Hi Jim,
Allan Ballett said: "Cancer, apparently, was all but unknown in 
traditional cultures."

This is not the same as saying that humans never got cancer. Geoff just 
got it wrong.

He has provided several links but they are all by or about Michael 
Fumento's rhetoric attacking Gary Taubes. No matter who is speaking, 
there will always be some detractors.

One of the reasons that cancer is exceedingly rare among humans eating a 
traditional diet is that those diets did not contain highly refined 
carbohydrates. Even a cursory glance at Nobel laureate, Otto Warburg's 
depiction of energy use by cancer cells, published in 1926, shows that 
insulin and glucose are important factors in cancer cell reproduction. 
Simply put, he showed that our highly glycemic diet promotes cancer 
growth. Because the very basis of Atkins' work and a great deal of 
subsequent work in the field of metabolism bears out Warburg's 
hypothesis, it is nothing short of incompetence that led to the 
vilification of saturated fats.

Further, the findings in a group of 16 cancer patients with a variety of 
advanced (hopeless??) cancers. Five of these patients experienced a halt 
or regression in tumor growth.  The harsh constraints imposed by the 
ethics committee, the very mild level of ketosis achieved, and the 
allowance of many more carbs than are usually eaten while in ketosis, 
combine to suggest that the remission rates would have been even better 
had these people stuck to a stricter diet........ but the victims 
probably "knew" it was a very bad diet with all that fat. The 
researchers certainly report that it was difficult to get these subjects 
to stick to their diet.

The low glycemic nature of most traditional diets would make most of the 
rare cancers that did arise fairly benign, resulting in individuals 
dying with them, rather than from them.

best wishes,
Ron


On 10/7/2011 1:27 PM, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Geoff > it's just not correct to state that humans never got cancer in 
> hunter-gatherer days
>
> Who claimed that?  The only claim that's been made to my knowledge is 
> that the rate of cancer is much, much higher since we abandoned our 
> ancestral diets.
>
> As for your comments about Taubes, he is a bit of a sensationalist 
> when he writes his pieces for popular magazines.  But, reading his 
> _Good Calories, Bad Calories_ book, his conclusions are inescapable, 
> if only partial.  The obesity epidemic is almost entirely caused by 
> dietary carbohydrate.
>
> Jim
>


-- 
PK