<<Re: Cordain Bashing and Rabbit Starvation (cont'd) and Oils>>
Ron Hoggan wrote:
> It seems highly unlikely that following Cordain's dietary recommendations
would result in rabbit starvation.
> His recommendations, although not as liberal as I would endorse, are still
much higher than current
> conventional wisdom.
Excellent point, Ron, and Cordain actually warned against rabbit starvation
on p. 101 of The Paleo Diet (2002 softcover ed.). He recommended
omega-3-fat-enriched eggs, fatty wild fish, fat-containing walnuts and fresh
fruits, all of which would prevent rabbit starvation if eaten in sufficient
quantity--not just beef fats. So anyone who got rabbit starvation after
reading his book apparently missed huge parts of it, including the meal
plans.
Ron wrote: "I believe [Cordain] is on the right track, I think he has
stopped short of optimal levels of fat in the most healthful diet, as I
believe that the evidence from HG eating habits suggests a much higher ratio
of fats than Dr. Cordain advocates," pointing to the Inuit and Plains
Indians as examples. They clearly do show that one can live healthfully on a
diet high in meats and organs. However, the Plains Indians did reportedly
eat some berries, corn and other non-animal foods, and even many of the
Inuit supposedly did eat some plant foods.
According to Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, the traditional diet of the
Blackfoot people of Canada included "pemmican made with berries" and "blood
soup, made from a mixture of blood and corn flour cooked in broth, was used
as a sacred meal during the nighttime Holy Smoke ceremonies." (Guts and
Grease: The Diet of Native Americans, by Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD)
According to H. M. Sinclair of the University of Oxford, some Inuit ate
other foods during the summer beyond meats and organs, such as black
crowberry, dwarf blueberry, cloudberry, certain roots (such as Polygonurn
viviparurn), the stalk of Angelica archangelica, some algae, the buds and
young leaves of the dwarf willow, and some other leaves (such as Cochlearia
ofJicinalis, Oxyria digyna and Epilobium latifoliurn). (The Diet of Canadian
Indians and Eskimos, by H. M. Sinclair, Laboratory of Human Nutrition,
University of Oxford, Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, Volume 12,
Number 1, 1953, pp. 69-82,
http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPNS%2FPNS12_01%2FS0029665
153000188a.pdf&code=0ef8a1b3a5345f61e332fec41a70bb64)
More importantly, hunter gatherers diets are not limited to those of the
Inuit and Plains Indians, and they span a wide range of fat proportions by
calories, from 23 percent up to 58 percent, based on data in the
Ethnographic Atlas. Even within a HG group there was variation-with some
Inuit specializing in hunting seal and others specializing in salmon and
eating more summer plant foods--depending on where they lived.
> My biggest problem with Cordain, however, was his previous recommendation
re vegetable-oils such as canola-
> oil/flax-oil etc. Given that none of these oils were, exactly, Palaeo
foods, I am doubly wary of Cordain.
--Geoff
As I mentioned in my earlier post, Ray Audette also recommends flaxseed oil
and olive oil, so on that basis you would be wary of Audette as well. I
think we're starting to pick a few too many nits. It's fine to disagree with
some of Cordain and Audette's views, but let's not trash them altogether
without very good reason, for it was their ideas that helped inspire this
listgroup in the first place. Without them we might not be discussing these
issues here at all.
Ashley:
> And that is my biggest issue with Cordain: from what I've read, it looks
like he thinks like a doctor, as if
> you can do a million studies, each on one millionth of the subject of
nutrition, you can piece it all
> together and understand it in the in the end. (I usually compare doctors
to blind men identifying an
> elephant.)
> By comparison - what I really liked about Ray Audette when I read
Neanderthin was his basis in simple
> observable fact. The stuff that not even a statin researcher could
mis-interpret.
I think you hit on something here, Ashley. Cordain and Audette's books were
aimed at different audiences. Cordain's at scientists, people with a
scientific mindset, and athletes who do most of their shopping in
supermarkets, whereas Audette's was aimed at rural laypeople who have access
to relatively inexpensive sources of wild or grass-fed meats and maybe hunt
themselves (as Audette does). As a result, Audette was free to speculate and
was not required to back up his claims with as much evidence. If Cordain
used Audette's language he never would have gotten the book published and
would have been laughed into oblivion (he has taken enough heat from the
academic community as it is, even with his supposedly "politically correct"
writing). I enjoyed both books, but I often don't "fit the mold," so that's
not suprising. Maybe the reason I did is because I expected Cordain the
scientist to write like a scientist and Audette the layman to write like a
layman.
> Sometimes the Indians selected only the fatty parts of the animal,
> throwing the rest away. "On the twenty-second of July," writes Samuel
> Hearne, "we met several strangers, whom we joined in pursuit of the
> caribou, which were at this time so plentiful that we got everyday a
> sufficient number for our support, and indeed too frequently killed
> several merely for the tongues, marrow and fat." --Guts and Grease
This point about hunter gatherers favoring the tongues, marrow and/or brains
of animals seems to come up repeatedly, here and elsewhere online (such as
at the Weston A. Price site that quotes Guts and Grease). Cordain is aware
of it and addressed it years ago on his website (see excerpt below), and it
actually supports his view about favoring omega 3 and monounsaturated fats
over saturated fats, believe it or not (though I'm not convinced that
saturated fats from wild meats are a health concern either). I recommend
checking out his actual views rather than relying solely on remembered
perceptions of his book. His website and newsletter are of course more
up-to-date than his books, and therefore should be checked first.
<<There is absolutely no doubt that hunter-gatherers favored the fattiest
part of the animals they hunted and killed. As far back as 2.5 million years
there is incredible fossil evidence from Africa showing this scenario to be
true. Stone tool cut marks on the inner jawbone of antelope reveal that our
ancient ancestors removed the tongue and almost certainly ate it. Other
fossils show that Stone Age hunter-gatherers smashed open long bones and
skulls of their prey and ate the contents. Not surprisingly, these organs
are all relatively high in fat, but more importantly analyses from our
laboratories showed the types of fats in tongue, brain, and marrow are
healthful, unlike the high concentrations of saturated fats found in fatty
domestic meats. Brain is extremely high in polyunsaturated fats including
the health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids, whereas the dominant fat in tongue
and marrow are the cholesterol lowering monounsaturated fats.
Since most of us would not savor the thought of eating brains, marrow,
tongue, liver, or any other organ meat on a regular basis, a few 21st
century modifications of the original Paleolithic diet are necessary to get
the fatty acid balance "right.">> --Loren Cordain,
http://thepaleodiet.com/faqs/#Fats
Cordain's solution for people who don't like tongue, marrow or brains would
not be well-favored here, so I left that off. As far as the adipose
saturated fat stores in such tissues as the hump on bison--it shrinks
dramatically during the winter months, so that the overall adipose stores
are pretty meager through most of the year. Even the camel's hump shrinks
and often sags during the long dry season as food becomes scarcer and is
only at maximum plumpness during the plentiful times of a desert's short
rainy season.
http://www.answers.com/topic/camels-guanacos-llamas-alpacas-and-vicu-as-came
lidae-biological-family. Seasonal variation in fat stores is rarely taken
into account by Weston Price devotees. This contrasts with domestic beef
cattle who are slaughtered year-round at the peak of their fatness. Also,
anyone who has cooked bison, venison, ostrich, moose or other game meats
beside the equivalent cuts of domesticated meats knows that the game meats
are far leaner. The difference is amazing. Additionally, just because hunter
gatherers sometimes discarded the leanest portions of kills doesn't mean
they always did that. If they did they would kill off their food supply too
quickly. My guess is that they probably mainly did that during seasons of
grass/browse shortage (winter or dry season; see John D. Speth, "Protein
Selection and Avoidance Strategies of Contemporary and Ancestral Foragers:
Unresolved Issues," http://www.jstor.org/pss/55463 and Cordain, Miller,
Eaton et al, "Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy
estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets,"
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/3/682) or when there was an
overabundance of animals. Since Cordain, Miller, Eaton et al's data show
that some hunter gatherers consume as little as 23% of their macronutrients
as fat by calories (though I wish they had specified which HGs these were),
and since all hunter-gatherer groups have been found to be devoid of the
diseases of civilization, this indicates that eating lots of saturated fat
(whether wild or domesticated) is not necessary for good health.
Ashley wrote:
> ... It definitely *wasn't* the initial shift into ketosis,
> this was months into me eating paleo, and I was eating a LOT of
> fruit. It wasn't ketosis cycling either, I've done that several times
> since and it gives me a headache but not muscle weakness.
Are you aware that carbohydrates prevent rabbit starvation? Given that, and
given that rabbit starvation also tends to involve severe
diarrhea--Stefansson said it starts "in about a week" of eating a
lean-meat-only diet--perhaps it was something else that you were
experiencing?
Ashley wrote:
> But I'm absolutely certain that it was lack of fat that
> was doing it, and not in any way related to ketosis. And the lack of
> fat was solely down to following Cordain's recommendation of eating
> lean meat.
Ron wrote:
> Okay..... I'm convinced that the problem was insufficient fat, but why
would you go to that extreme? Cordain > recommends 25% fat. It appears that
you were eating very, very little fat.
As Ron pointed out, Cordain's diet contains more fat than the S.A.D., so it
could not be responsible for "insufficient fat" as compared to the SAD, and
certainly not for rabbit starvation. Page eleven of the 2002 edition of the
Paleo Diet recommends a fat range of 28-47% by calories (excluding the
extremes of 23% and 58% fat by calories). The average of that range (about
38%; Cordain's team used 39% as the typical fat level of hunter gatherer
diets in their analysis of nutrient levels of Paleolithic-type foods) is
higher than the 34% average of the S.A.D., and one can eat up to 47% fat
while still staying within Cordain's recommended range. Based on your
assumption that Cordain's advice on fat creates rabbit starvation, the
majority of Americans should currently be suffering from it, and the
low-fat-eating HGs at 23-28% fat, should be in terrible shape. Yet all HGs
have been found to be extremely healthy.
Like Ron and Ashley I embrace fats, and I am eating about 40-45% fats by
calories currently, which is higher than the US average while still within
Cordain's range, though lower than most Atkins, Eades and WAP dieters. I've
never noticed any symptoms of rabbit starvation, even during times when I
was eating less fats, so I'm wondering if your experience may not
necessarily apply to everyone. I seem to feel better when I eat more omega 3
fats, rather than more saturated fats (though I don't think they are
necessarily bad), and I tend to get better HDL and blood pressure numbers,
but maybe that's just me. Either way, I prefer not to claim that my
experience is good evidence of anything, because I am too small a sample,
and I try to cite evidence from larger samples where possible.
There seems to be a lot of emotion on both sounds around the fat issue,
especially saturated fat. I don't share any of that emotion and am a little
perplexed by it. I think it has to do with animal-rights vs. meat-eater
rights or something. I don't have any personal allegiance for or against
saturated fat. I only care what the facts are, so if it turns out that
saturated fats (SFAs) are a health food miracle, I'll gladly eat more of
them. I can see how there might be bad stuff in the SFAs of grain-fed,
antibiotic-pumped, pesticide-poisoned animals, but I'm just not convinced
that there is enough of a problem for me to avoid fatty commercial meats
altogether, especially given the greater expense of wild meats and seafood.
Ashley:
<<I wasn't deliberately avoiding fat. In fact I tried to (and did) eat a
lot of nuts. I could eat myself almost to the point of being sick on them,
but they never satisfied my fat hunger.>>
If you ate a lot of nuts, then you weren't eating a low fat diet, since nuts
are relatively high in fats, so I don't understand what caused you to think
that you suffered from rabbit starvation. Maybe you're talking about
personal satisfaction and fullness rather than "rabbit starvation"?
Ashley:
<<Well the problem is (if I remember, I haven't read The Paleo Diet for a
long time) he recommends topping up your fat intake with flax and canola
oil. Now I knew back then that was wrong, which meant I was eliminating one
source of fat. I've never found anything, not a single thing, as satisfying
as animal fat cooked on the meat. And it makes a huge difference to me if
it's still a piece of fat on the meat
- dripping used to cook food doesn't have the same effect. There's
something deep down in my head that goes THANK YOU as soon as I bite through
a piece of pork or beef with a nice slab of tender cooked fat on it.>>
Ah, now things are starting to make a little sense. Cordain also recommends
fatty wild fish, fish oil supplements and omega-3-fat-enriched eggs. So if
you cut back severely on fats (but your mention of plentiful nut consumption
indicates that you probably didn't) then you weren't following Cordain's
diet, you were following your own modification of his diet. If you were
eating lots of nuts and/or fruits, rabbit starvation should have been
impossible. Maybe it was more a matter of personal preferences or
sensitivities than fat proportion? Either way, your comment about Cordain
seems very unfair in light of this new information. If you're now eating
mostly pasture-fed, free-range and wild fatty meats and are consuming 28-47%
of your calories as fat, then your current diet probably qualifies as a
Cordain version of the Paleo diet, believe it or not.
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