Stefansson's book online

[pioneer]

I didnt say that cooked saturated fats were healthy, I simply stated that they dont correlate to heart disease. I'll tell ya what, I'd take cooked saturated fats over cooked grains and carbohydrates any day. The real correlation is within the inflammation, and yes I'd have to agree AGE's play a big factor. Im just saying that the US lives in a fat phobic society. What people have to realize is carbohydrates are 100 times worse than fats. Even Weston Price said that while sugar consumption in US increased fat consumption decreased, and heart disease is skyrocketing, so whats the real correlation? A 1902 study posted by the New York Times stated that since 1870 sugar consumption increased 8 times. Since 1902, it increased 7 times. So we're looking at a society that eats roughly 15 times the sugar today than it did in 1870, WOW  . However during this sugar increase, fat esp sat fat has decreased.

[TylerDurden]

Actually, that's quite wrong. The amount of fat-intake each year has not really decreased - here is more accurate info re this:-

http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/NutritionInsights/insight5.pdf

 And carbs are fine and healthy (if raw), it's just the refined carbs which are the problem as well as the cooked animal fats. Also, you have to bear in mind that whereas people used to just lightly cook their meats, they now use frying/microwaving and other harsher cooking methods thus producing much higher levels of heat-created toxins than in previous eras, so that cooked animal fat is just as unhealthy as refined sugar nowadays. And toxic AGEs from cooked animal foods have been directly linked to atherosclerosis and heart-disease.



 In short, the point is that any form of cooking/processing other than fermenting is extremely unhealthy for humans and should be avoided like the plague.

[PaleoPhil]

By the way, the stefansson quote from vinny's page above is a load of ****. In fact Stefansson always advocated and ate, 99% of the time,  a cooked-meat diet and frowned on organs and raw(though he did eat some small amounts of raw marrow during his bellevue experiment).

McClellan and Du Bois claimed that Stefansson and Andersen apparently also ate organs and eggs during the Bellevue experiment:

"Nature of Diet: The meat used included beef, lamb, veal, pork, and chicken. The parts used were muscle, liver, kidney, brain, bone marrow, bacon, and fat. While on lecture trips V.S. occasionally ate eggs and a little butter when meat was not readily obtainable. The carbohydrate content of the diet was very small, consisting solely of the glycogcn in the meat. ... A sample menu for the day, given in raw weights follows.

Breakfast: lean beef, 190 gm.; fat, 100 gm.
Dinner: liver, 200 gm.; fat, 75 gm.
Supper: lean beef, 200 gm.; marrow, 70 gm."

[From the Stefansson all-meat Bellevue Hospital study, "PROLONGED MEAT DIETS WITH A STUDY OF KIDNEY FUNCTION AND KETOSIS.*" BY WALTER S. MCCLELLAN AND EUGENE F. Du BOIS. (From the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology in Association with the Second Medical (Cornell) Division of Bellevue Hospital, New York.) (Received for publication, February 13, 1930.) Downloaded from The Journal of Biological Chemistry Website, www.jbc.org, on July 6, 2008, http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf+html]

However, Stefansson in his writings only admitted that Andersen ate organs, AFAIK, so it's not totally clear. Still, you would think that the report would have mentioned it if Stefansson had completely abstained from organs. Other people have also claimed that Stefansson ate organs during the experiment but didn't provide additional original sources.

[pioneer]

The point I am trying to make is that saturated fat gets the blame and that is totally wrong, any cooked fat produces toxins. I think oxidized/ cooked omega 6's and vegetable oils are way worse. Another thing is that it is very reasonable to believe that we humans are carnivores in nature so we were meant to eat plenty of fat, just not cooked. Even Aajonus, as well as many others who lived off the land for periods of time said that it is BS to believe that humans always had carbs available esp in the winter. He stated that when he lived outside for 3 years, fruit was barely ever ripe or around at all, and never available in the winter, so he primarily ate animals. I dont know much about cooked fat toxins yet but I believe your assertions. I have always just thought that to say that fat is the enemy is total BS, cooked carbs are way worse. Of course Im not talking about raw food here. Check out Brian Penski's website, I swear by the guy.

[TylerDurden]

The problem with the above is that in warmer tropical climes, carbs are indeed easily available all the year round. It's only in Arctic areas where carbs are rare - even then, 100% ZC is not a characteristic of Arctic-dwelling tribes as the Inuit etc. also consume berries which they freeze for winter-consumption, along with seaweed, plant-matter in stomach-contents, ground nuts etc. They are commonly  96-99% animal food-oriented.

The cooked-fat proponents, whether in the form of Anthony Colpo or whatever, variously recommend extremely unhealthy diets involving pasteurised dairy, grainfed meats(high omega-6: omega 3 ratios) etc. etc. The only thing they have going for them is that, unlike with most junk-foods on SAD diets, the foods they generally recommend contain far fewer chemicals/preservatives and less processing by comparison - other than that, their diets are worthless.

As for the issues of vegetable-oils used for cooking, they form only a tiny amount by comparison to the huge amounts of cooked saturated fats in the actual meats being cooked, so they cannot be primarily blamed  for the massive ill-health caused by cooked animal fats.

[pioneer]

What about oxidized oils though? And what about how plaque tends to have nearly 60% of it omega 6 oils from adulterated vegetable oils. What about inflammation and glycations on arterial walls from excess sugar consumption, and other inflammation, smoking, pollution, exogenous hormones, estrogens, pesticides. IDK I just get so annoyed at the media's assertions and in the US you always have to realize that whatever the media says, the opposite is usually true. They think that the etiology of heart disease and cancer is something as silly and simple as fat. People started listening to the pyramid, and you saw where that got us. Very little of the common dietary knowledge is based on science, mostly just assumptions. Thats why I went raw in the first place. I will have to agree with you on the fat being bad cooked but I will stand with my point; getting the majority of ones calories from carbs is a big mistake. The US pyramid (the feedlot pyramid) recommends over 60% of calories from carbs, primarily from bread. That is why the country is obese, that is why the biggest epidemic today is diabetes. Diabetes has a strong correlation with obesity, this is all interconnected. The metabolic syndrome correlates strongly with high carb diets not fat. We weren't meant to function on carbs. We only need like 5% of our calories from them. Our bodies only have one teaspoon of sugar in them at any given time. So guess what happens when we eat 1 slice of bread (which is equivalent to 3 teaspoons of sugar)? Blood sugar spike, insulin comes in, drives sugar into cells, stores fat. No fat burning is possible during this time. People on high carb diets rarely burn fat, they burn carbs. Thats why keto diets work, deplete all glycogen so your body has no choice but to burn fat. Along with all that stuff, opposite to the commonly held belief, our brains run 2/3 on fat in the form of ketone bodies, and only 1/3 on glucose, so fat is our preferred fuel source, it just shouldnt be cooked fat. But if I was a typical American with no knowledge of raw paleo or anything raw, I'd take cooked fat over cooked carbs any day. I agree with all your points, Im basically talking on an ignorant American perspective. You typically cant start them off with a raw diet so you have to ease into the concepts, like less carbs esp grains, more organic fruits and veggies, less dairy, grass fed meat, etc... then once people get settled in that lifestyle you can introduce them to raw because they are way more open now than they would have been before. So if I were to help someone, Id tell them to go on cooked paleo first because I know they wouldnt take me seriously with raw. Then after like 6 months on that diet, and after they saw some benefits of it (because even cooked paleo improves people tremendously) Id tell them about raw.

[TylerDurden]

Well, actually a lot of people such as myself don't thrive on cooked-palaeo and do better on raw vegan in the short-term than on cooked-palaeo. And there are some perfectly healthy Instinctos thriving on raw high-carb diets. The trouble with cooked-palaeo is that it causes the same glycation-related issues as cooked/refined carbs, and cooked animal food has a higher load of heat-created toxins than cooked carbs even. The only real benefit re cooked-palaeo is that dairy and grains are avoided, that's about it.

[alphagruis]

The US pyramid (the feedlot pyramid) recommends over 60% of calories from carbs, primarily from bread. That is why the country is obese, that is why the biggest epidemic today is diabetes. Diabetes has a strong correlation with obesity, this is all interconnected. The metabolic syndrome correlates strongly with high carb diets not fat. We weren't meant to function on carbs. We only need like 5% of our calories from them. Our bodies only have one teaspoon of sugar in them at any given time. So guess what happens when we eat 1 slice of bread (which is equivalent to 3 teaspoons of sugar)? Blood sugar spike, insulin comes in, drives sugar into cells, stores fat. No fat burning is possible during this time. People on high carb diets rarely burn fat, they burn carbs.

Unfortunately your stance is usual ZC ideology, not science.

If things where that simple how do you explain that very few people if any were ever obese or diabetic in 19th century rural France or Germany? As far as we know as much "carbs" and even bread were eaten by that time. The main difference is in respective fractions of processed versus unprocessed foods overall and also non dietary factors such as physical activity but not in "carbs".

Again let me emphasize. It is largely vain, often misleading and basically not pertinent from a modern 21th century scientific point of view to just reason in reductionist terms of "carbs" or any single molecular component of food such as vitamins, glucose, specific amino acids or fatty acids, etc. What's more appropriate is rather to find out which whole natural unprocessed foods, such as meats, fruits, fishs, veggies, legumes, grains etc are appropriate in human diet and what healthy ecosystems can produce them.

This is because the properties of any food in terms of health or illness promoting are emergent by nature and therefore cannot seriously be reduced to any of its molecular components.

[pioneer]

I dont know how it is over in france, but here in the us, sugar consumption alone increased 15 times since 1870. According to an article in 1900 published by Times magazine, sugar consumption increased 8 times since 1870, look it up. That's a whopping 8 times in 30 years. There are plenty of facts out there that downright prove that carb consumption increased tremendously and fat consumption decreased in the US. As for my knowledge not being based on science, I dont get what your trying to say but I highly doubt the USDA food pyramid is based on science, nor any other commonly believed US nutritional knowledge. Yes, what you say about processed and cooked food is correct, and No Im dont support the zero carb approach, I just believe that we can function just fine with much less carbs, but that doesnt mean carbs are bad. Everyone is different and just because I function better without many carbs doesnt mean someone else will. Like I've said before, look up Dr. Brian Peskin, he is a world renowned physiologist who actually knows the facts, and although I dont base my knowledge solely off of one mans knowledge, out of all the people out there, hes got most of the dots connected together. And ohhhh noooo hes not raw paleo. So the hell what, the world doesnt change trying to promote raw. Baby steps is what needs to be made.

[pioneer]

I highly agree with your post after reading it again. I just find it funny to say that people werent obese back then even though they ate a lot of carbs. What about them not being obese back then even though they ate a lot of cooked meat?

[alpha78]

First im half faroese and i will just say that food in arctic area faroe island -iceland- and greenland that food has been coocked for a very long time ever since the vikings and pirates came. In faroe island before pirates came all was blond but the offspring from faroe island gaved them dark hair so in my bloodline there is pirate blood :-).
The men from faroe island was very strong men but they didnt get much older than 55_60
They had light that burned on fish or whale fat/oil for cooking and heat offcourse they eated alot raw but it was also a major part dried meat and fish and even on faroe island there are some wild berrys and they have been sailors and traders for long long time

Alpha

[alphagruis]

I highly agree with your post after reading it again. I just find it funny to say that people werent obese back then even though they ate a lot of carbs. What about them not being obese back then even though they ate a lot of cooked meat?

Well, is it really true that they ate a lot of cooked meat? Or more precisely more cooked meat than in SAD?

Apparently only a minority of wealthy people certainly ate a lot of cooked meats and fishs but they were precisely very prone to sicknesses of affluence such as obesity, gout etc. Yet I agree with you that these people also were those who could afford to buy some refined suger and routinely eat this toxic stuff 150 or 200 years ago.  

I'm really convinced that modern processing and agro-production techniques are the main culprits rather than the change in carbs/proteins/fats ratios. By processing I not only mean the final practice of more or less systematic cooking of food, but also preservation techniques, irradiation, pasteurization etc.

Overall a majority of the 19th century population here in France ate a much higher proportion of strictly raw unprocessed foods such as fruits, veggies, meats (ham, saussages...), fishs and shellfishs, eggs, dairy, honey etc...than the relevant 21th century population. Today it becomes more and more difficult to even find strictly raw food in supermarkets. Even those foods that were traditionally eaten plain raw, such as butter, mayonnaise (egg yolks, mustard and virgin olive oil), aioli (egg yolks, garlic, virgin olive oil), ham, saussages etc are now systematically pasteurized and prepared with junk additives and heat extracted seed oils.    

[TylerDurden]

There are plenty of facts out there that downright prove that carb consumption increased tremendously and fat consumption decreased in the US.

 I just recently provided a link debunking the absurd notion that fat-intake has decreased in modern times. In fact fat-intake has increased.

As for the claims re people in the past not being obese despite eating lots of cooked meats, that was primarily because they indulged in much higher levels of exercise than we do today - plus, like Alphagruis said, our ancestors generally ate far higher levels of raw, unprocessed foods than SAD-eaters do today. In other words, the raw aspect is  more important than any particular food-category(even with non-palaeo foods, people generally do better on raw dairy than pasteurised dairy etc..

[pioneer]

Where are the facts stating that fat intake increased? Everyone always says it has but no one knows any sources. Even if it did increase, carb increased way more. People like to shout out things like "fat intake increased dramatically" therefore it must be the cause of health problems. However once again anything can be manipulated by statistics to prove a point. I think all macros increased because population increased, so yeah fat did increase, however where the ration of Carb/ fat back then could have been 50/50, its more like 70/20 now esp since the USDA food pyramid got involved. They put the pyramid up and people listen. So while fat increased may have increased with an increasing population, carb intake increased astronomically in comparison. ANd no Im not against carbs or anything, but 90% of carbs in the supermarket is just plain sugar in ones body. So the carbs today are way worse. As for exercise, I know we live a more sedentary lifestyle now, but thats no excuse. Ever heard of BMR? Our bodies burn the majority of calories doing basic daily functions, including sleeping. In other words, Exercise plays a very small role in it unless your like michael phelps or something. But how unnatural is it to exercise as much as him? Extreme athletes frequently get sick all the time because exercise in excess is an immune suppressant. Plus, I know everyone is different with metabolism and such, however for me a 175lb male doing basic daily activities I burn 1900 calories without any exercise at all. If I run for half hour I burn around 200 calories, and I think strength training burns a good amount also, however 200- 500kcal in 1 workout is nothing compared to BMR. Some people can burn 1000 cal sleeping. So I agree that there are many health benefits to exercise such as circulation, muscle mass, strength, and respiratory, but if one thinks that we are unhealthy today more because of less exercise than worse diet he/she is very mistaken. Also, I agree with the above post a lot about the quality of the food being more important than macros. And yeah, I hate agricultural practices of today, they make me sick and it pisses me off that I cant acquire as much quality food anymore.

[alpha78]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smkPdW0lY3E

[TylerDurden]

Where are the facts stating that fat intake increased?

I already provided a link demonstrating that fat-intake has increased, not decreased. here it is again:-


http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/NutritionInsights/insight5.pdf  

More to the point as Alphagruis said, people in the past(couple of centuries ago) often had very high carb-intakes but didn't have obesity etc.That's because the carbs they ate were unrefined, largely.

As for the other claims:- first of all, ALL foods have now become more highly processed , whether in the form of carbs or fats, it's erroneous, therefore, to single out carbs as the main culprit. Raw meats/fats have been variously hydrogenated(eg:- lard) or have had multiple preservatives/chemicals added to them so that they don't truly resemble the original raw food in any meaningful sense.

As far as exercise is concerned, I've already shown in other threads how the Athenians and the Cro_Magnon in the Palaeolithic era practised far higher levels of physical activity than any of us do nowadays. Indeed, in terms of functional strength, any average palaeo man could whip the butts of any modern human today with incredible ease. With all that high level of activity, obesity would not be possible.

[pioneer]

Yeah I know, all that shit really sucks. Please recognize that I dont want to argue with anyone on this forum, I just like to understand others opinions and formulate my own. Anyway, when I was cooked paleo, I was living at my dorm in college eating out of a cafeteria because I had no other choice. It always bugged me to know that the meat they served definitely was cooked in death producing oxidized vegetable oils and most likely had gluten in it. I am celiac and corn intolerant so I noticed when I ate the food there I was always in the bathroom. I wouldnt be surprised if the meat was made with soy either. Either way, Ive been out of the caf for months living back at home and although my mom is pissed because of the raw paleo diet, I have managed to perfect digestion to a tee. I eat and then have a BM an hour later and never need toilet paper. I guess that proves the diet is perfect. The whole thing with exercise I was trying to say was that yes they were more active back then but that wasnt the reason. I look at examples of lions and other predators, they dont exercise at all, just hunt their food. Bears hibernate all winter and are ready to go in the spring. I know we cant compare to animals but it makes a lot of sense that we humans dont need to go out of our way to exercise so much. I mean think of the ice age. Thats a prime example. Cavemen were living in sub freezing temperatures, and we all know the colder the climate the more heat your body produces the more calories you burn. People have been known to burn 500 calories an hour outside in cold temperatures which is about the same as an hour jog. Did these caveman want to do any more exercise? Hell no, the only exercise they did was hunt mammoths, oh what a beautiful era to live in. So if the diet is perfect, exercise seems only secondary.

[pioneer]

From the USDA studies:

Conclusion
Total fat consumption expressed as a percent of caloric intake has steadily decreased since 1965. However, in the past 5 years, the decrease in percent of calories from fat is a result of increased total caloric intake and not necessarily due to decreased fat consumption. The daily fat intake in grams has, in fact, increased in many cases, reversing the trend of Americans consuming less fat in their diet as was reported earlier (3).

I hope you do realize those studies were made by the USDA, the same people who told you cholesterol was bad and raw milk and meat kill.
Nevertheless, I never really meant fat intake actually decreased, but just like the conclusion states, as calories increased, the ratio of fat decreased which obviously means that in a time of rampant heart disease and obesity there is very little correlation between fat and heart disease and obesity. I am not calling any macro the culprit, Im just defending fat.

Check out this video:      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXCvduiAbs
And this link:                 http://finallyhealing.com/a-brief-history-of-sugar/

Read that last link carefully, sugar is pretty much the culprit for everything, even slaves.

[KD]

Ive been out of the caf for months living back at home and although my mom is pissed because of the raw paleo diet, I have managed to perfect digestion to a tee. I eat and then have a BM an hour later and never need toilet paper. I guess that proves the diet is perfect.

Stefansson incarnate.

[TylerDurden]

Like I said before, the fact that the cooked-fat component has decreased as a proportion of the diet does not make it any less a factor in heart-disease as the actual intake of cooked fat has increased. It is simply a question of processing. In other words, someone eating mostly unrefined raw carbs and only a little cooked/processed fat would be far better off, healthwise, than someone eating mostly cooked/processed fat and only a few raw carbs.

As for the FDA, I don't view conspiracy theories re the FDA as remotely credible. And some notions the FDA has had have been spot on:- for example, raw milk is a very easy way to get infected as milk from a diseased animal more easily transmits /pathogens/diseases to others than the raw meat itself. And the reason why there are so many studies damning the consumption of cooked animal fats is because of the serious harm caused by such foods as a result of the harm done to those foods via cooking, and, in some cases, other forms of processing.Scientists may not always get 1 study right, but when multiple studies all confirm the same sort of results, then chances are highly unlikely that there was a mistake.

As for the issue of exercise, Cordain has already shown without a doubt that Palaeo peoples experienced far higher levels of exercise than modern man. The bones/skulls of palaeo men have been shown by scientists to be  much stronger, denser than in modern humans , which is a sign of increased physical activity on a daily basis:-

http://chetday.com/cordaininterview.htm

[pioneer]

I agree with processed cooked fats being bad, Ive stated before that Brian Peskin found that plaque is 60% oxidized omega 6 oils probably from the immense consumption of vegetable oils, so saturated fat is barely an issue. And to say that strong facial structure bones was a result of exercise is just by assumption, it could be very probable that the diets they ate back then were the reason for these strong features, however that is an assumption as well. There is no way of proving what exactly caused their strong features. And I am not talking about conspiracy theories really. Im talking about the huge amount of fallacy and assumptions in the scientific and medical community when it comes to studies. Sometimes studies are meaningless esp when they can be manipulated by statistics. Just look at Ancel Keys, that was a false study done in 1953 and people still believe the lipid hypothesis. I dont care about studies unless they are experiments, and there is a huge difference. Ancel studied other countries to see which diets were healthier than the SAD diet but what the hell does that tell us? Not a damn thing, because unless you perform an experiment where one group consumes a certain food and another is a control, studies dont mean a damn thing. Another thing with studies is you always hear "breaking news new study shows." However no one ever asks the question, what happened to the first study? Or, why didnt the guy get it right the first time? It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see that studies dont mean jack squat unless there is solid proof or evidence and in the diet community there rarely ever is. Only experiments matter, not studies.

[TylerDurden]

Studies routinely involve experiments and they do commonly use controls. As regards the issue of diets and exercise, the very fact that cooked-palaeodieters in modern times do not remotely have anywhere near the superior physical capabilities and skeletal structure that ancient Cro-Magnon humans had in the palaeolithic era eating the same sort of diet, means that it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that a cooked, palaeolithic diet alone could have led to such superior physical bodies. Besides, the superior bone-density has been proven as being linked to increased physical performance as even modern athletes have better bones than sedentary types.

As for the conspiracy theories claims, it's natural that the pro-cooked saturated fat crowd are forced to use such lame conspiracy theories as they have very little data to back their claims. The way science works, incidentally, is not that every study has to be 100% right(to err is human after all) but that the majority of the studies will, over time, back the conclusion that is indeed scientifically correct, through trial and error. If a particular scientific conclusion(eg:- that cooked saturated fat is healthy) is constantly being debunked by study after study, experiment after experiment, then it is vanishingly unlikely that it is the correct one. More to the point, RVAFers have generally had very poor health as a result of following cooked-saturated-fat-rich diets such as Atkins Diet etc.

As for Brian Peskin, he has been condemned on his own wikipedia page as a fraud:- "Peskin has been accused of making false claims about his qualifications and the effectiveness of some of his products, and is the subject of a permanent injunction from the State of Texas preventing him from making such claims and ordering him to cease the sales of the products" taken from:-

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

Not only is he neither raw nor palaeo, but he's a crook as well:-

http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/Peskin/peskin.html

 It's a common trick for wannabe gurus to promote dodgy processed supplements as the profit-margin is much larger than with other diet-related products like books.

[pioneer]

When did I say their superior physical nature was due to cooked paleo? I think raw produces strong physical structure and could be the very reason why cavemen had strong physiques. Nevertheless, there really is no way of proving if they ate raw or not, nor when fire was first introduced. Im not arguing that raw is not good, I love raw and see the benefits of it through observation, experimentation, and first hand. However whether we like it or not, until some new technology comes out that proves whether the meat they ate was not cooked the argument cannot be made. Once again I hear another person talking down on someone who isnt raw. Honestly who the hell cares? Brian Peskin, Mercola, Eades, or Cordain etc... find the truth and give it to the people, thats all I ask for, the truth. And the more acceptable and mainstream influential people like Ive stated become, the more acceptable RPD will be. Im tired of people on this forum talking shit on Cordain for being a "sellout" because hes not raw. The guy made cooked paleo mainstream and many people wouldnt even consider RPD unless cooked paleo was popular. Also, people talk shit on vegans too, however at least veganism intoduces people to raw food. I know if someone told me about eating raw meat before I knew about paleo I would have been like "are you out of your F#@king mind? Cooked paleo introduced me to raw. Peskin is an awesome guy who only performs experiments, not studies. He works with many other scientists to produce the most meticulous experiments possible so that they can say case closed. One can call the guy an idiot all one wants but he's an MIT grad for engineering & when his wife got sick he went to med school and is now a world renowned physiologist who doesnt buy into all the media's bullshit. Anyone who speaks against all the obvious nutritional wrongs out there is good in my book.

[pioneer]

Wow I read that stuff you found about him and thats bullshit. I thought the guy was good. He was on onetalkradio talking about all the stuff that makes sense, like how fish oil is bullshit, lipid hypothesis was made up, however I didnt agree how he promoted flax oil. Flax are 3x more estrogen than soy WTF . IDK how I feel about him now.

[TylerDurden]

Err, as shown above Brian Peskin was condemned in open court for lying about his credentials, with bogus claims of being a doctor, having a PHD etc.So any claims he may make re further credentials are not to be remotely trusted.

As for Cordain, I actually view him quite highly, because unlike Peskin, Colpo, Gary Taubes etc. , he depends on a lot of genuine palaeolithic-era scientific evidence to support his claims, and he isn't even all that anti-raw as, unlike many other similiar paleo gurus, he acknowledges openly that cooked diets produce AGEs and other heat-created toxins which are extremely harmful to human health.

As for the connection between diet and exercise, the point was that such high levels of bone-density etc. among palaeo humans can only be explained if they had extremely high physical activity every day. In other words, a rawpalaeo person on a great diet but not doing much exercise could not compete against a rawpalaeo in the palaeo era((or, IMO, a cooked-palaeodieter in the palaeo era) given the extreme physical activity of the latter two types.

As for the issue of when cooking was invented, I'm afraid you're wrong there. The overwhelming evidence is in favour of the notion that cooking was only introduced in the last 10% of the palaeolithic era, c.250,000 years ago, given evidence of cooking hearths. Sure, Wrangham and a few kooks have suggested much earlier dates for cooking, but their views are ignored by the rest of the scientific community as they have no genuine evidence to support their belief:-


http://old.rawpaleodiet.com/non-wrangham-theories-of-cooking-debunked/

http://old.rawpaleodiet.com/advent-of-cooking-article/