the human diet

S

SwedishFish

Conspirator
Registered Senior Member
i've been reading about a way of eating that is supposed to be the most natural way for human being to eat because it is how we evolved. according to whoever wrote it (who knows?) early humans grazed on plants throughout the day and then had a large meal at the end of it as a tribal gathering and social event.

what do you think of this way of eating for modern humans?

since i'm a health nut i jumped at the chance but i swear i've lost weight since doing it. wouldn't earlier humans have benefitted more from keeping weight on? they also needed fat for the development of the brain, no?
 
Well look at African diets.....which is very natural compared to American diet. Their bowels are a lot healthier than American bowels seeing as how their meals are digested and excreted in a cycle of 33hours as opposed to 72 hours for Americans. As a society that jumps on any fad bandwagon the stars in tinsel town are already fans of new way of cooking which is techinically..sans cooking. They don't believe in cooking any food. Everything is eaten as natural and cold and they claim it is very healthy and natural.

they also needed fat for the development of the brain, no?
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Yes, true, but they could have also gotten that from fatty plants such as potatoes and Avacados.

don't mind me Swedish..i am taking a stab in the dark here.
 
well, given our relation to chimps, and our inherent like for meat, I'd say that eating raw, straight from the animal meat, mixed throughout the day with vegetables would make the most sence for people whose ancestors are from temprate/tropical areas. Peoples from areas with high frost levels, a higher meat diet would make the most sense. However, there are alot of factors which may regulate this point to unimportant. Given people's reluctance to slaughter animals themselves, and the dangerous nature of eating raw meat from the store, I don't recommend it as a modern diet.

While dealing whith this diet (one I have been dablling in for around 6 years), one has to keep in mind that while we evolved from apes in africa (according to modern theory), we also have had dozens of millenia in areas other than africa to diverge in look, physical stature, and digestive habits. What will be a healthy diet for an Inuit will not be healthy for a African Bushman.

My ancestry is from Native America, Irish, Welsh, German and British roots. I attempt therefore a balance of African (basic) diet (fruits and vegetables w/ some meat), mixed with diets of these peoples. Not the exact foodstuffs, but the dietary ingridients in them. Grain, meat, root vegetables, etc.
I also have included lots of tea and have eliminated red meat consumption in my diet because it specifically helps me.

Exersise is also a very, very important part of these diets. in particular exersize which promotes lean muscle and flexability. bulk is not as helpful as dense, small muscle. low weight, high rep exersizes. Study Bruce Lee's exersize methods for some cheap ways to increase stregnth significantly w/o uselessly increasing bulk.
 
Latino diets is all around lunch, breakfast and dinner are the smaller meals of the day. The human body was designed to eat no matter the pattern, the body will adapt well to any pattern. Humans are omnivores which means we eat meat and plants, we are not designed just to eat plants (we lack the digestive system) nor just meat (we lack synthesis for lacking nutrients in meat). Ancestry doesn't matter humans don't deviate enough genetically to warrant any change of diet based off race.
 
my own little personal research has yielded positive results. it just feels so right. it's like i've been doing things wrong all my life and now i'm getting back to nature. my ancestry is mixed northern european/scandinavian which is closer to african decent than to asian*

*side note on asians: through archeological studies, it was found that native americans were much healthier before they started cultivating corn and potatos. asians did not evolve on these things so it wasn't natural for them to consume them even after they became staples. skeletal remains after cultivation show greater bone mass loss and degradation around the joints. africans seem to handle super starchy foods better but the anglicanizing of african americans has led to a higher rate of diabetes in that population.
 
Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Ancestry doesn't matter humans don't deviate enough genetically to warrant any change of diet based off race.
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during the vietnam war the oh-so-well meaning americans sent care packages of dry milk that all went to waste. asians do not traditionally raise cows because of the terrain and climate. they cannot digest milk.
 
The lactose intolerance mutation is not race specific: 15% of Caucasians, 75%of African Americans and 90% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant, this means that for every race there reasonably large exception and a race wide diet is not adequate for the individual. If your Asian and are not lactose intolerant should you still not drink milk? No of course not.
 
:rolleyes: duh

my point is that there are differences in heritage. do not use asian americans as an example. do not use any americans as an example. if you want a more reliable opinion than my own, one of my professors covered this in a chemistry class. it went more or less:

prof- is anyone here scandinavian?
me- ::raise hand::
prof- what is it that scandinavians seem to craaave?
me- fish!
prof- ::went on to explain the evolutionary advantage of craving fish in the light starved far north and roped it into a lesson about vitamin production::
even those of us living in a region with sufficient light still have an unusual insatiable craving for fish. my aspirations to be vegan cannot override my body's desire to eat fish.
 
Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
The lactose intolerance mutation is not race specific: 15% of Caucasians, 75%of African Americans and 90% of Asian Americans are lactose intolerant, this means that for every race there reasonably large exception and a race wide diet is not adequate for the individual. If your Asian and are not lactose intolerant should you still not drink milk? No of course not.
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for the first time, wellcooked, I have to disagree with you.

No, if you are Asain, and not lactose intolerant, then there is no reason to not drink milk. However, if you didn't know if you were lactose intolerant or not, then by following your own numbers, there is a statistically better chance that by being of Asian decent, you are lactose intolerant. It doesn't mean you are, it means that until you know one way or the other, it may be worth assuming you are, given the chances. this of course, depends on the effects of the intolerance in question. Were we talking about nut allergies, then any chance you may be allergic could be a life-threatening chance.

Not all people are allergic to Poison Ivy, but untill you know for sure, I wouldn't recommend rolling around in it. I'd recommend assuming that you are allergic, given your genetic history, and then slowly test things to see how things are specifically for you. In a safe and controlled manner.

Ancestry doesn't matter humans don't deviate enough genetically to warrant any change of diet based off race.
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you contradict yourself with your above quote, don't you? if only 15% of Caucasians are lactose intolerent, then 15% of Caucasians should not drink milk. then if 90% of asians are lactose intolerent, then 90% shouldn't drink milk. That's a 80% difference in diet recomendation based on race alone!

The Native American body recieves a European diet in a significantly different manner than a European does. Take the obisity levels of the NA population, and compare it to the caucasian population on the same diet, and you will find a significant difference, seemingly based on Race alone.

Now, I will concede that the human body is quite good at adapting to the diet it is given. However, considering the western world, the world with the least amount of inherited ancestrial diet, is also the culture with the highest incidents of cancer, heart attack, non-microbial intestinal illness, etc, I'd say we should assume something's up until we know for sure one way or the other. I'm not suggesting we only eat what is statistically best for you ancestry; I'm suggesting that until you do your own reaserch, and know for sure what you body requires for optimal output, following the percentages for your ancestry will give you a "most likely" starting point.
 
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Well, the amount of preservatives in American diet completely messes up all good intentions, so, although one may think he's getting back to nature, he's still far from it.
The older you get, however, i would recommend eating less in the evening and not later than 3 hours before bed time.
 
America is a pretty new country. Many countries (most) have been around a lot longer than America. So in their own respective environments, each culture began to rely on a food source that grows readily there. So you get many cultures eating foods that are balanced because of the availability of the items. But then you get America. America is an assimilation of many cultures so you get lots of different food. Because of this, Americans have a larger selection of foods, and thus can eat what appeals to them, as opposed to past civilizations which ate healthy because they had no other kinds of food to eat. It's just that thing. :m:
 
Lets look at it this way lets say all members of the white “race” should drink milk because that the diet they “evolved” for right, well then we would have 15% of all whites living very uncomfortably, race is not accurate therefore is can’t be used to judge the individual, especially when we have tests that can be individual level cheaply and far more accurately.
 
yes take milk drinking advice from the new england dairy council :rolleyes:

this thread, although interesting, has gotten off topic a bit. the diet i am suggesting has nothing to do with race. it is the ancestral diet of all human beings. which foods you choose to include in your diet may or may not be better for you if they are of your ethnic cuisine. if you're irish you may want a potato for your starchy course, if italian maybe pasta. not the point. it's the way the food is eaten and what nutrients you take in.
 
its a Ad Hominem to assume that just because they are protecting their interest they must be lying or wrong.
 
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Ok so I’m half Scottish, half Norwegian. Going by the ‘evolutionary’ logic I shouldn’t eat vegetables or fruit because my great-grand parents lived in a god forsaken place where summer was for a day and it took 4 weeks for anything to arrive (imported fruit). Yea they did all right, didn’t die of cancer, but then they only lived to be 40.
 
no no no! the "evolutionary" logic applies to ***all*** people and has zip to do with race. that was a sidetrack.

you all have every right to reply but it only adds to the conversation if you read the posts beforehand. :(
 
Originally posted by sargentlard
Well look at African diets.....which is very natural compared to American diet. Their bowels are a lot healthier than American bowels seeing as how their meals are digested and excreted in a cycle of 33hours as opposed to 72 hours for Americans. As a society that jumps on any fad bandwagon the stars in tinsel town are already fans of new way of cooking which is techinically..sans cooking. They don't believe in cooking any food. Everything is eaten as natural and cold and they claim it is very healthy and natural.



Yes, true, but they could have also gotten that from fatty plants such as potatoes and Avacados.

don't mind me Swedish..i am taking a stab in the dark here.
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Not that there aren't any people who eat only uncooked food, but there seem to be some thoughts floating around which say that we were successful because we started cooking food. Apparently cooked food delivers more calories per volume, or something similar. Our teeth also seem to indicate that our ancestors have slightly adapted to a softer (cooked) diet.

Of course cooking can destroy important vitamines and such, but maybe our success was more determined by the increase in overal energy intake than the abundance of trace elements, which would have been abundant anyway in a varied diet.
 
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