Theory is good but proof is better. Do walk your talk and does it work for you/

Thats what we need to know.

If you look as good as this 58 yr old dude called Storm who has lived on a raw vegan plant based diet wiith very low protein for 20 plus years, then I’m all ears.

http://tinyurl.com/ar2laz

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think I reached out to bring you into the fold. You found me. If you want to follow a whole-food vegan diet, please don’t let me stand in your way.

I’ve read a wery well (at least for me) argumented text on this subject, but it is not translated to English, and I believe the author is now forgotten.

I suspect that primitive people gathered shellfish, bugs, snails, worms, and so forth long before they gathered bone marrow from scavenged prey. They probably ate brains and other internal organs from scavenged animals, too, but it’s not clear that these were responsible for changes that you attribute to it. We don’t know how much of those could have been eaten, given their low availability, esp in smaller animals. It’s unlikely that we got to eat a lot of marrow and organs from large animals, until we began hunting them. Nor is it clear that it would be ideal to recreate such a hypothetical diet in today’s polluted stressful world, that isn’t like the world we evolved in (environmentally or culturally).

Cream has carbs and often carrageenan, refined sugars, and chemical additives. Plus, most of it is ultra-pasteurized in the USA. Also, coffee stimulates insulin, including decaf. For Taubes’s experiment to be valid, he would need to get rid of coffee, and use butter instead of cream. Butter has virtually no carbs (0.06% by weight). Another experiment would be to use ghee as the only dairy product. Ghee is 100% fat, so it may not cause the same reactions that cream, milk, and cheese do. If you can obtain them, raw butter and cream should also be tested, in order to make sure that the processing isn’t the problem.

“Adding to what Dr. Eades said, large ruminant mammals have the most saturated fat. Primitives also ate the fat preferentially and wasted the lean meat.”

And way before hunting there was gathering ….. for large bones with the bone marrow left after hyenas meal. That brought about bipedalism, first tools and skills to make them, fire, hair loss on the torso and a big fatty brain, – everything that differ us from apes.

Speaking of little things throwing us off (i.e. the cream in Taubes’ coffee)…

Most evenings, I enjoy drinking two dark beers (porter, stout, ale, etc.). And other than that, on a good day (i.e. no cheating) I probably also consume about 70 net carbs throughout the day. I am deluding myself into thinking that those two beers are in any way healthy? Or are they derailing any progress I might be making with my otherwise-carb-restricted diet? And don’t suggest a low-carb beer like Michelob Ultra, because I’d rather get down on all fours and lap from my toilet. Thanks.

If you are maintaining and not gaining on the beers, then I would say go for it. If you’re trying to lose, and your weight loss has stalled, the beers probably need to take a powder.

I’m not all that keen on Michelob Ultra, but Bud Select isn’t too bad. If you can find it; it’s not in all markets.

What could be the mechanism for that? I occasionally use an ion-exchange whey protein isolate for some extra protein (Especially in the mornings where I haven’t had time to fix my usual bacon and eggs), and have been trying to cook more and more with organic, grass-fed butter. I’ll see if those stall me like putting cream in my coffee does, too…

As we all know, a lot of nonsense is published by scientists in the peer-reviewed literature. I think Cordain’s claims against saturated fat amount to that. Sally Fallon and Mary Enig ripped his arguments apart in a debate on the paleo diet lists, archived here.
http://www.scdiet.org/7archives/lutz/paleo2.html

They’ve also written several other articles that refute his very flawed conclusions.
http://westonaprice.org/bookreviews/paleodiet.html
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/caveman_cuisine.html
http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional_diets/native_americans.html

The fact is that Cordain has frequently changed his positions. He used to argue that people had evolved as low-fat vegetarians. Then he revised his views and said they ate more fat and meat. He’s still recommends a very unhealthy diet, because humans were more hunters than gatherers. We ate fat preferentially and wasted lean meat. The fat eaten was predominantly SFAs and MUFAs, with very low PUFAs. His advice to use canola and flaxseed oil and eat nuts clearly has no precedent in the actual diets of hunting tribes. None of them would eat such vegetable oils, which are usually inferior in taste and nutrition to fat from ruminant mammals. The increased use of unsaturated oils spawned modern disease epidemics.
http://raypeat.com/articles/

Cordain has changed his position as the data he looks at changes. I think he is coming around to our way of thinking.

I’m sure you’ve heard or read about what Michael Phelps eats while he trains and I was wondering what your thoughts are concerning how much carbs he eats per day.

Thanks,
Jeff

Young elite athletes – for the most part – can get away with eating whatever they want. It doesn’t catch up to them until later. He’s expending a ton of energy in his activities, and he’s burning all carbs to do it. His activity level pretty much overrides the negative metabolic effects of the high-carb intake, but it won’t work forever.

Which makes me wonder about the medical establishment and physicians like Ornish. Okay, so “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. But that should not apply in science, and the individuals to whom it does apply should hear from their less-compromised colleagues. How can laypeople be expected to act realistically when the very people charged with understanding reality lie to them for personal gain?

Dr Mike, I’m having a problem understanding something and can’t find it discussed in your book, this site, or Dr Bernstein’s book. If you could orient me –not in the role of physician giving medical advice, but as a scientist expert in a specialised field– I’d be grateful.

I’m 68, and after an dietarily-unhealthy hiatus of some years, I’ve been back in a ketotic diet since early July because of a blood-glucose problem. It would not be hard for me to drop myself out of ketosis – even a cup of coffee lowers my ketone production, so I presume that means my beta cells are still alive and functioning (yes?). I manage to maintain a ketosis on the order of 60-160mg/dl (per Ketostix) by ruthlessly limiting my carbs (tofu, eggs, nuts, rehydrated whey), and I’m seeing some trivial body-shape changes though no actual size changes.

But my BG remains persistently elevated ( ca. 125 ), I have no stamina during exercise, and the rate of fat mobilisation is nowhere near what I’d expect on a diet that averages on the order of 500 calories/25g carbs a day. The other day I went to the grocers (6.5km round trip) and was so exhausted when I got back that I had to sit down and rest for minutes twice while carrying my bike the two flights up to my apt – something that’s never happened before. I passionately do not want any more diabetic side-effects (I already have some toe numbness) yet cannot think of anything I can do to improve my situation. I presume there’s something I’m not seeing, or not interpreting correctly.

You may want to increase the fat in your diet. And I would increase it by increasing meat intake, not dairy intake. I’ve heard from enough people who had their weight loss perk up the minute they got rid of dairy in their diet. In fact, the other day when we had lunch with Gary Taubes he related that a number of years ago when he was first experimenting with a low-carb diet he found that his weight loss picked up markedly when he quit drinking cream in his coffee. All these reports – including Gary’s – are anecdotal, but it may be worth a try to see if it works in your case.