Hunter-gatherers vs Westerners

tidmutt

@Need2bfit918: Yes, there is a dairy/veal industry counterpart. This is the main reason vegans don't eat dairy products. It's death once removed, if you will. Plus, spent dairy cows aren't rewarded for their service once they are too old to produce a lot of milk. It's off to the slaughterhouse with them.

Thank you for the opportunity to explain a point about veganism that is reasonably obscure and complex. Most people just don't want to know.

Edit: I think it's wishful thinking that farmers would 'want' to do things differently by raising the male animals to adulthood. It's simply an economic loser. The public is accustomed to buying eggs and dairy pretty cheaply, and truly humane farming practices would mean much higher prices at the grocery store.

That's very interesting. Thanks for enlightening me. I think if I were eating vegan I'd probably allow eggs, especially if they came from my own hens or from a responsible farmer especially since eggs are a wonderful source of lots of nutrients.

_VoV

@Need2bfit918: Yes, there is a dairy/veal industry counterpart. This is the main reason vegans don't eat dairy products. It's death once removed, if you will. Plus, spent dairy cows aren't rewarded for their service once they are too old to produce a lot of milk. It's off to the slaughterhouse with them.

Thank you for the opportunity to explain a point about veganism that is reasonably obscure and complex. Most people just don't want to know.

Edit: I think it's wishful thinking that farmers would 'want' to do things differently by raising the male animals to adulthood. It's simply an economic loser. The public is accustomed to buying eggs and dairy pretty cheaply, and truly humane farming practices would mean much higher prices at the grocery store.

That's very interesting. Thanks for enlightening me. I think if I were eating vegan I'd probably allow eggs, especially if they came from my own hens or from a responsible farmer especially since eggs are a wonderful source of lots of nutrients.

Some veg*ns draw the line there and raise their own chickens. Most decide that the sourcing of hens is too complex to feel good about it. I had a neighbor who kept a lot of chickens for a while. I think she only had one instance when an actual chick was born, and she had to incubate it and separate it from the flock. Even with this TLC, I don't think it made it. Most backyard chicken farmers need to buy their chicks from breeders, and therein lies the problem.

Need2bfit918

@Need2bfit918: Yes, there is a dairy/veal industry counterpart. This is the main reason vegans don't eat dairy products. It's death once removed, if you will. Plus, spent dairy cows aren't rewarded for their service once they are too old to produce a lot of milk. It's off to the slaughterhouse with them.

Thank you for the opportunity to explain a point about veganism that is reasonably obscure and complex. Most people just don't want to know.

Edit: I think it's wishful thinking that farmers would 'want' to do things differently by raising the male animals to adulthood. It's simply an economic loser. The public is accustomed to buying eggs and dairy pretty cheaply, and truly humane farming practices would mean much higher prices at the grocery store.

I agree to really fit close to your ideals you would need to raise your own.

_VoV

@Need2bfit918: Yes, there is a dairy/veal industry counterpart. This is the main reason vegans don't eat dairy products. It's death once removed, if you will. Plus, spent dairy cows aren't rewarded for their service once they are too old to produce a lot of milk. It's off to the slaughterhouse with them.

Thank you for the opportunity to explain a point about veganism that is reasonably obscure and complex. Most people just don't want to know.

Edit: I think it's wishful thinking that farmers would 'want' to do things differently by raising the male animals to adulthood. It's simply an economic loser. The public is accustomed to buying eggs and dairy pretty cheaply, and truly humane farming practices would mean much higher prices at the grocery store.

I agree to really fit close to your ideals you would need to raise your own.

Yes, as in, maybe adopting a couple chickens from Petfinder and hoping they can still breed to start their own brood of chicks. I absolutely would never buy chicks which were pre-sorted.

freerange

I love how some, start insulting and become obtuse in their arguments when they run out of sound issues to debate.

tidmutt

Yes, that is why I feel vegetarianism has been vindicated over time. One of the earliest studies I am aware of is the Framingham Study, which I believed was in the 1940's. Campbell's study was in the '80's, and there have been a host of studies since then. One problem with some recent studies is that funding was from the Meat and Dairy industry. Practically every study I have ever seen about the Inuit and Lapplanders' diet was funded by some meat or dairy interest group. These ethnics are (or were) environmentally isolated, and developed an ability to eat meat without suffering the consequences, i.e., heart disease or cancer. I attribute that possibly to genetics, and almost certainly to epigenetic influences,

I certainly agree it's possible although I don't think you know that with certainty. It's interesting in itself that they adapted well to this type of diet or were they already adapted to it? It does indicate that we can be healthy on this sort of diet and even live to a ripe old age, the question being is does it take certain generic mutations for this to occur? If we knew, then people could be tested for these genetic markers...

I'm concerned about bias in a lot of scientific studies. I've seen reports where researchers have admitted that even studies funded by supposedly non-partisan government bodies can be subject to pressure to conform to the accepted line of thinking. Admittedly, being given money by the dairy industry for a study on the health impact of dairy consumption is a pretty big red flag lol. Saying that, does that mean the research is necessarily invalid? I don't think so, but sadly it makes it more suspect.

GnochhiGnomes

Not really,
1 you will never find a Paleo trying to legeslate their diet on others
2 you will never find a Paleo doing it for Missplaced moral or ethical reasons

lol no. You don't know every paleo therefore you can't vouch for every single one of them.

girlinahat

I think this article has been somewhat misinterpreted in the media and is quite hard to get to grips with.

The basic hypothesis was that obesity was caused by people having lower metabolic rates caused by their inactivity, and therefore requiring a lesser calorie intake than actually had.

What the study showed was that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle does not significantly change the metabolic rate (and by hunter-gather I mean the tribe listed in the study) meaning that their TDEE is pretty much the same as the average lethargic westerner.

What it shows is that TDEE changes little whether you are a couch potato or hunting your own food in the desert - and that the cause of obesity is eating too much.

This doesn't mean that exercise is pointless.

tidmutt

In the case of Campbell, Bernard, etc., to Howard Lyman, the vegan ex-cattle rancher, all had established careers before they devoted themselves to promoting vegetarianism. Overall, I would say they probably lost money by doing what they did.

All the more reason for them to be fanatical about their claims now. I'm not accusing them of being any worse then some of the Paleo guys, just indicating their motives can be called into question just as easily.

yarwell

What it shows is that TDEE changes little whether you are a couch potato or hunting your own food in the desert

I think it shows that the TDEE of a skinny guy running round for food can match that of an obese couch potato, so the "expenditure" side of the equation isn't the problem - as you say, " the cause of obesity is eating too much"

However if the couch potato was cattle prodded into action and made to run around as much as the skinny guy in Africa their TDEE would go up quite a lot.

The couch potato is probably inactive because they're obese, they didn't become obese by being a couch potato.

tidmutt

I think this article has been somewhat misinterpreted in the media and is quite hard to get to grips with.

The basic hypothesis was that obesity was caused by people having lower metabolic rates caused by their inactivity, and therefore requiring a lesser calorie intake than actually had.

What the study showed was that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle does not significantly change the metabolic rate (and by hunter-gather I mean the tribe listed in the study) meaning that their TDEE is pretty much the same as the average lethargic westerner.

What it shows is that TDEE changes little whether you are a couch potato or hunting your own food in the desert - and that the cause of obesity is eating too much.

This doesn't mean that exercise is pointless.

Nice summary. It's not a revelation to me, losing weight starts in the kitchen, end of story. Exercise is great, but IMO, 95% of it for most people comes down to diet, especially for those who are actually obese. For someone losing 10 lbs, an increase in activity might be all they need. The exercise helps though, the larger deficit it creates can help keep me on track, but it rarely makes a significant difference to the actual weight loss. Of course, exercise has other health benefits which are worth pursuing regardless of your weight loss goal.

tidmutt

VeggiusMaximus - You've mentioned in this thread, gave up trying to find the post, that it's accepted that humans are herbivores, but I've seen so many counter arguments, I struggle with that claim. The jaw musculature that you mention I've heard rebutted by saying we haven't needed to hunt with our mouths like carnivores for millions of years since we had the benefits of tool use. In fact, I recall reading that some chimps are know to use spear like implements for hunting. This meant we didn't need to evolve the carnivore like jaw. I've heard a similar argument for why we have more herbivore-like nails.

What about the B12 issue?

What are you thoughts on these?

girlinahat

What it shows is that TDEE changes little whether you are a couch potato or hunting your own food in the desert

I think it shows that the TDEE of a skinny guy running round for food can match that of an obese couch potato, so the "expenditure" side of the equation isn't the problem - as you say, " the cause of obesity is eating too much"

However if the couch potato was cattle prodded into action and made to run around as much as the skinny guy in Africa their TDEE would go up quite a lot.

The couch potato is probably inactive because they're obese, they didn't become obese by being a couch potato.

sorry - probably what I should have said was that their BMR changes little. So to say that the TDEE of the couch potato is the same as the skinny guy running around isn't true. The study showed that calorific need doesn't change that much. If you are running around chasing food then yes, your calorific need will be higher, but that it is eating too much that causes obesity, not the lack of running around.

Silverkittycat

Yes, that is why I feel vegetarianism has been vindicated over time. One of the earliest studies I am aware of is the Framingham Study, which I believed was in the 1940's. Campbell's study was in the '80's, and there have been a host of studies since then. One problem with some recent studies is that funding was from the Meat and Dairy industry. Practically every study I have ever seen about the Inuit and Lapplanders' diet was funded by some meat or dairy interest group. These ethnics are (or were) environmentally isolated, and developed an ability to eat meat without suffering the consequences, i.e., heart disease or cancer. I attribute that possibly to genetics, and almost certainly to epigenetic influences,

I certainly agree it's possible although I don't think you know that with certainty. It's interesting in itself that they adapted well to this type of diet or were they already adapted to it? It does indicate that we can be healthy on this sort of diet and even live to a ripe old age, the question being is does it take certain generic mutations for this to occur? If we knew, then people could be tested for these genetic markers...

Does it take genetic mutations or variations for this to occur? I think so.

Many adults in the world can't digest lactose well, right? Their bodies no longer produce the needed enzyme once they become adults.
Approximately 50% of Asians can't drink alcohol because they can't convert acetaldehyde into acetate well, why? Genetic variation.
Evolutionary pressure.

Pharmacogenetics. The pharmaceutical industry is throwing a lot of dollars at researching genetic variation in different population groups.

*** tidmutt, this thread is already all over the place, sooo off topic.. I'll just post on your page or message you.

VegesaurusRex

Yes, that is why I feel vegetarianism has been vindicated over time. One of the earliest studies I am aware of is the Framingham Study, which I believed was in the 1940's. Campbell's study was in the '80's, and there have been a host of studies since then. One problem with some recent studies is that funding was from the Meat and Dairy industry. Practically every study I have ever seen about the Inuit and Lapplanders' diet was funded by some meat or dairy interest group. These ethnics are (or were) environmentally isolated, and developed an ability to eat meat without suffering the consequences, i.e., heart disease or cancer. I attribute that possibly to genetics, and almost certainly to epigenetic influences,

I certainly agree it's possible although I don't think you know that with certainty. It's interesting in itself that they adapted well to this type of diet or were they already adapted to it? It does indicate that we can be healthy on this sort of diet and even live to a ripe old age, the question being is does it take certain generic mutations for this to occur? If we knew, then people could be tested for these genetic markers...

Does it take genetic mutations or variations for this to occur? I think so.


Possibly, but I don't know. Sadly no one that I know of has ever done such a study on Inuit or Lapp populations. A mutation would be possible, more likely certain genes were just turned off via some epigenetic mechanism.

Many adults in the world can't digest lactose well, right? Their bodies no longer produce the needed enzyme once they become adults.
Approximately 50% of Asians can't drink alcohol because they can't convert acetaldehyde into acetate well, why? Genetic variation.
Evolutionary pressure.

Yes, So you are agreeing with me?

Pharmacogenetics. The pharmaceutical industry is throwing a lot of dollars at researching genetic variation in different population groups.

I bet they are, but they are not likely to get anywhere:

"Why Personalized Medicine Is Bunk
David Collier,
You’ve probably been hearing and reading a lot about personalized medicine lately. This is the much-hyped idea that, with soon-to-be-affordable genetic testing, we will enter a magical world in which your doctor can prescribe exactly the right drugs for you, at exactly the right doses, tailored for your specific genetic make-up. What could be better than that?

Unfortunately, it’s hogwash.

Why?

First, no test is 100% accurate.

For most medical tests it’s OK if you’re right most of the time. But if you’re measuring more than one thing, even tiny error rates become big problems. Say your genetic test is 99.9% accurate. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, for personalized medicine, you need to conduct a LOT of individual tests. The human genetic code contains more than 3 billion letters of DNA, each of which might differ between any two individuals. Clearly it doesn’t make sense to measure all of them. Different companies talk about different numbers of “genetic loci” they propose to measure, but to really tailor a drug regimen for a single person, many companies are proposing to measure anywhere from 10,000 to more than a million locations in the genome. If “99.9% accurate” means you have a false positive rate of 0.1%, then you would expect to get 10 false positives out of each test performed on 10,000 loci, and 1,000 false positives if you’re measuring 1 million. Of course you don’t know which of these measurements are false positives. This is known as the multiplicity problem. There isn’t any simple solution for it. Imagine: even if you’re perfectly healthy, getting a genetic test may falsely indicate that you have between ten and a thousand problems that need to be investigated!

This is a reason doctors generally don’t recommend that healthy people getwhole body CT scans to screen for cancer. Each point in each slice of a CT scan is essentially a separate test, and the chance that a whole body CT scan is going to turn up something somewhere that looks funny is nearly 100%. That leads to a lot of unnecessary surgery, biopsies, and follow-up scans on people who are completely healthy. For every real cancer that is identified this way, hundreds of healthy people undergo dangerous, invasive, expensive and completely unnecessary follow-up testing.

Second, the only way to really know which drug or which dose is right for a given patient is to conduct a clinical trial that compares drugs or doses to each other or against a placebo.


So if there are three possible drugs, all we need to do in order to figure out which one is right for you is to take 900 of you, put 300 of you on each drug for a few months, measure the effects on your health, both positive and negative, and compare the results. But wait … there aren’t 900 of you to test? You don’t have 899 clones? And you don’t have the $20 million it will cost to run this trial? I’m sorry then, you’re simply out of luck. There isn’t any way to really know which drug is right for you.

Third, an ugly secret that the genetic testing industry doesn’t want you to know is that we have virtually no information about the relevance of most genetic mutations.

We can sequence your entire genome with reasonable accuracy but we really don’t know what to do with the information we get. Most of the information that we do have is derived from correlation studies. For example, if we compare patients with colon cancer to those without across the entire genome we can find some genotypes that occur more frequently in the cancer group than in the non-cancer group. But if you’re a healthy person and your test shows up with the “cancer” genotype, does that mean you will likely develop colon cancer? It’s impossible to know without conducting a long-term clinical study: follow 10,000 people with the mutation in question for 20 years and see if they get colon cancer at a higher rate than people without the mutation. With 3+ billion places the genome might differ and thousands of diseases to worry about, that’s more than three trillion clinical trials we’d need to run in order to be able to make good use of information from the entire genome.



PAGE 2 OF 2

Is there anything of value we can look forward to from the application of genetic information to diagnosis and treatment? Yes, but the reality is a lot less sexy than the “right drug for you” story that is being hyped.

One new type of test that has arisen from the genomic revolution is called a “multi-analyte genetic test.” These tests look at the expression levels of many different genes and combine them mathematically into a single risk score.

Another type of test coming out of the genomic revolution involves looking at individual genetic mutations that are known to be associated with specific medical consequences. The best known of these is the Her2/neu test used to select patients for treatment with the drug Herceptin. Herceptin is a breast cancer drug that was developed to treat tumors that have a specific mutation in the Her2 gene. If a woman’s tumor doesn’t have that mutation, there is no point in treating her with Herceptin. Similarly, there are known mutations in some liver enzymes that metabolize drugs. Depending on which version of an enzyme gene you have, you might metabolize a drug quickly or slowly. That might be important in deciding which drug to give you, and at which dose.

That last example sounds like it is fulfilling the promise of “personalized medicine” and in a small way it is. But there are only a few cases where we know the relationship of a specific mutation to a specific effect, and also only a small number of cases where an effect is determined by a single gene rather than the combined effects of hundreds or thousands of genes. We have another name for tests that look at individual measurable things and guide treatment in specific ways and they are called “diagnostics;” we have had tests like these forever. The genomic revolution is simply providing us with more things to measure, but only a very small fraction of these are medically meaningful and can be turned into new diagnostics.

“Personalized medicine” is just another name for “diagnostics,” but it soundsso much sexier.

David Collier, MD, is managing director at San Francisco venture capital firmCMEA Capital."


*** tidmutt, this thread is already all over the place, sooo off topic.. I'll just post on your page or message you.

VegesaurusRex

VeggiusMaximus - You've mentioned in this thread, gave up trying to find the post, that it's accepted that humans are herbivores, but I've seen so many counter arguments, I struggle with that claim. The jaw musculature that you mention I've heard rebutted by saying we haven't needed to hunt with our mouths like carnivores for millions of years since we had the benefits of tool use. In fact, I recall reading that some chimps are know to use spear like implements for hunting. This meant we didn't need to evolve the carnivore like jaw. I've heard a similar argument for why we have more herbivore-like nails.

Fine. Let's accept that as true. Well then, we didn't evolve carnivore characteristics, what kind of caracteristics did we evolve? Gee, herbivore characteristics. Why do you suppose that is? BECAUSE WE WERE AND STILL ARE HERBIVORES. We got the default, i.e., what we had before we started eating meat. HERBIVORE CHARACTERISTICS. Don't you think that might mean that we are herbivores? The argument you presented simply assumes we started as herbivores, and have not changed. I can buy that. We can still move our jaws back and forth and we can still grind with our molars, (and in fact we still have molars!) I guess we are still herbivores.

What about the B12 issue?

B12 was not a problem when we pulled up roots and ate them with little or no thought for hygene. The super clean veggies we eat now make it a problem. That is probably the simplest answer.

What are you thoughts on these?

VegesaurusRex

WE ARE HERBIVORES!!!

Anatomically and physiologically, people are herbivores.

Facial Muscles
Carnivore: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
Herbivore: Well-developed
Human: Well-developed

Jaw Type
Carnivore: Angle not expanded
Herbivore: Expanded angle
Human: Expanded angle

Jaw Joint Location
Carnivore: On same plane as molar teeth
Herbivore: Above the plane of the molars
Human: Above the plane of the molars

Jaw Motion
Carnivore: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
Herbivore: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
Human: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Major Jaw Muscles
Carnivore: Temporalis
Herbivore: Masseter and pterygoids
Human: Masseter and pterygoids

Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
Carnivore: Large
Herbivore: Small
Human: Small

Teeth (Incisors)
Carnivore: Short and pointed
Herbivore: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
Human: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

Teeth (Canines)
Carnivore: Long, sharp and curved
Herbivore: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
Human: Short and blunted

Teeth (Molars)
Carnivore: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
Herbivore: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
Human: Flattened with nodular cusps

Chewing
Carnivore: None; swallows food whole
Herbivore: Extensive chewing necessary
Human: Extensive chewing necessary

Saliva
Carnivore: No digestive enzymes
Herbivore: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
Human: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

Stomach
Carnivore: Simple
Herbivore: Simple or multiple chambers
Human: Simple

Stomach Acidity
Carnivore: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
Herbivore: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
Human: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Stomach Capacity
Carnivore: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
Herbivore: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
Human: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Length of Small Intestine
Carnivore: 3 to 6 times body length
Herbivore: 10 to more than 12 times body length
Human: 10 to 11 times body length

Colon
Carnivore: Simple, short and smooth
Herbivore: Long, complex; may be sacculated
Human: Long, sacculated

Liver
Carnivore: Can detoxify vitamin A
Herbivore: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
Human: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

Kidneys
Carnivore: Extremely concentrated urine
Herbivore: Moderately concentrated urine
Human: Moderately concentrated urine

Nails
Carnivore: Sharp claws
Herbivore: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
Human: Flattened nails


Anatomically and physiologically, people are herbivores.


When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings." --William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of The American Journal of Cardiology

yarwell

sorry - probably what I should have said was that their BMR changes little. So to say that the TDEE of the couch potato is the same as the skinny guy running around isn't true.

The skinny guy has a low BMR and more physical activity, the couch potato has a higher BMR but is sedentary. Result - potentially similar TDEE.....

"Contrary to expectations, measures of TEE among Hadza adults were similar to those in Western (U.S. and Europe) populations. In multivariate comparisons of TEE controlling for FFM and age, Hadza women’s energy expenditure was similar to that of Western women (n = 186) and Hadza men’s TEE was similar to Western men (n = 53)" - from the paper http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0040503

The range of energy expenditure (TDEE) for the hunter gatherer women sits within the range of the Western women.

girlinahat

WE ARE HERBIVORES!!!

Anatomically and physiologically, people are herbivores.

When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings." --William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of The American Journal of Cardiology

first off - if humans are herbivores why have we evolved to be capable of eating meat?

secondly - which study is it that clearly states and proves unequivocally that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat ingested by the human body are directly responsible for 'killing us'?

VegesaurusRex

WE ARE HERBIVORES!!!

Anatomically and physiologically, people are herbivores.

When we kill the animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings." --William C. Roberts, M.D., editor of The American Journal of Cardiology

first off - if humans are herbivores why have we evolved to be capable of eating meat?

Why can rabbits eat meat? Why can bears eat blueberries? We can get SOME nurishment from any living organism. You can give a cat soy products only and it will survive - for a while. Eventually bad things will start to happen. Same with humans, you can give us nothing but meat for a while, and we can survive -but eventually bad things will happen.

secondly - which study is it that clearly states and proves unequivocally that dietary cholesterol and saturated fat ingested by the human body are directly responsible for 'killing us'?

Just google Chronic Diseases caused by eating meat and you will get more studies than you can ever read. Why do you suppose the Editor of the American Journal of Cardiology said what I posted? Why do you suppose they recommend vegetarian diets, or at least cutting meat drastically? I am not making this stuff up, and it is so well known, it is pretty much common knowledge.