I had a great question that involves Katherine Miltons rebuttal to much of Cordain’s work. Here is the question and my response:
Robb,
I’d love to talk to you about elite level athletes diets (olympian diets), and their high reliance on carbs and not so healthy food, sometime.. but too long to do here.
But on a different note, what do you think of these articles that challenge yours and Loren’s research? http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/3/665
and
http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~gowlett/GowlettCJNE_13_03_02.pdf
OH!@ that’s good shit there! Here is the conclusion from the first link:
In conclusion, it is likely that no hunter-gatherer society, regardless of the proportion of macronutrients consumed, suffered from diseases of civilization. Most wild foods lack high amounts of energy and this feature, in combination with the slow transit of food particles through the human digestive tract, would have served as a natural check to obesity and certain other diseases of civilization. Yet today, all non-Western populations appear to develop diseases of civilization if they consume Western foods and have sedentary lifestyles (24). Given these facts, in combination with the strongly plant-based diet of human ancestors, it seems prudent for modern-day humans to remember their long evolutionary heritage as anthropoid primates and heed current recommendations to increase the number and variety of fresh fruit and vegetables in their diets rather than to increase their intakes of domesticated animal fat and protein.
A number of folks in the dietetics community went bananas over Cordain’s research. He does NOT advocate domestic high fat meats. He recommends low fat varieties especially if the source is not grassfed. It is this very recommendation that gets the WPF/Fallon/Eng crowd whipped into a sat’d fat lov’n frenzy. Cordain’s position is that the preponderance of cals HAD to come from animal sources…he details this via the Ethnographic Atlas and he looks at the two really interesting pieces of info: The energy expenditure of HG’s and the available foods, both plant and animal. I’ve had a post on this cooking for a while, and it is a key section of the book but the main point is: we know HG’s had a very high activity level. We also know the energy density of the foods they ate…and it’s impossible to feed that activity level with a plant based diet. The !Kung of the Kalahari have periods of time when a nut called the Monongo is very available as are numerous varieties of melon and other fruit. Robert V. Lee (who lived among the Kung for more than 20 years) found that their reliance on animal products hit about 10% of cals during this time. During their winter however, which is dry and actually fairly cold (30*F and the Kung make no special clothing to deal with this time) they rely on animal products for more than 90% of their calories.
Milton (the author of the first paper) offers NO counter point to the hard data or the mathematical underpinnings of Cordain’s work. She is a dietitian and I swear they ALL HATE Cordain because he’s an outsider that figured out their “science” and they can make neither heads nor tails of it. She concedes in the paper that the health of pre-industrial people is better in that we see none of the western degenerative diseases…then she just recommends business as usual!! It just makes my head want to pop off my shoulders!
If they really had a clue they would attack his numbers and the data…they don’t so they can’t. The damn dietitians just want to keep counting calories with not an ounce of interest in describing what they actually observe. It is criminal and completely devoid of academic rigor.
Robb,
That so-called rebuttal by Milton seemed pretty vacuous to me as well. You can’t explain HG health by nutrient density when many of them were almost complete carnivores (according to the Atlas). Given that you can’t eat more than 35% of your calories as fat before you get “rabbit starvation”, these groups were eating 65% or more of their calories as fat. A diet cannot get more nutrient-dense than that. It also blows away the “slow transit” hypothesis since there’s no fiber to slow down nutrient absorption in a carnivorous diet. So much for whole grains and vegetables…
By the way, I think Cordain is a little bit wary of fat himself, especially sat fat. He doesn’t like to acknowledge the fact that many HGs had high-fat diets rich in saturated fats, even though that conclusion flows logically from his data. I think he has a robust sense of professional self-preservation. By the way, I posted a discussion of one of his papers recently on my blog. It’s the one where he determines the animal/plant subsistence ratios of HGs. Here it is:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/composition-of-hunter-gatherer-diet.html
Stephan-
Vacous is the best description yet of the milton piece!
Perhaps I’m a Cordain schill, but I think he is pretty spot on with his analysis of fats and sat’d fats. He acknowledges that it is but a piece of the puzzle in the atherogenic process with insulin and oxidative damage being key elements as well.
His main contention is grassfed/wild animals have a dramatically different fatty acid profile from feed lot animals, both in terms of total fat, n-3/n-6 and sat’d fat. If the ratios were similar it would not really matter as 10% of 200g is still the same percentage as 100g.
Perhaps he is out to lunch on this…lets see better data than he and his team have collected and lets run from there, but I’d be very hesitant to label him as having a robust sense of self preservation. Have you seen where he works? The whole department of Nutrition surrounds his his office at Fort Collins. Food pyramid posters abound…lectures that he gives at his own university have barely a representative contingent from the local professors who all think he is a kook. The meat lobbyists hate him because he advocates grass fed, the dairy lobbyists hate him because he is no fan of dairy, the hippy’s (like milton) hate him because he is NOT pushing a vegetarian agenda. He pisses EVERYONE off and is the nicest fucking guy in the world. I think he hangs his hat on the best available data and is ALWAYS open to finding new directions. The paper you mentioned is a re-hash of Eaton’s original paper and it was found by Cordain actually checking the damn numbers! He is on par with Uffe Ravanskov in this regard.
Attack the guys idea but to say he skews his world view for professional longevity is REALLY missing the mark IMO. The guy toiled for years in near obscurity, a largely unwelcome member of his local community.
WolfMeister…….What is it about human nature that makes folks write long winded rebuttals sans reading the actuall thing they are rebutting ?
Assume something read or heard about said paper piques the person, aggro response/neural hijacking ensues and wallop they ‘talk’ afore they’ve read fully ( and esp carefully ) the thing in question and then of course have uge gaping oles in their rebuttal making it as useful well as coq au vin minus the coq.
Also anybody any thoughts on Olive oil and its high 6 content please ?
Am lost in the wildernesse of self !
Fellows-
It’s NEVER the person with the right answer with the neural hijacking! It’s just interesting…you look at the Protein Debate between Cordain and Campbell. Cordain provides line by line references for Campbell’s material. Campbell just belly-aches that Cordain dislikes the nutritional sciences! The rebuttal to Good Calories, Bad Calories is similar…the guy is just out to lunch. What to do?!
Uh, Rob, appreciate your defense of Cordain, but Milton’s professor of Physical Anthropology at Berkely. Not that that makes her right, but does give her somewhat more credibility.
Scott-
More credibility than who or what? Cordain has published research in the fields of:
Opthamology, Dermatology, rheumatology to name a few. NO ONE publishes across disciplines these days because shit is soooo specific. The reason he does is NO ONE else is looking at things with the answer already in front of them. Cordain is asked for re-prints of his work from people in the field and they are aghast that he is not “one of them”.
Cordain has put forward a theory that is predictive AND descriptive of the available data. If someone has better data or a better theory they need to step up! Milton and the people like her are still in the taxonomic stage. They name and describe Nouns…they have no framework for describing why those nouns are the way they are.
Oops. Apparently there are two Katharine/Katherine Miltons at Berkeley. This one apparently does indeed study primate nutrition.
I just don’t get it.
Nutrition is not f-ing rocket science.
Eat meat from healthy animals, veggies from good soil, some nuts, seeds, a dash of seasonal fruit and get on with your life until you die like everyone else.
The vast majority of these academic folk are a nuisance, like buzzing flies.
PS: ..paraphrased Crossfit doctrine of course.. don’t mean to belittle performance-nutrition and macronutrient tweaking, just generalizing.
I find it curious that on the one hand Milton claims we cannot infer the best diet from the activities of our ancestors:
“…because some hunter-gatherer societies obtained most of their dietary energy from wild animal fat and protein does not imply that this is the ideal diet for modern humans, nor does it imply that modern humans have genetic adaptations to such diets”
yet in her conclusion decides to recommend the best approach to diet based on…the activities of our ancestors:
“…the strongly plant-based diet of human ancestors, it seems prudent for modern-day humans to remember their long evolutionary heritage as anthropoid primates and heed current recommendations to increase the number and variety of fresh fruit and vegetables in their diets…”
But more importantly, unless I am missing something, her opening remarks miss the point entirely. The fact that meat from modern domestic animals has a different nutritional profile from those hunted by hunter gatherers does not make Cordain’s advice ill-advised – it just means that to follow it properly one has to find superior sources of animal products!
As an aside, as you have a biochemistry background, I’d be really interested in your comments on my recent post. It’s about how science could one day allow us to create food that taste like one thing but digests as another (i.e. going well beyond the crude attemps of artificial sweeteners.) I put forward some suggested mechanisms by which this could be achieved and ask what it would mean for us if it happened.
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
Thanks,
Methuselah
Pay Now Live Later
Methuselah-
This is spot on:
“But more importantly, unless I am missing something, her opening remarks miss the point entirely. The fact that meat from modern domestic animals has a different nutritional profile from those hunted by hunter gatherers does not make Cordain’s advice ill-advised – it just means that to follow it properly one has to find superior sources of animal products!”
In addition to what you list above, Milton misses the completely obvious! Attention to detail and new ideas are apparently in short supply at Berkly.
Regarding your post…I think modern food chemists still have an overly mechanistic view of the body. “It tastes sweet but we can not digest it! what could possibly go wrong?!” Apparently stuff like that can still elicit an insulin release and more cryptically, it can derange the normal hypothalmic response to food and make us not increase our metabolic rate in response to eating food. It may sound like the yammering of an un-washed hippy, but we are an integrated whole…the product of billions of years of evolution…and some schmuck food chemist is not going to circumvent that complexity! I’d be willing to bet that if we can hack directly into the pleasure centers of the brain and “virtually” consume chocolate cake every day, all the time…there will be a price to be paid for this. The phantom pain of a lost limb causes a decrease in immune function due to the cortisol release…yet the whole thing “just” exists in the mind. Unless you change how we are fundamentally human you are not likely to circumvent these systems.
Robb, what are your thoughts on raw dairy (occas) as in kefir etc and non cows milk dairy ie…sheep milk yogurt and/or water buffalo or goats milk yogurt. Was never a dairy person but I find myself attracted lately!
Sarena-
I do a little Goat yogurt for the live cultures and I seem to do fine with it. None of the issues of standard dairy. I’ve not tinkered with raw dairy…I suspect raw and grassfed dairy would mitigate some of the negatives but it’s just a guess.
Hi Robb.
Actually Cordain and his team (which include Brand Miller, a famous professor of Nutrition in Australia and author of many papers on the Glycemic Index, and the father of the Paleolithic lifestyle priciples – Boyd Eaton) have a rebuttal to that Milton’s editorial available at:
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/Milton%20Rebuttal.pdf
And he also has another paper that sheds light on that topic available at:
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/Meat%20Paradox%20Final.pdf
As for the Weston Price Foundation critics, I took a look at an old forum about Paleolithic Nutrition, that I think all readers of this blog should take a look:
http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?A0=PALEODIET
I also suggest that his rebuttal to Falloon’s personal attack (something I don’t see him do)should be read:
Would you care to comment about Sally Fallon’s negative review of your book at the Weston A. Price website?
Needless to say, Sally Fallon’s review bothers me — not from a personal basis, but rather because it attempts to cloud the real dietary issues for readers like you, who may not have a sufficient background to know what is factual and what is hype. Further, this review attempts to discredit a very powerful new scientific concept (evolutionary medicine) that is being used worldwide by scientists in a wide variety of disciplines to answer complex health questions.
I do not know Sally Fallon, but I suspect that she has “an axe to grind” because of a debate I had with her co-author, Mary Enig, on whether or not dietary saturated fats were healthful or harmful. My research group and I believe that the high amounts of dietary saturated fats in the western diet promote atherosclerosis because they down-regulate the LDL receptor (a concept for which the Nobel prize in medicine was awarded in 1984). We do not believe that dietary saturated fats are the sole or even main cause of atherosclerosis, but rather are a part of many dietary elements that promote heart disease.
It is natural and healthy for scientists to disagree on scientific and medical issues as this is the process called “peer review” which ultimately moves science forward. Unfortunately, the internet is not a peer reviewed forum, and literally anyone can say anything they care to say. As far as I am aware, Sally Fallon is not a scientist, nor has she ever submitted any of her ideas to the peer review process in scientific journals. Does this mean that Sally Fallon’s ideas have no merit? No, they simply have not been adequately tested using the scientific method. All of the information I present in my book is substantiated by peer reviewed scientific articles that I have published, along with my research group or by other scientists from diverse fields.
Sally Fallon’s review attempts to debunk the Paleo Diet concept by using a satirical tone in which she misleads the reader by taking information out of context and emphasizes specific points without examining the larger picture. The first paragraph of her review represents an example of this deliberately misleading prose. There is no doubt that hunter-gatherers ate the entire edible carcass of animals that were hunted and killed, and the fatty portions of the carcass were relished more than the lean muscle tissue. We have pointed this information out in many of our scientific papers. However, there are two key points that Fallon fails to mention.
The first is the total fat content of wild animal carcasses varies seasonally throughout the year in a cyclic waxing and waning manner. Studies of caribou over a 12-month period show that the total carcass (organs and all) fat by weight for 7 months of the year average less than 5 %; for 9 months of the year it average less than 10 %. For 3 months of the year total carcass fat falls between 11-17 %. In contrast 99 % of the beef in the U.S. is produced under fed lot conditions in which the animal is always slaughtered at the peak or highest body fat % which typically exceeds 30 % by weight. An animal that has a body fat of 5% by weight equals 34 % fat by energy, whereas an animal that has a body fat of 30 % by weight equals 85 % fat by energy. Hence the total fat content of feed-lot produced domesticated animals is not even remotely close to that of wild animals.
The second point of deception in Fallon’s review revolves around the types of fats available in the total edible carcass of wild animals over a 12 month period. From our recent paper analyzing the fat content in the tissues of wild animals (see webpage for article), we have been able to show that the dominant fats (> 50 % energy) in organs are polyunsaturated (PUFA) + monounsaturated (MUFA) fatty acids, whereas the dominant (>50% energy) fat in adipose tissue is saturated fat. Further, by employing allometric regressions that scale organ mass to tissue mass and then by analyzing the fat content and fatty acid composition of each organ, it is possible to calculate the total edible carcass fatty acid composition as it varies throughout the year. Our results (in press) show that for 9 months or more of the year, it would have been impossible to obtain >10 % of the total carcass energy as saturated fats.
In my book, The Paleo Diet, it was not my objective to precisely and exactly imitate the dietary practices of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, but rather to synthesize a diet from commonly available modern foods that would emulate the nutritional characteristics of hunter-gatherer diets. Few modern people would be willing to eat brains, intestines, liver, kidney, gonads, lungs etc. Nor do few modern, westernized people have access to wild animal meat and organs on a year round basis. By removing skin and excess fat from domestic meats available at the supermarket and then by adding in healthful oils, it is possible to simulate the entire carcass fatty acid profiles of wild animals. Consumption of the fatty cuts of meat (chicken with skin, hamburger, beef ribs etc) on a year round basis is vastly at odds with the nutritional patterns of hunter-gatherers. It’s not that hunter-gatherers didn’t want to eat fatty meats; it’s just that a year round source did not exist. Hence, my recommendation to eat lean meats trimmed of visible fat along with healthful oils provides a diet with approximately 10 % or less of total energy from saturated fats – a value that mimics values in hunter-gatherer diets. From our paper (Cordain L. The nutritional characteristics of a contemporary diet based upon Paleolithic food groups. J Am Nutraceut Assoc 2002; 5:15-24), you can examine in more detail the fat profile of modern diets based upon Stone Age food groups.
The second paragraph of Fallon’s critique again represents a satirical ploy to invalidate the entire concept of evolutionary nutrition based upon irrelevant information. In the first place Paleolithic people (hominins living during the Old Stone Age – approximately 2.4 million years ago until 10,000 years ago) did not cook in pots as pottery was first produced ~9,000 years ago. Secondly, oil extraction from any plants is not known to have occurred until ~ 6,000 years ago. But again, even though Fallon is unaware of this information, it skirts the real issue. It is virtually economically impossible or culturally deplorable for most western people to eat the entire carcass of wild animals throughout the year. Consequently certain beneficial changes must be made to foods commonly available at the supermarket to achieve the general nutritional characteristics of pre-agricultural diets. The addition of canola oil to lean domestic meats increases the MUFA and n-3 concentrations of the entire meal so that it more closely resembles the fatty acid concentrations that are present when the entire carcass of a wild animal is consumed. The addition of various spices, lemon juice etc. improves the flavor of the meat and makes it more palatable. Although this combination of spices certainly would not have been available to historically studied hunter-gatherers, there is extensive ethnographic evidence to show that various spices and plant parts were components of Holocene hunter-gatherer diets. The addition of these spices in no way impairs the nutritional qualities of the diet and in fact may add many valuable phytochemicals and antioxidants.
In the typical western diet refined sugars comprise 16-18% of the total daily energy. Clearly, there are numerous health problems associated with this enormous intake of empty calories. However, for many people it is difficult to make sudden behavioral changes, particularly when it comes to comfort foods, such as highly sugared processed foods (ice cream, cake, cookies, candy etc). Although fruits would be a much better choice for taming the sweet tooth, diet sodas can help people to make this transition. We never have suggested that diet sodas were part of pre-agricultural diets, but neither were fatty meats, milk, butter, cheese, whole grain breads or the salted foods that Fallon so highly recommends.
The third paragraph of Fallon’s diatribe becomes personal and insulting – not just for me for any educated person. I prefer to let the data and information speak for itself, regardless of a person’s gender, racial background or academic affiliation. Information should not be accepted or rejected upon who generates it, but rather upon the merit and objectivity of the idea. I personally find it repulsive to prejudice an individual or person based upon personal issues or characteristics that are unrelated to the information being presented.
In the third paragraph of her review, Fallon once again mistakenly suggests that we indicated that hunter-gatherers ate low fat diets. This never has been the case. Apparently, she has not bothered to read our paper (Cordain L, Brand Miller J, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SHA, Speth JD. Plant to animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in world wide hunter-gatherer diets. Am J Clin Nutr 2000, 71:682-92) in which we say “Our analysis showed that whenever and wherever it was ecologically possible, hunter-gatherers consumed high amounts (45-65% of energy) of animal food. And “the fat intake would be comparable or higher (28-58% energy) than values currently consumed in modern, industrialized societies.”
Fallon brings up the notion of political correctness (pc) in her review. As scientists, we utilize the scientific method to form and test our hypotheses and let the chips fall where they will regardless of any pre-conceived notions. Although it may be politically correct to state that saturated fats are not necessarily healthful when consumed in the high amounts in the typical U.S. diet, it is terribly politically incorrect to recommend limiting grains of any kind (whole or processed) or dairy products. Our dietary recommendations have no basis in political correctness, but rather reflect what the data indicate.
In Fallon’s 4th paragraph she completely misleads the reader by stating that: “He says that Paleolithic peoples had no carbohydrate foods like grains or starchy root foods—never mind reports of grains found in the fire ashes of some of the earliest human groups, or the widespread use of tubers among primitive peoples, usually fermented or slow cooked.” This statement steps far beyond the bounds of truth. We go on record as stating that Pre-Agricultural people ate few or no grains, however we have never suggested that they did not eat tubers. Again, if Fallon would take the time to read our scientific papers, she would be aware of this. In our AJCN 2000 paper (Table 3) we show that tubers, roots and bulbs would have comprised 23.6 % of all the plant food consumed by the average hunter-gatherer. Grains are virtually indigestible unless the cell walls are broken via (grinding or milling) and the starch is gelatinized by cooking. Hence the appearance of stone grinding tools (mortar and pestle, saddle stones etc) heralds the widespread use of grains in hunter-gatherer societies. The first primitive grinding tools do not make their appearance anywhere in the world until the late Paleolithic (~15-20,000 years ago), and the first hunter gatherer society known to have made wide scale use of grains were the Natufians who lived in the Levant ~13,000 years ago.
The next statement in this paragraph is highly objectionable, false and is totally ignorant of the actual data regarding the fatty acid composition of the tissue of wild animals. “He says that there isn’t much fat in wild animals (did he check with any hunters while writing his book?) and that what fat these animals had was highly politically correct—low in “lethal” saturated fat and rich in monounsaturates and omega-3 fatty acids. Did he look up the fatty acid profile of buffalo fat while researching his book? Obviously not. If he had, it would have ruined his whole theory because buffalo fat is more saturated than beef fat.” Apparently, Fallon again has failed to do her homework. If she would take the time to read our paper (Cordain L, Watkins BA, Florant GL, Kehler M, Rogers L, Li Y. Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: Evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease. Eur J Clin Nutr, 2002; 56:181-191.) she would know that our conclusions are based upon hundreds of hours of painstaking analysis. I don’t believe Fallon has ever analyzed the tissues of any wild animals – we have, and our scientific results are much different than her opinions.
Here’s another completely false statement: “And obviously he didn’t check up on canola oil, which he recommends as a source of omega-3 fatty acids—because virtually all canola oil is deodorized, a process that gets rid of the omega-3s.” This statement shows how anyone can say anything on the internet with absolutely no systems of checks and balances that are normally provided by the peer review process in scientific publications. Any reader who wants to can access Medline (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) and find numerous studies showing that canola oil contains about 10% of it’s total fatty acids as omega 3 fatty acids. Here are 2 citations (Dupont J et al. J Am Coll Nutr 1989;8:360-75; Ayorinde FO et al. Rapid Commun Mass Spectrom. 2000;14:608-15).
In regard to salt, Fallon again does the reader a disservice by not adequately presenting the data. The systematic mining, manufacture and transportation of salt have their origin in the Neolithic. Dragging and gathering salt from dry lakebeds is known to have taken place on Lake Yuncheng in the Northern Province of Shanxi, China by 6000 B.C. The earliest evidence for salt exploitation in Europe comes from salt mines at Cardona, Spain dating to 4200 – 3600 B.C. It is likely that Paleolithic or Holocene hunter-gatherers living in coastal areas may have dipped food in seawater or used dried seawater salt in a manner similar to nearly all Polynesian societies at the time of European contact However, the inland living Maori of New Zealand lost the salt habit, and most recently studied inland hunter-gatherers add no or little salt to their food on a daily basis. Further, there is no evidence that Paleolithic (2.5 million years ago until 10,000 years ago) people undertook salt extraction or took interest in inland salt deposits. Collectively, this evidence suggests that the high salt consumption (~10 g per day) in western societies has minimal or no evolutionary precedent in all hominin species prior to the Neolithic period.
Fallon’s final paragraph represents opinion unsubstantiated by factual data. Again, if she would have taken the time to read our paper (Cordain L, Watkins BA, Florant GL, Kehler M, Rogers L, Li Y. Fatty acid analysis of wild ruminant tissues: Evolutionary implications for reducing diet-related chronic disease. Eur J Clin Nutr, 2002; 56:181-191.), she would have known that a modern Paleo Diet contains almost 8 times the RDA for vitamin A. Consequently, her statement that high protein diets lead to vitamin A deficiency is nonsense and completely untrue. Although hunter-gatherers did not consume dairy products, their bones were robust and resistant to fracture and rarely exhibited signs and symptoms of osteoporosis which is endemic in western populations. As we have outlined at my website as well as in the JANA paper and elsewhere, these people maintained strong bones because they were in calcium balance – meaning that calcium intake exceeded calcium losses in the urine. When the diet is net alkaline-producing, calcium balance can be maintained at lower calcium intakes.
Our recommendation to rub flax oil on meat prior to cooking was based on information published by the Flax Council showing that no oxidation occurred to flaxseed when cooked at 662 F for 60 min. Apparently, flax oil may respond differently than flaxseed for unknown reasons. Because of the new information we have rescinded our previous recommendation and suggest that flax oil be added after cooking (see website–click here for more information).
Fallon wraps up her diatribe by saying that we indicated diet sodas were part of hunter-gatherer diets. This statement is a ludicrous attempt to discredit our scientific work and the work of hundreds of dedicated scientists throughout the world who realize the value of evolutionary nutrition in treating multiple diseases of civilization. The most powerful and pervasive idea in all of biology is evolution through natural selection. It has only been in the last decade that this organizing template has been applied to nutrition and health. Great strides are now being made in understanding how clinically demonstrated principles underlying proper nutrition can be traced to our genome. Our genome was conditioned and shaped by environmental selective pressures that occurred long before the Agricultural Revolution. Since the appearance of our genus Homo, more than 2 million years ago, there have been at least 100,000 generations. Since the Agricultural Revolution of 10,000 years ago there have been only 500 human generations. Our genome simply has had insufficient time to adapt to the foods ushered in during the Neolithic (fatty meats, dairy products, whole grains and salty foods).
Hey Miguel-
Yea, I’ve read the various rebuttals to the Milton piece…I believe t6he rebuttals are part of the journal that originally published Cordain’s work. I also did a piece on the WPF and Fallon’s hatchet job on Cordain…it’s in the archives somewhere.
Thanbks for the links…great stuff!
Robb,
I don’t mean to insult Cordain, I think his research is great. And you’re right that he’s very professional. I still think he’s off the mark about saturated fat though. According to his own research, wild ruminant adipose fat is about 50% saturated, with very little PUFA. Very similar to modern beef. Here’s the ref:
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n3/abs/1601307a.html;jsessionid=545580BD090ADBF57A677617F3A5ADD4
I understand that other tissues that HGs would have eaten are not as rich in saturated fat as adipose (although they still contain a fair amount of it), but at certain times of year adipose is where most of the fat is.
During the fall and early winter, wild ruminants are as fat or fatter than modern beef, most of the fat coming from the sat fat-rich adipose tissue. If HGs could handle large amounts of sat fat during several months of the year (at a minimum), why not year-round?
Furthermore, Sally Fallon is correct in saying that HGs tended to select the fattest animals available, such as older male ruminants. The anthropologists are on her side about that. It makes sense because more fat = more calories. Cordain assumes “representative” animals that are of average leanness, but I think this causes him to underestimate fat (esp saturated) content.
Many HGs were almost totally carnivorous, and thus they were getting 65% plus of their calories from fat (35% is about the max for protein according to Cordain). The idea that they were not eating much saturated fat in a diet like that is hard to believe!
Stephan-
All valid points. There are a few interesting things to take from this IMO. The first is that there is/was cyclic variability in the food intake of our ancestors. There appears to be a shift in metabolism towards ketosis and fats during the winter, more carb tolerance in the summer. This appears to be wired into the photo-period and it has huge implications for modern living, both in regards to the amounts and types of food to eat but also sleep and light exposure. Built into this is the fact that periods of high fat intake were NOT accompanied with high carb intake. This seems to jive with what Eades and Cordain have come to logger-heads on this topic: High fat intake AND high carb intake is bad news. I’ll shot Loren an email about the topic of cyclic ketosis and see what his thoughts are on that…
A second issue is Optimum Foraging Strategy (OFS). The theory goes that GH’s would try to optimize nutrient/caloric density in their foraging efforts. This would appear to necessitate seeking out the fattest animals and fattiest cuts of meat on the one hand and the most accesable/nutrient dens plant materials possible. It is interesting to note that many HG’s worked outwards from an encampment, eating the preferred foods in an ever widening circle. They purposfully passed over less desirable foods that were more accessible in the quest for foods that they simply preferred to eat. At a certain point the more desirable foods were sufficiently distant that they started eating the closer, but LESS desirable foods. At some point the resources were depleted enough that camp was moved and the process started over. Robert V. Lee’s book :!Kung San-Men, Women and Work in a Foraging Society is a fantastic resource for this topic.
Now, what is not clear to me in this whole thing is how does the fact that HG’s would tend to trek fairly far and wide looking for preferred foods fit into OFS? If I recall correctly this act of passing over “less desirable” foods actually optimizes OFS. Now, all that considered…it seems likely that fat intake was indeed higher than “representative”. Thoughts?
Hi Robb,
Very interesting. Thanks for the !Kung reference; I’ll have to check that out. I’m not familiar with OFS. However, it’s clear from Cordain’s papers that HGs went for the most nutrient dense plant and animal foods available. One of the most interesting aspects of this is that HGs didn’t eat many “vegetables”. If it wasn’t protein-rich, fatty or starchy, it wasn’t worth wasting time on! There were some exceptions of course.
I’m interested in the statement you made about carb tolerance. If I understand correctly, you’re saying that we have a metabolic rhythm that favors starchy foods in the summer and fatty ones in the winter? If you have references on this, I’d appreciate if you could point me to them. Thanks for the informative conversation.
Stephan-
My first exposure to the concept of cyclic nutrient tolerance was in the book Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival. They discuss the concepts there AND provide a stunning number of references. I think you will find it much more in line with your thoughts on Paleo eating. Between that book and Protein Power: LIfeplan, I think that covers everything anyone would need for health and fitness. Talk about Nutrient Density!!
I’ve been thinking that saturated fat is generally best consumed in cold climates as the body needs that continual slow burning fuel to keep warm. If the body’s metabolism has to continually generate heat, there isn’t much left around in the body to store. Also, if there’s snow on the ground, there aren’t many plants to eat. I see animal fat and cold going hand in hand. Inversely, if there’s less of a metabolic furnace needed, just about anything will pile up and either spoil or block things. I think if people are eating a lot of fat and live in moderate to warm climates, they will need to really up their metabolism to prevent a pile up of any kind. Am I wrong?
Abraham-
I don’t know if I’d say “wrong” but there are some subtleties here. I think in the dead of winter it’s safe to assume we are wired up for a higher fat intake, but again, I’m not sure that means the percentage of sat’d fat is that different. Keep in mind, animals in cold climates have an up-regulation of an enzyme called desaturase which increases the % of mono and poly unsat’d fats in tissues. This acts essentially as an antifreeze for the cell membranes which loose the ability to perform normally if the membrane fluidity is not kept within certain parameters.
Keep in mind also, insulin stores fat. If fat is the predominate fuel source and insulin levels are low, people tend not to gain weight…no need for an increase in their metabolic rate!
Robb, What a gold mine, thanks very much for making this very relevant (to me) info available. Looking forward to reading some of the archives now that I’ve found this. It was a pleasure to meet you at the Games. Paul
Thanks Paul!
Robb, wrt your last comment “insulin stores fat. If fat is the predominate fuel source and insulin levels are low, people tend not to gain weight” – in theory, what happens when I’m overall well nourished (via zone for the sake of argument) but I stuff a jar of macadamia nuts into myself, 126 g of fat. Won’t some of that convert to body fat? Would you briefly describe the impact and/or mechanism? Thanks, Paul
This could be a good section of a book but I’ll try to touch on the key points. In the case you mention even Zone levels leaves enough Acetyl-co-A around to easily convert a giant fat bolus into stored fat. In a completely carb restricted diet, we see little to no fat storage WITHOUT some baseline of AC-Co-A. We see an uptick in metabolsim and storage based on the amount of Acetyl-co-A produced from the glycerol back bones of the TAG’s consumed in the nut butter.
That’s kind of a micro-scale look at this. On a macro level it is DAMN hard to get someone to sit down and eat a whole jar of nut butter…add some carbs to that scenario and viola!
We can eat the jar of nut butter AND a whole bag of cookies we slather the nut butter on. Is’nt that interesting? We bonk on eating pure fat…we get full. Add some kind of carb to the scenario and our body knows we can process that whole mess. We have similar mechanisms with very lean protein sources, we get full and the food has no appeal. Another thing to consider is the liver has a processing limit with fat…you can get quite nauseous from an overly large meal of fat (ask me about my whole can of coconut milk experiences).
This is a quick run-through but let me know if it helps.
Robb, I think I get it – summary, I’m not likely to eat all that fat without having some carbs, but if I did, I would get some fat accumulation from it based on having Zone-residual levels of Acetyl-co-A …
This is nearly a real scenario btw – I get started chewing on a few macs in between meals and the next thing I know, I’ve downed 3 ounces and have to force myself to put the can away from my desk. However, there’s little detectable downside – a bit less weight loss than I would like, but blood lipids are great and I feel good. It is apparently a behavior habit, not driven by metabolic cycles as can be seen with carb munching, for example.
Thanks! Paul
Paul-
That is the confounding thing…over eat fat and you may not lean out as much as you want but you will NOT get “fat” not screw up your lipid profile…defies logic but it certainly appears to be the case.
So, if over eating fat doesn’t make you lean would it be a specific ratio or time period? Maybe a cycle of ketosis, such as mentioned before? Would it have to do with the bf% of the person combined with any of the above?
This stuff is great, please keep it up!
John-
You lost me…what’cha asking here?