This is a sort of “barely” on topic post from the far North [born and raised in Alaska ... and after accumulating a couple of degrees, back again].

Well, ok. I wrote a whole “on topic” book below before I got to the barely on topic part … but not much need since there are lots of those.

Personally, however, it is very easy to convince myself of the proof of a low carb [durn near 0 - just 'cause I never much liked them and Adkins gave me an excuse to stop gagging them down] I am the easiest living proof that high meat, low carb diets work … at least as well as we can know over a few decade time frame. You’d have to run a few multi-century experiments to really know what it does to health and longevity. I used to eat lots of carbs just because that’s what someone put on the table or in the pantry or on the grocery store shelf … without thinking about it. As per all the men in my family I went from “really too skinny” [165 lbs. - 6' 2"] to “really too fat” [265 lbs. - 6' 2"] over the period of three or four years in my early 30s. I loved it. I finally gained my “adult weight” and felt (and was) vastly more powerful physically [partly because during this period I was doing, for modern society, an incredible amount of hard physical work ... much of the gain was muscle]. But it was still too much.

After some serious hiking out from Nome [Alaska], shortly subsequent to a storm that had turned up masses of metal from the late 1800s/early 1900s gold rush … and lacking transportation other than my feet. The “gold beach” (yeah, you can still get gold, but given a few spoonfuls of fairly ugly flake gold [not the pretty stuff we have farther south] versus a turn of the (last) century woman’s clothes iron [solid steel] or pick-axes [solid steel] or gobs of other cool stuff … no issue. The gold held no allure. But I packed hundreds of pounds of steel for many miles each day for several days.

Got home and my joints (particularly my left hip) hurt for weeks. I realized I was the only male in my entire line … backwards, forwards, sideways, up, down …. everywhere I looked … I was the eldest male in the clan that had not had hip replacement surgery. Figured it was about time to stop packing around that extra 50 lbs or so that I enjoyed but really didn’t need. Also … I build things and do lots of climbing … going up a 20 foot ladder with just “me” was the same as if the right sized “me” was carrying a 50 pound bag of cement up that ladder. Which is difficult if you’ve never tried it. Those suckers are heavy!

I’d never thought I was overweight. I rejoiced in being big [I carried it very well ... I looked powerful, not fat]. And I’d certainly never tried to lose any! Didn’t want to! Until I decided it was that or I was going to have joint surgery in the near future.

So … I stopped eating all the foods that my Mom had always piled on my plate and said “eat your whole dinner young man!” But now I didn’t have to any longer! If the President of the U.S. didn’t have to eat his broccoli then neither did I!! I never had a sweet tooth, but when I started paying attention I found I was DRINKING huge amounts of sugar! Soda pop, heavily sugared iced tea, etc. Basically, I knocked off all the fruits and vegetables that I had never liked anyway. Swapped cottage cheeze for the potatoes that I used to use to drench the meat grease, dropped the iced tea and switched from regular Pepsi to diet Pepsi … and I hit the right color on the kerotyn (or whatever it is called) strip in about a week.

I didn’t push it. After the first few days it was barely noticeable. After the first few weeks I paid no attention except that I just “ate that way”. When we vacationed in Hawaii I ate all the carb stuff since local cusine is always part of exploration of a culture. Only weighed myself every few days. Didn’t check a keytone strip after the first week or so.

It always irritated me that the commercial butchers at the chain (and most other) grocery stores started trimming all the fat off! I was ticked off for years until I found out that the butchers were too. They hated it also and always took home “well-marbled” steaks with a couple inches of fat on them for their personal diets, but the stores had to play gastronomical correctness games. Much of it was wasted!!! The best, most expensive, and most (pre)historically hard come by food … large quantities of animal fat … was being thrown away or given to animals [if you love Fluffy, why give her food you think is bad for you???] Anyway, after that I just bought my steaks “special made” and the butchers loved me. They would even give me (free!) bags of “trimmin’s” … straight fat … wonderful stuff! Get a skillet of hot grease going and pop a bunch of pieces of those in and salt heavily …. mmmm … I’m getting hungry! Cracklins … can’t beat it. Straight hard white meat fat.

I come from a land that was still eating Paleo to a large extent even when I was growing up. In reality the “Paleo” diet means “whatever you can find to keep from starving”. Up here than meant a lot of meat … moose, caribou, elk, deer, rabbit, squirrel … whatever … and the Interior Athabascans still faced starvation nearly every winter. But it was all “low-fat” by today’s standards. I used to eat a moose or two a year, but I got tired of having to grind most of it up into mooseburgers so that I could grind in major quantities of beef fat to make it palatable. Most wild game in “difficult to survive” country like up North here … just doesn’t carry enough fat! You can actually starve to death with all the wild rabbit to eat that you want. [Different regions therefore had very different "Paleo" diets!]

The oceanside folks, Inupiats, Yupiks, Aleuts … they did much better; starvation was very rare. Loads of fatty salmon (one of nature’s greatest health foods). And then the ocean mammals. A bowhead whale was more work to kill and bring home than a mammoth … but it was wonderfully almost straight fat. [And once you develop a taste for it ... muktuk is delicious ... though us "white folk" have to develop the taste! [I was determined to and did. Now, give me a piece of muktuk, wrap it in straight raw blubber, dip it in a jar of seal oild ... now that is good stuff! But I concede when I first tried it ... it was not an immediate attraction ] Sea otter, walrus, seals … all the wonderful (and incredbly fat) marine animals … plus! the greatest of ocean delicacies. Crab, shrimp, abalone, clams, mussels … it was nature’s true bounty.

But with a few incredibly minor rare exceptions, there was not a vegetable or fruit in any meal. It was all just meat. Those that had to live on skinny meat sometimes starved. Those who lived on fat meat lived long and well.

But … dieters hate me. I only tried to lose weight once in my life. Got it over with quickly without paying it much attention and no pay no heed at all to carbs, sweets, whatever. BUT … when I decided to do it … to take off that extra baggage … with no hassles or feelings of “missing” anything (after the week it took me to acclimate to diet Pepsi) … I LOST 50 LBS. IN THE 5 MONTHS BEFORE MY 50TH BIRTHDAY!

Biggest hassle was that I had to “work” to put the brakes on. I didn’t like regular Pepsi as well any longer. I preferred my steak grease poured over cottage cheeze instead of potatoes. I’m holding at about 190 lbs. now after finally pulling out of the dive at about 180. [I'm 55 now ... pretty stable at ~190 ... would like to put another 10 lbs back on, but work won't do it -- amassing muscle is ok, but you pay for it in lost fat so why bother? Some people even think exercise is good to make you LOSE weight!!! Duh. If I wanted to gain it ... I'd have to cram a bunch of carbs ... and it just isn't worth it.

Oh. Yes. Numbers. The fact that I'm physically incredibly healthy, almost never even catch a cold when all those around me do ... the fact that I have had no joint pain in years ... none of that matters. It is all a numbers society. I didn't "do" doctors and medical stuff so I, unfortunately, have no "befores" to compare with. But I was "convinced" that I should once in awhile afterwards My blood pressure I do have before and after on ... before was always really close to 120/80. After ... I'm about 105/65.

[I don't know what these numbers mean, btw. They just handed me this bunch of lab report stuff and said to keep doing whatever I was doing! I asked if that meant I was still supposed to drench my grease in salt so that you can barely see anything else (which is also a family tradition! ... oh, in case it matters, although raised in a 50/50 Native/White village, I'm 100% ... well, probably 98% western Caucasian. [The 2% is just an old family joke about us being a mix of so many nationalities ... my grandpa used to say that "Yep, we had anscestors come over on the Mayflower ... and anscestors here to meet 'em" ]

Numbers:

Lipid Panel: Cholesterol total: 181 mg/dL; Triglycerides: 94 mg/dL; HDL Cholesterol: 84 mg/dL; [in bold, marked "HIGH" ... I'd have been worried but was told it was a good thing ... in fact the lab note adds a "Comment" which says "HDL cholesterol values >59 mg/dL are associated with reduced cardiac risk.] VLDL Cholesterol Cal: 19 mg/dL; LDL Cholesterol Calc: 78 mg/dL.

Prostate-Specific Ag, Serum 1.0 ng/mL [Beckman (formerly Hybritech) ICMA methodology

TSH: 1.939 uIU/ml

Oh lord ... there are pages of this stuff. Doctor said everything was excellent. The lab reports have several things in bold with w/a "flag" comment. I'll settle for reporting those: on the CBC with Differential/Platelyet ... etc. :

RDW 11.5 ("Low")
Platelets 121 ("Low")
~~~~~~~
Comp. Metabolic Panel (14) -

Glucose, Serum 134 ("High")
Globulin, Total 1.3 ("Low")

I don't know what other numbers are important. I asked Doc if there was anything in there to worry about and he said something about the concern of outliving all those I love [:-)] but other than that … go have a heavily salted, well-marbled steak, and to come back and see him in a couple decades … sooner if “lifelong members of TOPS” [which is the most absurd thing in our society!] ganged up and sat on me.

[Ok, that wasn't "quite" the exact quote

But the point is just that I seldom intentionally eat fruit or vegetables although I'll eat them [some I really like ... give me a salt shaker and turn me loose in a tomato patch and I'm happy all day.]

But it just took one kick to the metabolism and the weight came down instantly. My numbers are … well, you know better than I … all I know is that those with knowledge of such things are always extremely jealous. If anything I kind of have to work to remind myself to eat more carbs and sugar to keep from losing more weight. At that … it is really stable … it doesn’t yo-yo or anything.

The Native cultures here had even less vegetative matter than I eat. They lived on blubber and steaks. The Paleo diet here had no choice. There wasn’t anything else! Until white folk brought disease (and much worse … guns with which they enslaved the Natives and killed them … and, sadly and to our shame, not theirs … booze), the Native folk had a history of longevity.

So … we’re all doin’ fine up this way without anything that the — fruit and berries nuts … uh, the berry and nut fruits … uh … the “nutty, fruity and bury early” crowd [:-)] — would put in their body and eating ONLY stuff that they would NOT put in their bodies … we’re doing fine. In our 90s we’ll still be the active pallbearers for the much younger berry and nut folks we’ll be hauling off to the graveyard.

But that was NOT what I was writing about

My initial sentence referred to something only barely on-topic. Someday (should get to it soon, he’s in good health but he is, by well over a decade, my older brother) I’m going to write a book about it.

But my brother is almost certainly the last surviving human being who has eaten mammoth meat!

Let it sink in!

When he was just a kid up in the Nome area he hung around a group of scientists and crazy archeologists who were digging up prehistoric bones. One day one of the sled dogs tore into camp with a bunch more right behind it trying to grab the big chunk of meat the first one had. Folks traced it back to a mammoth that was melting out of a glacier. But it was in such great shape that we aren’t just talking about bones or traces of hair or skin. This was an almost complete baby mammoth (it is now in a museum. I have a bunch of notes on exactly where and all that aren’t handy … but I’ve seen pictures of it. It is still around. [Kept frozen!] So the crazy archeologists took a slab of the meat and tossed chunks of it in the skillet. They let my brother have a few bites. And they were all adults … mostly on the gray side of 50. As best we can tell, none that could possibly have had a bite are still alive now. Except my brother.

The Last Mammoth Eater!

He’s is great shape too. See what 20,000 year old meat does for you?

Thanks for letting me have fun today. [Every word that wasn't specifically referenced as a joke .... is dead true and accurate though!]

Thanks for commenting. I would love to have had a bite of that mammoth myself.

There’s quite a big difference between pastured and conventional eggs. You can read Stephan’s interesting post about it here: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/05/pastured-eggs.html

You can now get organic butter at Costco. Good to hear some .. dubiousness… about the necessity for grass-fed (expensive!) meat. I’ll go back to Costco meat with a clear… er… conscience and I’ll cook that meat in organic butter until my coconut oil comes! But I’m in a quandary about eggs: “vegetarian-fed eggs” seem to be the wrong thing (birds eat no bugs, no worms); but ‘industrial eggs” also seem the wrong thing. (My homeowners association won’t let me keep chickens! Tee hee hee!) I have not yet been able to find a local farm yet (but I’m still looking), and I do eat a lot of eggs… What’s a low-carb girl to do?! (You ‘don’t know if there is a huge difference’ — but which do you choose?

Thanks SO much for all your knowledge and help!

If so, which and why?

I would have thought that the diet and the sun would provide everything we evolved to require.

If I ate exactly as did Paleolithic man I probably wouldn’t take supplements, but then again I might just as cheap insurance against nutritional inadequacies.

Don’t you feel the “Eat Right for your Blood Type” diet has value related to your paleolithic diet findings/comparisons? My husband and I are both type O blood type and I feel your findings support Eat right for Blood Type (type O diet) greatly. Your thoughts on the comparison?

I think the Eat Right for your Blood Type diet is bogus. From all available scientific evidence, blood types evolved in response to infectious diseases, not foods, and, as such, have nothing to do with diet.

It seems to encourage folks with type A blood (which is what I have) to eat lots of vegetables, beans, pulses AND grain based foods (which I dislike) because he said type A blood reacts to lectins found in protein but not ones from carbs. He suggests A’s should all be vegetarians! So I went on that diet for a short while, only to grow weak and become severely underweight. I stopped it after that.

In another twist, I found an article by Dr Balzer, who mentions lectins found in grains, beans and pulses are toxic to the gut. Grains purposely make lectins (a glue type pesticide) to protect themselves so they don’t get digested in the gut of a predator (humans), that way they can survive being eaten so they get pooped out to germinate. Same reason why we can’t eat the seed of the apricot – it’s toxic. I’m so tempted to swear off as much refined or organic unrefined carbs out of my life as soon as possible but I wanna be cautious.

I would love to try out the Paleo diet to the fullest but somehow, I’m still worried that my A blood type will react to too much meat and cause side effects. I’m not sure which diet to follow. They all seem to make so much sense in their own right but still conflicting when placed next to each other. I wish the above study also revealed what the blood types of those participants were, then we’ll really see if blood type diets stand up to their claims!

In my opinion, the idea that proper diet is a function of blood type is ludicrous. The evidence seems to indicate that different blood types evolved to deal with different infectious diseases, not different diets. Although it isn’t a blood type sickle cell anemia is a good example of this kind of phenomenon. People in Africa who have the sickle cell trait are much more resistant to malaria than those who don’t. In the same way, people with certain blood types are more resistant to other diseases. Lectins are real and do cause certain problems, but again, they have nothing to do with blood type. I wouldn’t let your blood type stand in the way of going on a good diet.

While I agree completely that such treats would have been both seasonal and occasional—no orange juice every morning for breakfast—how do we know that wild fruits weren’t sweet—perhaps much sweeter than the hard-as-a-rock, green-as-grass stuff available in our supermarkets today?

I’m sure the wild fruits were sweet, but they were seasonal and probably small. And early man had to compete with the birds and other animals for them. Whatever size and sweetness they were, they weren’t available year round.