On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Don Wiss wrote:

> Todd Moody wrote:
>
> >Why would
> >we expect an Australian aborigine, whose traditional diet is low
> >in meat but high in fibrous vegetation to do well on the Inuit
> >diet?
>
> But according to what I've read they ate plenty of animal foods. In the
> Summer 1998 issue of Price Pottenger Nutritional Foundation Journal there
> is an article by Fallon and Enig. It appears to be from Weston Price's
> book. (Todd, you don't have Nutrition and Physical Degeneration?) Much
> discussion of how they caught land mammals, birds, reptiles, seafood and
> insects.

I just got the Price book, but haven't read much of it yet.  My
comment was based on what I've read over on Paleodiet, where the
aborigines of Australia are placed at the low-meat end of the HG
spectrum.

How do you like that journal anyway?  I'm thinking of
subscribing.

Anyway, if I'm mistaken about the aborigines, the general point
is that HG diets vary widely in their meat content.  Adaptation
to a particular point in the spectrum would not likely involve
the kinds of adaptations that would take hundred of thousands of
years.  It's not a question of whether an aborigine could survive
on the Inuit diet (and vice versa) but whether he/she would
thrive on it.  My guess (and it's all guesswork until someone
actually tries it, which is unlikely) is that the aborigine (or
other HG adapted to a low-meat niche) would survive but not
thrive.

If you look at the archives of the lowcarb support lists, you'll
find that some people "adapt" to ketosis almost instantly, as if
thteir bodies were just waiting for the chance.  Others adapt
rather slowly, and feel lethargic and foggy for weeks or more.
Some others seemingly do not adapt at all.  The lethargy never
lifts, they don't lose much weight, they feel crappy, their blood
lipids get worse.  It doesn't seem too farfetched to suppose that
these differences in response to ketosis represent divergent
microevolutionary adaptation to different ancestral environments.

Interestingly, my own adaptation to ketosis seems not to be the
best.  Although I don't feel fogged in, it seems that after 3
weeks of so of ketosis I begin to experience something like
spells of hypoglycemia, with subsequent adrenalin phenomena:
fight-or-flight response, etc.  A plausible explanation is that
my liver is not so good at gluconeogenesis, which is the
mechanism for maintaining blood glucose in ketosis.  That could
be the result of past abuses, toxicity, etc., or it could be
genetic.

Todd Moody
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