Carnivores that eat a significant amount of fruits or other plant foods are called facultative carnivores, whereas big cats are obligate carnivores.
Ok, thanks for the clarification.
I was not trying to make a point that humans shouldn't eat fruits, rather just making an observation that GCB is doing more than just sharing his success story. His writings suggest that he is trying to persuade others. That doesn't mean that doing so is wrong, it's just an observation. I think that "promoting a diet" is accurate wording for this, but perhaps there is a better wording you might come up with?
I feel that he tells what his experiments, experience and reasoning have led him to infer. There would be no point in writing a book in which the author tries to persuade his readers that what he writes is false.
That’s for the book. In the seminars he gave and which I attended, he always explained the how and why of his stand, emphasizing that we should never believe anything but rather relentlessly question everything (including what he told us) and never take something for true without understanding why. Moreover he stressed that every theory, of course his being included, is always a temporary approximation that shall be completed or even superseded in the future.
Do you think there is any extra nutrition in the tasty tropical fruits beyond more sugars and if so, do you know what it might be?
Who knows? There are millions or perhaps billions of different molecular structures in living organisms. We, “civilized” humans always tend to think we have knowledge and power! But we should rather realize that our knowledge is extremely limited against the complexity of the Universe and Life. It’s this way of thinking (“we know and we can”) that has brought the catastrophic state of things on this planet - and the catastrophic health state of so many people.
I was specifically referring to adult wild animals and HGs teaching their children to eat certain things and not to eat certain other things, not how to just save time or energy. In other words, wild animals and HGs do not appear to rely on senses alone in determining what to eat, so why should we? Are you saying that the instinctive regulation of these wild animals and HGs is distorted by not relying on their senses alone, even though they don't appear to suffer any serious negative effects from their choices in nature?
I don’t think there is any conflict between transmitted knowledge and instinct: they rather work together as long as no Neolithic, processed and cooked food is used. Even now, between us raw-paleo-dieters, we exchange information about what we found good tasting, therefore edible raw, and how and where to get it.
Yes, different from the wild fruits of today, and perhaps more different from the cultivated fruits of today and perhaps the fruits available to early hominids in Stone Age Africa, Europe and Northern, Western and Central Asia were also different from the fruits of South Asia, both wild and cultivated?
Yes. Apparently, extensive settlement of Europe and other temperate regions happened in the middle Paleolithic era, after the fire was mastered. So, our ancestors lived in the tropic during millions of years before coming to northern areas. No wonder that we like tropical fruits, which by the way are often more wild than cultivated fruits from temperate areas. Some argue that fruits are not available in winter without modern transportation means, forgetting that the bulk of our ancestors came out of the tropics relatively recently, having already mastered the fire.
I was referring specifically to your and my ancestors. I'll use mine as an example. Odds are that none of my ancestors going back to the first hominin set foot in SE Asia, as the evidence indicates that the Stone Agers who populated that area branched off from others and didn't then go to Europe as did some other Asians. So there's no reason to believe that any of my direct ancestors ever ate a SE Asian fruit until the 20th century when tropical Asian fruits became commonly available around the globe, whereas they may have eaten some fruits of Europe and Northern/Western/Central Asia for tens of thousands of years.
You acknowledged that "Plants and animals are in constant evolution," so it's possible that my ancestors may have evolved some while living in Eurasia and eating the fruits of temperate, subarctic and/or Arctic regions. They certainly didn't perish for lack of SE Asian or South Asian fruits. Why should I be more adapted to fruits from a region that my direct ancestors never stepped foot in than an area that they lived in for at least tens of thousands of years? The only possible explanation I can think of is that the SE/South Asian fruits are more similar to African fruits that our ancestors ate, but I haven't seen any research or analysis of this yet. Shouldn't we investigate that before we make assumptions?
I don’t think anybody will perish for lack of SE Asian fruits! But some of these fruits, just like any paleo foodstuff; can be useful for someone having a particular health problem, and most of us former consumers of Neolithic and modern cooked food have had a particular health problem. There’s no reason to exclude those fruits. Otherwise the reciprocate would apply to someone like GS living in SE Asia and he shouldn’t be allowed to eat apples and blackberries because none of his direct ancestors ever ate an European fruit.
The more relevant tropical fruits for my ancestral history would appear to be African tropical fruits, yet they strangely rarely get discussed by Instinctos or Paleos, much less eaten. Why? If plants and animals are in constant evolution and evolution has some sort of role in dietary adaptation this would seem to be an interesting question, not one to be ignored or dismissed.
There’s not so many fruits actually considered from African origin. Most tropical fruits I know are considered from either South American or South Asian origin. I don’t think this question has been dismissed by GCB. It’s just that those tropical fruits did not induce any troubles in the experiments as did cooked food, dairy and wheat. On the contrary, these fruits appeared to be not only very tasty, but also beneficial.
So much time is spent on fruits from an area that my ancestors and those of most Europeans likely never set foot in and so little on the fruits that they actually ate and the descendents of those fruits. The emphasis seems imbalanced. I think part of the reason is that African fruits are not widely sold outside of Africa, but since some Instinctos order durian fruits via phone or Internet, this doesn't appear to be a complete obstacle.
I happened to get friend with an importer of organic African fruits in Lausanne. Every week he sold me for very cheap his unsold, too ripe or a bit damaged fruits. Those fruits from Cameroon were bananas, plantains, pineapples, papayas, mangoes, passion fruits, avocados, coconuts, safus… only the last is considered from African origin, I think.
The common elements among the most favored fruits selected by the senses appear to be sweetness (ex: durian, banana, mango, grapes, persimmons, dried dates) and fattyness (ex: durian, avocado, coconut). Are there any other common elements that you've noticed?
No, I don’t see any other, except perhaps that some are juicy.
It seems like you're avoiding answering my question directly. We don't have the answers to this one but it's curious that both Instinctos and Paleos have put so little effort into finding out. It's as if we're afraid we'll learn that our beloved sweet fruits are not as ancestral as we assume, so we don't investigate. I'm not trying to say that just because our ancestors didn't eat something makes it poison or anything ridiculous like that--just that it would be interesting to know how well the actual facts line up with many people's assumptions. A matter to possibly consider, not a final proof of anything.
We can and should investigate and I had done a little research on this subject years ago. Yes, most fruits have been much artificially selected, but most of the time it’s rather difficult to know exactly what were the wild ancestors and where they originated. The most reliable way to know is to experiment, and that’s what has been done by GCB, his family and friends in the 60’s. It is these long term experiment which have shown the harmful effect of dairy and cereals, but on the contrary fruits have been beneficial as long as we are careful not to overeat it, which is too easy with the intensively selected ones.
I detoxination is a possible cause of negative symptoms from fruits, but I don't see a way to prove or disprove it scientifically. It would be more believable if it were at least falsifiable. Not sppearing to be so, it does smack of magic to me. Like Tyler reported with raw dairy and I have experienced with multiple foods, continuing to eat a food we are sensitive to doesn't always resolve the negative symptoms, and even if the apparent symptoms are resolved, we don't know what damage is occurring at the cellular level. So there don't appear to be any guarantees one way or another.
Our body constantly eliminate toxins. There are usual ways (in urine en feces) and other ways. What do you think comes out of our nose when we have caught a cold? What do you think comes out from pimples and other skin eruptions? It seems logical to infer that if something is expelled from the organism, it’s because it’s not welcome inside. Sometimes even the smell of a particular cooked food is present in the excretion.
This is the cornerstone of Burger’s new theoretical model of the viral phenomena – and also of his theoretical model of bacterial diseases. For the first time I found a logical explanation about that since I never found neither Pasteur’s model nor the hygienists’ model satisfying. The first needs a lot of complications to be able to explain the observed facts while the second deny contagion, which is aberrant. We perhaps could still use Pasteur’s model, but Ockham’s razor should be applied in favor of the much simpler and better facts fitting model of GCB.
I do still eat some fruits, so I am hoping that I'll tolerate them better over time and if your theory is correct, then I should eventually thrive on them. What is the longest period this "detoxination" should take to finish?
It should gradually decrease, but with highs and lows. For me, I was alternately very fine and sometimes tired and not so well for some days during approximately a year. If I remember, those bad days were when I ate too much, probably too much fruits.
Thanks, do you know what source Kirt was quoting from?
No, sorry, I don’t see.
Vegetarians? Do you know how they explain what's instinctive about a Neolithic invention of human beings like vegetarianism?
No, but they are free to call themselves instinctos even if they maintain an ideological stance in total opposition with the instincto theory as defined by GCB! On the opposite I know some others who don’t want to be called instinctos even if they practice just like me! Crazy world…
Thanks to have raised those pertinent points.
François
