>From: [log in to unmask]:
Zephyr? wrote:
>>The key word in the subject of this post is magic. There is
> magic in food, in meat, in life. It cannot be fragmented and
> understood via the mind and such simplistic maps as vitamin B.
I really liked the way this was phrased, & there is a great deal of
truth/wisdom in this statement. But I think we are growing ever
closer to understanding the infinitely-complex chemical/electrical
nature of foods.
>Douglas said:
>>I sort of disagree with Ward here
>>too, in that all evolution might do is select for
>>survival/reproductive traits in the environment at hand.
> Thus if we evolved in an environment (such as the Arctic) where meat
> was plentiful & plants rare, there would obviously be
>>survival/reproductive benefits from selecting humans better
> suited to meat eating. But this does not mean that if we take
> these humans & switch their diets back to predominately veg. that you
> will not also be doing them a favor (indeed, I strongly suspect you
> will).
Peter added:
>Interesting perspective. If eskimoes living in their Artic
> environment ere fed a high vegetable diet would they do better? Or
>how about eskimos who leave the Artic, but who go on a similar high
> vegetable diet in their new non-arctic environment. Genetic adaptation
> means that those who adapt best to the limitations of a certain
> environment have a good chance of surviving. But that normally means
> adjusting to small changes over a long span of time. What kind of
> elasticity is built into the evolutionary process concerning sudden changes
> like many of those confronting modern man today?
If you recall that Eskimo stuff I posted a while back, they were
healthy but had maybe a third lopped off normal lifespans due to
their high protein (and mostly RAF) diet. They simply began to fall
apart around age 50 or so, with people living into their 60s being
exceptionally long-lived for that population. I don't think there
is any doubt that if you took an Eskimo & sent him to live with
Bohdi out in the semi-tropical realm of the wise & generous Pete
Wilson that he/she would live a lot longer. Trust me: whether we
are talking animal experiments done by feeding them cooked,
fractionated proteins, or humans eating RAF, the results are not
going to be pretty- drastically shortened lives, accelerated
appearance of age-related diseases & higher cancer incidence.
The marvelous thing about evolution is the elasticity built into us,
in that we are born with the ability to go many different ways as
the environment demands. Brain work in particular in recent years
has shown this to be true, with all sorts of extra abilities built
into young brains, which if not used early in life in response to
environmental demands will wither.
I wrote:
>>All the evolutionary arguments can allow us to conclude (&
> again, I think Ward has demolished the Garden of Eden/fruitarian
> scenario) is that we evolved in an environment in which meat was present.
> It is a logical error to then use this to conclude that meat is
> good. IT MAY be, or MAY NOT be, & this may be true for SOME, not
> ALL.
Peter wrote:
>Since we evolved eating meat and since we are the only human
> species alive today, all cats (& some dogs) would take exception to this
>ontention]
>it does not seem like a huge leap of logic to
> contend that the rest of the hominoid species died out because they did
> not adapt well to meat-eating.
[I think that this is a leap, & that it is not valid. All sorts of
reasons could explain the disappearance of the other homonid
species. But many of the other primate species alive today of
course eat RAF. When I get a chance in the next week or two I'll
try to post something on a couple of the "magical meat substances"
which I have a hunch may explain some of the survival benefits of
eating RAF.]
>Obviously it was advantageous for Homo
> Sapiens to eat meat, yet you are proposing that even though our survival
> as a species depended on eating it, some of us can now do
> optimally without it. I disagree (as much as I can as a vegan :-)), as meat
> has been with us for many millions of years, though I do think that
> many of us could probably get away by just eating small amounts.
I define "optimally" as maximal lifespan, & there is no question
that protein beyond the minimal levels required (easily acquired in
a raw-veg diet) shortens lifespan. To give a sort of relevant
analogy, if we put a human population on a starvation diet for their
entire lives, sufficient in calories only to keep them alive, this
would probably result in a cessation (or drastic curtailment) of
reproduction, which is bad news for the survival of the population
as a whole. Yet the individual members of this population would
have exceptionally long lives from this. [Nature assumes that the
famine will eventually be superceded by fat years, and thus extends
the lives of the starved so they can live into the fat years &
reproduce so as to preserve the species.] I am not saying that meat
is bad for the survival of the population. I am saying that meat is
deleterious to at least some (most?) of the individuals in that
population.
>What I find so healthy and refreshing about instinctos is
> that they unlike vegans seem so devoid of any feelings of guilt, which
> is not a very constructive feeling anyhow. Bob, the only way you can
> really get to the truth of the matter would be to confront your own
> feelings of guilt and give RAF a real chance by eating liberal amounts of
> it by for a while.
Some of us (& I believe Bob Avery falls in this category) don't opt
for raw-veg out of guilt, but out of scientific motivations. I
could care less about the killing arguments or whatever. What
motivates me is simply what I have concluded is most healthy for me.
>Douglas said:
>>I'm forwarding this snip which I got off another list. Iron
> levels have a close correlation with heart disease & cancer, & I
> thought the RAFefarians might find this useful. I'm starting to
> suspect that not just iron, but other minerals (particularly
> calcium) get absorbed in a pathological way when eating cooked and/or
> meat foods.
>On a natural, whole foods diet I do not believe this is
> anything to concerned about.
Virtually everybody in the world is missing the boat big time on
this issue, in my opinion. If you read the issue of Scientific
American which just came out, there is a good article on Parkinson's
disease. It goes into how the pathology of this disease causes both
iron & calcium to be released from stores in the brain, & these then
gum up the works & create all sorts of problems. The fact remains
that iron is a very dangerous substance above minimal requirements
(something which the medical world is gaining more and more
appreciation of in recent years), and that iron from animal sources
is handled much more pathologically in the body than iron from plant
sources. [In recent years it has become common to find supplements
formulated without iron (& sometimes without copper) as a greater
appreciation develops of the dangers associated with iron.] I'm
convinced that calcium will someday be regarded as a dangerous,
aging-accelerating substance too. I will repeat that fruit acids
are excellent at allowing the body to remove excessive/deleterious
minerals. I just say a photo of Viktorkas Kuvalinkas (if I just
spelled his name correctly, it is a miracle), & just from looking at
his face it looked to me as if he is aging in the manner I would
expect someone subsisting largely on sprouts/vegetables, as opposed
to fruits, i.e., he was aging faster than if he had eaten much more
fruit. He had excessive enlargement of the nose & ears and deposits
under the skin, which I take to be signs of calcium deposition.
>Ward said
>>A brief clarification is required here. Yes, the scanning
> electronic microscope studies show that Australopithecus (roughly 2.5
> to 3.7 million years ago) and Homo habits (dating to roughly 2
> million yea.) were largely frugivorous, but they also show that they ate
> some meat. They also show that some of the botanically-classed-as-fruit
> items eaten were tough and pod-like, thus more like "vegetables"
> in composition, as we might classify some of those items today
> [same literature refs as my "chimps and meat"
>In your references are they specific about what fruits are
> the mainstay of the chimp diet?
I know that mountain gorillas (who eat about 2/3rds vegetable, 1/3rd
fruit) use celery as the main staple of their diet.
>BTW, I have thouroughly enjoyed all your [Ward's] postings on this
and related subjects.
Me too.
>Ward said:
>>>microscope studies show that Australopithecus (roughly 2.5
> to 3.7 million years ago) and Homo habits (dating to roughly
> 2 million yea.) were largely frugivorous, but they also show that
> they ate some meat.
>Douglas said:
>>And I would add that this is precisely the same with modern
> chimps (who eat about 2/3rds fruit), so it looks like diet has not
> changed all that much & there has been a remarkable consistency in
> hominid diet for a long time. This would not have been the case
> unless there were strong arguments in favor of this evolutionarily,
> & the question needs to be answered just what is it in RAF that is
>>beneficial? Is it simply an adaptation designed to grant
> survival during times when plant foods were scarce, or is it also
> designed to provide specific nutrients? Are we having trouble answering
> these questions because there are one or more undiscovered
> nutrients?
>Excellent questions. But since there has never been a time
> in hominid development where amimal foods did not play if just a small
> role in the diet, it would seem that they were also needed for their
> nutritional value.
>>It may be that both are more concentrated in animal than in
>>plant foods, & certainly there is a possibility of mineral
>>deficiencies in any local soil. By eating animals there is
> a greater chance of taking in minerals picked up by animals
>>(especially fish or birds & their eggs) which had traveled
> into a region from afar, even if they are several animals removed
> from the final animal you eat. This meshes well with Weston Price's
> work, in which he pointed out how some inland peoples went to great
> efforts to insure they had a little seafood to insure sufficient
> minerals. This argument can not be used for our hunter & gatherer
> ancestors whose diet was abundant with minerals, which leaves us with the
> conclusion that even under the most optimal of conditions, some meat
> plays an integral part of the human diet.
Indeed, I think we could state as a general rule that most
hunter/gatherer &/or agrarian societies were highly likely to
experience mineral deficiecies. Unless the soil is in an unusual
place where it has recently gotten a load of volcanic ash or glacial
runoff, there is every reason to expect deficiencies. As a general
rule, unless there is a load of freshly-pulverized rock of igneous
origin, the soil will probably be lacking to some extent. [See
"Survival of Civilization" by Hannamaker & Weaver- I believe that is
the correct title/authors.]
>Peter said:
>>Digging through "The Retardation of Aging and Disease by
> Dietary Restriction" by Weindruch and Walford, they say on page 8:
>>"The lifespan extending effects seem to depend quite
> specifically on energy (calore) restriction alone, since restriction of fat
> (...),protein (...), or carbohydrate (Dalderup & Visser, 1969)
> *without* entergy restriction does not increase the maximum
> species-specific LS of rodents."
>>The reference is "Dalderup and Visser: Influence of extra
> sucrose in the daily food on the life-span of Wistar albino rats.
> Nature, 222:1050, 1969". I haven't read this, but it is on my list
> now. I'll report back if/when I get to it. This is by no means
> definitive; lots of rat research this old failed to give adequate vitamins and
>>nutrients, thus invalidating results about lifespan.
>Douglas, from the life extension newsgroup I picked the
> above, which suggests that restricting specific macronutrients like
> protein only does not extend lifespan. I still have not had time to check
> out the references you pointed me to, but if the studies that you
> refer to use fragmented /synthetic proteins to prove that too much protein
> has deleterious effects on health & longevity, I would seriously
> question the results. (if I have made this point before I do not
> recall your response)
I have the same quibbles everyone else does on this list: all rodent
studies have been done with denatured and/or fragmented and/or
synthetic diets. But in spite of this there is no question that of
carbs., fats & proteins, protein is the most aging of the three, and
carbs are the least. For Weindruch and Walford to say that (I have
not read them yet, but for the sake of argument I am assuming they
did) is just irresponsible. [In their defense this could have beeen
written before more recent research was done.] They could have
meant that protein does not impact on the MAXIMUM (as opposed to the
average) lifespan. [Caloric restriction is supposedly the only known
method of extending maximum lifespan, but I think that a lot of this
is just pointless quibbling. I get what they are pointing out, but
for the practical aspects for those of us interested in living
longer, these quibbles become moot.] I would argue strongly that
does shorten maximum lifespan, but anyway there is no doubt that it
powerfully shortens mean lifespan, in other words it drastically
raises the odds that you will die at a younger age than if you did
without any excessive intake of it. Listen to the Bohdster kids:
any protein above that required to keep us in nitrogen balance is
superfluous & harmful. This is well-known to those who have read
the literature, yet this is not well-appreciated by most in the
life-extension community. Maybe it is sort of like the arguments
for eating raw, & although they might know about them, they just
don't want to believe them because they are addicted to cooked (or
protein). I'm lucky in that whenever I eat protein foods (whether
corn or nuts or milk) I can definitely feel it, & my body just does
not like it when I get too much. My tonsils get inflamed & I just
feel crummy. Those of us mortals who do not have the luxury of
waiting for long-term, full-lifespan studies to be conducted on
animals (let alone humans) in order to conlude what will or will not
impact our lifespans, have resorted to studying various clues to get
quick conclusions. Bob Avery has noted that eating nuts raises his
body temp. (the absolute best way of monitoring the efficacy of
lifespan regimes) & pulse the following day. Bob, did you determine
if this temp.-raising effect was above that coming from simply the
increased caloric intake this entailed?
The absolute worst thing to feed someone breaking a long fast is
protein. I went into shock after my first long fast (which ran 15
days). On the second day after breaking it I was watching TV & not
really paying attention to what I was eating or how much I was
eating. I was eating raisins & sunflower seeds, & ate a little too
much (a quantity I could easily handle when not in an immediate
post-fasting state). I went into shock maybe half an hour later,
crawling-around-on-the-floor, real shock. It is well known that
many of the WWII concentration camp survivors were killed from
too-rapid feeding of a high-fat diet in the days following their
liberation. I wonder if their diets also were high in protein
(excessive fat is not the greatest thing to eat either). Carnivores
(subsisting of course largely on protein) typically spend most of
their day sleeping. I believe lions will sleep about 20 hours/day.
Sleep requirements are directly related to the life-shortening
effects of the diet, & for this reason only a few hours of sleep are
often needed when deep into a fast (when we are aging the least).
Was it on this list that Bob Avery related how little sleep he gets
by on eating a minimal-calorie/raw-veg diet? I'm convinced that one
of the primary functions of sleep is to replenish our pool of
electrons, something which is readily depleted by eating, & by
eating proteins in particular. Antioxidants (which are
unquestionably powerful ways to extend lifespan) serve to replenish
our electron pool, as does breathing fresh air or walking barefoot
on (or otherwise touching) the negatively-charged earth. I suspect
that sunlight may somehow help too. Traveling in cars, planes or
trains depletes our electrons (due to static electrical effects
caused by the vehicle passing through the air), & this is why travel
can make you tired. Getting back to where this post started (with
Zephyr's statement on the magical properties in raw foods), I
suspect that the electrical impact of raw vs. cooked (or protein vs.
carbs.) is a big part of the magic in food we do not yet understand
well.
--Doug Schwartz
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