5 ms·

“ Taken together, these discoveries shred the long-standing idea that early people subsisted mainly on meat” No, they don’t. First of all, as is pointed out in

by seaorg 5y ago

“ Taken together, these discoveries shred the long-standing idea that early people subsisted mainly on meat” No, they don’t. First of all, as is pointed out in the article, people were eating massive amounts of fat and meat right up till the Neolithic because without crops, there just wasn’t enough starchy stuff to sustain a population of people, not outside weird settlements like this one. And even if these people were eating starches 100,000 years ago, that’s a drop in the bucket. We have been eating meat and fat for millions of years, and the evidence is absolutely clear that a ketogenic carnivore diet is the healthiest diet. It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of people who cured themselves of very serious health problems with it.

gautamcgoel 5y ago
Can you expand a bit on the benefits of this diet? Aren't fruits and veggies essential for your health?
- reedjosh 5y ago
  Turns out you only need vitamin C and fiber if you're eating fructose or other sugars. There was a study in the early 1900s where two guys ate meat only for (I think) one year. I'll see if I can dig it up. Found it. Pdf warning http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf Downvote all you want, but it's true. Manny people do it today, and I've done it myself for a period. That said I'm not saying there aren't benefits to fruits and veg, just that you can be perfectly healthy without them.
  - db48x 5y ago
    This is extremely misleading, because you need a constant supply of vitamin C regardless of how much sugar you consume, and because you can get both vitamin C and fiber from meat. I’ve read that polar bear livers have so much vitamin C in them that you can actually poison yourself with them if you eat too many (personally I regard it as a rather remote circumstance).
    - caymanjim 5y ago
      You're mixing up vitamins. Meat doesn't contain any vitamin C; it's one of the few vitamins we need that you can't get from meat. And you can eat all the vitamin C you want. It's vitamin A that you have to be careful to avoid overdosing on, particularly from the livers of omnivores and carnivores.
      - samatman 5y ago
        Half right. He is mixing up vitamin A toxicity from some animal livers with vitamin C, but vitamin C is also found in liver, fish roe, and in small amounts in muscle. Adequate amounts? All I can tell you is that I know a small handful of people who have eaten an exclusively carnivore diet for years on end without suffering from scurvy.
        caymanjim 5y ago
        TIL. Seems that this was studied extensively in Inuit and other Alaskan populations that have a particularly meat-heavy diet.
      - db48x 5y ago
        It looks like I was mixing up the toxicity; thanks for the correction!
Retric 5y ago
Significant anthropological evidence exists that gathering not hunting provided the primary food source in primitive cultures. Outside of the Arctic circle there is simply an abundance of edible wild plants relative to the density of game animals. Further those plants don’t run away, foraging was simply the more dependable food source.
TaupeRanger 5y ago
Yikes...this sounds almost religious. The truth is much more mundane and boring: we really don't know much about diet, aside from a handful of obvious things: don't eat too much sugar, don't eat trans fats, and try to get folic acid if you're pregnant. The final sentence really seals the deal on how little the OP understands diets. You can't look at anecdotes of someone "curing" themselves using a diet. That's how you get "miracle cures" using all sorts of random substances/fads. You have to do an actual randomized-controlled trial. Under controlled environments, the benefits of ketogenic diet are either nonexistent or moderate at best.
gostsamo 5y ago
So, they were hunters and gatherers but they were only hunters. Who would've thought of a magic food tree?
inopinatus 5y ago
I was mostly with you up until: > the evidence is absolutely clear that a ketogenic carnivore diet is the healthiest diet There is no single blanket "healthiest diet". Dietary requirements vary, sometimes dramatically, across the gamut of humanity; and then: > It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of people who cured themselves of very serious health problems with it. That is a super misleading statement. A diet is not a miracle cure and should never be presented as one, because like all snake-oil health claims it sells false hope to the desperate. A low-GI diet may improve insulin resistance; a low calorie diet may improve obesity. Neither of these are certain outcomes, neither of them are cures for disease, and neither strategy even particularly requires a ketogenic carnivore diet.
peanutz454 5y ago
As someone aproaching middle age and suddenly concious of health, I find claims like below... > It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of people who cured themselves of very serious health problems with it. ... very enticing. Then I wonder, if this were true, why isn't this backed by hard science? Even bad motives and bad statistics cannot hide miracles! I also wonder, if meat and fat based diet was the best for us, and yet humans AS A society (not as a person) evolved to eat card based diet obviously there has to be some advantage. What it is, I do not know, and I wish this would not change the subject, but the only thing that comes to mind is that eating carbs is the only sustainable way for our species. While these questions are unresolved, I eat meat once a week, and am otherwise vegatarian. Feeling healthy btw.
- nightski 5y ago
  Nutritional science is far from a solved case and doesn't have a lot to lean on yet. Not only is there a lot of misinformation, money, and lying involved but the science itself is pretty poor as well. Most nutritional studies are based on p values in uncontrolled environments with self reporting. While the few more rigorous studies do control for confounding variables and attempt to control the environment more - they tend to be smaller. It's not like you can lock thousands of humans (let alone one) in a controlled environment for 50 years and study long term effects of diets which even then wouldn't be perfect. I'm not saying it's impossible, and science is the only way forward. I'm just that it is a mess and we know less than we think. FWIW I have been on a keto-genic diet for coming up on a decade now and feel fantastic as well. But like I said before, that's not worth much. I do it for the "brain" high I get on the diet and also it totally gets rid of my acid reflux issues.
- Swizec 5y ago
  The problem is that any time we study populational positive effects of diet on health outcomes it always turns out that the secret ingredient was universal health care. Or at least the diet filters by “rich enough to have good insurance and access” We seem to have a hard time finding populations following any specific good diet with measurably good or better health outcomes than average that don’t have the compounding variable of access to health care:

by seaorg 5y ago

gautamcgoel 5y ago

Can you expand a bit on the benefits of this diet? Aren't fruits and veggies essential for your health?

reedjosh 5y ago
Turns out you only need vitamin C and fiber if you're eating fructose or other sugars. There was a study in the early 1900s where two guys ate meat only for (I think) one year. I'll see if I can dig it up. Found it. Pdf warning http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.full.pdf Downvote all you want, but it's true. Manny people do it today, and I've done it myself for a period. That said I'm not saying there aren't benefits to fruits and veg, just that you can be perfectly healthy without them.
- db48x 5y ago
  This is extremely misleading, because you need a constant supply of vitamin C regardless of how much sugar you consume, and because you can get both vitamin C and fiber from meat. I’ve read that polar bear livers have so much vitamin C in them that you can actually poison yourself with them if you eat too many (personally I regard it as a rather remote circumstance).
  - caymanjim 5y ago
    You're mixing up vitamins. Meat doesn't contain any vitamin C; it's one of the few vitamins we need that you can't get from meat. And you can eat all the vitamin C you want. It's vitamin A that you have to be careful to avoid overdosing on, particularly from the livers of omnivores and carnivores.
    - samatman 5y ago
      Half right. He is mixing up vitamin A toxicity from some animal livers with vitamin C, but vitamin C is also found in liver, fish roe, and in small amounts in muscle. Adequate amounts? All I can tell you is that I know a small handful of people who have eaten an exclusively carnivore diet for years on end without suffering from scurvy.
      - caymanjim 5y ago
        TIL. Seems that this was studied extensively in Inuit and other Alaskan populations that have a particularly meat-heavy diet.
    - db48x 5y ago
      It looks like I was mixing up the toxicity; thanks for the correction!

Retric 5y ago

Significant anthropological evidence exists that gathering not hunting provided the primary food source in primitive cultures. Outside of the Arctic circle there is simply an abundance of edible wild plants relative to the density of game animals. Further those plants don’t run away, foraging was simply the more dependable food source.

TaupeRanger 5y ago

Yikes...this sounds almost religious. The truth is much more mundane and boring: we really don't know much about diet, aside from a handful of obvious things: don't eat too much sugar, don't eat trans fats, and try to get folic acid if you're pregnant. The final sentence really seals the deal on how little the OP understands diets. You can't look at anecdotes of someone "curing" themselves using a diet. That's how you get "miracle cures" using all sorts of random substances/fads. You have to do an actual randomized-controlled trial. Under controlled environments, the benefits of ketogenic diet are either nonexistent or moderate at best.

gostsamo 5y ago

So, they were hunters and gatherers but they were only hunters. Who would've thought of a magic food tree?

inopinatus 5y ago

I was mostly with you up until: > the evidence is absolutely clear that a ketogenic carnivore diet is the healthiest diet There is no single blanket "healthiest diet". Dietary requirements vary, sometimes dramatically, across the gamut of humanity; and then: > It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of people who cured themselves of very serious health problems with it. That is a super misleading statement. A diet is not a miracle cure and should never be presented as one, because like all snake-oil health claims it sells false hope to the desperate. A low-GI diet may improve insulin resistance; a low calorie diet may improve obesity. Neither of these are certain outcomes, neither of them are cures for disease, and neither strategy even particularly requires a ketogenic carnivore diet.

peanutz454 5y ago

As someone aproaching middle age and suddenly concious of health, I find claims like below... > It works miracles on everyone who tries it. There are piles of people who cured themselves of very serious health problems with it. ... very enticing. Then I wonder, if this were true, why isn't this backed by hard science? Even bad motives and bad statistics cannot hide miracles! I also wonder, if meat and fat based diet was the best for us, and yet humans AS A society (not as a person) evolved to eat card based diet obviously there has to be some advantage. What it is, I do not know, and I wish this would not change the subject, but the only thing that comes to mind is that eating carbs is the only sustainable way for our species. While these questions are unresolved, I eat meat once a week, and am otherwise vegatarian. Feeling healthy btw.

nightski 5y ago
Nutritional science is far from a solved case and doesn't have a lot to lean on yet. Not only is there a lot of misinformation, money, and lying involved but the science itself is pretty poor as well. Most nutritional studies are based on p values in uncontrolled environments with self reporting. While the few more rigorous studies do control for confounding variables and attempt to control the environment more - they tend to be smaller. It's not like you can lock thousands of humans (let alone one) in a controlled environment for 50 years and study long term effects of diets which even then wouldn't be perfect. I'm not saying it's impossible, and science is the only way forward. I'm just that it is a mess and we know less than we think. FWIW I have been on a keto-genic diet for coming up on a decade now and feel fantastic as well. But like I said before, that's not worth much. I do it for the "brain" high I get on the diet and also it totally gets rid of my acid reflux issues.
Swizec 5y ago
The problem is that any time we study populational positive effects of diet on health outcomes it always turns out that the secret ingredient was universal health care. Or at least the diet filters by “rich enough to have good insurance and access” We seem to have a hard time finding populations following any specific good diet with measurably good or better health outcomes than average that don’t have the compounding variable of access to health care: