Dean:
>I'm not sure anymore which grains have phytates, but most of them
>do--certainly wheat, rye, and barley.  Rice, possibly not, I can't recall.
>Basically, it's in the husks, what we call the FIBRE.  The phytates are
>present whether you cook the grains or not.  Refining carbohydrates will
>get rid of them, which perversely means that highly refined flour products
>like Wonder Bread or beer are less of an issue than, say, a slice of whole
>wheat bread.

This was also the report from European instinctos (a raw, non-grain,
non-dairy diet). They claimed, after very subjective experiments, that
Wonder bread was easier to digest and caused less nervousness after
consumption than whole grain bread, which was much more problematic. The
after-reasoning was that since grains are not a proper human food,
de-germed grains were less problematic to the metabolism, being of a less
complex composition than whole grains (and whole grain products which are
even further denatured). European instinctos also speak of feeling bad
after eating "bio-dynamically" raised beef. BD produce is highly prized and
considered ultra-"organic", but the system feeds large quantities of wheat
to cattle, and it is suggested that this may be what is causing the
problem. But these folks _claim_ all sorts of things ;)

BTW, it is personal experience which makes me avoid dry-feed, antibiotic,
etc cattle, chicken, lamb, and pork: they smell and taste _far_ inferior to
wild or pastured animals. Further most commercial meat doesn't seem to age
properly at room temperature. They develop further off-flavors, perhaps due
to greater bacterial contamination which develops during aging without
refrigeration. Further, if grains are not proper foods for humans, why
should they be considered so (in high quantities) for farm animals. I am
unaware of any studies detailing what other animals' digestive metabolisms
do with heavy grain diets (outside of lipid profiles), but any farmer will
tell you that if you want to fatten a pig you feed it grains, and if you
want to fatten it faster you feed it cooked grains. And unfortunately, the
ingredients in many dry feeds are not simply grains, but all sorts of
processed stuff, few of which can reasonably be argued are part of the
paleo-diet of wild cattle, boar, sheep, etc. One of the things this means
at a practical level for me is that I have had next to no organs meats and
bone marrow for a few years now, and scant eggs as well. Whether
modern-farmed organs and marrow are better than none, I simply don't know.

While this is utterly unscientific (at present) it speaks louder to me
about the appropriateness of eating pastured animals than dozens of journal
citations.

Similar problems are probably associated with farmed fish which have
different lipid profiles and higher toxin concentrations than wild fish (if
not from severely polluted areas, of course). I sure wonder about the
different lipid profiles found between game and modern-farmed animals.
Eaton et al reports the absence of EPA in grain-fed animals, but I have
never seen a comparison of toxin concentrations in the average
slaughterhouse meats/organs vs wild game vs pasture-only meat/organs. (By
toxins I mean heavy metals, DDT, PCB's, and other estrogen mimics.) Toxin
concentration from the natural food web is one thing, but when foods are
modified and denatured to the extent we find in agri-business, toxin
concentration becomes a bit more important, at least to me squarely perched
on top of several food chains. ;)

It may be that the folks having trouble with their weight and/or lipid
profiles are ignoring the drastic denaturing of today's supermarket foods.
If Ray is hunting for most of his meat, he will probably get different
results than folks eating supermarket meats. Even here in health-conscious
southern CA what passes for natural meat is simply heavily marbled "no
antibiotics" brands which I guess are a start, but it may not be an end.
Perhaps if we want to be as healthy as our paleolithic ancestors we need to
dive deeper into truly paleo-foods to whatever extent possible; otherwise
we may end up as healthy as the average farm animal, a depressing thought.

Cheers,
Kirt

Kirt Nieft / Melisa Secola
[log in to unmask]