Instincto`s tropical paradise

[PaleoPhil]

So does that mean that if I eat a balanced, nonintoxicating diet, that I will be able to handle tropical fruits well at some point in the future? That would be good news indeed. What change in my body will enable this?

How long should the detoxination reactions last and what are the symptoms of detoxination?

[goodsamaritan]

OK, that's fine, and can you then explain why your posts are dominated by advocacy of tropical fruits without any note made of people who don't fare well on them? Are posts about cautions re: fruits for some, and about meats and fats and other foods to come soon?

It would be more interesting if you list down the actual fruits.
Each species has different qualities.

[Susan]

So does that mean that if I eat a balanced, nonintoxicating diet, that I will be able to handle tropical fruits well at some point in the future? That would be good news indeed. What change in my body will enable this?

How long should the detoxination reactions last and what are the symptoms of detoxination?

The inability to eat raw food that is normally edible for man is a sign of illness or imbalance of your system. If you cure yourself with instinctive raw eating this inability will vanish.

The duration of detoxination depends on your actual state of health and your skill to find raw food that enables your system to heal. It means to be open-minded and to offer a big range of food to your body so that your instinct (smell and taste) can select suitable food. If you select really by instinct and pay attention to the barrier there will be nearly no symptoms of detoxination. You only realize a steadily increase of vitality, physical and psychical.

Practically everyone who starts with instinctive raw eating made mistakes, sometimes because he is not willing to accept the instinctive barrier or select improper food (for example when toothfillings disturb the instinct) and other reasons. Various symptoms can arise, headaches, diarrhea, vomiting, inflammations, psychical symptoms and others. In this case it is important to wait till the symptoms vanish and not to suppress them either with products of the mainstream medicine nor so called natural therapies.

When you are really satisfied and calm after a meal (you will be in a sort of temporary heaven ), you can be sure that you have selected suitable food. If not, wait till the digestion is completed and try it agian.

[Susan]

Guy-Claude,

you suggest that I'm overloaded with sugar because I ate only twelve wild cherries. This thesis is very risky because you don't know anything about my state of health nor how long I'm eating instinctive raw. For me it seemed to be more likely that twelve wild cherries fulfilled all my needs from the species "cherry".

I myself can't answer the question how long I'm eating instinctive raw. Till now I'm not sure if the wish to eat instinctive raw is 100% reality or still wishful thinking. Till now I don't have gotten to know anybody who has executed this transition.

[PaleoPhil]

...When you are really satisfied and calm after a meal (you will be in a sort of temporary heaven ), ...

Yes, I can attest to that. That happens after I eat raw grassfed beef or liver plus grassfed suet.

[Hanna]

What do you want to say with the fact that you have eaten a hundreds of wild cherries?

That´s an interesting fact for me (I have never eaten wild cherries); thanks Iguana.

[Hanna]

As for affirmation that instincto “is typically a high carb diet ", on what base do you define a standard rate? You apply an assumption of normality whose value isn’t based, AFAIK, on any figures or serious arguments. I rather think that carbs, lipids and proteins ratios that the body signals drive to and are corroborated by very strict balance criteria (including the absence of inflammatory tendency), allow defining of this normality. And coincidentally, the numbers we get are very close to the recommendations given by nutritionists and food repartition of primates in nature. I’m more wonder about low carb diets: on what base the proponents of these schemes justify such practices

My reference point was the average proportion of carbs of the hunters' and gatherers' diets (= paleo diets). Different primates have different diets (Gorillas eat mainly leaves; Tarsiers are even obligate carnivores). AFAIK the species "hunters and gatherers" is more closely related to us than other primates.

On which figures or serious arguments are the recommendations of the nutritionists re carbs based on?

This happens with many wild stuff: rough and bitter as long as there is any nutritional overload, they completely change their taste and texture when the body really needs it.

Yes, but AFAIK all fruits that instinctos usually like are known as edible by cooked people too.

[Hanna]

By the way, should I split this topic and open a thread about mercury ?

Yes! Please.

[Iguana]

Here you are:    
Dental fillings, mercury, composite resin, ceramic, etc.

Francois

[Hanna]

As for affirmation that instincto “is typically a high carb diet ", on what base do you define a standard rate? ... And coincidentally, the numbers we get are very close to the recommendations given by nutritionists and food repartition of primates in nature.

In another thread this interesting article is linked:

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/should-all-animals-eat-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet.html

In 1997 the Journal of Nutrition published a study of the dietary intake of Western Lowland Gorillas, as the authors considered that the diet of one of our nearest 'cousins' could have implications for our (human) health.

(...) You will note in the picture on the right that there is a marked difference in shape between a human and a gorilla. But the gorilla's gut is not only much larger than a human's, it also has an entirely different design.

Human

Small intestine is major organ used to extract nutrients.
Small intestine ~ 50% of the total volume.
Caecum and colon ~ 20% volume

Gorilla

Ratios exactly the opposite
Small intestine ~ 25% volume
Caecum and colon ~ 53% volume.

This difference is highly significant. In a herbivore such as the gorilla, the caecum and colon harbour huge colonies of bacteria which ferment carbohydrates, particularly fibre, and use it to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFA) — principally acetic, proprionic and butyric acids. These are then absorbed into the body to be used as a source of energy. (...)

These SCFAs must be added to the fats already present in the gorilla's diet, which gives us the following proportions:

Overall energy
                                           (kcal) per 100g      %age
Protein                                   47.1                        24.3%
Available carbs                       30.6                        15.8%
Fat                                          4.9                          2.5%
SCFA from fibre                    111.0                        57.7%

This gives totals of:

protein = 24.3%
carbs = 15.8%
fats = 59.8%

Since the chimp´s fruits are fibrous and scarcely sweet and since, of course, chimps eat leaves etc., I would guess that they eat less sugar than instinctos usually eat. BTW, chimps spent 6 to 8 hours eating!

[Hanna]

BTW, chimps spent 6 to 8 hours eating!

My source was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Chimpanzee:

"Chimpanzees will typically spend six to eight hours a day eating."

[Hanna]

Meanwhile I learned that there are (or were) indeed hunters and gatheres who eat (or ate) substantial amounts of fruit:

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/non-mutant-fruits-and-vegetables/msg60767/#msg60767
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/non-mutant-fruits-and-vegetables/msg60801/#msg60801
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/non-mutant-fruits-and-vegetables/msg61242/#msg61242

Table 4 in this article (http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07601616.pdf) and figure 2 and figure 3 in this article (http://www.anthro.fsu.edu/people/faculty/marlowe_pubs/Tubers%20as%20Fallback%20Foods%20and%20Impact%20on%20Hadza%20AJPA.pdf) are particularly  interesting.

[Iguana]

A few weeks ago I talked on the phone with one of the three “instincto” guys who went in exploration without taking any food supplies into the primary rain forest where the orangutans live. I’m not sure if it was in Sumatra or in Borneo, I should ask him again but he lives in Jakarta and he was only shortly in France.

Anyway… I asked him what they found to eat in this jungle. He said they ate almost only fruits, various species of unknown wild fruits and he said it was not a problem because their trip lasted only 10 days. The fruits were high in the trees, so they had to climb after having thrown a rope.

And last week a met the father of an instincto family who lived  half a year in French Guyana. I also asked him what food they found in the Amazonian primary forest. He said there is about 150 different species of wild fruits, also all high in the trees.

[Iguana]

Thus, I think I can register the difference between what  the body is using to cleanse and substitute for intact or preferred molecules, and what is a sugar experiment in my body.

Thanks for your input and congrats for having stuck to raw food for so long, Van.

It’s fine if you can differentiate but for me, even after 26 years of 100% instinctive raw paleo, I’m never sure at all. For example 2 days ago I ate 1.6 kg of fresh scallops (of course in shells). I woke up in the middle of the night and had to go urgently to the WC, having some diarrhea.  It occured only once and then it was completely over. What happened? Did I eat too many scallops, perhaps forcing a bit to eat all the ones I had bought? Or did it trigger the elimination of some old toxins which had remained in my body? I don’t know: at least I can tell it was not the scallops which came out…

About entirely replacing fruits with animal fat, I think it would be much more difficult in Europe than in USA. It seems you just have to order some grass fed beef or buffalo fat and bones with marrow. Here we very seldom have such opportunities, the wild animals we get generally have little fat and their bones are small. Moreover, outside of the hunting season, regularly finding clean meat is quite difficult. We often have to rely on New Zealand lamb. When I was in Switzerland, I could also buy Australian horse meat (supposedly only grass fed) in a specific supermarket, but it was very lean chunks. Meat is also very expensive in some countries.

And when we have enough fat, which is seldom, we can’t eat all of it before it gets rancid. I have a very clear stop with animal fat, I can’t eat too much at once and if I overtake a bit this stop, digestion is difficult.

Also, what astonishes me is that all this knowledge about what different foodstuffs contain is modern. Our pre-fire ancestors didn’t know about ketosis, carbs, fat, proteins. They certainly ate whatever they found which smelled and tasted appetizing without caring at all of being “low carb”.

When you travel, and I traveled 3 times all around the world while eating completely raw and unprocessed, you scarcely find suitable animal fat. You can eat fish and shellfish but are they “fat” food? I don’t even know, it must depend on the kind. The most easy to find and cheap raw paleo food is fruits, and fish if you are not far from the sea.

GCB has always emphasized the need to eat a minimum of modern highly selected fruits. Of course, we should avoid them as much as possible and prefer the most wild ones. AFAIK, people who have always eaten instinctively raw paleo ever since birth have no problem at all with fruits. You wrote that in Montramé people gorged on tropical fruits. That’s true, because we payed a fixed price for the meals and we could eat unlimited amounts of whatever we wanted. So, when there for a few days, people tended to choose the most expensive stuff, the food they liked but could not often afford at home.

More to say, but my post is already too long…

Cheers
François

[van]

The 4 following posts have been moved here from there:
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/journals/life-with-a-doctor/msg114042/#msg114042
Iguana

the debate continues,,   of course they didn't have to think or worry about carbs, for there weren't many to consume, and if so, only a few months a year.   Of course you could point specifically to the jungles, or you could look at most of europe and north america as your examples.    They may not have known about the word carb,  But I doubt very much that when paleo man came across a bee hive and there was more than ample honey to go around (or a hunting party simply didn't bother to bring the hive or honey back to 'camp' to share),  that they didn't notice the effect on ingesting huge amounts of sugar (who's to say they would have respected their bodies stop).   Most other fruits, aside from the jungle had very little sugar as compared to the fruits as selectively cultivated today for high sweetness content.  For instance I can eat large amounts of wild berries and get a small insulin rise as compared to eating similar quantities of any fruit organically grown found in any store.   And again, those wild berries are only around for a month or two, not year around imported from different geographic locations around the globe making them available year around.    When you enjoy your figs, or persimmons, or Durian, or mangos, or watermelons, or apples, oranges, grapes, strawberries, bananas, cherries, peaches, plums,,,,,  ask yourself how many of them would be hanging around in the wild hadn't someone cultivated them, hyberdized them to their extreme sugary sweetness, and protected them against birds if it weren't for somebody ahead of you. 
       Dr. D   reports that his experiments with low carb are bringing him results he appreciates.   Why criticize or subject him with doubt?   My understanding is that you have not experimented with low carb or zero carb.  And if so, for how long, and how skillful were your attempts carried out.  I believe your previous comments as to eating low carb were dismissal of even the idea?    Most failures with living low carb have Mostly to do with one's body not having the time to learn how to switch from burning sugar to fat as fuel.  For some the process takes months.  Few are ready or able to go that distance.  And of course some believe it's silly to do in the first place, hence their beliefs prevent any real experience from happening.   (not to mention the possible sugar addictions)

[Iguana]

Van, I spoke of "zero carb" (I understood that's what our friend is currently doing) while you speak of "low carb". "Low" can mean anything: I may be on "low carb" sometimes. I'm now fed up of sweet fruits and would like to find some fatty meat, but I haven't found any suitable meat here yet.

Of course you could point specifically to the jungles, or you could look at most of europe and north america as your examples.

Our far ancestors came from the jungle whereas some settled in Europe recently, after they controlled the fire — and to America even much latter. GS already emphasized that the Spaniards reported that when they discovered the Philippines, fruits were “extremely abundant” — as well as other foods.

My understanding is that you have not experimented with low carb or zero carb.

Exactly, I haven’t because I see no reason to launch myself into a risky adventure which 1.) is without any sound logical theoretical basis, 2.) is impossible to be done properly in Europe and even more so when traveling around the planet, 3.) has been in the long run a failure for all the ones I know who tried it — our former posters “Carnivore” and “Löwenherz”, not to mention the severe health problems of Lex Rooker.

Mostly to do with one's body not having the time to learn how to switch from burning sugar to fat as fuel.  For some the process takes months.

The ones I cited just above did it for years. BTW, have you read my posts below in answer to your previous?  You haven’t answered.

A few weeks ago I talked on the phone with one of the three “instincto” guys who went in exploration without taking any food supplies into the primary rain forest where the orangutans live. I’m not sure if it was in Sumatra or in Borneo, I should ask him again but he lives in Jakarta and he was only shortly in France.

Anyway… I asked him what they found to eat in this jungle. He said they ate almost only fruits, various species of unknown wild fruits and he said it was not a problem because their trip lasted only 10 days. The fruits were high in the trees, so they had to climb after having thrown a rope.

And last week a met the father of an instincto family who lived  half a year in French Guyana. I also asked him what food they found in the Amazonian primary forest. He said there is about 150 different species of wild fruits, also all high in the trees.

…
When you travel, and I traveled 3 times all around the world while eating completely raw and unprocessed, you scarcely find suitable animal fat. You can eat fish and shellfish but are they “fat” food? I don’t even know, it must depend on the kind. The most easy to find and cheap raw paleo food is fruits, and fish if you are not far from the sea.

GCB has always emphasized the need to eat a minimum of modern highly selected fruits. Of course, we should avoid them as much as possible and prefer the most wild ones. AFAIK, people who have always eaten instinctively raw paleo ever since birth have no problem at all with fruits. You wrote that in Montramé people gorged on tropical fruits. That’s true, because we payed a fixed price for the meals and we could eat unlimited amounts of whatever we wanted. So, when there for a few days, people tended to choose the most expensive stuff, the food they liked but could not often afford at home.

If you want to continue to argue on that matter, it can be done on the specific thread from where those above quotes are extracted.  Not sure if I'll go on, though.

Cheers
François

[van]

I did forget to mention I remembered you saying how difficult it is for you to find animal fat.  I understand that,  but here it's not.     As far as your friends living in the 'jungle',, that's fine.  I survived quite well for years eating high sugar content fruits.  The toll to one's body with constant insulin spikes etc. doesn't happen over night or even over a few years,, just look at Durianrider,  when he's not being a jerk on his tube insults and actually presenting himself as a guest, he's actually quite bright.  But his health will fail as with all who have tried extreme high fruit diets.  I'm not saying you're or GC is advocating eating just fruits.  Just that your friends testimony about having to climb high trees to get at.... is also just a short experiment and most anecdotal.    I don't know why you would want to discount or dismiss centuries or generations of very healthy peoples living here in north america who did catch and eat anything that moved as their primary staple (very low carb content due to seasonal fruits) and thrived.  In europe before it was hunted to almost extinction, before the agrarian boom, what do you think they (probably your ancestors) ate?      You can dig deeper, if you care to, and find all sorts of peoples who do quite well using fat as fuel.    But if you choose to be selective and site lex and lowen..
 as your primary examples,    then it will be hard to come to some sort of common discussion ground. 
  I am not trying to convince or persuade you to change your diet.  That would be counterproductive.
  All I am asking is that without first hand experience, please don't use suggestive language to discourage Dr. D and anyone else who at least is appreciating results from his first hand experience in choosing to use fat as fuel as opposed to sugar. 
     

[Iguana]

is also just a short experiment and most anecdotal.

It shows that there are plenty fruits in jungles where apes are still there spreading the seeds of fruits trees.

I don't know why you would want to discount or dismiss centuries or generations of very healthy peoples living here in north america who did catch and eat anything that moved as their primary staple (very low carb content due to seasonal fruits) and thrived.  In europe before it was hunted to almost extinction, before the agrarian boom, what do you think they (probably your ancestors) ate?

1.) All these populations routinely cooked their food, therefore we cannot compare their case to ours. They were not free of diseases: for example a study published about 20 years ago in a French medical magazine established that 6 previously unknown diseases appeared simultaneously to the first uses of fire for cooking food.
2.) Amerindians were decimated by infectious diseases brought by Europeans, as already pointed out by Tyler.
3.) Obviously, they didn’t have a “zero carb” or “low carb” ideology.

   You can dig deeper, if you care to, and find all sorts of peoples who do quite well using fat as fuel.    But if you choose to be selective and site lex and lowen..

I’m not selective at all: Löwenherz and Carnivore are the only persons I know who have tried “zero carb” in Europe. Both dramatically failed following promising initial results. On the contrary, I know very well, in person, face-to-face, several  people who are fine after several decades of “instincto”, some ever since birth.   

  I am not trying to convince or persuade you to change your diet.  That would be counterproductive.
  All I am asking is that without first hand experience, please don't use suggestive language to discourage Dr. D and anyone else who at least is appreciating results from his first hand experience in choosing to use fat as fuel as opposed to sugar.

I don’t want to discourage anyone, I just warn once again that short term and long term effects can be very different. This doesn’t mean that it can never be favorable to shift from a mostly cooked standard diet to a raw “zero carb” one. It can even be temporarily a great thing health-wise. But it shouldn’t be taken as an ideology which would always beneficial, in every case and for ever. We change and our nutritional needs constantly shift.   

[van]

I think the only thing we may have different view points on is whether or not one should primarily uses fat or sugar for fuel.  I think we do agree on the notion of variety in food stuffs to satisfy what our body needs.   I remember reading old accounts of the foods the Indians who lived somewhere near the gulf of mexico or texas used.  The list went on for a mile,, every insect, lizard, snake, dear, wild edible plant,,, you name it, if it moved, it was on the list.  And they ate the entire living thing.  So yes, variety is king.    we also agree on mixing foods, respecting the natural stop, not freezing food stuff, or heating, or blending...    It's too bad GC didn't experiment with using fat as fuel.  And again, it takes months for some, year or more for others.   But almost all claim that it only gets easier with each day, and the energy does come.    And then I wonder,,  Orkos might not have had a chance without all the importing of fruits.  But then maybe it would have if they imported fatty products from all over the world.  Who knows. 
    Also I don't think you should discount Lex's attempts.   For remember we do both agree on the notion that he shouldn't be freezing and mixing all his food, nor is his variety optimal.   And as for Lowenherz,  who knows what he really doing?   Cheers

[Iguana]

I think the only thing we may have different view points on is whether or not one should primarily uses fat or sugar for fuel.

So we don’t disagree at all  because there’s nothing neither in my mind nor in the instincto theory specifying what should be our primary fuel: it depends on personal momentary needs and food current availability. 

[van]

Ok, if you want to go there,, then,, I don't necessarily agree that Nature had intended for us to live as long and as 'healthily' as possible. That Nature's primary intention was to keep up healthy enough to procreate and pass along survival skills.  Or, in other words, keeping blood sugars low and thus insulin and leptin resistance at low levels prolongs life; something that nature didn't care about.   Insulin and leptin resistance and their associated relationship to the hormonal body doesn't happen overnight, but is a gradual onset that we pay for as we age.   That onset is difficult to notice day by day.  As I have written before, either one is interested in this newer body of emerging science, or one isn't and will stick their noses up to the idea.  I happen to believe life is not all black and white, that one can marry science with nature and come out ahead.    And again, I doubt your and my pre-agrarian ancestors came immediately out of the jungle eating large amounts of fruit.  I tend to agree that there was a substantial amount of time that we adapted to living by using the fat off the land, the fat from animals as fuel, primarily because that was what was available.  And if there were Wild Seasonal fruits, so be it.  All the better.  But that seasonal fruit binge would have very little effect on ones overall hormonal health.  It's what we do in the long run that counts.  Diabetics don't become diabetics over night.   
      So I think we each understand each other's ideas, at least to the level we are willing to understand for any reasons.  Why don't we drop it, and see what else we can learn here.     And,    I would like to sincerely add that I would someday hope to meet up with you and soak up your developed sense of instinctualness.  Truly.   Van

[AnopsStudier]

So is there any more info about people trying to eat wild edibles from the African Rainforest and other locations from his or her past??  I will always be wondering about how many different adaptations and various needs we have from different locations in our evolutionary past.   How do I truly know that there are not various forms of vegetation in the African Rain forest that my body would truly benefit from....   Being a Caucasian person of European descent (Finnish, German, Welsch, French Canadian... Im a mutt!) I could need various wild European Edibles .. Or maybe I would benefit even greater from eating foods from a place even further back in my/our  evolutionary history (Africa most likely)....  maybe I would benefit from combining all of it together.... But Im living in North America and we can only be in one place at one time.   I wonder how GCB and other long term instinctive eaters would respond to random vegetation, seeds, nuts and fruit that most have no access to and if there are already instinctive eaters who have tried doing this.   I need to live with  bonobos for a week !   

Think of being able to find the true most beneficial foods for you from around the world and growing them in a chemical free organic garden with clean soil and clean water.      That is my dream

[eveheart]

@AnopsStudier: I was looking something up in the Jaminets' book The Perfect Human Diet, and it suddenly struck me that your question leading back to a rainforest-based early human diet does not coincide with what I have read about early paleolithic man's environment. The savanna, not the rainforest, is considered the home of our species. The foods found there are animals and starchy tubers, etc.

With your question in mind, I looked for quotes that might explain the conclusions that the Jaminets used in their book, but then I realized that it would probably be very valuable to you to read the whole book. The Jaminets really get into well-supported details about why one species can get all it's nutrients from fibrous plant foods, another species can get all it's nutrients from meats alone, and how mankind differs in food digestion from the other models.

I think you'll appreciate this book.

[AnopsStudier]

Thanks EveHeart!  I really do appreciate it! I am going to check my local library tomorrow

[FruitAndVegLover]

I have similar questions but Im gonna ask them in a new thread!