots of thick smooth warmed fat.  I don't like it, even though there's nothing wrong, I just don't like beef.  Maybe lamb loin pemmican would be tastier to me, made with ... pigsuet's tallow.  

[TylerDurden]

    We have a primal diet section, where we put our primal diet discussions, and everyone can read them.  We have a Wai diet section, and Instincto etc.  Maybe we should make a pemmican diet section too.  People who might like pemmican will likely like it because they can read about pemmican.  The rest of us will like it, because the rest of the forum will be raw. 

This forum was originally meant as a support group for RVAFers in general, though with a rawpalaeo main theme. We therefore included a few extra forums, such as the Instincto  and primal diet forums in order to cater to those rawists who had slightly different views of what being a RVAFer was all about. We also included a raw weston-price forum for those ex-WAPFers who wanted to do a raw version of the Weston-Price diet. Including forums for cooked palaeo foods such as pemmican would be contrary to the purpose of the forum, therefore. Besides, once rawpaleoforum has a forum for pemmican, then we would also, in the end, have to allow a junk-food forum, a cooked low-carb forum etc., thus making the whole aim of rawpaleoforum(as a support for RVAFers) utterly pointless. There are many other forums on the web which promote pemmican or pasteurised dairy or junk-food where people like William can post to their hearts-content about the supposed  wonders of such foods. This is one of the very few forums where incoming people can read about raw foods, feel supported by others doing RVAF diets , and not have to read about cooked foods/diets. Having someone like William constantly shouting misguided claims re a 2nd-rate non-raw food like pemmican, merely discourages incoming members who, for obvious reasons, are more interested in raw diets than cooked ones.

Besides, we already have threads on the rawpaleodiet.com site and rawpaleoforum on how to make pemmican, so there is already plenty of enough info around for those who want to try it. The general stance re pemmican on RPF is that it is a 2nd-rate substitute food used for travelling when people such as RZCers are unable to find suitable higher-quality alternatives. It is not acceptable, therefore, for William to promote it as a sort of  dubious wonder-drug.

Incidentally, this forum accepts that people sometimes have to eat cooked/processed foods when in the company of SAD-eaters and that some are not wholly raw for various other reasons(lack of supply etc. etc.), and that everyone is slightly different in their reactions to various foods, but that doesn't give us a licence to spout propaganda about cooked foods. I, for example, in a manner just like William's,  could easily state that, since I'm reasonably fine with many lightly-cooked plant foods, that it's OK for me to promote their consumption to others all across rawpaleoforum, including the raw zero-carb forum(!), with 90% of my posts discussing that very subject. I choose not to, as it would violate forum guidelines, and because I know that there are plenty of RVAFers on rawpaleoforum who do very badly with such cooked plant foods, and don't wish to antagonise them. William similiarly appears psychologically  incapable of grasping that many people here have tried pemmican and have incurred minor to serious health-problems as a result of its consumption.

   

[William]

I thought the purpose of pemmican was as part of emergency food supplies.
Such as canned food.

I've made some for that purpose, so have others.

Seriously, do people in this forum eat pemmican as staple food instead of raw meats?

It's food-as-medicine for me. Nothing else worked, though I tried variations on raw fat meat and veg. for years.

[goodsamaritan]

It's food-as-medicine for me. Nothing else worked, though I tried variations on raw fat meat and veg. for years.

This is interesting William.  What ailment were you trying to cure?  And how much pemmican you used on a regular basis to cure your disease?