Questions about Primal Diet

[CarnivorousApe]

Hi guys,

I finished reading We Want To Live couple of weeks ago. It mostly makes sense and descriptions of healing are really amazing (does anyone know if there are medical records available to prove them?)

However a couple of things seemed strange to me, maybe someone can provide more information (sorry if some of them were discussed before)

These recommendations from AV contradict my understanding of environment that human body evolved in:

1. No water drinking
2. No salt

Water and salt are readily available in nature, being consumed by animals, why would they be harmful to the humans?

3. Dairy products consumption

No animal drinks milk past childhood and from other species.

4. Constant honey consumption

Honey is not readily available in nature at all, it is rare, very seasonal and not easily accessible.

5. Blending

I suspect that ancient diet was very mono oriented, it took a lot of time to get from one food source to another, so blending does not make sense to me in that context and was technically impossible.

6. Vegetable juices (no fiber)

It is known that monkeys chew foliage for juice and spit it out afterwards. But they still consume large amount of solid plant matter, there are plenty of soft vegetables that don't make sense to spit out at all, fiber might be useful for a number of reasons - provide movement of food mass through digestive track and provide food for intestine flora.

7. No Fasting

There are no organic supermarkets in the wilderness so animals have to fast for long periods between seasons of abundance. I believe that human body used such periods for repair and detox.


For me personally it is harder to justify raw vs cooked then the points above, at least people used to cook for a long time, while they did things that AV recommends only during neolithic times.

[TylerDurden]

The above points have already been raised before on this forum many times. The only thing re the above that I object to is the issue of salt. Actually, salt-intake was nonexistent in palaeo times as salt-mines are needed, and those require a settled civilisation.

[HIT_it_RAW]

The above points have already been raised before on this forum many times. The only thing re the above that I object to is the issue of salt. Actually, salt-intake was nonexistent in palaeo times as salt-mines are needed, and those require a settled civilisation.

except at the coast where salt deposits are readily available

[TylerDurden]

except at the coast where salt deposits are readily available

Yes, but only small numbers of humans were on the coast. Most appear to have followed migrating herds further inland. Whatever the case, salt is unnecessary when there are far healthier natural salts in meat/blood etc. already.

[HIT_it_RAW]

Whatever the case, salt is unnecessary when there are far healthier natural salts in meat/blood etc. already.

Yes I fully agree. I never eat salt.

[cherimoya_kid]

Aajonus recommends honey and dairy because those are foods that people addicted to cooked foods can enjoy easily, as replacements for sweet/fatty junk food.

He recommends to avoid fasting, and also recommends to eat a lot of food, because he wants people to avoid getting so hungry that their cravings get too strong, which could cause them to backslide into eating cooked junk.

He recommends blending because most people don't chew well, and often have digestion problems.

He also recommends dairy because it can be a good transition food, from SAD food to raw paleo foods.  Dairy is not ideal for many people, even when fermented, raw and grassfed, but it's better than McDonald's cheeseburgers.

[achillezzz]

Anybody even noticed that primal diet = raw version ray peat?

[KD]

well, it could -diet wise- but theres quite a bit of differences in theory, particulary in the theories of disease and what are the greatest contributing factors.

they are totally similar in the ways that everyone else ^ completely misses the point. The answers being to all, that all that shit just works better. So if you have health issues (or just don't care to waste your time) you might want to go with things that work than what people with no preexisting health probems and a pristine environment could do to live more or less ok.

The peat stuff will give a sense the actual reasons perhaps AV would recommend what he does particularly with dairy. This is because healthy diets are high metabolism diets, and these require minerals like crazy. These arn't as present in modern 'paleo' diets, particularly those that don't employ bones and stocks (or tons of grains/veg which are problematic) and other things people in nature actually ate for those minerals. Also it would 'confirm' that people repairing shit need tons of constant proteins, minerals, and energy, and need fasting (metabolic ruin) and solvents (industrial mineral-poor water) like a hole in the head. Of course they disagree on salt, which is kind of a huge difference. Except when someone truly gets all their liquids from milk and juices and includes other sodium-veg/fruits, they would probably need salts.

[Lynnzard]

Sea salt in particular is also supportive and helpful for healing adrenal fatigue. I've added small quantities of it to my diet and have noticed a difference in how I feel.

[HIT_it_RAW]

Except when someone truly gets all their liquids from milk and juices and includes other sodium-veg/fruits, they would probably need salts.

Not true. I drink plenty of plain water along with raw milk kefir and some juices(less and less these days) never felt the need the supplement with salt. I still have high quality celtic sea salt and pink himalayan salt from before i started rpd. They used to help me quite a bit. since going raw i don't need them anymore. Recently i experimented with sole (saturated himalaya salt solution) taking half a teaspoon in a large glass of water before breakfast. I got headaches from it so discontinued that practice. In fact i noticed AV being right about the connection between salt and headaches. whenever i eat out in restaurants i get headaches afterward due to the huge amounts of salt they put on everything.

[CarnivorousApe]

Yes, but only small numbers of humans were on the coast. Most appear to have followed migrating herds further inland. Whatever the case, salt is unnecessary when there are far healthier natural salts in meat/blood etc. already.

There are salt lakes inland, mineral springs. Plus animals eat mineralized clay (AV actually recommends this, go figure) I heard that chimpanzees eat dirt and gorillas eat their own faeces to restore minerals balance. Salt seems like a better alternative Elephants migrate to salt deposits regularly.

But you are right, animals that need mineral supplements are mostly herbivorous. Probably meat diet fixes that, but do you really think that paleo diet was all-meat all year round?

[CarnivorousApe]

Aajonus recommends honey and dairy because those are foods that people addicted to cooked foods can enjoy easily, as replacements for sweet/fatty junk food.

So his diet is transitional? I believe that honey is great as seasonal treat and for healing purposes but I really doubt it is good for constant consumption.

He recommends to avoid fasting, and also recommends to eat a lot of food, because he wants people to avoid getting so hungry that their cravings get too strong, which could cause them to backslide into eating cooked junk.

Hm, why people should backslide into eating _cooked_ food when they are hungry? They might as well overeat raw food after fasting which seems natural to me. I believe that people in paleo times had to fast pretty often (like all animals in wilderness), so fasting should be incorporated in our genes as a time for body cleanup. AV himself was not happy about his fasting because he was drinking his own urine and was vegetarian at the time, big surprise.

He recommends blending because most people don't chew well, and often have digestion problems.

This might be a good option for very sick people, but seems like a bad habit long term.

He also recommends dairy because it can be a good transition food, from SAD food to raw paleo foods.  Dairy is not ideal for many people, even when fermented, raw and grassfed, but it's better than McDonald's cheeseburgers.

Thanks cherimoya_kid , great explanation. But this seems rather transitional to me. For people who start to switch to raw paleo style this is perfect. (I myself find that fermented milk greatly helps my digestion while fresh milk gives me problems right away) I didn't find AV claims that his diet is only transitional however, can you comment on this?

[KD]

As for transitional diet, its designed to simply be a better diet, correct or not. For some, things of course might be wrong or not applicable particularly since not everyone needs to do alot of complex stuff to be healthy. Also its not likely that one person understands this stuff completely accurately and will have their own bias. So what if some people can get by on any number of natural type things. Many people if they just starting following the food pyramid to  a T they would improve drastically, and that system couldn't be farther from the truth. So, like all diets, people have some relief seemingly from not-doing x, y and z and want to make a religion out of it. All of a sudden shit that noticeably works in the present or even for people for 1000's of years is just plain wrong.. hmm ok. Must be wrong...has to be. 'I ate milk once and got diarrhea and cavemen didn't have it', totally conclusive except for that thing how healthy thyroid means perfect production of lactase enzyme...

and with that and the 'can't improve on nature stuff' its less about the past and more about the examining the present results of present application. The ancetral swiss ate almost entirely mineral rich grains and dairy with next to no meat or fruit. One doesn't need to recomend that as a healthy diet (at least for today) to acknolwedge that this was a solution for them in their time to live ok into their 100s with no cavities or medical intervention, and just maybe it has something to do with minerals. Even though you'll have people dispute that they were 'healthy', you can find tons of people today recomending perfect diets of our ancestry with shitty teeth and have rampant signs of poor health disguised as 'feeling fine'. Nevermind how even lower paleolithic skulls of thirty year old men had disease destroyed teeth.

Simply put, people find some or all of the stuff is unnecessary or were problematic for them.  Which even if someone believes in the stuff, is not super shocking as just shedding the neurotic elements about it is probably very benefical. Saying otherwise about transitional approaches or to swaying cravings must be missing Aajonus himself dropping lbs of dairy and honey every day still after 40 years. If the purists actually want to present their results or at least show their pics and so forth and how drastically better they are over AVs personal successes so be it. Or if they want to just explain how it wasn't working for them, maybe thats more appropriate than their own private hypothesis of why people do what they do.

[Rawr]

There are salt lakes inland, mineral springs. Plus animals eat mineralized clay (AV actually recommends this, go figure) I heard that chimpanzees eat dirt and gorillas eat their own faeces to restore minerals balance. Salt seems like a better alternative

Unfortunately, what most people call salt or "table salt" is basically 99+% "salt of sodium" - NaCl. Even sea salt has negligible amounts of other minerals. I suspect himalayan salts to be 90+% NaCl also. It can't even remotely be compared to what would I call "real salts"/"full-spectrum salts" with not only 1, but all 20+ minerals our body needs. However I doubt that such "full-spectrum salts" with optimal mineral ratios for human body exist in the nature.

Aajonus recommends honey and dairy because those are foods that people addicted to cooked foods can enjoy easily, as replacements for sweet/fatty junk food.

He recommends to avoid fasting, and also recommends to eat a lot of food, because he wants people to avoid getting so hungry that their cravings get too strong, which could cause them to backslide into eating cooked junk.

He recommends blending because most people don't chew well, and often have digestion problems.

He also recommends dairy because it can be a good transition food, from SAD food to raw paleo foods.  Dairy is not ideal for many people, even when fermented, raw and grassfed, but it's better than McDonald's cheeseburgers.

Cheri, how have you found out these reasons/explanations? I thought I've read/seen/heard pretty much everything from Aajonus that's available electronically and I haven't heard him talk about this so far.

[cherimoya_kid]

Look folks, I'm sure AV goes through times where he eats much less dairy and honey than other times.  All raw foodists go through cycles with specific foods.

And yes, I'm sure he's smart enough to know that raw honey is very problematic for many people, health-wise, even as it is very satisfying taste-wise. The same for raw dairy.  He's not stupid.  He's trying to get people who don't have enough willpower to eat perfectly to at least eat better, and to reduce their addictions to cooked food. 

I think the reason he doesn't advertise this fact is because many people either

1. can't handle so much complexity at once (eat THIS raw food, but not THAT one, etc.)

2. wouldn't even try the transitional honey/dairy version of the diet if they knew it was just transitional.  Some people are neurotically perfectionistic that way.

[KD]

Yeah its fun to make up theories. In my near decade now of "health-book" reading and raw forum time-wasting, I have probably read every possible theory on eating, fasting, and natural healing. In that I've yet to come across a single person who can explain to me why you would want to limit yourself to what 'heathy' people did in nature to fix problems that these people wouldn't have had. Or someone who believed that limit was necessary who had much of anything positive to show for it over others, other than still being able to anonymously type on the internet. Cuz yeah, as we know in the real world, you can repair anything by just taking away the things you think damage it.

Here is one more likely reason. Following his instincts and natural eating and limiting to fruits and meats didn't work for him or his clients. If you start from a wide range of options and have problems with a particular approach, one can always do a more strict/i.e. 'paleo' version, fasting, urinating on themselves or whatever. But this is only true if people accept that this is one of many options. If they are sold on some cookie cutter version that the human race operates by while 100% neglecting reality, this isn't good. This is particularly important for when people have real life or death problems, and not a bunch of self-diagnosed diseases and 'cures' that flood diet forums.. PD (and of course WAPF) also carry a similar myopia at times, just less so compared to things we have no conclusive idea about, like what our original diet is and which aspects are most important to mirror or not.


bantu

neo

[TylerDurden]

KD is dead wrong. I seriously doubt that Aajonus is unaware that dairy and veggie-juice and honey are not ideal foods in high amounts and/or are not for everybody. I agree with everything that CK has said, since AV is a guru and has to deal  a lot with SAD-eaters with all their hangups re raw meats and so has to placate their phobias first in order to be able to encourage a thriving community of PDers. I think that a lot of  PDers either quietly, in the end, change their diet and remove raw dairy or, if they can handle it, they either consume it moderately or they add extra magnesium.

[KD]

Sure, critics and proponents alike rave about his effortless, intuitive, cheap, legal food, easily obtainable in your local supermarket, perfect for that casual dieter looking to shed a few pounds. This is also why he keeps that stuff about rotten meat eating and eating your own semen super top secret.  oh wait. no. He says you should get fat and go through terrible pain and anguish in order for any actual progress and is very clear on that???..hmm sounds like it brings in the newbies at any cost.

I count at least 10 ex forum members here who eat large quanities of milk and claim their health is never better and have labs to prove this improvement. More notably how in dire straits they were following most health-guessing here. [of course any labs that says paleos iz not healthy are obviously faulty] . I also count a far greater number of main posters here who never actually share a single shred of documentable evidence about their own personal health, but who have tons of ideas on how things should be.

People who actually think there is an 'obvious' answer to what I posed above and therefore basically are totally useless for tweaking real heath decisions because they are too focused on whats 'wrong' with humanity or whatever pathology. Usually people that exhibit many of the opposite qualities one would want in health. I recommend people pay more attention to that, and not too personally interested in whether PD has 'the' answers or not otherwise. Just that people don't bring their own ideas when there are clear outlined reasons things are given as 'solutions'. Solutions being those things which generally-speaking arn't frowned upon by most non-ideologues, to offer a solution to a problem that isn't just framing and removing suspected causes.

If there are such clear superiority that paleo diets are working far better than these other nonsense approaches, surely these should be presented easily with evidence against long-term primal dieters?

how about this centered guy:
http://flexrx.nourished.com.au/files/2008/12/scotty-hawaii.jpg
http://flexrx.nourished.com.au/2008/08/06/the-primal-diet/

or

Re: RAW PALEO/PRIMAL DIET INTERVIEW 2010!!!!

[CarnivorousApe]

I count at least 10 ex forum members here who eat large quanities of milk and claim their health is never better and have labs to prove this improvement. More notably how in dire straits they were following most health-guessing here. I count a far greater number of main posters here who never actually share a single shred of documentable evidence about their own personal health, but who have tons of ideas on how things should be.

Well, if we are going to follow some claims, any diet can seem optimal - there are a lot of healthy vegans, frutarians, damn, even SAD eaters! There is a woman in Australia who claims to eat only thin air!

For any lab research there are tens opposing lab researches.

Can we believe our instincts? Not with neolithic and cooked food for sure. Look and macdonalds kids. Maybe with raw food? Look at the fate of GCB wife.

Our own experiece? Hardly. It can be ok in the short term, but in long term a lot of problems can be unnoticed.

That's why the only thing seems more a less reliable to me: eat the way our bodies evolved to eat.

Btw, did AV shared his own medical documents or his son, or that girl Owanza, who claimed to cure from multiple tumours?

[KD]

the lacking of evidence is the legitimate criticism against AVs claims, doens't change his intentions or ideals, or the fact that he's still kicking (and well from most perspectives) from a diet that most camps would claim should rapidly deteriorate a person and not cure them. So its already a loss for them even if he died tomorrow compared to how many people talk about how detrimental these methods are and died even more prematurely and even others who had minimal preexisting problems. Most while in poor health the whole time like all the founders of natural hygiene and similar nonsense. Having something that gets you from A to B is all that matters ultimately and you can only narrow out things based on evidence, not prove things are good or sustainable. There is unfortunately no way to prove something is good, only correlate which things are helpful or not so great and have general standards of what is acceptable progress. Not 'hey I did all of this right by the evolution book and left out as many toxins therefore must be a healthy person'.

Same with looking at tribes or ancient history. You can claim which things are likely not bad like red-meat or dairy based on people not dieing form these things in nature, but to figure out what is workable you have to look at contemporary successes of failings, no matter where they match up with what you see in the past. You can't copy a tribe 100 years ago or 100000 years ago and expect you are going to do better than even some standard dieters today that have the right health practices, genetics, etc.. Heck people in nature did eat tons of dairy and/or honey and technically 0 known homo sapiens sapiens ate mostly raw meat and raw fruits.

And theres a difference between blanket faceless testimonials of some vegan site or like this site, and progress you can measure in a person you've kept in touch with for 2-3 years and seen where they've come or gone.

but if you are really in 'the body knows how to fix all its problems when you remove bad food' its kinda a non-starter of a conversation. I actually have a ton of PD criticisms to dish, but for all its wacky unprovable stuff, its in the ballpark at least with a number of its observations as far as healing people with tools and not evolutionary magic.

[Rawr]

the lacking of evidence is the legitimate criticism against AVs claims

I'm pretty sure that if the claims re his health history were fabricated, the corporate media in which he appeared would find out pretty quickly and use it against him in their shows to crash his credibility. Instead, all they were able to find "against" him was the blabbery of MDs, "food safety specialists" and other mainstream hogwash.

[CarnivorousApe]

KD, I'm afraid I can't get your point exactly, despite large number of letters you use to outline it. You can provide better criteria than evolutionary one to choose optimal diet?

[KD]

Yeah its fun to make up theories. In my near decade now of "health-book" reading and raw forum time-wasting, I have probably read every possible theory on eating, fasting, and natural healing. In that I've yet to come across a single person who can explain to me why you would want to limit yourself to what 'heathy' people did in nature to fix problems that these people wouldn't have had. Or someone who believed that limit was necessary who had much of anything positive to show for it over others, other than still being able to anonymously type on the internet. Cuz yeah, as we know in the real world, you can repair anything by just taking away the things you think damage it.

Not sure how I can say it any better.

There is only opposing evidence to any mechanism that the body heals best under 'natural' (pretentious) circumstances when in a contemporary setting, and there is no reason why an intelligent person would pick a historic person that supposedly didn't have a problem and assume this held the key to their complex problem or represents the optimum expression of health. People will disagree and cite a bunch of anecdotes, but it never lines up in disproving how people have used far more adverse things to their benefit. This is blatantly obvious when seeing how people have evolved rather than focusing on pathological negativity about humanity thats draws alot of people to this kind of non realistic thinking.

If these folks are right there should be 0 cases that exist in their world of people getting well without their concepts or only with new ones. Yet they prefer to be 'right' rather than put one example over another, and redefine even basic signs of health to suit their purposes or discount any kind of outliers as nonsense or 'freaks'. They claim stuff works better when often times it doesn't work at all or works just because the body can repair quite a bit of crap given the rest and opportunity. They leave out that this would probably happen whether they ate naturally or not but just gave up most crap.

People want to whine and scream about the wool over the eyes of 'da establishment' or whatever, but they completly ignore how most of the people that follow the ideas that 'the body heals itself or 'we are only adapted to certain foods' always come up short. It blatantly flies in the face of what we see in history, and even every day of our life in terms of what keeps people well, therefore is just wrong as a start point. Like I said, PD folks have a similar bias/animosity towards contrary concepts in reality if they don't fit their theory, they just acknowledge that people need more advanced help than just removing stuff from their diet.

[CarnivorousApe]

Not sure how I can say it any better.

There is only opposing evidence to any mechanism that the body heals best under 'natural' (pretentious) circumstances when in a contemporary setting, and there is no reason why an intelligent person would pick a historic person that supposedly didn't have a problem and assume this held the key to their complex problem or represents the optimum expression of health.

Can you provide a sample when eating paleo style worsened somebody's condition in modern environment?
Do you think that adding more damaging neolithic foods (like milk) would improve somebody long term in a contemporary settings?
We are not talking about healing or transition here. It seemed to me that AV recommended milk as constant part of the diet.

[cherimoya_kid]

KD is dead wrong. I seriously doubt that Aajonus is unaware that dairy and veggie-juice and honey are not ideal foods in high amounts ...AV is a guru and has to deal  a lot with SAD-eaters with all their hangups re raw meats and so has to placate their phobias first in order to be able to encourage a thriving community of PDers.

I forgot about veggie juice.  Good point. 

Also, excellent point about raw meat phobias.

And KD, there are plenty of us moderators and members here who use other alternative healing methods BESIDES diet. I use magnesium and vitamin D-3 supplements regularly, and also supplement with different herbs sometimes.   I also am very into posture work from Esther Gokhale, and lots and lots of other stuff.  I'm no "blind paleo re-enactor", so to speak.  I do what works.   Eating pretty much 100% raw really seems to keep my body young and healthy, relatively, so I keep doing it.