Too Many Pronouncements, Too Little Thought and Effort

[PaleoPhil]

Continued from http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79287/#msg79287

It may be fruitless, but I'm pleading with folks to please do less of making absolutist pronouncements as though they were all-knowing gods and instead put more thought and effort into their posts, especially in supplying specific evidence to support and explain their views. There are many types of evidence one could present, not just books and articles, but also years of personal experience, well-designed self-experiments, logical arguments backed by scientific knowledge, real-world observations of others, image/video documentation, and so on, but I'm not seeing a lot of it. It seems like there's a tendency for folks to act as if they are more interested in arguing than in learning and sharing and putting effort into their posts. Satya has done a good job at the Dirty Carnivore forum of redirecting the energy away from the mindless arguing and more into thoughtful, well-supported posts and I'd like to ask if folks could consider the same for this forum. I've seen it work, so it is possible.

Macronutrient ratios play indeed a fundamental important role in many medical conditions, for example fungal overgrowth, epilepsy, ADHD etc.

Where did I deny that? Don't expect sweet comments from me if you accuse me of making straw man arguments that I never did. This isn't relevant to what I actually wrote. I was talking about the wars on the Internet and via books and other media over low carb vs. high carb and low fat vs. high fat. I'm bored of the endless macronutrient wars and people that pronounce that "it's all about carbs" or "fat" or opinions to that effect or proclaim something like that the whole human race absolutely would do better on a low carb or low fat diet.

And even if I speculate about the diet of our ancestors 10k+ years ago, whats wrong with speculating? It's part of a thinking process.

Again, I didn't argue for that straw man that no one should ever speculate. I just pleaded for less speculative pronouncements and more learning and deeper and more skeptical thinking--especially when the speculation is used as the foundation for arguments. There's too much in this forum and the Internet in general of throwing out absolutist proclamations based on shoot-from-the-hip speculations pronounced as though they were dictates from heaven. I'm all for speculation when it's used as the starting point for thought and discussion, not as the conclusion.

Please realize that your speculations about word combinations like "must have" are of no use for anyone.

Please realize that you don't speak for everyone, unless you're claiming to be God or a Borg who has access to everyone's minds or a dictator who can kill any of us who disagree. Besides, it's not a speculation to point out that stating that something "must have" been absolutely so without providing evidence is asking the readers to accept an absolute assumption without evidence. It's a simple recognition of the logical fallacy called begging the question.

Have you learned anything from any hunter gatherer group? Or have you just read some nice books and articles like nearly everyone else here?

Are you now at least acknowledging that it's not true that we can learn "absolutely nothing" from HGs, but instead may be able to learn something by means other than books or articles? What if anything do you accept as useful sources of information on hunter gatherer groups (living as a HG, living among HGs, direct communication with HGs, videos of HGs, writings by HGs, observers reporting on HGs, field studies, lab studies, ...)?

Many of todays hunter gatherers are in a very poor shape and show detrimental habits like smoking and drinking alcohol.

I can't believe you're using the same style of proclamations without evidence, which I just decried, in your points to me, and you're not making it very clear who or what you're referring to or how it relates to what I wrote. If you're expecting me to be convinced by the methods I took issue with, that is puzzling.

This is a good example of where it would help for you to put in a little more effort and provide specific examples to not only support what you're saying, but to explain it. Which hunter gatherers are you talking about? Are you talking about traditional pipe smoking and home-fermented alcoholic beverages or store-bought modern versions? Are you saying that the HGs are in very poor shape because of their traditional foods and lifestyles or modern influences? Who do you believe have higher rates of chronic diseases (aka the diseases of civilization), the hunter-gatherer peoples that have maintained more of their traditional diet and lifestyle or those which have adopted more modern practices?

Are you seriously trying to re-animate Tyler's dead straw man argument in which he basically complained about people advocating mindless HG re-enactment that assumes without evidence that 100% of what HGs do is healthy, which I have actually argued against doing, not for? I don't recall anyone arguing recently in this thread for that inanity. As I pointed out, my signature and icon caption, which I think have been there for months now, show I don't believe that nonsense.

Regarding healthy diets for human beings there is not really SO much to learn, IMO. It's more about unlearning. The message is simple: Just eat all parts of HEALTHY animals (raw) and some raw plant food as desired. That's all.

Yet more of the same revelatory pronouncements. How can I make it plain to you that I'm not convinced of anything just because you say it's so and I'm much more interested in your actual experience, experiments and thorough research than in opinions that don't appear to have had much thought or effort put into them? Are you God or a prophet with a direct link to his mind? If not, I require more evidence than your say-so.

And of course, there are many other factors beside macronutrient ratios. Nobody denies this, PP.

Then we are in agreement on that, but my point was that there is too much emphasis on macronutrient ratios when it comes to diets for the general population and not enough on the bigger picture. I was not implying the ridiculous notion that all of the science and medicine that in any way touches on macronutrients must be discarded or ignored. Nobody that I know of has argued for that.

---*---

By the way, when I wrote this:

Some people have been making a lot of guesses and assumptions, which is typical on the Internet. Instead of doing that, why not read all you can about the actual hunter gatherer, pastoral and horticultural peoples you've been making guesses about and learn what you can? It's much more interesting and rewarding than pure speculation. Why not do as Stephen Covey advised and seek first to understand, then to be understood? http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79137/#msg79137

I meant Stone Age hunter gatherers too, not just those that were observed in recent centuries, and it was a request, not a demand, but I'm hoping that people will seriously consider it and in the constructive way in which it was intended.

[PaleoPhil]

I already pointed out how the lack of megafauna in post-Neolithic times makes any comparison between Palaeo HGs and modern HGs ridiculous. .... In short, it is safe to assume that the differences between tribes must be vast if they are separated by tens of thousands of years in time. Only logical.

So is your answer to my question yes, Lowenherz's statement was right that we can learn absolutely nothing at all from hunter gatherer groups (and would you say that even for HGs observed directly by you in person)? Do you think that Lowenherz is a better source of information on diet or lifestyle than any information about or from HGs?

Here's his original quote, so folks will know what I'm referring to:

We are talking about the Paleolithic era here. No books have been written at that time. What can we learn from actual hunter gatherer groups, Phil? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Most of them smoke and drink alcohol etc.

Löwenherz
http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79233/#msg79233

[TylerDurden]

There's a certain hypocrisy in you accusing others of absolutism, when that is clearly what you espouse. Your signature is just a diversion, not genuine.

The fact is that we all have differing viewpoints on everything , whether diet or anything else. Just as some people are entitled to stick solely to one middle-of-the-road idea, so are others entitled to take the view of just one end of the relevant spectrum of opinion, whether formed from one's own personal dietary experiences, or the realisation, backed up by scientific data,  that much "data" related by WP et al about  modern hunter-gatherers is seriously flawed or simply not relevant to HGs from tens of thousands of years before etc.

More to the point, we are a raw, (early)palaeolithic diet community, not a neolithic one, so we should NOT be emulating modern HGs with their grains, cooking or whatever.

[PaleoPhil]

There's a certain hypocrisy in you accusing others of absolutism, when that is clearly what you espouse. Your signature is just a diversion, not genuine.

I renounce absolutism and any perceptions of any alleged past absolutism by me was not intended as such. If you have any examples give them so I have the opportunity to explain or correct them, otherwise give me a break. Your claims that my signature is a diversion are themselves a diversion based on falsehood. I believe what's in my signature and caption text and have since before I joined this forum. To say otherwise without evidence amounts to a childish argument of "liar, liar, pants on fire." I wouldn't have posted the signature text if I didn't believe it. Your attempts to twist and recast my words into your straw man arguments are not my actual views and you cannot read my mind. If my words ever give you the impression that they are conveying a message contrary to what's in my signature, then please ask me to explain it rather than rephrasing them in the worst possible light and jumping to extreme conclusions.

William and SuperInfinity were the biggest and most consistent exemplars of your "noble savage" pet peeve that I can recall. Who else do you see having pushed what you call "noble savage" notions other than them (or mistakenly including me with that lot) and perhaps Weston Price? When they pushed utopian notions along the lines of promoting "noble savages" (such as William's godlike cave man notions and extreme creationist views or SuperInfinity's notions about ancient utopian tropical rain forest dwellers) who should be blindly emulated with little or no credible evidence to back them beyond insane, mystical rantings or a handful of quoted rants from dubious vegan websites, I disagreed with them, I didn't chime in. I also disagree with Weston Price's promotion of whole-grain rye bread eating because the Swiss did it years ago, though at least he observed them and saw they were doing well, which was more evidence than William or SuperInfinity tended to provide, but insufficient to give a clean bill of health to rye bread, and I'm also skeptical that raw dairy is as healthy and essential as Price claimed, though I've seen enough corresponding claims of benefit from folks here and elsewhere that I won't argue that it can't possibly benefit anyone at all.

The fact is that we all have differing viewpoints on everything , whether diet or anything else.

Yes, everyone has viewpoints and everyone can also put a little effort behind those views if they so choose. As stated above, I'm just making a request, not a demand.

whether formed from one's own personal dietary experiences, or the realisation, backed up by scientific data, ....

Personal dietary experiences and scientific data are a couple of the things that I asked people to provide. If they do more of that instead of just dictating what the truth "must have" been or what others should do, I would be pleased. What I was decrying was the lack of evidence, not calling for just one type of evidence. Any plausible evidence at all would be a welcome change from evidence-less absolutistic pronouncements made as if from heaven.

More to the point, we are a raw, (early)palaeolithic diet community, not a neolithic one, so we should NOT be emulating modern HGs with their grains, cooking or whatever.

Again, that's a straw man argument I didn't make. You know full well that I don't eat grains, so this has the appearance of another diversion on your part. All I did was ask people to do a little more investigating and to provide more support for their opinions. I'd like to ASK (not demand) if there could be less of "must have," "must be," and more of the "my experience is," "the evidence is" and so on. I'm not telling anyone to blindly emulate anyone. If you thought that then you completely misunderstood me and it would explain why your characterizations of my views have been so far off from the truth.

I'm getting the sense, Tyler, that any mention of recent hunter gatherers by anyone is going to set off your alarm bells, so I'll try to be cognizant of that when posting, but I do hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt that I don't intend for my words to be taken as directives for people to blindly emulate 100% any particular hunter gatherer group without taking any other factors into consideration. My mention of one group or individual or experience or data point doesn't mean that I intend for people to disregard everything else.

You seem to have some of the strongest antipathy toward non-Stone-Age HG evidence I've encountered, even stronger than most critics of raw and Paleo diets. What inspired this in you? Was it that Beyondveg site or maybe the other guy that was one of the early founder-members of this site who went on to form another website, or what? I understand your savage attacks on gurus are meant to discourage newbs from blindly following them, so could your antipathy to research on the HG's of recent centuries be partly due to a desire to discourage similar blind devotion to a particular HG group, like the Inuit, say? If so, I can certainly understand and agree with you on that, although I wouldn't take it so far as to denounce everything on HGs without even investigating it first. Do you strongly prefer abstract ideas to real-world leaders and examples, perhaps because ideas are more trustworthy than leaders and examples?

[TylerDurden]

The passive-aggressive stance in the above post  and the sheer length quite frankly bore me. All I  will state is that, long before encountering this diet, I came across the Noble Savage theory, which purported to show that all primitive tribes were somehow more perfect/saintly than more settled peoples, and there were obvious flaws in the notion, so I get particularly annoyed with WP, and certain village idiots like Jared Diamond among others, these days. Not that I claim that all settled peoples are "better", merely that neither type can claim "perfection" re morality.

[billy4184]

Why don't you guys go for a hike in the bush and see what there is to eat?

I'd like to point out that life expectancy figures don't necessarily represent how long someone will live on their diet, but more often reflect the lack of medical care. If you break a leg out in the bush it can be pretty deadly, and cut the average life expectancy a lot.

[Löwenherz]

Continued from http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/off-topic/what-are-you-eating-right-now/msg79287/#msg79287

It may be fruitless, but I'm pleading with folks to please do less of making absolutist pronouncements ...
...

+ endless blah-blah.

LOL!

PP,

I'm sorry but I'm NOT your personal therapist.

Eat a big green salad to calm your nerves and relax. This is not World War III. We are just talking about raw foods.

Löwenherz

[TylerDurden]

The amount of wildlife and plants, nowadays, is a small reflection of the amounts found a few hundred years ago in the wild, and a truly tiny reflection of the huge amount of wild game and plant food found in Palaeolithic times. So virtually everyone would starve, these days, if stuck in the New Forest, in the UK, for example.

Billy is right re the life-expectancy, though. People did die younger mainly because of lack of medical care, during the Palaeolithic era. That said, diet does also play a role since switching to Neolithic foods caused severe health-problems, as, I'm sure, did cooked foods when introduced c. 250,000 years ago, given the damage caused by heat-created toxins.

[billy4184]

The amount of wildlife and plants, nowadays, is a small reflection of the amounts found a few hundred years ago in the wild, and a truly tiny reflection of the huge amount of wild game and plant food found in Palaeolithic times. So virtually everyone would starve, these days, if stuck in the New Forest, in the UK, for example.

That's very true. 

[PaleoPhil]

I already pointed out how the lack of megafauna in post-Neolithic times makes any comparison between Palaeo HGs and modern HGs ridiculous. .... In short, it is safe to assume that the differences between tribes must be vast if they are separated by tens of thousands of years in time. Only logical.

PP: So is your answer to my question yes, that we can learn absolutely nothing at all from hunter gatherer groups observed in recent centuries (not even those observed directly)?

...so we should NOT be emulating modern HGs with their grains, cooking or whatever.

I didn't mention grains or cooking (yet another of the countless straw men), but since getting answers out of you is like pulling teeth, I'll take that as a yes unless you say otherwise. It would partly explain why you so often fail to support your opinions on raw and Paleo diet and lifestyle well with evidence and why you emphasize raw so much more than Paleo (and yes, I know you reported that raw makes more of a difference in your health than Paleo, which I acknowledged with "partly") and rarely discuss hunter gatherers despite eating what the forum description states is a "hunter gatherer" diet.

No one was alive during the Stone Age, so we can't know exactly what Stone Age hunter gatherers ate, the hunter gatherers whose diets we can get the best grasp of are observed living hunter gatherers (with recent remains that are better-preserved than Stone-Age remains being in-between), which is why all the leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition examine the evidence in that area. It would be negligent for them to completely disregard that evidence and only focus on the limited Stone Age evidence. Of course, it would also be negligent to only focus only on the living HG evidence. All the relevant evidence should be examined (including also randomized trials, observational studies, scientific knowledge, and so on), rather than cherry pick what suits us.

All I  will state is that, long before encountering this diet, I came across the Noble Savage theory, which purported to show that all primitive tribes were somehow more perfect/saintly than more settled peoples, and there were obvious flaws in the notion, so I get particularly annoyed with WP, and certain village idiots like Jared Diamond among others, these days.

Thanks for that grudging tidbit of explanation amidst the usual childish vitriol. At least we're getting somewhere finally. I can see how that would color your perceptions. Would you mind sharing the title or author of what it was that you read? If you told me before, I don't remember it.

Not that I claim that all settled peoples are "better", merely that neither type can claim "perfection" re morality.

I agree with you there.


Lowenherz, I'll take your nonanswer to mean you've given up trying to ascribe to me the nonsense about not recognizing any role for macronutrients at all, but that you'll ignore my request and continue to make absolutist pronouncements in little soundbite-like empathy-challenged posts, providing little or no supportive evidence, putting little effort into understanding what other members mean, and employing straw men and baiting insults with those who disagree with you, which is your choice, and it seems that Tyler will also continue in the same vein. It reminds me more of political debate than thoughtful discussion. And no doubt you and Tyler will follow this up with more insults, which just wastes everyone's time.

While I'd like to see Tyler and Lowenherz try to put a little more expansive effort into their posts, it is true that mine tend to go overboard in the other extreme, which is a valid complaint unlike the other useless insults. I thought I had already apologized for that in the past, but I discovered that was at another forum. It's good to be reminded about it since attention spans tend to be more limited in electronic communications than older forms. I'm not perfect, so I'm not asking for perfection from anyone else, just a modicum of honest effort and good will would be nice.

[Löwenherz]

While I'd like to see Tyler and Lowenherz try to put a little more expansive effort into their posts...

PP,
some of your posts sound very depressive or frustrated.

I'm sure that we both have a lot of things in common! So let us stop quarreling about irrelevant and trivial matters. Remember that we are a very small raw paleo community, just a few people out of 7 billion. Don't take every single word deadly serious. My response that we can learn "absolutely nothing" from current-day hunter gatherer groups could have been as slight overreaction. Maybe I have eaten too much red meat that day, which makes me a bit impulsively sometimes. But are there really SO many important things to learn from HGs nowadays? As Tyler pointed out they all cook their food, at least partly. As far as I know there is NO single 100% raw living HG group on this planet today. This is a RAW paleo forum and from my own experience I have no doubt that cooked food has detrimental effects on my body, especially cooked animal food. Believe me, I have been extremely skeptic about a 100% raw diet for many years until I collected enough evidences to be really sure. Tyler knows my endless thoughts about possible advantages of cooked animal fats etc, years ago. My comments or recommendations in this forum, even if they may sound sometimes a little bit harsh to you, are always based on my own experiences, for example about long-term effects of high fruit consumption. Yes, we can learn something from actual hunter gatherers. How to build traps, where to find wild honey, how to identify wild edible plants or whatever. But in our 2011 raw paleo lifestyle these things are relatively irrelevant, IMO, as most of us live in industrial regions where very little wildlife is left.

Please don't make things too complicated..

Best wishes

Löwenherz

[TylerDurden]

Precisely, there are vast differences between what modern HGs do and what palaeo HGs did, prior to the advent of fire.  While some info from post-fire palaeo HGs might be useful, modern HGs have too many differences to be useful for us given that many of us have issues with raw dairy or fermented grains, tubers etc.. Plus, many people foolishly make false assumptions about the supposed "perfect" health of modern HGs, as a result of mainly focusing on such,  which are not remotely valid.

[HIT_it_RAW]

Löwenherz, Tyler Sure todays hg's are different and probably not as healthy as those that still eat raw but does that really mean we can't learn much from them. Well maybe not directly but I found weston price's book fascinating and learned a lot from it.

[Dorothy]

I started studying HGs before they were all so corrupted and learned a great deal. Today, we would have to study those that had studied them back before their communities were destroyed. So little data really - but what there is can change one's view of everything. It did me. The hunter-gather lifestyle was more than just food. And much of the food choices, gathering/hunting and prep were pertinent.

[PaleoPhil]

Sorry about the length of this post, but there are some good tidbits to respond to and ask follow ups on.

PP,
some of your posts sound very depressive or frustrated.

Frustrated that the forum that has the most info on my way of eating and living could easily be better than it is (in part because I'm a member at another one where it is and I see the contrast--but the info there is not generally as useful to me, because their way of eating and living is more different from mine than at this forum). But that's enough about frustration, is it really worth your time and energy pondering what my mental state might be? Just enjoy the show. It's actually a bit entertaining wondering what archaic insult Tyler is going to next use for me or some other member (and I actually like archaic words, which almost makes the time wasted worth it ). I put out a request and I figured it would generate some backlash, but I figured it was overdo and I can't help improve something if I don't speak up. It may not work at all, but maybe it was worth a shot.

But are there really SO many important things to learn from HGs nowadays?

We'll never know if we don't even inquire and just assume that we can't learn anything, right?

As Tyler pointed out they all cook their food, at least partly.

And that's supposed to mean we can't learn anything? I'm aware of Tyler's views on cooking, which compared to mine seem somewhat extreme to me (it's all relative, I suppose), and I think you've hit one of the major nails on the head regarding why talk of HGs seems to bug him at times, which I'll try to be cognizant of (though I tend to be forgetful  ). My own views on that are closer to Lex Rooker's, and I actually put a bit more importance on rawness than Lex, just based on my own experience (which isn't necessarily going to be the same for others). Rawness is beneficial, sure, but it's not so uber important that we can learn nothing from someone who cooks some of their food. I'm no genius like Tyler, but to assume that we couldn't learn anything from people who cook would seem rather dogmatic to me. Besides, not even everyone here is 100% raw, so restricting our information sources to only those who are is extremely limiting.

My comments or recommendations in this forum, even if they may sound sometimes a little bit harsh to you, are always based on my own experiences, for example about long-term effects of high fruit consumption.

I'd be more interested in learning more about your personal experiences than your opinions of what others should eat based upon those experiences. If your experiences are impressive enough, they'll speak volumes and you won't need to proclaim what the best approach is because some folks will be inspired to try it out themselves. Like, just when I was considering tamping down or giving up on honey, Brady shared an amazing honey success story, so I decided to keep the experiment going. In other words, actions speak louder than words and teaching by example tends to work better than by pronouncements or dogma. Call me depressed or crazy or whatever you want, but I'd be more impressed if you could write more about improvements in your symptoms or health stats or point to some group of people who are eating similar to how you are and faring well than I would be by claims that things "must have" been a certain way with no evidence given other than someone's say so.

Yes, we can learn something from actual hunter gatherers. How to build traps, where to find wild honey, how to identify wild edible plants or whatever.

Now you're talking, thanks for thinking about it and not just dismissing it. And we can even learn things from people eating SAD diets, if nothing other than what NOT to do, right? To me asking questions and learning and experiencing new things is fun, but I'm kind of kooky that way.

But in our 2011 raw paleo lifestyle these things are relatively irrelevant, IMO, as most of us live in industrial regions where very little wildlife is left.

I think if you really look into it, you'll find more things you can learn than the ones you listed.

Please don't make things too complicated..

Too late, nature was already infinitely complex long before I came along, sorry.

Precisely, there are vast differences between what modern HGs do and what palaeo HGs did, prior to the advent of fire.  While some info from post-fire palaeo HGs might be useful, modern HGs have too many differences to be useful for us given that many of us have issues with raw dairy or fermented grains, tubers etc.. Plus, many people foolishly make false assumptions about the supposed "perfect" health of modern HGs, as a result of mainly focusing on such,  which are not remotely valid.

I should have guessed that the rawness factor would be a major reason, maybe the prime one, that you would use to dismiss recent HG evidence and focus almost exclusively on Stone Agers, along with the Noble Savage thing and the distaste for Weston Price. It doesn't tend to occur to me to think in such absolutist terms as largely dismissing the living HG evidence just because they cook. It's adding up for me now, thanks. This thread is becoming the sort of exchange of interesting info I was hoping for. I'm still curious what writing had such an impact on you re: "Noble Savages."

Dorothy, were there any particular HGs that stood out for you?

[TylerDurden]

As usual, you are making false insinuations. The issue of cooking isn't the only one. I already pointed out how large, pleistocene animals were hunted as game in palaeo times, unlike in post-neolithic eras. Then there's the fact that modern HGs have often been using advanced technology. Classic examples include Inuit using rifles to kill whales etc.  Similiarly, until c. 60,000 years ago, palaeo HGs didn't even use traps too effectively or use bows and arrows, according to reports, so had to use other methods to kill their prey, and so on.

[KD]

Basically I think alot of this forums strengths become its weakness. Intelligent skepticism to 'snake oil' becomes cynicism towards any kind of healing tools. This applies to an increasing lack of talk on minuate of diteary factors, or even dismissal of discussions of various health crisis brought on by healthy eating, lack of discussion about other factors than diet, and most importantly a lack of tipping ones hat to people actually finding results with anything that diverges from some robotic: less poisons in a diet = the best regardless of what that 'diet' contains or what lifestyle factors it ignores or what specific components one needs for their health situation. 
 
Most people that seemed to have any real knowledge about basic functioning of the human body and how it processes fats, proteins, sugars, starches etc.. don't seem to post very much anymore and what you are left is largely philosophical bullshitting defending concepts on paper that SO rarely (statistically) see the light of day as noticeable and sustainable success.  At such a rate that most would admit its oddly weird or confusing rather than expected when people actually do suceed at some marginal level employing them - despite the fact that the data supporting it seems so conclusivly correct.

Why people are so cynical and skeptical of the medical establishment and then accept information by people with no real known record of creating health -matching nevermind a HG but some regular 21st century joe/sue- or have experience cureing a specific disease, is what is strange to me. I guess some people can't help but fall for the same old natural hygiene gag and then suddenly people are granted as having all the answers because of some picture they can paint about millions of years ago which now also for some reason also has all the soultions to deal with reversing some super complex problems. The body knows!?
 
On another forum I'm on you have to actually submit videos attesting to your abilities and knowledge before being verified as someone who actually has information worth giving to other people. Not totally applicable to a raw health forum but there seems to be 0 constraints here from someone being able to be laid up in a deathbed, talking about that anyone that steams a carrot is automatically less healthy. Showing all the known cooked food toxins in that carrot with no need to show how their health decisions have trumped everyone else on plant earth who likely does far worse crap.
 
Based on some of these totally bizzaro-world conversations about HGs, I'm pretty confident at this point if aliens came down to earth they would probably assume 'cooked food toxins' were some kind of miracle components that kept people happy, sane, withstanding the elements and at a normal to healthy bodyweight and musculature. "raw food health" would translate more like divine wishes or rants within an asylum from a white person about being Michael Jackson.

sorry, little drunk.

[TylerDurden]

Kindly keep such anti-raw rants to the hot topics forum, in future, KD.

Besides, all this guff attacking heat-created toxins is pointless:- not only do we have plentiful anecdotal evidence from many of this forum's members on how cooked foods harmed their health due to toxins therein, but there is now multiple scientific data on the negative health-effect of these cooked food toxins. So, pretending that these toxins are harmless is just foolish.

[billy4184]

Based on some of these totally bizzaro-world conversations about HGs, I'm pretty confident at this point if aliens came down to earth they would probably assume 'cooked food toxins' were some kind of miracle components that kept people happy, sane, withstanding the elements and at a normal to healthy bodyweight and musculature. "raw food health" would translate more like divine wishes or rants within an asylum from a white person about being Michael Jackson.

lol
Some people on this forum definitely can't use one word when ten will do

[PaleoPhil]

The issue of cooking isn't the only one. I already pointed out how large, pleistocene animals were hunted as game in palaeo times, unlike in post-neolithic eras.

Right, I didn't say that you said that cooking is the only issue. Is it an important one? Do you remember what it was you read?

[Löwenherz]

PP,

again, you are making things way too complicated. And please remember: This IS a RAW paleo forum. So don't complain about the fact that Tyler (like me) is 100% convinced that raw food is better than cooked food. There are hundreds of low carb forums in the web for cooking people. Why should we talk about cooked food in a RAW paleo forum? As one of VERY FEW non vegan sites THIS forum is fully dedicated to RAW diets, no matter if current-day HG groups cook their food or not. If you want to eat cooked food, just eat cooked food, but don't complain that I and other members here don't eat cooked food and that I and other members here are not interested in discussions about cooked food.

I have written a lot of posts about my own experiences with cooked food, dairy, grains, starches and high fruit consumption. My 100% raw diet is simple: I eat the best animal foods I can get plus small amounts of raw plant food. That's all, PP. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you have special questions, just ask me and I will answer.

You are constantly criticising everything and everybody here. I suggest to you that you instead explain us your problems. Otherwise nobody can help you.

Löwenherz

[Dorothy]

Dorothy, were there any particular HGs that stood out for you?

Back in the early 80's I took a class in anthropology with a professor that had lived with and studied the K'ung bushmen. She brought back videos and talked about their lifestyle and about their healing practices. I found how they lived to be fascinating. The circular housing arrangements, the complete lack of any crime or harm they did to one another to speak of, how they spent such a minuscule part of their day getting food and spent most of their time enjoying each other's company in good-natured laughter, singing and story-telling. She talked about how happy and balanced they generally were. You know how you can tell when a smile is real and goes all the way through a person - well - every single person in those videos smiled that way. In that class I started research into the shamanic practices of the Native Americans in the area and was accepted by and learned from a shaman who came from a long heritage of shaman ancestors. This was in the Pacific Northwest. He talked about the old ways and how they could be interpreted in our new world with me and taught our little group a little bit of what he knew. He was so balanced and happy too - like the K'ung - but not as much as the K'ung. I can't imagine anyone living in our modern world being THAT content. I interviewed the shaman for the class and he talked about how he was chosen and  how some shamans had food power - in which they would know how to heal with food. Different shamans had different powers. I learned the ancient healing dances and how to spirit-travel. The K'ung used dances too. The K'ung might not have been 100% raw, but they ate mostly raw. The real destruction was much more than their diet, their healthy social structure and lifestyle were destroyed.

Health and happiness and balance are multi-faceted. Any little bit that can be gleamed of how to live generally from these people is priceless in my opinion.

[KD]

Kindly keep such anti-raw rants to the hot topics forum, in future, KD.

Besides, all this guff attacking heat-created toxins is pointless:- not only do we have plentiful anecdotal evidence from many of this forum's members on how cooked foods harmed their health due to toxins therein, but there is now multiple scientific data on the negative health-effect of these cooked food toxins. So, pretending that these toxins are harmless is just foolish.

Thanks for the uncharacteristic minor lashing but it has nothing to do with pretending, or anti-raw. People can support the idea of raw and even all raw diets and recognize that certain aspects of diet and health are far more important than such in contrast to many ways to go about a raw diet wrong. That people do better when they focus on those things and that many people seem to love to critize others for things that do not matter often when they really have no leg to stand on but a bunch of theories. Knowing full well one's experience of something is negative and sharing that is another story, but even then has no way of knowing it translates to other people. Its a simple observation from like a decade of forum-ing: People have no shame in presenting ideas that they religiously belive in when they can't even hold up to what they are criticizing or even of course when its something one hasn't even implemented to any real extent.

If people want to promote how all one has to do is eat raw and their health will be way better than the average populace or HGs just hang out on a raw vegan site. You'll find plenty of people having plentiful experience knowing all the answers, guiding people away form meats, dairy, injesting clay, eating fat, the idea of eating specifc food to heal and any other number of things due to how they see nature. Just saying one can add animal foods corrects the problem of bringing it back into balance with how we would have eaten is to be one with this logic that is always going to be out of touch with how even total cooked food 'users' can increase their health. You'll even find people there saying they are speaking from their 10,20,30 years (alive and intact to some degree) experience finding ways to justify how lack of something harmful somehow makes up for not paying attention to things that matter.

[TylerDurden]

You're trying to defend cooked diets by stating that raw foodists are capable of making mistakes as to their particular raw diets. The big problem with this is that cooked-food-eaters have the potential to make FAR greater numbers of mistakes than raw foodists , for obvious reasons, since their cooked diets can go wrong in more numerous ways, given the manifold ways one can process/damage a food through cooking. Plus, there are fraudulent, cooked food gurus just as there are fraudulent, raw foodist gurus. Either way, your claims are bunk.

[KD]

Its clearly problems that arise out from geting away from how HGs (and even less healthy cooked fooders) eat or not compensating for necessary added tools for a modern person as they stir up old problems - that you seem to have a total myopia around. Do you really suspect that everyone that has ever has sucess with a  raw diet for months, years, or decades goes off that diet because of desires to eat cooked foods? obviously when altering a whole way of eating many people are left with a diet that is no longer workable and thus take 'refuge' with other (likely cooked food) approaches . All you can talk is of theory and would never argue that people were necessarily healthier because they abstained from cooked foods when taking real life examples. You are seeing 'wrong' or 'right' merely like people are a tube with a food-absorption-systems instead of measurieng how people actually function in the real world. Eating various ways raw can cause more problems than other diets, its not an issue of which one is likely to yield even more. Particularly when you can have people criticizing one rawish approach because it contain cooked foods, when another totally raw (including animal food) one yields worse results.

Again I'm not interested in promoting cooked food as a solution. I'm suggesting the forum as others would be better, geared more to helping people work through these problems that come up on a raw diet and how to tweak their diet to get the most sucess rather than have a raw rah party about how people with cooked foods must be doing worse even when they have more other pieces of the puzzle, which is the farse.

Theres no way to argue this with you. As usuall I can only get out what I would think would seem totally reasonable as realistically pointing to which things yield sucess.