As I was sitting in my tent the other day, backpacking in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, I was reading the most appropriate possible book for my circumstances at the moment ? Hulda Clark’s The Cure for All Diseases.
It was the perfect book for the moment because it touts the many dangers of bacterial, viral, and parasitic infection and the vital need for absolute sanitary perfection. ?Keep those fingernails trimmed short,? says Clark, as I looked down at my long, dirt-caked hands and fingernails while sipping on unfiltered creek water that was undeniably chock full of protozoa, fecal coliform bacteria from one of the dozens of mammal and bird species in the area, and many other such pathogens. I had not used toothpaste in days. I carried no soap or sanitizer with me on the trip. I brought no toilet paper (Nepal-style rear washing?hint: in Nepal it is considered very offensive to touch someone with your left hand). I had not even washed my dishes.
In other words, I was violating every rule in the book. Surprise, surprise.
Over the past several weeks infectious disease has been the focus of my 180DegreeHealth members podcasts. Admittedly, during that time, I did succumb to my first illness in 17 months ? presumably campylobacter from drinking raw milk, as this statement was issued by my dairy farmer 1 week after my illness:
To all Co-op Members:
We were contacted by the Colorado Health Department this last Friday and
informed that there were several confirmed cases of Campylobacter illnesses.
Most, but not all were known to be share holders. They have taken milk
samples for testing and results should be known by Thursday of next week.
The last illness I contracted was during the Weston A. Price Foundation (the revivalists of the raw milk movement) annual conference, as there was a large outbreak of some common virus amongst the attendees (raw milk had nothing to do with it though). Ha!
Of course, getting sick from time to time is an inevitability. What I argue, that few others do, is that getting ill from time to time is essential for good health. The immune system needs a ?workout? on occasion to maintain viability just like any other bodily system. Further, after recovery from illness, the body is often stronger, cleansed, revitalized, with greater resilience to infection, barring that you don’t pummel your system with medication and symptom-suppressors to get through the infection.
Anyway, my conclusions are not the point of this post. Rather, it’s time to take two people with equally weird names and totally opposite health practices that both claim to cure us of everything and square them off against one another:
This is Hulda Regehr Clark vs. Aajonus Vonderplanitz! Are you ready to rumble?! Let’s look at how they match up.
Books with exaggerated claims about curing everything:
Hulda ? The Cure for All Diseases
Aajonus ? The Recipe for Living Without Disease
Stance on parasites:
Hulda ? She believes parasites are harmful pathogens that threaten our well-being immensely. They are the underlying root cause of nearly all illnesses. She recommends selling all your pets and living as hygienically as possible. She has worked to create an effective frequency-generating device that kills parasites within the body without invasion using harmonic resonance.
Aajonus ? He believes parasites have a natural janitorial role, and their presence suggests that waste products have accumulated within the human body. At that point, we are better to have the parasites there cleaning up than absent, although parasite infestation still remains an indicator of suboptimal health (and a need for cleansing so to speak). He believes that we have coevolved with these organisms and cannot and should not try to live our lives in fear of exposure or invasion by these presumed pests.
Stance on bacteria:
Hulda ? Same as her stance on parasites for the most part. Their presence in the body causes disease, both acute and chronic, and diseases of all kinds can be cured with their elimination. Avoiding bacteria is a must. She recommends sterilizing all food, keeping fingernails trimmed short, avoiding contact with contaminated people, pets, and areas. She warns of things like Salmonella bacteria from chicken and eggs.
Aajonus ? Bacteria are like holy water to Vonderplantiz, a 100% raw foodist with a diet centered on raw meats. Although I don’t think he goes full-on ‘two girls and one cup (sorry no hyperlink),? he is very fond of the practice of eating feces for health restoration. I’ve heard he often goes up to Organic Pastures and get buckets of cow manure to chow down on. He is also a huge proponent of eating rotten, or ?high? meat. He is the absolute antithesis to Hulda’s hygiene approach to bacteria. He recommends eating raw chicken and raw eggs ? one primary reason is to make sure to get plenty of salmonella bacteria.
Stance on milk:
Hulda ? Any dairy product that you can’t boil yourself prior to consumption, such as ice cream or cheese, should be avoided. Always boil store-bought milk when you get home, transferring it to a sterile container. Never, ever, ever consume raw dairy products. She notes that many of her patients fall out of remission when they fail to be meticulous about this practice.
Aajonus ? Dairy products are pathological when heated more than a few degrees over the body temperature of the cow (101F). Always, always, always consume dairy products raw. Aajonus is famous for single-handedly overturning the laws on raw dairy products in the state of California ? the only state where you can find raw milk, cream, and butter on the shelves of nearly all health food stores. He reports great healing results in many who switch from pasteurized to raw milk and milk products.
Stance on honey:
Hulda ? Always heat honey and add vitamin C powder to detoxify it.
Aajonus ? Honey is an extremely pathological sugar after it has been heated. Eat it raw only, and plenty of it.
Stance on healing:
Hulda ? Most disease stems from toxic buildup in the liver, kidneys, and other vital organs. This is what weakens the immune system to allow invasion of parasites, viruses, fungi, and bacteria ? for the most part. Her healing protocol is basically to kill off all infectious agents, do additional parasite cleansing with herbal remedies, do herbal and dietary cleanses of the liver and kidneys until thousands of stones have been crapped out, eat sterilized real foods that are unpackaged/processed and thus free of molds and solvents, get rid of chemicals in your lifestyle and have mercury amalgams removed, have carious teeth ?cavitated,? live in a sterile environment, and take several vitamin and mineral supplements such as vitamin C, D, zinc, and magnesium.
Aajonus ? Eat lots of raw foods such as raw meats/fish/eggs/poultry, raw honey, raw vegetable juices, and a little raw fruit. The emphasis is particularly on raw fats which act to bind with toxic fat soluble stored pollutants. If further healing is required, it may be necessary to eat even more bacteria than you normally get from raw foods by eating small amounts of feces or rotten meat. Avoid pollutants as much as possible, including supplements, which, in almost all cases, create greater toxicity within the body.
Although these two curative giants are at tremendous odds with many of their approaches to healing (and this is the short, short, short list of their differences), they do both generally agree that environmental toxins are probably the main underlying cause of all diseases ? and their approaches at healing both address this toxicity by getting more out and less in. Aajonus; however, feels like much of the toxicity comes simply from cooked food (from mutagens and heterocyclic amines for example).
Could they both, in their own way, be right?
I too have become ever more curious about the connections between infectious illness and its link with chronic disease. Infectious agents cause inflammation, and when they are chronic it leads to constant high levels of the hormone cortisol ? which is a known trigger of insulin resistance, elevated blood pressure, immune system destruction, weight gain, and more.
But to look at this compelling evidence and look at infectious disease from the Louis Pasteur-derived germ theory approach ? that infectious agents just jump up and invade unlucky folks that come into contact with them ? doesn’t explain what plain observation tells us. Those living in less sanitary conditions have greater resilience and less chronic disease. Those who grow up on the farm are NOT more ridden with parasites and chronic disease than those living in cities. For a more vivid example, simply look at wild animals.
Humans are the only creatures that have any conceptual knowledge of pathogens. Everything else relies on instinct. For example, Hulda brings up the example of dirty diapers in her book. She says to be very careful not to be contaminated with poop, but then mentions that an animal mother will lick the anus clean after its young has a bowel movement. Hulda says we can’t do this because humans are not strong enough. I assume she attributes this to processed food and chemical and heavy metal burdens upon us, although she doesn’t go into detail. I would argue that they develop this strength through a combination of perpetual low-dose exposure and good health as a result of instinctual obedience and untainted, unprocessed, food.
Look also to Pottenger’s cats, where the cats on raw meat and milk had no parasites and perfect health. Cats eating cooked food were ridden with disease, including parasites despite greatly-reduced exposure. Clearly, exposure was not the underlying theme.
This was seen again in McCarrison’s experiments with bacillus supestifier. Those on fresh-foods, unprocessed, nutritionally complete diets could not be made ill by virulent agents. Animal subjects on deficient diets based primarily around white rice were completely eliminated by the very same infectious agent.
Hulda, in some ways, is right. Infectious diseases put an awful burden upon our bodies. Removing chronic versions of them that the immune system has failed to effectively eradicate causes relief from symptoms and improvement in virtually any disease, including even HIV, cancer, infertility, type I and II diabetes, and other ?incurable? diseases that she claims to handle with reliable success. Success is particularly achievable in the short-term.
As science progresses, it will also serve to further confirm Hulda’s stances ? because the links between infectious organisms, the resultant inflammation, and the most common chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer are clearly there. They are getting more clear by the minute.
However, Hulda doesn’t get to the root cause though. She is healing disease by choking off the hose instead of turning the water off completely. The root source certainly appears to be having a low metabolism as a result of cumulative poor nutritional status (current and prior generations) and chronic consumption of the most disruptive substances in the modern diet: vegetable oils, caffeine, food additives, and the kings: refined and artificial sugars. Although toxins, chemicals, solvents, etc. certainly may play a role in disruption of the endocrine system and lowered immunity/metabolism as well, and common sense tells us that these can do nothing but harm, it still seems they play an accessory role, not a primary one. I certainly remain open though, as these two health counselors have an excellent grassroots following with little armies of believers who have noticed great boons in their health.
But let’s hope great results can still be attained without eating only raw foods including poop and rotten meat or living in a bubble of sterilization after spending thousands on dental work. Agreed?
The verdict ? Aajonus’s recommendations can probably provide a greater level of core health enhancement while simultaneously building tremendous resilience. If you want to be not just disease-free, but immune to diseases with fantastic strength for fighting off infection, sterilization ain’t gonna take you there. Hulda’s protocol for cleansing, relieving the burden of ailing organs, and improving overall nutritional status through supplementation and a more or less whole foods diet yields, without a doubt, some fantastic results. They are both right. They are both making far more strides in getting to the core of health problems than ?America’s doctor. They are also both living in complete oblivion to important sides of the great debate in solving the big questions of human health and the manifestation of disease.
I’d say HVA is a draw, but I tend to lean a little towards Aajonus just because he’s so damn weird. I mean come on, the guy lived off of his own urine for 41 days and he eats poop. What health fanatic can top that? Please vote at the top of the page to settle this once and for all!!!
i can’t stand hulda… everyone in the world have to burn down there house to follow her plan.
when i worked out at white egret farm, one of the guys i worked with made a zapper device. He told me about his experience with it… i guess he followed the instructions correctly.. anyways. ended up sweating a crap load… fell on the ground, took off all his clothes,,, rolled around on the ground naked for awhile, and then the woman who worked out there had to help him into a bath. This guy was funny as hell… i miss the weird shit that happened on that farm.
anyways… i guess really, that both of there diets are hard to follow… and thats why i don’t diet anymore.
cheers!
troy
But does your 180 degree health plan help you fend off imaginary parasites? Those are the ones Hulda battled.
Read Hulda closely. Most of her parasite observations consisted of “detection” via measurement of electrical reactance. This is pure cargo-cult sympathetic magic. I stopped reading after the description of her bogus detection apparatus. If you got further, ask yourself how often did she detect parasites by legitimate methods? (i.e., stool sample examinations, blood tests, etc.)
As for Aajonus, unsanitary habits are fine for isolated communities. They work pretty good if everyone else in the are is healthy and/or vaccinated. Get a big enough population in unsanitary conditions, and nasty bugs like cholera can be rather devastating. Unsanitary practices can be devastating when foreigners show up to visit as well.
Here’s one for you: Virginia used to be a place you could get malaria. Hasn’t been so for years, yet they still have mosquitos. Are we that much healthier than the early colonists (who didn’t bathe)? Or did we simply break the breeding cycle sufficiently with DDT and window screens?
You don’t have to eat raw food to detox. Last month, I was sick for a few days. I couldn’t keep any foods down, except raw honey. Anything else would make me vomit about 6-10 times or have diarrhea. After that is when my digestion improved to an astounding level and still remains. With Aajonus’s Primal Diet, my digestion went downhill with increasing stomach cramps, occasional loose stools, light colored stools, weight loss, etc. My health has improved more with High-Everything than eating AV’s stupid diet for a year and a half with “high-quality” grass-fed farm fresh foods. AV is simply full of crap, along with piss, rotten meat, snake oil, and other unsavory things. I don’t think either Hulda or Aajonus win. Both blame disease on the wrong things. Ray Peat is more intelligent than either of them. I put more stock in his ideas.
of course AV wins (if you have to chose either of them). Hulda is a joke. How can you possibly say it’s a draw Matt?
Bruce K which version of AVs diet did you follow? The one in The Recipe for Living Without Disease where he lays out a daily plan? That’s actually the worst version, and it’s the version that’s intended for fast healing, not eating it for 1 year or more. I would suggest you buy AVs revised version of We Want To Live. There he says that not everyone can tolerate dairy and not everyone should consume it, and he recommends more fat from animal meat. He also doesn’t lay the same focus on vegetable juices as in is other books. If you cut the vegetable juices and balance the dairy consumption to your own needs then you’d probably do well on his diet.
“You don’t have to eat raw food to detox. Last month, I was sick for a few days. I couldn’t keep any foods down, except raw honey. Anything else would make me vomit about 6-10 times or have diarrhea. After that is when my digestion improved to an astounding level and still remains”.
Ok, wow. You sound like you are contradicting yourself a little here. You say you don’t need raw foods/rotten meats to detox yet you admit that you were sick (bacterial infection) and that cured you. Raw rotten meat can make you very sick if you eat enough.. Maybe that would produce the same healing. You also say you could only eat RAW honey without vomiting. I guess raw really is superior :) (except for vegetables.. don’t eat raw vegetables)
Personally, I’ve met more people who’ve gotten really screwed up from following Aajonus program than anything else. One of the illest people I know got that way as a result of eating a diet centered around raw grassfed meat and milk. To say his diet is superior would contradict some of my personal experiences.
On the other hand, I’ve heard many direct accounts of good results from following Hulda’s recommendations. Plus, relieving the body of infectious illness, if she can help perform this, yields results.
I agree with Bruce, Ray Peat is the man
Anon, I read AV’s first two books when I ate the Primal Diet, not the revised 1st book. As for the vegetable juices, I did eventually realize they were part of the problem along with the raw eggs and PUFA oils (like flax) and other things which AV praises (olive oil, avocados, and raw nuts). Ray Peat has knows more about the cause of disease than AV, like having a low metabolic rate, poor organ function, and other things. Eating like AV does is not much better than SAD, with its much too high protein intake. Many would heal better with more starch and fat and way less protein (esp meat and egg protein). No tribes ate as much protein as AV says to eat (1-3 pounds of meat a day, along with lots of eggs, cheese, milk, and so on). This doesn’t help folks to heal any faster. It’s a waste of money. Eat like the people in Thailand or Kitava and you will be healthier than AV.
Raw honey was the only food I could eat for a few days without puking or having diarrhea, but it did nothing to help as far as I can tell. I do think raw honey is a good food, but probably not in the amounts that AV says to use.
AV’s diet is somewhat contradictory. The main reason people benefit (in the short term) is that the diet restricts PUFAs a lot. AV says many times that coconut oil and butter and red meat fat are the best type. He tells people to avoid the skins on meat like chicken, which is of course where most of the fat resides (which is high in PUFAs compared to dairy, coconut oil, and red meat). He also reduced the amount of nuts he said to eat. His first book said to eat no more than a pound of raw nuts a week. His second book said to eat raw nuts once or twice per week, and not two days in a row. So that is a very big reduction. He’s slowly realizing the healing benefits of limiting PUFAs.
His diet would be better if you took out the vegetable juices, PUFA oils, and the high protein intake (meat, eggs, cheese, and milk). Allow more starch intake. Put the emphasis on saturated fat and carbs. Stop pushing rotten meat, esp fish, that is highly prone to rancidity. Eating the rotten fish will probably age your body prematurely, as Ray Peat has noted about the Eskimos (see Chloe’s blog).
Ray Peat talked about fish oil in general, with the experiment on dogs and cancer
“…With just a normal amount of vitamin E in the diet, cod liver oil is certain to be highly oxidized in the tissues of a mammal that eats a lot of it, and an experiment with dogs showed that it could increase their cancer mortality from the normal 5% to 100%…”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/fishoil.shtml
As for the Inuit..
“…Stefannson said that Eskimo women were getting old in their twenties, and that at the age of 60 they looked as old as Europeans did at 80. He was a well informed anthropologist, and his observations were probably accurate. The Eskimos he observed ate large amounts of fish, and other unsaturated fats, and sometimes ate highly decayed fish. An accelerated rate of aging would be expected from such a diet, because of the toxic lipid peroxides….”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturatedfats.shtml
(:
“Personally, I’ve met more people who’ve gotten really screwed up from following Aajonus program than anything else. One of the illest people I know got that way as a result of eating a diet centered around raw grassfed meat and milk. To say his diet is superior would contradict some of my personal experiences.”
People can definitely get messed up, esp if they take his ideas to an extreme. On AV-Skeptics (now High-Everything-Diet), a member said his daughter was eating a lot of rotten meat and raw dairy, honey, raw ice cream, etc. She was obese with cavities, kidney pain, horrid odor, and lots of other problems. I think she was date raped and trying to drown her pain in food and becoming so ugly and smelly that nobody would want to be around her.
She would even eat rotten meat in front of her family like at holidays, and had alienated most her brothers and sisters with her disgusting habits. Her father said he had to wash all the sheets when she visited, because the smell of “high meat” had permeated her clothes and all of her sheets and bedding. Most people don’t eat exactly what AV suggests, due to problems. They have to modify it and change things. I’ve heard from guys who gave testimonials on AV’s first book and they since changed their diet a lot from what he recommends (like cutting out the vegetable juices or other things). When these people tried to get AV to remove their testimonials, he told them that “you believed the testimonial when you gave it.” This is like that great quote by George Stephanopolous. He said “The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.” Aajonu has little integrity, IMO. He once told me that I should donate $10 million to a fund to research his ideas to prove that I have an open mind. Why shouldn’t he donate a few million to research my ideas or Ray Peat’s? He puts the burden of proof on me, instead of giving any proof for his own ideas. He claims he has done tests to prove things, but if you ask him for the details, he will give excuses about as likely as “the dog ate my homework.” People should be dying of laughter when AV spouts off like that, but they just lap up his absurd stories.
“She was obese with cavities, kidney pain, horrid odor, and lots of other problems. I think she was date raped and trying to drown her pain in food and becoming so ugly and smelly that nobody would want to be around her.”
I don’t get it, what makes you think that? it sounds like she was trying to eat in a way that she thought was healing and healthy. If she was trying to ease her pain through food, she’d probably pick stuff like cake and other comfort foods, not rotten meat.
Harper: “I don’t get it, what makes you think that? it sounds like she was trying to eat in a way that she thought was healing and healthy. If she was trying to ease her pain through food, she’d probably pick stuff like cake and other comfort foods, not rotten meat.”
She was taking a lot of AV’s ideas to an extreme. She doubled in weight from like 120 to 240. She was eating a lot of raw ice cream and honey, raw butter and eggs and rotten meat and other things. It was like she was covering her pain with raw food, rather than junk food and so on. I think it was clear from her behavior she had serious psychological problems like from post-traumatic stress disorder, and self-destructiveness.
Sorry folks, I know the person described here, and I’ve read this version of the story once too often! There is a very different version to consider.
Yes for a few years she was a few pounds overweight to try to control detox, but not morbidly obese. Yes she was detoxing and had acne and was depressed, brain fogged and very miserable. She was the victim of a well proven medical mistake in which many many people were horribly and in probably 50% or more cases, lethally, injured by an improperly manufactured MRI contrast medium. The majority of those victims are dead today from gadolinium poisoning and many of the rest wish they could be dead, and cannot work or represent themselves. I have also followed forums discussing this travesty and been in contact with (pro bono)lawyers who defend them.
This young woman, a happy new bride at the time of her severe poisoning, lost her normal life in one day, and eventually her marriage. Her family who should have supported her, deserted her and discredited her suffering, confusion, and incapacitation. She credits the AV diet to keeping her alive, barely, and yes perhaps there were tweaks that might have worked better, but she did live when many others have died. She can sometimes work a few hours a day now, has no money or family who will help her or believe her, and the companies responsible for her injuries have refused to help her, wiggling out of liability with stalling techniques and technicalities. As was true for so many other victims, by the time justice was weakly served, or she knew what to do and could raise funds for the costly test needed to qualify for compensation it was too late for an accurate test. She is still very very far from well 10+ years later. Of course her capacities have been affected by very severe heavy metal poisoning. Through her pain, tears, and loneliness she is trying hard to just survive. She is not even able to get disability due to red tape hangups.
Also for the record, I am not aware that AV ever ate buckets of manure or high meat. Did he put some of that manure on his garden? His teachings, correct or not, consisted of marble or golf ball sized pieces of such, under certain rather unusual circumstances. In one instance he spoke of, he recommended more for someone who he felt needed a lot of normal gut bacteria. Right or effective or not, I submit that those descriptions of AV’s use and recommendations of manure and high meat use are highly dramatized, and there are cases known in which, implemented in the manner recommended, they were, at least, effective. AV spent a LOT of time teaching about the use of fats, but manure or high meat were more passing comments with not even always instructions.
AV did not know about the strange highly toxic parasitical organisms that are being found in people around the (western) world. He had only just heard of them before he died and had no chance to evaluate them. While parasites may perform some clean up functions or suppress an overactive immune system as is thought to be the case with Weinstock’s research, I believe he would have changed his views on parasites if he had understood more about their toxicity or mind control qualities, or their almost unbelievable numbers in most people. Yes parasites do take our toxins to build their bodies, (or our bodies build bodies for them??) but then they excrete their own significant toxins such as histamine, malondialdelyde (an amphetamine), formaldehyde, morphine. ammonia and oxalates and others. When living organisms consume toxins their excretions are toxic. AV knew that. When they hang around for decades, they grow to several toxic feet long, block ducts, make elderly folks? joints stiff, their smell emanates from their pores and exhalations, producing the “old person smell” often noticed in the homes of aged persons. They are part of the misery of old age.
Keeping these old organisms in our bodies may be like blowing our nose into a Kleenex and then keeping the Kleenex. Get rid of them, carefully, once they have served their purpose. When folks reduce their numbers they often get well, autistic kids lose their diagnosis, and folks feel calmer, less angry and less bitter. They recognize negativity but are less emotionally engaged by it.
Av’s basic use of pleomorphic ideas are fascinating and often useful. More often than not I noticed he was more right than wrong and gradually I saw other leaders migrating to some of the same conclusions he had already drawn with positive results. I suspect that we will see more of his principles come into their own, albeit his attempts to implement them may have been at times crude and in need of polishing or in some cases some ideas discarded. I honor him as a caring and generally kind, somewhat autistic pioneer and a ferocious defender of high quality food.
Final comment, after investigating the work of Dr. Jerry Tennant, MD, opthalmologist, of Dallas and his amazing work with voltage, it follows that a lot of AV’s success with raw diet was due not only to undamaged proteins,enzymes, etc. but that raw food carries voltage. Cooked food does not. Without voltage and raw materials one cannot build a new cell and therefore cannot heal.
We need to marry and balance Hulda and AV’s ideas and build on the foundations they laid.
“As for the Inuit..
“…Stefannson said that Eskimo women were getting old in their twenties, and that at the age of 60 they looked as old as Europeans did at 80. He was a well informed anthropologist, and his observations were probably accurate. The Eskimos he observed ate large amounts of fish, and other unsaturated fats, and sometimes ate highly decayed fish. An accelerated rate of aging would be expected from such a diet, because of the toxic lipid peroxides….”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturatedfats.shtml
(:”
Yeah but they had steady blood sugar and no diseases of civilization, right. LOL
“Yeah but they had steady blood sugar and no diseases of civilization, right. LOL”
Maybe, but their blood sugar might have risen with age. The Bear said his fasting blood sugar was over 100 (105, I think). The body adjusts to zero-carb by burning more dietary protein and muscle protein. Low-carb diets are the biggest joke. Just read Gary Taubes’s stupid claim that our grandmothers knew starch was fattening. I wonder where are all the fat Kitavans or Japanese people who eat hundreds of grams of starch a day, don’t do much exercise, etc. I suppose the few pounds they lose by smoking is protecting them from the starch-induced obesity. Yeah, right. It’s more complex than “carbs make you fat.” Protein is a factor. The Kitavans eat low-protein (like 60g per day). The Japanese eat a bit more protein (around 80g). The sumo wrestlers eat 2-5 times more protein than the normal Japanese. Rather than blame carbs, why not blame the mix of a high-protein, high-carb, high-calories?
“Just read Gary Taubes’s stupid claim that our grandmothers knew starch was fattening”
Between new books I am reading, I occasionally go back and read some GCBC. I am less impressed each time. He ignores history.
I briefly contemplated zero-carb after I first read Taubes's book, but luckily my common sense kicked in. There are dozens of lean cultures eating high-carb diets. Taubes ignores history and acts like the dogma of men like Banting and Pennington is beyond question. You can see the huge logical fallacies in Taubes's book, when he equates "refined carbs" with "easily digestible carbs" and "starches." As if anyone developed obesity and diabetes by eating potatoes in the absence of sugar, vegetable oil, excessive protein intake, and other Western dietary habits.
There's a big difference between a baked potato and a doughnut. Carbs don't merit any distinction in the minds of low-carb zealots. They're like some kind of weird religious cult, where sucrose is equated with rice and potatoes, where bleached & enriched white flour is equated with the unbleached unenriched kind, where fresh ground whole wheat flour is equated with rancid flour, where sprouted / fermented whole grains are equated to garbage high in anti-nutrients and toxins.
"They're like some kind of weird religious cult, where sucrose is equated with rice and potatoes, where bleached & enriched white flour is equated with the unbleached unenriched kind, where fresh ground whole wheat flour is equated with rancid flour, where sprouted / fermented whole grains are equated to garbage high in anti-nutrients and toxins."
I spent a year on LC and ZC, what a waste.I also get a laugh everytime I read the blog's of JM and CW, what idiots.
“Just read Gary Taubes’s stupid claim that our grandmothers knew starch was fattening.”
Actually, my grandmother did claim to know this, so on that level Taubes’ statement is accurate is accurate.
From Weston Price, studies of the Swiss
“The nutrition of the people of the Loetschental Valley, particularly that of the growing boys and girls, consists largely of a slice of whole rye bread and a piece of the summer-made cheese (about as large as the slice of bread), which are eaten with fresh milk of goats or cows. Meat is eaten about once a week. In the light of our newer knowledge of activating substances, including vitamins, and the relative values of food for supplying minerals for body building, it is clear why they have healthy bodies and sound teeth. The average total fat-soluble activator and mineral intake of calcium and phosphorus of these children would far exceed that of the daily intake of the average American child. The sturdiness of the child life permits children to play and frolic bareheaded and barefooted even in water running down from the glacier in the late evening’s chilly breezes, in weather that made us wear our overcoats and gloves and button our collars. Of all the children in the valley still using the primitive diet of whole rye bread and dairy products the average number of cavities per person was 0.3. On an average it was necessary to examine three persons to find one defective deciduous or permanent tooth. The children examined were between seven and sixteen years of age.”
Forced to choose, I guess AV. But AV irritates the shit out of me with his belief that parasites and pathogens are merely detoxing the body.
This is a very stupid belief. All organisms on this planet are selfish; they merely want to perpetuate themselves. If they need to take others out in the process, so be it.
Wolves chase and consume deer. Humans slaughter cattle. Parasites and bacteria will consume flesh and spread disease if they need.
No doubt humans have evolved alongside bacteria so that we symbiotically live with various species. But that does not mean that some bacteria or parasites are happy to prosper at our expense.
Take the flesh-eating bacteria, for example. Would Aajonus simply welcome the bacteria as some sort of detox, or would he take steps to stop it? I think the latter.
In short, not all bacteria and parasites are problematic, but to say that they all of them serve some beneficial function for our health is terribly shortsighted. They are organisms that are attempting to ensure their own survival and their ability to contribute to or detract from our health depends on whether our health is beneficial or adverse to their interests.
-Ben
Good points Ben..
there’s even an example of a bird that acts like that called an oxpecker -yeah, that’s its name- and it will pick bugs off a host – but it will also actually feed off of their blood as well; so they are considered semi-parasitic. Whether an open wound and blood letting works in an animal’s favor or only the host (which would be why it’d be considered a semi-parasite) is the question Vonderplanitz should be asking himself.
Why monkeys would try to swallow leaves whole to get rid of parasites is another question. If these parasites are helping them out so much, why would they create a tactic to get em out. I agree, parasites are a whole other species – using their own way to survive, not to help the person they’re in, except maybe, by keeping the population from going too high.
“I spent a year on LC and ZC, what a waste.I also get a laugh everytime I read the blog’s of JM and CW, what idiots.”
Who is JM? Joseph Mercola? Mercola is by far the most dangerous guru IMO, because he promotes the LOW-everthing diet. He’s anti-grains, anti-potatoes, anti-starch. He may eat eat some beans and fruit, but his diet seems to consist of mostly lean meat and raw vegetables. He looks like a skeleton. When he dies, he will probably take over for the Grim Reaper.
Sen: “Actually, my grandmother did claim to know this, so on that level Taubes’ statement is accurate is accurate.”
But our grandmother’s views are not that convincing a proof of anything. They did not travel around the world studying all kinds of indigenous people and seeing if starch was independently fattening. They just observed that in the context of the diet they ate (probably high in protein) starch was associated with obesity. They never isolated their variables.
Who is JM?
Jimmy Moore
Crap… I made the mistake with too much protein for years (High protein low carb/fat)… Can I still heal my body Bruce and what should I do? Max out on the fat/starch?
I’m also worried about sources of foods. I can’t really find raw butter or raw cream where I am… But I can find animal fat, is that OK as the only type (suet and fat between cuts). Should protein be below 10%? It’s a bit hard since most fatty muscle meats still do contain a lot of protein.
I agree that protein is the least needed macro nutrient and fats and carbs are fuels. I just hope and pray to God that I can recover my metabolism to be fast again…
Can you lay out an example of a daily schedule of eating for getting 3000 calories? I just don’t have any clue on how to combine foods anymore and what to eat. All I can think of right now following your recommendations is white organic sushi rice and boiled potato and beef/lamb fat (and dairy products: but I can’t get those raw and MAtt says pasteurized results in absorption)
I meant MALabsorption
“The sturdiness of the child life permits children to play and frolic bareheaded and barefooted even in water running down from the glacier in the late evening’s chilly breezes, in weather that made us wear our overcoats and gloves and button our collars.”
The Swiss probably had lots of brown fat because of the cold exposure. Price and his wife didn’t, because they lived the comfortable modern life with heating and hot water and so forth. You can build up brown fat with cold showers, swimming in winter, etc. Excessive protein depletes the body of brown fat, unless it’s being used structurally (not as fuel). People in America and other Western nations eat far too much protein for their activity level, build, etc. Brown fat is healthy, it can burn off huge amounts of calories as heat, and it doesn’t pose the risk of white fat (which most people have). The modern diet depletes brown fat, whereas primitives probably had more of it, due to their active lifestyle, not eating an excess of protein, eating fat and carbs freely when available, etc.
Jimmy Moore… So sad. He has wasted his life on the Atkins myths that artificial sweeteners are healthy and carbs are the root cause of obesity. Like other dupes, he went from eating a diet high in sugar to a diet low in carbs and high in toxic chemicals (artificial sweetenrs). He did not ever bother to simply remove refined sugar from his daily diet. It’s sad that people fall for the low-carb gurus, with their pathetic theories blaming diseases on “carbs” in general. Read Atkins years ago, I thought that he had simply blamed carbs for sugar’s crimes. Americans take in like 160-200 pounds of refined sugars a year (mostly high fructose corn syrup) and yet millions of suckers believe that carbs in general were their problem, and proceed to destroy their metabolism with fad diets that are unjustified.
Anonymous, you should experiment a bit.
Organic white sushi rice and potatoes is probably a good place to start. Or pearl tapioca, corn starch, arrowroot flour or Chinese cellophane noodles. They're very low in fiber and PUFAs. Later you may be able to eat sprouted grain bread (no soy beans) or good sourdough or unbleached & unenriched white bagels (most breads now are bleached and/or enriched and I would avoid them, in general). UNenriched does not have iron and other toxins added. It is much lower in iron (like 80%).
To get 3,000 Calories? You can eat 3x a day and aim for 1,000 Calories each. Or maybe taper the calories. Like 1500 for breakfast, 1000 for lunch, and 500 for dinner. It might be best to eat most of your protein at dinner. Pulsed feedings of protein may improve nitrogen balance and anabolism more than equal meals. It is how Most cultures naturally eat, but stupid body-builders think it's a great idea to binge on lean protein and toxic protein powders all day. When you build up your digestion, you don't need those protein powders, because you can digest complex meals faster and easier. Eating high-everything speeds up digestion and metabolism. Dieting kills them.
Dear Writers of This Blog
My name is Dr. Huy Shimama Shang, from Japan. I have PhDs in nutrition, gastro-intestinal system, organ functions, detox and, of course, a PhD in liver.
After 92 years of studying diets and having tried: 5 years low fat diet, 15 years vegetarian, 25 years vegan, 12 years raw vegetarian, 22 years raw vegan, 16 years fruitarian, 3 years cooked paleolithic diet, 25 years raw paleolithic diet, 10 years zero carb diet, 5 years raw zero carb diet, 12 years primal diet, 3 years liquidarian, 2 years breathtarian, 5 years urintarian and 10 years fecaltarian diets, I have come to the following conclusion about diet and achieving perfect health effortlessly.
I will share it with all of you at no cost and it will change your lives. It is so simple it’s impossible to understand at first. But let it be absorbed into your mind and you too will live past 100 years like myself without diseases and with perfect organ function, high muscle mass, good senses, great appearance and skin and with the strength and stamina of a teenager.
Doing this simple thing will allow you to stop worrying about nutrient ratios, vitamins, minerals, toxins, pesticides, exercise and everything else you have been indoctrinated to believe has any meaning.
I will tell you now and set you free. The answer to all your nutritional and health issues is actually
Those 5 years starving yourself on Raw Zero Carb must have depleted your white blood cell count and caused your brain to malfunction.
Dr. Shang,
Based on your litany of extreme diets, I’d say you’ve yet to live 1 year, much less 100.
In light of a potential epidemic of low metabolism as being the underlying factor in most modern disease, it’s true – a diet that consists of a huge amount of protein is counterproductive.
Taubes ignores history, and a lot of things, but he’s done a good job at acknowledging history as well. He also did a fine job of summarizing the flaws in the caloric restriction approach to weight loss, better known as the “oops, sorry about your metabolism/sanity/fertility/muscle mass/sugar addiction” diet. Taubes did his best to rely on TL Cleave’s research and distinguish between refined carbs and natural carbs too, despite thinking that absorption rate plays some pivotal role, which it probably doesn’t.
There are definitely opportunistic organisms out there. To say that they are all our friends is pretty naive, and fails to acknowledge the competitiveness of mother nature’s design. Aajonus is both wrong and right in his conclusions. We shouldn’t fear everything that isn’t sterile, and getting lots of exposure can strengthen us. But there’s a trade-off. Sometines you get ill, and getting ill carries risk of death, chronic infection, and poor health. The appropriate stance on germs should be, once and for all, “you can run but you can’t hide.”
This puts the focus, not on whether you are being exposed to germs or not, but to maximizing your own personal health through dietary and lifestyle strategies that help balance your biochemistry and maximize immune function. Then you can be more oblivious to germs like every other creature on earth and most likely get by, just like McCarrison’s well-fed animal subjects who handled germ exposure without ill effects (96% resistance).
From a Hulda Clark perspective, Aajonus’s diet may also have tremendous initial benefit because it is completely devoid of processed foods contaminated with all kinds of solvent chemicals, molds, and other toxins. It is a fresh-foods diet devoid of rancid grains and mercury-laden refined sugars, caffeine, etc.
But of course, one need not eat only raw meat, eggs, and milk to achieve this. Just don’t construct a diet solely of packaged food, cake, cookies, soft drinks, coffee, and beer mixed with a ton of protein.
Another reason people might benefit from AV’s advice (temporarily) is that it’s a low-PUFA diet. He emphasizes butter, red meat, and coconut cream fats as the best for healing. Nuts and seeds and oils are heavily restricted, he says remove skins from meat, eat wild fish instead of farm raised (which is higher in PUFAs), and a lot of other things. Raw honey is devoid of fat and eating large amounts of honey is also a way to displace PUFAs from the diet. I didn’t know about Ray Peat until after I started developing problems with AV’s diet (stomach cramps, light colored stools, occasional loose stools, vertigo and dizziness when lying down). Removing fiber is probably another reason for the limited success AV has had. But it would be dishonest to say that everybody gains health by following AV’s diet. For every success he claims, there are probably 10 or more failures. And most of the people who claim to succeed have probably made significant modifications, like removing foods or adding foods. According to one of hte anonymous comments here, AV’s new revised 1st book no longer pushes a “one size fits all” diet. He now admits that some people shouldn’t eat raw dairy and vegetable juices and other things. I am wondering why it took him so many years to reach that realization, which should have been made before he wrote the book. AV claims to have a lot of rather severe health problems and it would be risky to extrapolate from his case.
Matt: "Taubes did his best to rely on TL Cleave's research and distinguish between refined carbs and natural carbs too, despite thinking that absorption rate plays some pivotal role, which it probably doesn't."
That was my biggest problem with Taubes. He acts like "refined carbs" are all the same as "easily digestible carbohyrates and starches." But you can't put all the refined carbs in the same class. Sugar's not as bad as HFCS and crystal fructose. Unbleached unenriched & unbromated white flour is not as toxic as the other kind. Unenriched white rice is relatively safe unless eaten to the exclusion of animal protein and fat, like McCarrison's white rice and butter diet. Rancid wheat flour is not equal to fresh ground whole wheat flour. Sprouted or fermented whole wheat berries are not the same as modern quick rise breads. Eating refined sugar all by itself isn't the same as eating it along with grains or protein and fat. Eating a doughnut isn't like eating boiled potato with scallops and butter.
I’m currently on a low carb diet (I eat very fatty meats, some boiled veggies and a little fruit). I do very well on it but have come to the same conclusion all of you in here have come to: Too much protein is bad. Whenever I eat too much protein at the expense of fat, I get bloated, metabolism slows down, my joints start making cracking sounds. It’s amazing how Loren Cordain is so ignorant in his book The Paleo diet as he recommends “as much lean meat as you can eat”. It’s ridiculous. How can a guy like that get a PhD??? Bruce and Matt you should have received PhDs/degrees long before Dr. Loren Cordain (or other “educated” gurus like Joseph Mercola). For me, fat is the best fuel and I eat up to 1 pound of pure raw fat (by weight) on some days, with only little protein and some carbs. I get fat from animal sources, like beef and lamb fat. When I can’t get enough fat I increase carbs… It’s that simple. Protein stays pretty low all the time, except when I buy some organ meats but these seem to digest easier/faster and don’t slow down metabolism as much (could it be the high purine content? Glycogen?.. Dunno)
Bruce I have a question for you. Can you please tell me specifically and overall what Ray Peat’s “eating recommendations” or “diet” looks like? (I think he just has general guidelines..). You mentioned once he eats 25% p, 25% fat, 50% carb. Only lean fish, bone broths, OJ and whole (raw?) milk, and little rice/potato? Does he think a low carb diet is sustainable and if yes with what foods/ratios. I’m really interested so can u refer me to a website where he gives his guidelines all in one place? (I know much of his nutritional advice is scattered around in his articles on his website but it’s tough to get an overall picture)
Bruce, I’d also like to hear more about your experience on the primal diet. You talk about vertigo and dizziness: did you notice what foods this was connected to? Did you really stay on the primal diet 1 1/2 year and how strictly? What made you totally quit it instead of just modifying (did you find it too difficult to sustain in real life?). I like the example you posted about the girl who binged on primal diet foods and doubled in weight, very interesting indeed. Nevertheless I Don’t think the Primal diet proposes to eat “high meat” more than just occasionally and I have yet to meet any smelly primal dieters.
Matt you also mention that you know people who have gotten in worse health by eating raw grassfed meats and milk (or by following AVs diet). Can you please elaborate because “bad health” is such a broad term. What specific health problems did they run into? Many people who go on the primal diet actually go on it because they are really sick (chronic illness like diabetes or cancer.. or the doctor often cannot diagnose what is wrong with them), they may seem in bad health after long time on the primal diet but remember to compare it to where they started from. I’ve seen a lot of inspiring transformations of primal dieters, though that is not to say that they don’t run into problems eventually and have to readjust the diet (but don’t we all?).
last thing I want to mention is that I still am skeptical about the notion of mixing starches with saturated fats in unlimited amounts. Maybe it’s the fear of fat I have rooted in my mind because of government, doctor and guru propaganda. As I said I have days where I eat almost all my calories from saturated fats. Like 1 pound of fat. Do you think it’s safe (or more beneficial) if I instead of that ate say 1/2 pound of saturated fat with a starch combo like rice (and little protein)?. Most people would think it’s suicide and the only reason I have allowed myself such a high fat intake is that I stay away from starches and don’t eat many carbs at the same meal as the fatty meal… that’s the only way I have rationalized that it’s safe in my mind, since I daily hear the “fact” that saturated fats are killers, and I can see it might be because the studies performed were done in combo with starch or with cooked fats… but according to you guys none of that is true? So diseases is not caused by eating well-done, cooked/pasteurized meats/fats together with lots of starch? It is like that has always been known to be a killer, they just didn’t know what to blame (sat. fat? starch? the combo? the cooked fat and the AGEs?). I feel like I want to play it safe and keep my variables low.. Just in case that it is proven that saturated fat is actually bad but only in some combo or cooked.
“Taubes ignores history, and a lot of things, but he’s done a good job at acknowledging history as well. He also did a fine job of summarizing the flaws in the caloric restriction approach to weight loss, better known as the “oops, sorry about your metabolism/sanity/fertility/muscle mass/sugar addiction” diet.”
Has anyone actually lost their sanity on a calorie restricting diet? That’s scary stuff. You mean like developing a full blown mental disorder? Any examples of that?
Bruce waht do you think about Chris Masterjohn (from Cholesterol-And-Health.Com). He seems to have the same view about PUFAs and cholesterol as Ray Peat. *but he seems to recommend iron while Ray Peat recommends against it.. I could be wrong though
ALSO
You mention light colored stools on AVs primal diet. Is light colored/yellowish stools a bad thing or what, does it prove malabsorption of something? what’s the optimal color of stool?
Kitavans eat a lot of carbs and get their fats from coconuts (saturated); the indigenous swedes that Price studied ate bread with cheese as a few examples
I think milk alone fits ‘high carb high saturated fat’ – an example of people living on mostly milk would be the Masai
besides how sound are those studies on saturated fat? all the ones I’ve read are so incredibly vague
most of the saturated fat’s not paired with natural carbs either, most likely, in those studies – what have you read or are referring to anyway?
Ancel Keys caused insanity in the people that he victimized with very-low-calorie diet. One of the men chopped off several fingers to get out of the study. Michael Eades spun the study as usual to make it seem like carbs were to blame. The fault lies in the calorie restriction, and fat restriction, not that they ate carbs. He cited a low-carb study by John Yudkin in which people eating the same calories on low-carb diets didn’t develop the mental problems. But the studies have little in common. Keys worked with people who were normal weight and starved them down to a pathetic emaciated state. He didn’t give them unlimited food and simply limit the amount of animal protein or fat in their diet. Nobody has proved that carbs cause obesity, independent of other variables, like protein intake, fat intake, type of carbs, or type of fat. Anthony Colpo has debunked this silly article by Eades, as well. The logic is entirely lacking that carbs cause hunger / weight gain, unless you are talking about refined carbs, esp refined sugar and HFCS.
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/metabolism/is-a-calorie-always-a-calorie/
Chris Masterjohn agrees with Peat and me on many things. I haven’t read about his views on iron. There is no reason to eat lots of iron, IMO. Limiting iron maybe a to slow down aging or protect from toxic pollution and other poisons. Ray doesn’t avoid red meat or anything, but he stays away from iron supplemenets and enriched foods with iron (most wheat and rice). I know he wouldn’t eat a zero-carb diet of meat, like Bear and Charles. Peat’s diet seems to be about 50% carbs, 25% protein and 25% protein, more or less.
Light colored stools can indicate a bile deficiency or too much mucus. I think it is best to have dark stools, which don’t float in the water. Not black but a dark brown with no traces of food.
Corrections in capital letters:
“Limiting iron maybe a WAY to slow down aging or protect from toxic pollution and other poisons.”
“Peat’s diet seems to be about 50% carbs, 25% FAT, and 25% protein, more or less.”
The claims against saturated fat are all nonsense, whether cooked or not. In what way would cooked saturated fats be worse than cooked MUFAs or PUFAs? Many healhty tribes ate mostly cooked food. There was no 100% raw foodist tribe, as Matt noted in the past. Obesity results from eating high-everything all the time, as in high refined sugar, high PUFAs and trans fat, high protein, high calories. If you take out one or more of those variables, your results might change. If people eating a lot of fast food stopped eating the soda and ketchup and milkshakes and desserts, their results might be very different. I think Morgan Spurlock is a great example of someone failing to isolate variables. He ate tons of HFCS and/or refined sugar and yet blamed the fat instead. Where is the proof that cooked fat is bad that is not from people eating refined sugar and PUFAs and trans fatty acids?
Bruce: “He ate tons of HFCS and/or refined sugar and yet blamed the fat instead. Where is the proof that cooked fat is bad that is not from people eating refined sugar and PUFAs and trans fatty acids?”
Yeah, that’s annoying that he blamed fat…but in all honesty, anyone that doesn’t know about the metabolic impact that sugar has would definitely point to the fat (or carbs) first if they were gaining weight, since sugar is fat-free.
As for the vegetable oils…I think that people consider this “healthier” than animal/saturated fat simply because it’s from a vegetable, and they see vegetables as “healthy.”
Definitely some flawed conceptions but I see why they think the way they do!!
Is it fine if I eat all my fat from conventional grainfed beef? I get beef fat for free from whole foods market (no hormones or antibiotics, but grainfed). Is it dangerous? Will the omega6 from grain fed beef fat and too little omega3 cause me to die rapidly?
Um mr. Bruce what about all the Heterocyclic Amines, AGEs, Lipid peroxides, etc etc etc proven to be present in cooked meats/fats and proven to be carcinogenic?
I am not saying raw meat/fats are necessary for longevity, but they are BETTER for health, even if just slightly. You can’t prove cooked meat/fat is somehow more beneficial, only from perhaps a social standpoint.
So anonymous, let me ask you something
Is all you eat fresh killed meat – straight up?
I’m assuming you know what the Maillard reaction is? Is that what you’re referring to as carcinogenic or what? Because you know what’s funny.. maillard particles are still in anything room temperature, albeit smaller amounts, but they’re still present. If you happen to eat anything fermented, that will also be concentrated in maillard particles.
Maillard particles are produced naturally inside the body, hence, I don’t understand the argument behind them or the fact that they cause you to age faster. Eating 100% raw, or 100% cooked — you wil always have maillard particles with you. Maybe it’s the “you can’t avoid the life cycle” situation.
Did you know that maillard reactions that occur among the body’s own tissue are accelerated in diabetics? That being said, it’d be much more wise to take account of blood sugar, rather then reducing “maillard intake”.
The body is no dud, it will get rid of AGEs through white blood cells, such as ones that form on other proteins, as well. Like the topic of the “HVA” – it’s like trying to avoid germs in a germ filled world. These things are nothing but natural.
Not to mention the fact that no known culture today has a 100% raw diet – and many, many cultures practice fermentation for preservation. Now, if this were such a problem, and these supposed carcinogenic properties in cooked and fermented foods were true – wouldn’t we have been dead by now? Over oh say, the past 40,000 years of cooking and fermenting food – maybe longer?
chlOe: You seem like a little confused girl and an annoying follower of Bruce who is just repeating everything he has said. You aren’t even half original
It is clear, from your above post, that you have an eating disorder. Why are you pushing that Maillard particles are safe and aren’t pro-aging when it has nothing to do with what I said. What you have written seems more like a monologue to me, it surely is not a response to what I said. You seem to want to convince yourself that your own diet is healthy, but really, I think you are afraid to admit that a diet that is socially acceptable in your social circle is not necessarily the healthiest. Either that or you are just trying to impress Bruce and win his acceptance.
With that said, I’ll just repeat what I said in my previous post once more
“I am not saying raw meat/fats are necessary for longevity, but they are BETTER for health, even if just slightly. You can’t prove cooked meat/fat is somehow more beneficial, only from perhaps a social standpoint.”
The discussion is on whether raw meat is healthier (even if just in minute amount) compared to the cooked counterpart. No Charles W. or guru can convince me that a medium/well-done steak or ultra heat treat cream is better than their raw counterparts. Bruce is ignorant for saying that cooked meat is better than raw, there is no evidence of this. But there is plenty of evidence that raw is better. Even if half of this evidence is meaningless/untrue, raw is still the champ in the cooked vs. raw meat/fat competition
As I said, raw is not necessary for good health/longevity but it’s favorable. Just like eating 2 gram of vegetable oil occasionally vs. not eating any vegetable oil: not eating any vegetable oil sure is healthier, even if just slightly
HCAs and AGEs don’t make you stronger, just like PUFAs don’t. You can’t compare carcinogenic/free radical forming toxins with bacteria or parasites. You don’t need to “train” your body to handle toxins or stimulate the immune system or make the body heal faster – there are enough toxins in the air, food and water today, the body gets plenty of hormesis. Everyone in an industrialized country is exposed to enough toxins but not to enough bacteria.
And chlOe as a side note, it doesn’t matter what some tribe ate decades ago, we live in the 21st century, we have the knowledge and possibility today to live even longer and better
Anonymous, I think Chloe is trying to say that the “carcinogenic” things that you think are present in cooked meats are actually present even in raw meats as well; they’re even present in small amounts in our bodily tissue already. I’m sure she has a source for that if you want to ask her.
I don’t think that you should judge her as having an “eating disorder” before you actually speak with her, either. She’s really intelligent and does tons of research on her own, and in no way does she idolize Bruce. Where did you get that idea? And how can you label her as “annoying,” when you’re the one saying rude things to innocent people you don’t even talk to?
I think it’s extremely relevant “what some tribe ate decades ago,” because it sets the foundation for what worked in nature in the absence of industrialization.
Anonymous; please don’t mistake me for trying to win any acceptance metal, those aren’t my intentions. This is what I personally believe.
You are making statements that appear hypocritical; such as saying no one can prove cooked meat is healthier than raw. Can you prove raw meat is better than cooked? If raw isn’t “necessary” for longevity or good health, than why exactly is it better? If at all preferred?
If you don’t know what a maillard particle is than you shouldn’t bother arguing it. I’m not saying to eat maillard particles on purpose to “get stronger” I’m saying they’re unavoidable. Maillard particles are generated by the body anyway. AGEs come from more than just cooked meat, they’re formed on body proteins, like collagen, and are destroyed by white blood cells. I was comparing them to germs for this reason because they’re unavoidable and harmless in a healthy person (such as maillard particles become destructive in diabetics from being accelerated.. germwise, say, the flu may cause destruction in someone with a weak immune system). Mailard particles are involved in this argument to argue that they are what’s associated with these “AGEs” in cooked meat – though, they’re present in everything. AGEs are the products of a maillard reaction at an advanced stage, hence, the subject of maillard particles.
And by cultures, I mean modern day. From 40,000 years ago to present.
I don’t know why I’m off topic, please explain why. I’m explaining why raw food would not be considered healthier even by the slightest standard and you’re not even providing an argument. You’re just saying raw food is automatically better, like you know. Like, where’s the debate in that?
Thanks Harper (:
For the last four months I’ve followed a diet that is essentially Art DeVany’s+saturated fat. I say that it is like DeVany’s rather than like Mark Sissons because I was getting most of my calories from the two or three pieces of fruit per day. Now I had remarkable sucess on this diet. I’m 21, 5’10” 130lb. Unfortunately I lost a few pounds on the diet (I consider myself very underweight) but it did pretty much clear up my terrible digestive troubles that had been going on for the last year (I was positive at one point before going paleo that I had Celiac). Before I found your blog something in the back of my head was nagging me. When maybe once every few weeks I would have some diarea I noticed that it would be directly after I ate an excess of raw fruits or raw vegatables. So I was in a position where I knew that grain was bad (gluten phobia, and probably with good reason), that fruit was probably bad too, and that I didn’t want to go into ketosis because that didn’t seem like a good way to gain weight. So on paleo my digestion improved, my dry skin cleared up, and some eczema type shit is about gone. Mood also stabilized dramatically. But every morning when I wake up I have gunk on my teeth and my tongue is a little white. My entire life I have not been able to breath through my nose except in the first few weeks of going Paleo. I can’t breath again and now that I’ve tasted what it is like to do so I’m looking for a way to make it happen. I found your blog and the plantspoisonsandrottenstuff blog. I’m on the fence. Have you checked out her blog?
Today’s my first sugar free day. I bought bread and had 2 slices today for the first time in months. Of course I had it with buttered with 4 fried eggs and 4 bacon strips.
Could fructose really be what’s making me unable to breath naturally? My mother , grandmother, and sister all suffer from sinus infections and from what I can tell are unable to breath through their noses as well.
I have been weight lifting on and off but am unable to put on weight. Am on the fence about taking Cod Liver Oil supplements (thinking that vitamin A deficiency might be related to my inability to build muscle.)
Would really appreciate any input.
One last thing: Did a four day experiment of drinking a gallon of milk a day (pasteurized, whole, grass-fed, and my skin was flaky and dry within the four days. It had started to heal but has not done so completely. I have a bottle of synthetic K-2 which I’m also on the fence about using regularly.
A few corrections: I meant to say that I got most of my carbohydrates from fruit rather than most of my calories. Most of my calories probably come from fat. I eat a lot of meat and eggs.
Also: I have always had trouble with delayed sleep phase syndrom. I have trouble falling asleep yet sleep always for 9 hours straight. When I was drinking the gallon of milk a day and taking 1.5x the RDA of chelated magnesisum I noticed that for the first time in quite a while I was naturally falling asleep at midnight and waking up at 7am naturally which is unheard of for me. Could my calcium/magnesisum ratios/quanties be screwed up, or was the milk simply making me tired by some other means (I was very very tired when drinking it).
Really appreciate any feedback.
@Anon
Where are the studies of populations who ate nothing but cooked meat,drank pure spring water and lived in a toxin free bubble? What was the rate of cancer from eating the cooked meat?
Also where are the studies of populations who ate raw meat, drank pure spring water and lived in a toxin free bubble?
George I experience flashbacks often if I stay away too late at night and I also have problems falling as sleep. I turn around often in my sleep and experience night mares.
oh no not the raw food debate again
yawn!!!!
Hi Matt,
I think both your challengers win the crackpot prize – but I do like crackpots because they sure are interesting compared to normal folks.
An interesting book on Germs, if you haven't read it yet, is Good Germs, Bad Germs by Jessica Snyder Sachs – a good read, IMHO.
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Germs-Bad-Survival-Bacterial/dp/0809016427/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240138851&sr=8-1
Regards,
LCC
Here’s a question for all of you –
From a digestion standpoint, do you think it’s better to do low-intensity exercise (like a brief walk) after eating, or is it better for digestion to be sedentary after eating?
Harper brief walk
I would assume since it takes energy to digest food, it might be a good idea to wait some before walking? I guess it might depend on how well you digest food, too.
Hi Bruce and all other Gurus
Speeding up your metabolism is the worst thing you can do if you want to live a long life:
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/womens_thyroid_disease/84677
All studies which have used calorie restriction, or people living just slightly above the calorie restriction limit, showed the longest, healthiest lives.
Eat a low calorie but high mineral diet, that is the key to a long life. Find fruits and veggies with a high brix index (so they have the most minerals). All conventional and organic fruits and veggies are virtually devoid of nutrients today, you need to get Certified Biodynamic fruits/vegetables/meats to get high brix/mineral/vitamin foods and to live a long life.
eat 1500 calories per day. Eat things like vegetable/bone broths for the minerals necessary to sustain life. Exercise by taking some sprints in the forest. You will live long like this.
Eating 3000 calories per day will oxidize your system faster (causing aging) and wear out your heart and other vital organs. You will only reach old age faster than usual.
Everyone on a low calorie diet – provided they get the necessary minearls/nutrients – has lived longer and looked younger. Avoid whole grains as they bind to calcium and other minerals in the intestines. Get at least 20% of fat in your diet to protect yourself from the fat soluble pollutants of today. You’ll all be fine !
You should question why calorie restricted studies showed longer living lives. Is it really metabolism? Would that mean anyone who makes it to 100 is all calorie restricting or has a slow metabolism?
I think a more reasonable explanation for calorie restriction is Peat’s theory.
“The carcinogenic properties of the polyunsaturated fats have been known for more than 50 years, as has the principle of extending the life span by restricted feeding. More recently several studies have demonstrated that the long lived species contain fewer highly unsaturated fats than the short lived species. Restriction of calories prevents the lipids in the brain, heart, and liver from becoming more unsaturated with aging.”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/vitamin-e.shtml
“If food and air and water are rationed, then slow metabolizers are going to live longer. But when nutritional needs are met, the organisms with the highest metabolic rate generally are healthier and live longer. In a study of nurses, those who habitually consumed the most calories lived longer than those who consumed the least. Even while Pearl was promoting his theory, other famous biologists, for example John Northrup in Jacques Loeb’s lab at the Rockefeller Institute, were making observations that contradicted the rate of living theory. For example, around 1916, Northrup observed that fruit flies that metabolized at the highest rate lived the longest. …
The idea of extending life span by slowing metabolism and growth was a logical implication of the “rate of living” theory of aging, and it’s an idea that is still popular. Many people have supposed that eating less would slow metabolism. Caloric restriction does extend the life span of many species, but it generally preserves the high metabolic rate of youth, so that at a given age the calorie-restricted animal has a higher rate of oxygen consumption per gram of body weight than the unrestricted eaters.
…Roy Walford, a gerontologist who wrote about extending the human life span to 120 years by caloric restriction, spent 30 years limiting his diet to about 1600 calories, with little animal protein, almost no saturated fat–fish once or twice per week, poultry or beef about once, and a fat free milkshake for breakfast–and after about 15 years, began developing a degenerative brain disease, ALS, one of the nerve diseases involving lipid peroxidation and excitotoxicity. When he died from the disease, he had lived a year longer than the normal life expectancy. …
Calorie-restricted animals (on a diet of normal composition) have a lower degree of fat unsaturation in their mitochondria as they age, preserving the relatively more saturated fats of youth.”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturatedfats.shtml
Basically, eating the right fat for human beings is sufficient enough to keep the metabolism at a normal rate (not at a diseased rate, which, by the way, hyperthyroidism is often confused — it’s actually hypothyroidism); and the normal rate with an extremely low unsaturated fat content in the body is what keep us able to live long, fight disease, and prosper.
Ray Peat is around 80 years old, outliving that other calorie restricted dude (who ate fats that were predominately unsaturated). Isn’t observation fun?
My grandmother who is 95 has used sunflower oil her entire life for frying, and she eats fried foods (meats, eggs, etc) most of the days during the week. And guess what, she is still alive!
Go to Eastern Europe (like Hungary) and go to see some old “traditional” people. They all use sunflower oil for cooking, it’s what grows there. And they use it DAILY, and in high amounts. Go see how well they look into their 70s, 80s. This is an entire population of people.
Observation IS fun!
P.S. Other than the lean meats along with sunflower oil they mostly just eat refined starches (white bread mostly), boiled veggies, and some dairy products (milk, cheese). They do not eat tons of saturated fats, as the theory goes, to protect them from PUFA damage, yet they are still alive and breathing.
Travel out of your little continent Americans, all your theories about what is eaten in Thailand, Europe etc are flawed. Go visit. I’ve been to Thailand and can testify that 99% of the people don’t eat what Bruce says they do… They might have 200 years ago, but now everything is deep fried in PUFAs: fried rice, fried noodles, fried chicken, fried veggies… and guess what, it’s all in refined vegetable oils: plenty of PUFAs and NO Saturated fats. Let me lay it out once more: people in Thailand get their protein from lean meat, fat from PUFA oils and carbs from rice/noodles. Why do many Thai people live into old age? Maybe because they are much more appreciating of life and analyze their food less than Americans. Just my 2 cents
I’m going to assume that your grandmother didn’t eat a restricted calorie diet, so that cancels out the other Anonymous’s theory that calorie restriction lengthens lifespans.
You’re saying to look at “old, traditional people.” Since degenerative disease and dietary problems are (in theory) cumulative through generations (Pottenger’s Cats,) I have to ask: how is the younger generation of eastern europeans doing? I think they won’t be as healthy as their grandparents by the time they reach their 70’s and 80’s.
As for the Thailand thing, I DO know firsthand that they use a good deal of PUFA oils in their cooking. You’re right. Maybe the fact that they don’t consume as much sugar, fructose, or trans fats helps curb the effect of PUFAs. Or maybe it’s another cumulative thing, let’s wait to observe the youngest generation of Thai people 40 years from now.
And as an American, I know there’s a huge stigma attached to us being stupid and ignorant. Most of us here have traveled a good deal, so try not to think that all of us are a bad stereotype.
Ray Peat has also pointed out that iron restriction prolongs life. Experiments have been done with that and when they reduced the iron in animal’s diet, they lived longer. (Many foods are enriched with iron, based on the belief that you will be deficient if you eat white rice or white flour alone. Apparently, these geniuses never considered that eating a balanced diet would prevent defriciency, even if you ate ONLY refined starches.) Here’s a good quote by Ray Peat.
“One of the major lines of aging research, going back to the early part of this century, was based on the accumulation of a brown material in the tissues known as “age-pigment.” The technical name for this material, “lipofuscin,” means “fatty brown stuff.” In the 1960s, the “free radical theory” of aging was introduced by Denham Harman, and this theory has converged with the age-pigment theory, since we now know that the age-pigment is an oxidized mass of unsaturated fat and iron, formed by uncontrolled free radicals. Until a few years ago, these ideas were accepted by only a few researchers, but now practically every doctor in the country accepts that free radicals are important in the aging process. A nutrition researcher in San Diego suspected that the life-extending effects of calorie restriction might be the result of a decreased intake of toxins. He removed the toxic heavy metals from foods, and found that the animals which ate a normal amount of food lived as long as the semi-starved animals. Recently, the iron content of food has been identified as the major life-shortening factor, rather than the calories. [Choi and Yu, Age vol. 17, page 93, 1994.]”
Iron’s DangersAs for the claim that some people lived long lives while eating sunflower oil. So what? I don’t want to eat rancid and bad tastiong oils. I would rather eat coconut oil, macadamia oil, butter, and beef tallow. I will let other people go ahead and ead safflower oil or sunflower oil. I would only use the “high oleic” versions of those oils, if I were going to eat them or foods containing them.
Japanese competitive eater writes book
Here’s a story talking about a Japanese female competitive eater who routinely eats high-everything and yet she’s thin and healthy. She says that she has been eating lots of foods all her life, and never worried about calories. Now, the naysayers will say it’s just because of them being Japanese. They will ignore any suggestion that these people have a fast metabolism because they don’t diet and limit things like most obese people do. They will ignore competitive eaters like Joey Chestnut who can drink a full gallon of whole milk in 41 seconds with no digestive problems. People are obese because they have a bad metabolism, not because they eat too many calories, too much fat, or too many carbohydrates. If you want to go on believing morons like Gary Taubes and Charles Washington and Michael Eades, that’s up to you. All of their claims only apply to people like them with a damaged metabolism. Healthy people could eat 10,000 Calories a day, while doing no exercise, and remain as thin as a model. The metabolic rate can easily increase by 15-fold if you have more brown fat activity or less.
“what about all the Heterocyclic Amines, AGEs, Lipid peroxides, etc etc etc proven to be present in cooked meats/fats and proven to be carcinogenic?”
There are more AGEs in raw fat and raw protein than in cooked starches. You are listening to the wrong people. If you’re worried about AGEs, then you should eat lots of carbohydrates and very little fat or protein. Base your diet on potatoes, organic white sushi rice,
“RESULTS: Foods of the fat group showed the highest amount of AGE content with a mean of 100+/-19 kU/g. High values were also observed for the meat and meat-substitute group, 43+/-7 kU/g. The carbohydrate group contained the lowest values of AGEs, 3.4+/-1.8 kU/g. The amount of AGEs present in all food categories was related to cooking temperature, length of cooking time, and presence of moisture. Broiling (225 degrees C) and frying (177 degrees C) resulted in the highest levels of AGEs, followed by roasting (177 degrees C) and boiling (100 degrees C).”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15281050
“AGE content in food is influenced by the distribution of macronutrients (proteins and fats more than carbohydrates) and by cooking conditions, including temperature, time, and moisture (45). In particular, cooking at high temperature generates a large amount of AGE because the reactions that produce these compounds are accelerated by increased heat. Culinary methods that are water based (steaming, poaching, boiling, and stewing) instead of fat based and/or browning methods (frying, broiling, and grilling) could greatly reduce AGE ingestion despite the same macronutrient content of foods. For example, a skinless chicken breast contains 692 AGE kilounits raw, 1011 AGE kilounits boiled, 5245 AGE kilounits broiled, and 6651 AGE kilounits fried (45).”
http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/cgi/content/full/1/6/1293#SEC3
So, even if you eat raw meat, you would be ingesting more AGEs than someone who eeats mainly dairy, eggs, grains, beans, etc. Charles Washington and Aajonus are eating more AGEs than Dean Ornish, Joel Fuhrman, and so forth. Just because the AGEs are associated with some condition doesn’t mean they are causing it. Maybe something else is to balme in the diets most people habitually consume.
Hey anonymous, guess what? Sunflower oil is high in vitamin E.
“In the 1940s, the official definition of vitamin E’s activity was changed. Instead of its effectiveness in preventing the death and resorption of embryos, or the degeneration of the testicles or brain or muscles, it was redefined as an antioxidant, preventing the oxidation of unsaturated oils.
Although some people continued to think of it as a protective factor against thrombosis, heart attacks, diabetes, and infertility, the medical establishment claimed that the prevention or cure of diseases in animals wasn’t relevant to humans, and that a mere antioxidant couldn’t prevent or cure any human disease.
The experiments that led to the identification of vitamin E involved feeding rats a diet containing rancid lard and, as a vitamin A supplement, cod liver oil. Both of these contained large amounts of polyunsaturated oils.”
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/vitamin-e.shtml
Also, I should be saying – it’s how the person is effected by the food and how saturated their fat tissues are. Approaching speeding up metabolism and sustaining ‘youthful’ lipids can probably be done multiple ways, not just by choosing the right fat. I should have said that first. The whole point is, I think age is determined by how well your body is balanced, not exactly blaming bad health for one random food. It’s the effect that bad combining or lack of this or that can have on hormones, therefor on metabolism, or perhaps even how you’re born or how you’re raised – more than just food. Therefor these ill effects lead people to believe one food group as bad, and causing things – like allergies; milk and eggs, often totally shunned by many groups of dieters.
Hi Chloe
Are you still here?
“And as an American, I know there’s a huge stigma attached to us being stupid and ignorant.”
You mean we Americans are not loved and respected everywhere? I am deeply saddened to hear this news.
"chlOe: You seem like a little confused girl and an annoying follower of Bruce who is just repeating everything he has said. You aren't even half original."
You're a stupid troll and you aren't at all original. Chloe thinks for herself & isn't following any gurus, unlike you, with your blind belief that raw food is "better" (if only slightly). You do not even bother to read the arguments being presented by Matt, Chloe, Troy, and me. How do you explain the fact that Broda Barnes was able to prevent cancer, even in people who smoked, just by repairing their thyroid hormones? AV is so simple minded and dumb, compared to Barnes and Cleave and others. He's a joke. You are the one with the eating disorder if you think that AV's diet is healthy. It's a pathetic and fearful way to eat that is likely to weaken you. I've heard people on the Primal Diet complain that they're more sensitive to perfume and cigarette smoke. How is that health?
Someone who's now eating high-everything used to have those sensitivities and now doesn't. I'm not promoting any diet dogma. AV's diet weakens people. That's proven. He says it right in the invitations of his pot lucks, that people shouldn't wear any colognes or perfumes, because people on the Primal diet are sensitive to them. Why are they sensitive? Because they're not eating the toxins in cooked foods, so their body reacts more to all toxins in general. You can apply AV's hygiene hypothesis argument to his own theories. We need to eat cooked foods and even the occasional fast food and/or junk food to build up our body's immunity. By eating like AV, you weaken the body. AV is not healthy. Someone who can sit in a room full of cigarette smoke, perfume, cats, dogs, and other allergens without having a reaction is healthy.
Digestion Problems Resolved
“And chlOe as a side note, it doesn’t matter what some tribe ate decades ago, we live in the 21st century, we have the knowledge and possibility today to live even longer and better “
So, prove that we would live longer and better by eating raw meat and dairy, as opposed to cooked versions. Just saying that doesn’t prove anything. Pottenger doesn’t prove anything. His study has a lot of flaws and hasn’t been reproduced in humans OR cats. So where’s the proof that cooked foods degrade health or raw foods enhance it? We can get plenty of bacteria simply by not being fanatical about hygiene. No need to eat raw meats with potential parasites and so forth based on AV’s stupid dogma that they’re just nature’s clean-up crew. How do you explain why people decline in health on the Primal Diet or have to change it in significant ways (adding or removing of foods, cooking foods, and so forth), if it’s so perfect? Whyd did Ben’s health suffer on the Primal Diet? Why did mine? Why has Matt heard of more people whose health declined than who benefited from AV’s brain-dead diet dogma?
Anonymous: “All studies which have used calorie restriction, or people living just slightly above the calorie restriction limit, showed the longest, healthiest lives.”
Then how come studies using intermittent fasting with NO calorie restriction show the same benefits and more? How come the same benefits can be derived by avoiding PUFAs and iron and other free radicals? It’s far more complex than calories. You need to read Ray Peat’s articles and the studies on intermittent fasting with NO calorie restriciton, iron restriction, and avoiding PUFAs. Most studies feed animals PUFA oils, refined sugars, and casein as the bulk of their calories. Of course they age fast on such a braindead diet. That doesn’t prove that you would also age fast on a diet of potatoes and white rice and butter and cheese and meat and eggs and coconut oil.It’s more important where the calories come from than how many you consue. PUFA oils are deadly. Saturated fats are healthy. It is better to eat refined starches than refined sugars. Mixing refined starches and sugars with PUFAs creates a perfect nutritional storm, accelerating disease processes. That’s is what most American and Western people eat (SAD). There’s a big difference between SAD and HED.
I am posting for the first time here although I have been following and enjoying this blog for the past several months.
Actually, I am writing in response to Anonymus about the massive use of sunflower oil in the Central/Eastern Europe, Hungary in his/her case. I have grown up and have lived the most part of my life in that part of Europe, on the other side of the Hungarian boarder so I can attest for it. The people there are paying with their health the heavy reliance on processed sunflower oil. Heart disease, diabetes and obesity are becoming more and more wide spread among the population in their 50-ties. Sure they are using it because “it is what grows there”, but is hasn’t been so always. It was after the WWII that the industry of massive extraction of oils began. IMO, good quality, high saturated fats are not available (except butter)or easy to find in those countries. Lard is available but people has been so brainwashed that just a few use it nowadays. Coconut fat is almost unknown and also unavailable. Beef tallow might be available, but I don’t know of anyone using it. Sometimes, on the market, we would get duck/goose fat and spread it on bread. Olive oil has beome available because it is being imported from Greece, Italy, Spain, but due to its strong taste, a few use it (maybe because it has become fashionable, not out of tradition).
Just my opinion on the “traditional” use of sunflower oil in the Eastern Europe.
Katarina
Nice one Pip. Raw food debate… yawn, yawn!
It is possible to have a normal metabolism and not eat that much food. That probably would extend life to the maximum number of years.
The high-everything diet is but a short-term dietary strategy to bring the metabolism back to normal. When it is suboptimal, life sucks, you run a higher risk of encountering every known illness, and your body mismanages just about every particle that enters it – from fats to carbohdyrates to calcium and other minerals.
But thinking that a low metabolism is synonymous with great health and longevity is some certified Ron Rosedale bullshit.
Fructose and fruit is not “Bad,” in and of itself. If you are a fructose malabsorber, which is very common due to bacterial overgrowth (probably from having a low-metabolism), then it may be best to avoid it until your metabolism has been restored. When that happens, normal intestinal bacteria is more likely to be restored, and fructose malabsorption does not occur (p.s. – the greater the fructose malabsorption, the greater the hypoglycemia, which Broda Barnes also treated by bringing the metabolic rate back to normal – although this may have more to do with the liver, which is where fructose is handled in the body).
Thai people don’t drink 44 ounce Mountain Dews and eat Twinkies, nor did the past several generations. Not so in America, Britain, Australia, etc. We’ve been hitting the white powder in ungodly quantities mixed with our high-protein diets for generations. Now we’re on the HFCS crystalline fructose thing.
In Japan, sugar ingestion levels are what they were in the land of the “stupid” 100 years ago.
And yes, Americans are stupid, but so are people everywhere.
How long do you think competitive eaters like Natsuko “Gal” Sone or Tomoko Miyake will live? They seem to have eaten high everything all their lives, including a lot of mayo, fried food, and occasional binges on cake and other junk food. They look like Japanese teenagers, with a BMI of under 17, and Sone claims digestion’s very important and so is elimination. It maybe that nutrients are less important than calories and variety.
Disease is caused by a lack of nutrients and/or calories due to dieting or eating fake foods (artificial sweeteners, trans fats, olestra, and so on). Diets degrade health, boxing you in, ruining digestion and metaboolism. People behave as if the only dietary choices were low-fat, SAD, or low-carb. They never try their common sense. Eat natural fat freely, eat clean starch and unrefined sugar freely. Don’t eat bleached or enriched flour and other garbage, except rarely. Don’t eat sugar, except rarely. Avoid PUFAs and trans fat as much as possible. Maybe mayonnaise is OK if you’re healthy, purely as a way to keep your calories up. “Gal” Sone claims mayonnaise is her favorite topping. But she’s healthy and eats lots of food each day. So maybe her body can handle it and get rid of what it doesn’t need. She has never subscribed to any diet, AFAIK.
“Americans are stupid, but so are people everywhere”- Matt Stone. The greatest comment ever stated on this blog.
It is so funny – it is not about a diet, it is about life/live style
I vote for AV…lol
Funny that sunflower oil was brought up– Matt Stone's later post on omega 6 content of food lists sunflower oil as 3.7% (-the high oleic version, that is). Perhaps when Anonymous said that the Eastern Europeans "are paying with their health the heavy reliance on processed sunflower oil", this would be the NON-OLEIC type, and possibly with the vitamin E damaged or removed as well.
Probably so Jared. Standard sunflower oil is very high PUFA. Just as high as any typical seed oil.
@Bruce
Wow, you're writing some of the dumbest things I've read in a while.
"We need to eat cooked foods and even the occasional fast food and/or junk food to build up our body's immunity."
How can a body be "immune" to toxins? What kind of rediculous idea is that? Toxins accumulate while the body tries to get rid of them. By your reasoning I guess grainfed cattle who get hormones are healthier than grassfed ones if they just eat enough? Sure they have to build up their resistance to toxins by ingesting and accumulating them, because they live in the polluted modern world…
"Someone who can sit in a room full of cigarette smoke, perfume, cats, dogs, and other allergens without having a reaction is healthy."
So… I guess children are unhealthy, because they have a natural negative reaction to cigarette smoke and perfume. Couldn't it be that their instincts just haven't been dumbed down enough to put up with things that are bad for them?
There is no proof that we haven't adapted to the toxins in cooked food and many people fail to thrive on 100% raw diets or mostly raw diets, esp AV's, Matt and myself included.
As for cigarette smoke and perfume, I don't have any reaction to them. People who do are weak and overly sensitive to them. AV has a point that we should expose ourselves to bacteria, mold, viruses, parasites, etc. But he does not have all the answers to health and neither does any other raw food guru. He should see that the hygiene hypothesis applies to toxins just as much. If you don't expose yourself to toxins such as pollution, you will become more sensitive to it in the long run.
Hi Bruce
Are you still here?
"So… I guess children are unhealthy, because they have a natural negative reaction to cigarette smoke and perfume. Couldn't it be that their instincts just haven't been dumbed down enough to put up with things that are bad for them?"
Not all children do have a negative reaction, so your theory that some people's instincts are "dumbed down" doesn't hold up. It is just as likely that some people are overly sensitive because they live in a bubble.
Matt Stone said in the past that he developed allergies and other problems while eating a WAPF-type diet. His allergies went away when he visited his brother and ate fast food. The theory of hormesis (building up a tolerance to toxins through periodic exposure) can be used to explain this. Hans' theory that some people's instincts have been "dumbed down" can not explain why Matt developed problems while eating clean food and improved in response to fast food. Troy (Half Navajo) also mentioned that one of his friends had all sorts of food sensitivities and couldn't eat any thing but fast food without having problems. This is not to say that everyone should eat fast food all the time. I can't eat bleached and enriched white flour now without having gas and messy stools, but I could eat it in the past without problems. My metabolism is messed up from taking lithium and other psychiatric drugs, IMO.
It's at least a thought to be entertained. But if one generalization could be made, it's that those who are most sensitive to chemicals, toxins, and fragrances are typically far more unhealthy than those who are not. Perhaps it stems from their immune and inflammatory reactions being set on a hair trigger.
For example, if 2 people smoke, one gets lung cancer, and the other lives in good health to age 96, we can assume that the overall health of the person who developed lung cancer, and not necessarily the cigarrettes themselves, caused the lung cancer. The difference? One has a hyperinflammatory response to cigarrette smoke and the other does not.
Natural Organic cigarettes would be less dangerous. I think it's all of the additives that cause cancer and so forth. Commercial Cigarettes all have like 20,000 chemical additives as well as pesticides. They are not pure tobacco the all natural kinds. I've heard that cancer increased at the time they started adding all of the chemicals to cigarettes.
First off, sorry for the "dumb."
Children who smoke for the first time generally cough a lot, in my experience, something which I would call a bad reaction.
AV didn't expicitly say that he had a bad reaction from the fragrances as far as I know. He also says no essential oils. Maybe his clientel consists of a lot of very 'alternative' people who have a tendency to overuse fragrances, so he is simply annoyed by them. I would be.
About the fast food theory, there could be other variables not mentioned or different mechanisms at work. Personally I try to minimize toxins as I think they are bad for health. I eat cooked food but my meat / fish / eggs / most of the fat raw. I haven't developed any intolerance to those foods in cooked cooked form that I didn't have before I started eating raw.
@Ian
Diarrhea from eating enriched flour could just be your body getting rid of something it doesn't want, gas could be bacteria trying to get rid of the iron (or rather feasting on it.)
About cigarettes, in Sugar Blues, Dufty writes that cigarettes also contain sugar…
Industrial cigarettes contain a lot of things. All natural organic cigs like American Spirit omit all these additives, including the sugar most likely. Even if they do contain it, how can the body absorb calories in smoke? When you burn up a food, you don't absorb calories in the smoke, right? You can't judge tobacco just based on people who smoke Marlboro, Camel, and other junk. Those are as much like natural tobacco is sugar is like the sugarcane plant. I don't know how children would react to natural organic cigarettes which were free of toxic additives. For example: I don't think tar is a natural component of tobacco, but it's added by all the industrial cigarette makers.
AV seems overly sensitive to food and many things. He claims to get acne if he eats coconut oil that is heated to like 100 degrees. He then extrapolates from himself to others. That's no more valid than for Matt or I to extrapolate from ourselves to others. I don't have any reaction to being cooked fats or fragrances or occasional smoke from cigarettes. But I don't like being around fragrances or people who smoke, because I dis-like the smells. I don't smoke and I don't use cologne or perfume.
I eat raw meats, eggs, and cheese sometimes, but I have no problems eating them cooked. My metabolism seems to be improving, because I can eat more wheat without having messy stools or gas. I don't eat much wheat or sugar and I stay as far away from PUFA oils and hydrogenated oils as I can.
There are still toxins in the smoke from natural additive-free organic cigarettes, but they don't contain the 4,000 chemical additives that Marlboros and Camels do. You would still get cancer if you ate a poor diet, lived a poor lifestyle, and chain-smoked. But I am confident a person would be less likely to get diseases from natural tobacco than the chemical cocktail produced by massive cigarette corporations. In the past, people smoked much more and cancer was far less common. In Japan, smoking is extremely common and they don't have as much of the smoking-related diseases, probably because their diet is low in sugar and processed vegetable oils and bleached enriched white flour.
Here is a quote from Barry Groves:
Wayne Martin likes to tell a story which suggests just how cancer-causing are PUFs. In 1930 in the USA, eighty percent of men smoked cigarettes and the tar content of cigarettes was much higher than it is today. The death rate at that time from lung cancer was very low. In 1955 doctors decided that PUFs were good in terms of heart disease protection. After this lung cancer deaths increased so dramatically. By 1980 although the number of American men who smoked had dropped to only thirty percent, three times as much PUF was being eaten ? and there were sixty times as many lung cancer deaths. (11)
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fats_and_cancer.html
It's definitely more complex than saying that tobacco is toxic. Like Paracelsus said, poisoning is the consequence of quantity, not substance – toxic simply means too much. An organic cigarette without chemical additives would be a lot better than the chemical cocktail sold by Big Tobacco. Many natives smoked tobacco, but they smoked it in moderation, and they were using pure organic tobacco.
This was a super interesting blog post Matt. Really enjoyed to hear your approach to the contradictions within the alternative health world.
It's interesting and I tend to agree with this. I noticed that since I got chronic illness, I've not had a flue or a cold, and that's in ten years. I think it's definitely cause my body went into the inflammation state where it had not previously been.
It may sound crazy but I'm hoping to get a flue or a cold now that my basal body temperature is up in the normal range again. I think it would show me that my health is improving.
The totally opposite views of Hulda and Aajonus totally sums up the current alternative health care ideas, that for every one statement there is the exact opposite counter statement.
Matt, do you think eating raw foods is good for humans because it seemed to be good for Pottenger's cats? What is you experience with people eating raw foods? I know that Wetson A Pice noticed indiginous people eatinhg mostly cooked food but some raw.
My vote goes to Aajonus just cause I'm still annoyed with Hulda's expencive "Clarkia" drops for doing nothing for me but made me have to count drops for months….
I think there probably are some benefits to raw foods and likewise some benefits to exposure to pathogenic material as opposed to trying to live in a bubble.
But unfortunately most of the benefits are touted by odd cultish raw foodists while the dangers of cooked foods are greatly over-exaggerated and taken out of context of what really happens to real people when they eat cooked food – nothing, other than they say "yum" and move on with their lives.
There are some people who are extremely sensitive to cooked and esp processed foods, as AV claims to be. The question is whether improvement is possible. AV claims that only by eating like 90-100% raw can health improve and that only a few people have the "enzyme mutations" to thrive on cooked/processed food. It seems that AV and his followers are the ones degenerating, in that they claim to be sensitive to colognes, perfumes, pollution, and other things. I had the same experience when I was eating lots of raw milk and raw meat. I would get very tired when exposed to pollution, like driving, and once had to pull over and take a nap – after a full night's sleep, I think. I had the same problem later when I ate lots of unroasted nuts (probably not "raw" by a raw foodist's standards). I think AV is obsessed with certain foods, raw butter and unheated honey in particular, and bases his diet on them with a slavish devotion. It is difficult to obtain raw milk (let alone raw butter) in most places, and neither are "Primal" Foods. His diet should be called the California or Malibu Diet. I am dubious that raw honey or butter are super-foods or that they are essential to health in massive quantities. But I guess with all the foods AV cuts out of his diet, those are the only foods that provide concentrated palatable calories.
Welcome back, Ian Cruikshank! I really missed you when you were absent.
Those are excellent points that raw dieters seem to be degenerating. Maybe it's the parasites which that they got.
I think I had parasites on the PD, cuz I lost too much weight. I was down to like 175# and I'm 6'0" with a medium build. I was working out and probably lost muscle too. Course, AV would say it's because I didn't eat enough, parasites are always-and-only beneficial if you binge on high calorie foods according to his rules. I think AV is right that you shouldn't get too thin. I like Matt's build more than AV's, however. Better yet, a sprinter's.