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Niko Antalffy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>The issue of fat diets elevating LDL cholesterol is a different one
>logically from what is a good predictor of cardiac incident.
Most people find that eating more fat raises HDL, the good cholesterol. And
most people find that eating less carbs lowers triglycerides. They then end
up with improved lipid ratios. If you eat enough fat, and cut out enough
carbs you can get the TG:HDL ratio to 1:1, and one Harvard study concluded
that the ratio of TG:HDL was the most significant risk factor in developing
coronary heart disease.
>the two indicators are probably linked too and animal-based diets, of course,
>do lead to heart disease and a lot of other major Western killers-
>debilitators.
Unfortunately the studies that find problems with animal based diets are
flawed. Subjects are matched merely for age, height and sex, but not for
body composition and dietary habits such as smoking and sugar, coffee and
alcohol consumption. A group of omnivores that smokes drinks and indulges
in a calcium-poor diet of refined carbohydrates will naturally have poorer
health than a vegetarian.
>You would also want to look at just what surviving and thriving meant in that
>study. The Inuits' very high animal protein diet does lead to osteoporosis
>without fail in all subjects,
Completely false. No osteoporosis was found in the Inuit until they started
to eat Western foods, like flour and sugar. Then it became common.
As for calcium loss with high protein diets this is true when the studies
have used diets of isolated, fractionated animo acids from milk or eggs.
But when the studies used meat, and calcium intake was over 500 mg per day,
they found no loss, but instead an increase.
>That doesn't follow at all according to any rigorous logic. Ron assumes here
>that any type of weight loss is good and that is false. If you very quick
>to gain weight after a diet it actually signals that what you lost was
>probably mostly water and the diet was a very dangerous one you should not
>do on an ongoing basis, unless you want to dehydrate yourself and cause
>ketosis.
You missed it when Ron pointed out the differences between ketosis and
ketoacidosis. There is nothing wrong with ketosis, except for things like
bad breath. Since our ancestors had few carbs in the winter it is very
possible that our systems evolved to be in ketosis for part of the year.
>You simply must separate logically cancer causing and cancer sustaining, or
>cancer preventing and cancer halting phenomena.
Okay. Let's discuss cancer causing foods. In
Vilhjalmur Stefansson's book _Cancer Disease of Civilization_ 1960; Hill
and Wang, New York, NY.
it points out that Stanislaw Tanchou "....gave the first formula for
predicting cancer risk. It was based on grain consumption and was found to
accurately calculate cancer rates in major European cities. The more grain
consumed, the greater the rate of cancer." Tanchou's paper was delivered to
the Paris Medical Society in 1843. He also postulated that cancer would
likewise never be found in hunter-gatherer populations. This began a search
among the populations of hunter-gatherers known to missionary doctors and
explorers. This search continued until WWII when the last wild humans were
"civilized" in the Arctic and Australia. No cases of cancer were ever found
within these populations, although after they adopted the diet of
civilization, it became common.
More recently Bruce Aimes of U.C. Berkeley published a series of articles
on cancer causation in the journal Science (#236,238,240) one of which
(in#238,Dec 18,1987) is titled "Paleolithic Diet, Evolution and Carcinogens".
And in this study:
Lutz, W.J., "The Colonisation of Europe and Our Western Diseases", Medical
Hypotheses, Vol. 45, pages 115-120, 1995
Dr. Lutz, in the face of epidemiological studies that failed to support the
current belief that fat intake was at the root of coronary disease and
cancer, has done his own explorations of epidemiological data. His findings
show a clear, inverse relationship between these civilisatory diseases and
the length of time the people of a given region of Europe have had to adapt
to the high carbohydrate diet associated with the cultivation of cereal
grains that was begun in the Near East, and spread very slowly through Europe.
You may want to jump in and ask what about all those studies that correlate
fat consumption with cancer and not grain consumption. Those studies are
retrospectice studies. This is where they ask people what they ate in the
past. Such studies have recall bias, where people craft their answers to
what they believe the interviewer wants to hear. When you do such studies
in countries where there is a low awareness of diet and cancer issues there
is less scope for recall bias, and you find things like the risk of breast
cancer decreased with increasing total fat intake whereas the risk
increased with increasing intake of available carbohydrates.
>If one wants a more wholistic approach than one should look beyond
>reductivist studies indeed. The only problem is that you still keep relying
>on just these which seems to be a methodological glitch.
How about a simple evolutionary approach? Our ancestors had a much lower
carb diet than what is eaten today. They ate no grains, no beans, no
refined sugar, and no potatoes. Their carbs came from fruit, roots, and
vegetables. But fruit would be seasonal. They did not shy away from eating
meat. And our ancestors didn't get any of the diseases that now plague us,
e.g. all autoimmune diseases, cancer, dementia, strokes, cholesterol
problems, heart problems, obesity, high blood pressure, arthritis,
osteoporosis, etc. Nor did these exist in any of the remaining
hunter/gatherer populations studied earlier in this century.
Oh, but what about them dying young? Yes, they did have a life expectancy
lower than ours. But people died of accidents, disease, and being eaten by
other animals. Without medical help relatively minor accidents can be
fatal. Many never made it past childhood. People who researched
hunter/gatherer populations earlier in this century found plenty of old
people, and they were healthy.
The methods for measuring death age of archeologic human bones are very
unsure, and it is not possible to tell if the person was more than 40. Also
that is 40 compared to modern aging speed, so that could in fact very well
be more. Even a complete skeleton from someone who is supposed to have died
at the age of 50 could well have passed 80 years of age.
For many articles discussing the diet that humans evolved to eat, see:
The Paleolithic Diet Page: http://www.PaleoDiet.com/
Don.
Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY.
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