>Kirt:
>>I have no problem on all meat when I cook it. When I tried to do it
>>entirely raw the taste would fall off after a few days generally.

>Gary:
>Not sure what you mean by the taste falling off. You mean it no longer
>appealed to you or that you actually found it off-putting?

Instinctos call this property a "taste-change" or "stop" and it is
especially noticable in wild foods (mackeral, salmon, venison, berries,
etc.) but often occurs in domesticated foods as well. Ideally an instincto
chooses a raw food by what smells the most attractive/interesting and eats
that food alone until s/he wants no more. If not satisfied with the first
food s/he selects another by the same method and then eats that food alone.
And another if desired. So meals are a sequence of individual foods
selected by sensory attraction. People who are ill (or otherwise
nutritionally unbalanced) often have very clear preferences (and sometimes
for some pretty strange raw foods). Folks in relative health may find that
most any food will do. Modern fruit is way too sweet and attractive and
most instinctos find they must neo-cortically limit their consumption to
get the best results. Whether "instinct" (ie sensory attraction) can be
used by modern humans, not only for food selection. but for quantity (i.e.
eating until the taste-change)  is a controversy at present--though
hardcore instinctos believe it with all their heart, and neo-cortex ;)

Veggies and animal foods, even domesticated have pretty clear taste changes
for most folks. Anyone wanting to experience a taste-change can easily do
so with ordinary veggies. Take some celery, or cabbage, or cauliflour, and
eat it alone on an empty stomach. Keep eating the selected food without
spices or dressing of any kind until it becomes somehow less than tasty
(assuming it tasted good on the first mouthful--and if it didn't this is
supposedly a sign that your body doesn't need that food, or its nutrients
if you prefer). If you deliberately keep on eating the food it will soon
become _very_ unpleasant--painful even (supposedly indicating that any more
of that food would be harmful to the body). The taste-change in aged fish
is _remarkable_ for many folks, going from rich/smokey/wonderful to
putrid/overbearing in just a couple mouthfuls. Raw shellfish are similar.
Whether that stop comes after a couple ounces or a couple pounds can not be
known in advance. Only the "instinct" or sensory pleasure can deal with raw
foods, or so the theory goes.

The taste-change is much less pronounced and/or absent from denatured foods
(cooked, spiced, even fractionated but raw) and pretty much eliminated
completely in industrial foods: potato chips, Snicker's bars, etc.

On the other hand, some people (like Ward Nicholson for one) report a
taste-change in cooked foods. Perhaps most people do and the folks who get
into instincto are blown away with it because it is the first stops they
ever experienced--kind of an eating disordered thing. Then again, getting
bored with the flavor of rice (if one doesn't just spice it up with fat and
salt ;)) it not really the same phenomena that seems to happen with raw
wild foods.

So, yes, I do get satisfied eating a meal of cooked meat (and notably I
don't expect or experience a taste-change so I am not deciding my portions
by sensory pleasure but simple satiation), but wonder if I am overloading
on cooked meat since raw animal foods, even well-aged which is how I
usually prefer them, will not "let me" eat them day after day after day. I
hope that makes some sort of sense ;)

>It's good to keep in mind that you can get into ketosis withoug necessarily
>dropping carb intake extremely low. All that's required is sufficiently
>high energy expenditure.

So as long as the carbs eaten are burned that day (so to speak) the body
remains in ketosis? I thought ketosis is when you are burning fat and/or
protien for fuel. What happens to carbs eaten when a person is in ketosis?
(My ignorance of this is pretty complete ;))

>The relevance of ketosis to hunter gatherer groups
>is a point I'm quite intersted in. In fact, I find the whole process of
>ketosis fascinating. It's quite a dramatic shift in metabolism and
>undoubtedly involves changes in the regulation of several genes.

I am quite fascinated as well--especially after experiencing it as a normal
thing--i.e. outside of fasting. I suspect I was well on my way to burning
out from a too high carb diet (excess raw fruits living in the tropics for
6 years). But ketosis is very pleasurable I find.

>I get the
>impression that ketosis is generally thought of as a sort of back-up system
>for the body when sufficient carbs aren't available, but I wonder about
>this. To the extent that certain hunter gatherers were predominantly meat
>eaters (depending on locale), ketosis might have been the predominant - and
>perhaps ancestral - energy-generating metabolic pathway for that group.
>Another point of interest is that the body goes into ketosis during
>fasting, a state that is relevant to surviving famine and that can be
>considered the limit for the longevity-enhancing (in animals) process of
>caloric restriction.

I'd guess you are right on all counts. Though as a species we are
incredibly adaptable to various diets, I suspect that the major difference
between our metabolism and the rest of the primates is the addition of a
ketosis metabolism evolved alongside the increased percentages of animal
foods in the ancestral diet. Who knows though, maybe a chimp easily has the
metabolic ability to deal with a paleo diet. I'd love to see a primate
study where they are given only animal foods and low carb plant stuff:
would they thrive like humans do? Or are we evolutionarily unique in our
ketosis abilities? Perhaps every mammal has the ketosis mechanism ready and
waiting--since it is basically the fasting mechanism...

>K:
>>While
>>ketosis is probably useful for us switching from high carb diets, is it the
>>goal of paleodieting? How many of the listers here figure they are in
>>ketosis most of the time?
>
>Good questions. My impression from the book is that Neanderthin hovers
>right around the ketogenic threshhold and could go either way.

How does it go for Neaderthinners when they pig out on fruit or carrot
juice even, or don't they ever do that? Ideally, I'd like to have fruit for
lunch and meat or seafood and veggies for dinner, but doing so seems to put
me into minor metabolic disarray so I've been sticking to a salad for lunch
(olive oil and dulse included) and meat or seafood for dinner--staying in
pleasant ketosis.

>Since the ratio of fat to protein is of importance during ketosis,
>questions here might be: a) whether you eat as much fat when you eat raw
>meat as when you eat cooked

It seems about the same. Except for this bone marrow lately. If anybody is
missing cheese they might give it a try. ;)

>and b) whether your protein intake might be
>lower when you eat those avocadoes than when you eat the meat.

Yes. Definitely. Great point! So the implication is that the proper
digestion of fat "needs" a complimentary protien eaten with it (as is found
in animal foods).  This solves a query I have had for nearly a year about
the merits (or lack of) fruit-fats (avos, olive oil) and the way they
"stand-in" for animal fats. I could gain weight with avos, but have been
losing a little with the very fatty meat and marrow. I doubt that
paleo-humans had much of these fruit-fats available (except maybe nuts
which have plenty of protien--though I wonder if folks could get fat on
them as well?)

>On a mixed food diet, if you eat an amount of fat significantly in excess
>of maintenance requirements, you will store the fat and gain weight. I
>presume this also has to happen even on a keto diet, but that it's much
>more difficult to accomplish.

By mixed I assume you mean grains, or would you consider fruits the same
way (as just more carbs)? If you do, there is a huge irony here:
fruitarians become emancipated, but too much fruit on a paleo-diet inhibits
weight loss. BTW, lots of vegan raw-fooders (which I never was) also go
crazy on avos. I wonder if avos are just an animal food "mimic" which can
mess up the metabolism in quantity. Any paleo-listers into avos here?

Interestingly, I have no desire (and significantly limited sensory
attraction) to avos--or fruit for that matter, though it always tastes
sweet and edible--while eating lots of meat.

Thanks for the dialogue, Gary.

Cheers,
Kirt

Secola  /\  Nieft
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