Amadeus Schmidt wrote: > Your obvious statement is agreeable BUT the only deviation from > a (true!) paleo way of eating you mention is cooking. > > So then, the only supplementation necessary should be for the vitamins > and in the amounts that are deteriorated by cooking. For a 'sufficient' level, yes. That's what I said, wasn't it? > On the other hand, if you add all your food items vitamins in their raw > (and ideal fresh) state, then the resulting vitamin contents should > be sufficient, in your terms. Sufficient, yes. That's what I said, wasn't it? > If they still aren't sufficient raw, then IMO your nutrition can't be > a paleolithic one, or one we're adapted to. Sufficient, yes. That's what I said, wasn't it? > But *that* is the intention of the paleolithic nutrition, isn't it? The intent of the paleolithic nutrition is to achieve better health, at least for most of the people on this list. I don't think there are many here who would eat this way if they didn't believe it produced health benefits. > To get that straight and avoid further misunderstandings as we had: > I'm argueing in this way *of course* because i think that th > e high meat > amounts (several 100 grams) that some consume are *not* real paleolithic > and that we are *not* adapted to them. -- We may tolerate them. > IMO they happened ("following the herds"), > but only for such a small time period that, > a real adaption didn't occur, > or maybe the adaption went away in neolithic times. > I think you can see that on our vitamin requirement profiles. I see that you have taken yet another topic and used it to start a 'meat isn't paleo' debate again. My statement was very simple - a paleo dieter might still take supplements because: 1) paleo diet is good at providing sufficient, but not optimum levels of vitamins/minerals. So, for an optimum level one might want to suppplement. 2) cooking is not paleo, but many people eating an otherwise paleo diet (animal or plant in origin) cook their food, so may need supplements. While the debate about meat certainly belongs to this list it does not belong as a response to my message, which had nothing to do with meat, vegeterianism, or how paleo is either of them. I have also pointed out that that's what my message was about and asked not to start a debate about it. It would be plain curtesy on your part not to use my message for your thread again, considering that I did not give any real reason for you to start such an UNRELATED thread. Now, since you have indeed started it again, I will respond to it, though I do consider this 'trolling'. Most people who advocate the eating meat: 1) do NOT recommend eating ONLY meat. They simply believe that eating meat was an important part of the diet. 2) do recognize that other parts of the animal were eaten, not just muscle tissue. Those other parts have different nutrient composition to meat and together make for a much more balanced diet. They admit that eating meat as the primary animal protein is simply a convenience, given what's available in stores/restaurants. 3) do recognize that most of us cook meat and that destroys nutriets 4) do see a role for some veggies in the diet, which would easily add the nutrients missing in meat. You keep bringing up various vitamin/mineral composition of meat, even though the whole point is moot given what I have just said. Additionally, the final word in nutrition is not theory, but practice. The fact that meat may not have enough of some nutriet does not meat diddly, if people appear not to develop any negative deficiency side effects on pure meat diet, e.g. vitamin C. It still remains to be discovered how or why this happens, but that fact remains nontheless. Vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients are usually used to produce something else in the body. It is possible that this 'something else' is already present in meat and thus the intermediate nutrient is not needed. It is also possible that meat contains nutrients needed to manufacture the missing vitamins, thus avoiding a deficiency. For example, meat may have an enzyme for making vitamin C, thus there is no deficiency even though meat does not have C itself. It is also possible that requirements for some vitamins/minerals are lower on a meat based diet (e.g. people who eat lots of grains may have elevated need of zinc, magnesium, etc). These were merely examples of what MAY BE HAPPENING. I am not making any claims for them, so don't start debunking them one by one. The reason I bring them up it to emphasize the point that the final word on suitability of one diet or another is human experiments/experience. It appears that people live just as long, if not longer, on a mixed diet which includes a very large amount of animal foods than they do on a vegetarian diet. Not only that, but they appear to have fewer degenerative deseases on such a diet. Given that, how can you argue that a diet includes animal foods is not healthy? > To me it looks like at best suboptimal - tolerable as long as we have a proper > plant selection and as long as we don't assume the over 100%-percent > cases as dangerous (we already discussed several aspects with protein and iron). Discussed does not mean aggreed. Just because you have previously stated that excess protein is dangerous does not make it so. > On cooking: > Furthermore cooking not beeing paleo > is not agreed on by all. Most of us cook their food and feel > pretty much paleo, > because fireplaces were found several hundred k-years old. Modern cooking can destroy a number of vitamins completely in any food, including plants. A deficiency of those vitamins would then likely develop no matter what the diet was if it was cooked thoughly. I completely do not understand your point here. Are you just arguing with me for the sake of arguing? I was refering to cooking that destroys nutrients. Are you arguing with the fact that it can? If not, then with what? > If cooking is *not* paleo, and you intend to be paleo-eating, > why do you cook then? Taste, convenience, safety. It's hard to guarantee that my food is fresh or isn't parasite infested. So I cook to make it safer. I also go out to restaurants where it's a challange to get an all raw meal. Did you really need this explanation? Are you really trying to say that you didn't already guess this much? > In this way you might > loose very important aspects and benefits of > the nutrition you *really* are adapted to. I know that through cooking I might loose something, but as I have said it's often not convenient to eat raw paleo. I strive to eat healthy; I don't make it my religion. > Still not discovered phytochemicals for examples. Thank God for small favors. (If I sound sarcastic, it's because I am - your trolling has just wasted 30 minutes of my time responding to you). Ilya