Explain Instincto Diet Fully #2

[TylerDurden]

I think walnuts are the only nuts with a good omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, last I checked.

[Hanna]

One further thought: Instincto postulates that cooked food has late or no instinctive stops because we aren´t genetically adapted to it. Couldn´t it be that cooked food has late or no instinctive stops simply because it is easily digestible and lacks antinutrients, so that we can eat it without direct health damage until our stomach is replete? Eating rawfood without respecting instinctive stops seems to have more negative consequences than eating cooked food lacking these stops. The instinctive stops when eating raw food therefore could warn against unpleasant symptoms and direct health damages that are simply not to be feared in the case of cooked foods. in my opinion our genetic adaptation to cooked food isn´t as good as that to rawfood in some respects. But this doesn´t mean that our adaptation to raw food is perfect and that there is no adaptation to cooked food at all.

Und noch ein weiterer Gedanke: Instincto postuliert, dass Kochkost späte oder fehlende instinktive Sperren hat, weil wir genetisch an die Kochkost nicht angepasst sind. Könnte es nicht sein, dass Kochkost schlicht deswegen späte oder fehlende instinktive Sperren hat, weil sie  leicht verdaulich ist und wenig Antinutritiva hat, so dass wir sie ohne unmittelbaren Schaden essen können, bis unser Magen voll ist? Eine Rohkost, bei der instinktive Sperren (warum auch immer) nicht beachtet werden, scheint unangenehmere Konsequenzen als Kochkost zu haben, der diese Sperren fehlen. Im Falle der Rohkost könnten daher die instinktiven Sperren vor Unannehmlichkeiten und unmittelbaren gesundheitlichen Schäden warnen, die im Falle gekochter Speisen schlicht nicht zu befürchten sind. Nach meiner Ansicht ist unsere genetische Anpassung an Kochkost in mancher Hinsicht nicht so gut wie die an Rohkost. Dies bedeutet aber nicht, dass unsere Anpassung an Rohkost perfekt ist und dass es keine Anpassung an Kochkost gibt.

[goodsamaritan]

I would be more specific about cooked food:

It should state CONDIMENTED food.

Cooked meat by itself with zero condiments is taste less.

I just experimented with making beef soup for my children with just plain water and it sucked.  Didn't taste like anything.

[miles]

Fatty cooked meat tastes very nice when it's your only meat. It doesn't taste as nice as raw meat though. However, raw meat tastes really nice when one's hungry, but not nice when one is not hungry whereas cooked meat you can eat it whether you're hungry or not, and have the negatives. Whereas raw meat if I don't really want it I'll taste it and stop.. If I do want it, I'll scoff down kilo's. Cooked meat there is no stop so if I'm hungry I'd eat the same 400g as if I was not really hungry(body ready for food) and this is not good. e.g. before bed, I do not have good taste for raw meat, it tastes bad... cooked meat I would just eat, and then would have bad effects.

[klowcarb]

Cooked meat by itself with zero condiments is taste less.

I disagree completely. I pan fried some boneless lamb shoulder last night and ate it plain. I eat all my meat, raw or cooked, completely free of any spices or condiments. 

[miles]

I disagree completely. I pan fried some boneless lamb shoulder last night and ate it plain. I eat all my meat, raw or cooked, completely free of any spices or condiments.  

Same... To me, the second nicest food after raw meat is cooked meat... I never used(of course I have experienced them, but out of preference) any condiments, of any sort on my cooked meat... nor do I use them on my raw meat. Not that I eat cooked meat.. But it tastes good without any condiments.. better without, to me. It's just that the taste of cooked meat is always 5, for example(depending on how competently it was cooked), whereas raw meat can be 0 or 10.

[klowcarb]

I eat raw meat as much as possible, but like pork or lamb cooked, as well as egg yolks. I am pure ZC first, and raw second.

[alphagruis]

One further thought: Instincto postulates that cooked food has late or no instinctive stops because we aren´t genetically adapted to it. Couldn´t it be that cooked food has late or no instinctive stops simply because it is easily digestible and lacks antinutrients, so that we can eat it without direct health damage until our stomach is replete? Eating rawfood without respecting instinctive stops seems to have more negative consequences than eating cooked food lacking these stops. The instinctive stops when eating raw food therefore could warn against unpleasant symptoms and direct health damages that are simply not to be feared in the case of cooked foods. in my opinion our genetic adaptation to cooked food isn´t as good as that to rawfood in some respects. But this doesn´t mean that our adaptation to raw food is perfect and that there is no adaptation to cooked food at all.

Cooking destroys indeed part of the antinutrients or defense chemicals in plant based food and makes it easier to eat than its raw counterparts. This is indeed one reason that accounts for in instincto language "late instinctive stops". Yet this antinutrient destruction can hardly explain the same phenomenon of increased palatability in case of cooked meats that clearly exists too, as Klowcarb points out.  

There is indeed much more than destruction of antinutrients since heating also accelerates tremendously the formation of Maillard reaction products for instance in binding carbs or fats to amino acids. This is nothing but the food scientists label for AGE's and these compounds are well known since many decades to increase the palatability of foods. Obviously most of these molecules formed in appropriate cooking recipes such as fried or rosted meats are felt as very tasty. Note however by the way that not all heated food tastes better, bad cooking recipes are well known to result in awful tastes.

Finally as GS recalls, condiments or seasoning is a third way to augment palatability of food and thus definitely increase its intake.

I contend the idea that invoking a wicked "instinct" to "explain" all these phenomena only obscures them, actually explains nothing and thus fools us.

Finally as to " our genetic adaptation"  this is IMO a too vague concept that cannot learn us to much. What is better adaptation ?

In darwinian terms it is just faster reproduction and species biomass growth. In this respect humans are extremely well adapted. Just have a look at world population versus time curve !

Obviously this is not the kind of things we have in mind in this forum when we invoke better adaptation which is rather better health or longevity.

It is likely that because of the much higher quality of paleofood and more physically active lifestyle our ancestors from middle or upper paleolithic could quite well cope with a certain amount of cooked food in their diet and nevertheless be in vibrant health as compared to degenerated civilized man even after switching back to 100% rawfood.   



  

[Hanna]

Thank you for your suggestions.

>>and nevertheless be in vibrant health as compared to degenerated civilized man

But may I remind you that you critizised gcb´s belief in the "noble savage" ? I don´t feel degenerated even if I compare myself to noble savage rawvegan gorillas (who seem to be the inspiring models for many German rawfoodists).

[alphagruis]

Hanna,

What science tells us is that our ancestors were neither "noble savages" nor were their lives simply "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"

As to civilized man's degeneration maybe you did'nt notice but I purposely compared to middle and upper paleolithic hunter- gatherers i.e. a period ranging from about 10000 to 300000 years ago not to a much more remote common ancestor of gorillas and man. I maintain that a definite degeneration i.e. change in very nature of man occured during the neolithic revolution not only because our diet deteriorated but also because our life style and relationship to nature dramatically changed.

[Paleo Donk]

Do you think its possible that since man has such a taste for cooked foods that cooked foods do provide us with energy more rapidly although though perhaps not as fully absorbed? As in one study I found where fecal nitrogen waste was significantly greater for the diet higher in malliard products - suggesting to me that cooked protein is turned into energy more rapidly but with more waste.

There must be a reason why cooked foods taste good - i can think of plenty more reasons but was specifically wondering about the above.

[Hanna]

Aren´t maillard products in some raw foods too? Old nuts or dates for example. Are maillard products in high meat? Perhaps aged food is often more easily digestible than fresh food.

[Hanna]

Google tells that maillard products are also generated under long-term storage conditions. And sugar seems not to be necessary:

In a previous study, feeding an isolated soy protein (ISP)-based diet to rats was found to reduce colon cancer risk as assessed by a reduced number of colonic precancerous lesions. However, this same ISP, after storage at room temperature for >2 years, increased the number of precancerous lesions (Gallaher et al., 1996). We hypothesize that this increase was due to the development of Maillard reaction products in the ISP during storage. Thus, the objective of this study was monitor development of the Maillard reaction during storage of ISP and delactosed whey protein concentrate. (...) To investigate why ISP underwent browning in the absence of glucose while whey protein concentrate did not, the reaction of genistein was investigated. Genistein is an isoflavone with putative chemoprotective properties found in ISP but not in whey. (...) The rate of browning was found to parallel the rate of genistein loss, suggesting that genistein plays a role as a reactant in nonenzymatic browning reactions. This suggests that long-term storage of ISP will lead to the loss of genistein and potentially result in the development of carcinogens.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf9800864

[alphagruis]

Google tells that maillard products are also generated under long-term storage conditions. And sugar seems not to be necessary:

Yes of course Maillard products or other oxidation products are also formed in food left at room temperature and actually even continuously in living healthy organisms. Yet the quantities formed are orders of magnitude less than at higher temperatures and we have obviously developped mechanisms that allow us to fairly well cope with these small amounts of Maillard products or AGEs whether endogenously formed or present in our food. Moreover in "aged" meat or food bacteria and fungi thrive simultaneously and use these compounds as food and so diminish further the quantities present in such foods.

In order to give an idea of the relative amounts of AGEs formed as a function of temperature it is interesting to recall a little basics of chemical reaction kinetics. The chemical reactions involved in Maillard reactions are non enzymatic and thus strongly thermally activated ones. The rate of formation (or number of reaction products formed per second) in such reactions increases very rapidly (somewhat exponentially) with temperature. Typically to show the order of magnitudes in such reaction rates whenever 1 of such specific Maillard molecule is formed at 15°C there are 40000 of them formed at 90°C and around 10 millions of them at 180°C.

In other words for every Maillard molecule formed in a food left to "age" during 3 months in a cellar at 15°C there are typically 10^7 x 30 / (60 x 24 x 92) of them formed during a 30 minutes cooking at 180°C i.e. 2264 times more...

 In spite of the short cooking as compared to ageing time.

It is therefore not surprising that while we easily cope with the amount of AGEs formed in even the aged raw food this is probably not the case with the cooked food which overwhelms progressively our detox capabilities. In particular if this overwhelming is repeated day after day during our whole lifetime. This is in line with the obvious fact that clear cut troubles and sickness due to AGEs accumulation usually show up only after several decades of heavily cooked diet depending of individual genetic capabilities.  

  

[GCB]

Thank you Alphagruis , that’s exactly what I said in my first book in connection with the molecules of Maillard in 1985. Except that at the time nothing was known about the AGEs and their capacity to accumulate in the body. Moreover from yourself : a marvelous confirmation of my assumptions!

I bet that 25 years from now on quite as resounding confirmations will be recognized concerning my ideas on the alimentary instinct. Meanwhile, don’t eat too much butter and sauerkraut (your favorite dishes, according to what I read from you on the French forums) if you want to still be there to celebrate the confirmation with me…

[ys]

don’t eat too much butter and sauerkraut

ahhh, i think i missed the connection somewhere.  can you please remind what's wrong with too much butter and sauerkraut?

[GCB]

Don't be afraid, it's purely metaphorical... 

[Hanna]

Thank you alphagruis for this interesting information concerning Maillard products!

[TylerDurden]

Hanna, just wanted to make clear that the few experiments done on digestion have actually shown that cooking raw meats makes them less digestible(I cover this in 1 of my articles on rawpaleodiet.com I think re hake etc. being less digestible when cooked etc. Only non-palaeo foods(raw veggies are an exception, raw dairy is made worse)) are easily improved by cooking re antinutrients being removed, but the cooking process adds on heat-created toxins such as AGEs, like alphagruis said.

As for cooked foods being more pleasurable, that has to do with more opioids being formed via the cooking process and giving certain "highs" to the brain, causing addiction.

That said, I have noticed that rawpalaeos usually end up eating raw meats with fewer and fewer spices in the long-term, while spices have always been routinely used to add some taste to otherwise relatively bland cooked meats. Certainly, one can reasonably argue that the more one cooks the meat, the less tasty it becomes(really well-done meat can taste almost  like charcoal, for example).

[miles]

I never used spices on cooked meat, and I've never used them on raw meat. I do not find cooked foods more pleasurable, I find raw foods more pleasurable.

[alphagruis]

As TD recalls raw (in particular fatty) meats or fishs are undoubtedly more easily digested than their cooked counterparts. In this respect I was able to convince up to now about 15 people on more or less usual (cooked meat at least) diet to give it a try. In seasoned form if they appeared to be unable to eat the stuff as it is.

They all agreed about this point.  

[Hanna]

I would guess that at least stringy meat becomes more easily digestible if it is cooked. And there must be a good reason why hunters an gatherers cooked their meat. Isn´t cooking a kind of predigestion - and likewise the aging of meat? Fish is known to be more easily digestible than the meat of land animals. I can´t compare raw with cooked meat, because the last time I ate something heated was six and a half years ago and voluntarily i will never eat something heated again because my body then goes haywire...

TD, could you please give me the exact link of the article you have in mind?

[alphagruis]

Well, Inuits apparently cooked only a modest part of their meat,fat  or fish. In general HGs rather roasted or grilled meat on open fire which produces much addictives Maillard and fat oxidation products that possibly also explains the spread of this practice. Cooking makes sometimes meat easier to chew and swallow but this is not meat or fish digestion which seems always impaired by the formation of a substantial fraction of heat damaged amino acids and fatty acids that cannot readily enter into our normal metabolic paths.
 

[GCB]

Facing the avalanche of questions – all enthralling – accumulated in these few days, I don’t really know where to pick up! As all those questions spin around the instinct, I believe essential to start by putting things straight about this concept and later on the theoretical reasons that could push someone to reject it along with consequences in the “instincto” theory.

1°) My starting point isn’t theoretical, but empirical. Although impassioned of theoretical physics, I’ve always preferred to give preponderance to facts, in particular on complex subjects. In 1964, I noticed on myself, then on many others and animals as well, that there are variations in attraction for a given foodstuff. This phenomenon is easily observable, particularly with edible goods left unprocessed.

2°) These variations of attraction translate subjectively on several levels: odor, savor, consistency, dislikes (nausea) and stomachic feelings. I initially concentrated on the observation of those first three aspects, which were the newest.

3°) First question: are the observable perceptive variations contingent, or do they match variations of the physiological needs? The answer can only be empirical, i.e. it is necessary to seek the correlations between the perception’s variations and variations of the somehow known needs. Such research isn’t straightforward since we don’t always know the body needs.

4°) First answer: When a given foodstuff or another food providing the same nutrients has been consumed in a large quantity, an attraction drop can very generally be observed. This rule was confirmed with all the tested foodstuffs (unprocessed and subject to minor artificial selection) whatever their source (fruits of any origins but as wild as possible, vegetables, high-protein seeds, oilseeds, fish, shellfish, meat, eggs, honey, etc). Yet, some natural stuff like mushrooms were not systematically tested. As a whole, and since there is homeostasis (safeguarding of a balance), it can be concluded that these perceptive variations belong to a system of regulation.

5°) The following question, much more subtle, is to know if these variations are able to ensure a satisfactory nutritional balance. It is therefore necessary to observe individuals agreeing to respect them (something not obvious), in particular by ending the intake of each foodstuff as soon as it becomes unpleasant, and by observing the rules imposed by comparative observation of the results. The purpose of these rules is to bring nutritional conditions closer to those of a primitive environment. It definitely proved that the sensory mechanisms work correctly under precise conditions only, conditions sufficiently close to the living conditions in which theses mechanisms evolved. I succeeded in convincing, during dozens of years, approximately twelve thousand people to try the experiment.

6°) The crucial point is then to define the criteria of a “satisfactory” nutritional balance. The most determinant case was that of children nourished on the “instincto” mode since birth and whose mothers had practiced instinctive nutrition themselves for years. The fact that their body developed without deficiencies and disorders until adulthood let’s think that such instinctive paleo-nutrition brought them all the substances a human body may need to ensure a perfect growth and health. My own children, who always balanced by very innocently following their attractions and repulsions, are now in their forties and are living evidence about the adequacy of this mode of nutrition and regulation.

7°) The case of adults on a traditional diet (SWD or various diets) switching to instincto diet is also very persuasive: the absence of long-term deficiency, the fulfilling of old deficiencies, their body index of mass (BMI) and many criteria of health show that they not only get the raw food benefits, but also an extremely precise nutritional regulation. The few divergent results could always be put in relation to defects of provisioning or errors in the application of the rules drawn from the first years of observation, in particular with regard to the interpretation of the sensory data on the level of the sense of smell, taste and stomachic feelings, but also of the organization of the presentation of the products to the sensory organs.

8°) A much finer criterion clearly marks out the difference between a ordinary raw diet and instinctotherapy:  the inflammatory tendency. Inflammation plays a key role on the immunological side; it constitutes in fact the expression at macroscopic scale of the body’s defense and regeneration mechanisms, which the immune system ensures at the microscopic scale. Inflammation is also the seat of mechanisms of self-destruction and various complications. However, with a nutritional balance managed according to the instincto principles and rules, the level of inflammation is such that all complications disappear: no more erythema around the lesions nor oedema, and especially no pain.

A fracture is painful for short while, then the signal stops after few minutes (in analgesic position) and no inflammation nor pain comes next to complicate the bone’s cicatrisation. On the other hand, it suffice to force the alliesthesic signals at the gustatory or stomachic level (for example with artificially selected fruits abnormally rich in sugar) to see redness developing, oedema and pain taking off. For example during the fracture of a toe (as just happened to me) the pain remains absolutely quiet and the oedema is limited just as to avoid inopportune movements of the phalanges. But a transgression of the instinctive stop (taste, repletion) is enough for the process to take off.

This spontaneous and systematic regulation, easily and already observable on babies at the condition of applying the instincto rules, shows that the mechanisms of perceptive variations are innate, genetically programmed so as to very precisely control nutritional balance. It requires however an adequate food environment such as these rules precisely teach it, as well as a rehabilitation of the body listening for the ones who did not integrate it since early childhood.

9°) The innate character of the perceptive variations mechanisms is shown in a very direct way, as I did with my own children and as many parents have been able to verify: it suffice to present to the baby right after birth a series of foodstuff left unprocessed so that their flavor is not modified. The baby, who still has his eyes closed, automatically opens the mouth for some specific food, but not for the others. Reflexes are coherent, in the sense that repeated presentations never trigger a mouth opening for a food that would have obtained a negative answer, and target finally on a reduced number of products. If the choosen stuff is crushed and put in the baby’s mouth, he’s got the reflex to chew (although without teeth) and swallow it. If a foodstuff that failed to produce a mouth opening is nevertheless force fed into his mouth, the baby has (even before any training) the reflex to spit. The coherence of this complex operation is checked by the digestive quality, in particular by the absence of odors in the faeces.

10°) For several reasons this does not exclude the necessity of a training so that these mechanisms function correctly:
a)   we are no longer placed in an environment close to the one where our genome evolved, thus a series of precautions must be taken;
b)   innate and acquired characteristics aren’t dissociable, thus the innate mechanisms require a training (it is the same for example for walk, which is innate but request a more or less long training according to the species);
c)   the training we had of these regulation mechanisms during childhood has been deeply distorted by culinary deterioration of savors, so that we don’t know how to establish the correct link between the sense of smell and the taste, nor between these sensory signals and the stomachic feelings, neither with the risk of digestive or nutritional overload, nor spontaneously to compensate for the influence of the environmental modifications (for example vis-a-vis modern fruits richer in sugar).
 
This skewed training can be partly compensated by a particular training which consists in bypassing the intellect and cultural reflexes. It is allowed by the blindfolding procedure (whose purpose is not an immediate alimentary balance, but rather recovery of the defective training of perceptive variations mechanisms). A teaching is obviously necessary in order to learn the rules to respect, the way to organize our provisioning and other points that constitute the method known as instinctotherapy.

I hope the above will clarify the issue and allow a better-centered debate.

[Hanna]

>>we are no longer placed in an environment close to the one where our genome evolved

Concerning this point: Will you answer my initially posed questions later on?