[Laurifer]

Two year old TED talk.

To sum up the video, he claims that the epidemic of dietary diseases in America and the West is caused by a diet that has emphasized meat and dairy. He states that all the diets of early civilizations originated on starches as their staple: corn for the Aztecs and Maya, potatoes for the Inca, wheat for the civilizations of the Levant, and rice in the far East. Meat was usually reserved for royalty whom he says almost always died over weight and diseased ridden.

This is the first time I've heard of a diet advocating starches to solve the problem of dietary diseases. This goes against the healthier diets that are all the rage today such as Paleo, which directly contradicts a starch based diet.

Your thoughts?

[rudebwoy]

Corn today is mostly GMO, the Aztecs ate pure food.
Same can be said for most foods.

[Teutatis]

What about this idea, just eat a bit of everything, animals of all kinds, vegetables, fruits, potatoes, rice, oats, cook your food, don't eat processed junk, fast food, soda or sweets, drink plenty of water, and all in quantities that suit your daily caloric needs, depending if you're an athlete, active, sedentary.

Repeat everyday for the rest of your life and you'll be healthy and sexy while you still breath.

That's it, no secrets, no "X" diet, no gimmicks.

[MidniteSpecial]

That guy doesn't look to healthy in the video.

I would still try this for a month to see how I felt. If I could.

[dasher]

The dietary advise given by the fattest western countries (UK, USA and Australia all give similar dietary advice) has not been dairy or meat focused for years, and this can be seen by observation of food pyramids and dietary guidelines like this: http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/_files_nhmrc/pub...ts/n29.pdf and in the data from studies like http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/03/what-the-uk-eats/

[Thomas the Rhymer]

Hunter-gatherers did not rely on starch for their main dietary intake, the switch only came with the population boom brought on by agriculture. Settled people had to switch en masse to starch based diets away from variety-based hunter gatherer diets. Archaelogical evidence suggests that this was a bad thing - comparisons of hunter-gatherer era skeletons vs agricultural era skeletons showed that hunter-gatherers were generally taller, had denser bone, and also less evidence of nutritional deficiency.

In other words, starch has little nutritional value beyond the fact that it is the cheapest source of calories in terms of inputs.

Just my 2c, I didn't even watch the video the OP linked to.

[Parlay44]

If you look at it from the caveman perspective, most of the time you'd be out wandering around and snacking on fruits, nuts and berries. You'd only eat meat after an exhaustive work out like taking down a water buffalo.

[kbell]

He is a well-known vegan.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

As long as he managed his calories and ate sensibly (i.e. whole wheat or rice), I don't think he would have any significant problems. You can overeat and get fat from Paleo too, as well as lose weight while eating just Twix bars.

His lifestyle doesn't seem too enjoyable though. I really enjoy a good steak or ćevapi.

[Basil Ransom]

" You can overeat and get fat from Paleo too, "

I think that would be a challenge for most people - you'd have to eat lots of sugary fruits. Also, many paleo dieters have calmed down and now eat starches like potatoes and white rice.

[rottenapple]

The main argument against this is indeed that the starch they ate in those times is nothing like what we have on offer now. If you read 'wheat belly', it is explained in detail how for instance bread right now is nothing like its ancessor. Look up a picture of ancien corn, you will see the difference very clearly. The starch we have now, became so complex in it's structure that it became very hard to digest, which then causes all kinds of problems in our bodies and along with the high sugar content make that we are susceptible to diseases. Genetic modification has made all these foods incredibly cheap and resistent and most of these products are concentrated in a few companies (Monsanto is well known off course) who are as good as it gets when it comes to lobbying, hence there is propaganda for these types of food in the whole western world. It wouldn't surprise me if this guy is linked somehow as well.

So yes starch could have been very useful in ancient times and no today it is definitly not. Dairy however is also not beneficial to your health, with few exceptions such as non-cow milk and cottage cheese. Enough scientific literature about that.

In general the ideal diet based on all the reading I have done (which is a lot) consists of clean meat, fish (small fish in general), nuts, vegetables, fruit and legumes in general (paleo). It is high in protein and fats and relatively low in carbohydrates, especially white ones.

The problem in this diet on a personal level could be that depending on where you live it is more expensive. The problem on a societal level is that meat is industry heavy. Clean meat for all individuals is in the current food system not an option, due to cost and space limitations (and moral issues as well for some people). Meatfactories as we have now in general are easier, but the quality is lower and even now for many people on this planet meat is a luxury. A difficult problem to overcome, but a first step in the right direction if you ask me would be to manage subsidies better and to tax on unhealthy food. People who are unhealthy are a big cost to society, hence taxing on sugar, colourants, etc. would make the cost of maintaining this lifestyle higher. Simultaneously subsidies for vegetables and other good sources of food can become incentives for people to go in that direction. Advantages of scale can then be used to produce these foods more efficiently without loss of quality.

Plenty more to be said about this, but in general the food industry today is very fucked up and it takes a lot of work to educate yourself properly on how to eat well. A strange thing that I've noticed is that now in many developing countries the well off people actually eat a lot better than in Western world. Fi in many countries in Africa, the main diet is fruit, legumes and vegetables and if you can afford it meat (grassfed) and fish. Whatever other products they produce locally are also likely to not have been modified genetically as much as the ones we have in Western world. Off course if you are highly educated in the topic and have money to spend, you will still have the best options in the Western world, but then we are talking about perhaps 1% of the population.

[Maciano]

Good luck losing weight on starch.

Vegans should be taken as seriously as astrologers, alchemists, Freudians, creationists, Marxists,...

[SpecialEd]

Maciano, I've done it. Its rare to see a fat vegan, if anything they're on the scrawny side.

I've been saying it for a while, Paleo is a crock diet. Cavemen didn't live long, why are we emulating them?

Study after study shows meat consumption is bad. As for grains being GMO, meat is pumped with hormones. The reality is we have a tainted food supply, buy organic if you can afford it.

There are plenty of natural starches out there that are loaded with nutrients and are cheap. Quinoa, oats, sweet potatoes., etc..

[Parlay44]

I fucking love sweet potatoes. Just toss them on some foil on a cookie sheet throw them in the oven for an hour or two.

[j r]

How much actual meat and dairy do people with shitty diets eat? Meat and dairy are relatively expensive, so crappy food is full of fillers and flavor enhances that are full of starch and sugar.

Think about a Big Mac, a large fries and a Coke. Does that meal suddenly become healthy if you replaced the two beef parties with soy parties?

[rudebwoy]

@rottenapple - great post and I agree.

[Basil Ransom]

"I've been saying it for a while, Paleo is a crock diet. Cavemen didn't live long, why are we emulating them?"

Lol if you're going to attack paleo, you might not want to start with the worst argument against it. Cavemen died early due to ubiquitous violence, and were taller than their agricultural counterparts.

Most vegetarians and vegans are just not intellectually honest enough to be open minded about whether an animal free diet is in fact optimal. If the evidence bore out their opponents, they'd still dispute it.

[Maciano]

(04-01-2014 11:23 AM)SpecialEd Wrote:  

Maciano, I've done it. Its rare to see a fat vegan, if anything they're on the scrawny side.

I've been saying it for a while, Paleo is a crock diet. Cavemen didn't live long, why are we emulating them?

Study after study shows meat consumption is bad. As for grains being GMO, meat is pumped with hormones. The reality is we have a tainted food supply, buy organic if you can afford it.

There are plenty of natural starches out there that are loaded with nutrients and are cheap. Quinoa, oats, sweet potatoes., etc..

1

Dude, if you feel good vegan, go ahead. I think stuff like Gaynoa tastes like shit. Vegans want to argue our digestive systems are somehow better equipped to eat stuff like plants, while most of our history we ate animal proteins.

Right...

And for the record, there has NEVER been a study that conclusively showed moderate meat consumption to be bad.

Everyone who whines about GMO an sich being bad is a loon too.

[SteveCR]

Read up on Blue Zones. Blue Zones are areas throughout the world where there's a large concentration of centenarians (people that live 100+ years). They all eat carb-heavy diets, high in starches. They all eat animals, and a couple of the Blue Zones also consume plenty of dairy.

[SpecialEd]

BasilRansom: Lol. I'd love to see that study on the leading cause of mortalility in cavemen....Furthermore, how is height a measure of health? While I can appreciate the notion that many vegans are borderline fanatical, I couldn't really find a coherent argument/point in your post.

Maciano: I'm actually a vegetarian...but as for studies, there are a lot. Here's one from this year. According to the University of Southern California, Meat eaters are 4x as likely to die from cancer.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140304125639.htm

[Maciano]

Ed,

I can give you a dozen studies claiming the opposite. Last week some dude claimed butter was good for your heart. Harvard's Walter Willett got into a scandal over twisting/lying re his own data after a statistician pointed it out to him. Face it, food science as we know it is quakery, slightly better than astrology. Like economics it's best effort at best. Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories" is an eye-opener. An honest person can't believe nutrition recommendations after reading that one.

Also, genes differ widely around the world. Some people can digest milk (North Euros), some can digest dense meat (Sami), some survive on a diet of blood, milk & meat (Masai), others can digest rice a little better (Chinese), Mediterreans tend to live longer, others like the Irish & Aborginals can't take alcohol well, Latin-Americans have trouble with agricultural products, etc.

The best guidance you can take is: what were your ancestors accustomed to? If that's not corn, alcohol or whatever, don't take it.

[Laurifer]

(04-01-2014 03:09 PM)SpecialEd Wrote:  

BasilRansom: Lol. I'd love to see that study on the leading cause of mortalility in cavemen....Furthermore, how is height a measure of health? While I can appreciate the notion that many vegans are borderline fanatical, I couldn't really find a coherent argument/point in your post.

Maciano: I'm actually a vegetarian...but as for studies, there are a lot. Here's one from this year. According to the University of Southern California, Meat eaters are 4x as likely to die from cancer.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140304125639.htm

I skimmed the article that you linked to see if the study differentiated processed meats from non-processed meats. I didn't find any mention of it. And in fact the picture at the top of it shows cuts of ham and salami (processed.) From the reading that I've done, processed meats are the ones to stay away from. Its not the meat giving you cancer, its the additives: sodium nitrate, colorants, volume binders, phosphates, MSG, ascorbic acid etc. source

If you can buy the most natural, additive free meat that you possibly can, I doubt you'd still be 4x likely to get cancer.

[Maciano]

Ed,

Here's an article dissing vegetarianism:

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/04/01/s...at-eaters/

Food science swings all ways, it's like economics. There are only some rough common sense ideas that must be true.
- you shouldn't eat food, your ancestors didn't eat (like corn, cassave, peppers, etc. Or depending on your ancestry: dairy and/or alcohol)
- you shouldn't overeat.
- you shouldn't eat food that you don't like (even when other people say it's good). There's a reason why your body protests.

Vegetarianism is like tanning salons, a fashionable idea that will live its course and disappear in the future when it's discredited completely.

Veganism... Well, that's just sad. People who fall for that, pity them.

[Hades]

Vegetarians have higher incidences of cancer, live shorter lives, are generally in poorer health, and make more frequent use of medical care than meat eaters. Besides which, they tend to smoke and drink less. So not only is the average vegetarian a boring and pompous teetotalling ass, but they do it for absolutely no net gain and cost everybody else more in taxes.

[RockHard]

(03-31-2014 10:35 PM)Laurifer Wrote:  

Two year old TED talk.

To sum up the video, he claims that the epidemic of dietary diseases in America and the West is caused by a diet that has emphasized meat and dairy. He states that all the diets of early civilizations originated on starches as their staple: corn for the Aztecs and Maya, potatoes for the Inca, wheat for the civilizations of the Levant, and rice in the far East. Meat was usually reserved for royalty whom he says almost always died over weight and diseased ridden.

I've heard this before, mostly from Vegans. Tony Gonzalez, who's a part time vegan said something similar. @Maciano, I agree. In past times our ancestors had another word for Veganism, it was called "starvation".

There's an exhibit on the Maya currently at my local museum of natural history. One part shows where they did scans of skulls of the Maya. An enormous number of them had absolutely horrible teeth from their diet of corn. There's lots of evidence to suggest that unhealthy teeth are one of the worst things for your health - really nasty infections can fester in the root canal and when they abscess and burst, you're letting a bunch of really virulent organisms loose in your body.

In addition the paleo argument is that for the almost 2 million years humans lived pre-civilization, they ate what we call a "paleo" diet. I think that probably humans discovered grains and potatoes long before they settled down, so the hard core paleo types probably have their archaeology wrong.

Personally, if grain is such a bad thing, I wonder how the rise of agriculture caused humans to create civilizations and become the dominant species on earth. There's a gigantic advantage to grains and potatoes - they store well and having good food storage ties you to one place but also is insurance that you'll still be eating through hard times.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. The real problem is that it's way too easy to get calories in the West today, and on top of that, the majority of work is sedentary. When I track my calories, it's easy to see how you can load up on foods that provide calories but no other nutrition. If you've going to stick to a 2000 calorie diet, you have to emphasize a paleo-ishdiet in order to get a proper array of nutrients, or you're going to need to supplement with a multivitamin, which is just plain dumb - even organic produce is cheaper than multivitamins.