Brains

[Poncho]

Does anybody know where I can get information on the differences between the brains of carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores?

[Poncho]

Ahhh, no one? 

[Projectile Vomit]

Do you mean the nutritional difference between brains of these different types of animals, as food? Or do you mean anatomical differences? Not quite sure what you're asking for.

[PaleoPhil]

Why do you ask? Are you trying to persuade a vegetarian friend to eat some meat, based on brain size differences, or something like that?

It depends on what you mean by "carnivore" and "omnivore." There is no set specific definition of "omnivore" in science and there is even disagreement over what specific criteria to use to categorize carnivores.

[Poncho]

I ask because yes, I was trying for so long to figure out a simple way to explain to people why they require raw meat.
Because I want everyone to at least come a little closer to reaching their potential.
The suffering I see all around me, I have felt first hand.
And obviously I have a lot of people questioning me for what I do, and questioning how necessary it is.
I was able to easily prove that a raw diet was superior to absolutely any cooked diet.
But people would say "anything you can get from animal products, you can't get from plants"
I knew that wasn't true, but I didn't know exactly why.

Then I recalled 'the 70 year old raw vegan' who looked great yet had clearly aged somehow. Because she dressed her age, spoke her age, and was still with her very ancient looking husband.
I thought, what part of her aged? Something did.
Couldn't figure it out.
Then I was considering that since my brain injury, I had been able to relate to people so much better.
I knew what so many of their problems really felt like.
I assumed that was just brain injury showing me symptoms of different problems.

Nope.

The brain is aging. Starving. If you don't eat raw animal products.

If you guys all know that, why is the rest of the world not eating this way!

Their brains are all dying!
The vegans are clearly often much more aggressive and just… weird than regular dieters.
Somethings going on.

I read that herbivores can synthesize something required for the brain, but we can't, so we need animal products.

Maybe I'm explaining this very poorly haha, but I really have thought this through as thoroughly as someone with no scientific background and 20 years of life possibly could.

[PaleoPhil]

Here's some "food for thought" on the topic from my files:

Food For Thought: Meat-Based Diet Made Us Smarter
by CHRISTOPHER JOYCE
August 02, 201012:00 AM
food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter

Meat Eating Behind Evolutionary Success of Humankind, Global Population Spread, Study Suggests, sciencedaily.com
(I think the scientists go overboard by categorizing "Species for which at least 20 per cent of the energy content of their diet comes from meat" as carnivores.)

Human vs. chimps: What the "regulome" tells us about meat eating & bigger brains
human-vs-chimps-what-regulome-tells-us.html

Vegetable-Only Diet Ups Risk for Brain Shrinkage
Published September 15, 2008FoxNews.com
Being a vegetarian may actually be bad for your brain, according to a study published in the Sept. 9 issue of Neurology, The Sun reported.

The study said those on a meat-free diet are six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage as the most vitamin B12 is found in meats, liver, fish and milk.
vegetable-only-diet-ups-risk-for-brain-shrinkage/

Vitamin B12 status and rate of brain volume loss in community-dwelling elderly
A. Vogiatzoglou et al, Neurology, September 9, 2008 http://www.neurology.org/content/71/11/826

I suspect that the butyrate generated from raw roots and tubers also contributed to hominid brain growth (and I suspect that's part of the reason for the success of the raw 70yr-old-vegan you mentioned), but that won't help convince a vegetarian. 

[Poncho]

Those articles that claim cooked meat is what caused us to evolve are obviously wrong, right?
I've read very many of those. Completely absurd to think that consuming undigestible masses of carcinogenic compounds caused us to evolve.
It seems pretty clear to me that cooking is what began the decent of man, haha.

[PaleoPhil]

If you mean Wrangham, yes, I think he's mostly wrong. He did correctly identify tubers and animal foods as contributing factors, IIRC, but I think his focus on cooking is off target. By destroying resistant starch and other fermentable fibers, cooking actually has a negative effect on the production of butyrate, which contributes to brain growth.

Plus, lots of folks had already identified the importance of animal foods, particuarly animal fats in brains and marrow, before Wrangham came along. Wrangham disagreed with those folks by claiming that the advent of cooking was more important than fatty animal foods themselves.

[Poncho]

Crazy.
The advent of cooking was so obviously the beginning of the end.
Everything wrong with life, when traced back as far as I can, leads to cooking.

[Iguana]

Quite right, it seems. Congrats, Poncho!

[Poncho]

I can never tell if you guys on here are being completely sarcastic, haha.

[Iguana]

Sarcastic, me? In my last post above? No, not at all, I completely agree with you that cooking food was the beginning of the end, the root cause of the causes of the problems we are facing now on this planet.

[Poncho]

Haha alright, good

[Projectile Vomit]

Wow Talya, you gave your website a serious make-over. What happened to all of your old posts?

[Poncho]

Oh, oh god. Yeah about that.
Theres no way of explaining it. You'd have to watch a video of me for the past 3 years, that might help.
I guess to sum it up, I could say that my healing brain has had it's ups and downs… and I am not the same person that I was when I wrote that blog… haha.