brain size

[PaleoPhil]

As for the other point, no, my point was directly relevant, actually. I only gave that blind/hearing as an example - obviously, in the case of eating less meats, the brain might become smaller but compensate by adding more neurons in the frontal lobes etc.

I hadn't heard that hypothesis before of meat making the brain smaller. Did you come up with it or did you see it somewhere else? Do you have any evidence?
 

As for the point re another HG tribe eating large amounts of raw animal foods but having a smaller skull-size, the Australian Aborigines have been cited as having much smaller skull-sizes/brain-volume, and some have stated that their diet consisted mostly of animal foods.

It's plausible. Have you seen any evidence on this? I find it an interesting coincidence that the majority opinion of scientists is that increased meat eating was a major factor in hominin brain growth (with Wrangham and a small number of others supporting cooked tubers as the key factor) and the most carnivorous culture allegedly had the largest measured skull sizes. I've seen conflicting reports on Inuit IQ measurements, but as you say, brain size alone doesn't necessarily correlate exactly with IQ or intelligence.
 

Anyway, what I think makes  more sense than the meat-diet explanation is that the Inuit have the largest brain-size/skull-size among humans because they are the only humans who lived regularly in very  harsh, very cold climates. In other words, I am thinking of the cold-climate/intelligence theory. Likely as not, though, there are probably several explanatiosn which are all equally correct.

Yes, with nature there do usually seem to be multiple causes of most things. I think that both meat eating and cold climate could be factors re: brain size, and possibly others.

[goodsamaritan]

I am sooo offf-tooppppic, but I can't resist it.

Sabertooth, your children are SOOOOO Cute!!!!

Love that picture with the raw meat.  Outstanding.  Can I repost that pic on my blog?

[Hanna]

The point is perhaps that the Inuit ate a lot of long-chain Omega-3 fatty acids (fatty fish).

[TylerDurden]

I am sooo offf-tooppppic, but I can't resist it.

Sabertooth, your children are SOOOOO Cute!!!!

Love that picture with the raw meat.  Outstanding.  Can I repost that pic on my blog?

  I agree. Those marvellous photos of your  and Sabertooth's happy, healthy children reinforce RVAFers' notions that it's OK to feed one's children on raw animal foods. I mean, we had those f*ckw*ts among the public who criticised that family on Wifeswap and reported them to the social services, so debunking their silly notions regularly is a good idea. After all, there have been some occasions in the past where an ex-spouse reported their other spouse for child-abuse to the social-services/divorce-courts because the other partner had fed their children on a raw-meat-diet, and we do need more protection from the law.

[TylerDurden]

PP, the evidence re the brain compensation of brain-damage in one area by repairing stuff in aother is all over the web:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_modal_plasticity

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/645222.html

Evidence re the smaller skulls of Aborigines is also googleable:-

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1261675/

Not sure re the Aboriginal diet, I only remember Stefansson and Wodgina emphasising that the Aborigines ate mostly animal-foods as part of their diet, which sounds correct, given the desert-like environment of much of Australia.

[sabertooth]

I am sooo offf-tooppppic, but I can't resist it.

Sabertooth, your children are SOOOOO Cute!!!!

Love that picture with the raw meat.  Outstanding.  Can I repost that pic on my blog?

Blog away, I dont mind a bit

I stand by everything I am doing in regards to my childrens diet and upbringing. They have never had any issues with raw meat. They get their regular well baby check ups and are seen by a pediatrician at a government health care center, where they have perfect scores on health and developmental milestones. They have never had to be given drugs and never been vaccinated.

My wife supports me and knows what we are doing is right, although she is more fearful of repercussions and reprimands from authorities and ignorant family members regarding raw meat. I do have the added benefit of living in a commonwealth state where the kangaroo social service courts are so overrun with real issues of neglect, that they dont have the resources to persecute people over hearsay.

What really gave me confidence, was seeing how naturally my younger ones took to eating raw meat. My two year old would grab my left over ribs and began eating them without any encouragement. Those little teeth are perfect for picking bones clean of meat. I also noticed how much they liked bone marrow from the first taste and when I had an empty bone laying around they would pretend to scrap out marrow with a butter knife. It just seemed so natural and fitting for them to eat raw animal foods.

Thats a lamb spine she is chewing on, I think part of the neck. My butcher gave me some leftover bones and I was picking the meat off of it that night, and she was watching and would keep asking me for some , she would smile and say" Bone" with a southern drawl. She picked off quite a bit of meat and was happily picking at it for about half an hour. It seems natural to me to just had over bits of left over bones to the kids, I kind of have a feeling that the paleo kids would of spent time picking through the discarded remains of the adults leftovers for bits of meat. My other little one is at the stage where she is getting front teeth so I give her some left over raw chicken legs with a little left on it and she will carry it around and finish of the remaining bits of meat.

My son is more reluctant to eat raw meats, but he will eat most things rare, and he will eat an entire lamb kebab in one sitting. Just recently I have even gotten him to eat raw eggs. There was a Charley brown cartoon where he saw them making egg soup. So when I had made some mushroom soup with melted bone marrow in it and he asked me to put some eggs in it, well it was cooled off below cooking temp and I mixed in some raw eggs and he ate it. I always load up what ever I feed him with either pasture butter, or home rendered lamb fat.

My recipes are not totally raw but imagine the brain building potential of mushrooms, cream, butter, lamb fat, and raw egg mixed into a single bowl. The great thing is that its easy to make this Weston price/semi paleo concoction and dish it out to all three of my little ones.