A major problem with prescribing dietary ratios using percentage of calories
is that meat and fat are up to 45 times more calorically dense than
vegetables and fruits.

Consequently, meat and fat can supply more than 50% of calories in a diet
while being less than 30% of the weight.

Example:

100 g of beef brisket (182 cal)
114 g of sweet (or white) potato (120 cal)
100 g of broccoli   (31 cal)
100 g of blueberries (65 cal)
10   g of butter    (72 cal)
12 g of whipped cream (unsweetened) (36 cal)

Total mass = 436 g
Total calories = 506
Protein = 38 g
Carb = 47 g
Fat = 19 g

Percent calories from meat and fat = 57%
Percent calories from vegetables and fruits = 43%

Dr. Cordain's Am J Clin Nutr article states that wherever possible
hunter-gatherers consumed 45-65% of energy from animal food. Conversely that
means 35-55% from plants. This menu is right there.

Percent mass from meat and fat = 28%
Percent mass from plants = 72%

So is this meal, or the hunter-gatherer diet, meat-based or plant-based?
Both! Meat/fat based by calories, plant-based by weight.

Protein = 30%
Carb = 37%
Fat = 34%
(Sum not = 100 due to rounding)

72% of mass is plants but protein is 30% of calories! Note that the
inclusion of a starchy vegetable and a fruit in the same meal does not
produce an excessive carb load. Cordain's team estimated "the most plausible
percentages of total energy [in hunter-gatherer diets] would be 19-35%
protein, 22-40% carbohydrate, and 28-58% fat."  Again this menu is right on.

Remember the example I've given supplies only 506 calories.  Add 10 more
grams of fat or oil and the meal is 446 g, 596 calories, 29 g fat, 44% of
calories from fat, 31% carbohydrate, and 26% protein. Now 70% of calories
come from protein and fat, only 31% from carbs, but by weight it is still
70% plant foods.

Also, Cordain's team estimated that "fruit represented 41% of the total
number of food items, seeds and nuts represented 26%, and underground
storage structures of plants (roots, tubers, and bulbs) represented 24%" of
plant foods eaten by hunter-gatherers. That means fruits, roots, tubers, and
bulbs made up 65% of plant foods eaten by hunter-gatherers. That's why my
example includes a tuber and a fruit, together making two-thirds of the
weight of the plant food in the menu.

Cordain's team emphasized: "By and large, plant-food items with the greatest
ratio of energy capture to energy expenditure would have provided most of
the daily plant-food energy of world-wide hunter-gatherers."  In other
words, they preferred fruits, roots, tubers, and bulbs to leaves and other
low carbohydrate plants by a wide margin.

So I don't think you can exclude or limit those foods and emphasize
non-starchy vegetables and say you are following the hunter-gatherer
example. Besides, as my examples show, these can be included without
providing any overload of carbohydrate.

Also, Sebastian et al have calculated that 87% of hunter-gatherer diets were
net base producing.  If you do the calculations (which I have in our
forthcoming book, The Garden of Eating), to achieve a net base-producing
diet, it is necessary for fruits and vegetables to form more than 65% of the
diet by weight. Which means, if you include any grains, and want to maintain
an alkaline residue, the grains have to replace some meat, not some
vegetables or fruits.

Todd Caldicott wrote:

"most [of us] don't live in a paleolithic environment (i.e. most
of us live in a semi-tropical indoor environment for much of our
lives), I have modified the diet to reflect this as well,"

You may be interested to learn that traditional Eskimos kept their dwellings
pretty warm. In his Harper's article "Adventures in Diet", Stefansson wrote
that in midwinter the Eskimo family he lived with "burned seal or whale oil"
for cooking and heating. "The temperature at night was round 60 degrees F,"
but when the fires were stoked during the day, after they returned from a
day of fishing, "we came home to a dwelling so heated by the cooking that
the temperature would range from 85 to 100 degrees F, or perhaps even
higher--more like our idea of a Turkish bath than of a warm room. Streams of
perspiration would run down our bodies, and the children were kept busy
going back and forth with dippers of cold water, of which we naturally drank
great quantities."

Thankfully people don't have to weigh all their food to get the right ratio;
if you simply eat about three plant food portions for each animal food
portion, the weight ratio is satisfied. More insights, practical tips and
more than 250 recipes are provided in our forthcoming book The Garden of
Eating: The Definitive Guide to Practicing a Produce-Dominated Diet.

Don Matesz






Thankfully, people don't have to weigh all their food
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Don and Rachel Matesz <[log in to unmask]>